January 10, 2024 • 51 mins
Bruce La Fetra's clients call him The Client Whisperer. As founder and owner of Eastwood Strategy Advisors, Bruce uses a product marketing approach that generates bigger and faster returns for most small to mid-sized B2B firms.
Bruce shows B2B business owners how to fish for clients with a spear instead of casting a wider net. His clients accelerate their sales cycle, get paid for more of their value, and are more referable. He equips his clients to “clone” their best, profitable clients.
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Bruce shows B2B business owners how to fish for clients with a spear instead of casting a wider net. His clients accelerate their sales cycle, get paid for more of their value, and are more referable. He equips his clients to “clone” their best, profitable clients.
Winning Business Radio is broadcast live Mondays at 4PM ET.
Winning Business TV Show is viewed on Talk 4 TV (www.talk4tv.com).
Winning Business Radio Show is broadcast on W4CY Radio (www.w4cy.com) part of Talk 4 Radio (www.talk4radio.com) on the Talk 4 Media Network (www.talk4media.com).
Winning Business Radio Podcast is also available on Talk 4 Podcasting (www.talk4podcasting.com), iHeartRadio, Amazon Music, Pandora, Spotify, Audible, and over 100 other podcast outlets.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/winning-business-radio--3075598/support.
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W FOURCY Radio. Churchill said,those who failed to learn from history are
condemned to repeat it. Kevin Helenm believes that certainly applies to business.
Welcome to Winning Business Radio here atW four CY Radio. That's W fourcy
(00:44):
dot com and now your host,Kevin Helenair. Thanks everybody for joining in
today. This is the first showof twenty twenty four. I'm particularly excited.
I am Kevin Hellenan and welcome backto another episode of Winning Business TV
and Radio on W four cy dotcom. We're streaming live on talkfor tv
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dot com in addition to Facebook andthat's at Winning Business Radio. We're also
available in podcasts after the live showon many platforms. You've heard them a
lot of times. It's YouTube,iHeartRadio, Spotify, Apple, pretty much
wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. The mission of this show, winning
business radio and TV, as regularlisteners and viewers know, is to offer
insights and advice to help people avoidthe mistakes of others, to learn best
(01:32):
practices, the how tos, thewhat too's, the what not tos,
to be challenged, and certainly tobe inspired by the successes of others.
But you know, virtually every successfulperson I've ever talked to has had some
form of failure in their lives andcareers. So while we all have to
get our knees skinned once in awhile, I'm driven to keep those scrapes
from needing major surgery. Let's endeavorto learn from history so we don't repeat
(01:53):
it today. My guest is BruceLafatra, the client Whisperer, founder and
owner of owner of eat Wood Strategies. Yeah, I can talk, We'll
get there, Bruce Eastwood Strategy Advisors. Bruce's clients call him the client whisper,
Using a product marketing approach that generatesbigger and faster returns for most small
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to mid size B to B firms. Bruce shows those owners how to fish
for clients with a spear instead ofcasting a wider net. Bruce's clients accelerate
their sales cycle, get paid formore of their value, and are more
referrable. Reverse Engineering the firm's bestclient relationships results in insights that banish random
acts of marketing. He equips hisclients to clone their best profitable clients.
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Bruce earned his BA and Economics fromClaremont McKenna College in Claremont, California,
and his MBA from the Tuck Schoolat Dartmouth. He's a trained facilitator and
currently lives in Knoxville, Tennessee.His husband to Debbie, who's an attorney,
dad to Brian who's twenty five,and Sarah who's twenty two. He's
currently a He's not currently a petowner, but loves dogs and is definitely
a pie over cake guy. Metoo. Thanks Bruce Bruce, Welcome to
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Winning Business TV and Radio. Appreciateyou being here. It's great to be
on and it's great. It's alwaysgreat to talk to you. Kevin.
It's always good to talk to anotherpie guy. Good. I threw that
in because I h it's a goodtest for sure, for sure. And
dogs over cats, sorry cat people. So let's let's start with some background.
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I always liked our listeners and viewersto kind of get a sense as
to where you came from and alittle bit of your background. Where'd you
grow up? I actually grew upin the San Francisco Bay area in Menlo
Park, back when middle class peoplecould live there before Facebook and Google and
all that. Man. Wow,I was a recruiter back in right when
the Internet bubble was at its highest, and even then it was crazy we
(03:42):
try to relocate people into there.It was insane, insane. So what
was it like in Menlo Park atthe time, And what is Menlo Park
well known for? Well, MenloPark is now is a you know,
it's a suburb of on the SanFrancisco Peninsula. It was big home to
big employer. When I was therewas a Raycam Corporation which has now been
bought by Tycho many years ago,and was in the material science. It
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was a place I worked coming outof college where I learned product management and
learned to actually sell stuff that peoplemade. And now I'm a consultant,
so you know, kind of maybeI went over to the dark side.
What I won't do it. Iwas going to say, there are a
couple of good consulting jokes, butself deprecating, I might add, but
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what were your early interests? Highschool? And you know, maybe early
college. Oh, he's been abaseball fan, but I always liked I
grew up in a family of allengineers, so I'm the only one in
my family that doesn't have a BShave a BA. But I also I
grew up where something and they weretinker engineers, not these software engineers.
Now they don't know how to usea screwdriver. And so whenever anything broke,
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we took it apart, and theworst it could be is it was
still broken. Otherwise we learned aboutit, and sometimes we fix things that
other people said were broken. Andso for me, I wasn't quite the
mechanical aptitude of my siblings, butthat I learned that to apply it to
people. And I always love tounderstand why people do things, not you
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know, the psychobabble, but butin terms of how do you create value
that people appreciate, that's excellent.I love hearing that. Why did did
you choose Claremont and why economics.I liked small schools, so I both
my undergrad and graduate are our topschools, but they're very small programs.
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And I became a big fan thatthere's three parts to education. One is
the classroom bit, one is yourclassmates, and the other is kind of
the atmosphere around there. And myhigh school classmates that went to someplace and
had nine hundred people in their introto whatever class missed out on two of
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those pieces. I would see myprofessors, you know, in the supermarket
and in town, get invited overto their houses, and I think that
really enhanced the h experience. Andso when I went to grad school,
I was looking for the same thing. And amongst the top NBA programs,
there's only one that fits that category, and that's the Tux School at Dartmouth.
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Economics general business interest. I wasn'tI didn't know exactly what I wanted
to do. I knew I wantedto, you know, be business of
some sort, uh, And sothat provided a really broad base for me.
Were you there long enough to getinto any winter sports, I assume
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you mean that Dartmouth, not atClermont, the Dartmouth well surfing would be
the winner sport in southern California.Well, if you in the Bay Area,
you don't have to go that farfor for a mountain or two,
right, But no, I metDartmouth for sure. Well, actually,
the the the program at tuck Inuntil in my second year that talking to
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professors, I understood this, butthey the program was really intense. And
what it was is it was forcedyou to work with other people that you
could not you could not do italone, and so the peak of one
class would hit the valley of theother one. And I thought, oh
my god, we are so luckythat these things, these peaks didn't line
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up. And it wasn't until Iwas talking to professors a second year that
oh no, they carefully script itso that you're not killed, but that
you can't. You can't. Youhave to depend on your steady group mates.
And I thought that was a greatlearning experience because the other thing from
the is we came in we wereall really smart. I mean, to
get accepted to a place like that, you have to be pretty smart.
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We were successful, but then wefound out that we had solved some of
the same problems different ways. Soit wasn't that there was a solution.
There are solutions, and that tome was really eye open and a great
lesson for life. Why so twothings, Why did you choose to pursue
an MBA? And where were youafter college? After undergrad? Where were
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you in your career at the time. So I worked for over three years,
actually graduated in three and a halfyears from undergrad and worked so at
the top class. In one hundredand sixty eight people in my class,
there were two that didn't have workexperience. Now we weren't. I wasn't
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so far in that had this hugeopportunity costs. I laughed at the married
students at first because they smoked allof us academically. It's like, how
can they do that? Their opportunitycost was way higher than ours. Yeah,
yeah, so true, No,I did well. So I'm not
saying like, you know, sloutstring anything like that, but yeah too.
(08:52):
It was early enough in my careerthat I could do that. I
could take two years and go dothat, and I learned a lot lot,
But it wasn't you know, Ididn't have family and kids and all
those things that make it really hardand trying to locate a spouse with a
job and those kinds of things.Yeah. Uh, to that point,
tell us about Debbie and of courseBrian and Sarah. So so, my
(09:13):
wife's attorney. She does a pelletlevel constitutional laws. So we have very
interesting dinner table conversations. The kidsgrew up knowing a lot about the Constitution.
Uh. So that's so that's good. Son's a he works, he's
a civilian analyst for the Air Force. And I can't tell you anything more
than that. And because I don'tknow anything more than that, because he
(09:35):
wouldn't tell me. Uh. Andmy my daughter is a senior in college
trying to figure out what what she'sgoing to do next. And you know,
she has a variety of interests,very very interesting. I wonder if
Debbie would be willing to get onthe radio. She likes radio, but
not TV. She's actually on theradio tomorrow and she she she doesn't like
TV. Uh, we'll see ifI can, I can have a chat.
(09:58):
I'd love to talk Constitution a lot. As crazy as that sounds,
no, it's not crazy in ourhouse. Yeah, good good. So
all right, you've had you've hada number of jobs. You were at
Raycam. I saw that and forsome reason, I know the name of
that company, or knew the nameof that company. I don't know why.
But then you got your program manager, programs manager, developer relations,
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product marketing manager, various company companies. You could see the progression into marketing.
