How To "Move The Needle" In Your Business With Jonathan Drake

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Welcome back to bacon wrap business. It's Brad. I am excited to have you back on the show. Listening closely to every single word I say. Hey, seriously, this show has really been doing well and I took a little bit of a break here the past couple months. I didn't really pepper in the shows every single week. And I got a lot of emails from you guys saying, man, where are they? And I'm back at it. Got some really cool things to share with you, including today I brought a friend of mine on and we're going to talk about how to move the needle. Before I jump into introducing Jonathan to you, however, I want to let you know that if you're not already subscribing on itunes to the show, or if you're not on my newsletter list, which you can get on@baconratbusiness.com, please do it. Hit that little subscribe button in itunes. The reason why is because every time I release an episode, you don't have to do anything except open that app. It'll tell you and you can hear all of them. And as you know, or if this is your first time listening, I do my best job to tackle the topics that business owners, marketing executives, entrepreneurs face every single day, including myself. I'm not a full time podcast radio host. I run a business and I consult other businesses on how to do their best. And I use this as a platform to extract some really sizzling hot business advice that will help you improve the profits in your business. Every single one of my episodes is designed to give you really actionable stuff and today is absolutely no exception. I've invited a guy that I've known for years. We met really when I was just getting started in the kind of the online digital marketing world. His name is Jonathan Drake to join us today. So Jonathan and I have kept in contact since I think we were at a networking party years ago and I've really followed his trajectory pretty close to the power of Facebook, right? And he's worked with some of the absolute top entrepreneurs and business owners, helping them to dramatically improve their profits. He's one of the most gifted marketing strategists that I've ever met. And every time I talk to him, he's coming up with different ways to add not only profit to your business, but to remove the confusion and frustration that a lot of us face. Maybe that's because he's smarter than a lot of the people that he works for. Maybe that's just because he's more intellectually curious and he dives into strategies, much like I do here, and wants to know everything. And he has a ton of arrows in his quiver. So his business is called how to move the Needle. Well, that's actually his website, howtomovethenidle.com you can go check it out. But Jonathan's sole purpose. I'll let him correct me if I'm wrong in just a second. Is to show business owners and entrepreneurs how to really move the needle in their business, especially if they're stuck. And how to break out of these. These frustrating ruts and wondering, why is my business not growing? Or why am I working too hard? And today, I'm going to extract every little bit I can out of him so that you can run off and move the needle in your business or contact him and see if he can help you. So, without any further ado, welcome. Drumroll. Jonathan Drake to bacon wrap Business. How are you, buddy?

I'm doing great. Great to be here.

Cool, man. I'm glad you joined me. You know, I. I probably just.

Simplified the introduction for you, and I probably left out a lot of the backstory. But really, the reason I wanted you on the show today is because I've always been really impressed with the things you find, the things you share. When I see them on Facebook and we talk on the phone, you've always got some really creative things that you're doing. I think it's a lot of stuff that people can use, and they just don't realize it. But tell me a little. Let's go, a little bit of backstory here. What are some of the things in business that you like the most, that you're most proud of? Give the folks here a little reason why they're listening to you.

Sure. So I realized pretty early on I worked on some of the bigger product launches, and I realized product launches are a great aspect of a business, but they are not what makes a business. Nobody should rely on a product launch. And so that was really how I cut my teeth. And I came into the space helping businesses, helping other people. And I went off on my own, and I said, hey, I'm going to, you know, helped other people to build their business. I know how to do it. I spent with the business partner. We spent about two years. And one of the things I did is we were actually ahead of the time. A lot of people heard of AppSumo. I had a company called Heist IT and what Heist it did is we brought together the tops apps and services in the world and put them into a bundle and sold them at a discount. And I know that now that I.

Bought your first bundle. I remember back in the day, yeah.

It seems like such a very normal thing today. But when we were doing it, it was so new. People thought we were not telling the truth. People didn't understand it. But one of the things I'm really proud about, we never made a dollar in sales and it was our first bundle and I was charged with putting that bundle together. And what that meant was I had to go and convince the product owners and the service providers that we are the best way to get the message out and get the word out. When it was all said and done before we even sold our first bundle, I had at our disposal $50 million in software codes to be sold. So I look back at that and I realize, hey, we had Inc. Magazine was a part of it. Freshbooks, Wistia. Before anybody knew who Wistia was, there was a certain reason. I liked the analytics and what they provided. Office Autopilot, several other Shopify was in there. People now they're like, oh, Shopify just went public and you know they're gonna, they're on their way to being public. They're a billion dollar company. Yeah, they were in our bundle. Inc Magazine was in our bundle.

