Curt Mercadante - Does Your Brand Have Authority?

Time is precious and so are our pets, so time with our pets is extra precious. That's why we started Dutch. Dutch provides 24/7 access to licensed vets with unlimited virtual visits and follow-ups for up to 5 pets. You can message a vet at any time and schedule a video visit the same day. Our vets can even prescribe medication for many ailments, and shipping is always free. With Dutch, you'll get more time with your pets and year-round peace of mind when it comes to their vet care. Hi everyone, it's Bill Black, the exit coach from the Exit Coach Radio show. You know, one of the biggest questions I get on the show is what exactly goes into a business exit plan and when should I start creating mine? Well, I always tell people that the best time to start was 5 years ago, but the next best time is now because you never know when you might need it. So we put together a free report that describes what an exit plan is and what you should know. You can get it free by texting exit plan with no spaces to 442-22. That's exit plan to 44222. Again, text exit plan to 44222. Welcome to the Exit Coach Radio show, the show for baby boomer business owners who are looking for cutting edge information as they plan their 3 to 10 year business succession and exit. Every week we interview top professional advisors for their best tips, strategies, and precautions so you can be well planned. And now here's your host, the exit coach Bill Black. Well, hey everyone, thanks so much for joining us. It's always a pleasure to have you with me and I always enjoy interviewing people who are creative and at Merck Enterprises they're a team of writers, designers, podcast producers, ad buyers, media relations specialists, and basically they help people. They're on a mission, let me put it this way, they're on a mission to save humanity by empowering the freedom to think, create, and manifest a fulfilling, prosperous, and abundant future. So my guest is Kurt Mercadante, and he's the founder of Merck Enterprises, and he's a branding expert, speaker, and business strategy. And so I just welcome, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for joining me today, Bill. It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you so much and thanks for that, that humbling introduction. Well, you know, it's interesting what, what, what so many people are just here to exist, and, and there's some of us here like yourself who are here to help make a difference and help people make a difference. And so I love that and I love to have that conversation with people. Tell me a little bit about you, Kurt, and your background and how you came to start Merck Enterprises. Yeah, so I've been in, well, first and foremost I'm a husband, and I'm a father. Uh, we have 4 beautiful kids. We're actually in the process of selling our home this Monday as we record this, we're hitting the road. We're going to be nomads for an indefinite period of time, and, and that's been kind of part of our what I call our freedom journey over the past several years, uh, but I, I've been in public relations and advertising for about 25 years. And I've built 3 profitable businesses including a 7 figure PR and ad agency that 3 years ago I shut down at peak revenue because I was unfulfilled with it and I was just done and I really wanted to work with entrepreneurs, business owners, people who wanted to be entrepreneurs or solo entrepreneurs who are really the backbone of the economy and help them build their freedom businesses as well. Interesting. I like that term freedom businesses, and I think a lot of our listeners. are probably thinking, wow, how is he going to do that 25 years in business because that's something I sure want to do. I can't tell you how many business owners I talked to Kurt, who say I see an RV go by and somebody heading out of town, and I think that's what I want to do. I want freedom back in my life. I want a business that doesn't run me, that I really run, or maybe I just want to, you know, get out of it and go part time. So tell us about your freedom journey. I think that's that's interesting because what you said was you, this is, this is not a fluke. This is something you've been planning for a while. Tell us a little bit about your journey and maybe when you started thinking, I really want, I want some of my life back and so I'm going to do something different with my life. Yeah, thank you. I, you know, I, I had my agency and I made really good money right off the bat. About 4 years into it, I was overwhelmed and frustrated. So I ended up, uh, you know, a big part of what I do is I work with, uh, businesses to really focus on who's your ideal customer that you like working with, that you're passionate about working that aren't pains in the neck. They're the growth clients you can really scale around and I had. Built my business around a lot of clients that weren't in that mold. I actually fired half my clients, raised my prices, and doubled my revenue in the next year. So I scale it, but I also, it just, just something wasn't there. And the way the people I was working with, the clients I was working with, etc. it just wasn't fulfilling and it creeped back into, like you said, running me instead of me running the business. And I had probably, uh, for about 8 years, anxiety attacks. I was about 55 times heavier than I am now. I was on a bunch of prescription drugs and anxiety drugs, and stomach drugs and all these. And it just, I knew it was there, but I was in a comfort zone, right? And, and I call it a comfort zone of misery, where you're not happy, you're going through those physical things. You know there's