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How I Get Unlimited Leads (No Ads, No Outreach)
Chris Do and guest Matt Essam unveil a system for generating unlimited leads through strategic partnerships.
Chris Do
Founder, The Futur™ · June 24, 2026
Your Leads Aren't Inconsistent. Your System Is.
For most creative entrepreneurs, the number one question is always the same: how to generate leads.
The resulting anxiety fuels a destructive cycle. You say yes to work you don’t want. You lower your prices out of fear. You neglect your best clients while chasing the next project. You hesitate to hire, trapped by the uncertainty of next month's revenue. Stress becomes your default operating system.
Most creative professionals get their work from referrals. This feels good. It’s a vote of confidence. But it’s also dangerously unreliable. Referrals are random, unpredictable, and rarely scalable. This leads to the classic feast-or-famine roller coaster: a frantic scramble for work, followed by a period of intense delivery where all marketing stops, which inevitably creates the next famine.
It feels like a personal failing. It is not.
During a workshop at The Futur, business coach Matt Essam—who has guided executives from Disney, Spotify, and Hyper Island—showed that even the most accomplished creatives face this exact problem. “Even though they were the top of their game creatively,” Matt explains, “even though they had these big names on their portfolio, they still struggled with inconsistent leads.”
This is a symptom of what he calls the talent limit. Your skill as a designer, strategist, or developer can only take you so far. Beyond that point, craft is not enough to build a predictable, oversubscribed business. You need a new system entirely. Not one based on spammy DMs, expensive ads, or the relentless hustle of content creation. You need a system for generating an infinite number of high-quality leads.
Your Business Is Your First Client
Success in business is 80% mindset and 20% strategy. Before you can fix your lead flow, you must fix your thinking. The first and most critical mindset shift is a direct challenge to the service-based instinct to please.
Who is more important: you or your client?
The honest answer for most is the client. This is the root cause of the feast-or-famine cycle. When a new project lands, you throw everything at it. All hands on deck. Your own business, the one that needs consistent nurturing, is forgotten. Like a plant you flood with water before a two-week vacation, it withers from neglect.
The solution is a simple, non-negotiable rule: Your business is your number one client.
This is not a metaphor. It is an operating principle. If you have the capacity to handle four clients, your actual capacity is three. The fourth slot is permanently reserved for your business. Matt’s first instruction is brutally practical: “Open your calendar... and schedule a minimum of 30 minutes a day, which is a meeting with yourself or with your business.”
This two and a half hours per week is sacrosanct. When a potential client asks for a meeting during that blocked-out time, the answer is no. “I have a meeting at that time, but we can schedule for later in the week,” is the correct response. You have an internal meeting. It is just as important, if not more so, than any client call.
The Futur's founder, Chris Do, pushes this logic to its extreme. “What's more important and more valuable to your business, getting the work or doing the work?” he asks. While many reflexively say they are equal, a simple thought experiment proves otherwise. An entrepreneur who only focuses on *doing* the work will eventually have no work to do. An entrepreneur who focuses on *getting* the work can always hire others to execute. They have options.
This reality is explained by Stan Shih’s Smile Curve, a concept from the manufacturing industry. The model shows that the least profitable part of any value chain is the middle: the actual assembly or creation of the product. The highest value is captured at the beginning (R&D, design, sales, marketing) and the end (branding, customer service). As Do bluntly states, “The person who makes the least amount of money is the person who actually makes the thing.”
Prioritizing business development isn't selfish. It is the fundamental responsibility of a business owner. Do himself blocks two full days a week where no one can schedule his time. That time is reserved for thinking, strategy, and working *on* his business. Treating your business as your primary client is the first step to breaking the cycle of inconsistency, a principle he explores in his weekly planning system.
From the Attention Economy to the Trust Economy
The second mindset shift is to decide you will always be oversubscribed. Most agencies stop marketing the moment they get busy. They turn off the tap, not realizing there’s a 90-day delay before the hose runs dry. To escape this, you must generate more demand than you can handle.
It’s simple supply and demand. When supply is limited and demand is high, prices go up. Your time is a finite resource. By creating a waiting list, you not only stabilize your income but also gain the power to charge what you're worth. You should be turning people away. You should be telling new inquiries, “The earliest I can take you on is in two months.”
But how do you create that demand? The conventional advice, popularized by figures like Gary Vaynerchuk, is to dominate the attention economy. Create more content. Post more. Message more people. For many creatives, this feels like a relentless, soul-crushing hustle.
There is a better way. As marketing theorist Seth Godin argues, we no longer live in the attention economy. We live in the trust economy.
“I don't think the challenge is about gaining attention,” Matt says. “I think it's quite easy to get attention these days... but I think it's very difficult to build trust.” This distinction is the key to a more sustainable and powerful lead generation strategy. Matt maps the options on a simple grid:
Cold DMs: Low trust and low scale. Ineffective and feels spammy.
Referrals: High trust but low scale. Wonderful when they happen, but impossible to control.
Paid Ads: High scale but often low trust. You can reach millions, but a cold ad promising 10 clients in 90 days is met with deep skepticism.
Partnerships: High trust and high scale. This is the most underrated and powerful quadrant.
This is where you shift your focus. Stop asking, “Where is my next client?” Start asking, “Where are my next 100 clients?”
The Power of a Single Introduction
Matt’s mentor, the author and entrepreneur Daniel Priestley, once told him something that changed his entire approach to business: “Someone, somewhere woke up today with exactly what you need.”
Matt reframes this for lead generation. Somebody, somewhere today woke up with the attention *and* the trust of your ideal clients. Your job is not to find those clients one by one. Your job is to find that one person a key partner and get them to introduce you.
Instead of going from your agency directly to a prospect, the model shifts:
Agency → Partner → Prospect
Think of it as the difference between showing up to a house party alone versus being introduced by the host. Alone, you have to shake every hand and explain who you are. When the host stops the music, clinks a glass, and says, “Everybody, this is Matt. I need you to meet him,” you gain instant credibility. The party comes to you.
When Matt started his coaching business, he had zero credibility. He was known as the marketing agency guy who built websites. He applied this principle, asking himself who had the trust of his ideal clients. He thought of his friend Laura, who ran a local co-working studio filled with entrepreneurs and creatives.
He didn’t ask for referrals. He created a valuable offer for her community. He ran a workshop, and before he knew it, he was presenting to 30 of his ideal clients. From that single event, he landed his first six coaching clients. He went from zero to a full roster in one day through one partnership. This strategy is central to attracting premium clients, a topic Daniel Priestley himself discusses in a masterclass on high-ticket sales.
There are three primary types of partnerships:
Delivery Partnerships: Subcontracting for another agency or white-labeling services. This is a common starting point for many businesses.
Brand Partnerships: Associating your brand with another, like George Clooney and Nespresso. This builds prestige and recognition.
Distribution Partnerships: Gaining access to another brand's audience, like Nike selling its shoes through Walmart. This is about reach.
The goal is to focus on distribution. These partnerships are the most powerful for rapid lead generation. One client, Izzy, used this method to get his startup-focused agency in front of 80 potential clients by partnering with a single venture capital firm. The VC introduced Izzy’s brand audit to their entire portfolio. One relationship, 80 qualified leads.
The question is no longer whether this works. The question is how to make it work for you.
Crafting Your Magnetic Message
To make a partnership strategy work, you need two things: a crystal-clear message that attracts your ideal client and an offer so valuable that partners feel compelled to share it. This happens through a three-part process: Magnetic Messaging, an Irresistible Offer, and The Trust Grid.
It all starts with specificity. You cannot create a compelling offer for a vague audience. You must choose one ideal client to target for a specific campaign. This doesn't mean you have to niche your entire business forever. It means you are running a focused campaign to get more Bobs, not just more “B2B service companies.”
The first step is a client audit. Look at your last 10 clients and score them based on three criteria:
Revenue: How much did they pay you (High, Medium, Low)?
Impact: How impactful was the work you did for them?
Enjoyment: How enjoyable were they to work with?
This simple exercise will reveal a pattern. The client who scores highest across all three categories is your starting point. This is your Ideal Client Profile (ICP). Not a composite, not a generalization, but a real person. Bob, the 50-year-old CEO of a sales training company with 25 employees and $5 million in annual revenue. You should be able to visualize this person. If you can’t pick them out of a crowd, you aren't specific enough.
As Do emphasizes, many get this wrong by creating a bland composite. “They usually get it wrong because they build a composite of too many different types of clients and it's not any one person,” he notes. The other mistake? “They really don't know their clients at all. So, they just make it up.”
Once you have your specific ICP, you can move to the next, most crucial step: understanding their world.
Mapping the Gap: Speak Their Language, Win Their Trust
The biggest mistake creatives make in marketing is talking about themselves. They talk about their services: branding, web design, strategy. But clients don't buy services. They buy solutions to their problems. And often, they don't even know what solution they need. They only know the pain they feel.
To connect with them, you must understand their journey. Every considered purchase follows a six-phase decision-making process:
Phase 1: Satisfied. They are unaware they have a problem.
Phase 2: Dissatisfied. Something happens, and they become aware of a problem or a pain point.
Phase 3: Decision. The pain becomes unbearable. They decide to actively seek a solution.
Phase 4: Research. They are now in the market, comparing options.
Phase 5: Purchase. They make a choice and buy.
Phase 6: Review. They evaluate their purchase and either become a promoter or return to phase two.
Most marketing targets Phase 4. This is a mistake. Only 8% of your total addressable market is actively looking for your service at any given time. This is also the most competitive phase, where decisions are often made on price. As Do points out, “You're kind of too late to the game. They've already picked who they're going to consider at this point.” This is a race to the bottom. For a deeper dive on this, check out Do's proven strategies to attract ideal clients.
The strategic move is to engage clients in Phase 2. To do this, you must stop talking about your services and start talking about their symptoms. This requires Mapping the Gap—understanding the gap between where your client is now (their frustrations) and where they want to be (their desires), all in their language.
For example, a creative studio niched in motorsports identified their ideal client: a young racing driver rising through the ranks and looking for sponsors. They didn't offer “branding packages.” They created a “Sponsorship Assessment” that told a driver if they were ready to approach major sponsors. The offer was irresistible because it spoke directly to a critical, high-stakes problem the driver was experiencing.
Your task is to swap services for symptoms. Instead of “logo design,” what is the business pain they feel? Maybe it’s embarrassment when handing out a business card. Instead of “website redesign,” maybe it’s losing sales to competitors with a more professional online presence. When you articulate their problem better than they can, they instantly see you as the expert and the only logical choice for the solution.
This is how you move from being a vendor in a crowded market to becoming a trusted guide. This is how you stop competing on price and start winning on trust. This isn't just a lead generation tactic. It's a fundamental shift in how you position your entire business.
The work ahead is clear. Stop chasing clients. Start building the system that brings them to you. Your talent got you here. A strategy built on trust and partnership will take you to the next level.
TRANSCRIPT
The number one question I always get from people is how to generate leads. Today, we're going to have the ultimate master class on how to generate infinite number of leads. And here's the best part, you can do this without being spammy or reaching out to people in DMs. You don't have to create a lot of content. [music] Matt, tell us about the program.
>> So, you're going to walk away with a really clear messaging that attracts your ideal client, an irresistible offer that takes interest and turns it into inquiries,
>> [music]
>> and something I call the trust grid, which is a strategy that [music] will get other people in your network promoting your business for you without you even asking them. [music] Just out of curiosity, how many of you here get most of your work from referrals or word of mouth? Okay, pretty much everyone, right? So, referrals are great. Yeah, we all agree that it's pretty nice when someone says, "Hey, you should go do business with this person." Okay, so what would it be like if you could get referrals that were really consistent, they came to you seeing you as the expert, and they were willing to pay what you currently charge consistently every single month. How would that change your business right now? Wouldn't have to spend money on ads, yeah? How else would it change your business? What do you do now as a result of having inconsistent inquiries and miss the wrong-fit clients coming to you? What are some things that you do that you don't really want to be doing?
>> Not following up on weak leads.
>> Okay, not following up. What else? How many of you say yes to work that you don't really want to be doing, but you're like, "Well, we kind of need some projects this month." Yeah, so taking on non-ideal fit clients. What else? What other behavior? Has anyone ever lowered a a price cuz they're worried like, "Well, if we don't get this project, then where's the next one going to come from?"
>> All the time.
>> Yeah, okay. Anything else? Have a lot of stress, sleepless nights. Maybe don't hire people cuz you're like, "Oh well we kind of don't really know where the leads are coming from. So, if we hire this person, are we definitely going to be able to afford to pay them?"
>> May- maybe take on more of work that is is out of your scope.
>> Take on more work cuz that's your
>> Yeah, out of your personal scope. Like, instead of you building the business that we're talking about earlier, you're back in the business and you might be acting like your old self, your old skillset.
>> Yep. 100%. Any- Anyone think of anything else that you do as a result of all of these negative things, like inconsistent leads, wrong fit clients, low low pricing?
>> Stepping over dollars and uh yeah, to chase to pick up pennies. Like, not paying attention to your core clients. It takes you off the prize.
>> Okay, so maybe neglecting some of your core clients cuz you're out chasing work.
>> Sure.
>> Okay. Cool. Any more for any more?
>> Having to put myself out there to meet other people and get write new content. That's kind of like where I don't like to
>> So, you're putting yourself What is putting yourself out there mean?
>> Yeah, to to get more visibility. Um like, networking and yeah, something I have to like, you know, um and uh I'm an introvert. Like, I I hate having to do that.
>> Okay. So, you're an introvert and you feel like you're pressured to constantly put yourself out there, create content, go to networking events. Yeah. Okay. Cool. So, let me just give you a little bit of context. Over the last 10 years, I've been lucky enough to coach some of the world's leading creatives. And just to give you an example, on this screen, we've got um an ex-VP of Disney, internationally recognized DJs, um guy who worked at Spotify, ex-Typeform, Hyper Island. I could go on. And I'm not telling you this to impress you. The reason I'm telling you this is because when all of these people came to me, they had the exact same problems you guys have all listed. Even though they were the top of their game creatively, even though they had these big names on their portfolio, they still struggled with inconsistent leads. They still hated putting themselves out there, always having to chase, under-pricing, all the things that we've just covered, these people struggle with as well. And I say that to know for you guys to know there's nothing wrong with you. You're not broken. It doesn't mean that you're not good at what you do. It doesn't mean that you're bad at what you do. This is a symptom of something I call the talent limit, which we talked about earlier, right? So, your talent and your craft only gets you so far, but it's not enough to get work consistently in your business and get you over subscribed. And so, this is typically kind of what as a cycle for a studio looks like. These referrals come in, but because they're inconsistent, I can't remember if it was Chris or Hector that said it, but we kind of scramble. We We win the work, we get excited, and then maybe we focus so much on that new client that we neglect some of our existing clients, or we focus so much on that new client that we stop doing the thing that got us the clients in the first place. And so, then we have this whole cycle that repeats and repeats and repeats, and it feels a little bit like this. And as creatives, that doesn't feel like a great place to be, right? Because when it when our income is like this, when our lead flow is like this, you like you said, it feels stressful, and stress isn't a good state to do our best work in, would you agree? Yeah. 100%. So, if we're going to break this Well, I mean, before we do that, who's like Chris said earlier, who's actually committed today? Like 100% in your body to breaking this cycle. Like you have come here today cuz you're like, I am bored of this. I want to do something about it. Just just by a show of hands. Is anyone not Is anyone like 90%? 90 okay.
>> He's perpetually 90%.
>> [laughter]
>> Never gives you 100, man.
>> What What would need to happen for you to be 100%?
>> I think for me it's just more like of a belief thing.
>> Yeah.
>> What would you need to believe in order to be 100%?
>> The most I've ever gotten paid for like a freelance that was like 2K. So, I haven't seen any bigger numbers than that, which for me that's just a very like limiting belief. So, I guess if I consider like the amount of money that it would have take to potentially pay for other people like 10K at least 10K projects.
>> Okay. Let's just separate for a second running a business from this specific problem.
>> Okay.
>> Right? So, all I need from you right now, I don't need you to commit to growing a business or any of that like further. All I need from you is to be 100% committed to solve the problem of inconsistently flow.
>> Yeah.
>> Are you 100% on that?
>> Yes, 100% on that.
