December 22, 2025 • 34 mins
Get ready for a lively and insightful conversation on this episode of Count Me In! Host Adam Larson welcomes author, strategist, and founder of FractionalCMO.com and Redfern Media, Draye Redfern, as he shares his bold approach to staying resilient and thriving in uncertain times. Drawing on advice from his "Recession Survival Guide" and giving a sneak peek into his upcoming "Anchor Marketing" framework, Draye Redfern delivers practical strategies for teams and individuals who want to future-proof their businesses and careers.
Whether you’re running your own company or leading a department, you’ll come away with ready-to-implement tips for attracting new leads, nurturing relationships, and building a solid foundation for growth—even during a downturn. Draye Redfern's real talk on marketing, team dynamics, and building lasting customer relationships will keep you hooked from start to finish. Tune in for high-energy ideas, personal stories, and a toolkit to help you turn challenges into your next big opportunity!
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Episode Transcript
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Adam Larson (00:06):
Welcome back to Count Me In. I'm Adam Larsen,
and today, I'm joined by DrayeRedfern, the founder of
fractionalcmo.com and RedfernMedia. We're diving into
strategies for thriving throughturbulent economic times as
outlined in Draye's book, therecession survival guide. In our
conversation, Draye sharespractical actionable tips and
walks us through his anchorframework from attracting leads
to nurturing relationships tooptimizing operations and
(00:29):
maximizing retention. We'lldiscuss how teams outside the
sales and marketing, especiallyin finance, can use these
principles to break down silosand add more value across the
company.
So if you're looking for fresh,effective ways to repair your
business for whatever comesnext, you're in the right place.
Let's get started.
(00:52):
Well, Draye, I'm really excited to have you on
the podcast today. We're gonnabe talking a lot about your
book, The Recession SurvivalGuide. And there's a lot of
uncertain times right now, and Ithink people are really kind of
wary about what's happening withthe markets going all over the
place with uncertainty,especially in The US markets and
even the worldwide markets witheverything that's happening. And
in your in your book, you kindastress the importance of
(01:14):
focusing on the bigger pictureduring terrible turbulent times.
So maybe can you kinda sharethat approach, for teams and
what that looks like?
Draye Redfern (01:22):
Yeah. I'm certain certainly happy to do it. And
thank you for having me, Adam. Ithink that no matter where we're
at right now, people feel thattimes are turbulent. They've
said this five years ago.
They said this twenty years ago.They said this a hundred years
ago. So there's alwaysuncertainty in any market no
matter what you're facing. So ifyou lead with that, then it sort
(01:44):
of takes the conversation in ain a, I think, a more
interesting dynamic. And what Imean by that is, on average,
depressions typically in Westerncountries happen oftentimes
about every 100 years onaverage.
Recessions, you can argue, like,we were in a one month recession
during the times during COVID inearly twenty twenty, whatever.
(02:05):
On average, recessions typicallyhappen about every eleven years.
So if you take that as abaseline, we're more or less due
for both. Cool. Maybe thathappens, maybe it doesn't, but
it's probably worth preparingfor it either way, like having
your financials figured out,having good risk management
(02:28):
practices, having a good way toconsistently generate leads,
having an offer for yourservices that is, you know,
recession agnostic.
It doesn't matter whether arecession's gonna go on or not.
Like, there's a reason why, youknow, Warren Buffett invests in
companies like Gillette becausemen are always gonna need to
shave their faces. Like, this isjust a reality. And so if you're
(02:52):
selling one off tchotchkes thatare cheap European import or
Chinese imports, then, like,yeah, if times get tough, that's
gonna be the first thing that,like, people are not gonna buy.
And so the your offer structure,what are you actually doing to
serve the market?
What does your team or structureand financials look like? Are
you way over leveraged? Like,fixed cost versus variable cost
(03:12):
inside of your business. There'sso many different sort of
avenues I think a business ownershould just get like, do it now
because if a recession happens,like, no. You don't have a
crystal ball.
I don't have a crystal ball. Butif a recession were to ever
happen, which it will withoutwith absolute certainty, it
will. It's a matter of when.Then you're much more geared up
(03:33):
to take advantage of it. Like, aperfect example of this is a lot
of the businesses who were notready for COVID, what they did
was the first expense they cut,like, oh, markets are going
down.
Everyone's freaking out. Stopthe marketing. Stop this. Stop
that. That's what many did.
For the businesses that actuallykept advertising, it was the law
(03:55):
of supply and demand. You had alot less people in the market
wanting to advertise becausethey all cut their spend. And so
their dollars went way, wayfurther. So we have some clients
that were getting three and fourx the amount of reach on the
same dollar spend that they didsix months previously because
the market dried up. Peoplepulled out of it.
(04:16):
They were no longer advertising.But it's the people who, like,
have, like, confidence in a planthat know the financials and
know the team, know fixed andvariable costs in the business,
know what it takes to acquire acustomer, all of these sorts of
things have a really solidfoundation. So if and when
something happens, they cancapitalize on it. So for those
clients of ours that werereally, like, push the gas pedal
(04:39):
during, you know, early COVIDtimes, they crushed. They
absolutely smoked it, made somuch money that you couldn't do
you can't do now for the sameamount of spend because people
are all advertising again.
So there's a lot of ways to sortof, like, take that. We can, you
know, dissect this any way youwould like, but I think that
it's really a matter of muchlike if you've ever sold a
(04:59):
business. I'm fortunate enoughto have ever, you know, I said,
sold two businesses at thispoint, one of which was to a
Berkshire Hathaway company. Nomatter what you're doing, if you
ever wanna sell the business,whether it's in six months or
six years from now, get it readyto sell today. And that's
essentially my philosophy whenit comes to running a business
is, like, get the business inorder today because, like I said
(05:19):
earlier, it's not an if, it's awhen on when some recession or
black swan event will happen formost businesses.
And so we can certainly use thatas a as a jumping off point, I
guess.
Adam Larson (05:31):
Yeah. That is a good jumping off point because,
like, a lot of questions come tomind. Like, what does it look
like when you, like, when youwanna get your business ready to
sell right now? And and and thenand then the the like, a
follow-up question is what ifyou work for a place that's not
looking to sell anything, butyou wanna hey. Hey.
Like, I wanna raise the red flagand say, hey, guys. We need to
be we need to get ready.
Draye Redfern (05:51):
So I think that when it comes to getting ready,
I I write about this in therecession survival guide. I also
write about it in a new bookthat's coming out called Anchor
Marketing. What what essentiallyit is, it's a framework on how
to market way, way moreeffectively in your business. So
your offer, your structure, yourbaseline foundation is really,
really solid. And what I mean bythat is if you were gonna build
(06:12):
a house, you're gonna erect allthe scaffolding, and you're
gonna take the time, and you'reput the trusses on there and put
the roof on there and do thefacade, but you built the dang
thing on a foundation of sand,you're kinda like you're you're
stuck up creek, and you're notit's not gonna be very long
until that thing comes crashingdown, even though the dang thing
is beautiful.
But a lot and that's how a lotof people run businesses. That's
(06:34):
how they run departments. Theydo all of that sort of stuff.
They don't take the time tobuild a really solid foundation.
And anchor can be that for a lotof people, so I'll run people
through it.
Anchor stands for attract. Sohow are you attracting new
leads, new, you know, interest,awareness, eyeballs? Every
business tracks somethingdifferent. What does that look
like? What is that awarenessfactor?
(06:56):
So how do you attracting peoplein? I typically recommend
businesses have at least three.Because if you're only relying
on word-of-mouth referrals,then, oh, man, John Smith went
out of business because timesare tough, and he's like, well,
I'm 65 anyway. I'm just gonnashut the doors to my practice.
I'm not gonna like, I'm done.
Well, there's your primaryreferral source that went up in
(07:18):
smoke, and you had no controlover it. Enjoy those referrals,
but you should you should thenhave at least two more options.
Maybe that's paid traffic. Maybethat's direct mail, which I
absolutely love. Maybe that issome sort of outbound or cold
email or whatever it is thatyou're doing.
There's a thousand differentways you can skin that cat. Do
(07:38):
three. That's attract. Thesecond part is nurture. Most
businesses operate in a senseof, hey.
