Finding Your Niche and Building a Purpose-Driven Business With Rob Murray

Intro 00:01
You are listening to Inspired Insider with your host, Dr Jeremy Weisz.

Jeremy Weisz 00:22
Dr Jeremy Weisz here, founder of inspiredinsider.com, where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders. Today, is no different. I have Rob Murray, intriguemedia.com you can check them out. Before I formally introduce you, Rob, I always like to point out other episodes of the podcast people should check out. Since this is part of the top agency series, a really good one was Jason Swenk. Jason Swenk talks about how he built his agency update figures and sold it, and then he started buying up agencies, and then started an agency group to help agency owners. The group kind of he wish he had when he had an agency that was a really good one. Todd Taskey was a good one. He’s got. Rob the Second Bite Podcast is he basically helps pair agencies to private equity. Helps sell agencies, Second Bite, because sometimes when the private equity sells again, those founders make more on the second bite than they do on the first so that was an interesting one.

Kevin Hourigan as well, Spinutech. He had an agency since 1995 so it was cool to hear the landscape of the internet, business and agency life through some of the decades. So that was a cool one as well. Check out more on inspiredinsider.com. This episode is brought to you by Rise25. At Rise25 we help businesses give to and connect to their dream relationships and partnerships. And how do we do that? We do that by helping you run your podcast. We’re an easy button for a company to launch and run a podcast. We do the accountability, the strategy and the full execution. So Rob, we call ourselves the magic elves that run in the background to make it look easy for the host and the company so they can create amazing content, relationships, and, most importantly, run their business. For me, the number one thing in my life is relationships, and I’m always looking at ways to give to my best relationships. I found no better way, over the past decade, to profile the people and companies I most admire and share with the world what they’re working on. So if you’ve thought about podcasting, you should if you have questions, go to rise25.com or email us at [email protected].

Rob also has a podcast which we’ll talk about. And I’m excited to introduce Rob Murray. He’s the co-founder and CEO of Intrigue Media. Intrigue Media is a digital marketing company that has been helping, you know, businesses grow in the home improvement space for over a decade. Right now, at this point in time, the last 14 years, Rob actually directs the vision and works with clients to grow their businesses. They’re very results-driven agency, which you’ll find from this conversation, and they have a proven track record after servicing over 1,000 clients since 2006 so Rob, thanks for joining me.

Rob Murray 02:55
Thanks for having me on the podcast, doctor.

Jeremy Weisz 02:58
Yeah. So let’s start off with. And by the way, if someone’s listening, there will be a video component. So as Rob is talking, I’m going to pull up their website. Just tell people about Intrigue Media a bit more. And what you do?

Rob Murray 03:10
Yeah, for sure. So Intrigue Media, we started helping customers make more money in 2007 and right now we are focused on the landscape industry, specifically with landscape entrepreneurs, residential design, build maintenance, between, say, two and 7 million that want to grow over 10. We’ve got a lot of niche services and products to help people do that, all the way from CRM tracking, accountability, attribution model, so you understand where your money’s going and what’s working and what’s not to full-service website opportunities. So you can get a world-class website from 599 a month to customer acquisition strategies and maybe even a little bit of sales coaching so you can help close more deals.

Jeremy Weisz 04:01
I mean, you know, maybe what I’m gonna ask next is, why landscaping? Yeah, okay, niche is an interesting topic too. So talk about that.

Rob Murray 04:12
Landscaping. Why landscaping? So we started off as a local organization in that digital out-of-home advertising model, we put up flat screens in local restaurants, retail environments, gyms, medical centers, and we built that up to whatever, maybe eight, nine cities. We had about 250 TVs playing local ads as an alternative ad medium, to say, the local newspaper, radio station. But as we were doing that, and the Internet became ever more prevalent, we got dragged into online marketing and digital marketing because our clients kept asking us when we’d start building websites.

Their cousin left, or their nephew got a full-time job and wasn’t in school anymore, so they didn’t have anybody to help them with their website. And then the social media mountain of energy came in. They’re like, how do I leverage Facebook? How do I get to the top of Google? And so with this customer base using this digital ad medium that we had before, they were really looking for a lot of help with digital. So anyway, long story short, that’s 2009 10, and then in 2015 16, we have all these online marketing customers, but we’re essentially a jack of all trades, master of none. We’re local. We’re working with all different types of businesses. And we said, okay, well, we need to work on our position in the market, because right now, we’re just a full-service marketing company like everybody else. So we started focusing in on Home Improvement and construction, because we could have, we had a track record of success. We were doing well for customers.

