Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:11] Speaker B: Welcome to the Victory Show.
[00:00:14] Speaker A: Hey victors. Welcome to this episode of the Victory Show. If this is your first time joining us, I'm Travis Cody, best selling author of 16 books. And I've had the privilege of helping hundreds of business consultants, founders and entrepreneurs write and publish their own best selling books as well. And in that journey I've discovered a really fascinating pattern. A lot of businesses hit a revenue plateau, usually around a million dollars, and they struggle to break through it. So on this show I sit down with some of the world's most successful CEOs, leaders and business owners to uncover the strategies they use to overcome those plateaus and scale their businesses to new heights and more importantly, how you can do the same. So get ready for some deep insights and actionable takeaways that you can implement in your life and business, starting now. My guest today is someone who's been behind the scenes of more startups scale ups that most people will frankly ever read about. Robert Mancier is the CEO of InFocus Brands portfolio and he's a serial entrepreneur, branded growth expert and just an all around force when it comes to turning ideas into real sustainable businesses. And here's the crazy thing, he's worked with over 175 international startups, he's helped 125 companies scale, he's led 70 exits, and he's been involved in the commercialization of more than 400 products and services. And that's not even counting the thousands of acceleration and go to market market campaigns he's been part of over the years. So Robert has this rare ability to combine sharp brand thinking with operational execution, which is why so many founders and investors turn to him when they're ready to move fast and actually get results. So we're going to dig into how he thinks about growth, what it takes to build something that lasts, and the patterns he's seen across hundreds of businesses. So Robert, thank you so much for being here today. I'm excited for our conversation.
[00:01:56] Speaker B: Thank you Travis, I appreciate it.
[00:01:59] Speaker A: So you have a very specific skill set.
And I'm just curious, take me back to the very beginning. What was the very first business that you, you were involved with? And then let's talk about the journey of how that turned into a, a platform for you then to eventually work with hundreds and hundreds of companies.
[00:02:16] Speaker B: Yeah, and I don't know if it's a skill set or just a genetic malfunction, but my first company was a property management company in New York city. I was 13.
I started it for all the reasons that Most immature newbie idea startups, they want money, they want power.
And what I realized very quickly was I loved leading companies and teams because you actually answer to them. And at that age, I answered to them and their parents, and it went against everything I thought of starting. I wanted money, I wanted power. And it quickly kind of evolved very quickly. And to this day, I'm still. I really believe in transformational leadership, where I am the servant of my staff, of my clients.
And I learned the greatest lessons that way. Dealing with people first.
[00:03:20] Speaker A: Right.
[00:03:21] Speaker B: It's not the company, it's people. And that's kind of carried me through all these years, took me to all corners of the planet, and here we are.
[00:03:30] Speaker A: How did you come up with the idea for property management at 13?
[00:03:35] Speaker B: So I. I'm a big. Anybody who knows me knows I'm a huge sports fan, and I've always played sports, and I love team concepts. And I had this. This core group of athletes around me. We played a lot of sports together, and I was like, we can make something happen.
The only skill I had at 13 was my voice dropped earlier than everybody else's. So I sounded older. And this is before the Internet, right? Because I think from your credentials you read about me, it just says I'm really old.
So I sounded older on the phone. Some of my friends were older, so they presented older before I got there. And, you know, we tried it and it took off. And then we moved out of the city and I added landscaping, and we carried it all the way through college, so it paid all of our colleges.
And then probably my biggest mistake was an exit. I sold it.
Biggest mistake, probably.
[00:04:31] Speaker A: Why do you consider that a mistake?
[00:04:33] Speaker B: Because I think if I look back on all the companies, that was the purest entrepreneurship. I didn't have any money to start.
I cut barter deals. I did everything that. Because I didn't know any better. Right.
So.
[00:04:50] Speaker A: So how old were you then when you exited for that first one?
[00:04:53] Speaker B: I was 20.
[00:04:54] Speaker A: And was that because you were kind of getting done with school and you're like, bigger and better, here we come.
[00:04:59] Speaker B: I was getting done with school. I was going to med school, so I thought my career was in medicine.
[00:05:04] Speaker A: So I love how you start a business at 13 and you're running it very successfully and it's paying for schools, and you're like, med school is the path for me.
[00:05:14] Speaker B: Always loved medicine. To this day, I love medicine. I just hate the business of medicine. Which is kind of ironic.