I want you to just pick outthis is pre self employment. Now,
I want you to pick out acouple of those more impactful positions and
tell us what you took away.What were some of those key lessons,
maybe earlier or later, but pickout a couple and tell us the key
lessons you learned. Well, there'sthere's a there's a couple of those,
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and one is a really big lessonabout channels. So a lot of people
that are in marketing or you know, executives that haven't worked in a channel,
think, oh, well, we'reunder price pressure. We'll just shave
the channel margin. And then theywant why the business goes away? All
right? Described for the for theaudiences. Oh so so if you're if
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you're selling through distributions or or resellers, and if they're not making money,
then they don't sell your product.There you go. And and that seems
like such a simple lesson, butit's one that i've encountered over and over
again where you know, I've beenthe voice of Sandy is like, no,
if the reseller is not making money, it doesn't matter what our margins
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are because they're not going to sellanything. So you need to make you
know, the customer in that caseis really the reseller, not the end
user. And and that's so that'sthat's the And then the other lesson I
got was and maybe it was justthe quirk of the of the companies I
worked with, but I grew upin a role where product management and product
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marketing were combined. It wasn't untilyou know, ten years into my career
where I where I had that rolesplit and it's like, what you mean,
that's like only half a job,not for most. So again for
the audience, describe the difference betweenthe two. So, product management is
managing the product. So what isit? What goes into it? It's
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life cycle, it's features, it'slife cycle the features. And when I,
you know, ray Km's starting out, we did a lot of we
had a lot of standardized products,but we also did a lot of custom
products and uh, and it wasentering new markets, so it was technology
was actually as old as I wasout of patent, but we were.
It'd been primarily military and high endcommercial technology, and we were going into
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commercial, lower end commercial appliances andautomotive and things like that that nobody in
the company had ever done. SoI knew as much as they did,
and so it was really fun.It was a great, great timing to
be there. Product marketing is whichyou think you know a lot of classic
marketing. You know, what's thehow do you you know, how do
you go to market, what's theuh, the copy, the advertising,
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those kinds of things. And obviouslyit's a little bit different for a consumer
product versus which I know nothing about, versus a business to business product,
which I know a lot about.All Right, we have time for one
or two more questions before our firstbreak, but I want to know here's
the big question for me. Youhave two instances of self employment Lafetra Consulting
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twenty eighteen, twenty ten to eighteen. Sorry that was a big shock of
time, and then your current EastwardStrategy Advisors. But back up from that,
why did you decide to become selfemployed? Well, I had I'd
actually fallen into consulting and just threwa Fluke, and the woman I was
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working with, small boutique consulting firm, decided that she didn't like selling,
which is really bad if you're ina small professional services business. You appreciated
the choir, and I loved whatwe were doing. We'd worked with a
lot of large software companies, Adobe, Smantic. They always paid, but
you had to harass them to getthem to pay you. And we had
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an office manager that spent probably halfher time chasing down these big companies,
and I didn't want to do that. I want to and so I kind
of gravitated towards smaller professional firms becauseit was fun, they paid, uh,
and they're fun to work with.In terms of the fature consulting Eastwood,
it's really a continuum. I wason my own. People can't spell
(14:20):
the fat and I had a partnerbriefly and because I thought it was when
I first met you, Yeah,probably everybody. And then I had a
partner, you know, briefly,and so we changed it the Eastwood,
and then he decided he really likedthe certainty and the benefits and things of
you know, being in a corporatejob, and so it just I kept
(14:43):
the kept the east the Eastwood.So I don't know if you do.
You probably do. I have adifferent perspective. I like the certainty of
being self employed. Yeah, controlyour own destiny, right, You control
your own destiny. You control whoyou work with, and certainly with what
I preach. As we talk aboutlater in terms of working with your best
(15:03):
clients once you in Clone, youcan't do that if someone tells you you
know who you work with, right, All right, let's pause right there.
We will be back Bruce in justabout a minute. Everybody else will
be back with Bruce Laftra the ClientWhisper in just a minute. You're listening
to Winning Business Radio with Kevin Heleneton W four CY Radio. That's W
(15:28):
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(15:54):
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to Winning Business Radio with Kevin helenanpresenting exciting topics and expert guests with one
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goal in mind to help you succeedin business. Here once again is Kevin
Helena. We are back with BruceLafecher or the client Whisper. I love
that tagline? Where'd you come upwith that? I didn't. It was
a client of mine and I askedthe story is. I resisted it for
(16:41):
a long time. I thought itwas kind of maybe cheesy or whatever,
and he kept pounding on me,and finally I tried it and people really
liked it. So that's how itcame about. So I'm smart enough to
use it, but not smart enoughto come up with it. There you
go, There you go. Quicksides that pier. You've had several articles
published. I want to know twothings. Well, First, tell us
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about one or two of those articles, and then we'll ask I'll ask you
about the process of writing and gettingpublished. I've been published in a variety
of different sorts of publications, everythingfrom a the trade magazine for the construction
UH and architecture Engineering sorts of worldto marketing type publications and other places.
(17:30):
And the experience in every case isin some sense, you know a little
bit similar. You probably know that, but in other cases it's it's specific
to their market and people want tohave their market addressed as opposed to generalized
knowledge. So it's applied knowledge iswhat I find, you know works with
people. So it's stories. Youknow, I'd love to tell stories,
and I, you know, usethe right stories for the right the right
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marketplace. And that's usually the gistof the way I approach it. So
tell us about one or two ofthose specific articles. What's psych my So
one that I have done is that'sactually in process. I don't know where
it's going to get published exactly becauseI'm speaking on it is. I call
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it the client the expert trap,and what that is is that there's a
lot of professionals who label themselves asexperts and actually actually hurts them. It
slows down the business development cycle,it costs them money, they get paid
less, and they become less referrable. And the reason is is that there's
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nothing wrong with being an expert.The problem is selling like an expert.
So come back to your world,whereas how do experts sell? Let me
tell you all the reasons why youshould buy from me, and if you
show any interest at all, thenI'm going to bombard you with more reasons
and more reasons and more reasons,and pretty soon our brains can't handle that.
So we step back and we startto look around. And now we
look at other options and that caneither make us price sensitive, that can
(19:06):
you know, lead us to anotherprovider, or we just end up doing
nothing because we're overwhelmed. Because that'sthe biggest competitor for almost everyone out there
is do nothing that's right status quote. And so I discussed I discussed you
know that situation, and people saystart nodding their heads, Oh yeah,
And then you know how you getout of it, which isn't that hard,
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But it's not by pushing the expertise. Think about it as as experts
answer questions, that's what they do, right, there's an advisor that helps
shape the questions. So yes,there's a role for both those. One
isn't better than the other, butbut one is is dependent upon works at
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the behest of the client. Theother one works with the client. The
value is very different and their roleis very different. So if you have
a lot of knowledge and I knowa lot of experts that do very well,
but they get called in for aspecific thing. Think about an expert
witness or something. They get calledin for a specific task that they don't
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control. And if you have agreat referral network, that goes fairly easy.
If you're out there hustling the business, it can be really hard.
Good points right there. All right, tell us about Eastwood Strategy Advisors.
I'll read what your LinkedIn profile saysfor the audience of a growth catalyst helping
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lawyers, consultants and advisors do whatevery business strives to do, earn more
without working harder. Evidence from afirm's own clients make my recommendations credible and
actionable. Understanding there or excuse mewhy their best clients select their firm is
a game changer. So just generallytell us about the firm. Sure.
So the one thing you need tounderstand is the concept the best clients.
(20:55):
So people talk about ideal clients.Ideal clients are what you want read magris
is who are you the ideal providerfor? Who wants to work with you?
If you can work from that perspective, life is a lot clearer,
it's a lot easier, and thingshappen a lot faster. So I call
your best clients are the ones thatyou would clone if you could, because
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people can do all the math asto who are their most profitable clients.
And I worked with one attorney andhis farm. They'd hired a consultant and
he spent like an entire day goingthrough their entire book of business. You're
rating them, who's you know?And then nothing had happened for like a
year. They didn't make much progress, and I was talking to him and
I asked him, so, whowould you clone if you could? And
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he thought that there's a great question. Stupid question. He goes, oh
my god, that is we spentan entire day trying to answer that.
And you did one question. Andso when you start to think about who
your best clients are, not allyour clients your best clients. Now,
all of a sudden, the worldlooks really, really different. And you've
probably heard, and our viewers,i'm sure have heard that the top twenty
(22:04):
percent of your clients generate eighty percentof your profits. What people don't talk
about is the bottom twenty percent causeeighty percent of your headaches. So if
you could, if you could focuson just one or the other, actually
getting rid of those bottom twenty percentwill cause more upside. Now, if
you can do that by focusing onthe top twenty percent, now of a
(22:27):
sudden, the world looks really different. You don't have as much variation.
You know what your clients want,so it's not well some like this,
some like that. There's magic,that chemistry, whatever you want to call
it, the magic mojo. You'reworking with clients that appreciate you, understand
your value you. They're the onesthat say, oh my god, Keven,
(22:47):
you get me. That's magic.And now of a sudden, and
there's no headaches, so your capacityactually goes up, so you can work
with more highly profitable clients than youcould if you cast away. Yeah,
they value what we do. There'smutual respect. So not only is there
more revenue and higher profits, butall those other softer things come into play.
(23:10):
Right, as you said, fewerheadaches. Oh and you mentioned yeah,
you're referring more business. Talk aboutthat too. Yeah, So when
you start to focus on your bestclients, there's some I call it your
secret sauce. And I call ityour secret sauces because if I were to
ask you, Kevin, why doyour best clients work with you? Is
there something real or is it justkind of lucky? You say, oh
(23:33):
no, no, there's something real. Well what is it? You can't
articulate it. You can talk aboutvalue or something that isn't really it,
but you know there's something real.If I ask your clients the same question,
they'll answer the same way. Yeah, there's something real about working with
Kevin, but I'm not quite surewhat it is. So my process is
to reverse engineer those relationships. Igo deep with the client that figure out
(23:56):
what peel the onion back to andsay, oh my god, Okay,
there's this thing Kevin does. Inever really thought about it, but if
he stopped doing it, it'd bea totally different relationship. That's your secret
sauce. And it's not necessarily forevery one of your clients, but for
your best clients it is common.Now you start talking about that, not
(24:17):
only do you attract business, youattract those best clients and say, oh
my god, Kevin, you getme. But now your existing clients have
the words to articulate why you're sogreat because clients will almost always once we
get to this point, they say, okay, that seems like almost too
simple. Let me go test itout with some of my best clients.
(24:37):
And the clients just go wide andthey say, oh my god, Kevin,
you have worked together for how manyyears? You know how valuable you
are. We wouldn't be here withoutyou, all that kind of stuff,
But I've never been able to reallyarticulate why you're so great. You just
put words on it. Now theybecome really powerful referral engines as well.
(25:00):
That's why it all fits together.I mean, it all comes together.
It's not. It's not three differentthings in terms of accelerating business development,
getting paid more, be more referrable. It's one thing, really, and
you are you're saying that's often organic, those referrals, those those referrals,
well yeah, they become organic.But then you also now you know,
because let's face it, referrals comein three parts. I mean, people
(25:22):
think referral is you introduce me,you know, well that's that's an introduction.