So you said you didn't make any sales?

Well, before we made any sales, before we launched our first bundle, we wanted our first bundle to come out of the gate as great. And so I didn't go for, you know, this third party service or you know, somebody who's never heard of. I went right to the top and I had a very strategic plan. And you know, I still have it to this day how to connect with anybody. You know, it's like 120 point plan, step by step process that I used and not only how to connect with them, but to position myself when I do connect with them that they are going to understand what I'm looking for and then also have a relationship that allows them to, you know, give me 10,000 of their software codes. So like we had, you know, we could have created 10,000 Shopify stores, 10,000 Office Autopilot accounts. I mean, that's what we did. Inc magazine, we had to have a special deal with them because of their certain rules with magazines. But that was really what we were going for.

Okay. And you just, you just cleared the brush for a rabbit trail that I want to go down. So let's talk about that. You said you have 120 points to connect.

With people, et cetera, et cetera. Is that basically what you said a second ago?

Yeah.

Okay, so let's go through all 120 of them in depth, talk about each one of them for 10 minutes. But give me some stuff. So this is a personal passion of mine. And as we all know, on bacon wrap business, we talk about what the host wants to, to talk about here. So give me a little bit more.

Give me a little bit more.

So I, yeah, so I would say kind of the biggest takeaway is to not approach a person initially with an ask. And I know it sounds very simple, but I would actually go through and I had, I'm going to go. And you know, and this is when Twitter wasn't quite as big. But if you go and follow somebody on Twitter and you, you know, like their most recent tweet or whatever, that's one thing. What I do is I actually scroll through because I actually want to learn about them. Do they have kids? Do they, you know, what are some things they care about? And so I scroll through and I look at, you know, something from two months ago and I look at what somehow that it's going to apply to me.

You stalk.

I guess some people call it stalking.

Ethically stalking.

Yeah, I'm just going through and, you know, this is all public stuff that at one point this was their most recent post.

Yeah, that's true.

Right. That they wanted it to be what they said at that moment. And so what happens is if somebody comments on what they did today, they're getting, you know, 50 notices, 20 notices, whatever. But if they see somebody who comments on something from two months ago that is applicable of how I want to be presented, you know, and it's obviously important to me enough, you know, for me to even be doing that, that's a part of it. And so it's to be willing to do the work and to build a relationship in a certain way that other people are not willing to do. And so instead of trying to go on the front door, I would rather send a postcard announcing my arrival, so to speak. And so I wanted to be there and be noticed by them before. So it also works well with introductions the power of a network is pretty important to having somebody introduce you, you know, but really the first contact on how somebody understands who you are is pretty important. And that's really what I wanted to focus on.

Right. So give me one tangible example. One of your favorites from whether it was back when you were putting together Heist it or something else where you got access to somebody you really wanted to and maybe kind of a unique or creative way.

Sure. And I don't know how creative it is, but I think it's. It actually will fall into that category in today's day and more day and age is I actually there was Wistia. Nobody had really heard of Wistia. I actually helped them to get a few customers early on. I was one of them. And then I went and visited them up in Boston. I went to their headquarters. I think they had five people at the time. Now they're up to 40 plus. I went in, I met the founders.

Wait a minute, no back up though. How did you get a hold of them originally? What was your.

I.

Because that's the part that I think confound or. Yeah, confounds most people.

So one of the things especially with software is, you know, especially with newer software, which was Wistia was at the time is I become a champion of their product and it only works with. I actually care about their product but I help them to mold and build their product. Another one this is current is Built With. A lot of people don't know who Built with is.

I like Built With.

Yeah, I have a subscription there. But Gary Brewer is his name who founded Built With.

I think they found it in 2009 or 10.

And for folks who don't really know builtwith.com, it's a cool little website where you can go put in, let's say you put in your own website and it'll tell you all the platforms, plugins, technology basically that you're using that you've used to build your website. It'll go through your source code and there's a lot of really cool uses for that that we won't go into right now. But it's a really cool website. You can get lost in for a while but keep going.