We gotta lead in. They didn'tbuy immediately. They're dead to
us. And, like, that's it. Theyhave a whole like, you you look
at their HubSpot or theirSalesforce or their high level
or whatever it is that they'reusing, and there's you know, if
not hundreds, if not tens ofthousands of emails of people
(08:01):
that, like, have not beencontacted.
And so the second part isnurture. And the easiest thing
that I recommend a lot ofbusinesses to do is take the 52
most asked questions in yourbusiness. What is that? Like, is
it about pricing? Is it abouthow you serve them?
And then build some sort ofcollateral off of that so that
(08:25):
you could more or less write andaddress all of the objections
that someone would have inworking with your service, and
you turned it into a year longemail sequence. One email per
week. You can nurture thosepeople over the course of a
year, but here's the magiclittle sauce that most people
miss. At the end of that firstyear, you tag them to begin back
at the beginning because do youremember an email that you got a
(08:48):
year ago?
Adam Larson (08:50):
No. I can barely remember emails I got today.
Draye Redfern (08:53):
Exactly. And that's the reality of it. So you
could essentially, for asingular action, do something
today and maybe it takes youtoday and tomorrow, whatever it
is, and then you have it lockeddown to nurture these people
indefinitely until the time isright where they're like, I'm
finally ready to changeproviders. I'm ready to, like,
do this thing. I've been pushingit off.
I got the email today. I'mfinally ready to make that
(09:15):
decision. Some like, typically,only between 13% of any market,
whether you're buying a car,buying marketing services,
buying financial services, areready to make the decision today
or in the next two weeks. Mostpeople don't don't pay any
attention to that. So by addinga simple nurture sequence like
that, it can go a long, longway.
(09:36):
The third part of anchor isconvert. What is the conversion
elements that you're using? Andmost people are only like, well,
we're only looking at leads,like, or, you know, amount of
calls on the books. Cool. Whatother conversion elements have
to occur with that prospectbefore they become a client?
So that could be, what is theamount of leads or opt ins that
(09:59):
we've gotten on our white paperor PDF or e whatever. How many
of those converted to bookedcalls or demos, sales calls,
whatever the jargon would bedepending on how the business
operates. How many sales calls?How many conversions off of
those sales calls? Whatconversion elements are you
looking at?
Because it's never just oneconversion. Someone just
doesn't, like, raise their handtoday and immediately buy. Sign
(10:23):
up. Sign a retainer. Whateverit's gonna end up being.
But knowing what that is andthen optimizing that, you know,
conversion journey, really,really simple thing. Put
dashboards on it, track itweekly or, to bare minimum,
monthly because it then alsoacts as a leading indicator to
the business of, hey. If, youknow, awareness is going down,
leads are going down, call booksare going down, closes are going
(10:46):
down, you're gonna know one tothree months ahead of time so
you can really put some gas onthat so you're not, like,
looking up and, like, ah, well,there's more months than money
this month. We gotta, like,figure something out, and it
becomes, you know, 911emergency. That is the c.
Kind of also relates to the o ofAnchor, which is optimize. What
are you trying to optimize for?Every department will throw,
(11:11):
especially if it's like a biggercompany, they'll throw all of
their metrics to the c suite andsay, here's how great we are.
But in the reality is, are theythe right metrics to be tracked?
And a lot of businesses do nottake enough time on this.
That could be, like I said,second. It could be visits per
(11:31):
month. That could be callsbooked, whatever else. What are
you trying to optimize for?Usually, most businesses should
optimize for about five things.
It's gonna be different on everybusiness, but I'll give you an
example for us. I wanna knoweyeballs or impressions per
month because we drive traffic,etcetera. I wanna know what
total impressions are per month.After that, I wanna know what
(11:51):
actual opt ins or new leads areper month. Like, you know, what
if they're under nurturesequences or something like
that.
I wanna know amount of callsthat are booked per month. I
wanna know the close rate off ofthat call or, like, the close
percentage off of that, meaningwe got x amount of you know, we
we had 10 calls. We sold threepeople. It's a 30% close rate.
(12:12):
And then finally, at least forme, I wanna know LTV, lifetime
value.
For us, on average, a clientstays with us for seventeen
months. So I know that if itcosts me, I'll just use round
numbers, a thousand dollars amonth we were to to, you know,
sell a service for, and andsomeone pay stays for seventeen
months, that's $17,000. Mostbusinesses do not know that,
(12:37):
which if you did, it allows youto treat your marketing really,
really differently. How muchwould you spend to get $17,000
in the door? Now if you knowyour operating costs and
whatever else and call it youknow, maybe it's a $5,000 to
serve that client, I'd spendanother $5,000.
I'd spend $10,000 sometimes toget the right go get in front of
(12:58):
the right people to get thosepeople in the door because I
know my numbers way better thanmost other people. Now, profit
margins are gonna be different,like, amount of time to serve as
a client. Like, there's athousand other variables there
that are gonna be different onevery business. But knowing
that, huge, huge catalyst tocreate more leverage in a
business. So that's attract,nurture, convert.
(13:20):
Oh, optimize. I skipped h ofanchor. H is humanize because I
can't spell today, I guess.
Adam Larson (13:26):
I was gonna call you on that. Was like, what
about the h? Because you justjumped to the o.
Draye Redfern (13:29):
Yeah. The humanize side of things.
Everything is right now AI, AI,AI, AI, which is cool, and I
love it. And we use Replxity,Claude, Gemini. We use them all.
We use and, like, a ton of othersecondary ones. But the reality
is, you know, if you send emailsout that are simply just like,
(13:51):
hello, contact first name, youknow, ampersand ampersand, and
that's what you're using toquote unquote personalize your
marketing via your emailautoresponder, it ain't cutting
it. Like, with the humanizedside of things, we're no longer
in a b to b world or a b to cworld. We are in an h to h
world, human to human. So youare we we have a connection
(14:12):
right now.
We've talked before thispodcast. We're talking now.
There's an actual connection.We're looking at each other,
albeit on a screen. There is aconnection that exists.
There's a humanized element toit. For most other people,
there's some level of that inbusiness, whether you're talking
from, you know, CEO to CEO tonegotiate a deal or business
owner to financial servicesprovider to do x, y, and z,
(14:35):
whether it's CPA work orbookkeeping or some sort of
financial services. Whatever thething is, there's conversations
that go in. You need to havesome level of rapport. And so if
you're marketing, manufacturingthat rapport really, really goes
a long way.
So you can do things, massproduce handwritten notes with
(14:57):
a, you know, robotic handwritingprinter that's not like a you
like an inkjet that's just like,you know, whatever else. It's a
robotic hand where you caninsert your Uni ball or your
Mont Blanc or your whatever itis you're gonna write with, and
it literally sets, draws, lifts,sets, draws, lifts where the ink
bleeds actually exist. So Icould send Adam a handwritten
(15:19):
note that says, hey, Adam.Thanks so much for having me on
the podcast today. Reallyenjoyed talking about x, y, and
z.
You know? All the best. Whateverelse. And never lift a finger.
This technology has been aroundfor about a decade.
Like, we bought one of thesemachines about ten years ago in
the former company that we sold.And we every time someone would
become a client, they would geta handwritten note from us, but
(15:42):
we would never sit there andwrite it. But the the the the
message is back and the rapportthat was created was huge
because, wow, like, no onewrites these things anymore, and
it creates a human to humanelement. That's an example. I'm
giving, like, high levelstrategy and tactics at the same
time.
So, hopefully Yeah. Everybody'stracking. Something else you can
(16:03):
do is not new. It's from a book,basically a 100 years old, how
to win friends and influencepeople by Dale Carnegie, one of
the top selling books of alltime. The sweetest sound to
someone's ears is the sound oftheir own name.
So I try to use it all thefreaking time. And so as an
example, if we were sending,like, an email sequence out, I
(16:26):
could send out 10,000 videos,maybe not today because it's
towards the end of the day. Icould send 10,000 videos out
tomorrow, however long theprocess is. Maybe take a day or
two to generate all of them.They would say, hey, Adam.