They were happy we were making the money. Our team knew how to do the projects well. And then as COVID hit, we realized that everybody got introduced to what we’re on now, zoom and video calls, and there was an opportunity for us to do a bit more of a North American play, instead of just a standard local marketing company. And so we started looking internally more and said, where are we actually the most successful? Where are we making people the most amount of money, and who are actually the most fun to work with? And we went through a couple of niches, but landscape was by far the place that we were doing the best for people and the clients were the happiest. And as we started to get involved in the industry and join the associations across Canada and the US, we actually found that they’re a lot of fun. And as much as it’s a bit of a pun, they are down-to-earth, work hard, play hard, kind of folks. And the industry itself is actually super open and cooperative.

We were actually working with a lot of HVAC folks to start with, and we get them. I had an HVAC podcast for a hot minute, and people would come on. They’re like, I’m not sharing my secrets. I’m not sharing how I got successful. Why did you agree to this podcast? Whereas landscapers are quite the opposite, they’re all willing to share. And there’s this weird underlying philosophy that’s beautiful about a rising tide raises all ships, and everybody’s kind of in it together, which is cool.

Jeremy Weisz 06:59
Why do you think the landscaping community has that mentality?

Rob Murray 07:03
I’m not sure what it is. Maybe it’s a lack of perceived professionalism from years ago. So they kind of need to band together, you know, better together, type of philosophy. I think there’s something to be said about the type of person that’s willing to get their hands dirty, like they’re just, they literally are down-to-earth people, and they work their tails off. If you think about people working in 40-degree weather, or where you are 100-degree weather outside and lifting heavy shit and pushing stuff around, there’s a certain character to that. And I don’t think they really care. If somebody knows you know what their gross margin is in their business, it’s not going to necessarily impact their ability to be successful.

Jeremy Weisz 07:44
It’s interesting. Thanks for walking through that. And there’s some things I want to just highlight for a second which I think are really important. One, the evolution of the business changed, and also you looked at the specific who you loved working with and who you had the best results for. And that kind of went from everyone to home improvement, construction to and you kept kind of just refining it to now you’re at landscaping. So it was really interesting. You found the community was really inviting. I’d love to hear from the initial piece with the screens. Which kind of got you started? What was the business model? How are you charging people?

Rob Murray 08:29
50 bucks a month, no contracts handshake. We were skateboarding from door to door with a backpack and a laptop, and we were using point-and-shoot cameras to make videos on a screen with Windows Movie Maker.

Jeremy Weisz 08:42
So 50 bucks a month, you install the TV.

Rob Murray 08:46
We put a team up at the University of Guelph to start with, and then went to the downtown businesses and said, Do you want to advertise the University of Guelph for 50 bucks a month?

Jeremy Weisz 08:55
I love it. I mean, it’s a no-brainer offer, though, right? Well, I mean, you put a TV in my house for 15 bucks and, like, serve me ads.

Rob Murray 09:05
No, yeah, well, but so that’s the thing. Like, the person that ran the hair salon at the University Center was an awesome person. His name’s Dean. He was a champion unicycler, if that’s the thing, he was just such a cool dude. So we got to put the TV in there for free, and he was willing to just help out some students trying to do a project on this to do a project on the side. And then we would charge 50 bucks a month for these, you know, local businesses downtown to put their video up on this TV. But then what happened is people started saying, well, you put a TV in my business and then give me a discount on advertising on the other TV. And so that snowball pretty quick, but we didn’t have any money. We spent 400 bucks on the first TV, and we went to a Best Buy.

What was that in a future shop, and they did the little financing kiosk in the middle of self-serve financing kiosk, it said, apply now for a 90-day no interest, no payment credit card. And so we applied, and all of a sudden it said, you’re approved for 2500 bucks. And so. 2500 bucks just happened to be at the time, in 2008 the amount of money it took to buy a TV, amount a computer and cables to install a television. And so essentially, we would buy a TV. We had 90 days to sell enough advertising to pay it off. And so we did that 13 times over, and we went from our forecast of $8,000 in revenue the first year, which was 20 and then to about 100 about 100 grand the next year. And it was on the backs of a 90-day new interest credit card.

