The Most Important Focus For a Small Business EP #083 with Garry Robinson

Hey guys, it's Den here. And this week's episode was recorded a few months back prior to the social distancing rules. So that's why we're at a busy cafe. My guest today is Gary Robinson, who is someone I met through LinkedIn and he happens to live very close to me here on the Sunshine Coast. But what an interesting guy, Gary. We had coffee a few times and I decided it was really worthwhile having him on the show. Gary is a marketing consultant and small business coach. He has over 25 years experience as an entrepreneur and a business owner in a number of different industries.

Including fitness.

Web design, publishing, e.com and it. But what I found to be interesting was really his take on marketing. If you know me, you know that marketing is a big focus for everything that we do here@danlani.com and really what we were talking about was the fact that marketing is the fastest way to grow your profit. Nothing else comes close. And if you want a company that's turning over less than 1 million a year, then you actually own a marketing business. So it pays for you to get good at marketing as it does, you know, your own trade as a filmmaker. So I think you're going to really enjoy this episode. And if you are looking for any support, make sure you head over to the website and check out the resources section. We're always updating that with additional tools and trainings that you can just take away for free. And if you subscribe to this podcast, I'll send you my book, how to increase quotes by 20 to 30% instantly, completely for free. And then you'll never miss an episode because we'll always email you when each episode comes live. So guys, I hope you really enjoy this episode.

Gary, you are the second guest on the Sunshine coast to be in the Cafe series of out and about. Today we're at the Container Cafe in Noosa.

I want to start by saying you're someone who reached out on LinkedIn and LinkedIn is one of those incredible platforms for connecting with like minded people. Tell us a bit about what motivated you to do that and a bit about your background.

Yeah, so my background is, I guess I hate using the word serial entrepreneur, but I've run a fair few businesses over 25 years. But I love the commonality for me is marketing. I figured out pretty early on that marketing was the single factor that could multiply your business more than accounting, more than any other thing. So now all my businesses, I'm trying to put a veneer of marketing over everything I do and see what the potential is. So, coming from a fitness background, I was pretty successful in that I realized that fitness providers were service providers. So I looked for commonalities in what they were doing. And then I had a little bit of success with some e commerce stores which weren't service providers. But I started to see patterns. And the patterns were that all successful businesses get there through marketing, whether. Whether they provide good services or not. Marketing is the. Is the. Is the differentiator. So I moved up to the Sunshine coast recently, about a year ago, and I decided, could my theory be proven in any market? So I decided to go like, let's double down on local businesses. We'll go wide rather than deep on a niche and see if I can apply all the things I've learned about marketing and make it work in a lot of variety of sectors.

It's interesting, one of the things that struck me when we had a coffee last week was your background in fitness. And we were talking. You were talking about fitness professionals and I was talking about video professionals. And you could take the word video and fitness out of the equation. And we were talking about the same things because fundamentally, videographers and video professionals who end up kind of wanting to run their own company, they start as either an employee or as a freelancer, and then they want to run their own business. Talk to me about your experience of that in the fitness world. In terms of, you know, working with individuals who love what they do. They love training and they want to build a business. But then, you know, they get into the business and it's kind of slightly different to what they'd anticipated.

Yeah. So I imagine fitness is like any other skilled profession. It's all the fun jobs don't pay much money, you know, because that's the way it is. Whether it's video businesses or any other small service business, you'll find a lot of tradies. They want to be in business on their own because they can see the potential. But what they find is that there's a big difference between being an employee and being a business owner. A lot of them find themselves suddenly they've got no clients and that's all been done for them. Suddenly they've got to do their own payroll. That's all being done for them. So 80% of that time has been taken up running the business and 20% on the tools, which is what they love to do. They get sick of that and then they. They quit because. Because they can't make it work.

And the other thing that I Certainly am aware of within the video profession is when I ask prospects and people that I meet who are in video, you know, tell me about your business. What do you do? How do you get clients? They virtually always, always say word of mouth. Oh, I don't do any marketing. The kind of I don't do any marketing is at times.

