Bruce La Fetra - The Client Whisperer - Eastwood Strategy Advisors

0:00 The topics and opinions expressed in the following show are solely those of the hosts and their guests, and not those of W FOURCY Radio. It's employees are affiliates. We make no recommendations or endorsements radio show, programs, services, or products mentioned on air or on our web. No liability explicit or implies shall be extended to W four CY Radio or its employees are affiliates. Any questions or comments should be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for choosing W FOURCY Radio. Churchill said, those who failed to learn from history are condemned to repeat it. Kevin Helen m believes that certainly applies to business. Welcome to Winning Business Radio here at W four CY Radio. That's W fourcy dot com and now your host, Kevin Helenair. Thanks everybody for joining in today. This is the first show of twenty twenty four. I'm particularly excited.

0:58 I am Kevin Hellenan and welcome back to another episode of Winning Business TV and Radio on W four cy dot com. We're streaming live on talkfor tv dot com in addition to Facebook and that's at Winning Business Radio. We're also available in podcasts after the live show on many platforms. You've heard them a lot of times. It's YouTube, iHeartRadio, Spotify, Apple, pretty much wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. The mission of this show, winning business radio and TV, as regular listeners and viewers know, is to offer insights and advice to help people avoid the mistakes of others, to learn best practices, the how tos, the what too's, the what not tos, to be challenged, and certainly to be inspired by the successes of others.

1:40 But you know, virtually every successful person I've ever talked to has had some form of failure in their lives and careers. So while we all have to get our knees skinned once in a while, I'm driven to keep those scrapes from needing major surgery. Let's endeavor to learn from history so we don't repeat it today. My guest is Bruce Lafatra, the client Whisperer, founder and owner of owner of eat Wood Strategies. Yeah, I can talk, We'll get there, Bruce Eastwood Strategy Advisors. Bruce's clients call him the client whisper, Using a product marketing approach that generates bigger and faster returns for most small to mid size B to B firms. Bruce shows those owners how to fish for clients with a spear instead of casting a wider net. Bruce's clients accelerate their sales cycle, get paid for more of their value, and are more referrable. Reverse Engineering the firm's best client relationships results in insights that banish random acts of marketing. He equips his clients to clone their best profitable clients.

2:37 Bruce earned his BA and Economics from Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, California, and his MBA from the Tuck School at Dartmouth. He's a trained facilitator and currently lives in Knoxville, Tennessee. His husband to Debbie, who's an attorney, dad to Brian who's twenty five, and Sarah who's twenty two. He's currently a He's not currently a pet owner, but loves dogs and is definitely a pie over cake guy. Me too. Thanks Bruce Bruce, Welcome to Winning Business TV and Radio. Appreciate you being here. It's great to be on and it's great. It's always great to talk to you. Kevin. It's always good to talk to another pie guy. Good. I threw that in because I h it's a good test for sure, for sure. And dogs over cats, sorry cat people. So let's let's start with some background.

3:20 I always liked our listeners and viewers to kind of get a sense as to where you came from and a little bit of your background. Where'd you grow up? I actually grew up in the San Francisco Bay area in Menlo Park, back when middle class people could live there before Facebook and Google and all that. Man. Wow, I was a recruiter back in right when the Internet bubble was at its highest, and even then it was crazy we try to relocate people into there. It was insane, insane. So what was it like in Menlo Park at the time, And what is Menlo Park well known for? Well, Menlo Park is now is a you know, it's a suburb of on the San Francisco Peninsula. It was big home to big employer. When I was there was a Raycam Corporation which has now been bought by Tycho many years ago, and was in the material science. It was a place I worked coming out of college where I learned product management and learned to actually sell stuff that people made. And now I'm a consultant, so you know, kind of maybe I went over to the dark side.

4:20 What I won't do it. I was going to say, there are a couple of good consulting jokes, but self deprecating, I might add, but what were your early interests? High school? And you know, maybe early college. Oh, he's been a baseball fan, but I always liked I grew up in a family of all engineers, so I'm the only one in my family that doesn't have a BS have a BA. But I also I grew up where something and they were tinker engineers, not these software engineers. Now they don't know how to use a screwdriver. And so whenever anything broke, we took it apart, and the worst it could be is it was still broken. Otherwise we learned about it, and sometimes we fix things that other people said were broken. And so for me, I wasn't quite the mechanical aptitude of my siblings, but that I learned that to apply it to people. And I always love to understand why people do things, not you know, the psychobabble, but but in terms of how do you create value that people appreciate, that's excellent. I love hearing that. Why did did you choose Claremont and why economics. I liked small schools, so I both my undergrad and graduate are our top schools, but they're very small programs.