Draye Redford here. Hey, Bill,Draye Redfern here. Hey, Susan,
Draye Redfern here. Hey,Veronica, Draye Redfern here,
along with the rest of my video,and use AI and voice over
(16:50):
matching to basically swap Adamfor Veronica, Veronica to Susan,
Susan, and it will move my lips.It'll sync up my audio, do all
of these sorts of things.
So I could send hyperpersonalized videos, humanized
videos to prospects or clientswishing them happy birthday.
Wishing them, like, hey. Ienjoyed our conversation on our
(17:11):
sales call. Looking forward tofollowing up again. These sorts
of things that allow people tofeel like, dang.
They really go the extra mile.And I feel like that's the world
that we're in. Like, yes, AI isgreat. It is still a tool. You
gotta use these things to youradvantage and do it in a way
that is not sleazy or unethical.
(17:31):
So that's attract, nurture,convert, humanize, which we had
to backtrack on, optimize, andthen finally, r is retention and
recurring revenue. For a lot ofbusinesses, especially, like, in
in in your market, recurringrevenue is gonna be built in in
some form or fashion. That's thenature of the business, which is
(17:52):
great. That's amazing. But whatis retention?
And so if recurring revenue isbuilt into it, what is the
retention level? For some, it'llbe 60%. For some, it'll be 95 or
98%. It depends on sort of thestructure of their offer, how
they're doing things, etcetera.So if businesses don't have
either of those, make a freakingoffer that has some level of
(18:15):
recurring revenue becausethere's gardeners and there's
hunters.
I'm a Texas boy. I like to playin both ends of that field.
Like, the hunting side ofthings, let's go, you know,
let's go land a whale of aclient and have a, you know,
like, the hunt, the excitementof it. But now we've done that.
Now we've gotta go do the wholedang thing again.
(18:35):
Whereas a gardener mentality,like, you do the work today, you
could plant the stuff today, andyou could keep reaping the
rewards of what you've planted,not today, but in three, six
months from now, and it can keepreaping all of those rewards.
That is like retention andrecurring revenue. Go attracts.
Go do all that sort of stuff. Gohunt the big game or the whales
or the client, whatever youwanna use.
(18:56):
But all like, the retentionrecurring revenue part is an
underpinning of a business thatbrings so much additional
certainty and clarity to how,like, you have to make decisions
on a day to day basis where youknow what? Like, if you're
having to go hunt every singleclient and it's a one off,
that's a bad place to be. So ifyou have the the recurring
revenue, then optimize theretention. And, it's gonna be
(19:20):
different depending on everyniche and sub niche, but you can
use actually a lot of thehumanized tactics to then
improve your retention and yourrecurring revenue side of
things. So that could be on yourbirthday because I know your
birthday because you're aclient, that I call you on your
birthday to say, hey, justwanted to wish you a happy
(19:40):
birthday.
It's Draye Redfern withfractionalcmo.com. Just wanted
to, like, let you know I'mthinking about you today. Love
that you're a client. Reallyappreciate you, and hope you
have an amazing day. All thebest.
Take care. If you never needanything, just let us know. Bye
bye. Now what I did not do thereis use your name, but I could
drop a voicemail onto yourphone, bifurcate the ringer so
(20:04):
that your phone never evenrings. You look down.
There's a missed call from me atour company line, whatever else,
wishing you a happy birthday.Entirely automated. So it's
things like that that you can dothat can man, my insurance
agent, my financial adviser, myfreaking plumber calls me every
single year on my birthday towish me a happy birthday. Who do
(20:27):
you think I'm gonna call thenext time I need plumbing work?
Or you know what?
John Smith, my friend at ourbarbecue, is complaining about
his financial adviser insuranceagent or CPA or whoever else.
Dude, you gotta go see my guy.He calls me all the time. They
don't drop a beat. Like, hewishes me happy birthday every
like, it allows so many morenatural word-of-mouth, like,
(20:49):
referrals to come about of thatfrom existing clientele by
simply dropping a few of thosenuggets into an existing
process.
So that is the anchor framework.I think of a lot of businesses
like, I could talk for ten hourson this stuff, but I think a lot
of businesses implement like,most businesses typically are
lacking very poorly in at leasttwo of those elements. But if
(21:10):
you have a really solid anchorframework sort of implemented,
the amount of confidence thatyou have in running a business
is like tenfold because you knowwhere the leads are. You know
how they're coming from. You'rediversified on your lead gen.
You know how to nurture thembecause not everybody buys
today. You're optimizing theconversions and really tracking
that. You create human to humaninteractions because I don't
(21:32):
wanna leave a friend if I'mdoing business with a friend.
Whereas if you're a number, Ican leave you much easier. I
know the numbers that I need tooptimize for, so I have my
leading indicators and mylagging indicators, and my
offers dialed in with myretention and current recurring
revenue, and those arecontinually going up into the
right.
If you have that, holy smokes,like the business that you're
(21:53):
then running is a dramaticallydifferent beast, and that
becomes way, way more fun.
Adam Larson (22:00):
Yeah, it does. And as you were talking about that,
I couldn't help but think aboutpeople who are part of internal
teams who might not be dealingwith the marketing side, who
might not be dealing with theexternal customer. Can you apply
this framework as an internalteam to help break down silos,
to help to help the organizationbecome a better culture and and
all around?
Draye Redfern (22:17):
A thousand percent. In fact, most of the
people who end up, like, readingmy stuff or, like, finding out
about me is via stuff like this,and then they, hey. I got this
idea. Let me go implement it.And, like, it starts with one.
Like, one person can, like, makea profound impact in a company.
So let's just say it's somebodyin a department. Well, that
(22:38):
somebody in a department couldrealize after this, like, you
know what? Let's just say like,give me an example of
department. Let's just let'spick something on the fly.
Adam Larson (22:47):
We'll say the the finance and accounting
department because that's whatthat's who the listeners of this
podcast are.
Draye Redfern (22:51):
Yep. So the finance and accounting
department of a company. Well,typically overlooked. They're
typically kind of the drypeople. They're like, oh,
there's just the pencil pushersover there in accounting.
That is the stigma that is outthere whether you like it or
not. So easy to combat that. Soif someone is in the finance or
(23:11):
accounting department, you coulddo something on the human to
human side of things. So let'sjust say that let's just use,
like, like, like, an accountsreceivable person. Someone like
bills are getting paid.
Let's reach out. Well, insteadof just, like, you know, sending
an email, you could drop a voicemail onto their phone, bifurcate
(23:33):
the ringer, and be like, hey.This is Draye from accounts
receivable at x y z financial. Ijust wanted to reach out because
we're delayed on x, y, or z, andI just wanted this to be the
first touch. I'll try you againlater, but I wanted you actually
hear from me instead of justgetting a phone number, like, or
a an email or whatever else.
Done. I could record that onceand send that out to every
(23:56):
single person that was everdelayed on their payment without
ever having to open my mouthagain. That is a variation of
that. Finance and accounting.God, there's so many ways that
you could slice and dice this.
I would say, like, the let'sjust let's play like, give me a
sec. We'll we'll we'll play thisout. So what is let's go a
subset of finance andaccounting. What is a role of
(24:17):
someone in finance andaccounting, and what are they
doing on a day to day basis?
Adam Larson (24:21):
Okay. We could go a number of different ways. So
let's say somebody from the FPand A team, and they're part of
the strategic plan. They'rehelping build the strategic plan
for the organization.
Draye Redfern (24:31):
Okay. Great. If they're starting to build the
strategic plan for theorganization, that one's way too
easy, but we'll do it anyway.What what are the numbers that
need to be optimized for? So notjust are we profitable, profit
margins, like, you know, our Aand R and, like, all the other
sort of stuff, managing the pand l's, etcetera.
A lot of like, we work with alot of fractional CFOs across a
(24:53):
lot of businesses that we Okay.We we work with. The ones who
really crush it, whether they'rein a big fractional CFO company
or they're a CFO in anothercompany, are the ones that then
know the numbers of otheraspects of the business. Because
most businesses typically saleshates marketing, marketing hates
sales. Because marketing I giveyou the good leads and you can't
(25:18):
sell them.