Almost a badge of honor. It's like, hey, I've made this much money and I haven't done any marketing. And I'm like, oh, okay. Is that something you've seen in the fitness world and working with tradies and other small businesses?

Not just in the fitness world, every small service business, they do wear it as a badge of honor. I don't need to market my business because I've got quite enough work on already, thank you very much. Okay, how many hours? Well, I'm working 60 hours a week. I can't even take on more clients even if I want to. But you'd like to make more money? Well, yeah, I'd like to grow more. So they're kind of stuck at a limit. There's a ceiling of how much you can earn on your own, really. And the only way you can get beyond that or break through that is to start treating what you do as a business and start taking yourself out of it and just pick and choose the bits that you want to do and you really love. And I believe marketing is the only way to do that.

Small business owner is a marketer. You know, you can't, you cannot run your own business without at least understanding marketing.

And do you think that's because, like a lot of the ceilings happen? And I know because this happened to me about eight years ago where I was a really good cameraman, really good editor, really good producer, director. And if I did all those roles, I made a quite a lot of money by not paying anyone else to do anything. But I was working 60, 80 hours a week and I remember thinking, oh, you know, this marketing all seems a bit hard. I've got to spend money. And what if I spend money on marketing? It doesn't work well, that's going to be a failure. What do you think it is that in your experience, shifts a business owner from that technician mindset of doing all the work myself and really hitting capacity to shifting to a more prospecting mindset of looking at some marketing, considering how they might start thinking about, you know, getting prospects, nurturing leads, A lot of that stuff's quite hard. What advice? Well, two part question. First place is what have you seen separates the successful businesses who actually break through that from the ones that don't. And the second part of the question is, how do you help businesses break through that? Because I think that it's something that's very hard to do on your own without support of someone who's a professional.

Yeah. So at some point in your career, you get really good at what you do, and you do that because you're. You're studious, you're diligent, you learn how to ply your trade.

Yeah.

And then you get. You reach a limit of how much you can do of that on your own. I think when you become a business owner, all you need to do is learn another set of skills. So if you're already really good at your trade, you've gotten there because you've been able to adapt and, you know, learn. So why not just learn the skills of becoming a business owner and then apply them and then evolve onto the next thing? So what was the subject of the second.

Yeah, and the second part of the question is, because I think what you're saying there is like, you simply can't just become a great marketer. It's a skill. Like if you're a cameraman, it takes you 10,000 hours to become a cameraman. I think often small businesses see marketing as this kind of thing you've kind of got to do in business, and let's see if we can fudge it and get through it rather than recognizing it as a significant part of the business.

Acquisition of customers. And it involves a lot of skills. There are funnels, there are headlines, there are. There's copywriting. There's the actual glue, the integration. And I guess that's where, in wearing your marketing consultant hat, that's where you come in, isn't it? I think what I'm trying to sort of articulate here is it's okay if you don't feel like you want to be a marketer. I actually believe that the best person to market your business is yourself. But if you find it something that you just really don't want to do, they could approach someone like you. Talk to me about how that might look for a small business.

Yeah. I think the first thing is marketing is not a black box in the sense that accounting is a black box or it as a black box. I really believe you can entirely outsource all of your marketing. You must keep at least the strategy for yourself. You can outsource things like running ads or graphic design or website building, but really it's like a web Designer is not going to give you your marketing strategy. A copywriter isn't going to give you a marketing strategy. Somebody in the business has to be directing that strategy. So when I work with small business owners, I work with them to teach them the strategies they need, but not necessarily do the work. I can take on some of the work or I can find people who can do some of the work. But really the skill of marketing is the strategy of marketing and knowing where your business is going and how you're going to take it there.

And what would you say when you look at a small business you go into work with and let's say they're in the sports world or a small business? I mean, it'd be the same if they're a video business. What are some of the first questions you would ask in terms of, like, if someone's done no marketing and let's say they're making $250,000 a year and they're doing it on their own, they're working 50, 60, 70 hours a week. What are some of the first steps that you'd be looking at in terms of helping them to create a strategy?