5:34 And I became a big fan that there's three parts to education. One is the classroom bit, one is your classmates, and the other is kind of the atmosphere around there. And my high school classmates that went to someplace and had nine hundred people in their intro to whatever class missed out on two of those pieces. I would see my professors, you know, in the supermarket and in town, get invited over to their houses, and I think that really enhanced the h experience. And so when I went to grad school, I was looking for the same thing. And amongst the top NBA programs, there's only one that fits that category, and that's the Tux School at Dartmouth.

6:19 Economics general business interest. I wasn't I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do. I knew I wanted to, you know, be business of some sort, uh, And so that provided a really broad base for me. Were you there long enough to get into any winter sports, I assume you mean that Dartmouth, not at Clermont, the Dartmouth well surfing would be the winner sport in southern California. Well, if you in the Bay Area, you don't have to go that far for for a mountain or two, right, But no, I met Dartmouth for sure. Well, actually, the the the program at tuck In until in my second year that talking to professors, I understood this, but they the program was really intense. And what it was is it was forced you to work with other people that you could not you could not do it alone, and so the peak of one class would hit the valley of the other one. And I thought, oh my god, we are so lucky that these things, these peaks didn't line up. And it wasn't until I was talking to professors a second year that oh no, they carefully script it so that you're not killed, but that you can't. You can't. You have to depend on your steady group mates.

7:39 And I thought that was a great learning experience because the other thing from the is we came in we were all really smart. I mean, to get accepted to a place like that, you have to be pretty smart. We were successful, but then we found out that we had solved some of the same problems different ways. So it wasn't that there was a solution. There are solutions, and that to me was really eye open and a great lesson for life. Why so two things, Why did you choose to pursue an MBA? And where were you after college? After undergrad? Where were you in your career at the time. So I worked for over three years, actually graduated in three and a half years from undergrad and worked so at the top class. In one hundred and sixty eight people in my class, there were two that didn't have work experience. Now we weren't. I wasn't so far in that had this huge opportunity costs. I laughed at the married students at first because they smoked all of us academically. It's like, how can they do that? Their opportunity cost was way higher than ours. Yeah, yeah, so true, No, I did well. So I'm not saying like, you know, slout string anything like that, but yeah too.

8:52 It was early enough in my career that I could do that. I could take two years and go do that, and I learned a lot lot, But it wasn't you know, I didn't have family and kids and all those things that make it really hard and trying to locate a spouse with a job and those kinds of things. Yeah. Uh, to that point, tell us about Debbie and of course Brian and Sarah. So so, my wife's attorney. She does a pellet level constitutional laws. So we have very interesting dinner table conversations. The kids grew up knowing a lot about the Constitution. Uh. So that's so that's good. Son's a he works, he's a civilian analyst for the Air Force. And I can't tell you anything more than that. And because I don't know anything more than that, because he wouldn't tell me. Uh. And my my daughter is a senior in college trying to figure out what what she's going to do next. And you know, she has a variety of interests, very very interesting. I wonder if Debbie would be willing to get on the radio. She likes radio, but not TV. She's actually on the radio tomorrow and she she she doesn't like TV. Uh, we'll see if I can, I can have a chat.

9:58 I'd love to talk Constitution a lot. As crazy as that sounds, no, it's not crazy in our house. Yeah, good good. So all right, you've had you've had a number of jobs. You were at Raycam. I saw that and for some reason, I know the name of that company, or knew the name of that company. I don't know why. But then you got your program manager, programs manager, developer relations, product marketing manager, various company companies. You could see the progression into marketing. I want you to just pick out this is pre self employment. Now, I want you to pick out a couple of those more impactful positions and tell us what you took away. What were some of those key lessons, maybe earlier or later, but pick out a couple and tell us the key lessons you learned. Well, there's there's a there's a couple of those, and one is a really big lesson about channels. So a lot of people that are in marketing or you know, executives that haven't worked in a channel, think, oh, well, we're under price pressure. We'll just shave the channel margin. And then they want why the business goes away? All right? Described for the for the audiences. Oh so so if you're if you're selling through distributions or or resellers, and if they're not making money, then they don't sell your product. There you go. And and that seems like such a simple lesson, but it's one that i've encountered over and over again where you know, I've been the voice of Sandy is like, no, if the reseller is not making money, it doesn't matter what our margins

11:28 are because they're not going to sell anything. So you need to make you know, the customer in that case is really the reseller, not the end user. And and that's so that's that's the And then the other lesson I got was and maybe it was just the quirk of the of the companies I worked with, but I grew up in a role where product management and product marketing were combined. It wasn't until you know, ten years into my career where I where I had that role split and it's like, what you mean, that's like only half a job, not for most. So again for the audience, describe the difference between the two. So, product management is managing the product. So what is it? What goes into it? It's life cycle, it's features, it's life cycle the features. And when I, you know, ray Km's starting out, we did a lot of we had a lot of standardized products, but we also did a lot of custom products and uh, and it was entering new markets, so it was technology was actually as old as I was out of patent, but we were.