[00:05:20] Speaker A: That is. That is pretty funny.
[00:05:22] Speaker B: Where.
[00:05:22] Speaker A: So at what point in the process, did you realize the business of medicine wasn't the path you wanted to go down?
[00:05:30] Speaker B: It was early 90s when DRGs and HMOs were coming in and insurance companies were taking over care.
We're dict. I shouldn't say taking over care. They're dictating care.
[00:05:41] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:05:41] Speaker B: So.
[00:05:41] Speaker A: And, and we can see how that turned out fantastically well.
[00:05:45] Speaker B: You, you can't mix qualitative and quantitative that way. Right. It just doesn't work for that industry. But we'll get.
[00:05:52] Speaker A: So where did you. So at that point, were you kind of like drifting for a minute where you're like, what do I do now?
[00:05:58] Speaker B: I'm not a drifter.
[00:05:59] Speaker A: No.
[00:06:01] Speaker B: I had already, I had already bombed one company while I was in school.
It was a water technology company. I built the product.
I made a lot of mistakes about CPG and going to market. I didn't realize that if it didn't match the kitchen, no one would buy it. Completely crashed that company. Out of that company. Started a film company that I still have to this day.
A film studio, an independent film studio. We do documentaries, indies, TV shows. Now we do a lot of branded content. So have the same crew for 30 years. That's the only thing I'm really proud of. Probably the only one on the planet that can say that.
[00:06:39] Speaker A: So all of your, all of your teammates are still running the. In your businesses?
[00:06:44] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:06:45] Speaker A: Wow. Okay, so let's talk because you have a unique experience where. And it's been interesting because this last month or so of talking to people, I get people.
I've had several people that have started and exited and I've had a few people that did it one time and then were like, I'm never going to do startup again. They will only acquire after a certain revenue mark and then they'll scale and sale and exit.
So people hire you for, for startups and let's look like, is there like, is there a revenue mark where it makes sense for someone to bring some. To bring someone like you in if they're, if they're a startup, do they, you know, do you work with guys that are bootstrapping it or do you prefer to have guys that like, hey, they, they've raised a hundred thousand, they've got bit of cash.
[00:07:32] Speaker B: Yeah, we don't care.
Pre rev. Bootstrap. I like bootstrap. We also have a VC fund. I'm a big fan of getting paid clients first before you ever raise any money. And we can talk for hours about why you shouldn't Go to equity too early, it screws up your cap table and your market valuation and it screws up your future exit. So we won't talk about that today, but it doesn't matter to us. And what I mean, even going back to my earliest team, I know the power that we do is in the people that we have and develop.
So we're always looking for great partners and teammates.
[00:08:11] Speaker A: Yeah, that's, that's the end of the day. Right. I think if there's been a recurring theme about what makes things most successful, the people has been. Been it.
[00:08:21] Speaker B: There's been two things and training them.
[00:08:23] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:23] Speaker B: You got to develop them and if you don't. Right.
[00:08:26] Speaker A: The leadership. And then the, the question I've asked where it's like what keeps businesses from scaling. I think 90% of the successful people I talked to said having an owner.
[00:08:36] Speaker B: That refuses to let go, that's only one piece. I think I, I think the other part is you have to realize that what got you to this stage that's getting you ready to scale isn't the process that you're going to scale with. You literally have to iterate and innovate completely.
And I think the biggest problem is people think scale is I'm going to do more of what I'm already doing, but that's not going to work.
[00:09:01] Speaker A: Yep. That my client that took his company from 2 1/2 million to 128 million was talking about that how from 1 to million to 5 million, now there's, everything's completely different. And then when you hit 10 million, everything got you there. So he's like, and sometimes, you know, if your company, it's taking you six years to get to 10 million, you've got all these habits and then you get to 10 million and now you've got to unlearn all of that. And he said that was also sometimes why companies get stuck because they don't have the ability to unlearn because they're like, but that worked to get us to 5 million. He's like, we're going 10 to 50.
Well and usually comes down to leadership and teams at that point.
[00:09:37] Speaker B: And also apathy and complacency.
Right.