That's not really a referral or recommendation. A real referral starts with you
know, if I have someone Iwant to send to you who I think
you'll be a great match for Ihave to I tell them why Kevin will
be a great match for them.If I don't know that, then I
can't really get to, you know, step one. But all the value
(25:48):
comes after Kevin be a great youknow match for you. Because so now
what do they do? Do theycall you right away? Unfortunately not,
No, they go check you out. You're the digital you on LinkedIn or
your website, those kinds of things. And if they see all your accolades
but not what I said about you, it's you're still on the running because
(26:11):
you're just like everyone else. Becauseeveryone else. But if there's if it
lines up, it's like that's exactlywhat Bruce said about Kevin. Now they
can't wait to talk to you.And so the third step comes into play
because it's still not you know,close business. But the third step is
now when you actually meet them,you can go in with all your accolades
and you'll do the expert thing overwhelmthem. Or you can say, hey,
(26:33):
I know what my referral partners sayabout me. I know what they
read when they you know, checkme out. I'm going to understand why
they're here, and yes, maybethere's other things I do and I will
over deliver for them down the road. But if they don't become a client,
they never have a chance to havethat extra experience. And so you
remember why they're there. You linethose three steps up, the referral process
(26:57):
can become very productive and very quick. That's really good, all right,
tell us so, but it startswith you have to tell me where your
sweet spot is. And if yoursweet spot is, you know, small
businesses between you know, ten andtwenty million dollars. It's like, well,
(27:18):
that's not it. But if youknow what that secret sauce is,
and you can tell me what thatsecret sauce is, now I'm primed to
go talk a little bit more aboutthat process. How long does it take
for you to help facilitate the understandingof that so they can replicate it?
So it's really it's it's not instantaneous, but it's not very long. So
(27:38):
it's a lot of its scheduling.So I'm trying to talk to the CEO,
the CFO, the EVP of myclients, their best clients, and
so those are people would never talkto a consultant. They've never heard of
for I want an hour of theirtime. These are busy people. That's
significant. Yeah, that's a bigask. So I have to work through
(28:00):
my client to get introduced in theright way, and so I help them.
You know, I've done this alot, so I know how to
how to set that up for them. So they make the introduction because these
they know they have a great relationshipand you Bruce is here to help build
that relationship. And they still thinkit's going to be a survey or the
classic your client's satisfaction call, whichis all about how does how do you
(28:23):
fit into my Kevin, how doyou fit in my client's you know,
business, which is not interesting atall. So right off the bat,
my entire conversation is one hundred andeighty degrees. It's all, how does
my client improve your business? MisterHalenan. That's interesting even to a CEO,
and they've never had a conversation likethat. So it's like, well,
(28:44):
this guy seems like kind of smart, he's it's a good conversation and
that's how I'm able to peel theonion back to get to that point where
we find the secret sauce. Becausethey don't I can't ask them what it
is because they don't know, andso we have to peel it back and
I have to age them in theconversation so we can get deep enough to
where we have that conversation and youknow, they end up loving the conversation.
(29:07):
They go in thinking oh, they'redoing a favor and they go away
wow wow, and they feel greatabout my clients, like, wow,
okay, that was He's like,they really really value our relationship. I
can imagine you might end up doingbusiness with a few of those people occasionally.
I mean, I'm really in aposition where i'm I'm I want to
(29:30):
make sure there's no selling involved,because that's the other thing any time.
Yet No, I heard that forsure, but it would strike It strikes
me that if they're finding that kindof value, they may ask, hey,
can you help us? Yeah no, and I'm open to that,
but we have to have a conversationwell after after the conversation. So it's
it's overall, it's you know,anywhere from a three to a five month
(29:51):
process. It's not all, youknow, eighty hour week because there's a
lot of scheduling in there. Butpart of my job is to banish confirmation
bias. I could talk to peopleand come back and tell you whatever you
want to hear, and that's whata lot of consultants do. But my
job is not to do that.My job is to come back with what
(30:11):
is the secret sauce? How canyou goot finish that thought? We're gonna
go to break? Oh okay?How can you see your business through the
eyes of your best clients? That'soutstanding? All right, we will pause
right there. We'll come right backto that thought. We'll be back in
just about a minute with Bruce leafitrathe client Whisper. You're listening to Winning
(30:40):
Business Radio with Kevin Helenet on Wfour CY Radio. That's W four cy
dot com. Don't go away.More helpful information is coming right up right
here on Winning Business Radio. Theyp dot com website is your local search
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the app to search local, findlocal, and save local. And now
(31:27):
back to Winning Business Radio with KevinHelene, presenting exciting topics and expert guests
with one goal in mind to helpyou succeed in business. Here once again
is Kevin Helene. We're back withBruce La. Bruce, you raised a
(31:51):
couple questions for me. One isgive me a give us examples of I
know it's a broad term, butI think you can do it. Of
what you mean by secret sauce.Sure, So there's a lot of variations
on this one, but it's theexpert versus the advisor. So I'm thinking
of a particular law firm, theboutique law firm in this case, but
(32:15):
it could be lots of different kindsof businesses. I could give you other
examples as well. And they hadit had little rough patch, really good
at what they do, so nooperational issues, but they found that it
was getting harder to win the kindsof growth that they wanted to do.
And a lot of times they goout and they get rebranded, and they
(32:36):
spend a crapload of money getting newwebsite, new colors. It's very expensive,
and initially they're giddy with because it'soh man, it's great. They
tell everyone how great it is.Any year later, cli its so quickly.
Sorry, well no, no,it's because it's more it's it's about
them. Yeah, it's they're thecolors. They like, it's the it's
(32:57):
the wording. They like, it'sall about them. But they don't write
checks to themselves. And so ayear later, you know, they get
frustrated because nothing's really changed. AndI often get introduced at that point.
I'd love to get introduced earlier andsave them, you know, they'll split
that money with them. But whathappens is I can quickly look at them.
I can't tell them what the solutionis, but I can tell them
what the problem is. It's like, it's all about you. So I
(33:20):
talked to a CPA a while back, and they were telling me, oh,
in great depth about how they're reallycustomer focused and they care about their
customer, and I believe that they'reabsolutely honest. But when I looked at
their website, the first six paragraphsall started with us we are our as
a client. It doesn't come through. So so in order in talking to
(33:43):
their clients, now the secret saucecomes out as it's the expertise is how
they deliver, that's how they getresults. But that's not why they get
hired. They get hired to havean impact on the client's business. And
so nationals tend to think. Lotsof people do is, but proficial the
professionals I work, they think interms of tasks. What do we do?
(34:06):
You know, the attorney, theCPA, the consultant. We take
these steps. Some avoids malpractice andthey have a smooth process and it's really
important internally, But the client doesn'tbuy that. They're buying how do you
improve their business? You know,on a piece of paper report a contract
doesn't do that. It's the impact, the effect of that. I say,
(34:27):
nobody cares what you do. Theycare what they can do because of
what you do, and that's whatcomes out. In some sense, I
could tell them eighty percent of theanswer because I've done this for a long
time, but I'm just a stupidconsultant. They won't believe me. They
have to believe or you talk totheir best clients not just because oh I
put a name on everything. Soit's really really credible. It's not some
(34:51):
of your clients say this, someof them this. It's like Kevin said
this, Bruce said that, Marysaid that, Mark, Mark said that,
and it's all good things because it'stheir best client. It's like that
really matters to Mark. Yeah,that is so significant, not just a
you know, a collection or conglomerateof answers, but very specific. I
(35:13):
love that too. It's super crediblebecause it's their very best clients, people
they know, and it's super actionablebecause, let's face it, these are
people that love doing business with them. It's not all the things you could
do better. I mean, occasionallythere's something it's like Heaven's great, but
you know he could do this.But almost all the time, it's about
what you do, but how youcan do it, how you can focus
(35:37):
and do better, be surface whatreally matters, as opposed to and a
lot of times I end up withclients they have things that they think are
important and they've invested a lot oftime and effort, and it turns out
those are either don't matter or theircheckof items. You know you have to
do it, but doing it betterdoesn't make it any better. And then
there's things that they do because it'sthe right thing to do or whatever reason,
(36:00):
and they think nobody really notices ormatters. It turns out that matters
a lot, and so they canthey can, you know, in some
sense, turn to dial up onwhat they're already doing, which is easy
to do, is actionable, andthey can they can cut or trim back
on the things that don't don't matteras much, or check off items,
and so they actually gain resources whilebeing more effective. Well, tell us
(36:22):
more about that, because that wasmy next question. What do you do
with the information that you bring backto the client? So, in the
really simple sense, it's positioning andmessaging. It's in you second in the
introduction, it's product marketing for servicesand people. You know, that's what
(36:43):
is your offer? What is yourvalue proposition? Who is your audience?
Are you talking to the right peoplewith the right value proposition? Is eighty
percent of success. The twenty percentis the content and the copy and those
things, and that's where a lotof people spend eighty or ninety percent of
their effort. That's why they getfrustrated because they have generic you know offer,
and then they try to, youknow, spice it up with clever
(37:06):
marketing, and you can't be clear, clear clarity, it's clever every time.
Are you strategy only and not executionto somebody else executed, you do
that as well. I'm strategy.So what we end up with is I
call a roadmap, a more clients, more best clients from roadmap. And
what that is is for marketing people, it's like a high level description of
(37:31):
what the intent, what's the purpose, what success and what needs to happen.
So the website, what's the purposeof the website. I'm not going
to tell people the colors or thetechnology. I'm colorblind. I'm not going
to I'm not going to mess withyour colors and marketing marketing professionals colorblind love
that too. But from a standpointof what's the purpose. So a lot
of times people think, oh,well, our purpose of our website is
to generate leads. Well, fora lot of high end B to B
(37:53):
businesses, it's not. It's toreinforce that right, It's it's it's to
reinforce referrals. It goes back toour three step referral process. Instead of
trying to blast out your leachen.You know that the people that are coming
are high value. They've already beenintroduced to you. Now how do you
(38:15):
how do you align with what they'vebeen told so they will then be really
excited to talk to you and ultimatelyget to the point whereas wow, Kevin,
you're like you get me. Iwas. Everyone told me I'm supposed
to talk to three providers, butI can't imagine anyone's going to be a
better fit than you. So whenI save myself some time, that's how
(38:35):
it gets faster. How many clientscan you work with at any one time?
