For Years, We Thrived Without Marketing. Now What?

hello everyone welcome to the 21 hats podcast I'm your host Lauren Feldman this week we bring you another entrepreneurial Fishbowl with Chris Hutchinson these fishbowls are our virtual brainstorming sessions where we offer business owners the opportunity to pose a challenge they're facing to a group of owners and entrepreneurs from the 21 hats Community this time our volunteers are Alvin Elbert founder of AR manufacturing and his daughter Megan perona who explained that their company had its best year ever in 2022 but has seen business fall off since then for 40 years a grew slowly but steadily on Word of Mouth more recently however the Albert family has concluded that it's time to do some real marketing like a lot of owners though they're a little overwhelmed by the options unsure where to begin and wary of wasting money they also happen to be going through a family ownership transition the 21 hats brainstormers Begin by asking a lot of questions including including whether the owners have invested in search engine optimization whether they've gone back to some of the customers they lost to China and whether they've considered hiring a marketing agency even in Good Times owning and running a business can be a lonely Pursuit our hope is that these weekly conversations will let owners know they are not alone in facing challenges in fact that's the whole idea behind the 21 hats Community engaging with other owners to get the kinds of insights only another owner can offer offer if you're interested in learning more step one is to sign up for the Morning Report which highlights the most important news of the day for business owners so you don't have to go looking for it step two is to get on our slack Channel where you can ask questions get vendor recommendations and tap the wisdom of a very impressive crowd just search for the 21 hats Morning Report to sign up for a free trial joining me this week on the podcast are Chris Hutchinson of trebuchet group along with his colleague Katie huy Plus David Barnett of business buyer Advantage Chris Campbell of ritzer Jay goz of the gos group Josh englas of propeller Paul Jordan of egeria group Elena Maguire of spoka kitchen and bath and Lisa Peterson of wealth Clinic the episode is titled for years we thrived without marketing now what all right you guys ready for some fishball wo let's do it uh Welcome to our fourth fishball led by our facilitator Chris Hutchinson of trebuchet Chris what does trebuchet do we help leaders and teams work together better uh so you don't do fishbowls all the time do you only with you Lauren it's just a it's a unique thing that we get to do with you and the 21 hat Community which is so cool all right I like to hear that as most of you know our goal here is to have some fun to make maybe learn a little but most importantly to try to help out some entrepreneurs who are facing uh an interesting challenge our guests of honor today are Alvin Albert and Megan Albert perona who are going to share about a manufacturing more about that in a minute Chris why don't you give us a quick reminder of how this works and what we're going to do sure the overall you're going to grill I mean you're going to interview Alvin and Megan and sort of get the basic setup of what the situation they're facing and as we all know the presenting situation is usually not the real situation that we need to deal with this group here will ask questions of Alvin and Megan to help everyone learn more about what the real challenge is and then after we get that Alvin and Megan will pick based on those answers one or two things they really want advice on will'll capture all your great ideas next steps cautions or success tips and then this group will get that vote them up so the most brilliant ideas go to the top we'll share those with Alvin and Megan and at the end they get to pick however many of those they'd like to implement and they're required by law to implement exactly what they absolutely it's 30-day commitment B yeah and we check in on you all right so let's try to set the scene here a little bit Alvin you started AR Manufacturing in a garage as something of a side hustle I believe when was that that was in 1980 I was 23 years old what was the basic idea make uh the decisions myself you're an entrepreneur I've been in Machining my whole career I to be a machinist when in high school and I got out in the industry found out I was pretty good at it and decided I'd rather make the decisions myself than have somebody else tell me how to do it so I started my own machine job and it was a contract machine shop from the beginning yeah it's always been contract machine shop Job Shop and who are your customers mostly our niches for the whole time has been dental equipment right now I think 50% of our work is for the dial industry it's not really the little small stuff it's really the bigger stuff I mean parts from dental chairs the all the bent tubes and arms and everything the dentist uses the lights all that so we make Parts components for that we do very little assembly or like finished end products so we make all of the pieces like when you go to the dentist the cart where they hang all of their tools on we make all the individual pieces that go into that cart we sell them to our customer our customer puts them all together and they sell them to the dentist and that's for just about every industry that's how it works Megan what's your role at the business I do the finances and um how did the business do Alvin what at what point did it stopping a side hustle uh we was a side hustle for four years and we finally got a dental equipment company that he was just starting out and he started growing pretty fast so it got to where I had to qu my regular job and just do it full-time that was 1984 yeah we kind of uh steadily grew slowly uh I think in 2004 we're up to about 25 employees so we' grown up to that and had moved