July 21, 2025 • 21 mins
The Million-Dollar Growth Hiding in Your Business
Not every breakthrough requires more marketing. Sometimes, your next big revenue leap is already in your building—or your truck.
In this episode, Brandon and Caleb break down a real client case study where a small profit center became a million-dollar growth engine… with zero added ad spend. How? By asking the right questions and using curiosity as a strategy.
Inside this episode:
- A real-world growth strategy uncovered in 30 minutes
- Why the yesterday customer is your secret goldmine
- How small pricing and service shifts lead to massive gains
If you’re looking for low-risk, high-impact ways to grow—this one’s for you.
Maven Marketing Mastermind → https://www.mavenmethodtraining.com
Get a copy of our Best-Selling Book, The Maven Marketer, here:
https://a.co/d/1clpm8a
Our Website: https://frankandmaven.com/
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LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/frank-and-maven/
Host: Brandon Welch
Co-Host: Caleb Agee
Executive Producer: Carter Breaux
Audio/Video Producer: Nate the Camera Guy
Do you have a marketing problem you'd like us to help solve? Send it to MavenMonday@FrankandMaven.com!
Get a copy of our Best-Selling Book, The Maven Marketer Here:
https://a.co/d/1clpm8a
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Welcome to the Maven Marketing Podcast.
Today is Maven Monday.
I'm your host, brandon Welch,and I'm joined by Caleb.
You're not a taco, ag.
Hey, you're not a taco.
You're not a taco.
But you know what?
I've never met a person whodidn't like you.
There's a lot of people whodon't like me.
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
I'm sure there's somebody out there, but that's a
sign I have in my office.
Actually, my wife bought it andshe didn't.
When she had an office, that'swhat she had in her office and
then I was like this deserves tobe in an office, staring at
people.
So it says you're not a taco,not everyone's going to like you
.
Yes.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Well, what are we going to talk about today?
Speaker 2 (00:45):
That's not your problem.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
I like it.
Well, let's chip in here andget it going, because this one's
called hey, by the way.
By the way, this is the placewhere we answer your real life
marketing questions so you caneliminate waste in advertising,
grow your business and achievethe big dream.
Just in case you didn't knowwhere you were, this is the
Maven Marketing Podcast and wehave the Maven Marketing
Mastermind, which is like thepodcast plus.
Yes, If you've got a businessyou are trying to grow, or if
(01:10):
you have a person working foryou that is trying to grow your
business.
Or if you have hired thismarketing thing outsourced for
years and you're not quite surewhat's working for you and you
want to get just a little bitbetter at it want to get just a
little bit better at it.
Or if you're just bored on aWednesday afternoon and you want
to hang around, caleb and I andtalk about other companies or
yours, and grow the MavenMarketing Mastermind is for you,
(01:31):
for a fraction of a fraction ofwhat you would pay to work with
us directly and the team thatis growing companies all over
the United States using theMaven Marketing principles real
life case studies Like we'vespent hundreds and hundreds of
millions of dollars onadvertising and would you like
to learn from that?
Would you like to learn how tonot make mistakes?
Would you like to learn how todo what is working for you even
(01:53):
better?
We just get bonkers excitedabout that and the mastermind is
going so well.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
It is.
We're rounding.
We're past month two now.
Yeah, and that's pretty wild toeven say out loud, but we would
love to have you in themastermind.
Everybody's literally gettingtheir actual answer, the
questions answered.
We're reviewing copy.
We're reviewing ad plans,reviewing-.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Entire strategy approaches for whole businesses.
Yeah, like, how do I grow thiswing of my business?
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Marketing strategy.
We're seeing new ideas come forproduct lines and how to
package your products and yourservices.
It's really, really cool thathappens.
There will be two calls a month.
There's a community of peoplewho are going to help you grow
beyond just the calls that youhave with us, and we're building
a bucket of resources that comeup during those calls that
(02:46):
you'll also have exclusiveaccess to.
Yeah, some exclusive trainingsfor Caleb and I.
So go to mavenmethodtrainingcom.
You can sign up there.
You can read a little bit moreabout it.
If you have any questions aboutit, you can email
themavenmonday atfrankenmavencom.
We'd love to help answer yourquestions if you have any
questions.
Yeah, love it,MavenMethodTrainingcom.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
But until then we're going to talk about the
million-dollar growth that isright under your nose, and I
have a story.
A few weeks ago we had a clientthat we love dearly.
They're in a lot of differentthings.
They're actually anchored to anonprofit, which is even cooler,
but they have a wing of theirbusiness that they do appliance
(03:26):
removal.
They have some trucks and theybasically they kind of have some
contracts where they'll comeout and either take your old
refrigerator or they'll takeyour mattresses, and we were
just kind of looking at what thenext year looks like for them
and this little profit center oftheir business.
I'm going to generalize somenumbers here just to keep them
anonymous, but it's around thesix-figure mark, so let's just
(03:47):
call it $100,000.