[00:09:41] Speaker A: Okay, so let's do like fictional scenario here. I've got a startup, I got an idea. Let's say I've, I don't know, I've sold a couple hundred people on a, you know, a five thousand dollar product and I'm like, okay, I got a validated offer, you know, making maybe a couple hundred thousand A year. Hire you, what do we do? Where do we go from there? So what's the first thing you recommend?
[00:10:08] Speaker B: Well, the first thing we do is assess you. We have our own assessment intake, so we have an analyst team that does its own research on your company and we meet and then it literally becomes the push and pull. Because what you're saying isn't always the exact truth.
And you see things in your company that outsiders can't see because they're not privy to it. So we're taking the external view and the internal view and meeting around a table, big conversation, and we're assessing where we think the help has to be immediate and it rarely matches up with what the company thinks they need first.
[00:10:52] Speaker A: That was actually one of the questions I've been asking on the show, which is, you know, how do, as a business owner, how do you know what's the first hire or the first few hires you should have? That seems to be, you know, my friends that have gotten to the point where they're like, I'm too busy, I don't like I need help. But is it marketing to say, right, how do you, how do you determine that? Do you have a metric system you use to determine?
[00:11:15] Speaker B: We do. We are very quant focused to answer the hires. It's whatever skills you don't have already you have, you have to bring into a hire. But they have to fit your culture, they have to fit the team dynamic. If they don't fit, it's just going to be constant push and pull, adversary or, you know, relationships.
So I always make all of our early stage founders do a self assessment and then we assess them as people, skill sets, personality. Because most people aren't completely honest with themselves, especially entrepreneurs. Because we're always told no, we're always told we shouldn't do that. We're crazy. So you kind of build up this armor and then we're making you peel it away and say, listen, you're great at a few things. The rest of these things you think you're good at, you are horrible at. And that's what we have to kind of bring in.
[00:12:11] Speaker A: It's so interesting because I've done a lot of consulting in the digital marketing space and the thing that I hear, and again, I'm looking at it now going like, oh, these are all guys that are Maybe in the 3 to 5 million a year range and they've just been there forever.
But I hear them say all the time of like, oh, you don't hire for a position until you've actually got in and learned how to do the job, and then only do you hire someone.
And I always thought about that. I'm going.
Well, running Facebook ads is a really complicated thing. So expecting some guy who's good at speaking on stage to go, now you gotta go learn Facebook ads and understand it and then do. And then hire for it. That never made sense to me.
So do you. Do you still rec or you're just like, no. Like, identify your skills and go, I'm great at these things and these things I suck at. And now I'm gonna go find somebody.
[00:12:59] Speaker B: Yeah. So let's think about it. People will work harder if they're doing things they love. If I'm making you do something. And here's another thing about scaling is like, I don't micromanage anybody. You're going to hang yourself in this organization because we have metrics for everything, and I don't look at clocks. You don't have to punch in. In any of my companies.
Get your job done. I don't care if it takes you three minutes or three days. Just get it done.
If they're doing what they love to do, the clock disappears. No one's watching the clock to get done with work. They're doing what they.
If I add things and I'll share a very quick story.
We go into a lot of sales organizations to retrain sales, business development and marketing units to work together. Integration, right? Yep. The amount of tabs that most salespeople have to have open on their screen to fill out as they're supposed to be selling is so ridiculous. It takes them away from what they're really good at, which is closing deals.
So remove all that stuff from the people. Give them a clear focus. Give them what they love to do and what they're really good at doing and let them go. Like, don't get in their way. The only thing I do is provide other resources. Like, very recently, we had a whole portfolio training about AI, how to use it. Right.
I was there bumbling through it like everybody else. Because that's the other part. If you're on a team, no one sits above another. So.
[00:14:27] Speaker A: So you're. That you have the round table of business leadership.
That's our.
[00:14:31] Speaker B: That's our new consulting firm. It's based on the round table. Yep.
[00:14:35] Speaker A: No, I love it.
This is. This is so fascinating. Yeah, that's.
So take me through. Like. Like, did you have a story where somebody came to you and they were just an absolute, like, mess? Maybe they were even like.
Like, you know, financial dire straits where it's like do or die in three months.
And. And how did you. What like a success story of taking someone like that and to either writing the ship or to an exit. I'm just curious.