from dunde to to our current location in Oregon right yeah we're in Newberg and we basically had a smaller building build a builder bigger building but we're still at that same location that we moved to we moved here in 1987 2004 was kind of a big year because we uh actually bought a machine shop in Bend Oregon and closed it down closed that operation down moved all the work over it to our for fac here in Newberg doubled in size overnight total chaos uh it took us about a year to get back on top of it but through that chaos we also started reaching out to different government agencies and Community Support things and kind of really changed our whole outlook of how we operated and how we we run our business and how we get involved in the community so the last 20 years has really been completely different from the first 20 years what was your best year uh 2022 M yeah everybody's was spending their Co money so we made lots of Parts yeah and had your uh your customer base broaden much or was it still mostly Dental it has broaden I mean probably in 2004 it was probably 80 90% Dental so one of the things was once we kind of changed our model and everything was to try to get Diversified so and we're about 50% right now I mean Dent is really good work and we're good at it and it's a and we're known to be in that Niche so we don't mind doing it but we do like to try to get in some other areas and how big was the business in 2022 revenues employees probably 30 I think around 30 employees um you know what the sales were back we probably doing before Co it kind of goes up and down I mean we had a really good year in 2018 because we sold like six million we had uh 50 employees uh our biggest customer moved everything to China then we went back Co hit and we went down to about 30 with Co 2022 got back up over 6 million had 50 employees but but things all dropped off once uh inflation hit and people got all their Co money spent and so now our sales last year sales are 4.5 and we're down to about I think we have 38 employees right now yeah is that about what you expect to do this year in terms of Revenue hopefully we do about five because it's hard to make a profit if we do less than five we we didn't make a profit last year no we had our worst year ever last year I'm saying last year because our fiscal ends September 30th so our our year already ended yeah got it so you traditionally have relied primarily on Word of Mouth for marketing correct much I mean back like when we were in the garage we had one main Dental customer and then you know the buyer from there went to a different Dental company and so then we picked up some work from that Dental company and then the buyer at that first company the new guy he went somewhere else and he told someone and so yeah we really have relied on Word of Mouth for 40 years and and we have been fairly successful that because we stayed we work really hard on delivering Parts on time and making good parts do good quality so we don't cause our customers problem so usually they they keep coming back and that was kind of always been our marketing is do on time do it right people keep coming back so what do you think has changed the last couple of years have you had a lot of business go to China was that part of it I mean I think in the last like 20 years A lot has gone overseas I think about 2008 was when uh Dental really went overseas so there's a lot of parts that we used to make that we will never make again what about just the last two years what's changed I think the changed mostly I mean our second largest customer decided to start selling direct instead of using a dealer Network so they're making more profit on their units but they don't sell as many doesn't help us any because we still sell it for the same price and make half as many parts as we used to so that one's really hurt us uh but Dent still has been pretty good I think it basically had you know it kind of did a big spike 2022 and now it's gone back down to normal I don't think it's much less than that but it's about the same aling the China has always been a big big issue and problem for us yeah and I think one of the bigger things with that is that we historically did uh large volume repeat work and the work that we've lost to China is large volume repeat work because that's simple stuff that you can make a bunch of somewhere else and then have slow slowly shipped back to the US um so I think that's the biggest thing is we lost the bread and butter Parts the bread and butter money that we had coming in that's that's what we've lost to overseas so here is it okay for me to equip the group here to make sure please all right one of the challenges of doing this kind of work in a group like this is that people are brilliant and love to save and rescue others and that's not what we're looking for this next set of questions really is around surfacing shared Clarity not about thinking around the situation we're really just trying to understand collectively what's happening here because the presenting issue is not always the real issue so who would like to go first go ahead Jay hi Jay gos the gos group so my question is I'm trying to get the landscape of your industry are there trade shows that one can go to that potential customers at are there trade Publications that you can Target are there email lists and mailing lists is there some way identifying potential customers there is some stuff out there there's there's like one trade show uh I never really thought it was a good fit was kind of question why not there'd be enough return on it me I actually went to the show a couple times to see what it was about uh Publications there's some Publications out there to kind of advertise in them I don't think it'd be very effective I mean there's some trade Associated groups before to we were part of a couple of trade Associated groups didn't really get much out of them I mean as far as customers but Co hit we kind of