Okay.
And we're looking at whathopefully everybody is stopping
at least once a quarter to looklike is what needs to grow next.
A lot of business and a lot ofmarketing ends up being just
haphazard and like gettingcaught up in the motions, and
that can happen to you, ithappens to us, um.
(04:07):
But we insist when, when wehave clients on our roster, that
we're at least stoppingquarterly to look at what
strategy looks like.
And so topic of this was how dowe grow this um, or this
quarter strategy was how do wegrow this profit center?
Uh, that is kind of like theirappliance removal thing.
And so most marketing peoplelike when you're in a marketing
(04:31):
room talking about marketing,it's like how do we grow it?
Well, we probably do some moremarketing, but what you're going
to do first instead of that isyou're going to stop and say I'm
going to put strategy first andsay is there something I can do
that doesn't include marketingthat would grow my business?
And so just to illustrate whatcan happen when you do that, we
(04:55):
first looked at what would wehave to do to grow without
increasing the marketing budget,because 100 grand doesn't
really support a whole lot ofROI.
Now it is true you have to spendahead of your revenue goals,
you have to invest before youget it back.
But before we did that we'relike what can we do to just kind
of improve it as is?
Speaker 2 (05:13):
As is yep.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
And so most marketing firms would either say, well,
we've got to do a market studyon that or we have to gosh, I
don't know.
We have to test something andsee if it works.
And I was like we have amarketing research department,
her name is Riley, and so wefired up their three.
(05:38):
Well, we fired up threecompetitors, that kind of sort
of did what they did.
And I said, riley, call thesethree people up and ask them
what it costs to do this andthis, and let's just check our
prices.
It's fair, right, we could havedone that in other markets, we
could have done that with somefancy GPT stuff.
But dude, we have the numbersright there.
It took her 15 minutes.
We found out in 15 minutes thatthey were undercharging by 30%.
They could still be the lowestprice provider in the market,
just by- by raising their prices30%.
(06:03):
And so we're like boom.
So right there, $130,000.
Just found 30 grand, 30 grand.
Okay, that would pay for somefancy advertising for sure, and
virtually no expense added right.
So from there we said, okay, howcan we expand our current
offering?
(06:23):
We went to the yesterdaycustomer, which, by the way, we
talk a lot about the today andtomorrow customer on this
podcast, because, frankly,that's where a lot of people
waste money.
But where we start in our fourwalls is always with the
yesterday customer.
Yeah, and so we're asking whocould we sell?
How could we sell more to thepeople that already love us?
Yeah.
(06:43):
And we figured out they're kindof in the category of junk
removal and so it's kind of anidea that had been maybe thrown
around in the past.
But I'm like, no, let's reallylook at that, like how much are
we leaving on the table Becausewe've got the truck, we've got
the guys, we have the insurance?
Speaker 2 (06:58):
You're picking up right now only two things, yes,
two categories of things.
Yes, what if we could pick upmore.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
And frankly, because of the name they have for this
service, they're really onlygetting those calls to begin
with.
And so I happen to have aproject going on at my house
right now and I needed some junkremoved and I said, you know
what, I'm going to just do alittle bit of down and dirty
market research.
When this fellow comes out, I'mgoing to ask him hey, out of 10
(07:26):
calls, your last 10 calls, howmany of those were just for one
appliance or a mattress?
You know what his answer was.
About one and the other ninewere junk removal Okay Meaning
and, by the way, this is a bigprovider for junk removal
services, so pretty safe samplesize.
(07:47):
This guy has been doing it awhile.
He's been out of my house acouple times.
We could just extrapolate thatthere's probably 90% more
business on the table If he's inthe same pseudo category we're
in.
But he's doing other calls andhe's getting 9 out of 10 of
those are like actual junkremoval.
So take your $130,000, divideit by 0.1, and you get $1.3
(08:09):
million.
Obviously there's work to bedone here, obviously there's
processes.
But hey, before we lifted afinger on marketing, just asking
how could we get more from whatwe already have?
There is a true and realpotential for a million-dollar
growth in not that long a timefor this little private center.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Yeah, yeah, and I think that's if we're capturing
at this point.
We're capturing one out of ninepotential junk removal if we
want to widen the category junkremoval customers and to leave
the other nine on the table.
Or maybe they're ignoring usbecause we've put ourselves in
this corner.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
That just opens you up so much more with just a
minor tweak to your serviceoffering.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
Yes, so now, if we don't do another thing for them
the entire year?
And just because we got to thatconversation, I'm not trying to
make us look like heroes here,but I'm just saying how much
money are you spending on doingthings with complexity, with ad
spend?
And the only ingredient we hadin this room was curiosity about
30 minutes of it.
And then, like a couple dayslater, I was like just curious
(09:20):
and asked the dude right, yeah,so now we could have just as
easily called a to be maybe fairand not like grimy about it.
We could have called a junkremoval company in another
market and said we're just,we're just, we're a research
firm.
