Growth Without Breaking: The 5 Cs for Sustainable Growth

Kathy (host):
Hello there, and welcome back to another episode of “Help My Business is Growing,” a podcast where we explore how to grow and build a business that is healthy and sustainable. I’m your host, Kathy Swatina, a fractional CFO and founder of NewCastle Finance, a company where we believe that everything you do in your business is eventually going to end up in your finances. To get to healthy finances is to have a healthy business. Well, the question is, how in the world do you get there?

Kathy (host):
Growing a business sounds simple on paper—you expand to new markets, you increase your price, you double your revenue, you reach more customers, all the things that should help you grow. But if you ask any entrepreneur who’s been through rapid growth, they know that the reality hits differently. Your team needs to be ready, your system needs to be solid. You need to really know your customers, your competition and your numbers. So how do you know if your business is ready for this rapid growth, and what steps should you take to get your ops prepared? And how can you grow sustainably without overwhelming your team or your resources? Because if you don’t prep for this rapid growth, that is going to impact your finances. And what might end up happening is that you see this rapid expansion, this rapid growth, but your bottom line is not going to be able to reflect that.

Kathy (host):
This is what we’re going to be talking about in this episode. And as a reminder, all of the episodes on this podcast have blogs and detailed timestamps, and we link all of those episodes in our show notes. So if you’re interested in that, please go ahead and look at it. It’s there for you as a resource.

Kathy (host):
My guest today is Joey Iazzetto. He is a national marketing leader and the Chief Growth Officer of ICG Marketing. He specializes in driving revenue growth and maximizing ROI through strategic business planning. With a deep understanding of business strategy, Joey leverages customer and competitive insights to deliver significant financial gains for privately held businesses. His proven track record shows measurable results by seamlessly integrating sales, marketing, finance and operations to enhance overall business performance. Join us.

Kathy (host):
Joey, welcome to the show.

Joey (guest):
Thanks for having me, Kathy.

Kathy (host):
Thanks so much for being here. And we’re going to be talking about something that every business thinks that they want, but it’s one of those things that you know, it’s going to be “be careful what you wish for, because it just might come true,” and that is exponential growth. And you’re such an expert in this field. But let’s first start here. How exactly is exponential growth a challenge for a business? Because, as I’ve said, you know, everyone thinks they want it, but once they have it, it can become a problem.

Joey (guest):
Sure. You know, from my perspective, oftentimes they think, “Well, how are we going to do it? How are we going to double our sales? How are we going to grow 3x in five years?” The sales and marketing size, to me, is oftentimes kind of the easy part. I’m sure we’ll get into that. But most of what I’ve seen from my perspective over the last 30 years is, yes, when we start working with companies, we’re absolutely on track to have all that top line growth that they’re looking for. But there are certainly four or five key areas that I’ve seen where it can get a little confusing, a little bit of mix up and a lot of pain for those business owners.

Kathy (host):
Let’s talk about those key areas that it can become painful. My guess, wild guess here is what I have seen, is the operation side. Because if you’re not ready for that revenue growth, it ends up being that you have all this business knocking on your door, but you have no way of actually fulfilling that business. Or if you do, the quality can drop, and then you have issues with delivery, and that is not a good thing, especially when it can start really being a problem for your brand. And you know, in this world, word goes quickly, and if your customers are starting to perceive that the quality of your services or products are going down, that can be a problem in the future. So let’s talk about what are those things that can be a problem as you’re growing exponentially?

Joey (guest):
Yeah, I agree with everything that you mentioned, and calling them operations is probably a good catch all for that. I would look maybe even a step further in that what everything you’d mentioned, I put into the category of capacity. And one of my first conversations is, do they have the capacity for growth? And where I’ve seen mistakes, or where I’ve seen issues come up, isn’t just in the operations, because you’re absolutely right, everything that you’ve cited I’ve seen, unfortunately, too many times, but when I talk about capacity—capacity, I guess the way I see that is, can they actually, you know, oftentimes, when we start with companies, they want to double over two or three years, and that’s fine, but here’s what they have missed in the past, operationally.

Joey (guest):
To your point, you know, can they add a second shift? If they’re a manufacturer, can they keep up with the staffing? Does their existing facilities support that they have enough machinery warehouse? Can they hire enough team and support the team? Can they maintain the quality of their product or service? Can they continue to keep the same margins they have? Can they get supplies in? Do they have supply chain issues? We ran into this, unfortunately, recently, had been working with a client that’s family owned business, very successful for generations, about a $15 million manufacturer, and we went into an area, and we were very successful, and got our initial trial order was a $2 million order, which was great. You can imagine the size of that potential client. Yeah, we basically sat on that order for over six months because they couldn’t even get the original order out without alienating their current customers.