propped them we didn't really have money so what do you got Megan yeah I mean I think the one thing that makes it a little hard is that we don't have one specific industry that we serve um because like I said we do about 50% Dental um and then we have like 10 % Aerospace uh we do some for recreational uh HomeGoods construction uh Machine Tools I mean it's it's a mix of things so I mean I think that is something that we we could probably pick a couple that we wanted to focus on and pursue those in that way okay great thanks David what's your question um yeah I just wanted to ask what about your equipment or experience makes you so well suited to the dental and um you mentioned a few of the other industries that you do do work for so I I guess I'm just trying to think about or ask what brainstorming you've done about other Industries you might be serving yeah I mean we definitely we can do good quality and we can do it fast I think that's the biggest thing especially versus overseas is that we can deliver a job much faster especially I think around 90% of our customers are here in Oregon so I I mean almost all of our customers are close enough that we can drive the parts to them if they needed us to um so that's definitely I think the advantage that we have we have the same equipment everyone else has uh we do our hiring and training within the business a little differently so I guess that's unique too we actually uh we hire with no experience necessary which is somewhat unique for a machine shop and then we have an inhouse training program and we teach them how to do it from the ground up um so and that also means uh we use a lot of lean systems for specifically how to set up jobs and how to run them uh that kind of lens towards that too so okay great thank you who has the next question Josh go ahead uh my name is Josh um longtime uh friend and contact of Lauren back from his uh reporter days at Inc and Beyond um excited to be on here what's the name of your business Josh propeller uh we do uh B2B technology Communications so a question I would have it's sort of two parts what is the buying cycle like how far from like initial contact to sale and what steps are in there like do you have to prove yourself or whatever and then the other part is based on an average order how many new customers would you really need to bring on to have a meaningful growth number um do you know what the current sales timeline would be I mean typically if uh the normal one is is we get a request for quote we try to quote it within two days we get the job we typically can fill jobs between somewhere between five to 30 days depend on the complexity of the job if there's a new company generally there's some certain amount of vetting gets done so and that kind of the bigger the company the more bureaucracy it has the longer it takes so some companies it might just be you know a questionnaire and you know non uh disclosure agreement and maybe two three weeks were going probably the longest the process has ever taken is about six months where we contacted and finally did something for him yeah sometimes it just depends too how quickly the customer wants their stuff there's a a new customer who we had been talking to for probably about a month or so but then all of a sudden they had a job that they won next week and then it was it was a very fast process all of a sudden the second one around uh sort of how many new customers do you think you would need for like meaningful growth it depends on the customer and the parts that they that they're making I mean if it's a small company and it's it's a $1,000 order we're going to need a lot of those but if it's you know a larger company where it has the potential to be you know we're going to make the same order the same you know $10,000 order every two weeks I we take one of those and we we'll be fine so break even about 5 million 6 million is a good number for us to be profitable we'd like to be six million I mean 80% of our sales is probably five customers maybe six customers so it'd be nice to get a couple of bigger customers that were somewhere between 200 to 500,000 now if we got two or three of those we'd be in good shape but we haven't been able to really get one of those for the last couple couple years yeah great thank you all right who has the next question to help us continue to understand the situation Al a Megan are facing D you another one if you think the talk of potential new tariffs on Imports could have any impact on your business I don't think it's coming back I mean there's slowly been stuff happening you know some restoring Shing and some things like that maybe it might do a lot uh tariffs always have a tendency to affect every others too so maybe it would generate some work for us but most likely it's going to raise raw material prices and other prices instead yes yeah so if it was it I don't know that I don't see a lot of benefit for us I kind of be more concerned that it would raise our cost actually I like manufacturing I've always thought manufacturing more of it should be us-based that be s w too much of it out of the country so if terrorists actually could get more manufacturing half than in the US I'd like to see that alvan when you're not competing with China who do you compete with Vietnam no you're basically locally yeah I mean we're about you know we're typically usually 40 50 employees uh it's not a huge machine shop but uh not the smallest either I mean we're good good mid siiz a little bit bigger size uh I mean Newberg there's probably there's 10 Job Shop machine shops in Newberg at least uh we're the biggest one in town most of them are going to be five 10 employees so but especially on the dental I end up competing I mean they're in the same count with all the other there's a lot of dental manufacturers in the area so most of them are doing dental and employee company has more overhead than a five employee companies our prices are usually higher