We're just curious whatpercentage of your business is
appliance only?
We'll we'll share our resultswith you.
We're going to call five ofthem.
We'll share them back with youand see if that's maybe
(09:41):
information we there's a lot ofways you could have gone about
getting that information, butthe best marketing decision was
made from curiosity.
Not clicks, not conversionrates, none of that stuff.
It was just plain old curiosity.
And so the question we have foryou today is what kind of
(10:02):
growth.
Could you?
find by just looking around forit.
You are a research firm.
You have an insane amount ofvaluable actionable intelligence
at your fingertips and McKinseyactually did a study on this.
70% of growth could for theaverage company.
(10:24):
70% of growth could come fromdoing more with your current
customer base, not new customeracquisition.
Isn't that crazy?
70%, 70% and it's like that ispennies on the dollar for
advertising.
So ironic that a podcast aboutadvertising and marketing is
(10:45):
talking about not spending moremoney on advertising and
marketing.
No, Is that weird yeah, well,that's.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
Um, this is a maybe a crass example, but somebody was
an older marketing guy that wetalked to.
He said his radio stationcalled him, station manager
called him one time said, hey,if I doubled rates, how many of
your clients would stay on?
He had several, several clientsadvertising on this thing and
(11:13):
he's like, oh, you know,probably lose about half of them
.
He's like, okay, so I'd be, I'dbe even on that, and he's, and
he, he's like, oh, that's.
But the reality was, yeah, if Idouble my rates and keep half,
I've done half the work and I'vegot twice the inventory now,
probably with half thesalespeople and all that yeah.
And so there are lessons.
(11:34):
Now, that's a pretty dramaticexample.
I'm not saying go double yourprices or anything like that.
The market may not support thator you may tick some people off
.
Obviously, that's the reality.
But there are ways.
If you look around, there areways to get a little bit more
juice for the squeeze.
There are ways to findefficiencies that you're
(11:55):
ignoring, and a lot of times Iwould say we were talking about
this, you know, actually, withour thumbnails, we were talking
about how hard it is forourselves.
This is in our last episode,but a lot of times it's hard to
look at yourself objectively andyou need some outside eyes,
somebody who's going to come inand say what about that?
(12:16):
But what about this, what aboutthat?
And you are, you are so used toseeing everything you see,
you're walking past that, thatbig pile of dust in the corner,
that you just don't even see itanymore.
You've, you've seen it everyday and your eyes can't process
it, and there are pieces of yourbusiness that you are ignoring
that.
If you will maybe let somebodyelse in, let them peek behind
(12:39):
the curtain, they'll be likewhat about that thing over there
?
You're like oh yeah, I forgot.
Obviously, I'm speakingabstract right now, so that it
applies to everybody.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
But let's talk about some specific things you could
do.
Maybe you're not just able toadd a service leg, but you could
look at offers that othercompetitors are doing in other
markets.
And if you've seen like use theFacebook ad library, Just type
in ads library on Google forFacebook and just type in the
names of some companies andother markets maybe big ones.
(13:09):
And if you've seen that adrunning on Facebook.
It probably means it's working.
And just hey, is that offermaybe a good thing you could try
?
You can use Google Trends andKeyword Insights to find what
people are searching around you.
Maybe you're a roofing companyand you're like we, do roofs,
but a lot of people aresearching for gutter clean out.
Maybe that would be your leadinto getting more roofs.
(13:32):
Like maybe in the wintertime,when there's not a whole lot of
roof replacement going on, youcould sell Gutter cleanups
gutter guards Just to pay yourpeople.
Yeah, Gutter guards possibly.
Yeah, Maybe you could look atjust a competitive analysis and
go, wow, am I a market leaderhere by looking at job listings
(13:56):
that are out in your market?
We actually do that.
We kind of want to see wheretalent's moving in our local
market.
We keep an eye on those sortsof things.
You could definitely use chatGPT Just say, hey, I'm this kind
of business.
I've been around this manyyears.
This is my average customervalue.
Compare me to the nationalaverage, Show me what insights I
might be missing and then giveme 10 ideas for improving the
(14:19):
key metrics in my business.
Gpt would spit out somethingthat would be like oh, I should
probably do that.
Maybe we could try that.
I don't like this one a ton.
I don't like misleading people,but if you were willing to pay
for a good service from abusiness that you're interested
in or that you could learnsomething from, maybe higher
(14:43):
competition or similarbusinesses, similar home
improvement companies Cullen,Rochefeller, 00,00 I will say a
lot of.
There was a really, reallygreat HVAC company here before.
We had a lot of homeimprovement business and I
learned a lot from just theircustomer experience that we
ended up consulting and takingto companies all across the US.
They were kind of reallyinnovators and how they were
communicating and I was likeI've learned some of that.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
Yeah, you guys need to go get some of these tools
and some of that.
Yeah, I think the biggestlesson here is for secret
shopping or for market research,for all these things.