something more, the money makes it pretty darn comfortable. And as a guy, right, I was doing what I was told I was supposed to do my whole life. Make money, take care of them and get the, the house in the suburbs in the car and this and that and the other thing. So what did I have to feel bad about? And sometimes that comfort zone is more dangerous. Then kind of, you know, Henry David Tro called it a quiet desperation. Sometimes it's more dangerous than loud desperation because when it gets loud, you do what I did, which is you fight back and they're like, I'm done with it. But when it's quiet, you can be there for decades. Yeah, and I think to sum it up, you were successful from the outside in, but you didn't feel successful, you didn't feel like you were successful from the inside out. Is that, is that sum it up kind of, I mean, yeah, you, especially with 4 kids now how old are your children now? Yeah, so our daughter is the oldest, she's 14, and then our sons are 12, 9, and 6. OK, so you're not, you're not an empty nester by any means, you know, you're, you're taking the bull by the horns and doing this when your kids are still, are still young. Um, and you, you also host something I need to point this out, the Freedom Mindset Radio podcast. So is this something our listeners should be listening to to understand more about this particular topic, because there is more I want to talk to you about, about what your business does as well and branding and that kind of thing. But is the Freedom Mindset Radio podcast where you talk about this type of stuff? That's exactly right. And I, I actually just recently also launched a podcast called the Authority Brand podcast that is specifically about branding and sales. Freedom Mindset Radio, we talk about health. I just had a, a, a breathing expert on to help you learn how to breathe to lower stress, uh, those types of things, and building that, that lifestyle where, uh, everything's in alignment, your relationships, your self-care, and your work. Mhm, yeah, and it's, you know, again. This is a topic that so many of my listeners want to know more about, about what is it going to be like when I get myself free from my business if I can imagine that. And so I think that's a very interesting topic. Now just to, just one more question about that. What are your, you say you're going to be a nomad. What it doesn't sound like you do anything unintentionally. What are you, what's your plan? Well, you know, when we woke up on New Year's Eve or New Year's Day 2020, like most people, this year has turned out a little bit differently than just about every human on the globe. And we've, we've been traveling more and more over the past several years, and it, it kind of when you travel, especially with kids, you, you grow and you get used to it and, and you want more. And you realize, wow, we can spend 6 months in Europe and be fine and, and survive and live and by the way, continue to grow my business. And, you know, I put together a process that allows me to do that. And so our plan was actually to do this maybe around January of next year and then travel, we were actually talking about 6 months in New Zealand with some friends, things like that. Well, COVID hit. That's out the window, uh, uh, you know, we didn't know travel and all that. So, but then in June, July, we're like, you know what, why not? Let's, let's just travel, but let's travel within the United States and when the borders open up, then we're ready to go. And we've homeschooled our kids since the very beginning. So my daughter's 13, so 14 years. So a lot of their stuff that we do now, we're very active homeschoolers at museums, we're out with groups, co op groups and everything, you know, a lot of those aren't happening. A lot of people say, oh, you're used to this. It's like we're actually used to be much more active. And so we're like, you know what, those things aren't happening. Let's hit the road. So we're, on Monday we're heading up to the mountains in North Georgia for 6 weeks after that. Who knows? Well, that, that, you know, like you said. A lot of people have been preparing for a situation like COVID, not knowing it was coming, of course, but you know, becoming more and more unplugged from having to go to a physical space, running their businesses more like from a dashboard approach. So let's talk a little bit about Um, the, the branding side of the business, uh, I, I want to get that in as well. We have about 10 minutes left. So you talk about something called an authority brand. What other types of brand are there and what's the difference? Yeah, so I, I like to differentiate between a authority brand, which, and a commodity brand, which, uh, you know, I posted about a couple of weeks ago and uh sports marketing legend Brandon Steiner, who I'm friends with, commented on my LinkedIn post and said, I like to ask people if you were going to be a hotel, what type of hotel do you want to be? You know, do you want to be the no tell motel on the side of the road that charges hourly or hourly rates, you know, or do you want to be a luxury hotel? And I really think that's such a wonderful way of breaking it down. Do you want to be treated like a vendor and get paid vendor prices, or do you want to be a trusted advisor that when a pandemic hits or the economy goes south, you're the last one to go because they need you there. Very good. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I think I can get that picture very easily, and I work with a lot of clients that have trouble with that. They might have 2 or 3 brands under one roof and they confuse the marketplace somewhat. What are the four pillars of building an authority brand? Yeah, yeah, it's, so the first one is attention, but that's where most people start, but unfortunately stop. That's all about eyeballs. It's all about getting attention. It's all about just blasting stuff out and I'm going to do a pay per click campaign. I'm going to buy ads and I can get cheap ads on Facebook and I'm going to do this and the attention we all get as humans, right now, the average is between like 4 and 10,000 ad impressions in our brains every day. Now that doesn't include Tweets, Facebook messages, calls, podcasts, notifications, all that, right? So there's a lot of competition for attention. So we talk about attention first because it's the most obvious. We actually work on it last with our clients. The second, we go, we start with the second pillar, which is accuracy, which means the right client, aggressively, radically, clearly identifying who that ideal client is, that's gonna treat you like a trusted advisor, that's going to pay you what you want. It's going to value you. They're not going to be paying the neck. They're not going to doubt everything you do, because if you build your clients around or your business around clients who aren't those ideal clients. You know, I grew up in the Midwest and we have an we had an Asian carp problem where they come up the Mississippi River and then the Illinois River and then they infect the Great Lakes, right? That's what happens if you have too many of those Asian carp clients and not ideal clients, right? It's easier to catch them because they jump right into your net, but you really got to focus on those smaller fish that are the, the, the more specific fish that are gonna help you scale your company. So accuracy is the second. The third is alignment, aligning what you do with more importantly, the impact your clients get. So many business owners want to kind of verbally vomit the how and their process and their how passionate they are and their bells and their whistles and how smart they are and they're now all that first, no. The clients, they don't really care about you. They may have empathy for a human being, but if they're gonna give you value, they want to know the impact that they're gonna have in return. So you gotta align alignment, align what you do with the impact you provide and the, the, the fourth pillar is authenticity. When you show up day after day consistently, truthfully, factually, maybe pair it with third party credibility, you build that consistency and based on all that. You then look at how you're going to get the right attention from the right clients with the right message. Then and only then do you look at the tools and the techniques, you know, right now a lot of people want to start with the shiny objects and what's my Facebook strategy? What's my Twitter strategy? Before you really get there, build that strong foundation with those pillars and then look the best way to reach the right clients with the right message. Well, excellent. You made it simple. The 4 A is attention, accuracy, alignment, and authenticity certainly makes a lot of sense. What's one of the first places you start with an entrepreneur or business owner who wants to build his or her authority brand? It sounds like a tremendous project. Yeah, you know, it's, it's, uh, and I work, you know, one on one and then so I have a boot camp. I actually just had a boot camp session before this, and we start with accuracy. We start with really identifying those ideal clients. Because the for new businesses, but even for I had someone in the recruitment and staffing industry called me last week, and he had had a company for 12 years, but he wanted to take it to the next level and he had worked with a number of folks in the skilled nursing facility industry, so not a small industry. And he said, should I really niche in there? Should I become the skilled nursing facility recruiter and staffer? And I said, absolutely. It's not like it's not a growing industry. Everyone's getting older, right? But he was scared. He was terrified to do it because it's easier to go with a huge net and just catch everything and catch those Asian carp. But I said, if you become the skilled nursing facility guy, the go to guy, and you are the authority, guess what? You're going to get more of the clients who are going to pay you what you work, they're gonna know who you are. You build your brand, and then you have the freedom. If a manufacturing company comes to you, you can say, I want to work with you or I don't want to work with you. But instead of feeling like you have to for cash flow, you actually have the freedom to make the choice. Um, so we get really, uh I have uh 5 pages of questions that I go through with my clients to help them identify their ideal client. I mean, we get into, are they churchgoing, you know, are they, uh, are they, uh, are they conservative, are they liberal? What, what podcast do they listen to? And I have one client who said, why would I need to know that? I said, well, I don't know. It turns out his ideal clients are women, late 50s, early 60s, who are divorced and Jewish. And that's just the way it was the data connected to that. So now you can reverse engineer and kind of figure out why he's an elite personal trainer, um, and there's certainly, you know, the region he works in, etc. but if you don't know, then you don't know and you can't really cast the net where those ideal clients are. Yeah, you bring back I knew someone in the financial services business, and he said he's very successful now. He says when I started, I was in the IRA business, and I said, Oh, you mean you wrote like individual retirement accounts? He goes, No, I meant