Jeremy Weisz 10:28
Love it. Talk about a hustle, right? Yeah. Oh, that’d be a great pitch for, like, at least a story on Shark Tank. I feel like the sharks would eat that one up. Talk about your sales pitch. I know you’ve had sales training, but at that point, again, you’re walking cold, you’re on a skateboard. What’s your sales pitch to some of these businesses?

Rob Murray 10:47
Well, back then it was just like it was actually really simple. So we said, are students, part of your people that want to come here? Yes, they do come here. Okay, great. We have a TV up at the University Center, we’ll make you a video for free. If you like the video, you pay us 50 bucks a month, no contract to put your video up on that TV. Everybody’s like, sure, no problem. So we take a bunch of pictures with an HP point-and-shoot camera. We skateboard away, come back two hours later, and we’d show them the video, and they’d be like, holy shit. This is great. Here’s my 50 bucks. But you know what we found out was doing something for free and proving to them that we would do it when we said we would do it, build trust. We asked people three years later, what was the number one reason why you decided to work with us? And the number one feedback, and we still get it to today, is you do what you say you’re gonna do when you say you’re gonna do it?

Jeremy Weisz 11:40
Yeah, I mean, it’s a compelling offer, it’s a no-brainer offer, and there’s something to be said about a really good offer, and then backing it up and just keeping delivering value, because that got you in the door. And then it sounds like people you were kind of their trusted advisors, like, what else should we be doing? And they came to you with other things which kind of your services evolved and your niche evolved from there. I want to talk about the evolution of the company and hiring a little bit. I know you’re a big culture person, so I want to start on the hiring piece, okay? And I was talking before we hit record, there’s a show. One of the shows I like, it’s called atypical, okay? It’s a Netflix drama, if you should check it out. It’s a guy who’s obsessed with Antarctica and penguins. And so you talked about kind of your hiring philosophy based on a job that was put out, but from an expedition. Yes, talk about that for a second.

Rob Murray 12:47
Oh, you’re what was the guy’s name? That’s what I was looking up. I figured, Singleton, Singleton. What was his name? Oh, Shackleton. Shackleton, yep, yep, yep, that’s right. Anyway. So he was the guy. He wanted to be the first person to get to Antarctica. He was in Britain or London at the time, and he had been graced some money from the monarchy to invest in his expedition, but he had no sailors. And one of the things that he did, which was really great, actually, I’m going to read it out loud, because I don’t want to kill it.

Jeremy Weisz 13:22
The only reason I knew that person is because I watched atypical and they do talk about Shackleton in the show, but otherwise I would never have heard of this person.

Rob Murray 13:32
Oh, it’s so good. Okay. So anyway, he, he’s, he’s got to find these sailors to get to Antarctica, because he doesn’t have anybody. So he posts in the town hall or the town square, sorry on a bulletin board. Men wanted for hazardous journey, small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return, doubtful honor and recognition in case of success, Ernest Shackleton. And guess who showed up? After reading that, there was five dudes, hard as nails ready to go. And what I love about that approach is, especially recently, there’s too many people saying, hey, good pay, great benefits, ping pong table food. It’s like everybody’s trying to, like, butter up these people, to put them in this, like, wonderful, no work, easy thing environment, when the reality of the situation is, when you’re an entrepreneur, or anybody a leader, looking to bring a team together, you want people that are going to work hard, they’re going to come together.

They’re going to get tough when times get tough. And, you know, marketing to these folks with these benefits and perks, and I just don’t think does the does the job, it kind of attracts somebody who’s a bit more oriented the idea of taking it easy and like, if times get tough, maybe I’ll just quit or stay home. And so we take this, we call it a Fight Club approach. And if you’ve seen the movie, but there’s a great…

Jeremy Weisz 15:06
Two rules in Fight Club.

Rob Murray 15:08
Yeah, exactly, yeah. First rule, Fight Club, right? They’ll talk about fight club. And I think it was Meat Loaf or no, it was, yeah, it was Meat Loaf that was in that. And yeah, meatloaf. So he’s on the porch of the house where they’re recruiting people, and they tell him that he’s too fat and he’s too ugly, that he should go away. And he sits there on the porch for three days, day and night in the rain, and they finally, at the end, say, okay, come on in. And what I love about that is, if you really go out of your way to tell people what your high-performance culture looks and sounds like, in terms of like, we expect people to be their best. They have to study, they have to do personal and leadership development. They have to master their craft. We have leader-building programs.