[00:15:02] Speaker B: Yeah, so we'll do a few. I won't use any names. Yes, some of them. So what we try to build is. Is truly a collaborative. So a lot of my past clients are now current clients and they will be future clients. Because once you exit or once something doesn't go right, you kind of are comfortable with this environment where there's a team around you at all times. Like, we're not until this year. We were never consultants. We deploy. Like I go into companies. That's why we've lived all over the world before we started this. We're talking about all the places we lived.
So we're on the ground with our clients, kind of. Because that's the only way we can learn the market. Right. Whoever you're trying to do. But I'll give one good one. We were dealing with an international organization that had a lot of operational issues. They've been around a long time. They were kind of that complacent, kind of. We did it this way forever. So we're going to keep doing it this way and the market's going to turn around and we're going to become successful again.
And, you know, most of us are born and bred in New York, so we're fairly blunt and direct. And we said, no, that's the definition of insanity. And that's not going to work because there's other people in the same space way ahead of you with technology, innovation, understanding the new way of doing this industry.
So we went in and we went on the ground and we completely changed their product line, their distribution methods, and we changed their whole brand.
And within two years, we exited that company with them. And it was such a successful exit that they gave us all the money back to start a VC fund. So we could do. We could match money for other companies, which we still run today. And we started a consultancy based on distribution and logistics internationally.
[00:16:59] Speaker A: I don't think I've ever heard of a company scaling and exiting in two years.
[00:17:03] Speaker B: That's remarkable. They had great people. They were constantly micromanaging.
Like, you can micromanage to mediocrity, right? If you have great people. And they did. And they were very loyal. Like, that's another thing we look at. We're like, if this team's really that rock solid, there's got to Be gold there. And I mean gold among them. The magic's got to be there. These were wonderful people.
The management structure was too heavy at the top and it just pushed everybody down. So it wasn't that difficult to change. And I give them all credit. They were very open to being coached and changed, which is one of the biggest things we get into and walk away from companies. Like, if you're like, we're here to help you. If you're not listening, you can push back. Right. And I have a saying. It's on my LinkedIn profile. I don't need to be right, I need to get it right. So if I'm saying something, you can prove that I'm wrong, then go ahead. But if you can't, you should just get out of our way. Yeah. So, wow.
[00:18:05] Speaker A: I love it. All right, so let's talk a little bit about operational challenges then. So. Because this is the world I live in, right. A lot of guys are. Solopreneurs can usually take a company to, you know, half a million, maybe 600, 000 or more a year.
To get to a million, they've generally got to bring on one person.
But if they hit a million and they, you know, they. And again, I'm talking about digital marketing space to be able to. To do a million. Right. If you're brick and mortar, it's gonna. You're not going to be able to do it as a solopreneur. I don't think maybe I'm wrong, but.
[00:18:34] Speaker B: Depends what you're selling, but sure.
[00:18:37] Speaker A: So the gate to a million dollars, what are the operational challenges they're going to face now? Going from, I'm just coming out of solopreneur or small team land. And I know I want to shoot for, let's say the next big goal for most people is like, I made it to a million, I want to go to 5. What are going to be the big challenges they face to get over that hump?
[00:18:58] Speaker B: Customer service, customer experience, depending on what their. But they have client relationships. And if you're going to scale, you're going to have more clients and you're going to have more needs.
So customer service, customer experience always is one of the first ones.
That's where I have a real issue with AI being the answer for every business. There are a lot of solopreneurs that should not be using AI because if you had a thousand leads today, you couldn't do anything with them because you can only service 10 of them. So it makes no sense to me.
A lot of times, we make them go back to the clients, or we go back to the clients to learn what the magic is, why they deal with them. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. I always categorize that. The Clint Eastwood movie, the Bad and the Ugly.
To find where we can get more alpha clients. Right. We want more of the best clients. We don't want more clients this way. We want more clients this way because that's higher profit margins, high or longer tail retention.
And that's the fastest way to start scaling without adding a lot of resources. Once you hit that kind of tipping point, it's either you are thinking about partnerships, collaborations, outsourcing some of the skills, but if you're going to outsource them, you better have detailed SOPs created so that the people are living up to your culture and brand, because people notice. Disconnect. A lot of the only compliment I've ever really been happy with is people telling me, I already knew they were on your team by the way they talk without me, without them knowing. Like, they just knew the way they held themselves. Like, that's a compliment to them, my team. But.
So is that where you were saying they would have to look at?