So the first step will be like, out of that 250,000 revenue, how much of it is profit? Because you only eat. It doesn't really matter how much you earn. It's what you keep at the end of the day. So my key driver when helping business is to double our profit. That's my goal for your business. I'm always going to work with you. So I don't want to double your revenue necessarily, because marketing can help you get more profit and streamline your business. So the first thing is, how much profit do you want to make? How much profit are you making now? And then how much more do you want to make? Do you want to double that? And what is that going to look like?

I think the other thing that I always want business to get really clear on is what is your core offer? I think certainly in the video space, and sorry, guys, there's a big bin lorry going past, but we are on a bit of a busy junction here. So one of the things that I always get businesses to do is go, well, what is it you're selling? Because I think small businesses, that technician mindset certainly in video is, well, I can shoot literally commercials, I can shoot overseas, I can shoot this, I can shoot that. We can do it all. And I love the phrase, just because you can doesn't mean you should. And we were talking just off Mike there Previously about the idea of a single funnel, a single offer, a single market. How important is that when you're working with a small business who is at capacity, wants more work, but actually can't handle more work because they've got their capacity. What are some of the steps that you would recommend small business do to kind of get rid of like a lot of the stuff that isn't perhaps profitable?

Yeah, so there's really only three ways you can grow any business so you can get, you can get more customers, you can increase the frequency of how often those customers buy, or you can add more value so that they pay you more. So your growth potential is in one of those three areas. So you really have to work out. If you have max capacity working 60 hours a week, your best capacity is probably, can you look at what you're doing to serve your customers now and make that more valuable so they pay you more money? If you've got an existing customer base and you're maxed out, that would be the first place to look. The second place to look would be if you've got a few one time customers or two or three time customers, can you increase the frequency that you can serve those customers? And of course, if you're just starting out or you have good capacity for growth, it will be like, let's get some more customers through the door. So that would be which of those three areas applies to that business most and let's start looking at the tactics you can use in those areas.

One of the obstacles that I come across with a lot of businesses is a mindset issue. A lot of videographers, video pros, will say to me, you know, Dan, my clients just want to work with me, you know, and so if I'm not on the job, they're probably not going to want to work with us. But that's a huge bottleneck because I see that as a kind of a freelance noose, if you like, where the perception is the client wants to work with you specifically rather than, you know, receive the benefits of the product or the service that you create. Is that something you see from your experience, like working with fitness pros, for example, where they perhaps have been the personal trainer and in order to grow the personal training business, they have to bring other trainers. And what are some of the challenges you faced working with those kind of businesses in the past?

Yeah, so it's like the idea of only I can do what I do and people will only want to work with me. It is a mindset thing because that's not really true, is it? If you think of somebody like Steve Jobs, who built one of the biggest, most successful companies in the world, people buy into those products because they buy into his message. Yeah, he's the face of the business. And I think something like a personal trainer or a video production business, the owner, it can still be the face of the business and people will still buy into that. But it doesn't have to necessarily be them delivering that product or service, or it can be in a way that is highly leveraged for them. So, for example, you with your group coaching, you know, in some ways, group coaching can be more valuable for the clients, whether it's in fitness or any sort of small business, because you get the benefit of the experience of other business owners or other clients. As you go.

As you go 100%. Almost every coaching call we do, we did a call Yesterday, we had 10 businesses on the call, and maybe four of those business didn't ask a question, but they sat there and just listened to. And they messaged me afterwards saying, oh, sorry, I didn't have a question today. But, you know, listening to Derek talk about pay per click gave me a massive idea. And then listening to Craig, Share story that was. That was really interesting. I was doing that in my business. And then. And then Declan had all these questions. My God. This, you know, the power of this group is not just you. Damn. It's all these other businesses. And when you're in a group situation, absolutely. There are two key elements to that. One is other businesses in other parts of the world with the same problems you've got, so you suddenly feel like you're not alone. And the second part is community and support. And I guess, you know, that's why, you know, in your background, you started personal training, then you started doing classes and groups because the group creates the community. How important is that in terms of, you know, creating a brand that can almost work without you?