but our deliver is better usually our quality is better so we still compete with them okay great Jay you have another question yeah I went to your website uh have you put any energy you you don't come up I took your exact phrase of high Precision CNC Machining and you don't come up in the Google search have you put any energy into working on getting your website to come up and drive sales um we started doing a little bit of it this year and I think it's actually actually a little better but I was just on the other day a couple of days ago just CNC Machining Portland now know we're page five CNC Machining Newberg we're on the first page you know but I think Sherwood we didn't show up uh I hillsbury we were on this third page yeah so yeah we don't show up so it's definitely an area that could improve yeah we agree I wonder if there's any other questions Lena go ahead what terms would you consider your your search engine optimization terms um you said CNC machining are there other terms that your ideal customers would be looking for no for machine shop maybe something like that I think C Machine shop kind of captures most and then I think the location would probably be the next thing so Oregon uh we're outside of Portland so Portland and Lena could you throw your name in your company sure Lena Maguire spoka kitchen and back great thanks other questions that would help us understand the lay of the land go ahead Lauren could you tell us about some of your other clients what other Industries have you worked in we do a little bit of Aerospace uh we do a couple parts for a couple helicopter places I mean one that actually builds helicopter the other one makes spring systems for helicopters so we did some work for them there's a company here in Newberg that makes uh tools for repairing Machinery we make a lot of parts for them uh and there's a company in the next suburb over from us that does um they have a measuring system unit that they sell and so we make the pieces for that um they were for a while making robotics for building iPhones too so we were making the components for them for those the recreation areas we we make all the parts for a paintball gun we make parts for uh the Boating industry for particular tournament ski boats so we make parts for that industry uh there's also a couple different uh Furniture companies that we make like door hardware cabinet hardware for yeah so I mean for the most part if it has blueprint we can make it h we're we're not super picky really awesome go ahead Jay give us a breakdown because I have no clue do you have a 100 customers 50 customers 500 customers and then how the biggest customer what percentage of your business is it uh I think in a month we probably have about 25 to 30 active customers uh in the course of a year it's maybe closer to 50 proba um and then largest customer I think right now is 25% of sales which for us is good I think in the past we did have one customer that was 75% of sales so I so we are more diverse than we historically have been cool I've got a question actually um how much business do you uh lose like how much are you you quote and you just don't get it versus it's usually about 30 35% yeah so we're losing 70 to 65 and what's the main reason people say that you're losing it price it's probably price more than anything okay but um May could be other things too but um and I don't really think well the industry 30 35% isn't that bad great uh Dave do you have a question yeah um so I was just wondering you said that the the prices you charge are quite High and the the quality of the components you make is also very high I'm just wondering what proportion of the total bill is related to Transportation would it you be able to just as easily serve people that are further a field than the people that you're serving right now yeah we we definitely can when I was saying that we had a customer that was 75% of sales I think the bulk of that was being shipped across the country to um South and North Carolina um so we have had customers in other states it's we're we're not only to Oregon the the only thing is I mean normally that customer they're going to pay for the freight or the UPS to get it to where they are it does seem like break isn't that big a deal so I say we said we do parts for a a Furniture Company they're in Rhode Island we ship all our stuff to Rhode Island and doesn't seem to be an issue with them yeah I think the I think the bigger problem is uh since we have relied so heavily on Word of Mouth is just getting our name into places that are not here in Oregon go ahead Lauren I'm just curious Alvin what what's your long-term goal here do you have a succession plan and what are you hoping ultimately happens with the business yeah both my daughter and my son work here and uh so a year and a half ago I turned over day-to-day operation so so it's pretty much now made again my son Troy and uh I have a 38-year employee uh that runs the machine shop for me but I basically turned over dayto day to those three people I'm a very Hands-On person so stepping away uh you know there a lot of stuff I took care of and you know now I have to turn it over to other people you know and some stuff only happens once a year you know so so getting that stuff turned over but um basically in two years I'll be 70 two years plan is to stop taking a salary and step away even more at that point but uh as far as the session planning the three running it they can have it I don't really care to sell it for a big ton of money or anything like that I just want the run on the buildings because I own all the buildings do you want the business Megan no not at all oh no my brother says I I said I will work here but I don't I don't want to own it no yeah that's a hard not well what about what about your does your brother want it yes my brother says that he wants it and we'll take it so yeah all right you're a winner you got one I struck out on three three Zer for