People are expected to volunteer, be part of community organizations. You know, lead organizations, and if you don’t want to do that. Don’t work here. Don’t even apply. But what happens is that people are like what I want to be around, people like that. And then there’s this Golden State Warriors effect that starts to happen, where you get great people coming in, and they all want to be around each other. And so then they all pull harder. They all support each other, and then you end up with an organization of people that are holding each other accountable because they want to help each other. And it’s, yeah, it’s and it’s been amazing. I’d say right now we have the best iteration of a team we’ve ever had in 17 years.

Jeremy Weisz 16:31
What’s the hiring process look like? Give us a little glimpse?

Rob Murray 16:35
Well, Chelsea would have to run you through it more specifically, but all of our postings start like leaders wanted. So this is that men wanted. We say leaders wanted, and our purpose is empowering leaders, streaming community. So we really do try to paint the picture of like you don’t want to be here unless these are the things that are important to you, but you probably don’t want to work hard. You probably don’t want to have to be your best. You probably don’t want to have to grow yourself personally and professionally. And then we get into some of the typical recruiting processes. When you post a job, you get inquiries, but we have knockout questions, we’re really looking for and one of the things is, why do you want to work at Intrigue? And that’s the most important question we look at when screening. We don’t look at resumes, resumes or garbage.

Everybody puts how they were a controller in finance when they were just running a cash register at a grocery store. So, like, I don’t see how they do anything. You found me out. Yeah, exactly right. So we look at, why do you want to work in Intrigue, and if it has anything to do with themselves, or it doesn’t get filled out well, and it’s got nothing to do with us, and the reason that they’re interested in the organization, not just the job, then they’re out. And then I think one of the biggest things we do is we test the work. So depending on the role, we ask people to come in or on their own, actually do the work, or work with somebody in the organization, or a couple of people, so they can experience the day to day first hand, and so we can get a sense of what it’s like to work together. So it’s a dance before you kiss kind of mentality.

Jeremy Weisz 16:42
Love it. Talk about having a co-founder and starting the company. And how you met Paul?

Rob Murray 18:15
So, yeah, so we met first year university. We’re on the same floor in residence. Was he the one going around the skateboard with you? Well, he does not a skateboard. Oh, no. All seriousness, we live downtown, so I was skateboarding more, he was walking more, and then he had a Ford Explorer too, so he got to drive and I had to skateboard. But we ended up just becoming best buds. Moved in second year, probably played more pawn hockey than class. And then in third year, it was his idea to start this thing. He had the idea of getting it going with the advertising screens in Oshawa, which is where he grew up with another buddy. It just didn’t come to fruition in the summer. So in Guelph, he said, hey, I found a TV. Do you want to give this thing a shot? And it was actually cool, because we would walk around with this TV in our hands asking people, from a market research perspective, if we put this up at the university, would you pay? And a lot of people are like, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep.

And then I left to Austria for Exchange, and then he came and visited me in June for my birthday, after school was over and he was backpacking Europe, and I showed him that we had made this video of us skiing through the Alps and all these different places, and we had never made our own videos before. We were trying to find somebody else to make videos for us. Was very arduous and painful to do it. And he said, What did you use to make that video? And I told him, Windows Movie Maker. And he’s like, Dude, we can sell advertising. I’m like, what are you talking about? He’s like, I installed the TV at the University Center, like it’s good to go. We can go home in August and start doing this thing. And the relationship we’ve always had is, I’m pretty much the guy who makes promises and he’s the guy who keeps them.

Jeremy Weisz 19:50
That’s all I was going to ask next is, how did you come to division of roles as co-founders?

Rob Murray 19:59
I mean. And for us, it was pretty clear, because, like, I just, I have no F’s given talking to people and reaching out to strangers and seeing if we can help them, so that just put me into a sales kind of slant out of the gate. We’ve both done all parts of the organization. He’s been in sales, I’ve been in operations. We’ve both done finance. I used to do the books. But at the end of the day, I would say, there isn’t really anybody I’ve ever met that’s more integral than He is in terms of follow-through. And so, that’s kind of where, I make the promise to make sure it’s clear. He makes sure that I’m not promising shit I can’t that he can’t fulfill. And yeah, we’ve made a really good 10 and we’re best friends. It’s been 17 years. It’s, yeah, it’s kind of unbelievable. I think we got a bit lucky. But the reason I think we’re so successful is because we shoot each other straight. We don’t wait for things to boil up. If something’s not good, we just say it.