[00:20:42] Speaker A: Is that where part of the apathy comes in? If somebody gets familiar trying to get to five and they. They have had shoddy customer service and they. That kind of drags that through. And as they're going forward, that's one of the things that'll be a downfall for them.
[00:20:55] Speaker B: Yeah. And also for me, customer service on my front line to learn what the customer's experiencing so I can fix it or add more of it. If it's really good, I want to keep pushing it because that helps my marketing, my sales, my business development.
But that kind of feedback loop usually breaks when you start. When you. When you as a solopreneur get to one million and a half, because you're literally just trying to keep up to get the projects out. You don't have time to look up and look around and spend time with your clients. Like, you know, part of our.
Part of our staff requirements is they have to check in with clients, not about business.
Like, we want to know what else is going on in their lives.
Because a company is one aspect of a life.
[00:21:41] Speaker A: Sure.
Right.
[00:21:43] Speaker B: So, yeah.
[00:21:44] Speaker A: Wow. Yeah. That's a very humanistic approach.
[00:21:47] Speaker B: So, okay, we're dealing with humans. Right. Regardless of technology.
[00:21:50] Speaker A: Wait a minute. My business school didn't have anything about humanity in there. It was all about profit.
[00:21:55] Speaker B: Either did medicine just say it.
[00:21:58] Speaker A: This is true.
What?
So okay, so let's say we managed to get out of our own way. We hit 5 million. So now what are the operational challenges to go from 5 to 10, how.
[00:22:10] Speaker B: Are you going to delegate and how are you going to hold people accountable without micromanaging them? Because you will drive yourself crazy.
And that's, you know, that's all the early foundational SOPs changing. That's probably bringing in some technology and I'm not a tech heavy stack person.
[00:22:28] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:22:28] Speaker B: Like bring in the technology that you need and you're going to use. People buy technology and they don't use it because it's there. Salesforce and I'm not picking on Salesforce, but Salesforce is one of those where people do not use all the wonderful features in it. They use one or two things.
Well, if you're not going to use the rest of it and you're not going to spend time to train your people to use the rest of it, then find something else that works for your business.
I think this one size fits all or one solution fits all is very silly.
Yeah. And it's a waste. Usually a waste of resources.
[00:23:02] Speaker A: Sure.
So obviously team and team building and transformational leadership.
So how, how would someone like let's say me is I'm the CEO of my own company.
I'm getting to that point now where I've got to do that. How do you train when you partner with somebody? How you train the management and the leaders to be able to step into that?
[00:23:24] Speaker B: Well, first we, we listen and observe.
So if we're coming into a new company, we can never wear the expert label. You're the expert, you're a company, you should be the expert. The things you don't know, we're going to learn together. But you're the expert. And we're going to observe and listen and see the interactions before we say anything. That's the assessment part. But once we see that there's going to be very key standout features that need to be fixed almost immediately. And it's not because we feel that way, it's because the numbers are telling us that if you go to 10 meetings and don't close any, well, obviously you have a good pipeline development, but you suck at the close.
So what's missing?
[00:24:08] Speaker A: Right.
[00:24:08] Speaker B: So you can chunk out every piece of an operation to figure out where the bottleneck is or where the rate limiting step is or where the biggest mistakes are made. And a lot of times it's in communication and training. We, we spend a lot in, in training for everybody, our clients, our staff, like, we're big into.
Let's learn things together.
So.
Wow.
[00:24:34] Speaker A: All right, so what?
So for you, like, with the guys you're working, the companies you're working with, do you have a, like a niche or a category of company that you, like, seem to sort of gravitate towards where you're like, oh, they're in this.
This industry. We love those. Or you, at this point, you've done so many where you're like, if you've got customers, we can help you.
[00:24:58] Speaker B: So it took me a long time, probably 20 years of running companies to realize that there's a process that works across all industries. So we are industry agnostic. We don't care. And we have some technology that hopefully in the next 10 years will be a new industry. But that's down the line, right?
There's processes that you can check off regardless of industry and get those right. Obviously, understanding the buyer, right, who's actually buying, it's not what you're selling, it's how they buy that's way more important.
And understanding that process in whatever industry we jump into, understand, understanding the ambassadors and the zealots that you can go through or champions that you can go through to get up the chain, those are some of the things we focus on. But also, it's just about bringing it back to operational excellence, but also being allowed to make mistakes. That's the hard one, right? We live in a fairly punitive corporate world, right. If you take that off, people shine because people do things.