Joey (guest):
Often clients will express to me, “Hey, Joey, we want to grow, you know, we’ve been growing like this. We want to get to 20 million. We want to get to 8 million,” whatever that threshold is. And that’s great news for me, because I know on the sales and marketing side, I could tell them what can and can’t work and measure it, but really what’s kind of beyond my control is what you’re calling operations. And then some, you know, of that capacity just the financing alone, of you know, can they afford the raw materials? You know, just because they’re sitting on purchase orders and insertion orders, there’s an entire cash flow situation. So, by all means, when people have aggressive growth goals, and even when they’re on pace for growth, those capacity and operational issues can be a challenge.

Kathy (host):
Yeah, and especially the financial capacity as well. Like, if you have a large order come through, you will need to, you might need to hire some people, and as you said, need to have the raw materials. So there can also be a challenge in terms of your payment terms. When are your payment terms actually happening? Is it after you deliver a certain percentage of whatever you need to deliver, or is there a prepayment? Or maybe, like, if you’re working with a large company or maybe a government agency, that you’re going to be being paid like, six months afterwards? It’s like, these are all the things that can be a huge problem, especially for a small business. So we’ve talked about capacity, and part of that is financial capacity. What are the other things that would be a problem as well?

Kathy (host):
yeah, and especially the financial capacity as well. Like, if you have a large order come through, you will need to, you might hire, need to hire some people, and as you said, need to have the raw materials. So there’s also can be a challenge in terms of your payment terms. When are your payment terms actually happening? Is it after you deliver a certain percentage of whatever you need to deliver, or is there a prepayment? Or maybe, like, if you’re working with a large company or maybe a government agency, that you’re going to be being paid like, six months afterwards? It’s like, these are all the things that can be a huge problem, especially for a small business. So we’ve talked about capacity, and part of that is financial capacity. What are the other things that would be a problem as well?

Joey (guest):
Well, you know, this gets into some of the sales and marketing of what are some of the things that can get in the way of the sales and marketing to kind of prevent or prohibit that growth. And I guess if I called the first capacity, I’ll stick with the C’s. I guess the second C I would call would be customer and especially it’s customer insights. When I say that, it’s because when I work with clients, the owners, their sales force, the veterans have been there will say, “Sure, we know our customers,” and they’ll start telling me about their customers. This is the industry. This is the type of company, this is the type of buyer, this is the type of sales cycle. And it’s all very valid. They’ve been doing it. They’ve been successful for a long time, but in almost every situation, they’re missing something, and what they’re missing is an insight from the customer that they’ve operated this entire time and not had.

Joey (guest):
Typically, it’s tied not necessarily just to the analytical but also to the emotional criteria of the audience. All of us, whether it’s business to business or business to consumer, we’re all consumers. We’re all humans at heart. We all like to think—myself included that, you know, I’ll tell my wife, “No, we’re gonna make this decision based on facts and data.” But so many decisions in real life are based on emotions. It’s the same with customers. Customers’ emotional criteria will often, by all means, supersede cost, delivery time, features, benefits, the traditional business offerings that we’ve all come to kind of use as a crutch. They lack those customer insights, not because the customers aren’t willing to share, but because they’ve never asked them.

Joey (guest):
You’d be surprised. I encourage my clients, there’s a few ways they can do this themselves, and I can tell you how they can do it, and give you options, but one is truly just ask them. And you don’t want your salesperson to ask, you know, try to use someone else in your organization or a third party, but the salespeople, the reason they’re not going to be upfront with salespeople is because they think it’s going to come back and haunt them. You know, “If I tell them price isn’t important, my price is going to go up.” So somebody from customer service or, you know, third party is optimal to really ask and get that real, true feedback from them of what’s important to them, you know, ask them what’s important in their life, in their day, because odds are, the product or service you’re supplying them is a sliver of what they do in the real world. And you might think, “Boy, it’s our timeline,” but all they care about is the next shareholder meeting or their next personal review, or “I have to get my boss off my back.”