Jeremy Weisz 20:59
So it seems like for him, he’s kind of very operational-focused kind of integrator type. You’re more maybe visionary type.

Rob Murray 21:08
I mean, you can talk about EOS labels all you want. I’d say he’s as visionary as I am, if not more, I could integrate a team better than he can sometimes. Yeah, that visionary integrator thing I don’t know. Maybe different times and stuff like that. He’s just really good at making sure we deliver on what we say we’re going to deliver on and crafting the promise so that I know what to go promise. And yeah, I just, he’s got a cool mind for hacking how to get shit done.

Jeremy Weisz 21:40
Talk about Rob values, right? Ivan, we’re talking about hiring and culture and talk about some of the values of the company.

Rob Murray 21:52
Yeah, so values here at Intrigue CFLAT, so it’s client, fun, leadership, learning, action, team and trust. We use an acronym to make it memorable, but so client, we exist to serve our clients. That’s our first value. Everybody needs to remember that without them, we don’t have paychecks, so we got to orient ourselves around making sure clients are a priority. Fun Life too short not to smile. We don’t need to get too upset about stuff. I think people take themselves a little too seriously sometimes, especially if something doesn’t go well, someone’s got to deliver bad news. It’s always better than you think. So just have some fun, have a smile, and let’s not take ourselves too seriously.

And then we have leadership. Do what you say you’re gonna do when you say you’re gonna do it, learning, practice of unquenchable thirst for applicable knowledge, action, embrace failure and learn from it. Theme, everyone has everyone’s back and trust practice, open, honest communication, yeah. Those values drive the culture, and the culture here, I would say, is very much teamwork-oriented and result-oriented. So those core values really help us shape the culture and making sure that people come to the organization and live those values on a day-to-day basis.

Jeremy Weisz 23:09
It looks like you also made a decision to be a certified B Corp. Yes, we did talk about that, because that’s a really, I think, and from what I’ve heard, very strenuous. So, yeah, it’s not like, oh, you just pay, like, money and you get it. There’s a lot of criteria you need to do. So talk about that decision, because I know people have looked into they’re like, oh, forget it. Like, no way. And obviously people went through with it.

Rob Murray 23:37
A lot of people, I mean, it’s an arduous, uh, bureaucratic process to get through and be certified. The thing though, that we saw is that we were a B Corp before we were B Corp, we just went through the B Corp process to certify the fact that what we do like we didn’t change our business to become a B Corp, we just had to build policies and governance around the things we believed in and prove to people we have them documented. So as much as, yes, it is a lot, all of our score deficiencies were a lack of documentation. So it wasn’t difficult for us to design the company for B Corp. We were a B Corp. We just had to formalize paperwork to be quite honest.

Jeremy Weisz 24:25
It seemed like you were talking before about it’s a big value to give back, and as far as, like, volunteering, etc. What are some of the things you do as a company or yourself that really sticks in your mind?

Rob Murray 24:42
Yeah, for sure. I mean, one of the things is, we believe that you have to get involved, not give back. You know, we live in communities, and we have the opportunity to have a beautiful life. We’re driving beautiful cars. We’re watching big screen TVs. We’re eating really good food. We’ve got sunshine, fresh air and fresh water, like we got it good, you know, 100 years ago. It wasn’t this good, not even close. So what can we do to get involved? They say it’s cliché to say, Be the change you want to see in the world. That’s cliché to do. It is not cliché. So get involved. We do a lot of stuff as a group, so we help do, like, a lot of customer acquisition or donor acquisition, marketing campaigns, community engagement for long not-for-profits, whether it’s a fundraiser, an event selling tickets, or if it’s a community organization trying to raise money through community bonds or whatever.

So we do a lot of that stuff. Personally, I do a lot of volunteering with local hospitals here. So community engagement, Task Force, digital Task Force. I was on the board there. We’ve got a bunch of other people here, whether it’s United Way, or community foundations working with like homeless shelters, there’s a lot, and everybody gets the opportunity if they need to volunteer. They it’s not like a personal day or taking the time, taking a day off. You could just go do it.