You're like crappy salespeople.And the salespeople hate
marketing people because yougive me all the leads and
they're all garbage. I can'tsell any of these. So if there
was someone out there that knewthese numbers and was putting
together all the structure ofthings, then they could know,
hey. Looking at our p and l,looking at, you know, where
we're profitable here, etcetera,we did this thing and this thing
(25:39):
in marketing that resulted inthose things in sales and
ultimately this amount on thebottom line.
But the problem is most of themare all too siloed to say, hey.
Our p and l is great thisquarter. Keep doing what you're
doing. Or we suck. Ah, the houseis on fire.
Market more. But if youintegrate more of those things
and you actually have dashboardsthat can optimize your
marketing, top of funnel, yoursales middle funnel, and
(26:02):
obviously the bottom of funnelafter the fact, the p and l's,
etcetera, of organizationalplanning and things, now all of
a sudden, you're playing with afull deck. But most financial
professionals, they put theblinders on, they stay in their
lane, and that's all they chooseto do. So simply, if you just
did the O side of things andoptimize and look at more of the
numbers from across the businesswhere you may think like, oh,
(26:24):
cost per lead is totallyirrelevant to me. You may be I
think you may be pleasantlysurprised.
Adam Larson (26:31):
Well, that's I think that's what I was kinda
pushing on because the CFOshould be doing those things,
and their team should be doingthose things. And so maybe we
can talk about some ways thatyou've seen see it the CFO work
with the marketing, work withwork with the sales folks, and
bring everybody together becausethe CFO is kind of the glue
because they hold the numbers.They hold the strategic plan.
They're that business partnerthat you need in these
(26:52):
situations.
Draye Redfern (26:53):
The problem we see though is most of those
people are not actuallyintegrating as many things as as
they should be, is how we'llprobably say it.
Adam Larson (27:00):
So one thing you and I spoke about when we first
chatted, you had mentioned, youknow, Jay Abrams' concept of
playing in other people'ssandboxes. And I wanted to push
on that, you know, becauseobviously, you know, you you do
a lot of things in themarketing, helping people in
marketing, but other people fromother sandboxes tend to listen
to you. And so I wanna encourageour listeners, you know, how can
they start playing in otherpeople's sandboxes to learn
(27:21):
those things, to bring them intothe finance and accounting team
to make things better?
Draye Redfern (27:26):
So, yeah, Jay Abraham is he is the marketing
godfather is how I'll probablysay it. So for those of, you
know, the listeners who don'tknow who Jay Abraham is, Jay is
a marketing legend. He is thehighest paid marketing
consultant on planet Earth. WhenI last checked, which was, I
don't know, six or eight monthsago, if you wanna work with Jay,
(27:49):
it's a $180,000 a day.
Adam Larson (27:52):
My goodness.
Draye Redfern (27:53):
A day.
Adam Larson (27:54):
A day.
Draye Redfern (27:54):
So it's not cheap, but he has an incredible
way of looking at things thatmost people will never like,
cannot replicate. And I wasfortunate enough to spend about
a half a day every month forabout a year with Jay a few
years ago, and he completelyshifted my paradigm in so many
different ways. And one of themis what you just you just
(28:17):
mentioned, and that is playingin other people's sandboxes. And
so the problem is if you only goto industry events, you only
regurgitate the same industrystuff. Okay.
That's cool. Like, we're makingincremental steps upwards. Like,
oh, we'll do this next littlething tactic, and, oh, that's
not working anymore, but I'll goto another event. We'll try this
(28:39):
other little tactic, and, like,we are we're stacking tactics.
Whatever.
Every business is different. ButJay's philosophy on many of
these things is, okay. You'resome sort of financial
professional. What if you wentto a, a marketing conference
with only marketers, people whorun marketing agencies? Or if
you're a financial professionaland you went to, some sort of,
(29:03):
let's just some other like, aplumbing conference, whatever,
you're gonna be here.
I don't know why I keep talkingabout plumbers today, but you're
gonna hear you're gonna heardifferent things that are
working in different industries.Now much of that jargon will be
completely irrelevant to you,and that's okay. You don't care
about Teflon, PVC, PEX,plumbing, whatever else because
(29:26):
you are in the financial space.But how they're thinking about
problems or what they're doingin their market to market
differently than everyone else'sin your market allows you to
take a nugget from over here andtake that back to your sandbox
and do something that no oneelse in your industry is
actually doing. So an example ofthis, like we've got I've got
(29:48):
dozens and dozens.
I've had 8,700 law firms asclients until we sold a business
previously. Lawyers are veryunique individuals. Some of the
most successful lawyers that areout there don't go to ABA
conferences, American BarAssociation conferences. They go
to real estate conferences, orthey go to CPA conferences, or
(30:11):
they're going to, like, youknow, other things like that of
industry professionals that arenot in their industry because
well, for a few reasons. Numberone, the whole Jay Abraham sort
of idea or theory where I couldtake a nugget from a real estate
agent conference and back to mylegal practice.
Great. What it also allows themto do is like, hey. I'm a real
(30:33):
estate attorney where I do someamount of real estate in my
practice. Going to law events,maybe I can, you know, increase
my knowledge of the legal field.I'm gonna go to the, like, the
people who are gonna be the bestpossible referrers of me, and
I'm gonna go to those events.
Now most other people in thespace do not do that. And so
it's simply like taking anexisting paradigm of how
(30:54):
everyone else thinks and justmaking a slight tweak on it, and
it could be, like, dramaticallyprofound. So I've gone to ABA
meetings. In fact, I went toevery ABA meeting for nearly
and, like, real estate events. Igo to CPA conferences.
Those are a bit more dry. I'llbe honest. Like, you name a
(31:15):
professional service segment,I've been to many, many, many of
those events, which has allowedme to take a lot of those
nuggets and aggregate them oramalgamate them into something
that is hyper unique that no oneelse is talking about. And so I
love the Jay Abraham sort ofphilosophy there. And the other
side of things, one of Jay'sgreat thoughts, is the Amazon
(31:35):
School of Marketing, where ifyou offer a service of any kind,
find the books of people likeyou that are written on Amazon
and go read the reviews or,like, the testimonials that are
done on Amazon.
You're gonna learn what peoplelike about that book. You're
gonna learn what issues, likequestions that people have that
(31:56):
were not addressed in the book.You're gonna see the questions
that were addressed in the book.So for marketing purposes for
your own stuff, you just hadyour copy, your website copy,
your marketing copy, yourcollateral generated for you by
simply doing and finding whatother people are doing in the
space and reading the reviewsother people are using off of
similar books, etcetera. Sothose are two of, like, 5,000
(32:19):
Jay Abraham things.
But it's just like like I said,you know, small hinges swing big
doors, and there's so many smallhinges that you could do in any
business, whether you're like anentrepreneur, operating like an,
you know, entrepreneur but inthe confines of a existing
business, or you're theentrepreneur, or you're working
in sort of like a a stacked sortof silo of people in your in
your team. Any one of thesethings you could use to, like,
(32:43):
operate more effectively in yourjob, bring more ideas to the
table so that, man, all of asudden, where did Adam get all
these great ideas from that wecould use for x, y, and z
project that's coming up? Like,well, he's just listening to the
podcast. Like, count me in.Like, let's rock and roll.
Adam Larson (32:59):
Yeah. Yeah. I love that. And I encourage everybody
to check out Draye's books. Youknow, he's got a new book coming
out.
He's got a book that, you know,so we'll have links to that.
Connect with him on LinkedIn.You know, get learn more here
because, we're kinda coming toan end here of our conversation
here, Draye. But I reallyappreciate you sharing your
insights and just going throughthose things, and I hope that
(33:19):
everybody got some nuggets foryou, and then they they kinda
dig to to learn more as they goalong.
Draye Redfern (33:24):
Yeah. It's my pleasure. I enjoyed it. Like, I
could talk about this stuff allday. If the anchor concept
resonated, we have a new bookcoming out.
It is called Anchor Marketing.You go to anchorbook.com.
Download it. We're gonna have afree version of the book and,
like, a $3 version of the booklargely just to get it in as
many hands as possible just totry and help as many business as
(33:45):
possible. So it's not a revenuegenerator for us, but purely a
way to sort of give back andspread the word of, like, really
helping businesses dial thesethings in.
