Joe Nicassio - Marketing is a Process - What is Yours? (B0918)

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 don't miss our one. Exit coach tip of the day on exit coachradio.com. And now here's your host, the exit coach, Bill Black. Welcome back. Thanks for listening. This segment of the show is brought to you by the Values Institute and features Joe Acacio. Joe is a, uh, business mechanic and marketing consultant, so that's what he's up. Uh, Joe, welcome to the show. Ah, thanks for having me. Did I get your name right? Is it Ncasio or Nacao? Nassio, OK, uh, it was a 50/50. All right, Joe Nacao and Joe, you're, you call yourself a business mechanic, but you, you're also an author and a marketing consultant, and, uh, we're gonna talk about um how businesses can build their value before they sell from a marketing point of view. So I'm, I'm really interested to get into that. But first, we always like to start by getting to know a little bit about our guests. So could you share a little bit about your background? And how you got into this particular line of work. Sure, um, I like to do storytelling once in a while, so once upon a time a man was walking down the street. And he fell into a hole and he was screaming for help and a priest came by and heard the screams for help, said a prayer and talked to the Bible, but the man was still in the hole. The man kept screaming for help, and the man came by and threw some money in the hole, but the man was still in the hole. And then a friend came by, I heard the screams, and he jumped in the hole with the man and the man said, uh, what are you doing now? We're both, you know, now we're both in this. Together and the friend said that's true, but I've been in this hole before and I know the way out. Follow me and let me show you the way. So I'm that guy. I'm that guy that, you know, I've run businesses. I made my million dollars. I lost everything, and then I went on an obsessive compulsive quest for the truth of what really, really works in business and I actually built a community, a small community of people that are also committed to that. You know, that truth, what you know, there's a lot of manure in the world of what works in business, and there's a uh to get to sort through it to get to the goal and so that's kind of my background, uh, you know, I used to troubleshoot electronics equipment and now I troubleshoot businesses. Yeah, that, that's why not? I mean, that's if you've been there and done that. And you're back out now to help people who are in that hole to get out of it because you can show them the way. I think that's a great analogy, great story, it makes a lot of sense. And Napoleon Hill said something pretty amazing. He said, you know, you failed, you know, congratulations. Now you're an expert at what not to do. So you know I can actually kind of look at businesses and predict the future yeah. Yeah, yeah, well, the, the, how, so when you first, uh, when somebody says, hey, Joe, I need help, what, what's the first thing that you look at to assess? Well, they say I need help or I want help? OK, let's say they say I need help. Well, yeah, they, you know, everybody's kind of a different spot. So, you know, some people are having help just getting started and some people are still in jobs, you know, I think the, the big kind of the thesis of my book is wanna have a thriving America tomorrow, you need to nurture a new breed of entrepreneurs today, but what we've done is we've created an entire culture of people that are employer reliant instead of self-reliant. So, uh, you know, right away, about 90% of the people I talked to are either in jobs or they're under. So there's a whole bunch of people that kind of want to escape from the corporate world and start their own business, so I do things for them, but, um, kind of the market that I serve in terms of what's really relevant to this conversation today is Uh, people that are, you know, they've gotten to like $500,000 a year and they really want to make, you know, turn the business into a $5 million a year company. So, so they have that desire to actually, you know, actually build their business in value so that they can someday sell it at an even higher value. OK. Yeah, yeah, they, they, but they're stuck a lot of times they're, they feel like they've hit a wall, right? Yeah, there's several walls that people hit. One of them is um themselves just thinking they have to do everything themselves. Uh, there's a big shift in people when they have this revelation that my success depends on the support of others and the support of systems. Uh, that's that's a huge revelation for people to, to surrender the ego. You know, people start a business if it is to be, it's up to me, you know, the right way to get things done and do it yourself, but there's a shift in thinking for people that people will cap out at 500,000 or a million, you know, plus or minus, you know, just choosing some random numbers because there's only so far they can go. You know, trying to do everything, wearing all the hats. Right, yeah, absolutely. They, they, they don't want to risk the capital to get the leverage, but it doesn't take a whole lot of capital to get another hand on deck that can really free you up to do some more important stuff. Is that kind of the gist of it? Yeah, either a hand, you know, uh, so there's two ways of delegating. You can delegate to, uh, people and you can delegate to automated systems. Most require, you know, letting go of the ego, thinking you have to do it all yourself, and kind of leads to another little story that, you know, once upon a time, you know, there was a village that needed, you know, they were a shortage of fresh water. They need fresh water and somebody started capitalize it so they get these barrels and go to the lake and or the river and travel and um. Bring back the fresh water and sell it and you know he did fine. And then another guy saw that this was actually viable and what he did is he got architects and people to manufacture a pipeline and so you know, people really need a pipeline and this is something. If you're one of those businesses that you're doing everything yourself and