Yeah. And yeah, and some of the things you can use with Built with is you can understand, you know, where a company is as far as tools wise. If they're using AWeber, they're probably at a certain threshold of income wise, you know, or revenue. And then if they're using, you know, marketo or Eloqua or, you know, so you can start to segment your audience and then you can actually get the emails and upload those into a custom audience. That's a whole other strategy we've used last week actually for a retargeting product launch. But to go back to that is I have been a champion of their product, not externally only, but internally. I send them feedback, I send them, you know, this is how I would improve this. And they've actually customized it. And if you look at built with, you know, part of their leads platform, it's because of me, you know, that they have done that. So I have a first name basis when I need a new code or a new platform put in, it's done within a day. They do that for me. And so in some ways I help them to build their product. And I tried to provide value ahead of time and actually during and consistently.

Well, you did that with me. And we're already, we've known each other for a while, but you sent like I had a landing page that had been designed for one of my clients and I shared it on Facebook and you reached out and you sent me this really cool four page eye tracking technical report saying, now granted, you didn't say anything's wrong with it. You said, hey, this is actually a really well designed page. And I just thought it was really cool. And that resonated with me. You didn't have to run this through a tool, but it probably didn't take you a lot of time to do the analysis and provide value to me. And I was like, dude, that's really neat. If somebody, if I didn't know you and you would have done that to me, you instantly are in my graces. So that's kind of a cool takeaway for folks to remember.

Yeah. And it's just a matter of, you know, understanding how most people are going to be approached and then not doing that exactly the same way. And the other. And this is something that, you know, that I still struggle with at times, and I'm sure everybody does, no matter where they are kind of in society is to understand that, you know, that person on the other end puts their pants on one leg at a time. And it seems so simple. But they're a person too. Like, they have emotions, they have relationships, they have things that go right in their life, they have things that go wrong in their life. And to be there, authentic as possible and really try to be authentic as possible to help support them in what they're doing and it does pay Dividends. Yeah, absolutely.

Okay, cool. So a lot of ways to connect with people. The fact that you've got like 120 point checklist, I'd love to see that offline sometime. I'd love to go through it. But that's a entirely another, not even a show but a season.

Well, real quick, let me, let me say so what the reason why that's there. And so before I realized I was naturally doing these things and I realized that if I wanted somebody to take over that role, they couldn't do it because they'd not me. They don't know what to do. And so I realized I needed to have some sort of system in place that they could follow a checklist and there's different books about that, you know. But at the time I realized I don't want to be the only one. I can't scale the business. I can't, you know, work on other areas if this is what I'm going to be, need to be doing full time because there's a, you know, a time lag as well. So I, my goal was to really kind of extrapolate or extract out of myself what is, what do I do? Why am I effective at what I do? And it was an ended up and I didn't say hey I'm going to create 120 but it was like I'm just going to document it as very detailed as possible. And it ended up being that that's great.

Well I'd love to see any documentation you have on that offline. And I think that'd be a. Because it's something that I've been told that I'm naturally gifted at and I like doing it. But I've never codified it myself either going what am I really doing to make these connections? So moving the needle. Let's talk about why a business owner and you've worked with some of the top people from Brendon Burchard to Perry Marshall and people who've just got.

Seven, eight, nine figure businesses that you've helped move the needle in their business. And I know these people seek you out because you've got a very specific set of skill sets. But what are the types of business owners that want to move the needle in there? I mean this sounds like, oh well, who wouldn't? But.

Who do you typically help the most and how do you help them?

Yeah, so I found the people who I end up helping the most are people who are open to what that actually means. You know that a lot of times people Think, oh, I need more traffic or I need more conversions or I need this or need that. And they come out, come in with a predefined, this is what I need as opposed to I'm looking to grow my business or I'm looking to sell my business. And it's actually like this secondary goal, which is really the first goal. And they're very truthful, but with themselves. This is what my goal is. And a lot of times it's very difficult because a lot of time I would say people are so much in the day to day, you know, they just want to have more, you know, traffic, or they want to have better employees or, you know, so they're looking, you know, one step ahead as opposed to really why did they get into the business? And I really went through a process of, you know, figuring out, you know, exactly what it is that I do and, and, you know, the process. But what I realized is I help a business owner and a business itself really fulfill why it was created in the first place. You know, the, the business owner didn't get in business for more traffic. I pretty much guarantee that, like, that's not why they got in business. They, they had a passion or they wanted to, you know, alleviate some pain or something like that. And then I really helped them to identify again or.

Renew and really focus on what is it that that's what they're looking for and be able to take some steps back and say, okay, where are we now? Are we still fulfilling that goal? Or if we're not, hey, let's refocus, let's do this differently. And in the end it comes into the strategies and tactics that help us to get there. But my goal is to provide a very clear get there as fast as possible to the goal, or accomplish the goal, or be in a zone that allows your business to get there in a way that resonates with the business owner, doesn't feel difficult.