Joey (guest):
When you know what the emotional criteria is for the client, and you know how they’re making decisions, it makes it a lot easier to be flexible with—like you mentioned terms for a minute. Let me use it as an example of the price and the terms and the cash flow. Oftentimes, and I can, I’ve seen this time and time again that my client, who’s trying to grow and is growing, thinks the customers can only pay X amount of dollars. When you talk to the customers I’ve seen time and time again, yes, they can only pay X amount of dollars this fiscal year or this period. If you can get creative with your billing oftentimes, you can actually be more profitable and not have to cut into your margins if you’re willing to bill them on a different pace, because that’s the way their financials and their annuals are set up. That’s one of the kind of overlooked—you know, I don’t mean to skip too quickly into financial but when you look at customer insights, the way those dollars are spent is often something that’s very important to them.

Kathy (host):
Yeah, that’s very true. And as you’re having these conversations with your customers. I mean, did you just go and have a conversation with someone like, “Hey, what is important to you?” Like, how would you have that conversation? Are there any particular questions that you found that work really well to get inside the brain of your customer?

Joey (guest):
Sure, part of it is the setup. Quite frankly, when you’re asking them you really should sincerely but cater to their ego. “Hey, Mr. or Miss customer, you’ve been a really important part of this company. You’re a valued relationship to me. I have some really important questions that are going to help the future. I’d love to get your opinions and your advice.” You know, be sincere about it, and ask them. Everyone likes to talk about themselves. You know, that’s why I’m here, right? But everyone likes to talk about themselves and hear about themselves, and people are under appreciated. You know, that’s another human being that you’re dealing with. We all like to share and, you know, explain to them before you even get into the questions of why they’re important to you and how important their opinion is to this. It isn’t to kowtow to them. It isn’t just to trick them into dealing with you, but it’s to kind of set the stage for them to offer up their valid opinions.

Joey (guest):
Then the next setup, once you have you know, whether it’s a cup of coffee, lunch or a simple zoom or a phone call, is to not only thank them, but kind of ensure with them that this is a safe space. You know, you’ve got thick skin. You’re not gonna be offended. You’re not looking for a testimonial here. You’re not looking to be praised. You’re looking for their real, honest feedback. When you have that setup, most cases, people are going to give you their real feedback. And what I like to do is you normally open up with nothing about the company whatsoever, all about them to begin with. What’s their role like? What are their challenges? Well, what, how does their team work? How does their process work? Because you get them talking about what’s important to them in their world, and you’re putting them first and yourself second.

Joey (guest):
Now, when you get to the second half of the conversation, of course, you know you’re going to want to know about you and say, “Hey, you know, what is it that you like about working with our company? You know, why did you choose us? You know, where, how did you find out about us? Where would you look for us, or some of the other companies that you’ve looked at? What’s important to you if you were to select a new company?” You know, depending on what information and what insights you’re looking for, you can really dig deep. If you want to get their opinions on competitors, you first ask them the unaided questions. You know you don’t prompt them—say, “Okay, who would you consider to be the competitors in this area?” And if there’s somebody that they don’t mention that you want to know, say, “Have you ever heard of blank?” That’s the difference between aided and unaided for those of us that forget the college days.

Joey (guest):
And then you can probe into each and every one of those and listen. You know, if you need to write notes or ask them if it’s okay to record because it’s important that you really want to hear their answers. And then the last part, and this, again, it has to be sincere too is thank them. And not just with words, but, you know, a little handwritten note, or a little, you know, here’s a $10 Amazon Starbucks card, you know, something that really makes them feel good about boy. They listen to me. I’m important to them. They’ve heard me and, oh, isn’t that nice? Kind of leaves them with nice little feeling. So, so that’s a quick synopsis of how to go about getting, you know, that primary research of collecting some of that customer data and Intel.

Kathy (host):
Yeah. So we talked about the capacity, the customers getting into their brain and getting the insights from them. What would be the next thing that would be a C? Because when we talked about, there’s five of these different ones, and I really want to get into what are they, so that people can anticipate whenever you’re trying to do this exponential growth. Hey, these are all the things we really need to be thinking about. So what is a third C?

Joey (guest):
Absolutely. So you know the third one, similar to customers, clients are gonna say, “We know this, we know this, we know this.” And I’m gonna push back and say, “No, you don’t,” and that’s your competition and building a competitive advantage. Now what I mean by that is, first of all, there are people—some people don’t realize there are tiers of competition. You have your direct competitors, which are the companies that are doing exactly what you’re doing. And then you have what I would call your indirect competitors, meaning, is there another type of company, possibly with a different service completely, that is going after the same dollars you are.

Joey (guest):
For example, if you’re a fast food chain and you’re McDonald’s, and say, “Okay, well, who are your competitors?” Well, Burger King and Wendy’s and Chick-fil-A, okay, maybe those are primary competitors, but a secondary competitor might be the local grocery store, fresh delivery meals done at home, you know, sit down restaurants, because they’re taking a share of that wallet away from you. So if you’re providing a service to a client that, like all of us, we all have finite amount of dollars that perhaps they don’t need to replace that widget yet, perhaps they’re going to be using those dollars for other resources.