Complacency. It's always been done this way. So I do it this way. It's almost to keep their job instead of excel at their job.
[00:26:13] Speaker A: I worked in Hollywood for 15 years and it was.
[00:26:16] Speaker B: Why?
[00:26:16] Speaker A: Why did we make that crappy movie? Well, $100 million with a sci fi script with Tom Cruise. It's a winner. Did anyone read the script?
[00:26:25] Speaker B: Doesn't matter.
[00:26:27] Speaker A: With Tom Cruise and sci fi movie, this should be a winner. And if it fails, not my fault. I follow the numbers.
[00:26:32] Speaker B: Yep, you follow the formula.
[00:26:34] Speaker A: Why did you do that? That's the way it's always done.
That was. That was actually when I. When I was in Hollywood, that's how I discovered direct response marketing is. One of my friends was doing it and he used to go on and on. It's just, you know, the heyday of Google Ads where he's like, my God, I spent 10,000 last month and I made 125 off of it. And.
And I'm going, wait, so you know, for the dollars you're spending, how much you're getting back for you. He's like, yeah. And I would go to our. I work for a huge producer and I'd go to our marketing teams and be like, okay, so for that $5 million we're going to drop on HBO, how many tickets is that going to sell? And they were like, are you crazy? Like, what are you talking about? I don't.
Five million there. Five million there. Five million there. Five million there. And then this is the strategy for the marketing teams Friday night.
And if Monday comes around and it's a number one movie, they all high five their brilliance. And if it fails, they go, but we, we spent all the money on all these channels. It should have worked. I don't understand.
[00:27:31] Speaker B: So all you got to do is peel the curtain back in any industry and you realize how ridiculous some of these accolades are. And I'll give the one about COVID When they were praising Target and Walmart for, for excelling in retail, they were the only stores open, there was nobody else. So why are you giving them kudos? And no offense to those organizations, but it made no sense to me that, you know, they're clapping themselves on the back. You literally shut down every competitor in every town. So.
[00:28:01] Speaker A: Yeah, and the one that really got me on that is my family. My, my in laws are from Canada and they would show us videos where you'd go into the Walmart and it was just this little piece of tape, right? And it's like on this side is the underwear and you can't go over there because you'll get Covid, but over here's the groceries and you can go over there and it's okay. But if you cross that line, literally, police would come and arrest you for being. I'm like, I don't understand what's happening right now.
That is so funny when they get hail for that and it's like shut everybody down.
So do you have any examples of companies you work with that started to scale spectacularly and then just something happened and they went off the rails and you ended up having to step out and be like, that's that we can't be involved in this without naming any names. And if so, what, what caused that to like, what causes a company to be scaling really well and then sort of have the tires wobble and fall off?
[00:28:52] Speaker B: Yeah, so we had two over the last few years where we hit. We came in and moved some really big metrics and I'm going to just classify both in the same bucket.
It almost is vanity and ego got in the way because they wanted to go back to what they were running because then they were completely in charge.
When you come into an organization, you work as the organization because that's usually our model. As a white label, you become part of the fabric of the culture, right? You're creating relationships, you're networking. In order to get things done, you have to lean on them, they have to lean on you. So it changes the dynamic of the organization.
Usually for the better. We do. I mean, going back to, you know, med training, do no harm, right? We are not coming in here to ruin the company. We're here to help. And if we can, I'll be the first one to pull us out. Like we're not helping anymore. We can leave.
It almost became a battle and to this day they haven't reached those numbers again. And. And it has to. It was the leadership who said this was working. But we're going to go back to this because now it's going to work better.
And you know, that's something I don't. You know, I'm getting too old and I don't like BS anyway. And I was like, you just want to be in charge and you want to dictate instead of learn. Because we're a big. Learn from the market. If we do something, it doesn't work out. I'm changing it. I don't care if I thought of it, okay, I suck. I took, I did something completely half assed last week. And to my whole staff, I was like, I screwed that thing up.
It's all on me. We just got to fix it now together. Because I have no idea where it's going. But it's that kind of lack of honesty.
Like if you think you're perfect, then you're the only human on the planet that is so.