12:31 It'd been primarily military and high end commercial technology, and we were going into commercial, lower end commercial appliances and automotive and things like that that nobody in the company had ever done. So I knew as much as they did, and so it was really fun. It was a great, great timing to be there. Product marketing is which you think you know a lot of classic marketing. You know, what's the how do you you know, how do you go to market, what's the uh, the copy, the advertising, those kinds of things. And obviously it's a little bit different for a consumer product versus which I know nothing about, versus a business to business product, which I know a lot about. All Right, we have time for one or two more questions before our first break, but I want to know here's the big question for me. You have two instances of self employment Lafetra Consulting twenty eighteen, twenty ten to eighteen. Sorry that was a big shock of time, and then your current Eastward Strategy Advisors. But back up from that, why did you decide to become self employed? Well, I had I'd actually fallen into consulting and just threw a Fluke, and the woman I was working with, small boutique consulting firm, decided that she didn't like selling, which is really bad if you're in a small professional services business. You appreciated the choir, and I loved what we were doing. We'd worked with a lot of large software companies, Adobe, Smantic. They always paid, but you had to harass them to get them to pay you. And we had an office manager that spent probably half her time chasing down these big companies,

14:05 and I didn't want to do that. I want to and so I kind of gravitated towards smaller professional firms because it was fun, they paid, uh, and they're fun to work with. In terms of the fature consulting Eastwood, it's really a continuum. I was on my own. People can't spell the fat and I had a partner briefly and because I thought it was when I first met you, Yeah, probably everybody. And then I had a partner, you know, briefly, and so we changed it the Eastwood, and then he decided he really liked the certainty and the benefits and things of you know, being in a corporate job, and so it just I kept the kept the east the Eastwood. So I don't know if you do.

14:46 You probably do. I have a different perspective. I like the certainty of being self employed. Yeah, control your own destiny, right, You control your own destiny. You control who you work with, and certainly with what I preach. As we talk about later in terms of working with your best clients once you in Clone, you can't do that if someone tells you you know who you work with, right, All right, let's pause right there. We will be back Bruce in just about a minute. Everybody else will be back with Bruce Laftra the Client Whisper in just a minute. You're listening to Winning Business Radio with Kevin Helenet on W four CY Radio. That's W four cy dot com. Don't go away. More helpful information is coming right up right here on Winning Business Radio. Have you ever dreamt of being on the radio, Well, now is your chance be a radio show guest on the number one ranked internet radio station and promote you and your business for free.

15:48 Yes you heard it, free business advertising right here on W four cy dot com. Call five six one five zero six four zero three one now to get booked on one of our shows. That's five six one five zero six four zero three to one GEG. You're free advertising now and now back to Winning Business Radio with Kevin helenan presenting exciting topics and expert guests with one goal in mind to help you succeed in business. Here once again is Kevin Helena. We are back with Bruce Lafecher or the client Whisper. I love that tagline? Where'd you come up with that? I didn't. It was a client of mine and I asked the story is. I resisted it for a long time. I thought it was kind of maybe cheesy or whatever, and he kept pounding on me, and finally I tried it and people really liked it. So that's how it came about. So I'm smart enough to use it, but not smart enough to come up with it. There you go, There you go. Quick sides that pier. You've had several articles published. I want to know two things. Well, First, tell us about one or two of those articles, and then we'll ask I'll ask you about the process of writing and getting published. I've been published in a variety of different sorts of publications, everything from a the trade magazine for the construction

17:18 UH and architecture Engineering sorts of world to marketing type publications and other places. And the experience in every case is in some sense, you know a little bit similar. You probably know that, but in other cases it's it's specific to their market and people want to have their market addressed as opposed to generalized knowledge. So it's applied knowledge is what I find, you know works with people. So it's stories. You know, I'd love to tell stories, and I, you know, use the right stories for the right the right marketplace. And that's usually the gist of the way I approach it. So tell us about one or two of those specific articles. What's psych my So one that I have done is that's actually in process. I don't know where it's going to get published exactly because I'm speaking on it is. I call it the client the expert trap, and what that is is that there's a lot of professionals who label themselves as experts and actually actually hurts them. It slows down the business development cycle, it costs them money, they get paid less, and they become less referrable. And the reason is is that there's nothing wrong with being an expert. The problem is selling like an expert.

