0371 | Dr. James Richardson

Hi, I'm James Richardson from premiumgrowthsolutions.com and you're listening to EA interviews, EA interviews.

Episode 371, inspiration, transformation, success stories and the imperfect action round. Seven days a week. Join Mario Ficcini for today's Expert Authority Effect interview. How would you like to grow your company past 100mil in revenue? I think that's a pretty good goal. There are so many different things at so many different levels that you have to learn. And I remember hearing what got you there won't get you to the next phase. And that's why I'm excited to have Dr. James Richardson on the show today. Author of Ramping youg Brand, he has worked with companies such as Coca Cola, Hershey's, Frito Lay and many others. We're gonna bring them up right after we thank the sponsor. Every business needs a book, including yours. And that's why I'm launching my new book to help you, regardless of where you think your current writing abilities are. Visit eapublishingmethodbook.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction, lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. Once again, that's eapublishingmethodbook.com Here he is, ladies and gentlemen, Dr. James Richardson. James, how are you feeling today?

I'm good, Mario. I'm good.

Glad to hear that. So with all the different growth strategies out there online offline, what has been your biggest takeaway working with such large companies over the years? I'm not sure if I mentioned Frito Lay early on, but Hershey's, Coca Cola, all these, what are the similarities you see? And what's been your biggest takeaway from working with them?

Well, I think the big public firms have struggled honestly for a lot of, for a lot of growth in the last.

10 to 15 years. And so what they've been doing is they've been buying fast growing companies.

Okay.

And that's, that's my client base today are the fast growing emerging food beverage brands that the big companies are using. They're actually buying their growth essentially through M and A and keeping the rest of the business stable. It's been very tough for them to generate a lot of growth organically even with.

Why do you think that is?

Well, I mean, how many Ritz crackers are you going to eat? I mean, it's like, it's. The reality is some, with some of the iconic brands, you know, advertising works really well to remind people to go have this thing they've always loved. Since they were seven years old. But it doesn't actually persuade anybody to have it more.

So if you're running a public company, you need your stock price. Well, you need your EPS to be growing, you need your earnings per share. So one way you do that is bring a fast growing, profitable company into the building.

Could you give us some examples? You know, I. For anyone listening that doesn't know, I want, I'd like you to share. I saw some of them, but the companies you're referring to, like Dr. Squatch, for example, I saw that on the list. How are the companies leveraging this? Because I think this is vital for any business because there's people who go, I'm going to do this big ad campaign, I'm going to do this. I'm going to do social media. But at the same token, I know other companies who just acquire other companies. Why do you think this is such an effective strategy?

Well, the guys who grow through acquisition are finance driven. And if you look at the big food and beverage companies, if you really work inside them like I have, they're driven by financial alchemy more than anything else. And that's just a different thing. And it works. It can work. You have to have massive amounts of capital to get the debt to do that. But if you're talking about Dr. Squatch Soap, an emerging brand that explodes on the Internet through essentially their own three minute sizzle reel, their three minute backstory.

That is a use of storytelling to get people to reframe what was a commodity bar soap. It retails about 50 cents a bar at your supermarket in little packs of six.

And they're selling them for 699 on the Internet.

It's kind of reminding me of what Starbucks did with coffee years ago.

Oh, yeah. No, it's, it's actually even crazy. It's an even crazier premium. And they did it by finding an audience that was underserved. And that's men. Men in the shower.

It reminded me of the. Also the Old Spice guy. Driving around, not driving around. Well, whatever. Driving around on the horse.

Yeah.

When he was switching all the screens and everything, he's like, do you do this? Do you do this? Like, I mean, it was very entertaining and everything. It. Neither of them persuaded me to go, wow, I just got to start using that. But at the same time I was like, this is probably some of the best marketing and just knowing who you're speaking to, knowing your audience that I've seen in a while.

Yeah. And it, it, you know, it was part Advertising guess based on some consumer research that the company had. But it also was just very passionately executed. I mean the challenge with advertising as a growth medium in today's marketplace is that it.