[00:30:53] Speaker A: You know. One of my mentors was telling me he was in direct response marketing and his mentor was considered one of the best ever. And he was telling me about the. One of the biggest lessons he learned was they had worked on this campaign together and his mentor was like, this is the best campaign I've ever had in my 25 years of doing this. This thing's going to crush it. We're going to make the riches of Everest. And the whole team's excited because they're like, he's like, I've been working with for three years. He's never talked like that before. So we're like, this is it. And, and then they, that they the campaign goes out a week later, they get all the metrics, and it was just a disaster. It was like one of the worst things I've ever had. And. And then the team's, like, scared to bring him the numbers, right? Because they're like, what's going to happen? And he's like. He looks at the numbers and he sits there for a minute and he's like. And then he just wads up the paper and throws it in the trash. And he's like, okay, what's the next?
And he's like, they were all thinking, like they were, like, depressed, and they're like, we did all this work and it didn't work. And he was like, well, scrap. Sometimes it works. Sometimes. I thought it was a winner, but the audience said no.
[00:31:55] Speaker B: And the audience is the only one that matters.
[00:31:57] Speaker A: Yep.
So clearly, Martin, I mean, you've launched a lot of products.
Are there sort of marketing fundamentals that. That apply to any business to. To increases your chances of success?
[00:32:12] Speaker B: Get the real voice of the customer.
How do you. We just had a big battle with an institution that was using general aggregated information about their customer segment was not specific to the geography and the service they were selling. It was literally like national census stuff. And we're like, that is the most inane use of information I've ever seen, because that's not who you're selling to.
So true. Voice to customer isn't always easy because you have to build a relationship to the customer. And I have a client right now in the Ukraine doing this with all that other stuff going on.
[00:32:51] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:32:52] Speaker B: Right. There's. There's a lot of other things going on in their lives, but he is still trying to figure out what he drives for the customers and why the customers rely on him. So I think for anybody, if you get the voice of the customer meaning the phrases, the jargon that they use about your product or service, and then you start using that, you're going to attract more of them. If they're your best clients, don't use the phrases that your worst clients are using because you don't want use the phrases in the jargon of your best clients and what they say about you and what they say about the service.
That's an easy way of creating the tribe of Alpha customers. Wow.
[00:33:31] Speaker A: I love it.
All right, so the name of your company is In Focus Brands.
How does branding.
[00:33:36] Speaker B: Completely misnamed.
[00:33:38] Speaker A: Yeah. Where did that come from?
[00:33:41] Speaker B: Ever since I was very young, people always said I was very focused. So most of my direct companies have Focus in there somewhere. Just as an homage to somebody that gave me guidance, that didn't even know they were giving me guidance. But in Focus Brands was completely misnamed, because a brand, to me is not a logo.
A brand is a system built to the team I'm working with. So Infocus Brands builds branded systems for the companies we're working with. So everything for us is a process and a system.
[00:34:08] Speaker A: That is the most unique definition of.
[00:34:12] Speaker B: Branding I've ever heard, and the stupidest. When I first started, because everybody was calling me, saying, I need a logo, and I'm like, I don't do effing logos.
I don't know what you're talking about. So, you know, that's the other thing. When people think they want to be the prime mover or first mover in an industry, you better spend a lot of time educating about what you're talking about, because nobody knows and nobody really cares. It took me a long time to. To make that stick for why people reach out to us.
[00:34:43] Speaker A: Yeah. That is amazing. Yeah.
Right now, especially on LinkedIn, the. The personal brand is, like, the big thing. You're gonna need a personal brand. And I'm like, what does that even mean?
I don't. What is personal brand?
[00:34:55] Speaker B: Oprah.
[00:34:55] Speaker A: And I was like, oprah had a personal brand because she had a TV show. I was like, you know, I don't.
So that's funny.
[00:35:05] Speaker B: Just be authentic and real. There's your personal brand, whatever that is.
[00:35:10] Speaker A: I've been telling people that for the last three years, and one of the arguments I made, I'm like, love him or hate him, one of the reasons Trump resonates is because he's authentic.
You see videos from 85, from, you know, 1985, and you go, man, that guy's a narcissistic. A hole. And then you see, you know, the press release yesterday, and you're like, narcissistic day. I'm like, this guy's the same. He's been the same for 40 years. I know what I'm getting.
[00:35:34] Speaker B: And listen, every. There's no brand that everybody loves.