>> Awesome. Cool. So, we're all in. So, if we're going to solve this problem, those of you that came to the podcast earlier will know I'm big on mindset. And I believe that success in life is 80% mindset and 20% strategy. So, 80% how you think and how you behave and 20% what you actually do. And so, if we're going to solve this problem, there's two fundamental mindset shifts that we need to make. And these are the two things that I find keep people stuck in this roller coaster cycle. The first one is Let me just ask you guys actually before I tell you. What's Who's more important? You or your clients? Honest answer. Honest answer. What you really believe and what you really think. Who's Show of hands for me. Show of hands Okay. Two. Who's clients? Yeah. Okay. Cool. So, my belief is the reason that we experience this feast and famine cycle is because we make our clients more important than us. And so, the first mindset shift that I want you to make is that your business, you are your number one client. So, why do you think I say that?
>> If we don't take care of ourselves, we can't take care of anyone else.
>> Yep, that's kind of ballpark roughly, but let's get a little bit more nuanced. What does that really mean in the context of business? What do we just describe in this cycle? What happens?
>> Not doing our best work.
>> Not doing our best work. What actually creates the cycle if you think about our actions? What do we do that creates this cycle of feast and famine?
>> Accepting lesser work. Lesser than what our expertise is.
>> You're in the sales cycle and then you're not in the sales cycle.
>> Yeah, we prioritize our clients over our business, right? That's ultimately what we're doing. Hey, there's a new project, all hands on deck. Everything to the client. So, I'll tell you what this means from a very practical perspective. How many clients do you think you can handle at one time at the moment in in let's say a month? Or depending on how let's say your brand sprint is 6 weeks, like how many how many clients could you take through that sprint simultaneously?
>> Four.
>> Okay. So, your real capacity is three. Because it's three plus your business.
>> Five.
>> Yeah, right? So, we don't factor in our business as a client. So, when we're busy, we have no room, we have no capacity to keep doing the things that are going to nurture our business. It's a little bit like going on holiday, right? And you go on holiday and you leave all the plants, you give them a bunch of water, but they're probably not going to look great when you get back in 2 weeks cuz you just gave them a bunch of water and then you just left them. You have to keep gradually watering them every day or every week, right? And so it's the same for our business. And so the one thing that I'd like you all to do as an action right now is I'd like you to open your calendar, whatever calendar you use, Google, iCloud, or whatever, and I'd like you to schedule a minimum of 30 minutes a day, which is a meeting with yourself or with your business. And you can if you need to do this over a block, so if you need to, you know, do 1 and 1/2 hours on a Monday or 1 and 1/2 hours on a Friday rather than 30 minutes a day or whatever, I think that's the right maths, right? You can do that, but I actually want you to block out that time. And that time is the time for you and your business, like the way you treat your clients, "Hey, we need a meeting on a Friday." or whatever your arrangement is, that's for your business. So I'm genuinely like that's your first action.
>> 30 minutes a day?
>> 30 minutes a day. So if you need 2 and 1/2 hours a week. 2 and 1/2, yeah.
>> Can you describe what that looks like working on your business cuz I feel like that's a never-ending thing for me?
>> Yeah, yeah. I will get to that in this process of what you actually do in that hour, but that's the first thing we need to do. And by the way, if you take nothing from this workshop and you just do that and that action is whatever you're currently doing to get clients, like networking events or posting on LinkedIn or whatever it is, that's better than nothing. And if all you took away from today was this action, I would be pretty confident in there in 90 days your business will be in a different place.
>> I'll repeat.
>> I'll repeat, right? Scheduled, repeat every single week. And so what, just quick shout out, what day is that? Is that Have you done it 30 minutes a day? Have you done it one particular day? When have you scheduled it?
>> I scheduled it 30 minutes a day, but it will likely fall into a 2 and 1/2 hour block on Mondays.
>> Okay. What time on Mondays?
>> Um probably starting at noon, I would say. We eat in the office.
>> Okay. So, if a really important client comes along and says, "Hey guys, um we'd love to speak to you. Can you guys do noon on Monday?" What's your answer going to be?
>> It's tough. As of right now, I would say yes, but
>> From today?
>> being honest.
>> Yeah, but from today, what's the answer going to be?
>> It's going to be no.
>> It's going to And what are you going to say?
>> I mean, usually I don't give a reason. I'll just like reschedule. I'll say, "Oh, we're not available during that time."
>> Okay.
>> What is the reason?
>> It's I have it as a BD block, business stuff.
>> Yeah, you have a meeting.
>> We have a meeting.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah.
>> With yourself.
>> Mhm.
>> Yeah, you have an internal meeting.
>> Right.
>> I feel so much tension already. Like, "Oh my god, our business is going to fall apart." I feel like Chris wants to maybe challenge me on this a little bit.
>> Oh, so many, but I'm not going to.
>> Okay, why?
>> I just want to say like, uh I want to rename the studio the crucible because we are only allowed to tell the truth here.
>> Okay.
>> So, if you're not going to do it, don't say you're going to do it.
>> Okay.
>> And if you're if you're going to give some like powerful answer that you won't say, don't say that either. We're only going to get somewhere we just tell the truth. So, Matt, myself, we need to know what you're really going to do or not going to do more importantly, that then we can think about maybe how to help you some other point in time. So, will you Have you blocked this out cuz you're like with the in theory everything feels very soft and ethereal with you. You got it? So, okay, you scheduled it. And so, when somebody says, "Hey, we need a schedule for Monday." You will say what? Now, I need you to say it more emphatically so like I believe because I didn't believe you the first time.
>> I have a meeting at that time, but we can schedule for later in the week. Here's my availability.
>> Perfect.
>> You know?
>> Yeah.
>> I actually have daily um already blocked out for my time and I don't get anybody to uh book on that unless it was a client I was a it's a sales call.
>> Sales are kind of the other end of the flow. Like you've done if you think about lead generation versus sales, there's a delay, right? So your action, whatever you do today, it's not like you go out to a networking event and then tomorrow you have a sales call and sign a 50k client. Might happen once in a blue moon, but probably doesn't happen very often, right? There's like people need to get time to know you. So this time in your calendar is more for the upstream. So it's what is called a lag sales and sales meetings are what's called lag metrics. So they're a lag from what you've done like 90 days ago. So my preference would you would be that you had another day that you take sales calls on. And that day is still for leads and marketing.
>> I think I don't have a problem with this one.
>> So if you follow the logic and you're like if half an hour is good for me a day, wouldn't be an hour be better? And if an hour is good, wouldn't a day be better? And then at some point you say, well, shouldn't I be spending all my time on my meeting internally to me? Is this where this is going at?
>> I don't think so. Do you want to come up here though? I feel like you know you've got no camera on you. So when we go
>> I do have a camera on me so right there.
>> Oh okay, sorry. My bad. My bad.
>> Yeah. Rephrase the question, sorry.
>> If half an hour is good for a meeting with ourselves if we're going to prioritize ourselves, if I am my own number one client,
>> Yes.
>> then could you argue that an hour a day is better than half an hour? And if an hour is better than half an hour, isn't a day better than an an hour? And then if meeting with myself is the most important thing, then 5 days a week sounds pretty important. What do you say to that? And there's there's a this is a real question by the way.
>> Yeah, okay. It depends where you are, right? So if you have if you're really struggling like holy crap, I don't know where my next lead's coming from and you're like, man, I think I should spend an hour a day or 2 hours a day on business development." Then, yeah, sure, because you need leads. If you've got lots of work and you're booked up for a month, and you're like, "Hey Matt, actually, I want to spend another 5 hours a day doing business development." I'm like, "Well, lead flow looks pretty good right now." So, for me, this is relative, but it never goes to zero. So, a little and often every single day. And when you see the rest of the framework, I think you'll understand why 30 minutes a day is actually enough to achieve a high volume of leads. Because we're not doing We're not spending half an hour and an hour going to a networking event or doing cold outreach on LinkedIn or creating content or whatever. You can do all of that stuff if you want, but with the the final part of this, the trust grid, um you only need like two or three partners. And once you've got those established, you're really just checking in and maintaining those relationships.
>> What's more important and more valuable to your business, getting the work or doing the work?
>> I don't think they I think they are equal in merit. Because if you don't get the work, then you don't have any work to do. If you get the work and do a [ __ ] job, then you don't have more work.
>> Okay. Let's use your logic.
>> Okay.
>> Earlier today, you said, "Take one idea thinking, take it to its extreme." Let's say you do very little getting work and mostly doing the work.
>> Mhm.
>> If you keep doing the work, eventually you get no work.
>> Mhm.
>> Right?
>> Yeah.
>> But if you say you don't prioritize getting the work, and you're actually not prioritizing doing the work, and you just get a lot of opportunity,
>> I didn't I didn't say prioritize not doing the work. I said if your capacity to deliver a delightful experience is four clients, it's actually three. So, you are a client. I didn't say
>> No, no, no. I didn't say what you said. I'm just saying if we just say, "What's the biggest priority for any business?" And hopefully, we can get to some truth here. Is it getting the work or doing the work? You're like, "It needs to be 50/50." So, I said, "Let's just go extreme." I'm not saying you said this. I'm just saying let's go extreme where one let's say that between Hector and Ray. Hector is like I'm going to just focus on getting the work. Ray is like I'm just going to focus on doing the work.
>> Mhm.
>> If he focuses on doing the work, eventually he gets no work cuz he hasn't done any marketing or lead, right? Whereas Hector focuses on getting the work, so now he's got so many leads, but he's not prioritizing doing the work.
>> Yep.
>> Who is better off in these two situations?
>> Hector.
>> Of course. So that's why I said if focusing on generating leads is a priority, why not just make it your only priority? Because as you get money in for leads, you just hire people.
>> Yep.
>> Right?
>> Mhm.
>> That's what ad agencies do. That's what some production companies do. In fact, that's what most big successful businesses do. They focus on getting the customer because as turns out the stand sheet smile curve is the person who makes the least amount of money is the person who actually makes the thing. It's the bottom of the value chain. And I know it's a hard message for people to hear, but I just wanted to go extreme so they cuz they're going to default to I don't want to work on getting the work.
>> Mhm.
>> I'm just trying to like pull them in there because I just look at this I don't look at it as lead generation, but your business my business is my number one most important highest priority. That's why I have two days.
>> What's that?
>> Client.
>> Your business is your number one
>> Client.
>> client.
>> Yep.
>> And what's the difference between priority versus client?
>> Priority is my business takes precedence over everything. Client is out of all my clients, that is number one. So in the context of clients, not in the context of everything.
>> Okay. I'm not sure I understand the nuance, but I'm going to keep going flowing with that though.
>> Okay.
>> I was just going to tell people I spend two days where my calendar is blocked off that you can't book me. The team cannot book me. The only person who can break the exception is me.
>> Mhm.
>> And so that that's my default. So I was in there thinking I should have three days booked off and eventually five days booked off where no one could book me for anything except for me.
>> Yeah, I mean that would be a true kind of owner way of operating versus Yeah, yeah, 100%. Yeah, I agree with you. Um Okay, cool. So, that's mindset shift number one. Mindset shift number two is kind of what Chris just alluded to, which is we always want to be over subscribed. So, the common thing I hear agency saying is, "Well, we don't really need to do any marketing right now." or whatever because we've got lots of work. And what they don't realize is they've stopped the tap down here, but they just haven't seen the effect of it yet because it hasn't caught up because there's a delay between when the water stops and when you see it not coming out of the hose anymore. So, we always want more people and it's just really simple supply and demand, right? What's happened to the price of oil right now? It's gone up. What's changed that's made it go up? Less supply. Demand is exactly the same. The only thing that's changed is supply. And so, all of you have a limited supply. And so, the more limited that you make that supply and the higher the demand is, the more money you can charge. And so, that's why I want you to have the mindset of if there's ever less people inquiring about working with us than we have the capacity to work with, there's a problem. You should be saying no to people. You should be saying, "The earliest I can take you guys on is in 2 months or 3 months or whatever that is right?" So, they're the two big mindset shifts.
>> I'm still a bit concerned about time because we've we've only [laughter] just we've only just started getting into the concepts. I want you guys to do some stuff. So, this is the last few bits I'll say is I hear a lot of people, the Gary V's of the world, talking about we live in this attention economy, right? And so, a lot of the advice I see out there is create more, make more content, message more people, spend more money on paid ads. And it can work to an extent, but most creatives I speak to don't want to do this cuz it feels like hustle and B don't have time to do this. And so, I don't think that we live in the attention economy anymore. I think more in alignment with Seth Godin, I think we live in the trust economy. I don't think the challenge is about gaining attention. I think it's quite easy to get attention these days. Write a controversial post, do something stupid online, and attention goes. Chris biting his tongue again. Um
>> [laughter]
>> Uh but, I think it's very difficult to build trust. Right? So, what I want to talk about today is how we build trust at scale. But, essentially, there are kind of four quadrants. And so, on the left-hand side here, we've got trust. On the bottom here, we've got scale. So, how scalable is this? So, up here Up here it's up top a little bit. Can you see it now? Okay, cool. Um this is referrals, right? Referrals are super high trust. But, they're very low scalability. It's very difficult to to scale referrals. Down here at the bottom, you've got these kind of cold cold DMs, one-to-one. Hey, by the way, you guys probably get them all the time on LinkedIn and stuff, right? Hey, by the way, guys, we do this thing. Do you need help with it? It's like, okay. Low scalability. I mean, there are some people who will try and scale this by saying, "Hey, we have this AI automation." There's a bit of a delay on this. Um we have this AI automation thing that can send millions of DMs or whatever, but it's pretty much low trust, low scale. Okay? Then up this end, there's lots of successful people who have scaled their business through paid ads. Very, very scalable. And combined with content, can be high trust. But, in general, a cold ad that you've never seen before to a cold audience, highly scalable, throw more money at it. But, I don't know about you guys, these days I see these offers that are like so good that you can't believe them, right? Oh, we'll get you 10 clients in the next 90 days or you don't pay me anything. How many of you have actually clicked on that thing, booked a call, gone and actually had the call with them, right? Probably not that many, maybe one. Right, okay. Now, there's something here which I think is one of the most underrated strategies that exist and that's what I really want to talk you through today. Um up here in the top right hand corner, there is a way to have high trust and high scale. And it's what I refer to as partnerships. Partnerships okay? So, this man here, does anyone recognize this guy? Daniel Priestley. So, Daniel's been one of my mentors for about 10 years now. This is when I still had hair, as you can see. And when I first started when I first met Daniel and when I first started working with him, he said somewhere something to me which really stuck with me. He said, "Someone, somewhere woke up today with exactly what you need." Someone, somewhere woke up today with exactly what you need. And I realized that I had been thinking about this whole business development thing and marketing thing wrong. I'd been thinking about where is my next client coming from? How do I get my next client? But then I started thinking through the lens of Daniel and I started thinking, why am I not thinking about where are my next 100 clients coming from? And so, the new way, the way that I want to talk to you about today is instead of going agency to prospect, we're going to go agency to partner. And the partner has not only the attention, but the trust of your ideal clients. So, there's I'm going to rephrase this, which I put in the workbook, somebody, somewhere today woke up with the attention and the trust of your ideal clients. And what we're going to do today is we're going to find these people because what I can promise you is they already exist in your network. So, this isn't random people that we have to just try and find on the internet. These are people that probably exist within your network. And we're going to get them to introduce you to your ideal clients. So, it's a little bit like going to a house party and it's the difference between turning up to the house party not knowing anyone, going around, shaking everyone's hand, "Hey guys, I'm Matt. Oh, how what do you do?" blah blah blah. Versus knowing the host of the house party, him stopping the music, clinking a champagne glass, and saying, "Everybody, this is Matt. I need you to meet him. He's an awesome guy. He does all of these things." And then, off you go into the party. That's going to be a different experience, right? Now, I've traveled with Chris for long enough to watch this in effect to the extreme. Chris gets up on the stage in front of hundreds, sometimes thousands of people, and as soon as he gets off that stage, people are in a queue to talk to him. Now, obviously, Chris has done a lot prior to that building up to getting on that stage, but I've even experienced this for myself. So, when I started this business, I the business that I run now, before I was I ran a marketing agency, and I decided I wanted to be a business coach/life coach. That was the thing that I wanted to do, and I came out into this market, and I had zero credibility. Cuz I wasn't known as a life coach or a business coach. I was I was the guy that built your websites, that did your social media management. And so, I thought about this principle, and I thought, "Who has woken up today with the attention and the trust of my ideal client?" And I remembered my friend Laura, and Laura ran a co-working studio just down the road from me. And so, I said to Laura, I was like, "Hey Laura, I'm starting this new business. I've got all of these ideas. I think they might be useful for some of the people in your co-working." We had a conversation. I ran through a very specific framework, which I'm going to teach to you guys. And before I knew it, I was giving a presentation to 30 of my ideal clients. So, I went from knowing nobody to being introduced by Laura, who had trust and credibility, 30, and that was my first day with my first six clients. From those 30 people there, I got six clients. They're my first six clients as a business coach. Then, I just kept applying that strategy. So, then I thought, "Who else do I know?" And my speaking engagements gradually just got bigger, and so I was speaking at things like the Google campus. And some of you may have seen my videos on the future channel. And this keeps going, right? So I'm technically now borrowing Chris's audience. And I believe that if we deliver enough value to people that already have the attention and the trust of our ideal clients, they will happily share us with their ideal clients. And so that's the strategy that I really want to talk about today. I'm going to handle some yeah, buts in a minute. But does anybody got a yeah, but or a question that isn't on this slide?