So we include more of the linksto the recession survival guide
and other stuff later, but Ithink that's, if that resonated
with people today, that's aneasiest, next next place to
start.
Announcer (34:04):
This has been Count Me In, IMA's podcast, providing
you with the latest perspectivesof thought leaders from the
accounting and financeprofession. If you like what you
heard and you'd like to becounted in for more relevant
accounting and financeeducation, visit IMA's website
at www.imanet.org.
Welcome back to Count Me In. I'm Adam Larsen,
and today, I'm joined by DrayeRedfern, the founder of
fractionalcmo.com and RedfernMedia. We're diving into
strategies for thriving throughturbulent economic times as
outlined in Draye's book, therecession survival guide. In our
conversation, Draye sharespractical actionable tips and
walks us through his anchorframework from attracting leads
to nurturing relationships tooptimizing operations and
(00:29):
maximizing retention. We'lldiscuss how teams outside the
sales and marketing, especiallyin finance, can use these
principles to break down silosand add more value across the
company.
So if you're looking for fresh,effective ways to repair your
business for whatever comesnext, you're in the right place.
Let's get started.
(00:52):
Well, Draye, I'm really excited to have you on
the podcast today. We're gonnabe talking a lot about your
book, The Recession SurvivalGuide. And there's a lot of
uncertain times right now, and Ithink people are really kind of
wary about what's happening withthe markets going all over the
place with uncertainty,especially in The US markets and
even the worldwide markets witheverything that's happening. And
in your in your book, you kindastress the importance of
(01:14):
focusing on the bigger pictureduring terrible turbulent times.
So maybe can you kinda sharethat approach, for teams and
what that looks like?
Draye Redfern (01:22):
Yeah. I'm certain certainly happy to do it. And
thank you for having me, Adam. Ithink that no matter where we're
at right now, people feel thattimes are turbulent. They've
said this five years ago.
They said this twenty years ago.They said this a hundred years
ago. So there's alwaysuncertainty in any market no
matter what you're facing. So ifyou lead with that, then it sort
(01:44):
of takes the conversation in ain a, I think, a more
interesting dynamic. And what Imean by that is, on average,
depressions typically in Westerncountries happen oftentimes
about every 100 years onaverage.
Recessions, you can argue, like,we were in a one month recession
during the times during COVID inearly twenty twenty, whatever.
(02:05):
On average, recessions typicallyhappen about every eleven years.
So if you take that as abaseline, we're more or less due
for both. Cool. Maybe thathappens, maybe it doesn't, but
it's probably worth preparingfor it either way, like having
your financials figured out,having good risk management
(02:28):
practices, having a good way toconsistently generate leads,
having an offer for yourservices that is, you know,
recession agnostic.
It doesn't matter whether arecession's gonna go on or not.
Like, there's a reason why, youknow, Warren Buffett invests in
companies like Gillette becausemen are always gonna need to
shave their faces. Like, this isjust a reality. And so if you're
(02:52):
selling one off tchotchkes thatare cheap European import or
Chinese imports, then, like,yeah, if times get tough, that's
gonna be the first thing that,like, people are not gonna buy.
And so the your offer structure,what are you actually doing to
serve the market?
What does your team or structureand financials look like? Are
you way over leveraged? Like,fixed cost versus variable cost
(03:12):
inside of your business. There'sso many different sort of
avenues I think a business ownershould just get like, do it now
because if a recession happens,like, no. You don't have a
crystal ball.
I don't have a crystal ball. Butif a recession were to ever
happen, which it will withoutwith absolute certainty, it
will. It's a matter of when.Then you're much more geared up
(03:33):
to take advantage of it. Like, aperfect example of this is a lot
of the businesses who were notready for COVID, what they did
was the first expense they cut,like, oh, markets are going
down.
Everyone's freaking out. Stopthe marketing. Stop this. Stop
that. That's what many did.
For the businesses that actuallykept advertising, it was the law
(03:55):
of supply and demand. You had alot less people in the market
wanting to advertise becausethey all cut their spend. And so
their dollars went way, wayfurther. So we have some clients
that were getting three and fourx the amount of reach on the
same dollar spend that they didsix months previously because
the market dried up. Peoplepulled out of it.
(04:16):
They were no longer advertising.But it's the people who, like,
have, like, confidence in a planthat know the financials and
know the team, know fixed andvariable costs in the business,
know what it takes to acquire acustomer, all of these sorts of
things have a really solidfoundation. So if and when
something happens, they cancapitalize on it. So for those
clients of ours that werereally, like, push the gas pedal
(04:39):
during, you know, early COVIDtimes, they crushed. They
absolutely smoked it, made somuch money that you couldn't do
you can't do now for the sameamount of spend because people
are all advertising again.
So there's a lot of ways to sortof, like, take that. We can, you
know, dissect this any way youwould like, but I think that
it's really a matter of muchlike if you've ever sold a
(04:59):
business. I'm fortunate enoughto have ever, you know, I said,
sold two businesses at thispoint, one of which was to a
Berkshire Hathaway company. Nomatter what you're doing, if you
ever wanna sell the business,whether it's in six months or
six years from now, get it readyto sell today. And that's
essentially my philosophy whenit comes to running a business
is, like, get the business inorder today because, like I said
(05:19):
earlier, it's not an if, it's awhen on when some recession or
black swan event will happen formost businesses.
And so we can certainly use thatas a as a jumping off point, I
guess.
Adam Larson (05:31):
Yeah. That is a good jumping off point because,
like, a lot of questions come tomind. Like, what does it look
like when you, like, when youwanna get your business ready to
sell right now? And and and thenand then the the like, a
follow-up question is what ifyou work for a place that's not
looking to sell anything, butyou wanna hey. Hey.
Like, I wanna raise the red flagand say, hey, guys. We need to
be we need to get ready.
Draye Redfern (05:51):
So I think that when it comes to getting ready,
I I write about this in therecession survival guide. I also
write about it in a new bookthat's coming out called Anchor
Marketing. What what essentiallyit is, it's a framework on how
to market way, way moreeffectively in your business. So
your offer, your structure, yourbaseline foundation is really,
really solid. And what I mean bythat is if you were gonna build
(06:12):
a house, you're gonna erect allthe scaffolding, and you're
gonna take the time, and you'reput the trusses on there and put
the roof on there and do thefacade, but you built the dang
thing on a foundation of sand,you're kinda like you're you're
stuck up creek, and you're notit's not gonna be very long
until that thing comes crashingdown, even though the dang thing
is beautiful.
But a lot and that's how a lotof people run businesses. That's
(06:34):
how they run departments. Theydo all of that sort of stuff.
They don't take the time tobuild a really solid foundation.
And anchor can be that for a lotof people, so I'll run people
through it.
Anchor stands for attract. Sohow are you attracting new
leads, new, you know, interest,awareness, eyeballs? Every
business tracks somethingdifferent. What does that look
like? What is that awarenessfactor?
(06:56):
So how do you attracting peoplein? I typically recommend
businesses have at least three.Because if you're only relying
on word-of-mouth referrals,then, oh, man, John Smith went
out of business because timesare tough, and he's like, well,
I'm 65 anyway. I'm just gonnashut the doors to my practice.
I'm not gonna like, I'm done.
Well, there's your primaryreferral source that went up in
(07:18):
smoke, and you had no controlover it. Enjoy those referrals,
but you should you should thenhave at least two more options.
Maybe that's paid traffic. Maybethat's direct mail, which I
absolutely love. Maybe that issome sort of outbound or cold
email or whatever it is thatyou're doing.
There's a thousand differentways you can skin that cat. Do
(07:38):
three. That's attract. Thesecond part is nurture. Most
businesses operate in a senseof, hey.
We gotta lead in. They didn'tbuy immediately. They're dead to
us. And, like, that's it. Theyhave a whole like, you you look
at their HubSpot or theirSalesforce or their high level
or whatever it is that they'reusing, and there's you know, if
not hundreds, if not tens ofthousands of emails of people
(08:01):
that, like, have not beencontacted.