[00:35:38] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:35:39] Speaker B: Right? You have haters. You have to have that emotional trigger. Either love or hate. You have to have it to be successful.
[00:35:46] Speaker A: I. I had a client who was a pastor one time, and we. Something was his. His side business was, like, kind of down, and we were chatting, and he's like, oh, I know what it is, Travis. He's like, I haven't been controversial in a couple of weeks.
And so then he went home and Rated wrote this email that was, like, really controversial. And then everybody's like, on this channel. And then his sales went up and that. And I was like, this is from a pastor. A pastor figured that out.
[00:36:14] Speaker B: He did that.
[00:36:15] Speaker A: But I, you know, the pastor who had a marketing brain.
So let's say somebody's listening to this episode and everything you're saying is resonating with them and they're like, oh, my gosh. Where has In Focus Brands been my whole life? How do they. How do they reach out to you? How do they, you know, get involved in. In your world?
[00:36:35] Speaker B: So the easiest way is to find us on LinkedIn, because seven years ago, I took down all our websites and our business shot up 4 or 500% a year for one reason, that we're white label. We work for the client in the client's name. They don't know we're there. Wow. It made no sense to have a website. Nobody was ever finding us. I was spending a lot of money on websites that weren't doing anything. And then we started sucking at up, keeping up, updating the website. So I was like, I'm going to take them down. I had a lot of pushback from my own staff, my investors, my board. I was like, I'll take the hit if I'm wrong, but to this day, I get to brag about it at every board meeting. So.
But we do have a new website coming out with our new consulting firm, so.
[00:37:20] Speaker A: Well, see, that's the side business, so you can get away with it.
[00:37:24] Speaker B: Nice.
[00:37:25] Speaker A: All right. I always like to end every, every conversation with three. Three personal questions. So if you could, if you could go back in time and give your younger self one piece of advice, what would it be and why?
[00:37:40] Speaker B: Wow.
Do more.
[00:37:44] Speaker A: Don't, don't. Don't sell the first business.
[00:37:47] Speaker B: No, no, no. Just, Just do more. Take more risks.
[00:37:53] Speaker A: That's funny because I'm looking at it going, you know, 70 exits and you're like, I could have done more. Most people are still working on exit number one.
[00:38:02] Speaker B: I, I think also to remove, like, now the ego's gone, the market leads us. I think if I had found that earlier and figured out a way to get everybody on the same page earlier, we could have done more. And doing more doesn't always mean personally, it's doing more for others.
You're part of a community.
Giving back is important to us. We donate a lot of time to organizations we've created a lot of not for profit. So do more. I think that would be my Advice.
[00:38:34] Speaker A: I love it. All right, so what believer mindset do you feel has had the biggest impact on your success?
The.
[00:38:43] Speaker B: The line I said earlier is that I don't have to be right. I have to get it right.
Has really led me for a long time, and it's permeated all the companies because I have other people like that, too, around me, which I'm really fortunate to have great people around me.
[00:38:58] Speaker A: That's a really good title for your next book. You don't have to get it right. You don't have to be right, but you have to get it.
[00:39:04] Speaker B: Yep. And that's what we're going for. Right. Our model is to disprove. Like, if I say something, I don't want you to ever yes me. I have no yes people in my organization. And if you ever sit in a meeting, you're like, who's in charge here? Because this seems like chaos and people are mouthing off to everybody. But it's the disprove model. Like, I. If I say something, I don't want somebody to say, hey, Bob, you're right. I want them to shoot holes in it.
[00:39:27] Speaker A: So I love it. All right, final questions. What's the best investment you've ever made in yourself?
[00:39:34] Speaker B: Wow.
My avid reading.
I'm an avid reader to this day. I read a lot of books each week. I. I think that's the only thing I would say was an investment in myself.
[00:39:49] Speaker A: Yeah, that's what Warren Buffett said. Right. If he had a superpower, it'd be speed reading.
And he's like, he already admits to reading eight or nine hours a day, so.
[00:40:01] Speaker B: Oh, wow. Yeah. I don't get that.
Do comic books count?
[00:40:06] Speaker A: Right. Well, Robert, this has been a fantastic conversation. Thank you so much for being here. I love it.
Listeners, if you have a business and you're wanting to scale LinkedIn in focus brands, do it.
[00:40:20] Speaker B: Thank you, Travis. Always a pleasure.