>> Is partnerships uh the same as like subcontracting with another agency? Because that's how I've actually built my business and been around for 20 years.
>> It's a form of it. I don't want to get too much into the nuances right now, but there's essentially three different types of partnership. So there's delivery partnerships, which is subcontracting for another agency or kind of white labeling. There's distribution, which is literally just getting in front of other people's audience, and then there's brand. So if you think about, let's say George Clooney and Nespresso, that partnership with Nespresso is purely a brand partnership, right? People think of George Clooney, they think of Nespresso, they associate those two things. That's why they want that relationship. If you think about maybe like Nike for example, and they bring out a new trainer, and they partner with Walmart, that's purely a distribution strategy, right? They just want to get as many trainers in front of as many people as possible. Um and then if you think about a delivery partnership, that might be someone like uh Bose who partner with Porsche or Mercedes and they say, "Hey, we we're going to have a deal so that our speakers go inside every car that you make." Does that make sense? So there's kind of different types. And so that is an example of a delivery partnership. My preference today is that you walk out of here with some ideas of distribution because they're more powerful in my opinion. If you can get something that ticks all three, then that's where the kind of real gold is. Another question is yeah, but I wrote some down here just from the I get from my clients. So like my example was speaking, I don't want to be a speaker, I run an agency. And so I'm just going to tell you about a few people that do this and don't speak. Um why would people promote my business? We're going to talk a little bit about how we get that. I tried this before, I asked for referrals all the time. Have you got one?
>> I'm just going to make up one for the group.
>> Okay, cool.
>> Yeah, but why would the host promote me?
>> Yep. So you're going to create an offer that is so valuable to your host that they can't help but introduce you to the party. You're going to have something that makes them look good and that brings value to the party so that they would feel stupid not introducing you. Okay, so I just want to give you a few quick examples and then we're going to do the first bit of homework. So these guys run a creative studio and their niche is kind of in the motorsport um area. So this client they got was from an asset they created which we're going to create today called a scorecard or an assessment and that person shared it with that uh with their network and they got something like 25 leads in about 3 hours. But from that they got a big client and the thing that I love about this was this was their Just zoom in a little bit so you guys can see that. Um this is the coolest part about this I think. So this was the first project, sorry there's a bit of delay on this I think. Or it's just not working. Yeah, there we go. Right, this is the first project that we've had which hasn't been through word of mouth or referrals in 3 years. Okay, and these are just normal guys that are speaking, they don't do podcasts, they don't do any of that stuff right? Um this is Adam and this I chose this cuz this was the funniest thing. He set up a little notification that when anyone filled in the form, he got this little note, "Hey Adam, someone has completed the form for the free brand audit. This [ __ ] might actually be working." So that's a good example of someone that didn't maybe quite believe the strategy would work at the beginning. And this is Izzy. Izzy uh uses startups and scale-ups, that's his ideal clients, and he had a couple of VC partners that put in front of 80 startups in their portfolio. Right? So one person, 80 potential ideal clients through one relationship. That's what I want you guys to get, right? The power of this. You only need a handful of partners to have hundreds and hundreds of ideal clients or hundreds of conversations. Okay. I'm not going to draw on this. I'm going to talk you through it cuz it will take me too long. But there's three parts to this that we're going to we're going to implement today. Um the first one is we're going to create magnetic messaging. So we're going to pick an ideal client who you want to get in front of, and we're going to really understand their challenges, their pain points, their desires, what's going on in their world, so that when you create an offer or you create something, it speaks directly to them. And what I want you guys to get is that we're not pivoting your whole business here. I'm not saying that today you have to walk away with a new niche or a new positioning. Think of this is like a So you guys are kind of website marketing. Think of this as a campaign. This is just a campaign you're going to run for a particular type of client. But specificity is the key here. The more specific we are, the easier this is going to be. So to give you to go back to the example of Jack and the creative studio, what they created within their niche, when we identified their ideal client, they realized their ideal client was a young racing driver who was rising up through the ranks and was looking for new sponsors. Right? That was their ideal client. And so what they created was this was a sponsorship assessment. And so they filled this assessment in and it told the racing driver whether they were ready to go after the big sponsors. Right? And so that was their assessment. So do you see how specific that is for such a specific person? And that's why it was so shareable. Like wow, this is really cool and really valuable cuz it's so specific to their challenges. Right? So I want you to not be broad. So we're going to get very magnetic messaging. Um I'll talk about the decision-making thing in a minute. Then we're going to create an irresistible offer. So we're going to use that messaging to kind of hook people in and then we're going to build today together we're going to build an assessment which I believe is the kind of first step, the easiest thing that you can build as an irresistible offer. Obviously you can come up with more ideas and different ways of skinning the cat, but I want you to leave today with something really tangible. And then we're just going to test this message with a few people and see how it starts to land. And then finally we're going to look at this trust grid, right? Who are the people in the in our network right now that already have the attention and the trust about ideal clients? How do we create something like Chris said, why would this person promote what I do? How do we create something that makes it a no-brainer for them to share? And we're just going to create a really basic agreement. Hey, we're going to do this for you guys and you're going to do this for us. So that's the overview of what we're going to what we're going to cover today. Has anyone got any questions on those three parts specifically because the next thing I'm going to do is get you guys to do some homework. So if you jump over to the workbooks, here's what I want you to do. I want you to go through your last 10 clients or the your latest 10 clients, however you want to think about it. And I just want you to fill out that spreadsheet. Right? Um and then you're basically going to going to rank them on a few things in that spreadsheet. If I So business name, what industry are they in? Who's the main contact? What's their role? And then total revenue generated for you. So, it's going to give you a a high, medium, or low option. So, in the scheme of all the clients you've worked with, did they pay you really well? Did they pay you okay? Or did they pay you really poorly? Um how impactful do you feel the work was? And then how enjoyable were they to work with? So, you're just going to rank them and then you'll get an automatic client score.
>> Okay. And for clients, previous clients?
>> Last 10 clients. Pre- Yeah, past 10. And if they're current clients, and that's working for you, then that that works as well. There's not I'm going to try and do this like quite methodically because otherwise people get lost. I know it might seem a little bit paint by numbers, but we created a little client avatar GPT. So, if you click that avatar GPT, it should open up in a a new tab. Um and you're just going to click help me pick an ICP. And then what you're going to do is you're going to take this Hate to if you're on an iPad, this might be a little bit tricky for you, so you can just describe it to the GPT. But for everybody else, if you're on a laptop, you can just go file and then download and just download this as a an Excel document. And you can just upload it into the GPT.
>> So, does this exercise supposed to find the actual person that you did well with with that particular company?
>> Yes.
>> Because my GPT just spat back a generalization. You CPG CEO. I I should choose a an actual person and an actual company, right?
>> Yes, correct.
>> Okay, I understood.
>> Yeah.
>> Thank you. This information.
>> Okay. So, if you You to the workbook There is uh something here which says client avatar form. If you click on that, then it should bring up this. We just need this filled in basically ASAP. So, I know this feels a bit tedious, but like this part is fundamental for making the rest of it work. If we don't have this specific person in our mind, then the rest of it just becomes really hard. Who is this person? Like, if I said to you, "Who's this ideal client?" you should be able to describe them and we'll go, "Oh, yeah, I can imagine somebody like that. I can think of someone like that." So, not like "Oh, CEOs." It's like CEOs is not an ideal client, right? We want Jeffrey, who's a project manager at this Fortune 500 company in the medical space. Yep, got it? Cool. Are we good? Okay, cool. So, the next thing we're going to do Oh, it's trigger. I'll stay standing up because Um the next thing we're going to do is we're going to do something called mapping the gap. Mapping the gap is figuring out where they are now and where they want to be. Most importantly, in their language. So, when we think about frustrations and we think about desires of our ideal clients, one of the common mistakes that creatives make is they talk about the frustrations and desires from their perspective, through their lens. So, they say things like they don't have a great brand or their website isn't good enough or all of these things. And that's fine, but your ideal client probably won't resonate with that unless they're looking for that particular thing right now. Okay? I'll talk a little bit about the decision-making process because I think it might be helpful. But Chris, like do you want to add anything here in terms of what when you do this with your clients' frustrations, etc. Any like common mistakes or examples that you can think of where people really get this wrong versus where they get it right?
>> Yeah, they usually get it wrong because they build a composite of too many different types of clients and it's not any one person. And the second mistake they make is they really don't know their clients at all. So, they just make it up random things and it's not logical. It's not consistent.
>> Yeah, cool. So, we've got a GPT to help you, but what I want you to do is once you've got these frustrations and desires, actually go talk to the person you just wrote down and see if these things actually resonate. Like, is this on the mark or am I totally off? Do you experience these things or do you not? Right? So, a little bit of validation there. So, I just want to quickly talk about the decision-making process just for 1 second because I think um it's really important. So, I talked about this earlier, but I'll do a very quick whistle-stop tour for you guys who weren't here earlier and YouTube. Um as humans, when we're making a considered purchase, there are basically six phases that we go through. We start at phase one where we're not really aware that we have a problem. We're pretty satisfied with life as it is. Then something happens and we move to stage two where we become aware that there is a problem or we're we're dissatisfied. Okay? So, if you think about anything that you've bought recently in your life that was a considered purchase. So, not like you just went to the shop and bought a new pair of jeans. Like, you've been thinking about it for a while. You can probably identify with this. Right? Then we stay in this stage two for a while where we're not really happy, but then something happens. The phrase the straw that broke the camel's back. And we're like damn it, I've had enough of this thing. I'm going to go and get whatever it is or I'm going to change this. And then we go out into the market and we start looking at the options. What am I going to do? Am I going to buy this phone or am I going to buy that phone or am I going to buy this car or am I Maybe we've already kind of got the thing that we want in our head and as soon as we make the decision we go from three to four and kind of skip to five. But most people do a little bit of research at stage four. They look at the options. Is this, you know, even within the range? is am I going to buy the MacBook Air or am I going to buy the MacBook Pro, right? We might have already decided on a MacBook. Then we make the purchase. And then we review that purchase. And if you're a weirdo like me, you actually go back onto YouTube and watch the reviews and compare it to your experience and see if those two things match up. Right? So, we're constantly reviewing this. And if we're not happy, we go back to stage two. Like, "Ah, this thing isn't what I thought it was going to be." Right? And we either return it and then that person has buyer's remorse, or we're super happy and we become the referrer and we tell all our friends about it and we go back to stage one. Does this make sense? Can you think of something that you've purchased that kind of this cycle clicks for you?
>> Yeah, it's like you're out shopping with your friends who are much more fashionable and they're like, "Your pants are too tight." And [laughter] you're like, "I was totally satisfied with the
>> 100% satisfied, yeah.
>> Then they bring you to your shop and show you other things and you still are not aware, so you stay in that unaware state.
>> Yeah, exactly that. For example,
>> Perfect Somebody, yeah, who knows?
>> That may have happened at some point. Not real life.
>> Definitely not real life.
>> Um So, here's the crazy thing about this. Most people think that stage four is the best place to engage with our ideal clients because our clients are out there looking for a rebrand, they're looking for a website. The problem with stage four is number one, it's only about 8% of the total addressable market. So, only 8% of your market is at stage four right now looking for the thing that you have. The other thing about it is what? When people get to stage four, what are they typically comparing services on? Price. Yeah. They want to know, "How much does it cost? Is this thing any good? Like, what's the quality like? And how fast can I get it?" So, we fall into the good, fast, cheap trap. They're the only We What's the Do one, maximum two, but never do all three.
>> I think also, in addition to price, you're kind of too late to the game. They've already picked who they're going to consider at this point, and you're a Johnny-come-lately to the situation. It's kind of like you found out the agencies bidding on these four firms, and you're like, "Oh, I want to get on that." And you seem desperate, and it's like, "No, we're not going to consider you. We've already gone through the not assessment, procurement period, and we already know who we're talking to."
>> And even if you are one of those four agencies, there's only so many variables that you can pull, right? Um and it's the most competitive. If you think about it, right? Everyone's trying to get to that point, attention, spend money on Google Ads, SEO. If anyone's ever seen one of those posts on Instagram or Facebook or whatever or LinkedIn, "Hey guys, I'm looking for a graphic designer. Does anyone know anyone?" What happens within 10 minutes? There's like 100 comments. "Oh, you got to speak to Chris. No, no. You got You can't You know, like you got to speak to Ray. No, you got to speak to this person." It's like, "Well, who do I speak to, right?" So, what we're going to talk about here is how do we engage people at stage one and two of the decision-making process, and how do we take them ourselves to stage four so that we become the only choice? And when they assess the options, they're not assessing the options of the market, they're assessing the options that we're presenting to them, the options of our different packages or the way that we work. Does that make sense? Cool. So, if we're going to do that, when we talk about frustrations and desires, we have to talk about those frustrations and desires as symptoms that people at stage two would be experiencing, not as services which we provide at stage four. So, the big shift is swap services, websites marketing branding etc. for symptoms. And that's how we want to communicate, and that's what we want to write down here, okay? So, I have built a little GPT that's going to help you with this. You may know some of these answers already, but there are two things here. There's this map the gap exercise, so you can click on this. Um exactly the same every time. Make a copy. And then there's a client avatar GPT which you're already working with, right? So, once you've got this client avatar, you can either just upload the the sheet that we're working on here. You can upload this into the GPT and say, "Hey, help me map out some frustrations and desires of this person. You might know some of these already. Now, the GPT isn't perfect. So, if you find it coming back with things that you think, "Mhm, this is a little bit stage four. This is a little bit too close to like branding or websites." Just push the GPT and just say, "Hey, this is These are kind of stage four or these are too much related to branding. I want you to talk more about the symptoms that they're they're experiencing, the things that my ideal client is saying." Once we get this part right, this is kind of the bulk of the This is the hard bit done. Everything else downstream from here becomes easier. This is the kind of hardest thing and most important thing to nail. So, I think this is probably the bit where maybe we we workshop a few ideas and just make sure that people are on track. So, if you think you know some of these frustrations and pain points and desires already, just get them down into this document. If you don't, then use the GPT and ask it, "Hey, this is my ideal client. What do you think the frustrations and desires of this person would be?"
>> Um one of our ICPs are B2B services. Um they're
>> Well, just let's just do it like this, right? Read out I I want you to read out exactly this document. So, what's the name? How old are they? What's the role?
>> What is their name, please?
>> Okay.
>> Yeah.
>> Okay. First name is Bob.
>> Yeah.
>> Um age, I'd say around like 50s. Role is founder CEO.
>> Cool.
>> Business snapshot, um B2B services. Team size is about 5 to 25 employees. Revenue is 500k to 5 million annually.
>> What industry? So, you say B2B services. What does that mean? I'm not 100% clear on
>> Like, what would you
>> Sales training.
>> Be specific. Yeah.
>> Okay, so put sales training.
>> Sales training?
>> Yeah.
>> Okay.
>> Do you want me to do a whiteboard on this? The problem with the profile you have is super generic and broad. The The way I do this is if I can't visualize this person in my mind, it's not good enough. Like, I want to see Bob walking down the street and say, "That's Bob right there." So, if we're in a room of a thousand people and you say, "Find Bob." and you read that, they would not be able to find Bob.
>> Mhm.
>> Make sense? Because a company doesn't make between 500 to 5 million. A company does 3.2 million.
>> a person, right?
>> It has to be a person.
>> Okay.
>> It's really critical because when we try to voice their frustrations, we're not trying to voice the frustrations of an industry. Bob, believe it or not, represent There's a lot of Bobs out there, but the way you're doing it is like it's so broad.
>> Mhm.
>> Okay?
>> Yeah, I think I wrote this out a little more like about the company.
>> Yeah.
>> pinpointed to actually the person that we're
>> Yeah. So, the person So, the person is still Bob, but what What Chris meant is like the company doesn't do that range either. Like,
>> I wrote
>> So, I mean, I don't know in America, but in the In the UK, like, on LinkedIn, it tells you what the the range is and like what Whatever you said it isn't a range, right? It's like I think it's like zero to 150,000, 150 to 500, 500 to a million Like, you know, the ranges are much smaller
>> Mhm.