The stuff that works generally works for established brands. And most of the folks like that I work with, they generally don't have a cash efficient way to do it for themselves at the scale necessary to create a big business. Dr. Squatch Soap was leveraging the power of online social media, viral social media sharing. And you're one, you're literally milliseconds away from buying it right on your phone, you know, so you know, online advertising, the DTC sales is a flywheel that if you have the right creative and a good offering that that can create these kinds of growth companies. But it's actually pretty rare because the creative is pretty rare. I mean I don't see a lot of really compelling, interesting, entertaining stuff.

But there is that possibility. And while I do want to say yes, it is rare and the likelihood could be slim depending on how good you are. This, that, the other thing, the reality is they're basically doing what everyone else is doing. Said let's do all this online and or at least have some part of an online strategy because I don't know any business nowadays that's not doing something online. How good they're doing, it's another question. But everyone has access to the Internet. We discussed that a little before the show upload speeds.

So I think Dr. Squatch has done. In a few years we'll probably have a public case study for them. I can't talk about it in detail, but.

They'Ve done really well in a rapid period of time.

Reframing a commodity into something magical with a specific audience that for whatever reason we'll never quite know. They needed that story. And.

It'S a fascinating version. I think the challenge is that it tempts people to look for.

I've actually had people message me on LinkedIn, Mario saying I see you work with Dr. Squatch. I'd like to work with you. I usually run from those leads.

Why is that?

Well, it's because most of the time.

These are people who they. Well first of all they're impatient. You know, they want to get to scale really, really fast. And Dr. Squatch didn't do that. They spent five, they spent four or five years doing what my book describes which was getting out there hustling.

For.

That overnight success, learning about their consumer failing at a whole bunch of experiments fail and get a whole bunch of online marketing Experience, and then finally they get it right, you know, but you had to persist. You got to stay for the five years to get the whim. And most entrepreneurs.

That start, you know, two, three years and they're out of there. If you go, I mean, I think.

That'S a great expert authority effect insight. Because you're basically saying, while this is a good, you know, what will be a good case study. And I know you can't talk about certain things, but it's. I think out of the brands I saw, I thought it was the most common one that I think people would relate to. That's why I mentioned it. But anyone can take the time. Anyone can have access to the Internet and correct me if I'm wrong, but what I'm hearing in here is what these companies really did, whether it's Coke, Hershey's, Dr. Squatch, or the emerging brands here.

They figured out what was working for them and kept doing it. And they figured out what wasn't working for them and did something to change it. Fair.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think the difference is that an entrepreneur, you know, my client base, they have to. That speed of iteration has got to be fast. It has to happen in months or weeks if you want to have the growth. If you want to. If you want to have growth. But if you want to actually get to scale on what I call a reasonable timeline in my book. In fact, that's the whole introduction to the book, because after I shoot down unicorns, which basically never happen in the world of consumer products, they do happen on a regular basis in the world of IT and technology and software, but not in consumer products. Extremely rare, but everyone wants. Would you like to get to 100 million in two years? Sure. But it never happens. We know that doesn't happen. There's no magic way to make it happen. And so when I went through case studies.

That are featured in the book, we find. And I found that it was actually something called exponential growth that got most brands like kind of Bar and Vita Coco and Skinny Pop to scale. And it took anywhere from four to seven to 10 years.

Generally seven to 10, you know, and it's. When you're. When you're doubling off a small base, Mario, it can seem like you're not making any traction and you're not making impact in the world. Right. Because you're at a million, then next year you're at 2 million. Than the following year at 4 million. The world still doesn't care about you. Like, there's no reaction. You're not being invited onto CNN.

And you don't seem like you're growing quickly to 100 million. But if you keep doubling the way the math works, you'll be there really quickly in the last couple years. But the only way that this happens is if you create a fan base that's doing most of your marketing for you. And it's actually true in my consulting business too. This is a B2B thing as well.

So it's not only for CPG.

No raving fans. Raving fans. In my case, they sell my book for me because I have no budget to go advertise my book.