You kind of imagine this fancybig city firm like a research
firm.
Or you imagine some secretshopping.
(15:23):
Like I have to pay a firm$10,000 to go drum up random
people to do this and I'm notbig enough because I'm a small
business, I'm a family-ownedbusiness.
I don't have enough money to godo all of this thing you do.
You just have to be creativeabout how you do it and you'll
find the answers to some ofthose questions.
(15:44):
Now, I would not get stucklooking to the right and to the
left, there's a reasonracehorses wear blinders and you
need to the left.
There's a reason racehorseswear blinders, yeah, and you
need to be aware.
That's the dark side of thiswhole mindset is you need to be
aware of your competition.
You need to be aware for thesake of making yourself better.
(16:05):
That's why we're aware, for thesake of growing our business,
like, oh, they're doing that.
I can learn from that, look atSteve Jobs.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
He didn't invent anything, he just said ah, these
devices are cumbersome Intel'sdoing that.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
Oh, let's grab some of this.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
Yeah, he just said this kind of sucks.
I want to make it morebeautiful.
That is a good springboard,right.
So what can you do to be thebest option available in your
market?
Why you should do that.
But also, just publiclyavailable data is better.
Yeah, it is.
We grabbed a stat here fromForrester 68% of small business
decisions can be improved withfreely available public data.
(16:41):
Manta is a great way to lookacross industries and figure out
who's doing what man any more.
Just plug it into GPT or Geminiand just ask them to find
insights for your industry andit's going to save you hours and
hours.
But, point being, you arealready a research firm.
There's information availableto you that, before you lift a
(17:04):
finger to do more in themarketing and budgeting
department, you could just findsome pretty dang good ideas that
would make an impact on the Pand L.
Uh, and then with that, it'salways going to have something
to do with your yesterdaycustomer.
That's always the moreprofitable one.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
That is the cheapest customer to get, because you
already have them.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
It's already a customer.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
Uh, as Caleb says, you are not a taco.
Not everybody's going to likeyou, but you do have a fan club
that's already placed an order.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
That's right Bunch of taco heads.
Caleb H.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
Yeah, exactly so.
So, yeah, guys, look around atyour market.
Just be doing this three orfour times a year with your team
, saying how do we be better?
Just spend an hour?
How could just look around ourcompany?
How could we make it better?
Just spend an hour.
Just look around our company.
How can we make it better?
Where's money that's easy tograb?
(17:56):
Actually, I'm going to rephrasethat Where's impact that's easy
to deliver on?
Just because you were alreadyin front of the customer and you
already have the talent and thepeople and the skills and maybe
a little bit of resources, butjust the willingness and the
drive to be a good force foryour company and the money will
follow from that.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
Yeah, and I'm going to take a quick sidetrack before
we wrap If you don't have adedicated set of time to work on
your business, you are missingout, even if you're just a
marketing director.
I say just a marketing directorIf you're an in-house marketer-
.
God bless you if you're amarketing director, yeah, but
especially if you're thebusiness owner owner or leader
(18:32):
you need to dedicate some hoursevery single week to spend on
the business, to make it better,to write processes, to look at
the things that need to bebetter and then go invest time
into those things.
They will not have an immediateresult most of the time, but
these are the kinds of thingsthat you will realize a massive
(18:53):
we're talking millions ofdollars in gains, but more than
that, you'll realize a better,more efficient, more polished,
more valuable business fromeverybody, from your team, from
the customers that get toreceive the service and the
products that you get to bringthem.
So make sure you set aside thattime.
These are the kinds of thingsyou'll find when you do that and
(19:16):
they equal big results.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
Love it.
Confucius reminded us that hewho asks a question is a fool
for a moment.
He who does not ask is a foolfor life.
Ask good questions, Stopquestion what you're doing and,
if you want a little help, jointhe Maven Marketing Mastermind.
See if we brought that back.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
Oh, bring it on, I like it.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
We will make sure that at least once every other
week, you are stopping for anhour and a half to focus on your
business and learn from otherpeople who are doing the same.
Last two weeks were shortepisodes If you couldn't figure
out.
We did a bunch of them in a daybecause I, by the time you're
listening to this, I amcelebrating my 15-year
anniversary with Valerie.
(20:01):
So I'm in a different part ofthe world right now.
That's right.
That's what you need to know.
But thank you so much forlistening.
Thank you so much for showingup to work on your business and
make your business better forthe world.
I love what Tim Miles saysabout his work as a consultant.
He's in our space.
He says our job is to help goodpeople find good companies.
He wrote a book called GoodCompany you should absolutely
(20:23):
get a copy of.
But that is what we're doinghere.
I've never found a better wayto say it myself.
So thank you, tim, for that.
But think about what you get todo.
You are an owner-operatedcompany.
You have so much impact on yourcommunity and the people that
live and work in your communityand just by deciding to be a
little bit better, you makelives easier.