>> than that. So, I think we need to get a bit more specific on that. And then in terms of the company or industry, it's like if they do sales training, it's sales training. It's not like B2B services.
>> Mhm.
>> Does that make sense? Cuz like loads of things are B2B services, right? So, when we When we create an irresistible offer, we're going to create an irresistible offer for Bob. We're not going to create an irresistible offer for B2B services cuz it's not going to be valuable because how can it be if it if it's just a mass appeal to B2B services? It can't be specific enough to be valuable.
>> I think that's where we've struggled with our outreach or marketing is we are too broad and and we've helped a lot of clients
>> Yeah.
>> that we've enjoyed and we've also profited off of.
>> So again, I don't want you to niche the whole business right now today. I just want you to run a campaign to get more inquiries from Bob.
>> Yeah. Yeah.
>> Yeah?
>> We do need to think about the B2B services aspect of like who exactly within that we want to pinpoint.
>> And just choose
>> For today, just choose one.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah?
>> Yeah.
>> Okay. It's okay for you to do this not perfect, but at least you're doing it the correct way.
>> Mhm.
>> It's more important that it be correct and then you can go back in and do a different one. But at least now you know what to do. So there's a general rule of thumb cuz a lot of people are like, I have no idea how much my clients make. Rule of thumb is in corporate America for every employee they have, it's about $200,000 of revenue. Rule of thumb. So a 25-person company should be doing about $5 million in revenue. Rule of thumb. Okay?
>> Okay.
>> And then you can also use Perplexity or Gemini or something else to cross-reference that to make sure Bob lives in Southern California, runs a sales training company with about 25 employees based on whatever data that is publicly available, what you guesstimate as to what they do in terms of annual revenue.
>> Mhm. Okay.
>> But general rule of thumb. Now, I I know business um averages, so that when somebody builds a profile and I listen to it, I'm like, it's off. I can tell you right now it's wrong. So try to do that as accurately as you can for one person. You'll see the benefit immediately.
>> Got it.
>> So for example, if I were to tell you my ideal client works in entertainment, do you know who that is? Um they work in the video game space and they are an execu- executive creative director. Do you have a better picture of who this person is? And if I tell you it's a man and that person's 34, does that help you? So, you That's what we're trying to get to because I can then start to predict the problems and the challenges, the goals, the hopes, and the dreams, and the fears of that person versus a really broad industry.
>> Got it.
>> Okay, who else has got one?
>> So, the reason I got you to do the previous client exercise is cuz I actually want you to pick a previous or existing client. So, when you're thinking through this, I want it to be a real person. Cuz that's the only way to avoid the trap of what Chris just said, which is making it too broad. Right? So, we are thinking about uh we know this person because we've done work with them in the past. So, we should be able to answer some of these questions around the frustrations and the
>> Client avatar, it should be a real person or should be a fictitious person that is like a real person?
>> Should be a real person.
>> Okay. And that we that we've all that we've worked with that we've worked with.
>> Yeah, got it. Thank you.
>> No problem.
>> Cool. Megan, 38-ish. Uh 250 million CMO of 38.
>> Now, of what CMO of what?
>> Oh, oh, food manufacturing company.
>> Okay.
>> What kind of food?
>> Uh big box food and grocery. So um
>> Processed foods?
>> Processed foods.
>> Okay.
>> Yeah. Cool, that works. So, let's just stick with you for a minute. What What frustrations and desires have you come up with for Megan?
>> Oh, um let's see here. Frustrations, marketing and creative of work moves through an inconsistent workflow. Brand execution varies across customer-facing materials. Projects slow down because responses and approvals take too long.
>> Okay. Thoughts, Chris?
>> That one straddles between what they might say and what you would say. I would like for you to err more on how they would say it. A lot of times we we make the avatar say what we want cuz we deliver on those services.
>> Mhm.
>> You have to forget about you for a minute.
>> Sure.
>> And just really dive into that. So, if you plug in this information into whatever AI engine and ask them what are What's your name, Meg?
>> Megan.
>> Ask it what are Megan's most likely to say about their frustrations.
>> Mhm.
>> And using their language. And see what it would say and compare to your answers okay?
>> Okay.
>> Is that what it said?
>> It That's what it said. What I put in based on what I know about her with Go ahead. I mean, she's complain is inconsistent workflow, inconsistent branding, slow response.
>> Slow response time. Slow response time from
>> Just projects. We're on retainer, so they're constantly getting us work.
>> So, here here's how the difference might be and we can argue about this. She's a CMO.
>> Yeah.
>> Megan. Of a really big company.
>> Yeah.
>> I don't think she would say, "Guys, we have a problem with slow response time." I just don't imagine her in a meeting and she would say that. What would she say?
>> Well, she's like the coolest CMO ever, so she's like, "Hey Hector, I've noticed that blah blah blah."
>> No, you're not even in the room, bro. I'm talking about she's having a meeting
>> Oh.
>> internally.
>> Okay.
>> See, you already designed your situation for her to talk to you.
>> Got it.
>> that's pretty awesome, but let's stay real. She's having a meeting, she's really upset, and and the heads of departments, senior vice presidents in the room. What is she saying?
>> I expect this stuff to be done within x amount of days and I need to make sure that happens. And I'm frustrated because it's not happening on a consistent basis. We're not getting brand alignment.
>> Well, just one thing at a time.
>> Okay.
>> So, you see the language change a little bit? Like, "I'm frustrated that we keep missing deadlines. I can't be running a you know, quarter billion dollar company here when you all can't deliver."
>> Right.
>> As cool as you want to be, she's still the boss.
>> Sure.
>> Bosses don't be like, "Well, strategically we're not hitting quarter four." They don't talk like that.
>> Right.
>> That's you, you know, like when you watch a movie and they speak dialogue that you're like, "No human talks like that." You're writing like that writer.
>> Mhm.
>> Write like Quentin Tarantino. It's like, I think that's how they talk.
>> Yeah.
>> Okay?
>> Okay.
>> The more you can do that, the better we're going to be. Yes?
>> Another mistake that we often make with these symptoms and these challenges is we talk about them very much as stage four in terms of when that project is being delivered. So, like, missed deadlines and all these things are only applicable when the project is on the table, when the project is being delivered. Now, the problem with that is, what happens for the rest of the time? And so, one of the challenges that creatives come with me and they say is, you know, I have all these great conversations, but the client doesn't have a project right now. They don't have any projects for me. So, they just sit there twiddling their thumbs waiting for a project. But, that's very much a kind of worker mentality. What we're trying to do is we're trying to shift up the chain so that we anticipate these problems and challenges before they become problems and challenges. So, before deadlines are missed, what mistakes are they making and what are they saying to themselves? What's happening in their day-to-day world before they get to that point where the project is actually being delivered.
>> I guess it's a long process, so I don't know internally where they start. I just know when it affects me and what past frustrations have been like and how we've resolved them.
>> Yeah. This is a fairly common response, especially the bigger the corporation. There's so many middle management between you and them, so it's really hard for you to figure it out. I'm pretty sure if you ask the machine, if I'm at stage four, what would stage two sound like, reverse engineer from that.
>> Okay. Cool.
>> That's what I'm trying to get to. See, so, it's one thing for us not to hit the bull's-eye, it's another thing for us not to know where the bull's-eye is. We're just spinning around in the dark taking shots. You all should know this is the bull's-eye and this isn't it, and then your creative brain will figure out how to find that answer.
>> Okay.
>> And you could do an informational interview. It's like, "Uh Megan, uh if you can spare 7 minutes of your time for an informational review, I'm trying to figure out where CMOs like you get stuck. There's nothing to sell or nothing to buy, I promise you. And you know, coffee's on me."
>> Mhm.
>> Something like that.
>> Yeah.
>> Okay?
>> Cool.
>> Yeah, because they don't You know, I can tell because what you're saying has been sanitized through three layers of middle management, then you get the project. They're not telling you what it sounds like from their point of view. Right? It's like she might say something like, "We are 60 days behind industry average from uh go-to-market strategy." She might say something like that. And she's not happy.
>> Yeah. I wonder if I picked the wrong client because we've been doing work with them for 15 years and on retainer for 12 of those 15 years. I rarely speak to them. They send the It's almost like I rarely speak. We just have a
>> You You didn't pick the wrong client. You just haven't taken the time to do what Chris just said.
>> You haven't had that 7-minute conversation with them.
>> I have audited and I have heard and she hasn't had many complaints
>> She hasn't had complaints about your service.
>> Correct.
>> Yeah, we're not talking about your service.
>> Okay. We're talking about
>> Their world. What's happening in their world. People only really care about their world.
>> Sure.
>> So
>> Okay.
>> You only become relevant when something in their world changes where you need to be relevant.
>> Okay.
>> I need you for this project cuz it's now all of a sudden relevant in my world. That time window is tiny.
>> Sure.
>> The rest of the time they're existing, they're just getting on with their lives. And what creatives find hard is to try and kind of crowbar themselves into their world so that all of a sudden there's work for them.
>> Okay.
>> Right? How many of you have felt like you're just not a priority? Like you're trying to talk to this client and you just Yeah.
>> Oh, for sure.
>> time. Why are you not a priority? Because you haven't said anything or you haven't positioned yourself in a way that is relevant to what is actually going on in their world. So, your project and your work is like number 10 in their priority list of [ __ ] that they need to think about on a daily basis. This exercise is trying to get you to make it number one. If you can figure out what is going on day-to-day that they are losing sleep over, that they're talking about in the boardroom, that they are literally pointing to with their team, and you can start meeting them where they are with that language, you all of a sudden go from a 10 priority to a one priority. Holy [ __ ] maybe Chris knows something that we don't. Hold on, what was that thing you just said? Oh my god, I had that thought the other day. What am I missing here? Hey Chris, you know that thing you just wrote on LinkedIn or you know that message you just sent me the other week about when you wake up and that's exactly what just happened to me.
>> Hector, do you consider yourself a proactive person or a reactive person? Quite proactive. What you're doing is reactive. You don't respond until it's ready to be a real thing. And first of all, I want to say congratulations. Anybody who's had a client for 15 years and giving you steady work is an amazing thing. Let's not take that for granted. That's pretty cool. But you're only waiting for them to call you, that's called reactive. So, now we're going to be a dog that goes out to hunt and we're going to find new game, even if it's within the same client or clients just like them. So, we're going to go from a passive to an active role. And I'll tell you something, I'm going to pretend like right now you sell hammers. Sure. So, you're looking for nails. Sure. And all you only tune in when you hear a nail, it's like I got a hammer, but only at the point in which they have a nail and they they want to drive something into the wall. What When we do business strategy, especially for creative agencies, is we're like put away, you sell nothing. Let's go on onto more of a consultative level business strategy and try to understand what their needs are, some of which we're not interested in or nor can we service, but there's lots of other things we might be able to service that we never even thought about. And here's the cool part. If you wrote that article on LinkedIn that touched upon a pain point that she has, she might say, "Hey team, check out this guy, Hector. He's doing his thing. We need to talk to him." And that's where they smile and say, "We already work with him, boss." You've done your job.
>> Okay.
>> But right now, you're not even talking to her at all. You're so far down the food chain, you don't even know that. You're in the I've already identified a problem. We already set a set a budget, and we're going to call a couple of people. We'll just call Hector again. He always does good work.
>> Perhaps I'm getting lazy, but
>> Well, let's not use a label judgment.
>> Okay.
>> It's just you don't know any better until right now, which is cool.
>> Sure. They bonused us out every year without us
>> Congratulations.
>> And raise our retainer every year even though
>> you doing here then? No, I was just asking a question.
>> the wrong This is my ideal client.
>> Great.
>> I love my I need 10
>> you like two of them or you'd like your ideal client to be your super ideal client?
>> I have four. They're my best, and I need five more just like them.
>> Okay.
>> That's why I'm here.
>> Well, fantastic.
>> Yeah.
>> We'll do that exercise then.
>> Cool.
>> I hate skipping ahead with things, but I'm super conscious of time. Um there's one other thing we need to do, and then we're going to go and build an asset. So, imagine that LinkedIn post, and imagine at the bottom of the LinkedIn post, there's something that will assess where they are. We'll assess that gap between where they are now and where they be, and it's going to give them a score, and it's going to show them where they can improve to get from A to B. That's what we're going to build together. And the reason I'm going to get you guys to build an assessment today is cuz I believe it's one of the fastest and most powerful things that you can build for your ideal clients. So, think about when you have something wrong with you and you go to the doctor. What do they do? When you step into that doctor's office, what do they do?
>> Ask questions.
>> They ask you questions. And what are they doing? What are they trying to establish by asking you questions?
>> Create a profile of you.
>> Hm.
>> Or or or um find a problem.
>> Yeah. Well, they're trying to find the problems cuz you're coming in with symptoms, but what you want to know is what's creating these symptoms. Right? That's why you go to the doctor, cuz if you knew, then you would just know what the exact problem is. But we don't, do we? We Google the symptoms, and then we look at the things that are the worst they could possibly be that come up, and we tell ourselves we've probably got that thing. Right? But we're not the expert, the doctor is. And we see them as an expert, because they're able to listen to symptoms diagnose what's wrong with us, find the problem, and then present us with a solution or some options. Well, we're going to do that exact same thing for our clients.
>> The metaphor is great. It's not accurate.
>> Okay, why?
>> Because, at least in America, Americans Western doctors don't actually treat the problem. They always treat the symptom. You got a cough? Oh, we'll get rid of the cough. You could have asbestos or mold growing in your house, they do not really address that. So, the theory is, and if you just really study how doctors work, it tells you a lot about how you might want to work. First of all, the doctor comes referred, right? And you go in there, before you can make an appointment, the the whoever it is asks you why you're seeing the doctor, so you have to tell them something. They write a report, and when you come in, you don't just get to see the doctor. They put you on the scale, they take your temperature, they do all the basic diagnostics first, and then you wait wait in a room. And then the doctor, who's reading the thing outside, is prepping right then and there for the sales call, goes in, has assumptions about what you may may not be uh be suffering from, and depending on how good they are, they ask you a series of very calibrated questions to eliminate possibilities of what it may or may not be, cuz you come in self-diagnosed. Right? And the better they are, the the fewer questions they got to go through, cuz it's like, okay. And if it's something really serious, they're going to go for more expensive tests or refer out to a specialist. Really study that. Now, you can ask yourself, do you want to be a general practitioner, or do you want to be the specialist, and how do you want to run the business? And and you know like there's a rookie in the room like they're a doctor in training cuz they're asking you all sorts of weird there's a wild goose chase when the real doctor is like okay cough one time okay chance are it's these two things I'm going to run one quick test and we'll know sit sit tight for 5 minutes. That's how they work and then they prescribe and you're done.
>> So let's just imagine they're a good doctor. So I appreciate that is very true about medicine but let's imagine they're a good doctor, right? So before we create that what we want to know is what questions are we going to ask to figure out if this person needs to go to a specialist or if they're okay just here or or whatever, right? And so there's there's kind of two versions of this. The first one is the qualifying criteria. So what makes someone an ideal client? Now this should be quite easy because we've got the ideal client in our mind. So we should just be able to say well they're generating this much revenue they have these kind of frustrations and challenges but there might be a few other things that they have or we need to know about them in order to determine whether they're an ideal client. So just quickly this exercise we're going to do and then we're going to get into building something. If you just click here on page number seven the qualifying criteria template and there's kind of four to five types of qualifying criteria we want to look at. The first one is their current situation. So if your ideal client is doing 250 million in revenue and someone fills out a form and says that they're doing less than 100 grand are they an ideal client? No. Right? So we want to give them some options so that they can self-select and say I'm one of one of these people, right? It's a bit like if we stick on the doctor analogy if I'm a an adult GP and someone fills in a form and they're under 12 they probably don't want to see me they want to see a pediatrician, right? Cool. So, that's the first one. Then the biggest challenge, we just want to list the things that we've come up with. So, they're going to select one of these things. So, it could be three, could be five. This is more just data for us. As we're going to create this assessment, we want to collect some of this data. And same with the desired outcome or solution. So, hopefully this should be a kind of copy and paste exercise where we just get this in. The fourth thing we ideally want to know is how urgent does this feel. So, if you think about when you come with symptoms, the doctor's trying to figure out like do we need to send you to the emergency room or do we need to just give you some tablets or do you need to come back in 6 months? Like what's the level of urgency? Well, we want to figure this out for our clients as well. So, how urgent is this problem to solve right now? How quickly do you want to reach this desired outcome? Want to try and measure some kind of level of urgency. And then the final thing is kind of what I just did as custom qualifying criteria. So, there might be something that you need to know to apart from these four things to figure out if they're actually an ideal client, right? So, for me I ask questions like um how long have you been running your business? Because typically we don't really work with people that have been running their business for less than 3 to 5 years. So, our ideal client is someone who's been running their business for kind of 10 years plus. Right? So, that would be my fifth qualifying question. Does that make sense as a concept? That should be fairly easy. Just do your best to fill that in as quickly as possible cuz I want to get you guys actually building something.