18:44 So come back to your world, whereas how do experts sell? Let me tell you all the reasons why you should buy from me, and if you show any interest at all, then I'm going to bombard you with more reasons and more reasons and more reasons, and pretty soon our brains can't handle that. So we step back and we start to look around. And now we look at other options and that can either make us price sensitive, that can you know, lead us to another provider, or we just end up doing nothing because we're overwhelmed. Because that's the biggest competitor for almost everyone out there is do nothing that's right status quote. And so I discussed I discussed you know that situation, and people say start nodding their heads, Oh yeah, And then you know how you get out of it, which isn't that hard, But it's not by pushing the expertise. Think about it as as experts answer questions, that's what they do, right, there's an advisor that helps shape the questions. So yes, there's a role for both those. One isn't better than the other, but but one is is dependent upon works at the behest of the client. The other one works with the client. The value is very different and their role is very different. So if you have a lot of knowledge and I know a lot of experts that do very well, but they get called in for a specific thing. Think about an expert witness or something. They get called in for a specific task that they don't control. And if you have a great referral network, that goes fairly easy.

20:15 If you're out there hustling the business, it can be really hard. Good points right there. All right, tell us about Eastwood Strategy Advisors. I'll read what your LinkedIn profile says for the audience of a growth catalyst helping lawyers, consultants and advisors do what every business strives to do, earn more without working harder. Evidence from a firm's own clients make my recommendations credible and actionable. Understanding there or excuse me why their best clients select their firm is a game changer. So just generally tell us about the firm. Sure. So the one thing you need to understand is the concept the best clients.

20:55 So people talk about ideal clients. Ideal clients are what you want read magris is who are you the ideal provider for? Who wants to work with you? If you can work from that perspective, life is a lot clearer, it's a lot easier, and things happen a lot faster. So I call your best clients are the ones that you would clone if you could, because people can do all the math as to who are their most profitable clients. And I worked with one attorney and his farm. They'd hired a consultant and he spent like an entire day going through their entire book of business. You're rating them, who's you know? And then nothing had happened for like a year. They didn't make much progress, and I was talking to him and I asked him, so, who would you clone if you could? And he thought that there's a great question. Stupid question. He goes, oh my god, that is we spent an entire day trying to answer that.

21:48 And you did one question. And so when you start to think about who your best clients are, not all your clients your best clients. Now, all of a sudden, the world looks really, really different. And you've probably heard, and our viewers, i'm sure have heard that the top twenty percent of your clients generate eighty percent of your profits. What people don't talk about is the bottom twenty percent cause eighty percent of your headaches. So if you could, if you could focus on just one or the other, actually getting rid of those bottom twenty percent will cause more upside. Now, if you can do that by focusing on the top twenty percent, now of a sudden, the world looks really different. You don't have as much variation.

22:33 You know what your clients want, so it's not well some like this, some like that. There's magic, that chemistry, whatever you want to call it, the magic mojo. You're working with clients that appreciate you, understand your value you. They're the ones that say, oh my god, Keven, you get me. That's magic. And now of a sudden, and there's no headaches, so your capacity actually goes up, so you can work with more highly profitable clients than you could if you cast away. Yeah, they value what we do. There's mutual respect. So not only is there more revenue and higher profits, but all those other softer things come into play. Right, as you said, fewer headaches. Oh and you mentioned yeah, you're referring more business. Talk about that too. Yeah, So when you start to focus on your best clients, there's some I call it your secret sauce. And I call it your secret sauces because if I were to ask you, Kevin, why do your best clients work with you? Is there something real or is it just kind of lucky? You say, oh no, no, there's something real. Well what is it? You can't articulate it. You can talk about value or something that isn't really it, but you know there's something real. If I ask your clients the same question, they'll answer the same way. Yeah, there's something real about working with Kevin, but I'm not quite sure what it is. So my process is to reverse engineer those relationships. I go deep with the client that figure out what peel the onion back to and say, oh my god, Okay, there's this thing Kevin does. I never really thought about it, but if he stopped doing it, it'd be a totally different relationship. That's your secret

24:07 sauce. And it's not necessarily for every one of your clients, but for your best clients it is common. Now you start talking about that, not only do you attract business, you attract those best clients and say, oh my god, Kevin, you get me. But now your existing clients have the words to articulate why you're so great because clients will almost always once we get to this point, they say, okay, that seems like almost too simple. Let me go test it out with some of my best clients. And the clients just go wide and they say, oh my god, Kevin, you have worked together for how many years? You know how valuable you are. We wouldn't be here without you, all that kind of stuff, But I've never been able to really articulate why you're so great. You just put words on it. Now they become really powerful referral engines as well.