But that's really what I in the end realized that I do. And it's kind of a big, bold, hairy promise that I realized. When a business owner is willing to commit to not looking at the day to day immediately, but saying, hey, this is really why I'm in business, then they can back up and then we create a plan and say, okay, these are some of the things you can do. Now, a lot of times people aren't willing to do that or aren't ready to do that. So that's why I've created, you know, very specific strategies that they can implement that can Kind of help them down that road where they are now to help move the needle in their business. You know, I realized, you know, we talked about it before, that, you know, there's one thing of, you know, actually implementing what you do versus what you, you know, you try to sell. Somebody's people aren't always looking for, you know, a holistic type approach to their business. They're looking for very specific stuff. But I think that's where they end up chasing their tail or chasing, you know, traffic or then they look at something else and they say, oh, you know, this, this plates over here is about to fall off. I need to go fix that. As opposed to why am I spinning plates? Like, why don't I have other people spinning the plates for me? Or why don't I have a system in place or a process in place that allows that to happen without them being there?

Right. That makes a lot of sense. So earlier I spoke about, you've got a lot of those arrows in your quiver and you've got a lot of things you can do. And when I, when I originally asked you to be on the show, I was like, you know, yeah, bacon wrap business. All about sizzling hot business advice and ideas. And you sent me a list of like 17 different awesome things that we could talk about. I was like, I want to talk about them all. But you have a few of them that really kind of caught my imagination, including the one earlier about.

How to connect with people. But I want to dive into this and I want to give some tactics to some folks. They walk away where, okay, I get the theory, but yeah, give me some ways to move my needle. And I'm looking for ways to move the needle for myself. So surprise me. So I'm going to just kind of go through a handful of these, you know, rapid fire. Give me, give me what you got on them.

Okay, sure.

Cool. So you told me you showed me how to find where my best to be affiliates are hiding in plain sight. Tell me about that. So if folks don't know what affiliates are, hopefully if you're listening to my show, you do you understand it's a completely independent other website company, business owner, etc. That gets paid a percentage to help promote your site to other people. If you don't know about that, it's a really powerful strategy, but I'm going to assume you do. So tell me about how to find those best affiliates to be sure.

This is something I do. It's something you can do actually for a business, whether you're A consultant and you can bring this to somebody, it's how.

And I'll get right to it. So when I help a business and I say, hey, who are your customers? What I do is I find out where those customers are already linking to. And so it's really to understand the backlinking profile of a business and how the interweb is actually sharing information which is mainly through links. And this link points here, this link points there. So to give you a very specific example and then we can kind of extrapolate if we want to, but there's a guy, good friend of mine, his name is Jack Born and he has a tool that for anybody who uses AWeber, they should be using what he provides, which is, you know, puts AWeber on steroids. It's called AW Pro Tools.

Oh yeah, I'm familiar with that. I haven't used it, but I'm familiar with it.

Yeah, anybody who uses AWeber should be using it. It gives a lot of like, yeah, things like, you know that Infusionsoft does moving the list and AWeber is idiotic.

For not buying that business off him and doing all that stuff themselves.

So yeah, depending on when this comes out, I don't have any super inside information. But I agree. I think that that's just the natural. So. But I. So for Jack I said, hey, how can we go and figure out who should be buying this and who should be promoting it for him? And the answer is AWeber actually has an affiliate program that not a lot of people know about. And they actually also had a white label program where they would white label. So Jeff Walker has a. It's called profolo. But I'm able to identify there were eight white label programs that are still in existence and people are still sending traffic through. So those are the whales for him to go after. They could promote him one time. They already have a predefined list but I was able to find them by looking through their backlink structure. The other is that the way that an affiliate link is structured actually points and gives very, very clear clues on who is sharing or who's pointing to AWeber. Same thing with Infusionsoft. I can tell you all the top affiliates with Infusionsoft you look at the link structure and then you start to do a search on where these links are coming from and where are the ones pointing to infusionsoft. And what you can do is you can look at. So if it's for attorneys, you can go through and see at the main attorney hub who is pointing to that, oh, those are my clients. And so you can find clients this way, you can find affiliates this way. So if you have other people and whether it's your product or people who are competitors, you say, hey, you know, they have an affiliate program who's already promoting them. So they already understand affiliates, they already understand how it works to promote. They're probably already making some money. And if you can pay them more money, potentially they'll change their links over. So it's really understanding their link structure.