>> So, what is the average size of engagement for project for you? It doesn't matter what the number is. I'll just show you the math. Don't make crazy weird numbers. It'll be difficult to do. Yeah. Great. So, 20K right? So, this is an engagement and how often are they doing this per year you think? Once. Just once a year?
>> For that particular engagement.
>> Okay. Well, maybe this is not so bad. Because what you can do is you can say their gross revenue, right? Gross rev. On an annual basis will be let's just say it's a million dollars. Most companies spend on average about 10% for marketing. And that includes all the internal fees and vendors. So their budget annually would be 100k. So if you say okay, a company that's doing a million dollars in revenue, they might have a comms person internally or buyer something like that. What do you think they have to pay them?
>> Uh 80?
>> Probably, right?
>> Yep.
>> So they only have at this point minus 80. So the comms person they only have 20k left to spend on a vendor. So they're never going to give you that full budget because if you hose them, they're screwed. You know, contingency.
>> Mhm.
>> What is a safe number that they hold back for contingency? Back in the agency days, you recall? It's roughly a number or percentage.
>> a a percentage of their overall overall?
>> Yeah, if they have 100k, what would they hold back?
>> Uh I would say 10%.
>> It's usually 10 to 20%.
>> Yeah.
>> I've heard that it's 20%. I don't know if it's true. So they're going to take out uh what, 4k from this? Um 10% is 2k. So now you have 16k left. Okay. So we know first of all they're underfunded to do this with you. And there's other costs in here, just not that 80k. So we know that you cannot even approach any client that does less than a million, not even close. So all you do is do the math. So at 2 mil, they have 32k, still probably not enough. So that's why you kind of have to go up. Probably your client has to do at least 5 million plus. I'm pretty sure it has to be higher than that, but that's how you do this. You reverse engineer it. That's right. Okay? And you know, a company only does one shot a year, that ain't it. Cuz they have to What do they do the rest of the year? This won't work because the what you do for them might happen once a year, but they have other things they want they need to do. Social media posts and a whole bunch of other things.
>> Mhm.
>> So, when you factor all that in, this number is going to be like probably 20 million now. And that's why when somebody has a 300K annual budget of I mean revenue, they can very rarely afford anybody in this room. Rarely. That's why I like his answer 250 million, we can do something with that.
>> That's right.
>> Right? Now, some really innovative companies or some companies that work in a commodity space, they may spend 70% in marketing. Companies like water, commodities, or sodas, they spend a lot of money on marketing. Uh finance companies like credit card companies, they spend a ton on marketing. But most companies generally are around that 10% range. That's how you know.
>> Yeah, this this object that that this product I'm selling it's it's more a startup strategy product. So, it's one-on-one. There's probably only one or two employees. And so that they don't really have
>> I see. They're early.
>> It's way early. So, that's like an early stage one-on-one, me and a founder.
>> Yeah.
>> That number should be 80,000 for let's say even even it's still a startup company for for the same product.
>> Yep.
>> 20 people.
>> So, by virtue of you working with an early stage pre-funded probably company or angel investor, they very rarely have a lot of money and they spend it very cautiously. It's one of the problems. Cuz their investors say, "What are you doing? Why would you spend all this money on this? What if you get that wrong?" Did you want to say something real quick?
>> Real quick. The only reason I have certain clients My my ideal client is 20 to 200 million. 80% of our clients are that. It's because in the manufacturing, they're consistently coming out with new products and that's how I
>> CPG?
>> CPG.
>> Perfect.
>> That's how
>> industry.
>> Yeah.
>> Uh we are refreshing our packaging. We're launching new products. We're discontinuing as we're doing that. Always need need have a need. That's great.
>> So, that's interesting. Let's just tie into that for a second because that probably ties into some of the frustrations and desires, right? So, if they're always launching packaging and new products, what it's that's okay. You know, I said before like oh, it's only becomes relevant when you've got a project. In your case, there's a slight exemption to that rule because that's part of their business model. They're always launching new things, right? So, what are some of the frustrations that they face as a result of constantly launching new products?
>> New regulatory for packaging.
>> Great. So, now we're talking. That has nothing to do with you. Has nothing to do with what you offer. That's probably a discussion they're having in the boardroom. Hey, this new regulatory thing just came out. Oh, man, are we going to So, just as an example, and this is just straight off the top of my head, it might be a [ __ ] idea, but what about if there was an assessment or a scorecard that they could run their ideas through to see if it would pass some of the new regulatory ideas, right? Hey, by the way, guys, I've got this thing. It's for CPD. Blah blah blah blah blah. You take this assessment and it tells you whether your new product launch is going to be a success. It measures in these three areas. Um, regulation, uh design packaging whatever right? And you take it and it tells you straight away. How valuable on a scale of 1 to 10 might that be for your ideal client?
>> Oh, very very valuable.
>> Right. Now, imagine that there's somebody who's got a bunch of those people in their network and you go to them and say, "Hey, man, I know you work with a lot of these people and the idea of partners is that you don't have competing services. You I know you help them with this, but I also help them with this. And I just built this tool. And I from having these clients, I know that one of the things they're really concerned about is regulations. And one of the things they spend a long time trying to figure out is their go-to-market. Is this thing going to work? So, I just built this tool. I just built this assessment that looks at these three key areas and it gives them the score and it also tells them what they need to focus on before they launch that product. Do you know anyone that might get get value from that? It's totally free, on me. Beautiful. Right. Now you've got an irresistible offer that you've just shared with a partner, and that partner's like, "Dude, Hector's got this really cool tool that does this thing, right? I wonder who else would find this valuable." It makes them look good cuz it's free. They haven't had to do anything for it. And then you get the people that fill out that assessment, you get all the leads.
>> Sure.
>> That's where we're going. That's what we're trying to build.
>> Good. Thank you. Just for a clarification, did you say consumer packaged good or CBD?
>> CPG, consumer packaged goods.
>> I think I heard you say CBD, right?
>> Yeah.
>> So, CPG.
>> Same difference. Tomato, tomato.
>> I just wanted to clarify.
>> They are.
>> [laughter]
>> In California, they are.
>> CBD needs CPG.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah.
>> Both need regulations, but one more than the other.
>> Okay. All right. Matt, what's the next thing we're doing?
>> Let Let's build something, right? Let's build an asset. I want you walking away today with something like that example we just gave for Hector that feels like, "Man, this could actually be really valuable for my for ideal clients." Recently, ScoreApp brought out a tool which kind of changed the game because up until this point, it was quite a long process to build a scorecard, right? And an assessment. Um but now we have this AI builder that these guys have built. And it's a little bit like if you've ever used lovable or anything like that, right? You just kind of type your ideas in and it will actually build out the questions, it will build out the landing page, it will build out basically everything for you. So, if you go to the workbook, and you just hit the link that says ScoreApp AI builder, and we're going to see now that we've got an ideal client, what kind of ideas might the AI scorecard builder or the AI assessment builder come up with for our ideal client? Right? So, we're just going to I think I've got this prompt on here. Yeah, right? So, number two, you can literally just copy and paste this if you want. Help me create an assessment for your ideal client. And remember, the more specific you can make it, the better. So, it's not B2B services. Sorry, we're on page number 10. Yeah. So, we'll start with some ideas, and then we'll have a quick break, and then we'll come back and build something. So, the way I've designed this, hopefully, you can just copy and paste this into here, and you've got your top frustrations. You've got your top desires. You've got your ideal client. So, you're just going to put it in.
>> [snorts]
>> I might just use an example as one of you guys so we can build it. So, Yeah, let's build it for Hector. Oh. Help me create an assessment for Hector. Let's describe your ideal client.
>> CMO. They do smart packaging. CPG. It is between 20 to 200 mil.
>> I know his ideal client. They do CMO for a consumer packaging good, big box store. Processed foods, you said, right? Yeah. Like snacks and things like that. Like Frito-Lay?
>> Like Reese's peanut butter foods.
>> I don't know them.
>> Potato salad, things like that.
>> Oh, I see what you're saying.
>> So, they do
>> And they do the
>> having a grand assessment for a CMO of a consumer
>> package CPG, yeah.
>> goods company
>> goods company that does uh between 20 to 250 million dollars annually.
>> Okay.
>> Big box store.
>> What's their Let's just pick one frustration for now. Like the biggest thing you can think of.
>> Their biggest frustration. What do you think their biggest frustration is, right now?
>> Uh consistent branding across all their
>> No, that's your That's your We've gone back to
>> Hector, you you're in the phantom loop again. Hector, hold on to the mic. It's not dangerous.
>> Okay.
>> [laughter and gasps]
>> Yeah.
>> Their biggest frustration uh
>> From their perspective?
>> Getting product out super fast to the marketplace.
>> So
>> They're slow to slow to market.
>> Yeah, struggle with uh being slow to market. Um why is that Why is that frustration what? What happens as a result of being slow to market?
>> They'll miss They They get competition, so they They need to get their product out before.
>> Okay, uh slow to market and have lost
>> Lost their brand visibility.
>> Sure, that's your language. And one more, so what are the Oh, actually, maybe we do that. So, be slow to market and uh want Okay, so we're just going to start broad and then we're going to narrow it down as we go, and it's going to give us some ideas, right? So, it's going to say Hey, pick from one of these ideas. So, it says, "To shape a high-converting assessment for a CMO in CPG who's slow to market and wants more revenue." What's the assessment for your primary goal? Here are some suggestions. Lead magnets to book strategy calls with CMOs, uh internal diagnostic workshop/webinar. So, we're going to say lead magnets to book strategy calls, right? You want more strategy calls with CMOs. Of course, we're going to click this one.
>> That's the quickest to making a sale path.
>> Yeah, maybe not the exact right one, but quickest to make a money with some money. So strategy session.
>> Well, it's a straight to booking a strategy call versus like, "Hey, you got to take a webinar with me, or you're doing an internal diagnostic." In reality, that's probably the more more likely of the things that they'll do.
>> Yeah. So, it says, "Perfect. What do you do for your company uh that you want the CMO to book a strategy call for?" So, we help them speed up innovation. We're a growth / brand strategy consultancy. I would say that one's pretty accurate, right? Pretty close to you guys. Yeah? Yeah, you could choose your own. Like, if none of these don't work, you can type your own in, but just for speed, does that We're We're a growth / brand strategy consultancy for CPG.
>> Sure.
>> Yeah?
>> Yeah.
>> Cool.
>> That sounds right.
>> Okay, so which type of CPG company is this assessment mainly for? So, this questions feel specific and credible. Here are some suggestions. Mid-market brands, 20 million to 200 million, enterprise CPG with complex innovation and approvals, challenger brands launching new products. Which out of those would you pick?
>> Challenger.
>> Challenger.
>> Challenger brands? I feel like that's a little bit cuz didn't you say they were like doing like 250 million or something?
>> 20 to
>> Launching new products Oh, I suppose yeah, launching new products frequently.
>> Yeah.
>> Okay. DTC plus retail.
>> So, what what Matt is showing you there is that the Score app will ask you lots of questions to help you build the assessment. It used to be that you would have to do this. Now, the AI prompts you through all this, and it's seemingly asking you a lot of good questions here.
>> Nice. Last discovery question so we can tailor the scoring and the call to action. What does slow to market usually look like for these challenger brands? Pick the closest. Here are some suggestions. Too many hands See, this is great, right? This is an example of the Scorecard drilling down into the symptoms, not challenges. It's recognized that slow to market is a challenge maybe in your language, and now it's saying, "Okay, well, how would they recognize that, right?" So, it's saying um "What does slow to market usually look like for these challenger brands? Pick the closest. Too many hand-offs and approvals so the launch is slip, retail readiness and packaging / compliance delays, they launch but messaging and positioning are unclear so velocity So, velocity is weak."
>> Number two.
>> Told you.
>> Number two, retail readiness and packaging right?
>> Okay. Sweet.
>> Let's see it it do its magic.
>> Awesome. Hector, can you see the screen from there? I know, it's a little small. Can you command shift plus or whatever that is? There it goes. Okay. I know that's a little bit better, but Okay cool.
>> Okay, so this is another really cool feature. If you give it If you give us your URL, it will at least pull some of your branding and logo and stuff into this so that it pulls you automatically into the into the landing page. Do you want to Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's not like one thing I coach a lot of designers and the landing pages and stuff it comes up with from a design perspective aren't the best, but it's a really good start that you can play around with saves you going and entering all the brand colors manually and your logo and everything, right?
>> It's like a hand grenade, it's pretty close.
>> Yeah. Hand grenade. [laughter]
>> MBN Creatives
>> Okay, so www.n for November
>> Like Making Brands New MBN Creatives
>> MBN
>> Yeah.
>> So M for Mike
>> Making Brands New
>> [laughter]
>> M for night, B for Bravo
>> There you go.
>> N for November. Just teaching you the phonetical alphabet as well. You know, you know, I just like to keep people surprised about what I'm going to teach when I'm here. And then creative
>> More bucks now.
>> Yeah, yeah.
>> creative.com
>> Okay. Okay, so now it's going to give us some options to choose from for the scorecard concepts, right? So we're just choosing concept right now. So the first one, pretty close to kind of what what we suggested, right? So the retail ready launch scorecard, find out what's slowing your next retail launch and how to fix it. Right? Summary, a diagnostic built for challenger CPG brands selling DTC plus retail. Da da da da, you can read. Um your speed to shelf score. See, do you see how like specific it's getting because we've given it the ideal client and how how great this is. Um a fast high clarity assessment that produces a single score showing how launch ready your brand is for retail expression. Um what is your launch bottleneck? So any of those three really resonate with you?
>> Yeah, B.
>> Okay, B. Let's go with B. Continue with this concept. Isn't it so cool, right? We're just like clicking buttons and it's it's giving us ideas.
>> The speed to shelf is like a cool name, too.
>> Yeah.
>> It makes sense. It's using kind of their vernacular and you got a little duration going. So it's pretty clever with how it's even naming this.
>> Yeah.
>> Right? A lot of this I'm not a lot of this all of this depends on you identifying an ideal client profile. You're welcome.
>> Thank you.
>> Right?
>> Garbage in, garbage out.
>> Right. That's why we spend so much time helping you try to figure out who your diet ideal client is and making sure it's accurate.
>> Yep. So now what it's going to do is going to come up with a bunch of suggested questions. So you once it's created these, you can go in and edit them really easily, but it just saves you actually going and coming up with them yourself cuz obviously this is a big barrier to entry for a lot of people. Um I'm just going to scroll down quickly cuz it usually produces quite a few. But was what's Sorry, which best describes your role in launches right now? So is even kind of giving you some qualification questions a little bit, right? Cuz it kind of wants to know who I'm talking to. Am I talking to the the marketing manager? Am I talking to the founder? Right? What's the number one outcome you want from improving speed to shelf? So we're talking a little bit about desires. Now the cool thing about this and I'll show you a little bit behind the back end in a minute of ScoreApp, but if you imagine, let's say 10 people fill this out, it will start to show you patterns. It will say 60% of people that filled this out said that the number one outcome they want from from improving speed to shelf is fewer delays and surprises in packaging compliance.
>> Yeah.
>> Right? So you now know that your ideal client, 60% of them have this as their top priority. So when you talk to them or if you want to create content, you've got some really tangible things that you know are actually happening in their world and you haven't even had to have a conversation with anyone yet.
>> Beautiful.
>> Cool, right?
>> Yeah.
>> Um when launch slips, what's the most common reason? So, what it's doing here is it's like suggesting scores as well, right? So, it's giving kind of plus one here, plus one there. And essentially, what it's going to do is it's going to it's going to kind of score them. So, do you have a single agreed definition of retail ready packaging compliance needs to do that everyone uses? Yes, they're going to get a point. No, they're not going to get any points or unsure, they're not going to get any points, right? So, the idea is that if they're doing this really well, they score really high. If they're not doing it well, they score low. And so, if they meet your ideal client criteria, but they also have a low score, how easy is that conversation to start?
>> Right.