So my most of my book sales are word of mouth.

So you're not doing any paid ads for the book.

Oh, I tried. I obviously I tried because you want to just like a good entrepreneur, you want to try things without ruling them out sort of prejudicially. Right. You want to give it a shot and then you kill it. Right? Kill that experiment. And I did. Amazon ad. Oh, my Lord. I spent like fifteen hundred dollars on Amazon ads to move my book. You know what moved my book? Word of mouth from gonzo readers who send me photos of it and buy it for their team and thank me personally. And then this other thing called get 100 reviews. And now Amazon's advertising my book. Every time you type in, type in marketing or strategy.

My book is showing up at the bottom. I don't have to pay for this. And it's the same in consumer products if you create a. You know, and Dr. Squatch had an online version of this. Most people don't realize because they're not performance marketing geeks. But the magic they created. Their story was virally spread like 10x to 1. One guy would see it, send it to 10 people.

So they pay for the ad once one click through. But they'd get 10 views from other totally unrelated people. So this is.

So it goes back to the content. When we're helping entrepreneurs publish their business books, I tell them the same thing. Because there's people who take this approach of I want the best looking cover in the world. And they'll invest a lot on the COVID and they go on the content. Or they go awesome on the content and they go on the COVID And it's like you need it all to go through because if no one picks it up, they're not gonna see. You know, I've used it for years, the steak example. Like, you can have the best steak in the world, but if no one's knocking on your door, to get it and then once they're in the restaurant choosing it on the menu because it's not like you have one item. Do you want steak and water or steak and a drink? You know what I mean? It's like you have to chew every step of the way. You need to be selling it and getting people involved.

Yeah, so I, I totally agree. I think, you know my, my strategy for my cover, Mario, was I told my book designer, I want the biggest font you can fit on the page because I need, I need a 65 year old person who's not got the glasses on right. To be able to read it on their screen.

That's exactly right.

On their mobile phone.

Podcast, artwork, books on Amazon. I mean, you have to remember people are looking on a phone. Even you know, I have one of the best phones on the market and it's still the covers are that big on it.

Yeah, so I totally agree. I mean the thing that I, I would tell listeners who are writing a book for their businesses while we're on that topic is.

Do your research on your audience. Even if you've been in business for several years or a long time, you know, that may be actually quicker for you to do because you got all these clients you can call up. In my case, I just did really cheap work to, you know, I just basically did highly discounted work to get a whole bunch of people under my belt and learn about what was the angle. Because I had, I was sitting on a, I was sitting on data science that my former company allowed me to sort of take with me to help launch my business. But I didn't know how to write it, I didn't know how to take it, package it up and with the right tone and the right emotional energy that a good, even a good business book has. And what I found is that.

I also needed to pick a tone that was authentic, that it sort of represented what it would like to be. What would it be like to work with me?

Now that may sound easy for most people, but I have Asperger's, so like I have very strange interactions when you're with me for more than 20 minutes. So. So you figured it out though. I, I'm super honest and I'm brutally direct and you know, 20 minutes of that anybody can handle, but, but eight hours of it in a session. So I don't know. So there's a lot of consultants out there who mix a bit of BS and back rubbing in because they figure they'll get better word of mouth if they're not too honest. And I just don't. I just can't sleep at night.

You don't have time for that.

Well, I don't, but my brain will. Won't let me. Like, if I try to lie, it'll just come out anyway, so. So I warn folks that, you know, this is going to be very, very honest. I'm going to tell you every work that I see, and I'll tell you which ones that you should prioritize removing and the ones you can leave, you know, because I'm a. I'm a growth optimizer. That's what I do. And that requires a fanatical attention to detail in the business.

I have it.

And I have to train my clients often to develop that as well. Even people who have a lot of experience can lose touch with the details, which is why some of them, like, you know, my friend John Fork at Once Upon a Farm, likes to bring people like me in because he's been in the business for 20 years, so he's not like a noob. But he knows that you get too close. You know, you get too close. You're listening to your team all the time on Zoom. You need that third party perspective to come in. And I think he likes me because I don't BS anybody. So I'm just gonna. Even if he doesn't agree.