And so the second part isnurture. And the easiest thing
that I recommend a lot ofbusinesses to do is take the 52
most asked questions in yourbusiness. What is that? Like, is
it about pricing? Is it abouthow you serve them?
And then build some sort ofcollateral off of that so that
(08:25):
you could more or less write andaddress all of the objections
that someone would have inworking with your service, and
you turned it into a year longemail sequence. One email per
week. You can nurture thosepeople over the course of a
year, but here's the magiclittle sauce that most people
miss. At the end of that firstyear, you tag them to begin back
at the beginning because do youremember an email that you got a
(08:48):
year ago?
Adam Larson (08:50):
No. I can barely remember emails I got today.
Draye Redfern (08:53):
Exactly. And that's the reality of it. So you
could essentially, for asingular action, do something
today and maybe it takes youtoday and tomorrow, whatever it
is, and then you have it lockeddown to nurture these people
indefinitely until the time isright where they're like, I'm
finally ready to changeproviders. I'm ready to, like,
do this thing. I've been pushingit off.
I got the email today. I'mfinally ready to make that
(09:15):
decision. Some like, typically,only between 13% of any market,
whether you're buying a car,buying marketing services,
buying financial services, areready to make the decision today
or in the next two weeks. Mostpeople don't don't pay any
attention to that. So by addinga simple nurture sequence like
that, it can go a long, longway.
(09:36):
The third part of anchor isconvert. What is the conversion
elements that you're using? Andmost people are only like, well,
we're only looking at leads,like, or, you know, amount of
calls on the books. Cool. Whatother conversion elements have
to occur with that prospectbefore they become a client?
So that could be, what is theamount of leads or opt ins that
(09:59):
we've gotten on our white paperor PDF or e whatever. How many
of those converted to bookedcalls or demos, sales calls,
whatever the jargon would bedepending on how the business
operates. How many sales calls?How many conversions off of
those sales calls? Whatconversion elements are you
looking at?
Because it's never just oneconversion. Someone just
doesn't, like, raise their handtoday and immediately buy. Sign
(10:23):
up. Sign a retainer. Whateverit's gonna end up being.
But knowing what that is andthen optimizing that, you know,
conversion journey, really,really simple thing. Put
dashboards on it, track itweekly or, to bare minimum,
monthly because it then alsoacts as a leading indicator to
the business of, hey. If, youknow, awareness is going down,
leads are going down, call booksare going down, closes are going
(10:46):
down, you're gonna know one tothree months ahead of time so
you can really put some gas onthat so you're not, like,
looking up and, like, ah, well,there's more months than money
this month. We gotta, like,figure something out, and it
becomes, you know, 911emergency. That is the c.
Kind of also relates to the o ofAnchor, which is optimize. What
are you trying to optimize for?Every department will throw,
(11:11):
especially if it's like a biggercompany, they'll throw all of
their metrics to the c suite andsay, here's how great we are.
But in the reality is, are theythe right metrics to be tracked?
And a lot of businesses do nottake enough time on this.
That could be, like I said,second. It could be visits per
(11:31):
month. That could be callsbooked, whatever else. What are
you trying to optimize for?Usually, most businesses should
optimize for about five things.
It's gonna be different on everybusiness, but I'll give you an
example for us. I wanna knoweyeballs or impressions per
month because we drive traffic,etcetera. I wanna know what
total impressions are per month.After that, I wanna know what
(11:51):
actual opt ins or new leads areper month. Like, you know, what
if they're under nurturesequences or something like
that.
I wanna know amount of callsthat are booked per month. I
wanna know the close rate off ofthat call or, like, the close
percentage off of that, meaningwe got x amount of you know, we
we had 10 calls. We sold threepeople. It's a 30% close rate.
(12:12):
And then finally, at least forme, I wanna know LTV, lifetime
value.
For us, on average, a clientstays with us for seventeen
months. So I know that if itcosts me, I'll just use round
numbers, a thousand dollars amonth we were to to, you know,
sell a service for, and andsomeone pay stays for seventeen
months, that's $17,000. Mostbusinesses do not know that,
(12:37):
which if you did, it allows youto treat your marketing really,
really differently. How muchwould you spend to get $17,000
in the door? Now if you knowyour operating costs and
whatever else and call it youknow, maybe it's a $5,000 to
serve that client, I'd spendanother $5,000.
I'd spend $10,000 sometimes toget the right go get in front of
(12:58):
the right people to get thosepeople in the door because I
know my numbers way better thanmost other people. Now, profit
margins are gonna be different,like, amount of time to serve as
a client. Like, there's athousand other variables there
that are gonna be different onevery business. But knowing
that, huge, huge catalyst tocreate more leverage in a
business. So that's attract,nurture, convert.
(13:20):
Oh, optimize. I skipped h ofanchor. H is humanize because I
can't spell today, I guess.
Adam Larson (13:26):
I was gonna call you on that. Was like, what
about the h? Because you justjumped to the o.
Draye Redfern (13:29):
Yeah. The humanize side of things.
Everything is right now AI, AI,AI, AI, which is cool, and I
love it. And we use Replxity,Claude, Gemini. We use them all.
We use and, like, a ton of othersecondary ones. But the reality
is, you know, if you send emailsout that are simply just like,
(13:51):
hello, contact first name, youknow, ampersand ampersand, and
that's what you're using toquote unquote personalize your
marketing via your emailautoresponder, it ain't cutting
it. Like, with the humanizedside of things, we're no longer
in a b to b world or a b to cworld. We are in an h to h
world, human to human. So youare we we have a connection
(14:12):
right now.
We've talked before thispodcast. We're talking now.
There's an actual connection.We're looking at each other,
albeit on a screen. There is aconnection that exists.
There's a humanized element toit. For most other people,
there's some level of that inbusiness, whether you're talking
from, you know, CEO to CEO tonegotiate a deal or business
owner to financial servicesprovider to do x, y, and z,
(14:35):
whether it's CPA work orbookkeeping or some sort of
financial services. Whatever thething is, there's conversations
that go in. You need to havesome level of rapport. And so if
you're marketing, manufacturingthat rapport really, really goes
a long way.
So you can do things, massproduce handwritten notes with
(14:57):
a, you know, robotic handwritingprinter that's not like a you
like an inkjet that's just like,you know, whatever else. It's a
robotic hand where you caninsert your Uni ball or your
Mont Blanc or your whatever itis you're gonna write with, and
it literally sets, draws, lifts,sets, draws, lifts where the ink
bleeds actually exist. So Icould send Adam a handwritten
(15:19):
note that says, hey, Adam.Thanks so much for having me on
the podcast today. Reallyenjoyed talking about x, y, and
z.
You know? All the best. Whateverelse. And never lift a finger.
This technology has been aroundfor about a decade.
Like, we bought one of thesemachines about ten years ago in
the former company that we sold.And we every time someone would
become a client, they would geta handwritten note from us, but
(15:42):
we would never sit there andwrite it. But the the the the
message is back and the rapportthat was created was huge
because, wow, like, no onewrites these things anymore, and
it creates a human to humanelement. That's an example. I'm
giving, like, high levelstrategy and tactics at the same
time.
So, hopefully Yeah. Everybody'stracking. Something else you can
(16:03):
do is not new. It's from a book,basically a 100 years old, how
to win friends and influencepeople by Dale Carnegie, one of
the top selling books of alltime. The sweetest sound to
someone's ears is the sound oftheir own name.
So I try to use it all thefreaking time. And so as an
example, if we were sending,like, an email sequence out, I
(16:26):
could send out 10,000 videos,maybe not today because it's
towards the end of the day. Icould send 10,000 videos out
tomorrow, however long theprocess is. Maybe take a day or
two to generate all of them.They would say, hey, Adam.
Draye Redford here. Hey, Bill,Draye Redfern here. Hey, Susan,
Draye Redfern here. Hey,Veronica, Draye Redfern here,
along with the rest of my video,and use AI and voice over
(16:50):
matching to basically swap Adamfor Veronica, Veronica to Susan,
Susan, and it will move my lips.It'll sync up my audio, do all
of these sorts of things.
So I could send hyperpersonalized videos, humanized
videos to prospects or clientswishing them happy birthday.