Joey (guest):
So one is understanding who the direct and indirect competitors are, but that’s just the start of it. I mentioned a competitive advantage. It isn’t just here’s our 3, 4, 5, 15 competitors, but what do we do differently or better than them? Now, most companies, when you walk in, will have some version of a SWOT analysis that they have done, putting together their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, but very few of them have conducted the SWOT in a competitive environment, meaning, forget us looking at ourselves. Let’s do a little quickie SWOT based on who we identify as our key competitors, and let’s match that up against ours.

Joey (guest):
So if we’re an outside potential customer that’s never heard of these four or five companies, and you’re going out and looking and evaluating them, let’s see what they all bring to the table. When you look at it through that potential, non-biased customer lens, you can then be honest with yourself about what your competitive advantage really is. I said we’re only getting halfway there, because once you have the competitive advantage in a perfect world, we like to make that a strong positioning. And different branding and marketing experts will all give you their versions of what strong positioning is. What we look for in a positioning is something that we keep real simple, and we call it a BUM. And the BUM stands for something is the positioning of your company—B for believable, is it U for unique? Most importantly, is it M for motivating?

Joey (guest):
So clients are usually pretty good about believable. They’re pretty honest about what they do. They’re not going to make a claim that they can’t support—that’s usually the easiest of three. Unique can be difficult. There’s a lot of companies and products that have competitors that are similar-ish, whether it’s a commodity or an area that has just a lot of good quality competitors, unique is tough, but the most important is motivating meaning. Does it mean anything to the customer? It doesn’t do us any good to say we’re the highest quality widget manufacturer if all they’re buying on is turnaround time.

Joey (guest):
You know a real good example of this is a customer, actually a customer I’m working with currently, so we’ve done a lot of this analysis with them. They’ve brought us on board as a third party expert to pull some of this together. And while we’re not quite there yet, the position of their company for 90 years has been this. Odds are, in the next few months, it’s going to be dramatically different, not because Joey wanted it to or the marketing guy wanted to change things, but what they stand for doesn’t mean anything to their customers, and what their customers are looking for, their huge competitors aren’t providing. So the customers are asking for a position, and it’s a client—now I’d love to share more, but what the customers are asking for, not only does this company naturally do, but none of the other competitors are asking for. So that’s an example of where you know that third C of really knowing the competition and building that competitive advantage can hold you back from that incremental growth, or can really help support that kind of growth.

Kathy (host):
And in this particular example that you gave us, were you able to identify that new positioning only because you did research on that competitive advantage market?

Joey (guest):
Correct. If it wasn’t—and it was the primary research, meaning doing it ourselves versus looking at independent studies. This is a large global category, so there’s plenty of research and analysis out there that I pored through to make sure that we didn’t, you know, repeat any efforts. I want them to only pay for what they need. In nowhere on the radar of anyone on this team of this client, or in any of these outside reports, identified this golden nugget that all their customers are pretty unanimously clamoring for as an opportunity. The only way it became uncovered, it’s not my magic—they could have done it themselves. Interview, I happen to be fortunate enough to be involved, so maybe I’ll get some of the credit, but really it was just from truly talking to the customers, you know, like I’ve outlined, that clients can do themselves.

Kathy (host):
And when you do such a shift, I mean, especially in this example, 90 years of a certain positioning, and now you’re completely changing it, would you go and do—since, obviously you have done this research, you know that there’s a different angle that would work better—would you do some kind of a test to just make sure that you have really nailed down that position, and before you change all of the market strategy and everything else?

Joey (guest):
Yes, what we will do is test it. To use your term, you know, we would call it like a soft launch to two audiences. One is their existing customers, because the last thing we want to do is sort of shift gears and alienate their current customers. Have to make sure it flies with them. Because, you know, no new business is worth losing your current business that you’ve worked so hard for, for the years. Secondly is, as they with this client, they do have the capacity for growth. Fortunately, you know, they’ve checked that box before I started working with them to make sure. But with the new prospects, we have three or four events where we have all their key decision makers coming up over the next few months. So we’re going to kind of do a soft launch with them, and say and measure the resonation and see how that compares to their past performance. So if we say, “Hey, look, you know before, when we talked to 10 customers, here’s what happened. Now, 10 customers with a new message, here’s what happens,” not only to validate but also to quantify. Because when we get into it, you’re going to see the numbers geek in me get real happy when we start talking about quantifying fact from fiction.