Jeremy Weisz 25:59
Yeah, I just figured, give get some people’s creative juices flowing for what you do, and maybe they’ll think about doing it in their own community, you know? So thanks for sharing that. Obviously you’ve helped a lot of businesses grow, and you have kind of this framework of five marketing mistakes. So why don’t we talk about that so people maybe can avoid the mistakes potentially?

Rob Murray 26:28
Yeah, for sure. And it’s all around building a foundation from a marketing and sales point of view that’s authentic and becomes predictable over time. And so the first thing we see as a mistake is that people are talking to the wrong part of the brain. And Simon Sinek is the best, I think, in terms of researching what creates a great leader and loyalty towards a great leader, whether it be the Wright Brothers or Martin Luther King, whatever you want to say. But what he found in his research with the three golden circles was that the way we communicate is kind of lined up with the way our brain takes information. And so our neural cortex is responsible for reason and arithmetic and taking in lots of information and vocabulary, and our limbic brain is responsible for emotions and decision-making, not vocabulary.

So, and this is a pretty old adage that people make decisions emotionally and then they justify those decisions intellectually. So the question then becomes, well, how do we communicate to somebody from an emotional standpoint? How do we get people emotionally involved when we’re talking about the what we do and how we help people. And well, the thing is, it’s getting into the why we do things like, why, why are we here? And so entering our purpose is empowering leaders to strengthen communities. That’s from an inside-out perspective. You know, we got to start with ourselves and our team, and then they empower our clients. As our clients grow, you know, they’re hiring more folks, and these are the entrepreneurs that put their houses on the line right and support local soccer teams, hospitals, whatever. So that’s kind of where we come from, and we have a big belief in leadership and community and it, and you can see it in what we do, and we’ve already talked a bit about it. So then when people hear us, see us, work with us, that leadership is prevalent, the community isn’t prevalent.

And what it’s cool is because it starts, we start to work with people that believe what we believe. And I think that’s where you build a really cool opportunity for a great customer experience by bringing customers in that believe what you believe, and bringing team members in that believe what members in that believe what you believe. So when they work together, they can have a world-class customer experience. We have a model called growth on purpose that explains how that all works, but the first thing is to try to figure out how to start talking to the limbic brain, and that can be done through the Start With Why approach. We have four questions, and people can go through they usually take some facilitation, but it’s simple. It’s just, what do you do? How do you do it differently than your competitors? Why do you do it that way?

And why is that important to you, and you’re not allowed to save for money because that’s a result, not a reason. And so when we bring people through that series of four questions, we start to see their value system pop up. And a lot of times that fourth question about, why is it important to you to run the business the way you do is usually grounded somewhere in how they grew up. And there’s usually some, you know, figure of authority from their childhood, parents, grandparents, whatever, that made an impact on the way they want to live their life, and then that comes through, and is, you know, essentially personified in an organizational setting. So that’s mistake number one, people talking the wrong part of their brain.

Jeremy Weisz 29:53
Rob, let me really quickly. Can you repeat those four questions? I think that’d be good for our next EO forum retreat go, what are the four questions again?

Rob Murray 30:03
What do you do? And no wordsmithing? The rule for the first question is you have to be simple and deliberate in what you do as a business. So like we, renovate backyards in Kansas City, like there’s no bringing family together to build connections and dreams. And that’s not the time for it. And then the second one is, how do you do it differently than your competitors? And what we need there is two or three specific examples that you do differently that a customer would experience. So you’re not allowed to say quality and just say that you’ve got good products. Customers don’t necessarily experience that during the delivery of your service. Now, if you say quality, you’ve got a 10-year warranty on your work, well, that’s something I can perceive, and I can see that you stand behind your work that’s quality. The next one is, why do you do it that way? And then the last one, and this one’s the one people struggle with and they don’t have answers for, and they have to really, like, sit in, is, why is that important to you?

Jeremy Weisz 31:14
Cool. Thank you. Yeah, of course. So that was number one?

Rob Murray 31:19
Yeah. Mistake number two, people think growth comes from new business. But the reality is, every business runs on a very similar, if not the exact, same, revenue model, and very quickly, you essentially break it down with leads times conversion rate gives you customers. So leads times conversion rate gives you customers times average sale times gross margin gives you average gross margin dollars times frequency of purchase times years of relationship, gives you lifetime value of a customer. And in this equation in terms of the lifetime value of 10 leads, there’s three results there, there’s customers, average gross margin in dollars and lifetime value of a lead. Those are all results. The other six variables are controllable. And so we can increase our leads, we can increase our conversion rate, we can increase our average sale, we can increase our gross margin, we can increase the frequency of purchase, and we can increase the lifetime value of a customer.