>> Hey, by the way, Hector, I noticed that you scored really low in this category. Would you be open to a quick conversation about how we might be able to improve that? And that's it. That's your sales conversation.
>> Yeah.
>> Right?
>> Or they score really low, you have a resource you can send them with a CTA to then the resource. Most of our clients who score low on this find this resource to be helpful. They read that like, man, this guy know So, you're priming them to see you as an expert with solutions for them. So, the sales call is very easy.
>> Yeah. Yeah, absolutely right. And the cool thing about ScoreApp is that you can actually tailor the results page. So, when you add these scores up, it will give you an option to create what they call dynamic content. So, if somebody scores low in a category around your ideal client, so they're not really an ideal client, you can direct them to a resource. But if they score high and they're like, this is an ideal client, you can direct them to book a call with you directly.
>> Mhm.
>> Right? So, if you imagine, you go to sleep, a partner sends this out to their list, you get 50 people fill this out, five of them are your ideal clients, you wake up the next day and you've got three calls with your ideal clients booked in your calendar.
>> Sounds amazing.
>> Right? Cool. So, I'm just going to go ahead and create this cuz it's it's given us quite a few questions here. Um, it shouldn't have given us more than 20 or 25, I think. Um, but we're just going to click build the scorecard. And it's now going to go away and it's going to build the landing page, it's going to build the scores, it's going to build the results page, it's going to do it all for you, right? Now, like Chris said, it's it's a hand grenade, so it's going to do most of the work, but it's it's 80% and then as creatives we're going to put the the icing on the cake, okay? So, I'll show you a little bit what this looks like, but I'm not going to spend ages and ages going through and tweaking the questions and tweaking the design because you guys are creatives, you're intelligent people. I think you can figure that bit out. What I really want to make sure we have time for is how do we get this scorecard in front of our ideal clients without sending cold DMs, without spending hours creating content, right?
>> Yep.
>> Cool. So, I'm now building your scorecard. Your scorecard is now ready to build. So, we're going to just click go to builder. And this is kind of where the magic happens. Now, I would encourage you to just watch these videos on the back end of Score Score App cuz it just talks you through the platform. I'm not going to play them now, but if if you're watching this, I would have I would suggest that you do. And obviously, you can just click next through here. Um but I just want to I just want to show you this one feature. It's spat out a little a little test a little scorecard for you here. Um and again, I said it's rough, so don't don't judge this from a high-level branding, design, web perspective, but yeah, okay, it is what it is, right? So, stop losing retail launches to hidden bottlenecks. Miss the launch date, blah blah blah. Start your speed to shelf scorecard. So, I would suggest that we work the most on this. And I've in the workbook, which I won't go through massively now, I've got something called a hook generator. I would work on this cuz this thing here is the kind of hook that's going to get people to take the scorecard. So, stop losing retail launches to hidden bottlenecks is okay, but what I would probably do is have your pain point and your desire in this hook somewhere. And I've got a GPT where if you put this in, it will give you ideas of better hooks. So, this is this above the fold as the web gurus will tell you, is the most important thing, right? So, you want to try and get the the kind of desires and the challenges up here somewhere, and then start your shelf uh scorecard. They just put their name and their email in it, and it's going to um spit out a score for them. So, you probably want to add to this, but it's it's a really good start. I just want to quickly show you before we we go on to the partner piece.
>> Wait, was that the whole thing?
>> No, no, no. That's just the landing page.
>> Well, can we just Oh, did you scroll all the way to the bottom or not?
>> Well, that's what it just created for now, and then if you go to edit If you go to edit this, basically, um ba ba ba ba landing pages. It's just a kind of wizzywig builder, right? So, if you go into this landing page, you you can just add content and section sections here really easily. Um
>> Is it using your colors? Is that your logo?
>> Uh yeah, it's my logo.
>> Okay. Is that your logo color?
>> Uh no, it's close. That's gray, yeah.
>> Okay, like we said.
>> We're saying
>> Okay.
>> Yeah.
>> You Well, that's not a color-accurate monitor, so you we're seeing two different things.
>> It is
>> It is color accurate, man. Pull the hex code on that.
>> So, all of the content here is kind of in blocks, so you would just choose things here which you feel are a kind of relevant to the way that you typically display content, right? So, if you wanted some testimonials, there's like testimonial blocks. If you want a video, if you want the different categories. So yeah wizzywig builder. I'm not going to go into too much detail about that. The The thing I just want you to show to show you guys really quickly is the results page. Um so, it's going to spit out a result for them. For your ideal client, it's going to give them an overall score, um and it's going to give a bunch of copy and stuff here, which I uh would encourage you to change. Um one of the features here is is dynamic content, okay? So, depending on where they score, low, medium, or high, you can display different content um on this page. So, one of the things that we do with our ideal clients is we create a section in here, which is essentially a a call to action. And the call to action is going to be something like book a strategy call, right? So, I'm going to click here. Um it's going to come in. We're going to make sure that this is dynamic content. And what we can do is we can go back into the categories if we want to, and we can have a category which is just for our qualification criteria. And we don't have to let the ideal client know that that's what it's doing, but it's doing that behind the scenes. So, here we say low, it says low content, but we can change it to what whatever name we want. Let's say we want this high because it means they're an ideal client. We can actually edit this so that this link goes to our booking calendar, for example. And this section will only be shown to people who score high in that qualified criteria category. Right? And so, why that's important is because if you've got this amazing tool, you don't want to be booking calls with non-ideal clients cuz then you're just back in the exact same situation you are when you get a crap referral. So, what you want is you only want to be offering your calendar and your time to people that are qualified. And that's why I love this tool. And the other thing you can do is you can create audiences. So, audiences are similar, but they're just a really quick uh kind of way to to qualify people, basically. So, they are like conditions. So, I might call this like qualifying criteria. And then, for example, um one of these, so which best describes your role in launches right now? I might select that. If the answer is um I own the brand marketing, but launches are mostly led elsewhere, right? I might say I might save that. So, I might call this say unqualified. And then save that. Okay? So, anybody who answers yes to this question is going to come into this audience and then depending on what CRM or whatever you use, you could have a different email sequence for unqualified which just sends them to your LinkedIn to consume your content, maybe you have a podcast, something like that. So, they're just kind of getting warmed up and then people that are qualified, we could create another one that says if they answer yes to this question, they're qualified, then they go into a completely different sequence and that could just be inviting you, "Hey, have a conversation with Hector. He's got over 20 years experience. He can look at your results and he can tell you in 20 minutes exactly what you need to do on your next launch. Book your call here." So, you're only getting calls booked in your calendar with qualified prospects. Does that make sense? Cool. We could and Daniel, if you follow Daniel Priestley, does full 2 3 hour workshops on scorecard marketing. In fact, there is a book that I've brought here to give you guys on scorecard marketing, how to how to get it and we'll put a link in the description below this video to get the scorecard marketing book cuz there's a whole This is a whole marketing strategy, right? But I just want you guys to see how quick and easy it is to build something like an assessment cuz we could sit here and we could brainstorm ideas about workshops and PDFs and whatever, but assessments actually have a much higher conversion rate as lead magnets than PDFs. Right?
>> Let's do a quick recap and let's spin out to break. Quick recap, number one is if you use a quiz or an assessment tool, it allows you to qualify them while giving them value. You have a lot of nuance control and luckily through AI and and the kind of the smart people behind this it gets you something up really fast without making you all the heavy lifting cuz that's usually the bottom neck. Like I don't know where to start. I have to figure out the questions. I have to wait the score and it gives you a lot of highly customizable ways to identify who's a good fit for you. Clearly you don't want to talk to every single person who's like, "I want to book." Cuz your calendar will be filled and you have nothing left to do and you'll hate all of us. We're not trying to do that. So you can see right now, you get to see really quickly who's a good fit, identify them, and determine next steps while also giving value to people even if they're not a good fit. You're not ready to go from something to shelf? What's that strategy to shelf or
>> Yeah.
>> Something like that, right? And now they know and they can go back to their team. And you can really work on this to your heart's content to make sure it's dialed in, the questions, the language. Matt was talking about it'll kick you out something. He strongly encourages you as I do as do I, the above the fold copy. That's got to be really strong. So why not just use another tool to generate 10 more headline ideas that really sound right? Okay.
>> Uh based on your experience, how many people actually fill this out and how long does it take them to fill it out?
>> It shouldn't take them more than 5 minutes.
>> And is it 50%
>> When you say fill them out, do you mean the landing page conversion or do you mean the amount of people that actually finish the questions?
>> Yeah, the questionnaire.
>> 80%.
>> 80?
>> Yeah, I'll show you. We did it for the registration for our book launch. We had something like 400 uh well, I don't know. I I've got the numbers here. Uh X 100 of people, so let's say it was like 270 and like 290 took it.
>> Wow.
>> So 270 out of 290 filled all the questions in. And we create every single lead magnet on ScoreApp and we just answer five simple Sorry, we just ask people five simple questions when they download anything from us, whether it's registering for an event, getting a copy of my book, whatever it is, and they are the five qualifying questions. So if they're qualified, they get different resources than if they're {quote} unquote unqualified.
>> Sure.
>> And so, if they're unqualified, we just send them to all of our free stuff because we know we don't work with anyone generating less than 100k in revenue. So, I'm not going to invite them to have a conversation cuz I already know that, you know, we're not going to work with them. So, it's just going to be a waste of both of our time. I just want to cover one more thing about uh ScoreApp before we go on to the partners piece. Who here doesn't really like sales that much? Okay, cool. The reason I want to cover this is because a few of you said, "Okay, well, the sales call of would you like us to help you improve your score is okay, but what am I actually going to talk to them about?" So, this particular feature isn't available on every single tier. I think it's the higher tiers. Um but, one of the cool things that you can do with ScoreApp is you can create PDF reports. So, you can actually create reports based on their questions and and scores. So, I just wanted to show you one of uh the reports that I've created on one of my score cards. So, imagine you're having a conversation with an ideal client who's taken this ScoreApp, and they book a call in, and they've they've got the copy of this PDF, right? And you say, "Hey, guys, let's uh let's open up this PDF, and let's just go through your score." Right? So, it's going to show them Uh so, this is my particular road map, for example, and it's just talking about the the different layers. But, it's going to give them overall category scores. So, you can sit here and talk through this PDF and say, "Cool, look, I noticed the differentiator is great. So, right now, you're obviously using your story, you're you're kind of differentiating yourself in the market, but you're really struggling at the moment to communicate that. Let's look at some of the reasons why that might be." Right? So, then I can talk through these kind of different areas of the road map, and all of this stuff is customizable depending on what they score. So, I can change what content is put into this PDF depending on what they score just like I can on the results page. So, I just wanted to kind of point out that as a tool because I think it's really useful for sales conversations and it's also useful for your content. Yeah, so this gets sent before you've even spoken to the So, they get this PDF in their inbox once they've taken the score. So, they can actually just pull this up and read through it and they hopefully will get some insight. And it you know, like you can see from this one it's it's pretty detailed, right? There's a lot of stuff in here that you can really go through. Now, these are I've created different sections for each of the scores. So, there's more content there. There's like a different bit of piece of content depending on what they've scored. Um, but yeah, I just thought that was a really cool feature that I wanted to to mention.
>> I think the reason why a lot of people don't like sales calls is because they don't know what to talk about. They think it's like I'm going to squeeze you into something, use some psychological levers, create scarcity and urgency. And if we just actually wanted to review something together, I'm not even selling anything. I'm just reading the diagnostic with you in case you have any questions. And if you've done your job at this point, they have identified the problem, where they're weak, where you might be able to help them, and they're going to probably say, "Can you help me do this?" That's it. So, does this sound like it'd be scary? Cuz I know you don't like sales. You don't like friction. If you just went over the report, easy peasy, fresh and easy, lemon squeezy? Okay, cool. That's it.
>> Yeah, awesome. Okay, so I want to shift gears a little bit. Um, let's come back to the PDF. So, we've built this assessment. There's a part here which I'm not going to get you to do now because it requires a little bit of longer input, shall we say? And I've called it test your message. And this is basically reaching out to some previous clients that you have good relationships with who meet your ideal client criteria and just getting some feedback on this concept. So, rather than Hector doing what a lot of creatives do, which is going away and being like, "Oh, I'm going to tweak my landing page. No, does this look right here? And is this the perfect hook?" And 2 weeks later, Hector still hasn't shipped his scorecard yet. He's just going to go, he's going to use the hook generator GPT that's going to give him some ideas, and he's just going to ask a client, "Hey man, I just created this assessment. It shows you X, Y, and Z. Um how valuable would something like that be to you on a scale of 1 to 10?" And we're just going to see what people say. And if they're like, "Meh, two." Okay, maybe we need to go back to the drawing board a little bit, but hopefully we can ask them some questions, right? Oh, why did you say two? And what's what's happening for you right now? And we can do the 7-minute assessment and ask some of those deeper questions. Maybe we've got some of these challenges wrong. Right? So, I've I've actually got some templates here. I've got a message template guide, and I've got draft documents in this workbook that you can just use. You can just copy and paste this and send it to your previous clients. But my suggestion before you get too OCD on the landing page and the results page and all of this stuff is just go and get some feedback on this concept, on this idea. Does it resonate with people? Do a social post about it, right? Hey, I just This was actually one of the best I things I did that I thought was an amazing idea, and it like just flopped on social. Like no one commented on it, right? And then I was like, "Um what about this idea?" And I just thought, "Meh, probably not going to work." And loads of people commented. I was like, "Oh, I didn't expect that." I was still using the challenges and the desires, but I was just kind of going through them and testing different hooks and different angles. And one of them, loads of people responded with, and another one not really that many people. So, I just built the one that everyone responded with, right? Um so, that's your kind of homework from this training. Cuz if we sit here now and I'm like, "Right, go message a bunch of people." We will be here all night. Um so, I want to talk about your trust grid. I want to talk about the people in your network right now who already have the attention and the trust of your ideal clients. So, I'm going to use Chris's framing around this. I'd like us to use our brains first, and then I would like us to use AI. So, maybe we start with Hector as as a group, I think we can help each other because often times it's easier for us to think of things from an outside perspective as it is for you running your business. So, Hector, just remind us all again, who is your ideal client and describe them in a way like Chris said that we can all picture that person. Like, "Oh, yeah, I can all imagine somebody like that."
>> Megan, 38.
>> Yep.
>> Okay. Mom.
>> Yeah.
>> Two daughters, one little son.
>> Mhm.
>> Out in Oklahoma. Works remote for a Southern California company. She's a CMO. Wicked smart. Doesn't want to be bothered with little things. So, I'm constantly anticipating. But, um and she doesn't want any problems. She doesn't want me bringing any problems to her. She wants solutions, kind of like you guys talked about earlier.
>> Yeah.
>> So, I bring solutions as often as I can. She's my golden egg.
>> not to deviate too much. We just want to know can can we all picture Megan? Can we all think what Megan looks like? But,
>> You didn't describe the important part of her.
>> I know. She works for a $250 million company.
>> Yeah.
>> Consumer packaging goods.
>> Consumer packaging Consumer packaging goods. Uh
>> She's the CMO.
>> Yeah.
>> You're missing a really
>> Okay. Okay.
>> Yeah.
>> You need to say this.
>> Oh. Um I'm going to say woof probably 30 products at least.
>> Yeah.
>> Reoccurring. She needs a lot of attention.
>> Sh- Shelf
>> Okay. Just pass the mic just so we've got a bit of backwards of all taking this.
>> Are they shelf or frozen or are they different types of packages?
>> Primarily shelf.
>> Primarily shelf. Okay, cool. So now can we all pitch in on Megan a bit more, but yeah, you good good call.
>> We tend to be so I don't know what it is. If I'm going to put a label on it, there's something about why you're reluctant to talk about her. And you want to skip into like this what I do and how I saw Because you have to shake off the old habit. You really do. When we talk about the customer, we're just talking about the customer. Don't talk about you, your services, what you do, and why you're so good, okay? So when we do this again, please don't repeat that same thing. Now, what do we do Matt?
>> Okay, so I want before Hector answers this, when you think about Megan, who do you think already has her trust? Who do you think Megan already trusts?
>> She does trust me.
>> Apart from you, Hector. You did a great job of shaking that off, man.
>> She trusts her She
>> [laughter]
>> She trusts the buyers that she works with.
>> Okay, cool. Tell me more.
>> Uh she goes to them weekly and gets feedback from them and has to implement on their uh decisions. So she has to pivot based on what the market buyers tell her.
>> Who else apart from the buyers? So that's that's one, right? The buyers.
>> The president of the company.
>> Yeah. So think think external more than internal, but yeah.