three okay at this point Chris asks Alvin and Megan to specify a couple of areas where they would most appreciate some guidance once we have that Chris will lead the group in brainstorming ideas Chris's colleague Katie huy will help the brainstormers post the suggestions on a virtual whiteboard then all of the participants will like the ideas they find most promising for Alvin and Megan's consideration all right Alvin and Megan are ready the answer is yeah we compared notes so I think we have two things one of them did did come up uh so we could use some advice on uh SEO and uh you know fixing our website okay and then the other thing which I I don't think quite came up but one thing is how best to use our time and energy so we only have so much time and energy and so it's it's not possible to tackle all of the different forms of sales and marketing with the resources we have so which ones would we be like should we put every into just trying to fix the SEO and the website or just keep focusing on our existing customers or try to get a national name recognition like so your feedback on where you think we can get the most pain for our buck or where long term it would serve Us best to put that energy that'll be really great so we have those two pieces so let's discuss the different ideas everyone has um succinctly around those different things around SEO and where to do energy around sales and marketing who' like to start Lena go ahead okay so um with the SEO um what I'm well what I'm hearing is that you are taking all kinds of work that comes in and when you're saying that you are high quality and higher price than other people the first thing I think of is that you have a value issue and that to differentiate you should specialize in something that requires High precision and quick turnaround like medical Parts helicopter parts things where safety is involved and that kind of thing and that would help differentiate you and once you describe your differentiator then you can start searching for the SEO terms because without that difference you're just throwing more spaghetti at the wall yeah that makes sense who would like to go next Jay I'd like to add to what was just said I think the issue now is there's no spaghetti getting thrown against the wall at this point there's virtually no marketing going out calling Word of Mouth marketing is kind of a stretch so the opportunity is to build a great website that talks about those unique selling propositions that she just said about you know what is your specialty but given that it's so easy to ship stuff nationally I don't think one needs to raise awareness I think it's all in getting the website fixed putting the right content on it and just sitting back and waiting for people to find you cuz it's 2024 I believe that if you do nothing more than supercharge the website and get the SEO I think your problems will go away one more thing quickly you said you've turned over everything well I'm gonna go back to the family Dynamics Megan is that true or is he still looking over your show no no don't do that I want to spend the money is he giving you a hard time on stuff because I'm the exact same age as he is so I understand the dynamic there for the most part I mean I think uh when he said that he would be not in the dayto day he still reserved the right to have the final veto which didn't he owns it so that's fair that's yeah so but no I I think it actually is going fairly well like I hear stories of other family businesses and I think man I guess we're doing pretty good actually where's your brother meanwhile why isn't your brother on this if he's the one that wants to own the business why are you the one on here not your brother it would be hard to fit three people in but I'm just saying he's the wants to own the business you made it clear you don't so it so Jake may go ahead around this thing you're talking about is there a success tip caution or a Next Step do you think you'd recommend yeah someone needs to decide who wants to be in charge and have some authority to make some decisions okay there you go because otherwise it's just you know talk I hear success tip in caution two for one perfect thanks Jay somebody else had their hand up Josh so go ahead Josh I've seen this a lot where a company thinks it knows why people buy from it they don't really know they think it's value they think it's speed they think it's price whatever do you talk to your customers much um likly on how did you pick us and then maybe longer term relationships why are you still here what are you interested in yeah we do we do like a quarterly review where we kind of randomly select like maybe four to five customers who have been who have ordered from us in the last quarter um and then uh we have a customer service person who is moving into a sales role uh who reaches out to the customers and just has a conversation with them about how things are going and then kind of does a a summary of it at our quarterly um management meeting so so we do hear feedback on how you know how we're doing what people like what they don't like some of our customers do scorecards supplier scorecards so we get some feedback by way too okay great thanks anybody else have Paul let us know your name and your company and what's your thoughts yeah sure uh Paul Jordan uh aera group um we're an investment firm and no I find this fascinating I think you have a great really neat company I guess you know I do think that SEO is kind of table Stakes I would agree completely with Jay as far as that goes but I thought one other interesting point you brought up was the 70% uh rate of customers that you don't win the quotes from and I was just wondering if you you know be worth spending some time to go through through some of those lost Ones reaching out you know is there a customer there that you keep quoting that you keep losing on you know focus in on a few of those or Quality Companies that don't need a lot of