all write anything, all right anything. So he says, I was, I would work with anybody who called anybody who came along, and he became very specialized over the years. It became very successful. And I imagine that's the same whether you're in a medical practice or in a business where you're trying to really create your brand within a specific niche, and I guess that's probably, I'm going to ask you this next question. It's probably one of the biggest things that's changed over the last 25 years. What, what else has changed over your last 25 years of experience? You know, the tools have changed, and what's really changed is the inclination to think in terms of the tools. But I would like to say that the quality of Ernest Hemingway's novels wasn't determined by his typewriter. And when you really look at it that way, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, we have these incredible means to deliver the message, but they can't determine the message, and you have to guide them, right? The tail can't wag the dog, but often we want the easy button because there's vendors out there pitching build a funnel. I do Facebook ads, you know, on LinkedIn. LinkedIn's a wonderful social network, but there's a lot of people on there selling video views, but they call themselves branding strategists or sales strategists like, no, you're a video vendor. And by the way, that's great for so many people and you do a great job, but it's garbage in garbage out. You know, if you put a garbage message in the machine. And aim it at the wrong clients, doesn't really matter. So one of the biggest tendencies, I remember a client from my agency was a very large trade association. I remember sitting down and she said, What's our Google Plus strategy? This is when Google Plus came, and it's not even a thing anymore, and I said, Well, Google Plus is not a strategy. You know, so, um, but shiny object syndrome has increased, and the business principles that existed and sales and branding principles that existed 25 years ago still exist now and will exist 25 years now, you know, the tools are different, but it goes back to relationships and communicating impact, and that will never change. The basic underlying principles that you, especially that you mentioned before, the attention, accuracy, alignment, and authenticity. Remain, but how you, how your tool sheds changed. You, it's as if you went out to your your gardening tool shed and found, well, there's about 50 new tools that I didn't know I had before. How do these work? What do I use these for? Uh, is that kind of sum it up? Absolutely, and some of them go away. Like, uh, I work with a lot of financial advisors who all of a sudden their whole thing was networking meetings. Well, went away in March, so now they don't know what to do. Like, well, apply the same principles of relationship building to LinkedIn. Or some other tool or the phone, believe it or not, I use the phone a lot. We go, you know, phone scripting, um, you know, use the tools you have, but they may not be the tools that are here 5 years, so you can't build everything around a single tool. Kurt, let's sum it up. What's, uh, one piece of advice you could give our listeners right now about building their Authority brand? Realize that every business started out as a thought, and that thought turned into an idea. Your business is the manifestation of that idea, and it's within those ideas that lie your authority because they're your ideas for how you can improve the life of someone else, which is what a business is all about. So if you have that confidence in that and know your unique authority, you could line up 10 competitors with the same or very similar product or service. But your ideas for how you're going to deliver it, how you're going to improve that customer's life is far different from those other 9 people. So you're the X factor, and that's why that authority lies within you and your ideas. Kurt, we covered a lot of ground today, just like you're getting ready to cover a lot of ground, and it's it was really great, great to talk with you. I really enjoyed having you on the show and hope you'll come back at some point soon. The website is Merck Enterprises, and I'll I'll spell that out for you, listeners, MEC. Enterprises. And it's a great website, a lot of great information there, including how to listen to the podcast and learn more about the branding agency and everything. So is there any other information you'd like our our listeners to focus on when they get there? Yeah, I got some free goodies too as well. If if your listeners take out their smartphone right now and text the word youth authority authority to the number 55678, there's three free webinars about building an authority brand, leveling up on LinkedIn. You could subscribe to my podcast. It's a one stop shop of free goodies, and that's the word youth authority and you text that to the number 55678. Terrific. Terrific. Well, thank you so much. Uh, happy trails and safe trails to you and your family and uh I hope you'll check in again sometime soon and uh let us know how everything is going. Absolutely. Thanks so much, Bill. Thank you for listening to Exit Coach Radio. Time is precious and so are our pets, so time with our pets is extra precious. That's why we started Dutch. Dutch provides 24/7 access to licensed vets with unlimited virtual visits and follow-ups for up to 5 pets. You can message a vet at any time and schedule a video visit the same day. Our vets can even prescribe medication for many ailments, and shipping is always free. With Dutch, you'll get more time with your pets and year-round peace of mind when it comes to their vet care.