And tell us a little bit aboutthe sort of the thumbnail of those
clients? Does geography matter matters lessto most? But what's the size et
cetera? And professional services? Iassume law, accounting, et cetera,
(38:57):
consulting? Who else? Yeah,so the first part of the question,
what was the first part? Again? Sorry I did load that up.
How many clients can you work withit any one time? I can.
I can only work with a coupleat a time because my head would explode
and then my life wouldn't be verygood because part of my job, as
I said, is too is touh prevent confirmation bias. So I actually
(39:21):
go about halfway through the whole interviewprocess without any structure. Now when I
give it to the client, there'sa lot of structure because I take you
know, our conversation into a pageor two bullet points that are then parallel
across all their clients so that youknow, they can see that and so
that I've got to figure that outin my head. So that's that's that's
(39:42):
the fun part to me. Imean, if I were in the scale,
that's what I'd have to get ridof. But I love that part
in terms in terms of type ofclient. I love intangibles, you know,
I have. I come out ofa world you know, as we
talked earlier, manufacturing and real realthings. This works there too. It's
just that those tend to be largercompanies or people think it's the product,
(40:02):
you know, the founder thinks it'sthe product. So that that boutique size
professional services firm is my sweet spotbecause there's a lot at stake. If
you can dial up those best clients, that's money. It drops right to
the bottom line. You know,a lot of times without organizational changes,
it just drops a lot more profitto the bottom line, more fun as
(40:25):
well, and the owner or themanaging partner can make decisions so we can
get there very very quickly. Thesetend to be smaller, more boutique.
I love boutique because boutique in myin my experience, boutique firms think more
like business. So think of yourtypical pick on lawyers, because that's pick
(40:49):
on lawyers is that most lawyers dolegal work and get paid for it.
Now maybe them get paid very well, so I'm not knocking that business model,
but their idea of growth is moremore billable hours. You know,
it's it's a it's a linear progression. You work harder, you get more,
and if you want to earn more, you got to work harder,
more hours. Uh, there's noreal way around that that those aren't good
(41:12):
clients for me. My great clientsare the smaller set. That are business
people whose business happens to be thelaw or a camp, financial services,
or construction or or that you knowthat bent because they're thinking about how do
I scale, how do I makemy how do I earn more without working
harder? Isn't that the ultimate youknow business ninja move? That's it that's
(41:36):
it, you bet, And thatdoesn't mean you don't work hard. But
if if you're growing your profits byworking harder, and you're working harder faster
than the profits are growing, that'sa really that's a terrible life. You
should be earning more as you grow, not less. I mean more in
terms of profitability, not just dollars. Uh thises geography matter, No,
(42:00):
not at all and not at all? Why so I know the why?
Sorry? How do they come toyou? Are they referred by the advisors?
Uh? Et cetera. Help helpme understand, help us understand how
your clients come to you. OccasionallyI will run into someone, but it
almost always comes from a referral.Often, and as we said earlier,
(42:22):
it's often after downe a big rebrandand they had some time. It's like,
crap. I love it when Ican get to them. Before that,
I had a a firm in Atlantathat we met in a networking event
and he was starting down that processand he goes, oh, crap,
we should probably talk with you first, And I said, you'll save yourself
(42:44):
a lot of money if you dothat. And it's viewers plug for plug
for you, Bruce, viewers andlisteners. If you're at that point,
stop, get a hold of Bruce. Well, well you see the info
and the craw but we'll get backto that too as well. So yeah,
that's outstanding. Let's see, soyou provide this is a list on
either on your website or I forgetwhere I got this might be LinkedIn,
(43:05):
but doesn't matter. Marketing consulting,pricing, strategy, brand consulting, management
consulting, marketing strategy, content strategy. Take one or two and just break
them down. So what I dois is really that strategy piece. So
the branding and the content, Idon't do that. What I do is
I informed that. So you're oldenough to maybe some of our viewers are
(43:28):
old enough to remember the old basF commercials from the eighties. Oh yeah,
I remember the voice we don't makeYeah, we don't make the products
you use. We make the productsyou use better. And that's what I
do. One one client described meas step zero. She goes your step
zero. Everyone starts with step one. You start with step zero, and
so step zero is really understanding thatsecret sauce. It's not why do we
(43:52):
want people to buy from us?But why do they actually buy from us?
And why do those very very bestclients buy from us. That's outstanding.
And so when you start with that, all of a sudden, it
flows into everything else you do.And that's where I can do a roadmap,
which is, you know, yes, the website has a purpose.
I'm not going to tell you what'sin it. We'll go get someone who's
(44:13):
an expert at that, but we'regoing to tell them instead of the fourteen
things that everyone in your industry hasto do, these are the one or
two things that we know moved theneedle for us. And if they don't
like that, we'll go find someoneelse. But in the end, what
happens is they think, wow,you like really simple, and they go,
oh my god, we have amuch more successful client. I had
a law firm I worked with thatwas very old school and you've got to
(44:36):
do the handshake to develop business,and they were regional, and by the
time we finished with them, youknow, a couple of years later,
they're now a huge HubSpot user becauseonce they got really dialed in on clarity
about how they improve people's business,they said, we don't have to actually
meet with people in person. Initially, we can start to do that through
(45:00):
other means. Now they're a nationalfirm. Now, if I had told
them that, you know, theywould use HubSpot you know down the road,
they would have thrown me out.We've never had the plant relationship exactly,
and I didn't know it was goingto go that way. But their
agency ended up, you know,had a little bit of questions like,
Okay, you're like telling them,we think we do strategy, but they
(45:21):
don't. Actually you get paid forthat. They get paid for building things.
I get paid for strategy. Idon't get paid for building things.
You look at the business model.And once they said they you know,
the client was very you know,assertive in this case and move forward.
Now they've done so much more businesswith that client than they ever will have
done. Well, it's been greatfor their bottom line too. Uh.
(45:43):
You mentioned referred to as or excuseme, you refer to the love model
lifetime opportunity value equation. Can youbreak that down for us? Oh,
that goes way way back. Ifit's not as relevant, we can skip
it. Yeah, it's it's it'snot as relevant. I mean the gist
of it is that that there's relationshipsaren't client relationships aren't linear? Yeah,
(46:07):
you can go forward, you cango backwards, and they're built on on
really the relationship as opposed to theclassic you know, awareness, you know,
consideration by uh let's see, Yeah, some interesting things we're closing in
on. Time to wrap up.You're an e Speakers Certified Visual Presenter.
You're also a member of the NationalSpeakers Association. Uh. You're clearly very
(46:30):
good at what you do. Tellme what motivated those two affiliations. So
I love to talk about what Ido, and you know, I like
to share my experiences. It givesme an opportunity to you know, go
beyond just the people I know interms of referrals and to have a broader,
(46:50):
a broader impact. So that's whyI've spoken for for years and and
the last you know year or soreally started to get serious about doing that
explicitly as opposed to when it comesalong right, And then of course you
know COVID and you know virtual there'syou know, we do a lot of
(47:12):
that now. I mean, we'redoing this now to come up to Boston
to talk to you and and wecan have a great conversation and you have
a much broader reach as do I, without a doubt I'm a current rotarian.
I'm the current president of our secondyear. By the way, you're
a former rotarian, Tell you I'ma current current Okay, yeah, sorry.
You've also looks like done things atthe district level as well, But
(47:36):
volunteering looks important to you. Thereare several instances of volunteering. Just whenever
this happens, I always ask theguest give a thirty second pitch for why
others should volunteer, because that's howyou make it. If you want to
live, create the neighborhood or communityyou want to live in. Yeah,
and there's lots of ways to dothat. There's more need than there is.
(47:59):
You know, there there is people, So pick one that's good for
you. Don't worry about what ismost important, Find the one that's that's
valuable to you, and dive inlove that. All right, A couple
of quick questions to wrap up.Who in the listening and viewing audiences should
reach out to you and why wementioned you know, if they're about to
do a big branding campaign, theyshould pause and talk to you. Who
(48:21):
else? Firm owners, mid sizedfirms and from that standpoint, it's it's
firms they don't have to be particularlybig, but there has to be if
we can dial up your profitability,it makes a big difference. So if
you have really tight margins and growingthat, you know you've got to do
a lot of a lot of changeto move the needle. But if you're
a high end professional where there's alot of profit, and if you can
(48:44):
dial up the profit and get runof those headache clients, there's a huge
impact. And so you don't haveto be particularly large firm. At some
point you get big enough that thatpeople think that they you know, there's
a lot of bureaucracy, and I'mon my own because I don't want to
do deal withocracy. Can it yourown bureaucracy? But that's a that's a
pretty pretty nice and so it's reallymore organizational than it is size of organization.
(49:07):
I worked with a construction company thatwas two hundred million dollars, but
they ran five owners. They ranlike a firm that was much smaller.
Nice. And so I want tohave a big impact. I want to
have a where I can have animpact fairly quickly and have a success.
I always tell people I'm too smallin operation to have unsuccessful clients. So
everyone. I want everyone to bea big success. I am with you
(49:29):
there, Bruce, Thank you somuch for being here. He is Bruce
at Eastwood Strategy dot com. That'sthe website as well, Eastwood Strategy dot
com. If you've got questions,reach out Bruce. Thank you so much
for being here. Thank you forhaving me. This is a fun conversation
and for me as well. Andthanks everybody for watching and listening. This
is a show about business and businesschallenges. If you've got concerns about the
(49:53):
sales growth of your company, feelfree to reach out to me. You
can find me on Facebook or LinkedInat Winning Business Radio and drop me a
note. One of my many emailaddresses is Kevin at Winning Business Radio dot
com. Our company is Winning inCorporated. We're part of Sandler Training.
We develop sales teams into high achieversand sales leaders into true coaches and mentors.
(50:13):
We're not a fit for everyone,but hey, maybe we should have
a conversation. Thank you to ourproducer and engineer one for another job well
done. Be sure to join usnext week. That's Monday, January fifteenth.