vetting that you know are legit to go after and just you know a couple phone calls uh consistent emails may go a long way putting you on top of their radar for the next uh job they have yeah that's a good feedback too we actually uh so we our our current uh employee who we mentioned who does like a customer liaison role he's uh going down to part-time and is going to retire in the next a handful of years and so we have another employee that we're moving into that uh liaison more sales role and that's one of the things that um she did was she reached out to uh there's a part of like a division within score called Matt which is like score specifically for manufacturers uh and she talked with them about the sales and marketing and one of the things that came up was making like a sales funnel that shows the whole sales path and that was one thing that came up and there are so many opportunities where we really should reach back out oh you didn't you know and like reaching out on the jobs that we didn't get and making a formal process around that one thing that's happened since between when I talked to Lauren about this initially and now is that uh like we did start working on that like sales funnel and one of the things that came up was that I think part of why sales and Market always got left to the side was that one we had enough work that we didn't worry about it uh but two was that uh we're really good at processes and we're really good at lead manufacturing and we we know how to run a machine and follow a setup sheet and we never took the time to make setup sheets and processes for marketing so that's one of the things in into your point I think that's we want to start making a process for like this is what we do with every order because it it's not happening super consistently right now okay um DAV I got a let me want to share yeah I I don't think that you can really work on the website and do SEO or even put content on there that's going to attract the best type of customer until you really know who the best type of customer is and what they want yeah so I I think you should look at your customers that you're working with today that you think are the best customers for you the ones you really like and then I I think what you need to do is Identify some lookalike companies out there that are just like those companies everywhere in the US and so if that's in dental manufacturing or Aerospace or military subcontractors whatever it happens to be you can make a list of these you know love to have clients and then call up their purchasers yeah and and just ask them what are you looking for in a supplier we're trying to become more adaptable to be more readily um available a for companies like you we you know we want to be able to bid on your next project and and make you happy what are you looking for and you can then gain sort of a perspective and feedback on what kinds of things those purchasers might type in to Google and I'm not 100% sure that in some of these industries there really are purchasers typing things into Google looking for suppliers I'm I'm I I tend to think that a lot of people are knocking on their doors and and that ultim Ely your marketing might have to take more of a sales effort kind of bent where where you're knocking on the doors of all the dental manufacturers um in the US and anywhere else you can ship you know one of the things that drove people to buy from China is even though they had to pay in advance a lot of the times and then wait six months for the goods to arrive it didn't matter to them because money was so cheap and today money is more expensive and it's harder to have a whole bunch of money tied up inventory some of the people you used to do work for may be interested in reducing their investment in inventory and goods that are at Sea and so there could be an opportunity for you to do smaller batches more frequently with less investment on their part I I would dust off your records and go knock on some doors of people you used to serve yeah thanks David go ahead J David that is extremely insightful you just describe my situation I've been ordering from China money was cheap I didn't care how long it took and now money's not cheap and yeah I got too much inventory so that was very very insightful and smart and I you're 100% right there's plenty of companies out there that the world's changed when interest is three it's very different than when it's six so I do think you're right so one of the things that I want to offer and then we'll go to Lauren um is sort of a connection with some of these based on what David said is knocking on the doors I I think you have an opportunity to turbocharge your word of mouth and take that list of those companies you want and go to the people that you're great and say who do you know in these companies they will make those connections and that could be a really great way for you to use that word mouth to get to where you want to go to do those sort of things you're talking about so it's Twist on what we talked about I one of the things it seems like I've noticed over the last few years is nobody wants to answer the phone you can't actually talk to anybody you know they don't actually answer the phone you get send them an email they don't answer the email but it doesn't seem like there's communication is there as much as it used to be 20 years ago I I think it's it's the relationship because you got to screen out I don't know in my business is 95% of the emails I get are not useful so when somebody contacts me that I know which is why I'm sharing that tip I think it would really help Lauren what is what is your question tip uh question I I think David made a great point about trying to expand your footprint geographically Al uh looking for customers and I it made me curious Jay asked you about going to uh trade shows and Alvin you said you'd gone to one I'm curious what industry was that trade show isn't that design to part one