Kathy (host):
Have you ever had an experience where the new messaging resonated with the new customers but it did not resonate with the current ones? It was almost like an upgrade that happened.

Joey (guest):
Yes, this was a little bit of a disaster, but it was the natural evolution of the concept. Many years ago, I was proud and honored to be a part of the team that found the very first retail health clinics in the United States. You now see them as Minute Clinic and others at your local stores. We innovated that concept originally, which sounds great, but to your point, we made some mistakes, and we did alienate some customers when we first started the concept, because of the parties involved, from the retailer and provider in healthcare, the intricacy and size and scope of it, there were a lot of different stakeholders and lot of different thoughts.

Joey (guest):
So our core audience shifted originally. Let me work backward. Now it has shifted to a model for suburban moms with young kids, for pink eye and easier to get into than your doctor’s office. And look how convenient it is to come here. The iterations before that were not for that audience, the iterations before one was for the uninsured and underinsured, and before that was for the senior market. But what we found was with senior market, quite frankly, not only did they not trust nurse practitioners, because their doctors are infallible, “I must talk to my doctor,” but they really do have the time to wait. So getting zipping in and zipping out was not really a benefit to them. With the uninsured and underinsured, there was a distrust of healthcare. Providing their information to their local people was a barrier at times.

Joey (guest):
So in all those cases, we had to kind of shift our position. And at the same time as we shifted to what it is now which is the most successful it’s been, because we are now, you know, so convenient for moms and dads and families. Seniors are not going to go there, you know, they’re going to go even less than they did in the past. So sometimes it’s inevitable that when you shift, you do alienate customers, and that’s when I talk about having to quantify it. You know, if you alienate X percent of your customers and lose this but gain—sorry, this podcast, some people are listening audio—if you lose a little bit, but gain a lot. You know, you just want to make sure that you measure and quantify that as well.

Kathy (host):
And this is what is such a fascinating thing for me. Obviously, I’m not a marketing person, but looking at it from an outside in into marketing, positioning is such a fascinating thing because it’s the same service that you’re providing. It’s just the way how you’re packaging it is very different, because the audience is going to be different, but it’s the same service that you’re providing.

Joey (guest):
Absolutely and even though most of my clients are business-to-business companies now and small and midsize, family-owned, a lot of my background has been on the big corporate side, and I have to say that while I don’t miss it, there was some great learnings there, because a lot of the large corporate consumer brands that you know, implement those strategies very successfully. You know, in automotive, they’ll often have a flanking strategy, meaning, you know, Lexus and Toyota, one company, one is more upscale, one is more mid-market. Beverage and spirits companies, you know, the brands of the world. They have a whole line of beers, wines, and spirits for every demographic, every taste, every appeal.

Joey (guest):
But it’s the same company churning out those same widgets. You know, those widgets being beer or, you know, autos or anything, but the positioning of each of those brands is completely different. Most of my clients have a positioning more for their company. Most of their products or services fall under one position. They don’t necessarily have multiple products or multiple divisions that each have a brand, but if need be, you can certainly come up with there are different flanking strategies and other ways to launch and to serve and to test different positionings out in the marketplace, if and when there’s an opportunity. If there’s an underserved segment of getting these widgets with no frills, no attach, get them when you get them, but they’re the cheapest ones out there, and that’s a huge potential of the market. But you don’t want to hurt your own brand, you might be able to open up, you know, Apex widget manufacturing, Apex discount widgets, and it’s a one-stop shop online, and you get everything. And here you go without, you know, alienating your current customers or cannibalizing your own sales. It’s interesting.

Kathy (host):
And you know, as you were talking, I think one of the perfect industries to think about this, the way how they’re doing positioning for the same product, is pharma companies. And there’s an example out there that’s just fascinating from this perspective—it’s semaglutide, which is the main ingredient for Ozempic, which has been like everywhere in the news. The company that is creating Ozempic also has the same drug out there with active ingredients. It’s called Wegovy. So Ozempic and Wegovy are made by the same company, however, they’re positioned for two different customers. So Ozempic is positioned for customers who have diabetes. Wegovy is positioned for customers who have obesity. One of the reasons why they did that is because it was so much easier to get FDA approved, FDA approval for one condition than it is for other. So they had to essentially—it’s the same ingredient—create two different drug names for the same ingredient. And it was so fascinating. As you were talking about this, I think that this was like a perfect example of same thing. It just the way how you position it is different.