25:00 That's why it all fits together. I mean, it all comes together. It's not. It's not three different things in terms of accelerating business development, getting paid more, be more referrable. It's one thing, really, and you are you're saying that's often organic, those referrals, those those referrals, well yeah, they become organic. But then you also now you know, because let's face it, referrals come in three parts. I mean, people think referral is you introduce me, you know, well that's that's an introduction. That's not really a referral or recommendation. A real referral starts with you know, if I have someone I want to send to you who I think you'll be a great match for I have to I tell them why Kevin will be a great match for them. If I don't know that, then I can't really get to, you know, step one. But all the value comes after Kevin be a great you know match for you. Because so now what do they do? Do they call you right away? Unfortunately not, No, they go check you out. You're the digital you on LinkedIn or your website, those kinds of things. And if they see all your accolades but not what I said about you, it's you're still on the running because you're just like everyone else. Because everyone else. But if there's if it lines up, it's like that's exactly what Bruce said about Kevin. Now they can't wait to talk to you. And so the third step comes into play because it's still not you know, close business. But the third step is now when you actually meet them, you can go in with all your accolades and you'll do the expert thing overwhelm them. Or you can say, hey,

26:33 I know what my referral partners say about me. I know what they read when they you know, check me out. I'm going to understand why they're here, and yes, maybe there's other things I do and I will over deliver for them down the road. But if they don't become a client, they never have a chance to have that extra experience. And so you remember why they're there. You line those three steps up, the referral process can become very productive and very quick. That's really good, all right, tell us so, but it starts with you have to tell me where your sweet spot is. And if your sweet spot is, you know, small businesses between you know, ten and twenty million dollars. It's like, well, that's not it. But if you know what that secret sauce is, and you can tell me what that secret sauce is, now I'm primed to go talk a little bit more about that process. How long does it take for you to help facilitate the understanding of that so they can replicate it?

27:34 So it's really it's it's not instantaneous, but it's not very long. So it's a lot of its scheduling. So I'm trying to talk to the CEO, the CFO, the EVP of my clients, their best clients, and so those are people would never talk to a consultant. They've never heard of for I want an hour of their time. These are busy people. That's significant. Yeah, that's a big ask. So I have to work through my client to get introduced in the right way, and so I help them. You know, I've done this a lot, so I know how to how to set that up for them. So they make the introduction because these they know they have a great relationship and you Bruce is here to help build that relationship. And they still think it's going to be a survey or the classic your client's satisfaction call, which is all about how does how do you fit into my Kevin, how do you fit in my client's you know, business, which is not interesting at all. So right off the bat, my entire conversation is one hundred and eighty degrees. It's all, how does my client improve your business? Mister Halenan. That's interesting even to a CEO, and they've never had a conversation like that. So it's like, well, this guy seems like kind of smart, he's it's a good conversation and that's how I'm able to peel the onion back to get to that point where we find the secret sauce. Because they don't I can't ask them what it is because they don't know, and so we have to peel it back and I have to age them in the conversation so we can get deep enough to where we have that conversation and you know, they end up loving the conversation.

29:07 They go in thinking oh, they're doing a favor and they go away wow wow, and they feel great about my clients, like, wow, okay, that was He's like, they really really value our relationship. I can imagine you might end up doing business with a few of those people occasionally. I mean, I'm really in a position where i'm I'm I want to make sure there's no selling involved, because that's the other thing any time. Yet No, I heard that for sure, but it would strike It strikes me that if they're finding that kind of value, they may ask, hey, can you help us? Yeah no, and I'm open to that, but we have to have a conversation well after after the conversation. So it's it's overall, it's you know, anywhere from a three to a five month process. It's not all, you know, eighty hour week because there's a lot of scheduling in there. But part of my job is to banish confirmation bias. I could talk to people and come back and tell you whatever you want to hear, and that's what a lot of consultants do. But my job is not to do that. My job is to come back with what is the secret sauce? How can you goot finish that thought? We're gonna go to break? Oh okay? How can you see your business through the eyes of your best clients? That's outstanding? All right, we will pause right there. We'll come right back to that thought. We'll be back in just about a minute with Bruce leafitra the client Whisper. You're listening to Winning

30:40 Business Radio with Kevin Helenet on W four CY Radio. That's W four cy dot com. Don't go away. More helpful information is coming right up right here on Winning Business Radio. The yp dot com website is your local search engine. If you're looking for a good restaurant, it can help you find the write one nearby with ratings and reviews. Or if your car breaks down, you can use the YP app to find the closest repair shop. Or maybe you're just looking for something to do on a Friday night. While it has great local coupons for all sorts of things, in your area, no matter what, when or where. If you're looking for something, YP Local Search can help you find it. So go to yp dot com or download the app to search local, find local, and save local. And now back to Winning Business Radio with Kevin Helene, presenting exciting topics and expert guests with one goal in mind to help you succeed in business. Here once again is Kevin Helene. We're back with Bruce La. Bruce, you raised a couple questions for me. One is give me a give us examples of I know it's a broad term, but I think you can do it. Of what you mean by secret sauce. Sure, So there's a lot of variations on this one, but it's the expert versus the advisor. So I'm thinking

32:10 of a particular law firm, the boutique law firm in this case, but it could be lots of different kinds of businesses. I could give you other examples as well. And they had it had little rough patch, really good at what they do, so no operational issues, but they found that it was getting harder to win the kinds of growth that they wanted to do. And a lot of times they go out and they get rebranded, and they spend a crapload of money getting new website, new colors. It's very expensive, and initially they're giddy with because it's oh man, it's great. They tell everyone how great it is. Any year later, cli its so quickly. Sorry, well no, no, it's because it's more it's it's about them. Yeah, it's they're the colors. They like, it's the it's the wording. They like, it's all about them. But they don't write checks to themselves. And so a year later, you know, they get frustrated because nothing's really changed. And I often get introduced at that point.