When I. When I've helped companies with their marketing and they hire me for consulting in that department, it's always interesting because it's like you can come in and do and say whatever you want. One, you have the authority and the positioning, like they're not gonna question you. And two, you're not worried about losing your job the next day if you say something to the wrong person. So it's like, you know, I'm not. I always try to make everything nice and uplifting, even if it's not fun. That's just me. But at the same point, it's. It's like, well, this is cut and dry. I mean, I don't need 12 seconds to look and go, here's your problem.

Right? And I, I mean, I. The only luck I have is I have a sense. I have a sardonic sense of humor that most people tend to appreciate. So that softens the blow.

I gotta be honest, that's a big word. What, what is sardonic?

Oh, it just, you know, dry and sarcastic.

Oh, okay.

Now, not, not everybody likes that, but I think that. But it can work, I think with folks who are very competitive, and those are the people I tend to work with, they're hyper competitive, fast growing companies and they, they want to crush their competition. Right.

So it's just a game to them. They, they're just looking at the numbers, financials and no, it's not just a.

Game, but it is competitive capitalist thing. Right.

Okay.

I think the world that I'm in is mostly full of what you would call mission driven founders. And I don't know that you always see that in tech. There's some. But, but in the world that I'm in, consumer products, the people that are building brands like Once upon a Farm, these are people who are trying to change childhood nutrition. Right. I mean that's the impetus to create it now. The impetus to scale it is capitalism 501. You know that it's the same motives any entrepreneurs have.

So the question is, how do you do that? And you know what, what I specialize in is exponential growth. I've studied how it works. I've studied how dozens and dozens of companies have pulled that off in different categories. And then through the pattern analysis, which you can read in my book, ramping your brand, you can create your own mental model essentially for your own business diy. And that's why I wrote the book. I wanted to, I wanted newer ambitious folks to have access to the data, a data driven perspective on how to grow a business. Because honestly, if you go, if you read, you know, most of the stuff that's available to them in terms of advice in my industry are sales consultants.

I've had people come to me and their distributor, their trucking company, their rent a truck company that brings the things to the store is handing them a strategy. Wow. Why? Because they're not creating. Yeah.

And they're, they're seeing the flaws too. That's when it gets real interesting. When you don't even need an outside consultant. It's like everyone sees it.

Yeah. Now some mistakes are self correcting fairly rapidly, others are, are not. And I think, you know, I work with people who are often they've been working 12, 14 hour days operationally scaling the business to maybe a couple million and now it's actually getting more terrifying because there's more and more money at stake. And that's usually when I add the most value. And those are the folks I like to work with because they've proven to me, they've proven to me that they bootstrap the thing.

Beyond to a threshold that 90% of consumer product founders never reach. Most of them flame out in the first half million million bucks in Sale.

And I mean flame out. Like, they go cash flow negative.

Wow. Definitely don't want that to happen.

It's a brutal industry because it's hard to make money without volume, you know, so you have to be able to.

Yeah. I've told people for years, you know, they're like, oh, we're gonna run a sale and lower the price 40%. I'm like, and I remember reading the stat even on $10 for a CPG. Like, I think it's if you lower it even 20%, you have to do 80% more in volume to make up for the difference in this and that. And it's like the only person who wins in the Walmart model is Walmart. Unless you're moving a billion dollars worth of it. Yeah, you can operate on a half a percent margin, but if you're not, I mean like for the, you know, smaller companies that are under 5 or 10 mil a year, which is majority of them. Yeah, they're like, yeah, we're just going to discount this 40%. I'm like, bro, your margin is 32. You're going to be going backwards.

Yeah, no, and I, so I try to work with people who've discovered what you just said. They've gone through that because I like good gross margin already. Existing trailer growth rate, that's healthy, at least 50%. Hopefully that's 75% year over year, which is the bottom of exponential growth. And then they've got a really killer product that has this potential to keep scaling because I think consultants, ad agencies, marketers, all these third parties you can bring into your business when you get to that kind of point.