Joey (guest):
Absolutely, I didn’t know that about the pharma—that’s fascinating because it’s so in the news today. Because before that, and I’m going to steal your story, because this, the one I would always tell, is so old, but way back when we did a lot of consumer electronic work, and there was a big parent company called Matsushita, a Japanese company that owns several brands here in the US. Two of the ones that you may know or remember, Panasonic and Quasar? And Panasonic was always kind of a standard general market brand, not necessarily upper low scale, but Quasar was kind of more of a discount brand, and they carried the discount pricing. And at their manufacturing facilities, there were seven days a week. Six days a week was Panasonic—on that seventh day? Same product, boom, but it gets the Quasar label. Microwaves, cordless phones, radios, televisions, literally the same widget, but with just pretty much a different sticker, sold through different channels, sold at different price points, sold with different messaging. So similar to your pharma experience, you know, that is a successful tactic for a lot of large companies and for some small companies. It makes sense as well.

Kathy (host):
I think we could have a whole another episode based on just positioning alone, it seems like. So let’s continue with the C’s. So we talk about the capacity, customers, competition. What is the fourth C that you should be aware of when you’re trying to grow?

Joey (guest):
You know, and we’ve teased it once or twice, I think, without knowing it, but it’s the channels, meaning, you know, where are you selling your products or services? And, you know, typically, I go into a company and they hear marketing, and the first thing they’re thinking is digital. You know, everyone wants digital and everyone wants social media. And what about Snapchat? And what about, you know, Instagram and all the stuff they hear their kids—

Kathy (host):
Are using the latest flavor of the social media. Yeah—

Joey (guest):
For sure. You know whatever celebrity is, you know, Taylor Swifting that way. You know, it’s just top charting and trending. But you know, the channels of distribution, the way we look at it is, you know, where potentially could this product or service be sold, meaning, not just literally, through whatever distributors or resellers, but what is your sales rep like? What is a sales organization like? Are there other 1099 employers? Are there, you know, third party sales groups that might be able to carry your product? Where have people not looked for your product in the past? Or maybe they will?

Joey (guest):
That’s where online sometimes comes up. A client that we work with—help them grow—another family, multi-generation business. They were on their second generation, and the husband wife had grown it nicely at 15-20 retail locations, very successful, but they were looking to get out. They had grown to a point, but just couldn’t get the numbers in the buy, because they weren’t that profitable for as big as they were. And they said, “Joey, what can you do to help us, you know, generate more visits in our locations?” We did a little bit of research, and I came back to them with, you know, good news, bad news. Bad news: I can’t really do much at all for retail locations. They’re too small. Your sales themselves, the basket fill is too small. You’re not going to get an ROI. We can spend a lot of money, but you’re never gonna see it come back. The good news is, you know, that little thing that you ignore called your website? Yeah, let’s talk about that.

Joey (guest):
Basically, what we did is we took the cost they were putting into marketing their website, we lowered that by about 100k, we increased their sales in the first year by like 250%. Within a couple years, we increased their sales to where their sales on their website were larger than their retail brick and mortar sales. Right after that, they got bought by private equity. So they were happy. Private Equity said, “Thank you for all your work. Goodbye. We have our own people.” So I grew myself out of a client, but a very happy client, but the retail e-commerce channel for them was perfect. It was being ignored, and it ended up being, you know, not just more profitable, but it was how they were able to retire.

Joey (guest):
Now, e-commerce is not for everyone. If you don’t have a product that is selling for at least, probably 50, $60 or more, on average, don’t even think about it—you cannot sell 10-20 dollar products these days with logistics and shipping as a one-off. But if you have a B2B product or service, if you have somewhere where you might be able to move pre-owned or pre-used merchandise, that’s a valid option. If you’re looking to go international, that’s another option, potentially. So there are a lot of potential channels out there, depending on what your product or service is, that really doesn’t take much to look into, have some of the planning, like we talked about, for capacity and everything else.

Joey (guest):
And then, to your point, you know, we never ask our clients to start throwing tons of money into it until we see what it returns on them. And that’s always test. We test everything. And that’s what’s nice about today’s marketing with data intelligence. AI numbers is—back when I started, they used to tease and say, “I know I’m wasting half of my advertising budget. I just don’t know which half,” yeah, because you didn’t know. Was it the radio? Was it the billboard? You know? What was it that was, you know, was it your spot on Ed Sullivan—you know, I’m dating myself. But what was it that really drove that sale? Now you can measure that, and you can really dive into that, you can adjust to that.