33:07 I'd love to get introduced earlier and save them, you know, they'll split that money with them. But what happens is I can quickly look at them. I can't tell them what the solution is, but I can tell them what the problem is. It's like, it's all about you. So I talked to a CPA a while back, and they were telling me, oh, in great depth about how they're really customer focused and they care about their customer, and I believe that they're absolutely honest. But when I looked at their website, the first six paragraphs all started with us we are our as a client. It doesn't come through. So so in order in talking to their clients, now the secret sauce comes out as it's the expertise is how they deliver, that's how they get results. But that's not why they get hired. They get hired to have an impact on the client's business. And so nationals tend to think. Lots of people do is, but proficial the professionals I work, they think in terms of tasks. What do we do?

34:06 You know, the attorney, the CPA, the consultant. We take these steps. Some avoids malpractice and they have a smooth process and it's really important internally, But the client doesn't buy that. They're buying how do you improve their business? You know, on a piece of paper report a contract doesn't do that. It's the impact, the effect of that. I say, nobody cares what you do. They care what they can do because of what you do, and that's what comes out. In some sense, I could tell them eighty percent of the answer because I've done this for a long time, but I'm just a stupid consultant. They won't believe me. They have to believe or you talk to their best clients not just because oh I put a name on everything. So it's really really credible. It's not some of your clients say this, some of them this. It's like Kevin said this, Bruce said that, Mary said that, Mark, Mark said that, and it's all good things because it's their best client. It's like that really matters to Mark. Yeah, that is so significant, not just a you know, a collection or conglomerate of answers, but very specific. I love that too. It's super credible because it's their very best clients, people they know, and it's super actionable because, let's face it, these are people that love doing business with them. It's not all the things you could do better. I mean, occasionally there's something it's like Heaven's great, but you know he could do this. But almost all the time, it's about what you do, but how you can do it, how you can focus

35:37 and do better, be surface what really matters, as opposed to and a lot of times I end up with clients they have things that they think are important and they've invested a lot of time and effort, and it turns out those are either don't matter or their checkof items. You know you have to do it, but doing it better doesn't make it any better. And then there's things that they do because it's the right thing to do or whatever reason, and they think nobody really notices or matters. It turns out that matters a lot, and so they can they can, you know, in some sense, turn to dial up on what they're already doing, which is easy to do, is actionable, and they can they can cut or trim back on the things that don't don't matter as much, or check off items, and so they actually gain resources while being more effective. Well, tell us more about that, because that was my next question. What do you do with the information that you bring back to the client? So, in the really simple sense, it's positioning and messaging. It's in you second in the introduction, it's product marketing for services and people. You know, that's what is your offer? What is your value proposition? Who is your audience?

36:45 Are you talking to the right people with the right value proposition? Is eighty percent of success. The twenty percent is the content and the copy and those things, and that's where a lot of people spend eighty or ninety percent of their effort. That's why they get frustrated because they have generic you know offer, and then they try to, you know, spice it up with clever marketing, and you can't be clear, clear clarity, it's clever every time. Are you strategy only and not execution to somebody else executed, you do that as well. I'm strategy. So what we end up with is I call a roadmap, a more clients, more best clients from roadmap. And what that is is for marketing people, it's like a high level description of what the intent, what's the purpose, what success and what needs to happen.

37:35 So the website, what's the purpose of the website. I'm not going to tell people the colors or the technology. I'm colorblind. I'm not going to I'm not going to mess with your colors and marketing marketing professionals colorblind love that too. But from a standpoint of what's the purpose. So a lot of times people think, oh, well, our purpose of our website is to generate leads. Well, for a lot of high end B to B businesses, it's not. It's to reinforce that right, It's it's it's to reinforce referrals. It goes back to our three step referral process. Instead of trying to blast out your leachen. You know that the people that are coming are high value. They've already been introduced to you. Now how do you how do you align with what they've been told so they will then be really excited to talk to you and ultimately get to the point whereas wow, Kevin, you're like you get me. I was. Everyone told me I'm supposed to talk to three providers, but I can't imagine anyone's going to be a better fit than you. So when I save myself some time, that's how it gets faster. How many clients can you work with at any one time?