I like that tool, basically. Yeah. So basically what you're doing is you're. Most people just look at one level deep. You're just using various probably relatively simple tools, everything from Google to whatever, to go deeper, follow those trails, see where they lead, and just ask yourself, would this person benefit from promoting my product as well? Or vice versa, Would I benefit from promoting them?

Right. And you can also sort by strength. Right. You can see how strong their domain is. You know, what's their traffic level?

They use various things.

Yeah. So yeah, there's one, it's called similar web is you can look at a site and see how much traffic they're getting. Another one that I use that's they've indexed almost every single link on the entire Internet is called Ahrefs. So a h r e f s.com and there is a monthly subscription. You can do some things for free, but, you know, so, you know, you could pay 80 bucks, 100 bucks and you can get all this information immediately. You can download it, you can sift and sort it. But it's proved invaluable, you know, so with the product launch, I'm able to see who's promoting who. You know, how many times did they promote, when did they promote? When did those links show up? And just allows you to kind of get into a stream and see what's actually happening, not what you think is happening. This is the real stuff. Like, you don't have to guess about it. The link is there. It's a real link. You can see where it is on the site, where it's pointing to.

I like it. That's great.

Cool.

So let's keep going because this is fun.

You talked about that. You've got a pricing strategy that people can do that maybe not be obvious to a lot of folks. A lot of people just sell their thing at one price or a couple prices, different packages. What's your pricing strategy that moves the needle?

Yeah, so there's a few, but it's not just one strategy. It's kind of overall how to look at pricing and recognize how valuable and how big of a deal pricing actually is. A lot of people don't recognize, but there's a stat that's pretty well proven and there's studies that have been done that every dollar more is actually every dollar that you can sell your product for more is actually about 11% more profit. And it's because there's going to be a hard cost associated with something. And so people, you know, they say, hey, I'm just going to price it like this. And so the next is to not base pricing on what your competitors or what the market is already charging. Because what that does is that doesn't allow you to really focus on am I looking to be the premium based product? The thing to focus on is called value based pricing. When you do value based pricing, it really forces you to understand the value and then sell the value and then you can price it accordingly and then let that go where it does.

Do you have any tangible examples, things you've done for folks that have really worked?

Yeah, so I, you know, as far as Wistia and I didn't work directly with them, I actually did, but not directly on their pricing. But what they did is they value based their pricing and they changed the metric. Every other video hosting company was selling bandwidth and that's what they sold and it became a commodity. And so Wistia realized and they worked with a company called Price Intelligently, which is a great site, great blog, you know, tons of pricing stuff there. But what they realized is they are, that's, that's a commodity, like it's a race to zero, like how fast can somebody get there? And Amazon won. People Host on Amazon S3 all the time because of that. So what they did is they changed the value metric on how many videos somebody can host. And so they didn't say like how much bandwidth. I mean they did have that, but it wasn't what they led with. They said you can have five videos, you can do 10 videos.

And it really changed how they were able to approach the market and what value they brought. They could talk about how many videos and the benefit of that. And then they actually went towards a freemium, which is a pricing strategy that people don't understand either. But one of the things we talk about pricing is discounting. People don't realize how much they're losing and how much they're training their customers to buy on discounting. And it's a sad thing. And I think a lot of times in the information space in different places. They feel like, hey, I need to make money today, so I'm going to discount now. What you're doing is you're. And there's a couple ways to, you know, combat this is to. There's, there is a time and a place to discount and, you know, we talked briefly about rfm. You and I have chatted about it. But when you understand where the customer is based on RFM and the customer life cycle.

Let's explain what RFM is for folks who don't know what that means.

Sure. So RFM stands for recency, frequency, monetary, and it's how recent somebody purchased from you, how frequent they've purchased from you, and how much they've spent. And there's other things you can use recency and frequency for other than just purchases and clients. You can do it for clicks and website visits.

But it's a great way to basically, in essence, your score, scoring your leads. So the people who have bought the most, the most frequently and the most.

Awesome and most recent.

Yeah, exactly. Those are your best customers and they will probably continue to be your best customers versus if you have a customer list. I know this is used a lot in list rental. And if you are renting a mailing list from somebody else, if they give you the people. Yeah, we have 100,000 customers, but 80,000 of them haven't purchased anything in two years. They're, it's, you know, their score is a little lower. So I just wanted to give some people some context. Yeah.

And I, sometimes I just start going on and I.

That's all right. That's what I'm, that's what I'm here for. So. Yeah, so you said you have a simple way of determining this, and I know that that's kind of been a challenge depending on the person's CRM and how they closely track their customers.