>> I'm th- I'm thinking about specific people, so I'll be more specific in my question. Um who does she she or her company already buy from?
>> Vendors. Many vendors that make uh boxes, pouches, containers of all sorts.
>> Yeah. So buyers, and when you say buyers, just for everybody else that doesn't know this industry, what do you mean by buyers?
>> People that are at big box store like Costco that's going to say, "I'll take your product, but you got to do this, this, and that, and then I'll take it, and it's going to be at this price, and I need it now."
>> Mhm. Yep, okay. So, buyers, and then what's the difference between a buyer and a vendor?
>> A vendor would be a supplier of raw goods or, you know, containers.
>> Yep, cool. And then within that, are there any organizations or governing bodies that these vendors and these buyers, and even maybe Megan and her company, are part of?
>> I'm sure there's some organizations. I am not privy to those.
>> Okay. Going to go really left wing here. You said Megan is a mom, and what were some other attributes?
>> Uh she's a mom, a wife,
>> Yeah.
>> lives in Oklahoma.
>> I wonder,
>> [clears throat]
>> are there any Facebook groups or communities of female CMOs or working mom CMOs on the internet?
>> Must be.
>> That that question is super super specific. May I just zoom out one level? We know who influences her decisions based on market suppliers, and vendors, and buyers. Who influences her opinion about the world and specifically her job? Who might influence her, and where might those influences be? Think about that, cuz that'll apply to everybody here.
>> Mhm.
>> Her co-workers, her boss.
>> Yeah. The the reason I went specific on this is because if you have a specific avatar, and you find a specific uh group of people,
>> Mhm.
>> there tends to be a very high level of trust there because they feel like a tribe. So I'll just I'll jump forward a little bit, right? Imagine if you went to the owner of this Facebook group and you ask for permission to post in the group. I know you've got a lot of CMOs who are working moms, predominantly female in this group. Um I work with a lot of these people. I've I've come up with this free tool, this free assessment that I think might be valuable to some of the people. Would you be open to sharing it in your group? Right? That's kind of where I'm going with this, right? So I'm thinking of something that would look good to them that would also be valuable for the people in that group. So now I don't know this is where you come in cuz I don't know the industry well enough to know how buyers work and how vendors work and things like that. But I bet from working in this industry long enough, there's probably someone in your network who has the trust, whether they're a buyer, whether they're a vendor, or someone of someone like Megan. Like they're connected, maybe even just a small group, 10, 15, 20 Megans. Can you think of anybody in your
>> Oh, there's vendors. That's how I've gotten my clients, the long-term ones.
>> Okay.
>> That's the only way I've gotten my clients.
>> now, so most of you have this, right? Most of you have somebody who has made the majority of your introductions or who just generally speaks well about you in the network. The problem is it's our communication with them is usually very stage four. Oh hey, like are there any projects that have come up or you know, what's going on? We're basically fishing for is there any work? So we're positioned as somebody who generally kind of takes cuz that's more of a take than it is a give, and we're always positioned at stage four. So I'm trying to flip that. So they see you as a problem solver, and like Chris said, they see you as someone who is active, not passive waiting for oh when have you guys got a project? So hey, I now have a So imagine going to these people and being like, guys, I've got this tool that I think might be relevant for some Megans in your network, but also might help you because I know that when Megan has this challenge, you guys also have this challenge, because that impacts on you. Do you think this tool would be valuable for someone? And that's how Matt and Jack got all of those leads. They just went to a previous person who was in their network, who referred them work in the past, who kind of said, "Oh, I always speak highly about you." And said, "Instead of hey, have you got any work? Hey, I think there's something of value here." Hey, can I tell you about this thing that I'm working on? Can I tell you about some things that I've noticed in the industry? And I really want to provide a solution to this. And guess what? It's totally free. It takes less than 5 minutes. And at the end of it, they're going to get real insight into challenge, frustration, desire. Is there anyone you know who that might be valuable for? Now, imagine that you've got two or three of those people who share that for you.
>> Right. Beautiful man. I can definitely see that working.
>> So, I just want you to test that. I just want you to reach out to those people and say, "I've been thinking about developing this tool, and it does this thing. Do you know anyone that would be that would be valuable for? Or, how valuable might that be for you on a scale of 1 to 10?"
>> Sure.
>> And get some feedback from people, right? So, I just wanted to set the scene, high-level concept. Are we seeing how this works? Cuz it is a bit of a mindset shift, right? It's a bit of a mindset shift going from prospect to partner. And our partners aren't prospects. They're on our team. We want to impress them. We want to show them that we're active. We want to give them valuable stuff for free, but we also want to have conversations with them to figure out what's going on in their world. The same way that we would with clients, we want to try and get on calls with potential partners all the time, figure out what they're trying to achieve, and what their challenges are, because then we can see how what we've got slots into that. So, it's exactly the same as a conversation with an end client, but we're just having it with a partner. Difference is, there's nothing for them to buy. There's only free value for us to provide.
>> Right.
>> Is this making sense?
>> Yes.
>> Okay, cool. So, let's just use our brains for 5 minutes. I'd love You go.
>> Chris. I I like that because that's more actionable. The people who send you work now, give them the tool first. That seems like very within your reach, low-hanging fruit. But, the reason why I asked that question of like, who influences her decisions, they're usually influencers. Every industry has people reporting, talking about it. So, find the person who's talking about and reviewing things. See if you can't get a relationship going. That's a That's a bigger ask, a bigger lift. Also, like for you specifically, maybe my reference here's out of date, but The Dieline might be a good place.
>> Mhm.
>> You know The Dieline?
>> Yeah.
>> That's uh an award excellence in consumer packaged goods. And then you can stroll that place and like, who's talking, who's writing the articles, and reach out to them specifically. That would be a good strategy. So, the people who are writing the articles and so, award shows, people who are doing news and reviews, that would be good. And every every industry has a trade association. Find out that thing cuz you don't know enough yet cuz this is a new Hector. The old Hector was just a different Hector waiting for work to come. This is Hector goes upstream to see work where the problem is.
>> Cool.
>> Make sense?
>> Beautiful.
>> Okay.
>> Thank you.
>> So, I'm going to get you guys to do a little exercise in a minute, but Chris just used a really important term that I've actually written down here in the workbook, which is low-hanging fruit. And so, I want us to start there because I almost guarantee Chris said, "Don't say anything that you don't know is 100% true in this room." So, I can't say this with absolute certainty, but I have a high percentage of certainty that there is somebody in your network right now that you already have a relationship with that has the trust and attention of your ideal client. Okay? And that's what I would term as your low-hanging fruit. So, what Chris just said is 100% right. And the way I think about potential partners is the same way I think about celebrities. There's an A-list, there's a B-list, and there's a C-list. And the C-list are the people that we already have relationships with. They're on our level. If we said, "Hey, do you want to jump on a quick call?" they probably would right? The A-list, if you send them a message and say, "Hey, do you want to jump on a quick call?" they probably get hundreds of those messages every day. If they don't know you, the chance of them jumping on a quick call is pretty low. So, we've actually got different approaches depending on whether they're A, B, or C. And so, in the workbook and uh I've got a lowest hanging fruit exercise. Um and I've also got this partner finder GPT, um which will make some suggestions. But I've also got um some suggestions, the partner pitch GPT, and the partner response document will show you that there are basically different approaches. So, for your C-list, you can literally This is what's worked really well for our clients is that low hanging fruit. They literally just reach out to them and they say this, "Hey, I noticed that you also serve this kind of client and there's no competitive overlap. You guys run a branding studio, we run an animation studio, or you guys run a PR firm, we run a branding studio. Would you be open to jumping on a very quick 15-minute call and working out if there's any way that we could collaborate?" And that's it. That's the message. And that gets between a 50 and 80% response rate. Hey, you also serve these people, there's no competitive overlap, would you be open to seeing if there's a way that we can collaborate? That simple. But the caveat is you have to be connected to them or know them in some way. You That That doesn't work for your A-list people. Okay? Your B-list people have a specific framework called the R Carver framework, which I won't go into cuz it's all there. If we have time, I can talk through it.
>> Did you say the same word you said before?
>> Oh, sorry.
>> R Carver
>> R Carver is an acronym. It stands for reason, compliment, anchor, value, and ask. I know I'm Yeah, so this we're on page 14 at the moment.
>> a question.
>> Okay, just before I come to you, 2 secs. And then the the A-list has a totally different approach. So I just The reason this is important is cuz I don't want you going to the awards people who have no idea who you are and be like, "Hey guys, I think we could collaborate." And you know, they've got 2 million subscribers on YouTube or whatever. You're probably not going to get a response and then you're going to go, "Ah, this strategy doesn't work." So start with the low-hanging fruit. Start with the people you know, and see if you can just book some calls. So when we work when we run through this with our clients, the objective is can you get two or three partner calls? And can you just have a conversation with someone about potentially collaborating? That's a win, right? That's like you've shifted your thinking, you're getting people on calls, you're seeing how you can collaborate, and then you basically just work your way up the chain. Once you have a few C-list partners, you then think, "Oh, cool. How can I get some B-list partners?" Once you have some B-list partners, then you think about A-list. And it kind of works. So this Once you've got C-list, sometimes the C-list can introduce you to the B-list. And you just kind of work your way up the the pyramid. Right.
>> You actually answered my question. So you good.
>> Cool. So what I'd love you to do quickly is don't do this together, guys, cuz you work in the same business. So we've got two and two here. Just tell the other person who your ideal client is, and your job together is to kind of brainstorm who might already have their attention. Just like we just did here. Let's test what you guys came up with. So we created a GPT, and you got two options. You can just literally upload the client avatar form into there and ask it to give you some suggestions, or you can copy and paste it in. I'd just be curious if you guys do this, if it gives you ideas, if it's the same things that you've been discussing, or if it gives you totally new ideas. So, upload the the client avatar form.
>> Uh what page?
>> Page number 13. Lucky number 13. And click partner finder GPT. And it should open up something like this. And then you're just going to click help me find partners. And it will ask you to either upload the avatar form you filled out or just copy and paste it in.
>> We are targeting healthcare as an ICP. Um so, we filled out the client avatar form. I uploaded it. It's saying that the best fit partner categories would be grant writers and fundraising consultants, public affairs and government relations consultants, and then strategic planning consultants for nonprofits and public agencies.
>> Okay. How do you feel about those suggestions?
>> I feel pretty good about that. I mean, the public affairs consultants, I feel really good about the grant writers and fundraising consultants. I feel like we'd have to talk about how to break into that.
>> Yeah. So, out of those, do you know anyone who meets any of those criteria?
>> The public affairs, yes. The grant writers, not me personally.
>> No, but yeah, start with that, right? That's your low-hanging fruit.
>> Right.
>> So, that's what we're looking for right now. Like, your job right now is to connect with some of those people and see if you can get them on a quick 10-15 minute collaboration call. And so, that kind of leads us to the next part, which I'll get into in a minute. But that's a great example. Yeah. Awesome.
>> Is that a great example?
>> Yes.
>> Cuz that's what you're waiting for.
>> Yes, exactly. That's
>> Yeah.
>> Yes, exactly. That's the answer that I was looking for.
>> Okay. Perfect. Chris is like dubious.
>> What's that?
>> I feel like you're dubious.
>> Dubious?
>> Yeah.
>> Like doubtful, suspicious?
>> Yeah.
>> Like unclear of the actual outcome?
>> Yeah.
>> Because she had said prior that this is what she was waiting for.
>> So, this is just
>> Confirmation.
>> with the customer.
>> Yeah.
>> Did you get what you came for? And if you didn't, we got to keep doing our work.
>> Represent.
>> These guys
>> These these guys are like see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil over here.
>> Yeah, [laughter] come on guys.
>> Represent. Who's got it? Raise your hand. Make a motion. Twitch, you are you ready? Right?
>> Put ideal client and I put Sarah CMO at a $50 million fashion company.
>> Yep.
>> Partner?
>> Yeah, what it is suggest?
>> Oh, you know, I'm going to just read off the partner side.
>> Yeah. Potentially collaborate with.
>> What?
>> Just read out the partners and then out of those are there any that you think you might be able to start a conversation?
>> So, the first one that it says for your partner types is paid media agency serving fashion brands.
>> Yeah. That makes sense, right?
>> Makes sense. I don't know why I didn't think about that.
>> Yeah.
>> [laughter]
>> Um e-commerce Shopify agencies. Email SMS marketing agencies. For me would be the paid media agencies.
>> Yeah, and you work in an agency, right?
>> Correct.
>> So, if one agency reaches out to another agency, you're kind of a similar level. Hey guys, notice that you do you would do work for fashion brands, but you guys focus on paid media, we focus more on brand. Do you want to hop on a quick 15-minute call just to see if there's any way we might be able to collaborate?
>> Yeah.
>> Seems like a pretty low friction
>> It does.
>> process, right?
>> Almost too simple.
>> Yeah, almost too simple. Yeah.
>> Right. I guess I'm used to just like having to like I don't know, playing tooth and nail with people. Which seems really simple. And easy.
>> Sweet. That's how we want it to feel.
>> Um my ideal partner types are brand strategy agencies, shopper marketing agencies, which I've never dealt with one of those, packaging manufacturers and converters. That sounds really spot-on. Fractional CMOs, food and beverage brokers.
>> Sweet. Any of those feel like low-hanging fruit? So, people that you already know in your network?
>> Yeah, for sure.
>> Awesome.
>> Yeah. Primarily, the packaging manufacturers and converters, they have access to everything that's been printed. And a handful.
>> Perfect. Handful is great. Handful is all we need. Remember, one partner, let's say equals roughly 10 potential clients.
>> Yeah.
>> So, with three partners, you've already got 30 potential clients there.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah. Want to add anything?
>> Uh okay, so I focus my I my ICP on that um CEO founder, 20 million to 200 million, um either CPG or RTD drink says consumer packaged goods or ready-to-drink. And um they give me a bunch here, but the one that I'm actually most excited about, who I've been thinking about focusing on, is private equity and um M&A advisors, those kind of guys who have portfolios of companies and they all run with with the kind of the same kind of guys and they need fast fixers. And that's like, you know, I've got a handful of folks like that in my network and I feel like that that's it's a small group of people who know a lot of people in that group who need help and they need like pros to come in and like work fast.
>> Yeah. So, one of my examples was Izzy, who's a brand strategist, and he partners with VCs who have big portfolios of startups. And he just gets introduced like they he is now the go-to person. Every every startup that they work with, they well, he has to qualify them first, but the VC kind of automatically qualifies them by backing them, and they all get a free constant brand strategy consultation with Izzy as part of the ongoing
>> That's exactly what I would like to focus on. Yeah. A handful. I mean, I haven't I haven't really turned the screws on it yet. Um I've I've actually seen other brand strategists who who who who focus who either embedded in a VC company, who they service their internal portfolio, or they're um you know, they're a consultant.
>> It's hard to find something when you're not looking for it. And we tend to find the things we look for. You look for trouble, you find trouble.
>> Are you looking for trouble?
>> Never. I only look for money. So, Chris, here's the cool What's that? Shut up. You want to You want to get in on this? Don't start a fight you can't finish Drigo. You know, that's right. Better walk away. Hold me back. All right. Chris, here's the cool part. You had some suspicions this might be somebody you want to talk to. The assessment or the AI thing just told you the same thing. So, now it gives you a little bit more ammunition. If you don't already know them, because I I sense some wavering in your answer like I think I might know, but I don't like There's not three people I can call right now, right? You know some? But, the cool part is let's pretend like you don't, and that's low-hanging fruit, ish. Your mind will start working on it like, "Wait a minute. That other person I met at that party, they said something I wasn't even interested in them, and now it's like, oh, I need to talk to them right now." That's how that works, right?