Wishing them, like, hey. Ienjoyed our conversation on our
(17:11):
sales call. Looking forward tofollowing up again. These sorts
of things that allow people tofeel like, dang.
They really go the extra mile.And I feel like that's the world
that we're in. Like, yes, AI isgreat. It is still a tool. You
gotta use these things to youradvantage and do it in a way
that is not sleazy or unethical.
(17:31):
So that's attract, nurture,convert, humanize, which we had
to backtrack on, optimize, andthen finally, r is retention and
recurring revenue. For a lot ofbusinesses, especially, like, in
in in your market, recurringrevenue is gonna be built in in
some form or fashion. That's thenature of the business, which is
(17:52):
great. That's amazing. But whatis retention?
And so if recurring revenue isbuilt into it, what is the
retention level? For some, it'llbe 60%. For some, it'll be 95 or
98%. It depends on sort of thestructure of their offer, how
they're doing things, etcetera.So if businesses don't have
either of those, make a freakingoffer that has some level of
(18:15):
recurring revenue becausethere's gardeners and there's
hunters.
I'm a Texas boy. I like to playin both ends of that field.
Like, the hunting side ofthings, let's go, you know,
let's go land a whale of aclient and have a, you know,
like, the hunt, the excitementof it. But now we've done that.
Now we've gotta go do the wholedang thing again.
(18:35):
Whereas a gardener mentality,like, you do the work today, you
could plant the stuff today, andyou could keep reaping the
rewards of what you've planted,not today, but in three, six
months from now, and it can keepreaping all of those rewards.
That is like retention andrecurring revenue. Go attracts.
Go do all that sort of stuff. Gohunt the big game or the whales
or the client, whatever youwanna use.
(18:56):
But all like, the retentionrecurring revenue part is an
underpinning of a business thatbrings so much additional
certainty and clarity to how,like, you have to make decisions
on a day to day basis where youknow what? Like, if you're
having to go hunt every singleclient and it's a one off,
that's a bad place to be. So ifyou have the the recurring
revenue, then optimize theretention. And, it's gonna be
(19:20):
different depending on everyniche and sub niche, but you can
use actually a lot of thehumanized tactics to then
improve your retention and yourrecurring revenue side of
things. So that could be on yourbirthday because I know your
birthday because you're aclient, that I call you on your
birthday to say, hey, justwanted to wish you a happy
(19:40):
birthday.
It's Draye Redfern withfractionalcmo.com. Just wanted
to, like, let you know I'mthinking about you today. Love
that you're a client. Reallyappreciate you, and hope you
have an amazing day. All thebest.
Take care. If you never needanything, just let us know. Bye
bye. Now what I did not do thereis use your name, but I could
drop a voicemail onto yourphone, bifurcate the ringer so
(20:04):
that your phone never evenrings. You look down.
There's a missed call from me atour company line, whatever else,
wishing you a happy birthday.Entirely automated. So it's
things like that that you can dothat can man, my insurance
agent, my financial adviser, myfreaking plumber calls me every
single year on my birthday towish me a happy birthday. Who do
(20:27):
you think I'm gonna call thenext time I need plumbing work?
Or you know what?
John Smith, my friend at ourbarbecue, is complaining about
his financial adviser insuranceagent or CPA or whoever else.
Dude, you gotta go see my guy.He calls me all the time. They
don't drop a beat. Like, hewishes me happy birthday every
like, it allows so many morenatural word-of-mouth, like,
(20:49):
referrals to come about of thatfrom existing clientele by
simply dropping a few of thosenuggets into an existing
process.
So that is the anchor framework.I think of a lot of businesses
like, I could talk for ten hourson this stuff, but I think a lot
of businesses implement like,most businesses typically are
lacking very poorly in at leasttwo of those elements. But if
(21:10):
you have a really solid anchorframework sort of implemented,
the amount of confidence thatyou have in running a business
is like tenfold because you knowwhere the leads are. You know
how they're coming from. You'rediversified on your lead gen.
You know how to nurture thembecause not everybody buys
today. You're optimizing theconversions and really tracking
that. You create human to humaninteractions because I don't
(21:32):
wanna leave a friend if I'mdoing business with a friend.
Whereas if you're a number, Ican leave you much easier. I
know the numbers that I need tooptimize for, so I have my
leading indicators and mylagging indicators, and my
offers dialed in with myretention and current recurring
revenue, and those arecontinually going up into the
right.
If you have that, holy smokes,like the business that you're
(21:53):
then running is a dramaticallydifferent beast, and that
becomes way, way more fun.
Adam Larson (22:00):
Yeah, it does. And as you were talking about that,
I couldn't help but think aboutpeople who are part of internal
teams who might not be dealingwith the marketing side, who
might not be dealing with theexternal customer. Can you apply
this framework as an internalteam to help break down silos,
to help to help the organizationbecome a better culture and and
all around?
Draye Redfern (22:17):
A thousand percent. In fact, most of the
people who end up, like, readingmy stuff or, like, finding out
about me is via stuff like this,and then they, hey. I got this
idea. Let me go implement it.And, like, it starts with one.
Like, one person can, like, makea profound impact in a company.
So let's just say it's somebodyin a department. Well, that
(22:38):
somebody in a department couldrealize after this, like, you
know what? Let's just say like,give me an example of
department. Let's just let'spick something on the fly.
Adam Larson (22:47):
We'll say the the finance and accounting
department because that's whatthat's who the listeners of this
podcast are.
Draye Redfern (22:51):
Yep. So the finance and accounting
department of a company. Well,typically overlooked. They're
typically kind of the drypeople. They're like, oh,
there's just the pencil pushersover there in accounting.
That is the stigma that is outthere whether you like it or
not. So easy to combat that. Soif someone is in the finance or
(23:11):
accounting department, you coulddo something on the human to
human side of things. So let'sjust say that let's just use,
like, like, like, an accountsreceivable person. Someone like
bills are getting paid.
Let's reach out. Well, insteadof just, like, you know, sending
an email, you could drop a voicemail onto their phone, bifurcate
(23:33):
the ringer, and be like, hey.This is Draye from accounts
receivable at x y z financial. Ijust wanted to reach out because
we're delayed on x, y, or z, andI just wanted this to be the
first touch. I'll try you againlater, but I wanted you actually
hear from me instead of justgetting a phone number, like, or
a an email or whatever else.
Done. I could record that onceand send that out to every
(23:56):
single person that was everdelayed on their payment without
ever having to open my mouthagain. That is a variation of
that. Finance and accounting.God, there's so many ways that
you could slice and dice this.
I would say, like, the let'sjust let's play like, give me a
sec. We'll we'll we'll play thisout. So what is let's go a
subset of finance andaccounting. What is a role of
(24:17):
someone in finance andaccounting, and what are they
doing on a day to day basis?
Adam Larson (24:21):
Okay. We could go a number of different ways. So
let's say somebody from the FPand A team, and they're part of
the strategic plan. They'rehelping build the strategic plan
for the organization.
Draye Redfern (24:31):
Okay. Great. If they're starting to build the
strategic plan for theorganization, that one's way too
easy, but we'll do it anyway.What what are the numbers that
need to be optimized for? So notjust are we profitable, profit
margins, like, you know, our Aand R and, like, all the other
sort of stuff, managing the pand l's, etcetera.
A lot of like, we work with alot of fractional CFOs across a
(24:53):
lot of businesses that we Okay.We we work with. The ones who
really crush it, whether they'rein a big fractional CFO company
or they're a CFO in anothercompany, are the ones that then
know the numbers of otheraspects of the business. Because
most businesses typically saleshates marketing, marketing hates
sales. Because marketing I giveyou the good leads and you can't
(25:18):
sell them.
You're like crappy salespeople.And the salespeople hate
marketing people because yougive me all the leads and
they're all garbage. I can'tsell any of these. So if there
was someone out there that knewthese numbers and was putting
together all the structure ofthings, then they could know,
hey. Looking at our p and l,looking at, you know, where
we're profitable here, etcetera,we did this thing and this thing
(25:39):
in marketing that resulted inthose things in sales and
ultimately this amount on thebottom line.
But the problem is most of themare all too siloed to say, hey.
Our p and l is great thisquarter. Keep doing what you're
doing. Or we suck. Ah, the houseis on fire.