We don't create success for anybody. I've never gone out. It doesn't say that on my website. My tagline is think smarter growth. I don't actually tell you I'm going to give you exponential growth. Here's my fee.

The reality is I'm going to train you how to put your own playbook together and I'll work with you on it to get there. But we need to use your business's data to do that and you're going to execute it. Right. And third parties are great at looking, seeing blind spots, giving you deep expertise.

In my case, it's case study driven. That basically optimizes what you're already doing. Well.

So I, you know, there's a whole world in consumer products of like turnaround consulting. And I don't do it. Like, I don't, I don't take a.

Startup, I don't take A field startup, a. You have the skill set to be able to do that. But I take a similar approach with you for my business, with publishing, for businesses. Because my rule is I know how powerful the book can be and I never give it to anyone who doesn't already deserve it or already has that level of. There's people who just don't know how to do it and then there's people going, I want. I think that's what you're getting at. The Dr. Squatch people who on LinkedIn where it's like they have no real clue what's going on or anything. They want you to be the magic bullet to give them the overnight success in six months to go from a million to 100 million.

Yeah, I, I mean, you know, I would just call them lazy.

I mean, let's call it what it is. These are, this is laziness and impatience.

I like people with heart that are also mission driven because it's like, okay, now you need help. Yeah, let's, you know, let's do more with this. You just need a little guidance versus you're just doing this for the sake of putting another gold star in your chart or whatever you want to call it. So I appreciate everything you've been sharing. I got one more before we go to the imperfect action round and.

You.

Have to pick yellow or black first though.

Black.

Okay.

So it has to do with the data. I'm going to sneak one more in for anyone listening. If someone you've given such great info, but what about the person? What would you tell someone that says, I don't really like data, I don't really follow it. It's not really my style. What would you tell them so they can reframe what they're thinking to take advantage of what the big businesses are doing?

I would tell them that you need to step back and examine whether or not you just have a discomfort, that is a lack of familiarity with data that you could get over 1, 2. I would say if you really need to hang out in the creative side of your business for whatever reason, and I'll throw in sales there as well as marketing, then hire somebody.

I mean I hire somebody who have a co, founder or business partner who's got the data mindset is looking at mathematical KPIs because there's no. You can do all sorts of hypothesis driven, creative sort of marketing experiments and I work with clients on those. But ultimately it doesn't take that long to figure out if money is happening. Right. And you have to. And in my business, there's specific ways of measuring growth, especially if you're in retail and you want to get at least an intermediate knowledge of that. Or you run the risk of two things. One is you just fly blind and just overinvest in bad tactics that aren't working. The other one is you just run from the data and you hide in a creative bubble. And I do encounter folks like that in consumer products because they tend not to be business people, Mario, Historically, not like most of them are not MBAs.

You know, but they had an idea and ran with it.

Pretty much. Yeah.

Admirable.

Yeah. So they, the challenge is that you got. If you don't want to take on that mindset, bring in a partner who will.

Okay, well, appreciate the honesty. Great answer. We're going to thank our sponsor and come back for the Imperfect Action round. You've heard me say every business needs a book, including yours, and it's true. And that's why I'm launching my new book@eapublishingmethodbook.com so you can learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. But you know what, don't take my word for it. Take it from a few of my authors like Lori, I went from having.

An idea and a possibility to actually getting my book published. Or Catherine, thank you for making my mom number one best selling author.

Or Mary Alice, what he got done.

For me in three days regarding my book launch.

Unmanageable.

John Cody. I've worked with Mario over the phone and online and he's been very helpful.

In getting me where I needed to go with promoting my books. Rocio, there's no way in the world I would have been able to do this with somebody else again. I've attempted it in the past. It didn't serve me. As a matter of fact, I ended up more frustrated than anything. So this has been a very seamless process. If you're looking for an amazing business coach, I highly recommend Mario Ficcini or Bill Benner. I can't make a higher recommendation than to work with Mario Ficini. He has been great for me and right now I won't work with anybody else except for Mario.