Joey (guest):
So understanding the channels, you know, for customers, I would look at, you know, the first place I would look is, where did you used to sell? Where have you had past success? Because sometimes, “Oh yeah, you know what? That was something Julie ran, or Jerry used to be in charge of that.” And all of a sudden, Jerry or Julie left, and that just kind of filtered away—well, that may present a potential valid channel. Also take a look at maybe where some of the other competitors are selling. You know, especially if you have competitors that are significantly larger than you and have more resources, odds are, they have more team members and, you know, more potential time to involve, to available to look into some of these things for you. You know, there’s no shame in being second to market with an idea. You know, do it better and do it profitably, and you’re in good shape.

Kathy (host):
Yep, yep. The only caveat to it is that you have to make sure that you are able to financially sustain that, because a larger corporation can obviously have a lot more cash power under the wing than you do. So you have to be more prudent with how you’re spending your money.

Joey (guest):
Absolutely with all these C’s, I don’t know if one could work without the others, to be honest. Like if you don’t have that capacity, and when you go through this, you have to think about like, well, let’s use this channel. Let’s say you identify a new channel, but you don’t have the capacity, you don’t have the customer insights, you don’t have a competitive advantage. Well, it doesn’t do you any good. You kind of really need all of these, in theory, to help ensure success.

Kathy (host):
So we ended with channels, and I know there is another one, the fifth C, what is that one?

Joey (guest):
Well, it’s probably my favorite. I’m guessing it might be your favorite too, you know, with your background expertise, and it’s my favorite because, you know, I like to say that most marketing people can’t spell P&L. They don’t know finance, they don’t know the role of a business owner, and they don’t really understand money the way business owners do. So the last and most important one is cash. Cash is king, and that is absolutely true on so many levels.

Joey (guest):
From a marketing standpoint, we’ve talked about, like you said, limited resources. What can we afford? Where can we have, you know, where can we use cash to help the capacity? Where can cash help us with our competitive advantage? But when it comes to scaling from a sales and marketing standpoint, the biggest mistake that clients will make is—if I go into any typical small business, and I would challenge your listeners or viewers or anyone to answer this too: Tell me, and I’m going to be picking on this, tell me what and how you invest in sales and marketing, and tell me what exactly you get back for every penny. I’m going to bet no one can do it, because it’s tough to do. No one wants to do it. And sales and marketing people, people in my industry hate to do it. They hate to be accountable. They like to hide. They like to fudge. They like to position.

Joey (guest):
If you have 350,000 costs, you’re not going to make up with that with 350,000 in revenue, because you’ve got COGS, SG&A, you’ve got a lot of expenses attached. Yet you’re going to need a minimal, in most cases, of three, four or five times your investment just to come close to break even. So if I gave myself a hard number 350, let’s say three—you know, if you’re putting 350 in, you better be getting at least a million bucks back on that return to be anywhere near profitable. Now, when we work with clients, we like to shoot for at least a six or seven multiple back, but being very accountable for it, saying, “Here’s your all-in cost, here’s your media spend, here’s your trade show, here’s the percentage of travel and entertainment, here’s all of my fees, here’s any web development or creative fees.”

Joey (guest):
Be real upfront about what our costs are, so we know what we need to make on it, run your projections, do your tests and evaluate if indeed you are getting a six or seven to one. Then it comes back to how much capacity do you have? How many times you want to put $1 into the slot machine and get eight or nine back? You know, if you want to do it again, just let me know—make sure you’ve got enough widgets in the back for all these new customers that are going to be lining up in queue. And everyone will be real happy. So cash, by all means, is, I guess, the final C, you know, in so many ways, the most important one too.

Kathy (host):
Yeah, and it’s, you know, it’s the resource that you need to help this machine going. And it is a machine—like once you start, once you get it to the right settings, it will work. It’s just the question is, how do you get those right settings right? And I want to go back into the beginning of our conversations, when you said, the sales and marketing, it’s the easiest part of this. So you know, once we got through all these C’s, why do you think that the sales and marketing is the easiest part?

Joey (guest):
I’d love to take credit and say that I’m so great at what I do, and all my experience and all my learnings makes me really good at it. But the best answer I could give is because I succeed because everyone else is so bad at it. Most sales and marketing people, and they might be lining up at my house now with pitchforks ready to burn my house down, but most sales and marketing people don’t really understand business. You know, I was a small business owner, you know, we had dozens and dozens of employees. I know what cash flow is like. I know what it’s like to have staffing and turnover and challenges and oh, now my bank is pushing me on cash flow and my clients are paying me late. I know that world—I lived that world for 20 years.