But is this. Yeah. So we're. Now we're talking about rfm. And what I found is when you can graph and anybody can get a lot of this information into an Excel spreadsheet.

You'Re not able to take action on it because you can't really see the data. I mean, so that's where there's a couple different tools. One's called Data Hero, and it makes any Excel spreadsheet really come to life. And anybody who has drag and drop capabilities can make a graphical representation of your data. And you can. It really opens up a whole new world of understanding what's actually happening because you can see it visually and it has a different impact on us than just looking at the numbers. And I think Data hero is like $10 a month or 20. I mean it's super inexpensive. They have a free trial and. But you know, I've actually worked with them as well helping to, you know, helping them to improve their product. It's not actually what I use anymore. I couldn't get enough information and sift and sort of I use a company called tableau, but that's $2,000 and there's not. Most people don't need to use that. So Data Hero works anyway. So that's what I'd say with RFM is to really understand where people are inside your database and then make decisions accordingly. So as far as pricing, a lot of people say hey, I need to discount in order to make sales. That's not true. You're going to have people who are going to buy and if you discount somebody who they're willing to pay you $100 every month, you tell them hey, only give me 80 because I discount for you. They're gonna give you $80 and you actually lost like 20% or more. And it's actually margin wise it's gonna be even more than that.

Discounting with discounting especially often is usually the last thing you want to do. I mean, yeah, I understand it's a great way to inject cash into your business but it can be very dangerous if you're not like to your overall business brand longevity and the RFM of your customers.

Yeah, but to know that there is a time and a place to do it, there's very specific times to do it.

You have to be strategical.

Right.

Strategy. Is that even a word? I was trying to use the strategiary.

Cool. So back to that little list you shared. You've got a great little video on your blog, howtomovethenedle.com and it's about using Google custom reports. And I'm a. So I hate, I love the results of analytics and knowing the numbers, it's very important. But I hate digging down personally into the weeds and building custom reports and dashboards inside Google Analytics. But you share a cool little tool on there that Google's already created. A whole bunch of customized reports from Google Certified.

Yeah, actually the Google team themselves. So the Google team wants you to use Google Analytics as, and get as much information as possible. And they realize that it can't be, you know, something out of the box. They give you a clean version but within 2 clicks you can get 3700 plus different graphs and things that are really going to help you to understand what's actually happening in your business. And I did show that. And I created for me, it's something I've used forever. I just, you know, sometimes the curse of knowledge, like I really, I thought, oh, everybody knows this. And, and I put it out and I asked people before creating the video, I said, you know, here's, you know, here's 20 different things I could do a video on. If you could rank them, you know, which would it be? And that was actually the number one thing people said, you know, show us this. Because they were just intrigued. They didn't realize it was possible. And so I created the video. It's, you know, I think it's like three and a half minutes long. And it shows within two clicks that you can get these reports and then you can start to analyze and understand actually what's happening on your website. And Google has already created these reports for you and other people, not just Google, but other consultants and other consultancies. And you can literally check it. If you're an E commerce store, you can say, hey, show me the E commerce ones that are going to make a difference. Or if you're a content producer, they can show you what are the best ones. And it's something you can do, not just looking forward. You can look at all your past data through these kinds of filters and custom reports that they've created. When I created the video, I, I use Wistia, but one of the things I did and have done is always paid attention to how long somebody has watched a video. So I've had several hundred people watch the video, and not just for myself, but other people. I've never seen a video be watched all the way through, so it feels good. I feel like it's something that's actionable, something that people can get something within two to three minutes that is going to apply. I mean, I think Google Analytics is one of the most used tools out there. So it applies to almost everybody. And yeah, it's just, I think it's on howtomovetheneedle.com and Google custom Reports. It's on a link. I think it's in the footer. I moved it down there for now. But yeah, that's what. It's just one of those things that I've realized more and more that I have these small little implement within 30 minutes. Do this, do this, do this. Very actionable, very quick to, you know, really move the needle in somebody's business. And you Know, I realized I just need to get it out there. You know, I've been using these for clients, I've been using them for myself. But it's just something I've realized people aren't, aren't using, they don't know about. And that's what people have said. Jonathan, I never, I've used Google Analytics for five years. I never knew that was there. And it just enhances their Google Analytics, you know, many, many, many, many more times than what they were able to get out of it. And it's always going to be there. And so I know people have already implemented it and they.

Yeah, so I'm pretty, pretty proud of that.