My guest will be Stevenstrom, authorof success and self discovery, until
then, this is Kevin Hallanan.You've been listening to Winning Business Radio with
your host, Kevin Helena. Ifyou missed any part of this episode,
(50:36):
the podcast is available on Talk forPodcasting and iHeartRadio. For more information and
questions, go to Winning Business Radiodot com or check us out on social
media. Tune in again next weekand every Monday at four pm Eastern Time
to listen live to Winning Business Radioon W four CY Radio w fourcy dot
(50:57):
com. Until then, let's succeedwhere others have failed and win in business
with Kevin Helenan and Winning Business Radio
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(00:21):
W FOURCY Radio. Churchill said,those who failed to learn from history are
condemned to repeat it. Kevin Helenm believes that certainly applies to business.
Welcome to Winning Business Radio here atW four CY Radio. That's W fourcy
(00:44):
dot com and now your host,Kevin Helenair. Thanks everybody for joining in
today. This is the first showof twenty twenty four. I'm particularly excited.
I am Kevin Hellenan and welcome backto another episode of Winning Business TV
and Radio on W four cy dotcom. We're streaming live on talkfor tv
(01:07):
dot com in addition to Facebook andthat's at Winning Business Radio. We're also
available in podcasts after the live showon many platforms. You've heard them a
lot of times. It's YouTube,iHeartRadio, Spotify, Apple, pretty much
wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. The mission of this show, winning
business radio and TV, as regularlisteners and viewers know, is to offer
insights and advice to help people avoidthe mistakes of others, to learn best
(01:32):
practices, the how tos, thewhat too's, the what not tos,
to be challenged, and certainly tobe inspired by the successes of others.
But you know, virtually every successfulperson I've ever talked to has had some
form of failure in their lives andcareers. So while we all have to
get our knees skinned once in awhile, I'm driven to keep those scrapes
from needing major surgery. Let's endeavorto learn from history so we don't repeat
(01:53):
it today. My guest is BruceLafatra, the client Whisperer, founder and
owner of owner of eat Wood Strategies. Yeah, I can talk, We'll
get there, Bruce Eastwood Strategy Advisors. Bruce's clients call him the client whisper,
Using a product marketing approach that generatesbigger and faster returns for most small
(02:13):
to mid size B to B firms. Bruce shows those owners how to fish
for clients with a spear instead ofcasting a wider net. Bruce's clients accelerate
their sales cycle, get paid formore of their value, and are more
referrable. Reverse Engineering the firm's bestclient relationships results in insights that banish random
acts of marketing. He equips hisclients to clone their best profitable clients.
(02:37):
Bruce earned his BA and Economics fromClaremont McKenna College in Claremont, California,
and his MBA from the Tuck Schoolat Dartmouth. He's a trained facilitator and
currently lives in Knoxville, Tennessee.His husband to Debbie, who's an attorney,
dad to Brian who's twenty five,and Sarah who's twenty two. He's
currently a He's not currently a petowner, but loves dogs and is definitely
a pie over cake guy. Metoo. Thanks Bruce Bruce, Welcome to
(03:00):
Winning Business TV and Radio. Appreciateyou being here. It's great to be
on and it's great. It's alwaysgreat to talk to you. Kevin.
It's always good to talk to anotherpie guy. Good. I threw that
in because I h it's a goodtest for sure, for sure. And
dogs over cats, sorry cat people. So let's let's start with some background.
(03:20):
I always liked our listeners and viewersto kind of get a sense as
to where you came from and alittle bit of your background. Where'd you
grow up? I actually grew upin the San Francisco Bay area in Menlo
Park, back when middle class peoplecould live there before Facebook and Google and
all that. Man. Wow,I was a recruiter back in right when
the Internet bubble was at its highest, and even then it was crazy we
(03:42):
try to relocate people into there.It was insane, insane. So what
was it like in Menlo Park atthe time, And what is Menlo Park
well known for? Well, MenloPark is now is a you know,
it's a suburb of on the SanFrancisco Peninsula. It was big home to
big employer. When I was therewas a Raycam Corporation which has now been
bought by Tycho many years ago,and was in the material science. It
(04:06):
was a place I worked coming outof college where I learned product management and
learned to actually sell stuff that peoplemade. And now I'm a consultant,
so you know, kind of maybeI went over to the dark side.
What I won't do it. Iwas going to say, there are a
couple of good consulting jokes, butself deprecating, I might add, but
(04:28):
what were your early interests? Highschool? And you know, maybe early
college. Oh, he's been abaseball fan, but I always liked I
grew up in a family of allengineers, so I'm the only one in
my family that doesn't have a BShave a BA. But I also I
grew up where something and they weretinker engineers, not these software engineers.
Now they don't know how to usea screwdriver. And so whenever anything broke,
(04:51):
we took it apart, and theworst it could be is it was
still broken. Otherwise we learned aboutit, and sometimes we fix things that
other people said were broken. Andso for me, I wasn't quite the
mechanical aptitude of my siblings, butthat I learned that to apply it to
people. And I always love tounderstand why people do things, not you
(05:12):
know, the psychobabble, but butin terms of how do you create value
that people appreciate, that's excellent.I love hearing that. Why did did
you choose Claremont and why economics.I liked small schools, so I both
my undergrad and graduate are our topschools, but they're very small programs.
(05:34):
And I became a big fan thatthere's three parts to education. One is
the classroom bit, one is yourclassmates, and the other is kind of
the atmosphere around there. And myhigh school classmates that went to someplace and
had nine hundred people in their introto whatever class missed out on two of
(05:57):
those pieces. I would see myprofessors, you know, in the supermarket
and in town, get invited overto their houses, and I think that
really enhanced the h experience. Andso when I went to grad school,
I was looking for the same thing. And amongst the top NBA programs,
there's only one that fits that category, and that's the Tux School at Dartmouth.
(06:19):
Economics general business interest. I wasn'tI didn't know exactly what I wanted
to do. I knew I wantedto, you know, be business of
some sort, uh, And sothat provided a really broad base for me.
Were you there long enough to getinto any winter sports, I assume
(06:41):
you mean that Dartmouth, not atClermont, the Dartmouth well surfing would be
the winner sport in southern California.Well, if you in the Bay Area,
you don't have to go that farfor for a mountain or two,
right, But no, I metDartmouth for sure. Well, actually,
the the the program at tuck Inuntil in my second year that talking to
(07:02):
professors, I understood this, butthey the program was really intense. And
what it was is it was forcedyou to work with other people that you
could not you could not do italone, and so the peak of one
class would hit the valley of theother one. And I thought, oh
my god, we are so luckythat these things, these peaks didn't line
(07:25):
up. And it wasn't until Iwas talking to professors a second year that
oh no, they carefully script itso that you're not killed, but that
you can't. You can't. Youhave to depend on your steady group mates.
And I thought that was a greatlearning experience because the other thing from
the is we came in we wereall really smart. I mean, to
get accepted to a place like that, you have to be pretty smart.
(07:46):
We were successful, but then wefound out that we had solved some of
the same problems different ways. Soit wasn't that there was a solution.
There are solutions, and that tome was really eye open and a great
lesson for life. Why so twothings, Why did you choose to pursue
an MBA? And where were youafter college? After undergrad? Where were
(08:11):
you in your career at the time. So I worked for over three years,
actually graduated in three and a halfyears from undergrad and worked so at
the top class. In one hundredand sixty eight people in my class,
there were two that didn't have workexperience. Now we weren't. I wasn't
(08:31):
so far in that had this hugeopportunity costs. I laughed at the married
students at first because they smoked allof us academically. It's like, how
can they do that? Their opportunitycost was way higher than ours. Yeah,
yeah, so true, No,I did well. So I'm not
saying like, you know, sloutstring anything like that, but yeah too.
(08:52):
It was early enough in my careerthat I could do that. I
could take two years and go dothat, and I learned a lot lot,
But it wasn't you know, Ididn't have family and kids and all
those things that make it really hardand trying to locate a spouse with a
job and those kinds of things.Yeah. Uh, to that point,
tell us about Debbie and of courseBrian and Sarah. So so, my
(09:13):
wife's attorney. She does a pelletlevel constitutional laws. So we have very
interesting dinner table conversations. The kidsgrew up knowing a lot about the Constitution.
Uh. So that's so that's good. Son's a he works, he's
a civilian analyst for the Air Force. And I can't tell you anything more
than that. And because I don'tknow anything more than that, because he
(09:35):
wouldn't tell me. Uh. Andmy my daughter is a senior in college
trying to figure out what what she'sgoing to do next. And you know,
she has a variety of interests,very very interesting. I wonder if
Debbie would be willing to get onthe radio. She likes radio, but
not TV. She's actually on theradio tomorrow and she she she doesn't like
TV. Uh, we'll see ifI can, I can have a chat.
(09:58):
I'd love to talk Constitution a lot. As crazy as that sounds,
no, it's not crazy in ourhouse. Yeah, good good. So
all right, you've had you've hada number of jobs. You were at
Raycam. I saw that and forsome reason, I know the name of
that company, or knew the nameof that company. I don't know why.
But then you got your program manager, programs manager, developer relations,
(10:18):
product marketing manager, various company companies. You could see the progression into marketing.
I want you to just pick outthis is pre self employment. Now,
I want you to pick out acouple of those more impactful positions and
tell us what you took away.What were some of those key lessons,
maybe earlier or later, but pickout a couple and tell us the key
lessons you learned. Well, there'sthere's a there's a couple of those,
(10:41):
and one is a really big lessonabout channels. So a lot of people
that are in marketing or you know, executives that haven't worked in a channel,
think, oh, well, we'reunder price pressure. We'll just shave
the channel margin. And then theywant why the business goes away? All
right? Described for the for theaudiences. Oh so so if you're if
(11:05):
you're selling through distributions or or resellers, and if they're not making money,
then they don't sell your product.There you go. And and that seems
like such a simple lesson, butit's one that i've encountered over and over
again where you know, I've beenthe voice of Sandy is like, no,
if the reseller is not making money, it doesn't matter what our margins
(11:28):
are because they're not going to sellanything. So you need to make you
know, the customer in that caseis really the reseller, not the end
user. And and that's so that'sthat's the And then the other lesson I
got was and maybe it was justthe quirk of the of the companies I
worked with, but I grew upin a role where product management and product
(11:52):
marketing were combined. It wasn't untilyou know, ten years into my career
where I where I had that rolesplit and it's like, what you mean,
that's like only half a job,not for most. So again for
the audience, describe the difference betweenthe two. So, product management is
managing the product. So what isit? What goes into it? It's
(12:13):
life cycle, it's features, it'slife cycle the features. And when I,
you know, ray Km's starting out, we did a lot of we
had a lot of standardized products,but we also did a lot of custom
products and uh, and it wasentering new markets, so it was technology
was actually as old as I wasout of patent, but we were.