Joey (guest):
Sales and marketing comes easy and naturally for me, because when we walk in with clients, typically they have never worked with somebody like myself. Typically, they’re working with a fairly junior person with five or 10 years of experience that’s doing a great job being a “do me” resource—do me a trade show, do me a sales sheet, do me a website—and they’re great at that, and they’re doing a bang up job, and I’m proud of them for doing that. But from a business owner standpoint, that’s not enough. You need more than that. You need accountability.

Joey (guest):
You know, marketing is there to help sell more product or service. That’s our number one goal. When my daughter was four, I told her, she said, “What do you do?” I said, “I help clients sell more stuff,” because that’s really what I see, is marketing’s number one job. So I guess the reason I see it as easy, and why we tend to knock it out of the park, is because those companies have never, really, for whatever reason, had the opportunity to work with somebody that has the business side of things and the marketing disciplines to put it together for them, because once you’re through—it may sound like a lot getting through those five C’s, but you now have a roadmap for the next X amount of years.

Joey (guest):
I like to tell clients when we go through this process, you know, sometimes it’ll take 60 days or more to go through, but I tell them, “I’d love to be able to work with you after this. But in theory, after 60 days, I can get hit by a bus, and you know, you’re set for the next few years. This shows you exactly how to achieve that growth.” You know, please, I’d love to be involved, keep me on, but, you know, it’s something that they’ve got the roadmap for success. So it’s great to see.

Joey (guest):
That’s why it’s frustrating, I guess, you know, whenever I see or hear a company that doesn’t have the time for marketing or doesn’t have the interest for marketing, that’s cool, but if you are one of those companies that is serious about growth, you know, if you want 5, 10, 15% annual growth, my value is limited, because I’m not free. But in order for me to put my money where my mouth is, make sure you get an ROI on my time, I typically have to bring in at least a half a million or a million dollars more in business for a client. You know, they’ve got to be able to say, “Hey, after Joey’s here, we’ve got this kind of spike.” So to be closely associated with that growth is awesome. I love it. It’s just there are most companies these days aren’t as set up for that incremental growth as I’d like them to be. They’re missing with some of those C’s, usually it’s the capacity or cash.

Kathy (host):
Yep, yep, and Joey, you’ve given us such good tips, and you know, examples of how this works. But if someone is interested in doing this growth, not just incremental growth, but exponential growth, and they have no idea where to start, obviously, we give them some of these 5 C’s that they can pick one of them and figure out. But what would your tip be? Where do you start in the next—something actionable in the next week or two for a business to get that exponential growth and to get and to be healthy exponential growth, I will put that?

Joey (guest):
Sure. I would tell them that if they want to start out by getting, you know, a couple thousand dollars of good consulting for about 20 bucks, 25 bucks, buy me a cup of coffee or a lunch, because I’ll sit there and I’m chatting. I’ll give them a couple hours of my time, and that’s fine, and I won’t charge them a penny, truly, and I can customize with them right then and there. I talked to you about my 60-day growth plan. I’ll give them a 60-minute version of it. I’ll give them the abridged short version, and they can walk out with a cocktail napkin of a high line of exactly what they need to do. Now, of course, if they want my help, I’m happy to work with them after. I’m happy to send them a bill for moving forward if we work together, but this would truly be on me, because I like doing it. You know, if we hit that billion dollar lottery or something, I would be on the show saying, “Everybody call me right now. Everything I do is free” because I love doing it so much, because it’s very satisfying for me to work with companies that have worked so hard to build where they are and now have this opportunity to grow, but don’t know how to get there. If they’ve got that capacity and that ability to grow and they just need the sales to do it—oh, give me a call. I’ll be through.

Kathy (host):
That is so very generous of you, Joey. So please tell us, where can people find you?

Joey (guest):
Sure, the easiest way you can email or I’ll give out my cell phone because I keep that on all the time. You can call my cell phone direct, 312-405-0432. I go by Joey, so if I don’t answer, just leave me a voicemail. I’ll call you back. That’s Joey, 312-405-0432, or if you prefer an email, my email address is JoeyI@ICGmarketing.com. You can see some examples of our work and a little bit more about our process there as well.

Kathy (host):
Great, and we’re going to have all of these in the episode show notes. There’s going to be Joey’s phone number and his email address as well. Joey, thank you so much for being on the show.

Joey (guest):
Absolutely. Thank you, Kathy. I really enjoyed it, and I appreciate the ability to commiserate with somebody who understands the operational and the financial side of it like you do.

Kathy (host):
Appreciate it. Thanks.