It's really good stuff. And so let's talk about, I mean you do, you do consulting for businesses, you come in and move the needle, as we've said, and you're sharing a lot of kind of cool, completely unrelated strategies here. You know, we've went from affiliates to RFM to this, that and the other. And what's funny, when we were talking off lying about this, we share a lot of commonalities. I've had people say, Brad, I don't really know what you do or how you work with me because it's really hard for either one of us to get pigeonholed because we have so many ways that we help our clients improve their profits, move the needle, make more money, save more time, etc. But explain to me, if people like this, and more importantly, if they like the way you think, if they like your brain, what types of clients are you a looking to work with and what could they expect from working with somebody like yourself?

Sure. So I found that I do well personally working with businesses that have already been moving for a while, that it's not usually somebody who just started and says, I have an idea, excuse me, that. And it's because I think that there's a lot to be said for businesses that have already had some level of success and it's just about, you know, helping that business or that business owner to understand this is what you can do a little bit differently. We don't have to like, you know, turn the ship around. It's like, hey, let's steer it this way. And then we're going to steer it this way and we're going to do it a little bit different here. But then also I found a lot of times businesses, they, and it's a good thing to get them to where they are is to go back through and understand now that they have the product that has been received in the market, they've already have the service that it's worthwhile to go back and look at the systems or the processes or the software tools that they're using and saying, is this still serving me today? And it's just a matter of looking at a business and saying.

What is it that's holding them back? What I found is that there's usually one thing business that's stuck that is holding them back. And the challenging part is for a business owner is that it's not usually an intuitive thing. It's not going to be staring at them every day. If it was, they would have fixed it by now. They don't know what it is. And so that's where I'm able to come in. I gather the data, I gather the information and then I help them to understand what is that one thing that is holding them back in their business. And it's usually pretty obvious to me pretty quickly, but they as the business owner say, oh my goodness, I never saw that. Now that I see it, I agree. So it's a pretty neat process that ends up happening. But then you need to say, okay, how are we going to fix that and what is it that we're going to do to actually make that not be the issue anymore? Then what happens and it's, and this is actually a good thing, is something else is going to be what holds them back. It's going to be this one thing. And theory of constraints is one of the processes that I use. And real quick, what theory of constraints is, is it says that, you know, if you had a chain, the chain is only as strong as its weakest link. And once you know what that weakest link is, is just fix that one link. And so if it's a hundred pound chain and there's, you know, but there's only a, there's one link in there that's 10. And so to equate it with money, so if it's a million dollar business, but one of the links in there is, so everything else could be right, literally. But if there was one link in the chain that was $100,000 link, that's what their business is going to be or else it would break. And so the matter is like going and finding what that one link is that's holding them back, take it out, fix it and make it a million dollar link. And then now all of a sudden their business will now not only deserve it, but will naturally assume to where they should be in the marketplace.

Right? And so you basically surgically go in and find where those links are. It's so hard for a lot of business owners and entrepreneurs and even executives to see where those are, because it's so hard to kind of get that clear look in the mirror. Everybody's mirror is foggy. And it's way easier to help other people. This is why I consult. I know why you do. Because we can see things through an. A completely different perspective that others aren't. And sometimes it's right beneath their nose. We mentioned earlier, we were talking about Rich Sheffrin in the past where he had created a report on kind of this theory of constraints. And he used a great little visual or anecdotal example that. Do you remember the pizza company example that he did in this report? So he was saying, he's like, imagine the owner of a pizza company is, you know, they're doing, I don't know, making 20 pizzas an hour. But they've got a lot of demand, and they're just like, man, we need to make more pizzas. People want them more. So this is stalling our growth. So what he does is he sends his, you know, his two pizza line people to pizza school, and he gets them more skilled, so now they're able to make pizzas faster. And then he hires somebody else to help them out. And now they have people prepping. So these two people could theoretically make 40 pizzas an hour. So he's just thinking he's doubled his output now and that will meet his demand. Then he realizes, hey, we're still doing 20 pizzas an hour. And he's like, why? Well, then one of his pizza cooks says, well, our oven will only handle 20 pizzas an hour. It's like, no shit. But he, you know, so people are. You're adding stuff onto the wrong thing. So if your constraint is the pizza oven, then no matter what you do everywhere else is completely wasted because you've got something that's holding you back. I love that. I think it punctuates what you do. And the fact that you have the ability to go into businesses and find that constraint, that weakest link, and remove it or strengthen it is so valuable. And it takes a specialist to do that. So if you have a business out there and this resonates with you, you should search out and stalk Jonathan the way he stalks everybody else, in my opinion. Are you now. Are you actively. Are you. Are you looking for clients? Are you looking to work with people always? Or are you like, no, I've got too Much money.