you're going into the water with your barrels and coming back, you're exhausted and when you build a pipeline, your business becomes indefatigable, becomes effortless, you know, and, and by the way, the pipeline guy, he shuts down. Competition pretty fast because they can just sit at the cash register and collect money. Another good story. That's a good analogy, and I like, I like the analogies of, uh, going to get the water versus building a pipeline, and you mentioned a little bit earlier, it could be hands on deck or it could be systems on deck. Uh, how important is it when you're, when you're hiring a person to have somebody who's internet and systems savvy? OK, there's two kinds of systems too. There's even there's, there's internet systems, online systems, and offline systems, but yeah, when you, when you're, when you're system savvy, by the way, just taking a step back to the story about the, you know, the, the water business with the, with the barrels and then the pipeline as a person, you're, you're like an expert at like evaluating businesses and selling them, right? OK. What's the value of the pipeline, you know, you know. somebody's gonna invest in one, who's going to get the higher, you know, resale of, of their business. So this is, you know, the value of your company goes through the roof when you put these systems in place. So let me actually like kind of paint a picture like what would your business look like in the next 12 months if you're, if you had all these marketing systems in place, you know, you had documents, a lot of people say they get word of mouth advertising. That's great. Do you have it formalized in a system that's documented that you, you consistently. Systematically, you know, implement that referral. Do you have an upselling system in place? So people are coming to buy whatever it is you're selling, but do you have a, do you have a documented training program, you know, uh, do you have a sales management system to gain? Uh, new people to train them and maintain them, you know, attrition is a reality, so you need to. If you're gonna have a business and you're gonna have a sales force, you know, do you just have people in place, or do you have like a formal system for recruiting people when they get, you know, when, you know, people leave, they move, they get pregnant, they, they, they, you know, life events happen. So, so the question is, does, does all that water cooler. Knowledge that the knowledge that people walk around with, and maybe they talk a little bit about, does it leave your company or has it been developed into a, a system that the next person can come in and say, OK, step one, I do this, step 2, I do this, step 3, I do this. Uh, right, and they can, you can, you can then not worry so much about one key person walking out the door with all of the knowledge in their head. Absolutely. I mean, McDonald the business, you know, McDonald's has a tremendous turnover, but their systems are, you know, in place. Yeah, good point. Why not do that to your business, and when you do, you radically increase the value so that when you do decide to exit, you know, you can, you know, I mean, if you have a $500,000 business and you get a 5 time multiple, you know that'd be like $2.5 million but if you had a $5 million business and you got a 5 time multiple would be $25 million. So the difference of, uh, you know, the difference of getting these marketing systems in place, not. First of all, you'll start making more money when you put marketing systems in place. And when you, when you put marketing systems in place and you continue to add them and build them and refine them, this year's income, you know, next year's income, you'll see growth, next year you'll see growth, next year you see growth, and they got 5 years of growth on the book, that looks pretty attractive to a new person that's, you know, gonna be buying a business. But if you're, you know, going to the well and doing this water and you're doing this manual thing, so, you know, yeah, imagine that you have a system in place. We actually have a marketing plan that's not an investor plan, but, you know, it's actually a, a working day to day activity list and, uh, you know, imagine that you have these checklist. Since you have a marketing calendar that you live by that's actually intelligent ways to to be in front of potential customers, you know, what if you have a documented way to do a trade show so that you have a before the trade show strategy and at the trade show strategy and you have an after the trade show strategy where you have leads and follow up and it all, you know, fills your pipeline to develop customers. And, uh, this is, this is a big giant gap. This is, this is the gap between the 500,000 and the people that are growing at 5 million and beyond. I absolutely love what you're saying, and it makes a whole heck of a lot of sense. And so, the, the, the building blocks you talked about the day to day activity list, marketing activity, the marketing calendar, the trade show strategy. Uh, it does it all start with the CRM? Is that the building, the, the kind of the base around which all of these things are built? Um, that's Um, yeah, now CRM is a, uh, as I know, is abbreviology it's a customer retention and management. Yeah, that's where retention or customer relation. It's just a database. It's your, it's your customer database really is what it's yeah, but I would never ever in the whole world call it a database. I would if I work with the restaurant, uh, I'm working with right now and um. You know, they don't know who their customers are. They come in, they buy it, they have like, you know, the guy makes great food, you know, but he doesn't have any kind of list at all and, and, uh, so what I'm doing is putting together a VIP membership, you know, VIP, you know, we like to be part of our VIP club, and so, uh, yeah, this is a big danger in business too, you know, we think about the list and we think about sales as a numbers game and that kind of thing and um sales is kind of a numbers game, but it's Actually, if you tell people, if you tell people that sales is a numbers game and you deserve all the sales you don't