Yeah. So just on that, before moving, one of the things that allowed me to become a good fitness coach in the first place was participating in group sessions that other coaches were running. Right. So you realize the power. Even if I'm participating in those sessions, I'm still learning and I'm still receiving information not from necessarily the coach that I was working with, but the system that the coach was working inside of. So in a successful sale, like I say, CrossFit is a great example of community and coaching put together and service delivery. Someone started that CrossFit gym with his own idea and he thought. And yeah, they Bought into a prescription. CrossFit's got his own prescription. But usually every CrossFit gym has its own personality and it's driven by the head, the business owner. He goes and then hires his team of coaches and teaches them or instills in them his beliefs and his methods and his teachings. So when he's actually on the floor coaching, they're observing and they're taking on all that for themselves, then that'll come a day when they'll only choose the sessions that they want to teach. And this applies to yoga. I've seen this work really well in yoga businesses as well, where teachers will teach, hire people to teach what they know to their students. So the students come into that gym because, because the face of the business owner, it could be like the Steve Jobs with Apple. You buy into his message, but when you actually go there every day, you're not actually getting steep jobs, you know, selling you your ipod. When you walk into an Apple store, if you were still alive. In the same way in fitness, you walk into that fitness facility, there's a coach there who completely understands and gets the system that that business owner has. So the business owner may be three or four or five steps removed, actual service delivery, but people are still buying into that. That's how you would scale a fitness business and still have your Persona and your brand and your values attached to it.

And change the word fitness to video and it's the same thing. Because, you know, if, if I went out and filmed a job, I mean, I haven't filmed a job and I don't know how many years.

And if I was out filming jobs every day, I can only film one job. And that only one client gets the benefit of my experience in the group. Now, you know, There can be 10 people on a call and 10 people get the benefit. So I get something else you mentioned there, which I want to touch on is the importance of systems. And that's something that I know that your average small business owner doesn't kind of want to go near because they think it's a lot of work. But. But how important is systemizing what you do with a view to removing you from being hands on every day?

Well, that's the thing, isn't it? That's the key to scaling and replicating yourself. So if I would challenge any business owner who believes that they're the only one who can do their job, in actual fact, if they broke down what they did, they'd have a system behind it. They just may not be. It may not Be at the conscious front of their brain type thing. But if you think of something like in fitness, again, a prescription like CrossFit, someone, Greg Glassman, figured out what it took to give everybody who wanted a specific result that result. Yeah. And then just like chunked it down, made a system and now any, any qualified CrossFit coach can deliver that system.

Yeah.

And I would, I would say that would apply to film production as well. I mean, at some point you figured out the key ingredients that make a successful video shoot and then you just document it and then teach it to others so they can go on deliver it. So it's still, it's still your thing and people are still buying your system if you like. It's just not in your head. It's out there in the world that other people can replicate.

And of course, you know what's really special about that is A, you can help more people, which is very fulfilling, but B, you're going to make a lot more money because the more people you help with your service, the more value you create, the more people that appreciate that. Take the Steve Jobs example. I don't know how many years have been dead now, but we're still buying Apple products. We still have the Apple experience.

What is the, you know, what do you think is the obstacle that the small business owner who starts as a one man band because they want to run a business, what do you think is the obstacle that stops them breaking through and becoming a fully fledged business? What do you think based on your 20 odd years of working with businesses and in your own business, what is the difference between someone who breaks through that and becomes a business owner and starts to create systems and outsource to team versus the person who is kind of scared to do that and stays kind of down at a level where they're at capacity the whole time?

It's almost like the professional who stops learning. So if you have a professional, if you stop learning your trade, you're going to be stuck at that level. So I think it's the feast and famine thing that business owners get themselves into. They take on enough work that they're maxed out and they're busy and they're loving it because I'm doing what I love every day until the clients and the jobs are finished and then they've got to go out and do the, you know, the stuff that they find a little boring or marketing, whatever. So if you can turn what you love and what you're good at in your trade into your marketing efforts, then you're always going to have new people coming in the funnel. So I almost think, like, while I say every small business owner needs to be the marketing for their business, it doesn't mean that you have to have a completely different role. You can become the voice of your business and your marketing by sharing what you know about what you're good at. So look at your business. You're no longer on the tools, but you still, you are, you know, because you're teaching people your methods that works for you, and other people are going out into the field and using those. So you're kind of still doing the work, but you're indirectly doing it. That's probably more valuable because you can affect more people.