So when we work with people, sometimes lead flow isn’t the issue, sometimes conversion rate is the issue. Or sometimes they’re priced too low, or sometimes they work on small projects when they shouldn’t, and it makes them too busy to work on better ones. And so what we need to understand is, if you increase those six variables by 10% each. So I’m talking 10 leads to 11 leads, a $10,000 average sale to an $11,000 average sale. So 10% is just a little bit 10% but if you increase each variable by 10% the overall net increase to the system is at 83% so what we do is like, where should we focus our first three, six, nine months. And then if you focus on one variable, actually a quarter in a year and a half, you can see an 80% increase without having to hire one person. That’s a big deal. The mistake number three is people are always talking about themselves. If you go to a website 999 out of 1000 websites are this is what we do. This is who we are.

This is how long we’ve done it for. This is why you should care about us, and this is our process. Turns out customers don’t care about you. Customers care about two things and two things alone. The first one is solving their problems, the second one is accomplishing their goals. And so what we need to do is move from a business-oriented and solution-focused approach to communication and shift it toward a customer-oriented and problem-focused approach to communication so that you can help people see that you’ve addressed the problems they have better than they have, so you understand the problem better than they do, Because you do it all the time, there’s their first the time. This is their first time as a customer, and then help them walk to the solution state. So it’s like, here are the problems we always help people with. This is how we address those problems that you probably have. And here’s a bunch of other people we’ve done it for, and what it looks like when they’re gone.

So we can understand your problem and solve it and help you accomplish your goal, which is the solution state. That’s a big deal. A lot of times, people don’t know their customer problem because they have too many customers types and they’re not narrow or niche. And so what we try to do is help people understand where they can niche towards they don’t have to fully go there, because it’s frightening for a lot of people to become more narrow because they think that there’s less customers, but really, they actually control their pricing. One of the good examples we always give is there’s this great customer we have in downtown Seattle. His name’s Scott Eckley landscape business. But if you go to his website, it says that they’re specialists in urban landscape design and construction in downtown Seattle. So they understand tight spaces, they understand outdoor living.

They understand Seattle very well. And then if you look at their next competitor, it says full-service design-build landscape company, if you’re looking to get landscape or outdoor living space renovated in Seattle. And you look at two websites, where do you go first? And so the whole idea around this is, how do you become the choice, not a choice. And even Intrigue, we’re a landscape marketing company today. You know, once we get to a certain number of customers, we’ll niche into another vertical. But there’s probably six landscape marketing companies that are professional like we are. Do you know how many full-service marketing companies there are in North America? But 40 million? It’s insane. So, how can we elevate ourselves? Differentiate the next mistake is that people don’t know where their money is going, and they have no goal, and they don’t know how to measure it.

So Mistake number four is no goal. You know, we’re Canadian, right? Picture that referee putting his arms out, no goal. And even when they do have a goal, usually it’s vague and ambiguous and doesn’t serve them. So a lot of times people call us they say they want to improve their social media, or they want to have brand visibility. I can tell you from experience that after six months of doing brand visibility, writing checks to somebody goes pretty cold, so a lot easier.

Jeremy Weisz 36:26
I hear that in the podcast world too. Yeah, I just want more authority. I’m like, no, no, it’s not what you want actually.

Rob Murray 36:34
You might think that, but I could tell you, if you’re writing me checks, it’s gonna get old quick. Yeah. So then we so, you know, marketing, from our perspective, especially for entrepreneurial business, under ten million even under $50 million should be supporting sales. And so goals for sales and marketing should be very much linked, and we want to see an increase in revenue. Now, there is a bit of a caveat, you know, we don’t close deals for people, so I can’t be on the hook for getting new deals. However, I can be on the hook for getting you what we would consider a qualified lead.