You make employees and teammembers grow.
(20:45):
You make missions possible.
You fund ministries and you'refeeding the hungry and you're
keeping out national and you'reyou're keeping out national and
possibly international interestby being excellent.
You are doing so much more thanjust the work you do today and
it's our pleasure and our truejoy to help you grow that and do
more of that.
(21:05):
So podcast our book, uh, themastermind, all of that.
That's.
That's why we are here and wesay this every week, but we will
be back every Monday, everyMonday, to answer your real life
, marketing and growth andculture and strategy questions,
because marketers who cannotteach you why are just a fancy
lie.
(21:25):
Have a great week.
Welcome to the Maven Marketing Podcast.
Today is Maven Monday.
I'm your host, brandon Welch,and I'm joined by Caleb.
You're not a taco, ag.
Hey, you're not a taco.
You're not a taco.
But you know what?
I've never met a person whodidn't like you.
There's a lot of people whodon't like me.
Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
I'm sure there's somebody out there, but that's a
sign I have in my office.
Actually, my wife bought it andshe didn't.
When she had an office, that'swhat she had in her office and
then I was like this deserves tobe in an office, staring at
people.
So it says you're not a taco,not everyone's going to like you
.
Yes.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Well, what are we going to talk about today?
Speaker 2 (00:45):
That's not your problem.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
I like it.
Well, let's chip in here andget it going, because this one's
called hey, by the way.
By the way, this is the placewhere we answer your real life
marketing questions so you caneliminate waste in advertising,
grow your business and achievethe big dream.
Just in case you didn't knowwhere you were, this is the
Maven Marketing Podcast and wehave the Maven Marketing
Mastermind, which is like thepodcast plus.
Yes, If you've got a businessyou are trying to grow, or if
(01:10):
you have a person working foryou that is trying to grow your
business.
Or if you have hired thismarketing thing outsourced for
years and you're not quite surewhat's working for you and you
want to get just a little bitbetter at it want to get just a
little bit better at it.
Or if you're just bored on aWednesday afternoon and you want
to hang around, caleb and I andtalk about other companies or
yours, and grow the MavenMarketing Mastermind is for you,
(01:31):
for a fraction of a fraction ofwhat you would pay to work with
us directly and the team thatis growing companies all over
the United States using theMaven Marketing principles real
life case studies Like we'vespent hundreds and hundreds of
millions of dollars onadvertising and would you like
to learn from that?
Would you like to learn how tonot make mistakes?
Would you like to learn how todo what is working for you even
(01:53):
better?
We just get bonkers excitedabout that and the mastermind is
going so well.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
It is.
We're rounding.
We're past month two now.
Yeah, and that's pretty wild toeven say out loud, but we would
love to have you in themastermind.
Everybody's literally gettingtheir actual answer, the
questions answered.
We're reviewing copy.
We're reviewing ad plans,reviewing-.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Entire strategy approaches for whole businesses.
Yeah, like, how do I grow thiswing of my business?
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Marketing strategy.
We're seeing new ideas come forproduct lines and how to
package your products and yourservices.
It's really, really cool thathappens.
There will be two calls a month.
There's a community of peoplewho are going to help you grow
beyond just the calls that youhave with us, and we're building
a bucket of resources that comeup during those calls that
(02:46):
you'll also have exclusiveaccess to.
Yeah, some exclusive trainingsfor Caleb and I.
So go to mavenmethodtrainingcom.
You can sign up there.
You can read a little bit moreabout it.
If you have any questions aboutit, you can email
themavenmonday atfrankenmavencom.
We'd love to help answer yourquestions if you have any
questions.
Yeah, love it,MavenMethodTrainingcom.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
But until then we're going to talk about the
million-dollar growth that isright under your nose, and I
have a story.
A few weeks ago we had a clientthat we love dearly.
They're in a lot of differentthings.
They're actually anchored to anonprofit, which is even cooler,
but they have a wing of theirbusiness that they do appliance
(03:26):
removal.
They have some trucks and theybasically they kind of have some
contracts where they'll comeout and either take your old
refrigerator or they'll takeyour mattresses, and we were
just kind of looking at what thenext year looks like for them
and this little profit center oftheir business.
I'm going to generalize somenumbers here just to keep them
anonymous, but it's around thesix-figure mark, so let's just
(03:47):
call it $100,000.
Okay.
And we're looking at whathopefully everybody is stopping
at least once a quarter to looklike is what needs to grow next.
A lot of business and a lot ofmarketing ends up being just
haphazard and like gettingcaught up in the motions, and
that can happen to you, ithappens to us, um.
(04:07):
But we insist when, when wehave clients on our roster, that
we're at least stoppingquarterly to look at what
strategy looks like.
And so topic of this was how dowe grow this um, or this
quarter strategy was how do wegrow this profit center?
Uh, that is kind of like theirappliance removal thing.
And so most marketing peoplelike when you're in a marketing
(04:31):
room talking about marketing,it's like how do we grow it?