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, certainly the goal with what we're doing in the accelerator is to really work out what are the key nine areas that have to be optimized to allow that business owner to have whatever freedom is and what that looks like for them. So one of the first modules we do is what is your why? And I ask people to understand, get very, very clear on what your ideal life looks like and how much that costs. Because if you can get that right, everything else becomes easy. And then from moving on from there, it's like you probably only need one marketing channel and one message. And we were talking about this before we started recording. I wonder if you'd just be kind enough to share a bit more about that notion of, you know, a lot of businesses take too much advice from too many places and get crippled by inaction. What do you think is the. Is the more sensible approach, if you're a small business, to marketing? Yeah.

So that's, let's say back to the beginning is, okay, what are we trying to achieve here with this business? Once you figure that out, it's a case of, well, how are we going to get there? The next step for that is what's the single next best market that's going to enable you to do what you want? Who do you do your best work with? Who can you get the best result for, who's prepared to pay you for it, and who do you like working with or serving? And it's, we like to think that everybody is a customer and we're going to take over the world and we want to own all the land, but really you start with owning the land that's immediately next to you. So what's the single next market that if you want to grow into a new market, what's that market look like? It's got to have similarities to your single best customer, you know, and just start one little step at a time. So instead of, for fitness coaches, for example, saying I can help anyone lose weight, okay, so can every single fitness coach. It's not difficult. We figured out how to do that. That doesn't make you special, but if you're suddenly talking to a specific person, I help 45 year old dads lose weight. You're going to get their attention and it's going to be a lot easier to reach those people and it's going to be a lot easier for you to explain what it is that you can do for them.

I mean, that makes perfect sense to me. It's a philosophy that I absolutely teach and live by in my coaching groups. But a lot of resistance comes when people go, oh, I know you say I should go niche, but I'm worried that if I go niche, I limit myself, I limit myself. Talk to me about that.

Well, limit yourself for three months to one niche and then dominate that niche. And it might be a tiny niche, you know, it might be, it might literally be one customer. You might look and look around your area and go, I'd love to work for that company, approach them, get them on board and then move to the next best one. And it might be that you do get to work for that company, but you don't like working for them. So it's almost like a series of, yes, go for a very small single target market at a time, but then move on to the next one, you know, so it's not like you're limiting yourself to that one market forever. And it's a permanent thing. It's, well, let's try this market and then move on to the next one and then the next one. Once you own that land, own your neighbor's land and then the neighbors land and you go that way in tiny little chunks, one kind at a time almost.

That's exactly how we've built this program. You know, we, we typically work with businesses that are, the businesses we have the most success with, typically are generating upwards of $250,000 a year, up to a million dollars a year, and they want to double their profit. They typically are male, in their early 40s, married or with a partner with a couple of kids. And all they really want is to create a nice life for the family, have a nice house, put the kids to education and not work too hard. And it's surprising how, how specific that niche is. And we typically don't work with freelancers because freelancers for Example will come to me and say, oh, you know, when they're quiet, oh, I'd love to talk to you about your program. You know, I'm sick of the feast and famine. I'm sick of this. And then we talk. And then like, oh, well, I'm not ready yet. And then I talked to them three months later, like, I'm really, really busy. Really busy. I'd love to come and. Come and do one of your workshops, but I just. I'm so busy. Clients have really got me under the pump. And so I know that until that person is ready to accept responsibility for the fact that that's a problem, or if they're saying to me, I've got no time and I've got no money, I'm like, well, there's a red flag if you've got no time and no money. There's a hole in your business somewhere. But what I've also learned, Gary, is that I can't convince someone there's a problem. They've got to feel pain before they'll go. Right now, I'm ready. And one big shift that we had was instead of trying to sell our program, we now attract people so we actually don't try and sell it at all. And I wonder if you had any thoughts in your own businesses of examples like that where you've had a big mind shift from trying to sell your product to service and trying to convince people to use it, rather than adjusting your marketing 1 or 2 degrees to more of an attraction style.

