6 Oct 2026 · 10 min
Matt Dart argues small business owners waste money on marketing when they can't handle the leads. A tradie spending $6,000 monthly gets 600 leads but can only respond to half, losing $1.5 million to $7.5 million monthly. The real problem is broken systems and staffing, not marketing spend.
Chapters
Welcome to episode 139 of the Leveraged CEO Podcast. My name is Matt. I'm super pumped to talk to you guys today about a very important topic. We're gonna be talking about marketing. So I'm gonna tell you, stop spending money on marketing, in asterisks, depending on your situation. I'm gonna tell you a little story about a few people that I've been talking to and a few new clients of mine. About their current situation. So I want you to imagine this for a second. This person, let's just call him a tradie. He is spending $6K a month on marketing and it's not paid advertising or technically it's paid advertising, but it's for like websites and that type of stuff that is producing 200 leads every single month. Gobsmacked. Actually, there's 3 websites, so it's actually 600 leads per month. Now he told me yesterday or the day before that he can't get to half of them. He's getting 27 calls a day with inquiries about getting roofing done. Now guess how much each, each job is worth to him? Each job is worth $25,000. And he's telling me he can only get hold of— no, he can only answer the phone for half of them. Half of them. Let's work this out for a second. Half of this is per month. So he's basically losing 300 inquiries a month, each one potentially worth $25K. 300 times $25K. Actually, let's not even do this math. This is, this is crazy. Okay. Now, he, the bigger problem is he doesn't have enough of the team to be able to handle this much. But that on the biggest scale, that's $7.5 million a month that he's losing by not having systems and processes and the right team to be able to handle this amount of work. Realistically, like, if he's missing out on 300 quotes a month, let's say that he converts like, I don't know, 20%. So 300 times 20% is 60. So 60 times $25K, even 60 times $25K is $1.5 mil. Per month that he's losing. I just want you to have a look at this for a second. And but he's still spending $6K a month on marketing. Marketing is not the issue. Okay, so the issue for this specific person is that, well, there's a couple issues, and I just wanted to bring this to your attention because this was, this is what's happening with a lot of people. Not to this amount of scale, but I spoke to someone else literally like an hour ago and they said they've got too much work. They can't even service the people that they're working with at the moment, let alone the new people that wanna work with them. And they're saying these people pay them $150K to $200K per year in contracts. It is absolutely crazy how much people are losing money on when they don't have the right systems and processes or even like AI agents that can help them with getting back to people's inquiry within a couple of minutes. They're saying that they take people a week to get back to them. Absolutely crazy numbers. I can't remember the stat exactly, but I think Google released a stat saying if you get back with— if you get back to someone within 5 minutes of inquiry, it's like a 300% chance that they will sign up with you because you're faster. You're the fastest person. If someone's got an immediate need and they need something done, they're not going to just go around and just get like 15 freaking quotes. Some people might get a couple of other quotes, but you can get back to them nice and fast, provide a good service, send the quote through within like 24 hours, then there's a really high chance that you're going to get this person across the line. So that's 2 separate people that I've talked to in the last 24 hours that are losing hundreds of thousands of dollars per month by not having this system and this process in place. So number one is the system and the process. Number 2 is having enough people, enough team members to be able to handle this amount of workload. So for one, this specific tradie doesn't need to spend $6K a month on these websites. Realistically, he probably just have one, to be honest, and maybe costing about maybe $2K a month. So these are the leaks that are happening in your business right now that you do not need to spend money on marketing. Both of these businesses need to stop spending money on marketing until they have the right systems and processes and the right team to be able to handle the work that they've got. Because what's gonna happen is the, the actual quality of the work that they're doing is gonna drop because they're always, you know, they're always getting too many inquiries. There's too many things happening for them to focus on getting these people a very good result, very specific result on what they're inquiring for. So in reality, marketing is not the be-all and end-all if you don't have the right systems and processes in place. To be able to handle the amount of workload, then, you know, you shouldn't just be spending money on marketing just for the hell of it. Okay. One of the biggest opportunities for pretty much every business is slow quotes. Slow quotes lose clients. And it's as simple as that. You gotta think of what the opportunity cost is by not being able to hire that person, you know. I talked to this, but you could even get like a, you know, like an appointment setter or someone to just deal with the inquiries and manage the books. Even if you paid them, you know, $5K a month, $10K a month, doesn't matter. You're still gonna get an extra $50K, $100K, $200K worth of income by having this person manage the stuff for you. And then you can focus on the delivery aspect or you can focus on other parts of the business that need to, need to keep improving. It's just simple maths. Like when you think about it, it's just simple maths. The person that I just talked to that just joined, she was saying, look, it's not rocket science, it's relatively easy stuff. But for some reason I've been trying to do this for 2 years and I can't get it done. So I need someone to hold my hand and do it. So this is you, if you need someone to hold your hand and make sure you actually do this stuff, get the processes, get the systems in place, get the AI agents to help prequalified leads, get AI agents to respond to inquiries instantly so you don't miss out on these sales, on these quotes, on these bookings, on these jobs, whatever your industry. We work with any, any industry that has this problem when they don't have the systems and processes in place to be able to grow and scale their business. Once we have the systems and processes in place, then we're gonna help you with marketing. It's a very simple equation. So in the link in the description, there's that option to apply with us. Fill in details. It literally takes you 60 seconds to apply to work with us. Then we'll have a conversation to see if it's gonna be a good fit. If we cannot help you, we will not sell to you. So there's no harm in click on the, click on the link, apply. Let's have a conversation. We'll see if we can help you out. At the end of the day, even if it costs you Not that we are priced this way, but even if it costs you $50K and you got back $200K in extra revenue, that's a significant return on investment. It's not $50K, by the way. But if, even if it was, as long as it's a return on investment, then it's an absolute no-brainer for you guys. So I wanna ask you guys, what are you actually, where are your revenue leaks? Where are your profit leaks in your business? Is it, Yeah. Is it like these guys where You're not quick enough to get back to your leads, to get back to your quotes. How much is it actually costing you? Do the, do the maths. If you were to be able to service all those leads that are coming through, if you were able to close 50% of them, how much extra money would you be making? What would business look like? What would life look like if you were able to have that in place? Can you afford not to hire this person to take this off your plate and have that as their sole responsibility? At the end of the day, this is just maths. You need to reverse engineer what that looks like. Because let's, let's do this example. Let's say you're missing out on half a million dollars, half a million dollars a month. And let's say that's worth, that's the $25K example, that's 20 people. So if you had someone calling or calling back and emailing people and managing those 20 people, you would make half a million dollars. And let's just say you give them like a Base of $5K a month plus a 1% commission. 1% commission, or even like 5% commission. $25K times 5% is $125, I think. No, never mind, it's $1,250. Okay, that might be a bit much of a commission. You might even just put them on commission only, to be honest. That is an option as well. So every single person they get as a sale or a job, they get a 5% commission. Yeah, $1,250. They're gonna make an absolute killing. Or even 2%, as I said, 2% is $500. You could even do a flat fee, $250, $500 for every single sale that goes through as extra on top of their base. You know, you're gonna be paying maybe some, what, $1,000, $1,500 a week, and you're gonna be getting like an extra $50K a week. Absolute no-brainer. So make sure you, you know, actually do the math on these things of what the opportunity cost is and what you're actually missing out on. So I'll leave you with that golden nugget. Make sure you check out the links in the description, apply to work with us, and let's have a conversation to see if we can get you back on track, get your time back, and then grow your revenue from there.
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