Hey, their words, not mine. Visit eapublishingmethodbook.com to get your copy and I look forward to hearing your transformation as our next video success story. Once again, that's eapublishingmethodbook.com and we are back with the Imperfect action round. James, are you Ready to take imperfect action?

Why not?

All right, I got three questions for you. Rapid fire answers, 60 second or less. The first one is, what is the past? What is the past is fast. Fast. What is the fastest path to the cash?

The fastest path is to optimize your offering for what I call heavy repeat consumers. They're more likely to talk about you and they're extremely profitable and you don't need many.

I like that.

Great answer. Number two, what is the biggest problem you see your prospects making and the fastest way for them to fix it?

I think they are trying to hit. They're trying to chase scale in the business, usually to solve a financial problem before they've really hung out with their fans to optimize their offering. And everybody keeps seeing a brand that scales and in three or four years to think that that's likely and it's not. Most people actually have to learn about their product from consumers and then everything sort of lines up. Very good.

Number three, what is the best way to maximize customer lifetime value?

You need to build in a process every year or so, studying your fans and looking at those repeat customers, the people who are talking you up and study the, what I call the outcomes that they're purchasing from you. Because people don't buy products and services, they buy outcomes. Ooh, that's good. And.

I'm not the only one to talk about that. But it's really important that we keep pounding on that because if you're buying outcomes, then here's what happens is as you scale, the outcomes that are driving the business actually may shift. So in the beginning, you might have triathlete geeks buying your nutrition bar for super geeky reasons. But if you want to turn this thing into kind bar, it's going to have to change the frame and it's going to have to speak to a different audience. They're probably looking for something else and the data is sitting there in your consumer base. But you got to ask. Okay.

Great insight. I love helping people publish their books and because I know what it will do for others businesses and companies and lives. What are some books that have helped you in business and life that you'd recommend to Expert Authority World?

Oh, some books I really, really enjoyed the Five Dysfunctions of a Team. Who's that by? I should know since I brought it up, but I haven't read it. I haven't read it about seven years. It's what I call an inverse leadership book.

In other words, it's not a typical book you would get like from Simon Sinek, which is about leadership. This is about disaster, what it looks like.

Interesting. No one has ever recommended that before.

What it smells like. And of course I'm a social scientist so I'm a little.

I don't know if you know much about us, but some of us are pretty cranky and the crankiness is because we actually can see the positive and negative of social life in equal portion. And most people only see the positive and then if they smell the negative, they sort of run from it.

But I'm staring at it.

Recommendation. I'll make sure that's on the Show. Notes on eainterviews.com but that's I've never had have not heard of that one. Thank you for that. Where would you like people to learn more?

Well, there, you know, I think listeners that are interested in what I'm talking about I think would benefit from going to rampingyourbrand.com my book website actually have a URL for listeners. It's rampingyourbrand.com expertauthority and you can download a free chapter there. And I have a little book sale going on for all of you.

Excellent on Amazon. Thank you.

Appreciate you making that available.

No problem.

Well, I haven't enjoyed this. It's been a pleasure. Thank you for your time.

Thanks so much Mario.

All right, Expert Authority World, we have another great episode here today. I'll see you tomorrow. Have a great day and God bless.

You're already the expert, but have you transformed your expertise into a tangible asset that will generate qualified leads while increasing profit for you 247 and if so, how well are you promoting it? With my new book, the Expert Authority Effect Publishing Method, I take you through my process step by step. Visit eapublishingmethodbook.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. Visit eapublishingmethodbook.com to get started. Now once again, that's eapublishingmethodbook.Com thanks for listening to today's episode. I would love to know what you enjoyed most from it if you haven't done so already. I invite you to connect with me on my new LinkedIn. You can go to it directly at eainterviews.com LinkedIn Once again, that's eainterviews.com link LinkedIn. Lastly, check out the full eainterviews.com site for complete show notes, the full interview video experience, links to the resources we mentioned, and more have a blessed day, and I'll see you on the next one.