Market more. But if youintegrate more of those things
and you actually have dashboardsthat can optimize your
marketing, top of funnel, yoursales middle funnel, and
(26:02):
obviously the bottom of funnelafter the fact, the p and l's,
etcetera, of organizationalplanning and things, now all of
a sudden, you're playing with afull deck. But most financial
professionals, they put theblinders on, they stay in their
lane, and that's all they chooseto do. So simply, if you just
did the O side of things andoptimize and look at more of the
numbers from across the businesswhere you may think like, oh,
(26:24):
cost per lead is totallyirrelevant to me. You may be I
think you may be pleasantlysurprised.
Adam Larson (26:31):
Well, that's I think that's what I was kinda
pushing on because the CFOshould be doing those things,
and their team should be doingthose things. And so maybe we
can talk about some ways thatyou've seen see it the CFO work
with the marketing, work withwork with the sales folks, and
bring everybody together becausethe CFO is kind of the glue
because they hold the numbers.They hold the strategic plan.
They're that business partnerthat you need in these
(26:52):
situations.
Draye Redfern (26:53):
The problem we see though is most of those
people are not actuallyintegrating as many things as as
they should be, is how we'llprobably say it.
Adam Larson (27:00):
So one thing you and I spoke about when we first
chatted, you had mentioned, youknow, Jay Abrams' concept of
playing in other people'ssandboxes. And I wanted to push
on that, you know, becauseobviously, you know, you you do
a lot of things in themarketing, helping people in
marketing, but other people fromother sandboxes tend to listen
to you. And so I wanna encourageour listeners, you know, how can
they start playing in otherpeople's sandboxes to learn
(27:21):
those things, to bring them intothe finance and accounting team
to make things better?
Draye Redfern (27:26):
So, yeah, Jay Abraham is he is the marketing
godfather is how I'll probablysay it. So for those of, you
know, the listeners who don'tknow who Jay Abraham is, Jay is
a marketing legend. He is thehighest paid marketing
consultant on planet Earth. WhenI last checked, which was, I
don't know, six or eight monthsago, if you wanna work with Jay,
(27:49):
it's a $180,000 a day.
Adam Larson (27:52):
My goodness.
Draye Redfern (27:53):
A day.
Adam Larson (27:54):
A day.
Draye Redfern (27:54):
So it's not cheap, but he has an incredible
way of looking at things thatmost people will never like,
cannot replicate. And I wasfortunate enough to spend about
a half a day every month forabout a year with Jay a few
years ago, and he completelyshifted my paradigm in so many
different ways. And one of themis what you just you just
(28:17):
mentioned, and that is playingin other people's sandboxes. And
so the problem is if you only goto industry events, you only
regurgitate the same industrystuff. Okay.
That's cool. Like, we're makingincremental steps upwards. Like,
oh, we'll do this next littlething tactic, and, oh, that's
not working anymore, but I'll goto another event. We'll try this
(28:39):
other little tactic, and, like,we are we're stacking tactics.
Whatever.
Every business is different. ButJay's philosophy on many of
these things is, okay. You'resome sort of financial
professional. What if you wentto a, a marketing conference
with only marketers, people whorun marketing agencies? Or if
you're a financial professionaland you went to, some sort of,
(29:03):
let's just some other like, aplumbing conference, whatever,
you're gonna be here.
I don't know why I keep talkingabout plumbers today, but you're
gonna hear you're gonna heardifferent things that are
working in different industries.Now much of that jargon will be
completely irrelevant to you,and that's okay. You don't care
about Teflon, PVC, PEX,plumbing, whatever else because
(29:26):
you are in the financial space.But how they're thinking about
problems or what they're doingin their market to market
differently than everyone else'sin your market allows you to
take a nugget from over here andtake that back to your sandbox
and do something that no oneelse in your industry is
actually doing. So an example ofthis, like we've got I've got
(29:48):
dozens and dozens.
I've had 8,700 law firms asclients until we sold a business
previously. Lawyers are veryunique individuals. Some of the
most successful lawyers that areout there don't go to ABA
conferences, American BarAssociation conferences. They go
to real estate conferences, orthey go to CPA conferences, or
(30:11):
they're going to, like, youknow, other things like that of
industry professionals that arenot in their industry because
well, for a few reasons. Numberone, the whole Jay Abraham sort
of idea or theory where I couldtake a nugget from a real estate
agent conference and back to mylegal practice.
Great. What it also allows themto do is like, hey. I'm a real
(30:33):
estate attorney where I do someamount of real estate in my
practice. Going to law events,maybe I can, you know, increase
my knowledge of the legal field.I'm gonna go to the, like, the
people who are gonna be the bestpossible referrers of me, and
I'm gonna go to those events.
Now most other people in thespace do not do that. And so
it's simply like taking anexisting paradigm of how
(30:54):
everyone else thinks and justmaking a slight tweak on it, and
it could be, like, dramaticallyprofound. So I've gone to ABA
meetings. In fact, I went toevery ABA meeting for nearly
and, like, real estate events. Igo to CPA conferences.
Those are a bit more dry. I'llbe honest. Like, you name a
(31:15):
professional service segment,I've been to many, many, many of
those events, which has allowedme to take a lot of those
nuggets and aggregate them oramalgamate them into something
that is hyper unique that no oneelse is talking about. And so I
love the Jay Abraham sort ofphilosophy there. And the other
side of things, one of Jay'sgreat thoughts, is the Amazon
(31:35):
School of Marketing, where ifyou offer a service of any kind,
find the books of people likeyou that are written on Amazon
and go read the reviews or,like, the testimonials that are
done on Amazon.
You're gonna learn what peoplelike about that book. You're
gonna learn what issues, likequestions that people have that
(31:56):
were not addressed in the book.You're gonna see the questions
that were addressed in the book.So for marketing purposes for
your own stuff, you just hadyour copy, your website copy,
your marketing copy, yourcollateral generated for you by
simply doing and finding whatother people are doing in the
space and reading the reviewsother people are using off of
similar books, etcetera. Sothose are two of, like, 5,000
(32:19):
Jay Abraham things.
But it's just like like I said,you know, small hinges swing big
doors, and there's so many smallhinges that you could do in any
business, whether you're like anentrepreneur, operating like an,
you know, entrepreneur but inthe confines of a existing
business, or you're theentrepreneur, or you're working
in sort of like a a stacked sortof silo of people in your in
your team. Any one of thesethings you could use to, like,
(32:43):
operate more effectively in yourjob, bring more ideas to the
table so that, man, all of asudden, where did Adam get all
these great ideas from that wecould use for x, y, and z
project that's coming up? Like,well, he's just listening to the
podcast. Like, count me in.Like, let's rock and roll.
Adam Larson (32:59):
Yeah. Yeah. I love that. And I encourage everybody
to check out Draye's books. Youknow, he's got a new book coming
out.
He's got a book that, you know,so we'll have links to that.
Connect with him on LinkedIn.You know, get learn more here
because, we're kinda coming toan end here of our conversation
here, Draye. But I reallyappreciate you sharing your
insights and just going throughthose things, and I hope that
(33:19):
everybody got some nuggets foryou, and then they they kinda
dig to to learn more as they goalong.
Draye Redfern (33:24):
Yeah. It's my pleasure. I enjoyed it. Like, I
could talk about this stuff allday. If the anchor concept
resonated, we have a new bookcoming out.
It is called Anchor Marketing.You go to anchorbook.com.
Download it. We're gonna have afree version of the book and,
like, a $3 version of the booklargely just to get it in as
many hands as possible just totry and help as many business as
(33:45):
possible. So it's not a revenuegenerator for us, but purely a
way to sort of give back andspread the word of, like, really
helping businesses dial thesethings in.
So we include more of the linksto the recession survival guide
and other stuff later, but Ithink that's, if that resonated
with people today, that's aneasiest, next next place to
start.
Announcer (34:04):
This has been Count Me In, IMA's podcast, providing
you with the latest perspectivesof thought leaders from the
accounting and financeprofession. If you like what you
heard and you'd like to becounted in for more relevant
accounting and financeeducation, visit IMA's website
at www.imanet.org.
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