something like that one called design to part which is kind of meant for like prototyping and uh like job shops I was kind of guessing it was something like that I'm curious there's got to be a National dental trade show uh where people are looking for work and maybe that's the trade show that you should be at yeah I mean and to be honest we've never we've never done anything like that okay great any other Lena go ahead so um my tip is to learn to say no to the people who are not your ideal customer so if you're taking on these jobs that it's going to get you $1,000 dollar you're spending a lot of time when you look at your dollars per hour for working and you're going to spend so much time doing these little ply jobs that you're not making room for the big jobs so so my tip is to learn what job is what you're looking for maybe even create a client Persona or two or three and try to you use them as Gatekeepers so that you're not taking work that you don't want because the work that you take people are going to go out and say oh they do that and then you're going to have more of that kind of work instead of what you're looking for yeah yeah okay Jay uh I've spent money for marketing for 40 some years I have to tell you I believe you're going to need a mind shift you're going to have to accept you're going to lose some money on some stuff I can see your facial oh the trade show you've already dismissed everything like and this the concept of no one answers the phone I mean that is just I mean are less people answering the phone clearly but there's plenty of people that answer the phone and the Smart Companies are still calling up customers so so you've dismissed because you've got it in your head no one answers the phone so that's all you're going to have to try some stuff and I am confident if someone stood sat there on the phone all day long they'd get some people on the phone and the trade show thing yeah I've done some I lost money on them I've done some where I found one big customer I it's yeah it's not a perfect science is the point unlike you buy a machine part you buy a machine you buy a car you get something here you could blow five grand and like oops didn't work so you just have to accept that that's going to be part of the game good deal Josh um this might be way too tactical but as you think about the different verticals you're in Dental obviously and the others I would start capturing case studies and case studies can literally be the most basic they don't have to be super deep about the whole story of the account and everything that you've done but just something that it could just even be a quote and maybe a picture of the of the part or it could just be a company logo and a quote with like an unnamed person just like head of procurement at this company um but I would be capturing more of those in those industry verticals because you don't know who is maybe people are coming to your site and they're like oh I don't see any there doesn't seem they don't seem to know my space I don't see any evidence of Aerospace here or dental or whatever so I'm going to go to some other place that does so I think demonstrating you have expertise in these verticals and some of them sound like they're probably pretty competitive or they would pay a premium like Aerospace I think would be a really smart thing uh to do and also when you do that by the way you could sprinkle in words like Portland OR Oregon or whatever and all of that stuff helps your SEO obviously yeah agreed awesome well I think we've done a great job of getting some ideas some are in conflict with each other some of them are different aspects of this so now we're enlisting uh the folks who are here in the room to go through and on the right hand side you see the little thumbs up button it's basically a a like so essentially the idea is click on those things you think this is fabulous fantastic helpful advice I think everything that everyone said is not in Conflict I think I think there was some great I I didn't hear anything that was in Conflict frankly yeah I would agree with that yeah I think it was it was all a good info so I think for us it'll just be more uh picking which thing to focus on first kind of Dave do you have a comment or question yeah I was just gonna say if if there's a purchaser or someone at a company that you really want to talk to and Alvin they will not take your call they will not answer the phone I think you should have some guys in your shop do a li lied production run of some really unique doohickey that demonstrates the Precision and quality of the kinds of things you can make like not a real part just sort of a little demo piece that would be like a a paper weight but something that's really unique looking and different so that you can mail it to that person and you can say Hey you know I'm Alvin and say I've been trying to reach you on the telephone I haven't been able to I wanted to send you a little peek at the kind of stuff that we make every day for our customers all across the country and just make that really unique standout thing that they've got to handle in their hand and so that they look at the person's card they recognize the number they maybe you've left a voicemail and they can put it all together and realize hey maybe this is someone I want to talk to so I'm a big fan of of of breaking through that sort of digital wall people have up by sending stuff that they have to actually handle in the mail so David snuck that in if you like that you know click on that far right button little thumbs up button and it'll we'll see where that falls and and then there's going to be a drum roll just really soon here anybody need more time at this point the group has reviewed the list of tips cautions and next steps and liked all of the suggestions they find most promising now we give Alvin and Megan an opportunity to ask the group any questions they may have about the advice so the one about identifying