get because sales is really a one on one relationship building game, you know, and it's all about managing relationships and uh well put. So, uh, yeah, but it really, you do need to have some kind of system to gather people's information and then communicate with them, uh, hopefully in a proactive way. Um, You know, where you actually If you really got this down. You actually put people through like video sequencing or video training that establishes your expertise before you even talk to the customer so that they are more presold so that if people go through your little pipeline of like here's how to do business with us. Um, you know, let me, you know, let me teach, then, you know, when you get to people on the phone, you're only dealing with people that are 7, 8s, nines, and 10s, and you're not wasting your time with that whole trust building phase. So yeah, we can automate this uh through a whole bunch of different ways, but you do need to have a system to bring them in to, to educate them, to bring them up to speed, you know, to move them towards the sale, uh, but you know I. I guess when you say, you know, the automation part and everything. The automation part is critical and yet We still live in a people world and so the ability to have social skills and go out and talk to anyone, anywhere, anytime, and then, you know, transition that conversation into a sales conversation. I, I still am a big believer in uh street sales skills. Have the ability to sell to people face to face, the ability to have that conversation. And matter of fact, you know, you can put all the automation in your company, and I still believe that one of the fastest ways to grow your business is to have state of the art, you know, selling. Uh, for every member of your staff will radically improve, uh, what goes on, you know. That be sure you're automated and internet systems all that. Well, it comes back down to the old saying they don't care how much you know until they know how much you care, right? Absolutely. So, uh, you know, you meet people offline or not, maybe you meet them online, but ultimately, you know, you want people to like you and trust you and, and, uh, you know, we can do stuff through Skype and the internet, but you know, when it leads to face to face, it increases the value of the relationships like. Exponentially than somebody that you, you know, oh, here's my product, you know, here's my credit card. That's a, that's a big problem, you know, we have a lot of people today selling information products and, uh, you know, it's good to have information and knowledge and even expertise, but, um, we need more implementation. This is where, this is where people fail in getting to that next level. I mean, it's just so easy to keep going to the river and getting the barrel, you know, than it is to, to, you know, maybe you'll start building that pipeline. But, um, you know, if you don't, if entrepreneurs are funny in the in the way that they start projects but they don't finish them themselves that's true, uh, you know, it, it takes, it takes a while to build that pipeline and then to To, you know, finish it, but when you, once you finish it, you can bear the fruit. And uh this is where people get stalled out. Maybe they have a system, you know, for selling, but they don't have a referral system. Maybe they have a strategy for trade shows, but it's not optimized. Um, but, you know, take, you gotta put that extra effort in, uh, uh, you know, it takes effort to build the pipeline and it's, it's almost counterintuitive. Well, it's, it's great stuff, Joe, and we're, we're running out of time, but I wanna give you a chance to talk about your book a little bit. Is it, what's the name of it and is it available on Amazon or how do people get in touch? Sure, um, my book is Resurrecting America's Entrepreneurial Spirit, subtitles the practical approach of creating jobs. I am a uh a big advocate of the startup entrepreneurs. Uh, you know, because the truth is, is that, you know, when I learned all this stuff about helping people go from 500,000 to 5 million, I wanted to help everybody. The truth is everybody doesn't want to be helped. That's true too, yeah. I mean, get your ego out of the way. Uh, once you do, you know, so, uh, I do have coaching programs for that. Uh, if you go to my website, joecoo.com, scroll down to the middle, there's, uh, my elite marketing coaching programs. It's called the principal centered marketing coaching, and it's actually a program where we build out these systems one by one, for that business owner that's in that 500. That's great. And let me just spell that out for our listeners. It's Joe, J O E. NICASSO.com. And so they can go there and learn more about the program and and get in touch with you, but also maybe do some exercises on there or something like that. Is that what it boils down to there? Um, yeah, I mean, they, they can pick up the phone and, you know, schedule a one on one with me, uh, they, you know, uh, uh, I've, I've had TV appearances. I can go see my TV appearances. I do sales training, you know, there's a lot of different things that I provide to help, you know, others grow, and that's the whole thing. I, I just love helping. You know my fellow entrepreneurs take it to another level. Well, you've given us a lot to think about and we're gonna upload this interview in a couple of days so our listeners can go back and listen again. And we really want to thank you for coming on. I'd like to invite you back sometime and come back on and go more into detail into some of these systems that we've talked about because we, we talked about quite a few of them and I really appreciate you coming on the show. But thanks for having me. Joe, great job. Um, really enjoyed the interview. We're gonna take a short break and we'll be right back. So please stay tuned. You're listening to Exit Coachradio.com, the information station for age 50 plus business owners, where we're interviewing over 250 top advisors for their best tips, ideas, and precautions so you can be well planned. We upload new one minute tips every day. Exitcoachradio.com. Come listen for a minute. Thank you for listening to Exit Coach Radio.