Well, so it's not about the money part. I have kind of just run into my own dilemma. And you talk about, like, the pizza oven. I looked, you know, kind of taking a critical look at my own business, and it's about scaling. You know, I can work with two clients, three clients at most, and that not only caps my income, but it also caps what I'm able to do and to bring to the world. Yeah. And so my goal is to find a way, and this is kind of what I charged myself with, you know, over the last six months, is to find a way that I can get these kinds of strategies out there, get, you know, not where people can actually rent my mind or rent me on their business, but that they can understand the way that I think and then start to look critically at their business kind of from this vantage point or this viewpoint. And partly what I found is that, you know, how about errors in the quiver is that I realized people don't, you know, going through. And I. And I've asked and surveyed, you know, people who would be potential clients, and what I found is that they're too busy, that they already have initiatives going. And, you know, we talked about that, too. That that's. That's actually a good thing. But the challenge comes is that those initiatives and those things that they're doing aren't actually what's going to either move the needle or help them to grow their business. It's just keeping them afloat. Right. Like, they're just doing what they've always done and they're looking for, you know, this, you know, to, you know, put the patch on a tire as opposed to, you know, make sure they're, you know, the bike's actually going downhill. And so that's really what I've really charged myself with, is finding a way to help disseminate and figure out the information that I believe is the most critical and the best questions and then kind of the best answers to those questions once they are asked of a business and be able to share those with the world. Now, they're not just going to be cookie cutter. You know, do you have traffic? Like, I get it. Like, I think that there's a time and a place for general and generic advice. So what I've done is I really have focused on creating a customized version and saying, okay, if somebody comes in, If I have 50 different things that they could be doing, they actually only need to be doing three of them. And I'm going to give those three exactly to them based on this is where, you know, technology has been great, is that I'm able to leverage technology by asking very specific questions and then the answers to those questions. I then have a response and say, okay, These are the three things out of all these 50 or 100 or 200 different things they could be doing. I'm able to give them a customized report or a customized version of what it is that they actually should be doing.

Nice. That's great. Really, really valuable stuff. So if people want to get a hold of you and find out more, what's the best way to do that?

Yeah, so it's how to move the needle and hopefully it's a pretty, you know, easy to share URL. And I, you know, I believe people can remember it how to move the needle.com because I realized that that's something when I share that name with people, people automatically say, yes, I want to move the needle in my business. Jonathan, how do I move the needle? And that's really what I wanted to capture that. It's, it's not, you know, Jonathan is saying you should hold a webinar or you should, you know, do AdWords or you should do this. I really have approached it and a lot of times people say, you know, it's going to cut out who I'm actually going to be able to help because people have to realize I'm not going to give generalized advice. I just can't sleep at night giving that to people. I think it just needs to be custom tailored to them. And I found a way to do it, you know, as best I can without paying some exorbitant fee on a month to month basis. One, it doesn't work for me and two, I felt like it just didn't, didn't serve a broad enough group of people and businesses than I feel as though it should.

Okay, that makes sense. Well folks, I encourage you to check out howtomovetheneedle.com and Jonathan is going to be putting out a lot more great information. And if you or anybody you know are looking for those little ways to get yourself unstuck, sometimes that's all it takes. Or to find that thing, that constraint in your business, that weak link. And you know this Jonathan's a great resource. And you know, by the way, if they want to email you, what's a good contact email?

Sure, it's Jonathan. Howtomovethenidle.com Jonathan is J O N a T H A N I realize yeah, people for some reason misspelled Jonathan.

Joe Nathan.

Joe Nathan would work actually. No hyphen.

Exactly. So this has been great, though, man.

You and I are kind of like birds of a feather. We're very curious about all the various tactics and strategies and how to use them. And to us, people like us, it's a lot of fun. So that's why we do what we do. Folks, if you have any questions for me, send them to ask bradakenwrappedbusiness.com and if you're not a subscriber on itunes, hit that subscribe button. Share this with your friends, your colleagues. Share it on social media. Tag myself, tag Jonathan in it. Let us know that you heard it. And if you do anything that we talked about today, let Jonathan know. Man, this helped move the needle.

Really excited to have you guys listen to the show and to be a part of it. You're the reason I do what I do. If you have any questions Once more, ask bradaconwrappedbusiness.com and until next time. Jonathan, thank you for joining me today, brother. I appreciate it. No problem.