Well, we probably do some moremarketing, but what you're going
to do first instead of that isyou're going to stop and say I'm
going to put strategy first andsay is there something I can do
that doesn't include marketingthat would grow my business?
And so just to illustrate whatcan happen when you do that, we
(04:55):
first looked at what would wehave to do to grow without
increasing the marketing budget,because 100 grand doesn't
really support a whole lot ofROI.
Now it is true you have to spendahead of your revenue goals,
you have to invest before youget it back.
But before we did that we'relike what can we do to just kind
of improve it as is?
Speaker 2 (05:13):
As is yep.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
And so most marketing firms would either say, well,
we've got to do a market studyon that or we have to gosh, I
don't know.
We have to test something andsee if it works.
And I was like we have amarketing research department,
her name is Riley, and so wefired up their three.
(05:38):
Well, we fired up threecompetitors, that kind of sort
of did what they did.
And I said, riley, call thesethree people up and ask them
what it costs to do this andthis, and let's just check our
prices.
It's fair, right, we could havedone that in other markets, we
could have done that with somefancy GPT stuff.
But dude, we have the numbersright there.
It took her 15 minutes.
We found out in 15 minutes thatthey were undercharging by 30%.
They could still be the lowestprice provider in the market,
just by- by raising their prices30%.
(06:03):
And so we're like boom.
So right there, $130,000.
Just found 30 grand, 30 grand.
Okay, that would pay for somefancy advertising for sure, and
virtually no expense added right.
So from there we said, okay, howcan we expand our current
offering?
(06:23):
We went to the yesterdaycustomer, which, by the way, we
talk a lot about the today andtomorrow customer on this
podcast, because, frankly,that's where a lot of people
waste money.
But where we start in our fourwalls is always with the
yesterday customer.
Yeah, and so we're asking whocould we sell?
How could we sell more to thepeople that already love us?
Yeah.
(06:43):
And we figured out they're kindof in the category of junk
removal and so it's kind of anidea that had been maybe thrown
around in the past.
But I'm like, no, let's reallylook at that, like how much are
we leaving on the table Becausewe've got the truck, we've got
the guys, we have the insurance?
Speaker 2 (06:58):
You're picking up right now only two things, yes,
two categories of things.
Yes, what if we could pick upmore.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
And frankly, because of the name they have for this
service, they're really onlygetting those calls to begin
with.
And so I happen to have aproject going on at my house
right now and I needed some junkremoved and I said, you know
what, I'm going to just do alittle bit of down and dirty
market research.
When this fellow comes out, I'mgoing to ask him hey, out of 10
(07:26):
calls, your last 10 calls, howmany of those were just for one
appliance or a mattress?
You know what his answer was.
About one and the other ninewere junk removal Okay Meaning
and, by the way, this is a bigprovider for junk removal
services, so pretty safe samplesize.
(07:47):
This guy has been doing it awhile.
He's been out of my house acouple times.
We could just extrapolate thatthere's probably 90% more
business on the table If he's inthe same pseudo category we're
in.
But he's doing other calls andhe's getting 9 out of 10 of
those are like actual junkremoval.
So take your $130,000, divideit by 0.1, and you get $1.3
(08:09):
million.
Obviously there's work to bedone here, obviously there's
processes.
But hey, before we lifted afinger on marketing, just asking
how could we get more from whatwe already have?
There is a true and realpotential for a million-dollar
growth in not that long a timefor this little private center.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Yeah, yeah, and I think that's if we're capturing
at this point.
We're capturing one out of ninepotential junk removal if we
want to widen the category junkremoval customers and to leave
the other nine on the table.
Or maybe they're ignoring usbecause we've put ourselves in
this corner.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
That just opens you up so much more with just a
minor tweak to your serviceoffering.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
Yes, so now, if we don't do another thing for them
the entire year?
And just because we got to thatconversation, I'm not trying to
make us look like heroes here,but I'm just saying how much
money are you spending on doingthings with complexity, with ad
spend?
And the only ingredient we hadin this room was curiosity about
30 minutes of it.
And then, like a couple dayslater, I was like just curious
(09:20):
and asked the dude right, yeah,so now we could have just as
easily called a to be maybe fairand not like grimy about it.
We could have called a junkremoval company in another
market and said we're just,we're just, we're a research
firm.
We're just curious whatpercentage of your business is
appliance only?
We'll we'll share our resultswith you.
We're going to call five ofthem.
We'll share them back with youand see if that's maybe
(09:41):
information we there's a lot ofways you could have gone about
getting that information, butthe best marketing decision was
made from curiosity.
Not clicks, not conversionrates, none of that stuff.
It was just plain old curiosity.
And so the question we have foryou today is what kind of
(10:02):
growth.
Could you?
find by just looking around forit.
You are a research firm.
You have an insane amount ofvaluable actionable intelligence
at your fingertips and McKinseyactually did a study on this.