It'd been primarily military and high endcommercial technology, and we were going into
(12:37):
commercial, lower end commercial appliances andautomotive and things like that that nobody in
the company had ever done. SoI knew as much as they did,
and so it was really fun.It was a great, great timing to
be there. Product marketing is whichyou think you know a lot of classic
marketing. You know, what's thehow do you you know, how do
you go to market, what's theuh, the copy, the advertising,
(12:58):
those kinds of things. And obviouslyit's a little bit different for a consumer
product versus which I know nothing about, versus a business to business product,
which I know a lot about.All Right, we have time for one
or two more questions before our firstbreak, but I want to know here's
the big question for me. Youhave two instances of self employment Lafetra Consulting
(13:18):
twenty eighteen, twenty ten to eighteen. Sorry that was a big shock of
time, and then your current EastwardStrategy Advisors. But back up from that,
why did you decide to become selfemployed? Well, I had I'd
actually fallen into consulting and just threwa Fluke, and the woman I was
(13:39):
working with, small boutique consulting firm, decided that she didn't like selling,
which is really bad if you're ina small professional services business. You appreciated
the choir, and I loved whatwe were doing. We'd worked with a
lot of large software companies, Adobe, Smantic. They always paid, but
you had to harass them to getthem to pay you. And we had
(14:00):
an office manager that spent probably halfher time chasing down these big companies,
and I didn't want to do that. I want to and so I kind
of gravitated towards smaller professional firms becauseit was fun, they paid, uh,
and they're fun to work with.In terms of the fature consulting Eastwood,
it's really a continuum. I wason my own. People can't spell
(14:20):
the fat and I had a partnerbriefly and because I thought it was when
I first met you, Yeah,probably everybody. And then I had a
partner, you know, briefly,and so we changed it the Eastwood,
and then he decided he really likedthe certainty and the benefits and things of
you know, being in a corporatejob, and so it just I kept
(14:43):
the kept the east the Eastwood.So I don't know if you do.
You probably do. I have adifferent perspective. I like the certainty of
being self employed. Yeah, controlyour own destiny, right, You control
your own destiny. You control whoyou work with, and certainly with what
I preach. As we talk aboutlater in terms of working with your best
(15:03):
clients once you in Clone, youcan't do that if someone tells you you
know who you work with, right, All right, let's pause right there.
We will be back Bruce in justabout a minute. Everybody else will
be back with Bruce Laftra the ClientWhisper in just a minute. You're listening
to Winning Business Radio with Kevin Heleneton W four CY Radio. That's W
(15:28):
four cy dot com. Don't goaway. More helpful information is coming right
up right here on Winning Business Radio. Have you ever dreamt of being on
the radio, Well, now isyour chance be a radio show guest on
the number one ranked internet radio stationand promote you and your business for free.
Yes you heard it, free businessadvertising right here on W four cy
(15:54):
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to Winning Business Radio with Kevin helenanpresenting exciting topics and expert guests with one
(16:18):
goal in mind to help you succeedin business. Here once again is Kevin
Helena. We are back with BruceLafecher or the client Whisper. I love
that tagline? Where'd you come upwith that? I didn't. It was
a client of mine and I askedthe story is. I resisted it for
(16:41):
a long time. I thought itwas kind of maybe cheesy or whatever,
and he kept pounding on me,and finally I tried it and people really
liked it. So that's how itcame about. So I'm smart enough to
use it, but not smart enoughto come up with it. There you
go, There you go. Quicksides that pier. You've had several articles
published. I want to know twothings. Well, First, tell us
(17:02):
about one or two of those articles, and then we'll ask I'll ask you
about the process of writing and gettingpublished. I've been published in a variety
of different sorts of publications, everythingfrom a the trade magazine for the construction
UH and architecture Engineering sorts of worldto marketing type publications and other places.
(17:30):
And the experience in every case isin some sense, you know a little
bit similar. You probably know that, but in other cases it's it's specific
to their market and people want tohave their market addressed as opposed to generalized
knowledge. So it's applied knowledge iswhat I find, you know works with
people. So it's stories. Youknow, I'd love to tell stories,
and I, you know, usethe right stories for the right the right
(17:52):
marketplace. And that's usually the gistof the way I approach it. So
tell us about one or two ofthose specific articles. What's psych my So
one that I have done is that'sactually in process. I don't know where
it's going to get published exactly becauseI'm speaking on it is. I call
(18:15):
it the client the expert trap,and what that is is that there's a
lot of professionals who label themselves asexperts and actually actually hurts them. It
slows down the business development cycle,it costs them money, they get paid
less, and they become less referrable. And the reason is is that there's
(18:40):
nothing wrong with being an expert.The problem is selling like an expert.
So come back to your world,whereas how do experts sell? Let me
tell you all the reasons why youshould buy from me, and if you
show any interest at all, thenI'm going to bombard you with more reasons
and more reasons and more reasons,and pretty soon our brains can't handle that.
So we step back and we startto look around. And now we
look at other options and that caneither make us price sensitive, that can
(19:06):
you know, lead us to anotherprovider, or we just end up doing
nothing because we're overwhelmed. Because that'sthe biggest competitor for almost everyone out there
is do nothing that's right status quote. And so I discussed I discussed you
know that situation, and people saystart nodding their heads, Oh yeah,
And then you know how you getout of it, which isn't that hard,
(19:27):
But it's not by pushing the expertise. Think about it as as experts
answer questions, that's what they do, right, there's an advisor that helps
shape the questions. So yes,there's a role for both those. One
isn't better than the other, butbut one is is dependent upon works at
(19:48):
the behest of the client. Theother one works with the client. The
value is very different and their roleis very different. So if you have
a lot of knowledge and I knowa lot of experts that do very well,
but they get called in for aspecific thing. Think about an expert
witness or something. They get calledin for a specific task that they don't
(20:08):
control. And if you have agreat referral network, that goes fairly easy.
If you're out there hustling the business, it can be really hard.
Good points right there. All right, tell us about Eastwood Strategy Advisors.
I'll read what your LinkedIn profile saysfor the audience of a growth catalyst helping
(20:33):
lawyers, consultants and advisors do whatevery business strives to do, earn more
without working harder. Evidence from afirm's own clients make my recommendations credible and
actionable. Understanding there or excuse mewhy their best clients select their firm is
a game changer. So just generallytell us about the firm. Sure.
So the one thing you need tounderstand is the concept the best clients.
(20:55):
So people talk about ideal clients.Ideal clients are what you want read magris
is who are you the ideal providerfor? Who wants to work with you?
If you can work from that perspective, life is a lot clearer,
it's a lot easier, and thingshappen a lot faster. So I call
your best clients are the ones thatyou would clone if you could, because
(21:18):
people can do all the math asto who are their most profitable clients.
And I worked with one attorney andhis farm. They'd hired a consultant and
he spent like an entire day goingthrough their entire book of business. You're
rating them, who's you know?And then nothing had happened for like a
year. They didn't make much progress, and I was talking to him and
I asked him, so, whowould you clone if you could? And
(21:41):
he thought that there's a great question. Stupid question. He goes, oh
my god, that is we spentan entire day trying to answer that.
And you did one question. Andso when you start to think about who
your best clients are, not allyour clients your best clients. Now,
all of a sudden, the worldlooks really, really different. And you've
probably heard, and our viewers,i'm sure have heard that the top twenty
(22:04):
percent of your clients generate eighty percentof your profits. What people don't talk
about is the bottom twenty percent causeeighty percent of your headaches. So if
you could, if you could focuson just one or the other, actually
getting rid of those bottom twenty percentwill cause more upside. Now, if
you can do that by focusing onthe top twenty percent, now of a
(22:27):
sudden, the world looks really different. You don't have as much variation.
You know what your clients want,so it's not well some like this,
some like that. There's magic,that chemistry, whatever you want to call
it, the magic mojo. You'reworking with clients that appreciate you, understand
your value you. They're the onesthat say, oh my god, Keven,
(22:47):
you get me. That's magic.And now of a sudden, and
there's no headaches, so your capacityactually goes up, so you can work
with more highly profitable clients than youcould if you cast away. Yeah,
they value what we do. There'smutual respect. So not only is there
more revenue and higher profits, butall those other softer things come into play.
(23:10):
Right, as you said, fewerheadaches. Oh and you mentioned yeah,
you're referring more business. Talk aboutthat too. Yeah, So when
you start to focus on your bestclients, there's some I call it your
secret sauce. And I call ityour secret sauces because if I were to
ask you, Kevin, why doyour best clients work with you? Is
there something real or is it justkind of lucky? You say, oh
(23:33):
no, no, there's something real. Well what is it? You can't
articulate it. You can talk aboutvalue or something that isn't really it,
but you know there's something real.If I ask your clients the same question,
they'll answer the same way. Yeah, there's something real about working with
Kevin, but I'm not quite surewhat it is. So my process is
to reverse engineer those relationships. Igo deep with the client that figure out
(23:56):
what peel the onion back to andsay, oh my god, Okay,
there's this thing Kevin does. Inever really thought about it, but if
he stopped doing it, it'd bea totally different relationship. That's your secret
sauce. And it's not necessarily forevery one of your clients, but for
your best clients it is common.Now you start talking about that, not
(24:17):
only do you attract business, youattract those best clients and say, oh
my god, Kevin, you getme. But now your existing clients have
the words to articulate why you're sogreat because clients will almost always once we
get to this point, they say, okay, that seems like almost too
simple. Let me go test itout with some of my best clients.
(24:37):
And the clients just go wide andthey say, oh my god, Kevin,
you have worked together for how manyyears? You know how valuable you
are. We wouldn't be here withoutyou, all that kind of stuff,
But I've never been able to reallyarticulate why you're so great. You just
put words on it. Now theybecome really powerful referral engines as well.
(25:00):
That's why it all fits together.I mean, it all comes together.
It's not. It's not three differentthings in terms of accelerating business development,
getting paid more, be more referrable. It's one thing, really, and
you are you're saying that's often organic, those referrals, those those referrals,
well yeah, they become organic.But then you also now you know,
because let's face it, referrals comein three parts. I mean, people
(25:22):
think referral is you introduce me,you know, well that's that's an introduction.