the best type of customer I think it's been a really long long time since we actually sat down and actually wrote that down and so I think looking at that would be a good way to go um and then also the I mean turbocharging the word of mouth that kind of goes with you know knowing who it is that we want to talk to yeah that was a piggyback for sure yeah uh oh and I I did really like the case study idea and I think that would also go with fixing the SEO and fixing the website too I mean that goes hand inand with that so the next one about losing going to lose some money that one is really hard for me because I do the finances and so I look at what it's going to cost and then I really question is this worth it like should we really spend the money here uh and so I do recognize that that is a problem that I have personally and I do need to work on that I've heard many times the theory about like second generation uh family businesses like the second generation is usually much more risk averse than the first generation was and that is very true and in our case so I do recognize that that we we do need to just try some things and accept that sometimes the money part of it won't pan out Megan does this have something to do with your uh not wanting to own the business oh yeah yeah yeah well I saw Alvin squirming a little bit too I don't think it's a unique thing to you well and then also on the as far as the people not answering the phone that that is Alvin's belief I agree with Jay that like it's harder to get through than it used to be but to also like the employee who is moving into that sales uh position uh like we we told her we kind of gave her heart block to like go ahead and try whatever you want to try and so I know she has tried just straight cold calling Dental companies and granted I think three out of four no one would take her call but the last one they did turns out they do everything in house but now they know that we exist if they have have overflow J something you want to share I will tell you something else you ever read a sales book you call someone once maybe they don't call you back you call them two three times they're gonna call you B say listen I wouldn't be bothering you if I didn't think I it's just it's sales 101 I mean I think I heard years ago it takes seven calls to get like and and in my case I get very few calls now because everyone's got it in their head no one calls I'm like I'm not the only human being that answers their phone I'm just not yeah I think one of the things that our system where it is where it's at is I'm a Hands-On person I'm not a people person so making the phone call is not something I like to do if the work came in without making the phone call that was good enough but that's where I if I'm stepping away I don't think it's good enough they need a better plan so that's kind of one of the reason life let's start figuring out how we're going to do this Lauren has his hand up though he's going to share I have one quick thought I feel like there's kind of an elephant in the room nobody has suggested that you hire an agency um to help you with your marketing and I just think that's worth addressing have you have you guys ever considered doing that and does anybody think they should do that we actually we did work with a Kinesis in 2020 so and I think that's how we got connected to 21 hats uh was through them I think what they gave us was really helpful uh and we have a stack of copy that they gave us to use but we never had the bandwidth to actually do anything with it so yeah that that one's on us well I how about that second part of the question Lauren you said is does anybody recommend that they hire an agency I saw some nodding head yeah why re why reinvent the wheel somebody knows how to do this like the back of their hand why why go figure this out on your own I mean I'd be careful who you hire but clearly there's someone out there well that's a big challenge Jay as we all I know it is I'm the one trust me it makes me I cringe when I think about it but I know that there's someone out there in five minutes is going to do more than you're going to do in five months because they do it all day long but yeah trust me I'm the first I'm extremely worried about hiring those firms because I haven't had great experience in many cases but they're in Oregon people are nicer there I gotta think that they somebody there so thank you Alvin and Megan for your vulnerability and everybody else for um sharing your great ideas because I think this is the spirit of the community trying to help everybody be better so I'm going to hand the Baton off to Lauren and I'm just going to Echo what Chris said thank you so much Alvin and Megan thank you for sharing and uh allowing us to have this conversation and thank all of you uh who participated especially our facilitator Chris Hutchinson of trebush really appreciate everybody take [Music] care one thing before you go everything we do at 21 hats is created by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs to help us all learn together if you get something out of listening to these podcast episodes consider joining the conversation you can do that by joining the 21 hats sounding board a slack Channel where you can tap the wisdom of a very smart crowd or by becoming a founding member and joining our monthly Zoom Forum where you can be part of conversations much like the ones we have on the podcast you can sign up for both by subscribing to the morning report if you have any questions you can email me at Lauren 21h hats.com and if you get something out of this podcast or out of the morning report please tell a friend tell an enemy tell every business owner you know your word of mouth owner to owner will always be the most effective way to build this community for all of us thank you it means a lot this episode was produced by another entrepreneur Jess ston founder of blank word Productions thanks for listening everyone