38:44 And tell us a little bit about the sort of the thumbnail of those clients? Does geography matter matters less to most? But what's the size et cetera? And professional services? I assume law, accounting, et cetera, consulting? Who else? Yeah, so the first part of the question, what was the first part? Again? Sorry I did load that up. How many clients can you work with it any one time? I can. I can only work with a couple at a time because my head would explode and then my life wouldn't be very good because part of my job, as I said, is too is to uh prevent confirmation bias. So I actually go about halfway through the whole interview process without any structure. Now when I give it to the client, there's a lot of structure because I take you know, our conversation into a page or two bullet points that are then parallel across all their clients so that you know, they can see that and so that I've got to figure that out in my head. So that's that's that's the fun part to me. I mean, if I were in the scale, that's what I'd have to get rid of. But I love that part in terms in terms of type of client. I love intangibles, you know, I have. I come out of a world you know, as we talked earlier, manufacturing and real real things. This works there too. It's just that those tend to be larger companies or people think it's the product, you know, the founder thinks it's the product. So that that boutique size professional services firm is my sweet spot because there's a lot at stake. If you can dial up those best clients, that's money. It drops right to

40:16 the bottom line. You know, a lot of times without organizational changes, it just drops a lot more profit to the bottom line, more fun as well, and the owner or the managing partner can make decisions so we can get there very very quickly. These tend to be smaller, more boutique. I love boutique because boutique in my in my experience, boutique firms think more like business. So think of your typical pick on lawyers, because that's pick on lawyers is that most lawyers do legal work and get paid for it. Now maybe them get paid very well, so I'm not knocking that business model, but their idea of growth is more more billable hours. You know, it's it's a it's a linear progression. You work harder, you get more, and if you want to earn more, you got to work harder, more hours. Uh, there's no real way around that that those aren't good clients for me. My great clients are the smaller set. That are business people whose business happens to be the law or a camp, financial services, or construction or or that you know that bent because they're thinking about how do I scale, how do I make my how do I earn more without working harder? Isn't that the ultimate you know business ninja move? That's it that's it, you bet, And that doesn't mean you don't work hard. But if if you're growing your profits by working harder, and you're working harder faster than the profits are growing, that's a really that's a terrible life. You

41:47 should be earning more as you grow, not less. I mean more in terms of profitability, not just dollars. Uh thises geography matter, No, not at all and not at all? Why so I know the why? Sorry? How do they come to you? Are they referred by the advisors? Uh? Et cetera. Help help me understand, help us understand how your clients come to you. Occasionally I will run into someone, but it almost always comes from a referral. Often, and as we said earlier, it's often after downe a big rebrand and they had some time. It's like, crap. I love it when I can get to them. Before that, I had a a firm in Atlanta that we met in a networking event and he was starting down that process and he goes, oh, crap, we should probably talk with you first, And I said, you'll save yourself a lot of money if you do that. And it's viewers plug for plug for you, Bruce, viewers and listeners. If you're at that point, stop, get a hold of Bruce. Well, well you see the info and the craw but we'll get back to that too as well. So yeah, that's outstanding. Let's see, so you provide this is a list on either on your website or I forget where I got this might be LinkedIn, but doesn't matter. Marketing consulting, pricing, strategy, brand consulting, management consulting, marketing strategy, content strategy. Take one or two and just break them down. So what I do is is really that strategy piece. So

43:22 the branding and the content, I don't do that. What I do is I informed that. So you're old enough to maybe some of our viewers are old enough to remember the old bas F commercials from the eighties. Oh yeah, I remember the voice we don't make Yeah, we don't make the products you use. We make the products you use better. And that's what I do. One one client described me as step zero. She goes your step zero. Everyone starts with step one. You start with step zero, and so step zero is really understanding that secret sauce. It's not why do we want people to buy from us? But why do they actually buy from us? And why do those very very best clients buy from us. That's outstanding. And so when you start with that, all of a sudden, it flows into everything else you do. And that's where I can do a roadmap, which is, you know, yes, the website has a purpose.

44:09 I'm not going to tell you what's in it. We'll go get someone who's an expert at that, but we're going to tell them instead of the fourteen things that everyone in your industry has to do, these are the one or two things that we know moved the needle for us. And if they don't like that, we'll go find someone else. But in the end, what happens is they think, wow, you like really simple, and they go, oh my god, we have a much more successful client. I had a law firm I worked with that was very old school and you've got to do the handshake to develop business, and they were regional, and by the time we finished with them, you know, a couple of years later, they're now a huge HubSpot user because once they got really dialed in on clarity about how they improve people's business, they said, we don't have to actually meet with people in person. Initially, we can start to do that through other means. Now they're a national firm. Now, if I had told them that, you know, they would use HubSpot you know down the road, they would have thrown me out. We've never had the plant relationship exactly, and I didn't know it was going to go that way. But their agency ended up, you know, had a little bit of questions like, Okay, you're like telling them, we think we do strategy, but they don't. Actually you get paid for that. They get paid for building things.