>> Yeah. I can't
>> I can't stress the power of that more, because A, if you're like the girls over here that have very broad targets, it's already a struggle to find your ideal client, because your brain, a part of your brain called the reticular activating system, that's always looking for things that it believes are relevant to you, doesn't pick up on it, because who's relevant? B2B service. Okay, who do you Who do you know who's good B2B service? No one. We know Megan who's 36, and right, so how do we get introduced to Megan? So your brain is not looking for it. So that's the first part. So you just even by honing in on your ideal client, your brain is going to basically meet people that you didn't meet before and you'll be like, why am I all of a sudden meeting all these people? Well, cuz you weren't looking for them before, right? We've all had that experience when we buy an item of clothing and then all of a sudden we see other people wearing it. Not Chris cuz all of his clothes are so unique, but for the rest of us peasants, right? We we see that item of clothing everywhere. Or we buy a car and then all of a sudden we see that car everywhere. That's just your brain noticing what was already there. So that's kind of part one, but part two is you probably weren't thinking about partners. You were thinking about clients. So all of those people you might have ignored connection requests from on LinkedIn or not spoken to at the networking event. Now all of a sudden you're like, hold on. I didn't make this connection before. This person could actually be really useful to me because they may have the attention and the trust of my ideal clients. All right. So perhaps before today you came to the thing to the workshop, you're like, I'm not sure my who my ideal client profile is. I don't even know who I'm going to reach out to. I don't have a plan or I'm doing all that I can. There's nothing else I can do or the narrative is all this is a friction-filled process. The whole process makes me feel icky about myself. And now without a lot of effort, you found somebody potentially that is a win-win. That's a Well, as the slide said, it's a win for you. It's a win for them. You're serving the same clients. No competition. And then when you eventually get these people on the phone, there's not even a sale. I'm just going to tell you what the report says and if you have any questions, I'm more than happy to answer them. Is this all doable? Yeah? Okay, how do you feel right now? Great. I have a time share I need to sell you. Okay, so I want to land the plane on this, right? But there's there's kind of two other things, two places where people fall down. Your main focus when you leave this room is can I book calls with my low-hanging fruit. That's what you want to focus on, right? When you book those calls, you're just going to ask them three questions. Number one, tell me a little bit more about you and your business. Now, hopefully you're all smart people, so you might go and do a little bit of research before that call. So, an even better way to start that conversation is, here's what I know about your business, what have I missed? Or what else is relevant, okay? So, where are they right now? Tell me a bit more about your business. So, this is what I know about you. Cool. What's going on with your business right now? What are you trying to achieve? What goals do you have, right? Now, remember this is not a sales call. This is a partnership call, but you can't create a win-win offer unless you know what's important to that person. If you just go in with your agenda and your thing and you try and force this assessment down their throat, it's going to feel salesy. So, I'll give you an example. When I've when I created my first partnership with Laura in the co-working space all those many moons ago, I didn't just go in and say, "Hey Laura, um I need some clients. You guys have my ideal clients. Can I do a workshop for you?" Would have felt a little bit salesy, right? I just said, "Look, I I love all you're doing here. Um I think there might be an opportunity for us to collaborate, but can we have a conversation about it?" And for the first 10-15 minutes, I just listened to Laura. So, what's going on with the co-working space right now? Oh, it's great. We have these things and So, you know, what are you trying to achieve? I'd love to build a more sense of community. You know, I really feel like our freelancers and our hot desking people, they're great, but there's no real cohesion. And also, it's a really high turnover. As soon as things get tough for them, the co-working membership is one of the first things to go. Right? So, these are some of the things she started talking about. So, when I pitched the workshop, I didn't say, "Cool, I need some clients, so why don't I come in and run a workshop?" I said, "What about if we put on an event together where we brought people together?" So, we did a lunch and learn, and we created this event, and I taught people how to attract better clients. So, that instead of them canceling their membership, they actually had more clients so that they could pay you for longer. How would that be?
>> She'd be like,
>> That's amazing. Cool. All I need from you is the space, and I just need you to promote this workshop to everybody in the co-working space. Can you do that?
>> She's like, yeah. I'll send an email out next week.
>> Perfect. And I'll bring all of my material. I'll, you know, contribute where I can, and I'll even share this outside of the co-working space to my network to try and maybe get a few more bums on seats and to get them a few more people into this space who might be interested in signing up to the co-working. How does that sound? And I literally used that strategy with co-working spaces as my only partnership to grow my first That was my first six-figure year. And I worked with WeWork, I worked with General Assembly, I worked with small independent co-working spaces, and the pitch was always exactly the same. Would you like some more freelancers in your space? Would you like there to be a more sense of community, and would you like them to know how to get more clients so that they could keep paying you? And guess what? People were like, hell yeah. And it's all free. You don't need to do anything. You just need to provide me the space, and you need to send a few emails out. And hey, look, these are the kind of emails that people have sent out in the past. They work really well. We'll write them all for you, and you just hit send. So, you see how I'm not selling anything. I'm trying to find a way to collaborate, but I can't do that until I know what they're trying to achieve and what's important to them. So, you're going to book calls, and I've also got links to structures of how you structure this call in the workbook, but you're going to book calls, and you're just going to figure out what's important to them. What are they struggling with right now? I'm pretty sure that that scorecard, that assessment that you've created, will fit in somewhere to their goals, because if it's valuable for your end clients, your ideal clients, who are also their ideal clients, then by default, it's probably going to be valuable to them. Not 10 out of 10 times, but eight or nine out of 10 times. And so then when you present that assessment at the end of that conversation, that feels like a real natural give rather than hey guys, by the way, I've got this cool thing. Can you promote it to your audience for me? It's making sense? Questions thoughts comments?
>> Were you able to land your own personal clients from this?
>> Yeah.
>> That's how I got my first six-figure year.
>> Mhm.
>> Yeah. That is the concept of the win-win offer. I've got some scripts and some things like that, but that's the kind of second-to-last piece that I want to talk about. And then the final piece is kind of boring but important, and it's a little bit like having contracts with your clients, okay? So this is a bit of a tightrope, and I can't give you specific advice on this because I don't know your specific situation, but it's always best to have as much of an agreement as possible, so there are no unspoken expectations. Now, I don't mean a contract that your partner signs. I mean that when I had that conversation with Laura, it was like, cool. So just to get this straight, and this could just be in an email, I'm going to do this. I'm going to bring my best content, my best ideas. I'm going to run this workshop for free. I'm going to post it out to my community, blah blah blah blah, and you're going to do this. You're going to send an email to your database. This is what you're going to say in it. We're going to hold the event on this specific date. We're going to have 30 tickets. And we've got that agreement in place. Does that sound good? Are you happy with that? Because what happens for a lot of times is people agree to something like, oh yeah, I'll share this for you. And you go, cool, great, thanks. And that's the end of the conversation. And then nothing really happens. Thanks so much for offering to share it. What would be the best way to share this? Do you want to share it with your email list? Do you want to share it on LinkedIn? Is there someone specific you want to send it to? How are you going to share it? I've got some ideas of some emails or some ways that you could share this. Are you open to me writing some stuff for you? You know, you really want a specific agreement in place that we're going to do this, and you guys are going to do this. Now, when it comes to delivery partnerships, obviously this is even more important because you're actually getting paid for the work. But what I would encourage you guys to do with your delivery partnerships is think about how this assessment could be valuable for the people you already deliver work to, but it could sit at the top of the funnel. And what I mean by that is it's actually just a standalone asset that's valuable for them that they could use. Right? So they could actually just give that to their ideal clients as a standalone value piece, and you guys just get the data on the back end. So that for me, if I was thinking about you guys, that would be the lowest lowest hanging fruit. It's like well we're already partnering with these people, but we're just delivering work. So that's a very kind of transactional relationship. Versus, hey do you know what? We've been having quite a few conversations or we've been thinking about this thing. We've developed this tool which I think is really useful for your end client. Would you be open to sharing it with them? So this is the final part, establishing agreement. And again, we've got our agreement creator GPT that even does it for you and we've got some templates here. I'm not going to sit here and go through this now and I know it sounds like maybe I've been copping out of that a little bit, but I want to use this workshop as the kind of high-level principles because if you don't understand the core principles and you don't get that penny drop and you don't have that kind of mindset shift, then all of the logistical, tactical, strategic stuff isn't really going to make sense. But this workbook is here. You can go away and you can go through these steps these kind of micro pieces on your own anytime. And there's a lot of thought and time and energy we put into these GPTs to really refine them. So you should just be able to say, here's a conversation I have with the partner, drop it into the agreement GPT and it will write you a draft agreement for this particular partner. That's pretty much the end of this, right? So I'd love to use the last 10, maybe 15 minutes depending on how much patience is everybody has got for a bit of Q&A. But first of all, I guess I would love to just hear like what has been your biggest insight or takeaway from this session and I'd love to hear just one thing from everybody.
>> I'll give you some time to think. Matt, if people are watching this whenever they're watching this video, they're probably going to be wondering, "Do we get the workbook?"
>> Yep.
>> So, the workbook will be in the description and link below. You can check that out. It's all the prompts, AI stuff. You can just follow along at your own pace. That's it. All right, who's got a an answer?
>> Yeah, let's just go from left from right. Like, biggest insight or takeaway.
>> Uh I guess my biggest insight was just the partnership side of things. It's something that, you know, we've been subcontracted before. We have partner agencies, but thinking outside of that and how many other partnerships we could have with other people, with branding people, with with PR, with grant writers, like all of that. It's um something that I've never really thought of and I'd like to start experimenting in.
>> How many partnerships do you think you would need in order to double the revenue of your business?
>> Mhm. I guess it I mean, it depends on how big those partners are, but um I don't want to say four at a minimum, maybe. Do you have a Is this on right?
>> Yeah.
>> Probably four. I mean, we do have like referrals still coming in. We still get um a lot We do have a lot of clients that come back for revamps every so often and it's like I feel like we have a solid pipe as of right now, but um
>> Even more reason to do it, right?
>> Right, right, right.
>> Solid pipeline right now. So,
>> experienced that. We actually went it down and we were kind of panicking and then we have a few projects to work on now. We're really busy. We are a small team, but it doesn't We do need to be putting that effort into our own agency and excelling on our side. So, um yeah, the partnerships. Do you have something?
>> Uh I I was just going to say we we've been so reliant on agency partners that we thought that would be like um you know, that's just we consistent, but it just in the last year it has changed. So, and that's why we're looking for other avenues and actually making a a system. So, what like this process is like a system that we can follow. And so, I think that's the insight you know, that take from here is having a system to do that.
>> Yeah, and I'd love to see cuz there's there's a couple of mindset shifts that I really want you to pick up on. The first is the downstream thing, right? So, what I just heard was you've got a bunch of partners, but that work kind of dries up. But, it also sounds like they were partners where you only really engage with them when a new project came in. Would that be fair? Right? So, I really want you to get this idea of repositioning how those people see you cuz right now they don't see you as a partner, they see you as a worker. Hey, this is an extension of our business overflow when we're super busy, you guys get the work. I want you to come upstream and start building tools and start building things that are valuable for the people that they serve. So, all of a sudden, you're relevant to the things that are going on day-to-day in their business, not just relevant when they don't have enough capacity internally and they need someone to outsource it to. Does that make sense? Cuz if you can make that shift, I think even the partners you've already got would probably get back to a level where it would sustain you.
>> Uh I think, you know, that's a very true statement because the partner is thinking of us as oh, they didn't know they did not know that we have the strategy piece that and that we were just executing. So, so that's a big shift to to show the them, you know, what we we got to offer.
>> Yeah, 100%. Thank you.
>> I I'd echo that. I think the partnership is a really great reframing of um the referral. You know, that your network not not just seeing them as like a one-and-done referral, but actually leveraging them as as partners. Um I've heard Hermosi do something similar where you reach out and you say, "Hey, can you give me two You're You're not going to sell the person you reach out to. Do you have two people you could recommend me to?" It's kind of a similar
>> Yeah.
>> analogy.
>> But even that Sorry to interrupt your insight, but even that, the mindset shift is that's an ask. "Have you got two people you can recommend me to? What am I getting from that?" I want you guys to be a give. "Hey, I've got this thing that I think is really valuable for you and the people that you serve." So, the more you can be seen giving, the more people will think of you as a genuine partner who they want to speak to, not just, "Oh, Chris is calling again. He probably wants more work." It's like, "Chris is calling again. I wonder what cool tool he's just invented that's going to be amazing that I want to share with everybody."
>> And I would say the um score app, I'm just really glad to see that as a tool and take Thank you for taking us through it because it's um It was It looked like a quiz before, but it's a pretty powerful tool the way you've positioned it. And thanks. Awesome day. Appreciate it.
>> Amazing. So, I think we're still getting hung up on constantly looking for clients. It's always the same thing. We're hungry, we need food. We're hungry, we need food. And to elevate it cuz when you guys talked about partners, I'm like, "What do you mean you only four partners and then it might work?" The way that Matt's talking about four partners is more than an app because they keep referring you to new people and they want to collaborate so that it's a win-win. The problem with the way we keep thinking about a relationship is what do I get? We don't even ask what do they want? So, in the in the the case when Matt talked about with WeWork, WeWork needs warm bodies in a room. That's how their business model works. And some of those people might walk around like, "This is pretty cool. I need a space here." So, Matt's like, "I got got perfect solution for you. If I'm making an assumption about your business, is your business depends on having creative professionals in this room. Well, I've got something that would bring them here. And you don't have to pay me. I'll do all the work. That's a give. There's a secret ask inside of that, but it's mostly a give. At least on the surface right? You all understand that? So, when you're doing that then they're sitting up at night thinking how do we get you all back in so that we can do this again and again and again. That's why he's like, "After this workshop, you're going to learn how to generate infinite leads." You have to think of it like that. It's a fundamental shift in your thinking. If you don't think like that, it this will work for a little bit and then it's going to taper off. Does everybody understand that? The difference is like, "How do I make it a win for them?" Blair calls it the double thank you. Where you thank them for including you in their event, and they thank you for helping them to achieve a certain result. Asking for how many people do you know might might need my work my help. That's just you asking. That's it. It's not a win for them.
>> Yeah. Like he mentioned I like having like the tool it makes me like being able to like think outside of I think the thing you're I don't remember the exact term, but just kind of almost going like on autopilot and not thinking What was it? I I wrote it down.
>> The default mode network.
>> There we go. Yeah, yeah. So, this is helpful to get out of that type of thinking.
>> Thanks, dude. Hey, to the connector.
>> Yes, sir. Um I guess discovering new partner types that I hadn't really thought about and where my low-hanging fruit is and you know, I don't spend enough time There's so much noise in my day-to-day where lots of noise. If I can sit down and with these tools which are freaking amazing, um I can hone in and take care of low-hanging fruit, and all I need is a couple of nice pieces of, you know, clientele, and things will be running smoothly. And I can continue to do this and continue to build. So, uh yeah.
>> Signal versus noise, right? So, how how are you going to determine the signal from the noise? What are you going to do? What's the mindset shift that you've made that you're going to walk out here with today that's going to
>> It's not about me, it's about them.
>> Yeah.
>> I'm going to shake it off, baby.
>> Yeah. And also don't forget what we talked about right at the beginning, right? You are going to sit down every day, and you are going to forget the noise. You're just going to focus on can I connect to the one or two new partners today?
>> Yeah.
>> And if you do that every day for 15 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, within 90 days, I promise you you'll have a totally different business.
>> Yeah. I kind of set aside 30 minutes on Sunday at uh before Monday comes, so that I already know what the plan is, and I typically
>> Yeah, and then
>> But would you do client work on a Sunday?
>> No.
>> So, why are you doing your number one client? Why are you doing that on a Sunday?
>> I'm just teeing up Monday, so I think about
>> I agree. I like planning my week on Sunday, but that's different from dedicating that time every day or week to this particular thing where we're finding partners, where we're doing the business development side of things. They're two separate activities, at least in my mind.
>> Oh, for sure. I'm just saying I already have It's not on the regular, but it'll have to be on the regular now. I have to be committed. I'm 100%.
>> Nice.
>> I'd like to be 112%, but we only have 100%.
>> Okay.
>> Also, FYI.
>> So, you have been watching a masterclass to generate an infinite amount of leads for your creative agency. There were three key things that we did in this training that you need to get right. The first one is getting really clear on exactly who your ideal client is, and what what pain points and frustrations are in their language, not your language. We then built an irresistible offer, a scorecard assessment tool that identifies some of these challenges, some of these pain points, and diagnoses what the problems are in that business. And then we looked at our low-hanging fruit, which is the people in our network that already have the trust and the attention of our ideal clients. So, your job now is to go away and reach out to two or three of those people and start forming some meaningful partnerships. Partnerships are the key to growing your business consistently and generating leads. And just remember, somebody woke up today with the trust and the attention of your ideal clients.
>> That's a good summary. Hey, if you've made it all the way to the end of this video, it means something. This was super valuable for you. So, we're not going to tell you what you just watched because you made it to the very end. Now, we know this, less than 20% of you who actually watch something like this will subscribe to the channel. So, go ahead and reward yourself with a nice fat thumbs-up. Make sure you make a comment and subscribe so that you don't miss any future episodes just like this. And if you enjoyed this, you've probably going to download the resources. Give Matt Essam a follow on LinkedIn. It's Matt Essam, E S S A M.
>> Got it.
>> And that's it, right?
>> That's it.
>> That's it. Thanks very much. See you guys next time.
>> [music] [music]
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