So we look at goals like customer or cost per lead, cost per qualified lead, or customer acquisition cost, assuming that the client’s been vetted for their sales process. And I would say, if you’re working on marketing yourself, or if you’re working with a company or a team, having a goal around the number of inquiries or number of leads that you want, and the qualification of those leads is probably a really good starting point when it comes to a goal. What’s really interesting with it is, if you have a $50,000 budget, and you say, my cost per lead goal this year is 500 Well, that’s going to get you 100 leads in theory. So then you run your campaign, and you see how it goes for the year and six months, in nine months, in 12 months, and you check in, well, it turns out my cost per lead was actually 1000 it was double what I expected. Well, guess what? Now you know what your cost per lead is, and so now you can try to make it better. A lot of people just don’t have a goal and they don’t measure it.

So with a little bit of discipline, we can get really clear on what’s working and what’s not. And there’s some amazing tools out there that can help you do that. We have a sales and lead tracking-like attribution system that is second to none, and shows you exactly what keyword drives what revenue. So getting really clear on what your goals are, and then measuring what’s working and what’s not, and getting out of this place of I don’t know where my money’s going. I don’t know what’s working. It doesn’t have to be there anymore. And then the last mistake is that people don’t know how well they’re performing next to their peers. They’ve got very little industry benchmarking. So your marketing might be good, and your cost per lead at a $500 goal is working, and you’re like, pumped, because you’re doing what you thought was great.

But it turns out that the cost per industry could be under $200 so there’s actually a good chance to improve things, or the cost code, typically is $800 and you’re kicking butt. You’re way below the average, and so you’re highly effective and efficient in the way that you’re going to market. That really helps orient where we can improve or not have to put energy towards something. But if we don’t have the benchmarking, it’s very difficult to understand where we stand. And so one of the benchmarks that we always talk about this is just generic for everybody, but a website done right should convert 3% of visitors into a decent lead. So that means out of 100 visitors, you get three phone calls or submissions. This is specifically in like a service business model. And so what we just say to people as well a, do you know what your conversion rate is if you don’t? Conversion rate is? If you don’t go ask your web team or marketing company, they’ll probably have to take a hot minute to go figure it out, because they probably don’t know what it is.

And then when it comes back, if it’s under 3% you want to put pressure on them to get it to three if it’s over 3% they’re doing something right. We typically want to see our sites convert angry. Five and 7% so five out of seven, five or seven leads out of 100 visitors. But if you don’t have that benchmarking, it’s difficult to understand what works and what doesn’t. So yeah, you tie those five mistakes together, and all of a sudden you can create a pretty predictable approach to market.

Jeremy Weisz 40:15
Rob, that was fantastic. I’m gonna have to go back and listen to that again. A lot of stuff jam-packed in there. So I’ll thank you for sharing that. I know we have a few minutes left. So I have one last question before I ask it. I want to tell people go check out intriguemedia.com specifically, if you know landscaping businesses or people in the landscaping arena, tell them to check it out. But my last question is, books? Some of your favorite books? I learned a lot just by looking at your LinkedIn profile page. You have a stack of books there. I actually looked up The Power of Nice. I’m like, I’ve never heard of that book. I have to go get that book on Audible. You start with, why on there? Simon Sinek, you have some Seth Godin books, what are some of the other favorite books, resources people should check out?

Rob Murray 41:07
Yeah, cool. So E-Myth Revisited was probably the one that started the path to become well-read when it comes to personal development, professional development, leadership development, business marketing, sales, operations, project management, whatever. EMyth made me realize I knew nothing. Michael Gerber, 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. John C Maxwell, that was a kick in the nuts. I thought I was a natural-born leader, and I realized reading that book that I had a lot of work to do. Law of The Mirror, specifically. And this is for anybody listening as an entrepreneur or leader, things happen inside an organization for one of two reasons, either you model it, or you settle for it. And that was a big lesson for me.

Jeremy Weisz 41:51
That’s a parenting lesson too.

Rob Murray 41:52
Oh no, no doubt. Well, leadership and parenting, I mean, they go hand in hand. No question. There’s a bunch man, like Jim Collin’s stuff is all amazing. Daniel Pink, stuff is pretty good. Patrick Lencioni, Five Dysfunctions of a Team. All of his work is amazing. I think You Can’t Teach a Kid to Ride a Bike in a Seminar. David Sandler, it’s a great read. It’s co-written by Dave Mattson. Anyway, there’s lots, but those are good ones.

Jeremy Weisz 42:22
No, I appreciate it. Everyone, check out more episodes of the podcast. Check out intriguemedia.com. We’ll see everyone next time. Rob, thanks so much.

Rob Murray 42:30
Appreciate Jeremy. Appreciate it.