45:24 I get paid for strategy. I don't get paid for building things. You look at the business model. And once they said they you know, the client was very you know, assertive in this case and move forward. Now they've done so much more business with that client than they ever will have done. Well, it's been great for their bottom line too. Uh. You mentioned referred to as or excuse me, you refer to the love model lifetime opportunity value equation. Can you break that down for us? Oh, that goes way way back. If it's not as relevant, we can skip it. Yeah, it's it's it's not as relevant. I mean the gist of it is that that there's relationships aren't client relationships aren't linear? Yeah, you can go forward, you can go backwards, and they're built on on really the relationship as opposed to the classic you know, awareness, you know, consideration by uh let's see, Yeah, some interesting things we're closing in on. Time to wrap up. You're an e Speakers Certified Visual Presenter.

46:27 You're also a member of the National Speakers Association. Uh. You're clearly very good at what you do. Tell me what motivated those two affiliations. So I love to talk about what I do, and you know, I like to share my experiences. It gives me an opportunity to you know, go beyond just the people I know in terms of referrals and to have a broader, a broader impact. So that's why I've spoken for for years and and the last you know year or so really started to get serious about doing that explicitly as opposed to when it comes along right, And then of course you know COVID and you know virtual there's you know, we do a lot of that now. I mean, we're doing this now to come up to Boston to talk to you and and we can have a great conversation and you have a much broader reach as do I, without a doubt I'm a current rotarian.

47:23 I'm the current president of our second year. By the way, you're a former rotarian, Tell you I'm a current current Okay, yeah, sorry. You've also looks like done things at the district level as well, But volunteering looks important to you. There are several instances of volunteering. Just whenever this happens, I always ask the guest give a thirty second pitch for why others should volunteer, because that's how you make it. If you want to live, create the neighborhood or community you want to live in. Yeah, and there's lots of ways to do that. There's more need than there is. You know, there there is people, So pick one that's good for you. Don't worry about what is most important, Find the one that's that's valuable to you, and dive in love that. All right, A couple of quick questions to wrap up. Who in the listening and viewing audiences should reach out to you and why we mentioned you know, if they're about to do a big branding campaign, they should pause and talk to you. Who else? Firm owners, mid sized firms and from that standpoint, it's it's firms they don't have to be particularly big, but there has to be if we can dial up your profitability, it makes a big difference. So if you have really tight margins and growing that, you know you've got to do a lot of a lot of change to move the needle. But if you're a high end professional where there's a lot of profit, and if you can dial up the profit and get run of those headache clients, there's a huge impact. And so you don't have to be particularly large firm. At some point you get big enough that that people think that they you know, there's

48:55 a lot of bureaucracy, and I'm on my own because I don't want to do deal withocracy. Can it your own bureaucracy? But that's a that's a pretty pretty nice and so it's really more organizational than it is size of organization. I worked with a construction company that was two hundred million dollars, but they ran five owners. They ran like a firm that was much smaller. Nice. And so I want to have a big impact. I want to have a where I can have an impact fairly quickly and have a success. I always tell people I'm too small in operation to have unsuccessful clients. So everyone. I want everyone to be a big success. I am with you there, Bruce, Thank you so much for being here. He is Bruce at Eastwood Strategy dot com. That's the website as well, Eastwood Strategy dot com. If you've got questions, reach out Bruce. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having me. This is a fun conversation and for me as well. And thanks everybody for watching and listening. This is a show about business and business challenges. If you've got concerns about the sales growth of your company, feel free to reach out to me. You can find me on Facebook or LinkedIn at Winning Business Radio and drop me a note. One of my many email addresses is Kevin at Winning Business Radio dot com. Our company is Winning in Corporated. We're part of Sandler Training.

50:07 We develop sales teams into high achievers and sales leaders into true coaches and mentors. We're not a fit for everyone, but hey, maybe we should have a conversation. Thank you to our producer and engineer one for another job well done. Be sure to join us next week. That's Monday, January fifteenth. My guest will be Stevenstrom, author of success and self discovery, until then, this is Kevin Hallanan. You've been listening to Winning Business Radio with your host, Kevin Helena. If you missed any part of this episode, the podcast is available on Talk for Podcasting and iHeartRadio. For more information and questions, go to Winning Business Radio dot com or check us out on social media. Tune in again next week and every Monday at four pm Eastern Time to listen live to Winning Business Radio on W four CY Radio w fourcy dot com. Until then, let's succeed where others have failed and win in business with Kevin Helenan and Winning Business Radio