Absolutely. You're talking about the difference between convincing somebody to do what they, you know is good for them or compelling them to do something that they want so you know what they need, but what they. There's a disjoint between what they want. So I think the thing is, and probably the third step that I would get, if we're talking about step by step here, is that come up with a compelling message that makes people want to act rather than a convincing message that's you telling them what they need. So would that be an example? I think it's more.

It's getting the message right for that market. So you have to talk, you have to let them know that you understand what the problems are in the first place. Because if you can help people understand that you know their problems, you've been there, or even if you haven't, you really understand it, and you live and breathe it every day, you're more than halfway towards being the solution about that problem. You probably heard that before, right? So Rather than trying to convince them all the features of what your product does or what your service does, help them see the benefits to them, which is way more compelling. And a compelling person is a motivated person and they're going to seek you out rather than you seeking them out.

Mentor of mine Ben Simkin said, if you can describe a client or prospect's problem better than they can, they will automatically assume you have the solution. Right?

Yep.

And another really famous quote, which I love is from a famous marketer, Dan Kennedy, and he said in his droll accent, and I won't try it because I'll destroy it. You know, basically everyone's wandering around with an umbilical cord in their hand looking for somewhere to plug it in. And so if you spend the time and effort really researching your target market, you can understand everything about what motivates and drives them. And I see the biggest challenge and it's something that I'm committed to sort of helping, helping as many businesses as possible resolving. My goal is to help 10,000 businesses double their profit.

Which is an ambitious target. But the biggest obstacle is status quo bias. People going, you know, I'm doing okay, I'm busy, I'm working. Yeah, I know you say I should go niche, but you know, I don't want to do that. And it's a really, it's a big challenge and not one that I think I'll solve overnight, but I'm really committed to, to helping people through that because I guess, I guess question for you is why is it so important to have one opportunity, offer one market, one niche, one message?

I think it just becomes easier and more enjoyable when you can do that. If you're serving someone who you believe that you can really help.

Or if you can really help one specific type of person because you understand it and you're not, you're trying to dilute your efforts across more people then you're doing the people who you're really meant to serve a disservice. It's almost like you're denying the people with those problems a solution to them. I don't know if, I mean, it's just the thing about generic messages, you know, it's like the only people who can really do that is in massive brands, you know, so if you imagine something like the Coca Cola sign on William street in Sydney, you go past that every day and it's successful for them. I don't know if they can measure it, but most of us in the six figure business world cannot use branding to market our business, we've got to be more direct. It's more efficient, it's more cost effective, it's actually more pleasant and it's more personal. And I think, I think for the market you're trying to serve, certainly the market I'm trying to serve is that direct response marketing.

Is not something that's mainstream yet, but it's the one thing that is the most effective thing to grow, to grow any sort of small business.

I agree. What a great place to wrap this up, Gary. Where can people find out more information about you and what you do?

They could probably start by going to my website, GaryRobinson.com I've created a simple one page marketing plan that pretty much any small service business can use to double their profit in 12 months. And you can get that plan from our website and start there?

Sure. And guys, I will link to that in the show notes and also on the website over@denleny.com so Gary, thanks very much indeed. It's been a real pleasure.

That's great, Dan. Thanks for having me on.

You've been listening to the how to Scale a Video Business podcast podcast with me, your host, Dan Lenny. If you're a video business owner, it's hit a ceiling and we benefit from mentorship, support and coaching. Then check out how you can work with me over@denlenny.com don't forget to subscribe and rate the show over on itunes and we'd really appreciate you taking a few minutes to leave a review. And don't forget to share if you feel you've gotten value from this episode and you think it would be useful for other filmmakers you know then. And please do me a massive favor and share it on social media and in groups that you might be in. So thanks for listening. See you in the next episode.