That's not really a referral or recommendation. A real referral starts with you
know, if I have someone Iwant to send to you who I think
you'll be a great match for Ihave to I tell them why Kevin will
be a great match for them.If I don't know that, then I
can't really get to, you know, step one. But all the value
(25:48):
comes after Kevin be a great youknow match for you. Because so now
what do they do? Do theycall you right away? Unfortunately not,
No, they go check you out. You're the digital you on LinkedIn or
your website, those kinds of things. And if they see all your accolades
but not what I said about you, it's you're still on the running because
(26:11):
you're just like everyone else. Becauseeveryone else. But if there's if it
lines up, it's like that's exactlywhat Bruce said about Kevin. Now they
can't wait to talk to you.And so the third step comes into play
because it's still not you know,close business. But the third step is
now when you actually meet them,you can go in with all your accolades
and you'll do the expert thing overwhelmthem. Or you can say, hey,
(26:33):
I know what my referral partners sayabout me. I know what they
read when they you know, checkme out. I'm going to understand why
they're here, and yes, maybethere's other things I do and I will
over deliver for them down the road. But if they don't become a client,
they never have a chance to havethat extra experience. And so you
remember why they're there. You linethose three steps up, the referral process
(26:57):
can become very productive and very quick. That's really good, all right,
tell us so, but it startswith you have to tell me where your
sweet spot is. And if yoursweet spot is, you know, small
businesses between you know, ten andtwenty million dollars. It's like, well,
(27:18):
that's not it. But if youknow what that secret sauce is,
and you can tell me what thatsecret sauce is, now I'm primed to
go talk a little bit more aboutthat process. How long does it take
for you to help facilitate the understandingof that so they can replicate it?
So it's really it's it's not instantaneous, but it's not very long. So
(27:38):
it's a lot of its scheduling.So I'm trying to talk to the CEO,
the CFO, the EVP of myclients, their best clients, and
so those are people would never talkto a consultant. They've never heard of
for I want an hour of theirtime. These are busy people. That's
significant. Yeah, that's a bigask. So I have to work through
(28:00):
my client to get introduced in theright way, and so I help them.
You know, I've done this alot, so I know how to
how to set that up for them. So they make the introduction because these
they know they have a great relationshipand you Bruce is here to help build
that relationship. And they still thinkit's going to be a survey or the
classic your client's satisfaction call, whichis all about how does how do you
(28:23):
fit into my Kevin, how doyou fit in my client's you know,
business, which is not interesting atall. So right off the bat,
my entire conversation is one hundred andeighty degrees. It's all, how does
my client improve your business? MisterHalenan. That's interesting even to a CEO,
and they've never had a conversation likethat. So it's like, well,
(28:44):
this guy seems like kind of smart, he's it's a good conversation and
that's how I'm able to peel theonion back to get to that point where
we find the secret sauce. Becausethey don't I can't ask them what it
is because they don't know, andso we have to peel it back and
I have to age them in theconversation so we can get deep enough to
where we have that conversation and youknow, they end up loving the conversation.
(29:07):
They go in thinking oh, they'redoing a favor and they go away
wow wow, and they feel greatabout my clients, like, wow,
okay, that was He's like,they really really value our relationship. I
can imagine you might end up doingbusiness with a few of those people occasionally.
I mean, I'm really in aposition where i'm I'm I want to
(29:30):
make sure there's no selling involved,because that's the other thing any time.
Yet No, I heard that forsure, but it would strike It strikes
me that if they're finding that kindof value, they may ask, hey,
can you help us? Yeah no, and I'm open to that,
but we have to have a conversationwell after after the conversation. So it's
it's overall, it's you know,anywhere from a three to a five month
(29:51):
process. It's not all, youknow, eighty hour week because there's a
lot of scheduling in there. Butpart of my job is to banish confirmation
bias. I could talk to peopleand come back and tell you whatever you
want to hear, and that's whata lot of consultants do. But my
job is not to do that.My job is to come back with what
(30:11):
is the secret sauce? How canyou goot finish that thought? We're gonna
go to break? Oh okay?How can you see your business through the
eyes of your best clients? That'soutstanding? All right, we will pause
right there. We'll come right backto that thought. We'll be back in
just about a minute with Bruce leafitrathe client Whisper. You're listening to Winning
(30:40):
Business Radio with Kevin Helenet on Wfour CY Radio. That's W four cy
dot com. Don't go away.More helpful information is coming right up right
here on Winning Business Radio. Theyp dot com website is your local search
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(31:03):
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(31:27):
back to Winning Business Radio with KevinHelene, presenting exciting topics and expert guests
with one goal in mind to helpyou succeed in business. Here once again
is Kevin Helene. We're back withBruce La. Bruce, you raised a
(31:51):
couple questions for me. One isgive me a give us examples of I
know it's a broad term, butI think you can do it. Of
what you mean by secret sauce.Sure, So there's a lot of variations
on this one, but it's theexpert versus the advisor. So I'm thinking
of a particular law firm, theboutique law firm in this case, but
(32:15):
it could be lots of different kindsof businesses. I could give you other
examples as well. And they hadit had little rough patch, really good
at what they do, so nooperational issues, but they found that it
was getting harder to win the kindsof growth that they wanted to do.
And a lot of times they goout and they get rebranded, and they
(32:36):
spend a crapload of money getting newwebsite, new colors. It's very expensive,
and initially they're giddy with because it'soh man, it's great. They
tell everyone how great it is.Any year later, cli its so quickly.
Sorry, well no, no,it's because it's more it's it's about
them. Yeah, it's they're thecolors. They like, it's the it's
(32:57):
the wording. They like, it'sall about them. But they don't write
checks to themselves. And so ayear later, you know, they get
frustrated because nothing's really changed. AndI often get introduced at that point.
I'd love to get introduced earlier andsave them, you know, they'll split
that money with them. But whathappens is I can quickly look at them.
I can't tell them what the solutionis, but I can tell them
what the problem is. It's like, it's all about you. So I
(33:20):
talked to a CPA a while back, and they were telling me, oh,
in great depth about how they're reallycustomer focused and they care about their
customer, and I believe that they'reabsolutely honest. But when I looked at
their website, the first six paragraphsall started with us we are our as
a client. It doesn't come through. So so in order in talking to
(33:43):
their clients, now the secret saucecomes out as it's the expertise is how
they deliver, that's how they getresults. But that's not why they get
hired. They get hired to havean impact on the client's business. And
so nationals tend to think. Lotsof people do is, but proficial the
professionals I work, they think interms of tasks. What do we do?
(34:06):
You know, the attorney, theCPA, the consultant. We take
these steps. Some avoids malpractice andthey have a smooth process and it's really
important internally, But the client doesn'tbuy that. They're buying how do you
improve their business? You know,on a piece of paper report a contract
doesn't do that. It's the impact, the effect of that. I say,
(34:27):
nobody cares what you do. Theycare what they can do because of
what you do, and that's whatcomes out. In some sense, I
could tell them eighty percent of theanswer because I've done this for a long
time, but I'm just a stupidconsultant. They won't believe me. They
have to believe or you talk totheir best clients not just because oh I
put a name on everything. Soit's really really credible. It's not some
(34:51):
of your clients say this, someof them this. It's like Kevin said
this, Bruce said that, Marysaid that, Mark, Mark said that,
and it's all good things because it'stheir best client. It's like that
really matters to Mark. Yeah,that is so significant, not just a
you know, a collection or conglomerateof answers, but very specific. I
(35:13):
love that too. It's super crediblebecause it's their very best clients, people
they know, and it's super actionablebecause, let's face it, these are
people that love doing business with them. It's not all the things you could
do better. I mean, occasionallythere's something it's like Heaven's great, but
you know he could do this.But almost all the time, it's about
what you do, but how youcan do it, how you can focus
(35:37):
and do better, be surface whatreally matters, as opposed to and a
lot of times I end up withclients they have things that they think are
important and they've invested a lot oftime and effort, and it turns out
those are either don't matter or theircheckof items. You know you have to
do it, but doing it betterdoesn't make it any better. And then
there's things that they do because it'sthe right thing to do or whatever reason,
(36:00):
and they think nobody really notices ormatters. It turns out that matters
a lot, and so they canthey can, you know, in some
sense, turn to dial up onwhat they're already doing, which is easy
to do, is actionable, andthey can they can cut or trim back
on the things that don't don't matteras much, or check off items,
and so they actually gain resources whilebeing more effective. Well, tell us
(36:22):
more about that, because that wasmy next question. What do you do
with the information that you bring backto the client? So, in the
really simple sense, it's positioning andmessaging. It's in you second in the
introduction, it's product marketing for servicesand people. You know, that's what
(36:43):
is your offer? What is yourvalue proposition? Who is your audience?
Are you talking to the right peoplewith the right value proposition? Is eighty
percent of success. The twenty percentis the content and the copy and those
things, and that's where a lotof people spend eighty or ninety percent of
their effort. That's why they getfrustrated because they have generic you know offer,
and then they try to, youknow, spice it up with clever
(37:06):
marketing, and you can't be clear, clear clarity, it's clever every time.
Are you strategy only and not executionto somebody else executed, you do
that as well. I'm strategy.So what we end up with is I
call a roadmap, a more clients, more best clients from roadmap. And
what that is is for marketing people, it's like a high level description of
(37:31):
what the intent, what's the purpose, what success and what needs to happen.
So the website, what's the purposeof the website. I'm not going
to tell people the colors or thetechnology. I'm colorblind. I'm not going
to I'm not going to mess withyour colors and marketing marketing professionals colorblind love
that too. But from a standpointof what's the purpose. So a lot
of times people think, oh,well, our purpose of our website is
to generate leads. Well, fora lot of high end B to B
(37:53):
businesses, it's not. It's toreinforce that right, It's it's it's to
reinforce referrals. It goes back toour three step referral process. Instead of
trying to blast out your leachen.You know that the people that are coming
are high value. They've already beenintroduced to you. Now how do you
(38:15):
how do you align with what they'vebeen told so they will then be really
excited to talk to you and ultimatelyget to the point whereas wow, Kevin,
you're like you get me. Iwas. Everyone told me I'm supposed
to talk to three providers, butI can't imagine anyone's going to be a
better fit than you. So whenI save myself some time, that's how
(38:35):
it gets faster. How many clientscan you work with at any one time?
And tell us a little bit aboutthe sort of the thumbnail of those
clients? Does geography matter matters lessto most? But what's the size et
cetera? And professional services? Iassume law, accounting, et cetera,
(38:57):
consulting? Who else? Yeah,so the first part of the question,
what was the first part? Again? Sorry I did load that up.