70% of growth could for theaverage company.
(10:24):
70% of growth could come fromdoing more with your current
customer base, not new customeracquisition.
Isn't that crazy?
70%, 70% and it's like that ispennies on the dollar for
advertising.
So ironic that a podcast aboutadvertising and marketing is
(10:45):
talking about not spending moremoney on advertising and
marketing.
No, Is that weird yeah, well,that's.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
Um, this is a maybe a crass example, but somebody was
an older marketing guy that wetalked to.
He said his radio stationcalled him, station manager
called him one time said, hey,if I doubled rates, how many of
your clients would stay on?
He had several, several clientsadvertising on this thing and
(11:13):
he's like, oh, you know,probably lose about half of them
.
He's like, okay, so I'd be, I'dbe even on that, and he's, and
he, he's like, oh, that's.
But the reality was, yeah, if Idouble my rates and keep half,
I've done half the work and I'vegot twice the inventory now,
probably with half thesalespeople and all that yeah.
And so there are lessons.
(11:34):
Now, that's a pretty dramaticexample.
I'm not saying go double yourprices or anything like that.
The market may not support thator you may tick some people off
.
Obviously, that's the reality.
But there are ways.
If you look around, there areways to get a little bit more
juice for the squeeze.
There are ways to findefficiencies that you're
(11:55):
ignoring, and a lot of times Iwould say we were talking about
this, you know, actually, withour thumbnails, we were talking
about how hard it is forourselves.
This is in our last episode,but a lot of times it's hard to
look at yourself objectively andyou need some outside eyes,
somebody who's going to come inand say what about that?
(12:16):
But what about this, what aboutthat?
And you are, you are so used toseeing everything you see,
you're walking past that, thatbig pile of dust in the corner,
that you just don't even see itanymore.
You've, you've seen it everyday and your eyes can't process
it, and there are pieces of yourbusiness that you are ignoring
that.
If you will maybe let somebodyelse in, let them peek behind
(12:39):
the curtain, they'll be likewhat about that thing over there
?
You're like oh yeah, I forgot.
Obviously, I'm speakingabstract right now, so that it
applies to everybody.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
But let's talk about some specific things you could
do.
Maybe you're not just able toadd a service leg, but you could
look at offers that othercompetitors are doing in other
markets.
And if you've seen like use theFacebook ad library, Just type
in ads library on Google forFacebook and just type in the
names of some companies andother markets maybe big ones.
(13:09):
And if you've seen that adrunning on Facebook.
It probably means it's working.
And just hey, is that offermaybe a good thing you could try
?
You can use Google Trends andKeyword Insights to find what
people are searching around you.
Maybe you're a roofing companyand you're like we, do roofs,
but a lot of people aresearching for gutter clean out.
Maybe that would be your leadinto getting more roofs.
(13:32):
Like maybe in the wintertime,when there's not a whole lot of
roof replacement going on, youcould sell Gutter cleanups
gutter guards Just to pay yourpeople.
Yeah, Gutter guards possibly.
Yeah, Maybe you could look atjust a competitive analysis and
go, wow, am I a market leaderhere by looking at job listings
(13:56):
that are out in your market?
We actually do that.
We kind of want to see wheretalent's moving in our local
market.
We keep an eye on those sortsof things.
You could definitely use chatGPT Just say, hey, I'm this kind
of business.
I've been around this manyyears.
This is my average customervalue.
Compare me to the nationalaverage, Show me what insights I
might be missing and then giveme 10 ideas for improving the
(14:19):
key metrics in my business.
Gpt would spit out somethingthat would be like oh, I should
probably do that.
Maybe we could try that.
I don't like this one a ton.
I don't like misleading people,but if you were willing to pay
for a good service from abusiness that you're interested
in or that you could learnsomething from, maybe higher
(14:43):
competition or similarbusinesses, similar home
improvement companies Cullen,Rochefeller, 00,00 I will say a
lot of.
There was a really, reallygreat HVAC company here before.
We had a lot of homeimprovement business and I
learned a lot from just theircustomer experience that we
ended up consulting and takingto companies all across the US.
They were kind of reallyinnovators and how they were
communicating and I was likeI've learned some of that.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
Yeah, you guys need to go get some of these tools
and some of that.
Yeah, I think the biggestlesson here is for secret
shopping or for market research,for all these things.
You kind of imagine this fancybig city firm like a research
firm.
Or you imagine some secretshopping.
(15:23):
Like I have to pay a firm$10,000 to go drum up random
people to do this and I'm notbig enough because I'm a small
business, I'm a family-ownedbusiness.
I don't have enough money to godo all of this thing you do.
You just have to be creativeabout how you do it and you'll
find the answers to some ofthose questions.
(15:44):
Now, I would not get stucklooking to the right and to the
left, there's a reasonracehorses wear blinders and you
need to the left.
There's a reason racehorseswear blinders, yeah, and you
need to be aware.