How many clients can you work withit any one time? I can.
I can only work with a coupleat a time because my head would explode
and then my life wouldn't be verygood because part of my job, as
I said, is too is touh prevent confirmation bias. So I actually
(39:21):
go about halfway through the whole interviewprocess without any structure. Now when I
give it to the client, there'sa lot of structure because I take you
know, our conversation into a pageor two bullet points that are then parallel
across all their clients so that youknow, they can see that and so
that I've got to figure that outin my head. So that's that's that's
(39:42):
the fun part to me. Imean, if I were in the scale,
that's what I'd have to get ridof. But I love that part
in terms in terms of type ofclient. I love intangibles, you know,
I have. I come out ofa world you know, as we
talked earlier, manufacturing and real realthings. This works there too. It's
just that those tend to be largercompanies or people think it's the product,
(40:02):
you know, the founder thinks it'sthe product. So that that boutique size
professional services firm is my sweet spotbecause there's a lot at stake. If
you can dial up those best clients, that's money. It drops right to
the bottom line. You know,a lot of times without organizational changes,
it just drops a lot more profitto the bottom line, more fun as
(40:25):
well, and the owner or themanaging partner can make decisions so we can
get there very very quickly. Thesetend to be smaller, more boutique.
I love boutique because boutique in myin my experience, boutique firms think more
like business. So think of yourtypical pick on lawyers, because that's pick
(40:49):
on lawyers is that most lawyers dolegal work and get paid for it.
Now maybe them get paid very well, so I'm not knocking that business model,
but their idea of growth is moremore billable hours. You know,
it's it's a it's a linear progression. You work harder, you get more,
and if you want to earn more, you got to work harder,
more hours. Uh, there's noreal way around that that those aren't good
(41:12):
clients for me. My great clientsare the smaller set. That are business
people whose business happens to be thelaw or a camp, financial services,
or construction or or that you knowthat bent because they're thinking about how do
I scale, how do I makemy how do I earn more without working
harder? Isn't that the ultimate youknow business ninja move? That's it that's
(41:36):
it, you bet, And thatdoesn't mean you don't work hard. But
if if you're growing your profits byworking harder, and you're working harder faster
than the profits are growing, that'sa really that's a terrible life. You
should be earning more as you grow, not less. I mean more in
terms of profitability, not just dollars. Uh thises geography matter, No,
(42:00):
not at all and not at all? Why so I know the why?
Sorry? How do they come toyou? Are they referred by the advisors?
Uh? Et cetera. Help helpme understand, help us understand how
your clients come to you. OccasionallyI will run into someone, but it
almost always comes from a referral.Often, and as we said earlier,
(42:22):
it's often after downe a big rebrandand they had some time. It's like,
crap. I love it when Ican get to them. Before that,
I had a a firm in Atlantathat we met in a networking event
and he was starting down that processand he goes, oh, crap,
we should probably talk with you first, And I said, you'll save yourself
(42:44):
a lot of money if you dothat. And it's viewers plug for plug
for you, Bruce, viewers andlisteners. If you're at that point,
stop, get a hold of Bruce. Well, well you see the info
and the craw but we'll get backto that too as well. So yeah,
that's outstanding. Let's see, soyou provide this is a list on
either on your website or I forgetwhere I got this might be LinkedIn,
(43:05):
but doesn't matter. Marketing consulting,pricing, strategy, brand consulting, management
consulting, marketing strategy, content strategy. Take one or two and just break
them down. So what I dois is really that strategy piece. So
the branding and the content, Idon't do that. What I do is
I informed that. So you're oldenough to maybe some of our viewers are
(43:28):
old enough to remember the old basF commercials from the eighties. Oh yeah,
I remember the voice we don't makeYeah, we don't make the products
you use. We make the productsyou use better. And that's what I
do. One one client described meas step zero. She goes your step
zero. Everyone starts with step one. You start with step zero, and
so step zero is really understanding thatsecret sauce. It's not why do we
(43:52):
want people to buy from us?But why do they actually buy from us?
And why do those very very bestclients buy from us. That's outstanding.
And so when you start with that, all of a sudden, it
flows into everything else you do.And that's where I can do a roadmap,
which is, you know, yes, the website has a purpose.
I'm not going to tell you what'sin it. We'll go get someone who's
(44:13):
an expert at that, but we'regoing to tell them instead of the fourteen
things that everyone in your industry hasto do, these are the one or
two things that we know moved theneedle for us. And if they don't
like that, we'll go find someoneelse. But in the end, what
happens is they think, wow,you like really simple, and they go,
oh my god, we have amuch more successful client. I had
a law firm I worked with thatwas very old school and you've got to
(44:36):
do the handshake to develop business,and they were regional, and by the
time we finished with them, youknow, a couple of years later,
they're now a huge HubSpot user becauseonce they got really dialed in on clarity
about how they improve people's business,they said, we don't have to actually
meet with people in person. Initially, we can start to do that through
(45:00):
other means. Now they're a nationalfirm. Now, if I had told
them that, you know, theywould use HubSpot you know down the road,
they would have thrown me out.We've never had the plant relationship exactly,
and I didn't know it was goingto go that way. But their
agency ended up, you know,had a little bit of questions like,
Okay, you're like telling them,we think we do strategy, but they
(45:21):
don't. Actually you get paid forthat. They get paid for building things.
I get paid for strategy. Idon't get paid for building things.
You look at the business model.And once they said they you know,
the client was very you know,assertive in this case and move forward.
Now they've done so much more businesswith that client than they ever will have
done. Well, it's been greatfor their bottom line too. Uh.
(45:43):
You mentioned referred to as or excuseme, you refer to the love model
lifetime opportunity value equation. Can youbreak that down for us? Oh,
that goes way way back. Ifit's not as relevant, we can skip
it. Yeah, it's it's it'snot as relevant. I mean the gist
of it is that that there's relationshipsaren't client relationships aren't linear? Yeah,
(46:07):
you can go forward, you cango backwards, and they're built on on
really the relationship as opposed to theclassic you know, awareness, you know,
consideration by uh let's see, Yeah, some interesting things we're closing in
on. Time to wrap up.You're an e Speakers Certified Visual Presenter.
You're also a member of the NationalSpeakers Association. Uh. You're clearly very
(46:30):
good at what you do. Tellme what motivated those two affiliations. So
I love to talk about what Ido, and you know, I like
to share my experiences. It givesme an opportunity to you know, go
beyond just the people I know interms of referrals and to have a broader,
(46:50):
a broader impact. So that's whyI've spoken for for years and and
the last you know year or soreally started to get serious about doing that
explicitly as opposed to when it comesalong right, And then of course you
know COVID and you know virtual there'syou know, we do a lot of
(47:12):
that now. I mean, we'redoing this now to come up to Boston
to talk to you and and wecan have a great conversation and you have
a much broader reach as do I, without a doubt I'm a current rotarian.
I'm the current president of our secondyear. By the way, you're
a former rotarian, Tell you I'ma current current Okay, yeah, sorry.
You've also looks like done things atthe district level as well, But
(47:36):
volunteering looks important to you. Thereare several instances of volunteering. Just whenever
this happens, I always ask theguest give a thirty second pitch for why
others should volunteer, because that's howyou make it. If you want to
live, create the neighborhood or communityyou want to live in. Yeah,
and there's lots of ways to dothat. There's more need than there is.
(47:59):
You know, there there is people, So pick one that's good for
you. Don't worry about what ismost important, Find the one that's that's
valuable to you, and dive inlove that. All right, A couple
of quick questions to wrap up.Who in the listening and viewing audiences should
reach out to you and why wementioned you know, if they're about to
do a big branding campaign, theyshould pause and talk to you. Who
(48:21):
else? Firm owners, mid sizedfirms and from that standpoint, it's it's
firms they don't have to be particularlybig, but there has to be if
we can dial up your profitability,it makes a big difference. So if
you have really tight margins and growingthat, you know you've got to do
a lot of a lot of changeto move the needle. But if you're
a high end professional where there's alot of profit, and if you can
(48:44):
dial up the profit and get runof those headache clients, there's a huge
impact. And so you don't haveto be particularly large firm. At some
point you get big enough that thatpeople think that they you know, there's
a lot of bureaucracy, and I'mon my own because I don't want to
do deal withocracy. Can it yourown bureaucracy? But that's a that's a
pretty pretty nice and so it's reallymore organizational than it is size of organization.
(49:07):
I worked with a construction company thatwas two hundred million dollars, but
they ran five owners. They ranlike a firm that was much smaller.
Nice. And so I want tohave a big impact. I want to
have a where I can have animpact fairly quickly and have a success.
I always tell people I'm too smallin operation to have unsuccessful clients. So
everyone. I want everyone to bea big success. I am with you
(49:29):
there, Bruce, Thank you somuch for being here. He is Bruce
at Eastwood Strategy dot com. That'sthe website as well, Eastwood Strategy dot
com. If you've got questions,reach out Bruce. Thank you so much
for being here. Thank you forhaving me. This is a fun conversation
and for me as well. Andthanks everybody for watching and listening. This
is a show about business and businesschallenges. If you've got concerns about the
(49:53):
sales growth of your company, feelfree to reach out to me. You
can find me on Facebook or LinkedInat Winning Business Radio and drop me a
note. One of my many emailaddresses is Kevin at Winning Business Radio dot
com. Our company is Winning inCorporated. We're part of Sandler Training.
We develop sales teams into high achieversand sales leaders into true coaches and mentors.
(50:13):
We're not a fit for everyone,but hey, maybe we should have
a conversation. Thank you to ourproducer and engineer one for another job well
done. Be sure to join usnext week. That's Monday, January fifteenth.
My guest will be Stevenstrom, authorof success and self discovery, until
then, this is Kevin Hallanan.You've been listening to Winning Business Radio with
your host, Kevin Helena. Ifyou missed any part of this episode,
(50:36):
the podcast is available on Talk forPodcasting and iHeartRadio. For more information and
questions, go to Winning Business Radiodot com or check us out on social
media. Tune in again next weekand every Monday at four pm Eastern Time
to listen live to Winning Business Radioon W four CY Radio w fourcy dot
(50:57):
com. Until then, let's succeedwhere others have failed and win in business
with Kevin Helenan and Winning Business Radio
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