That's the dark side of thiswhole mindset is you need to be
aware of your competition.
You need to be aware for thesake of making yourself better.
(16:05):
That's why we're aware, for thesake of growing our business,
like, oh, they're doing that.
I can learn from that, look atSteve Jobs.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
He didn't invent anything, he just said ah, these
devices are cumbersome Intel'sdoing that.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
Oh, let's grab some of this.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
Yeah, he just said this kind of sucks.
I want to make it morebeautiful.
That is a good springboard,right.
So what can you do to be thebest option available in your
market?
Why you should do that.
But also, just publiclyavailable data is better.
Yeah, it is.
We grabbed a stat here fromForrester 68% of small business
decisions can be improved withfreely available public data.
(16:41):
Manta is a great way to lookacross industries and figure out
who's doing what man any more.
Just plug it into GPT or Geminiand just ask them to find
insights for your industry andit's going to save you hours and
hours.
But, point being, you arealready a research firm.
There's information availableto you that, before you lift a
(17:04):
finger to do more in themarketing and budgeting
department, you could just findsome pretty dang good ideas that
would make an impact on the Pand L.
Uh, and then with that, it'salways going to have something
to do with your yesterdaycustomer.
That's always the moreprofitable one.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
That is the cheapest customer to get, because you
already have them.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
It's already a customer.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
Uh, as Caleb says, you are not a taco.
Not everybody's going to likeyou, but you do have a fan club
that's already placed an order.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
That's right Bunch of taco heads.
Caleb H.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
Yeah, exactly so.
So, yeah, guys, look around atyour market.
Just be doing this three orfour times a year with your team
, saying how do we be better?
Just spend an hour?
How could just look around ourcompany?
How could we make it better?
Just spend an hour.
Just look around our company.
How can we make it better?
Where's money that's easy tograb?
(17:56):
Actually, I'm going to rephrasethat Where's impact that's easy
to deliver on?
Just because you were alreadyin front of the customer and you
already have the talent and thepeople and the skills and maybe
a little bit of resources, butjust the willingness and the
drive to be a good force foryour company and the money will
follow from that.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
Yeah, and I'm going to take a quick sidetrack before
we wrap If you don't have adedicated set of time to work on
your business, you are missingout, even if you're just a
marketing director.
I say just a marketing directorIf you're an in-house marketer-
.
God bless you if you're amarketing director, yeah, but
especially if you're thebusiness owner owner or leader
(18:32):
you need to dedicate some hoursevery single week to spend on
the business, to make it better,to write processes, to look at
the things that need to bebetter and then go invest time
into those things.
They will not have an immediateresult most of the time, but
these are the kinds of thingsthat you will realize a massive
(18:53):
we're talking millions ofdollars in gains, but more than
that, you'll realize a better,more efficient, more polished,
more valuable business fromeverybody, from your team, from
the customers that get toreceive the service and the
products that you get to bringthem.
So make sure you set aside thattime.
These are the kinds of thingsyou'll find when you do that and
(19:16):
they equal big results.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
Love it.
Confucius reminded us that hewho asks a question is a fool
for a moment.
He who does not ask is a foolfor life.
Ask good questions, Stopquestion what you're doing and,
if you want a little help, jointhe Maven Marketing Mastermind.
See if we brought that back.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
Oh, bring it on, I like it.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
We will make sure that at least once every other
week, you are stopping for anhour and a half to focus on your
business and learn from otherpeople who are doing the same.
Last two weeks were shortepisodes If you couldn't figure
out.
We did a bunch of them in a daybecause I, by the time you're
listening to this, I amcelebrating my 15-year
anniversary with Valerie.
(20:01):
So I'm in a different part ofthe world right now.
That's right.
That's what you need to know.
But thank you so much forlistening.
Thank you so much for showingup to work on your business and
make your business better forthe world.
I love what Tim Miles saysabout his work as a consultant.
He's in our space.
He says our job is to help goodpeople find good companies.
He wrote a book called GoodCompany you should absolutely
(20:23):
get a copy of.
But that is what we're doinghere.
I've never found a better wayto say it myself.
So thank you, tim, for that.
But think about what you get todo.
You are an owner-operatedcompany.
You have so much impact on yourcommunity and the people that
live and work in your communityand just by deciding to be a
little bit better, you makelives easier.
You make employees and teammembers grow.
(20:45):
You make missions possible.
You fund ministries and you'refeeding the hungry and you're
keeping out national and you'reyou're keeping out national and
possibly international interestby being excellent.
You are doing so much more thanjust the work you do today and
it's our pleasure and our truejoy to help you grow that and do
more of that.
(21:05):
So podcast our book, uh, themastermind, all of that.
That's.
That's why we are here and wesay this every week, but we will
be back every Monday, everyMonday, to answer your real life
, marketing and growth andculture and strategy questions,
because marketers who cannotteach you why are just a fancy
lie.
(21:25):
Have a great week.
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