In this Business Blast podcast episode, host Tyler Wagner interviews marketing leader Corey Quinn. Corey shares a pivotal career decision story where he chose a riskier role at Scorpion over a seemingly safer e‑commerce offer, emphasizing that following his heart consistently leads to success. He highlights clarity as essential in both leadership and marketing, explaining that vague vision or confusing messaging undermines team performance and market impact. Corey stresses client retention as the most critical health metric for agencies, noting Scorpion’s multi‑year retention rates enable higher upfront acquisition spend. He reflects on personal regrets, such as not publishing an early SEO book, and advises his younger self to trust and speak his voice. For happiness, he outlines a daily growth framework across four domains: body, spirituality, relationships, and business. He recommends Robert Cialdini’s Influence (scarcity and social proof) and shares a favorite Jim Rohn quote about doing what others won’t. Finally, he directs listeners to his website and social channels.
Chapters
All right everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Business Blast podcast. I'm your host Tyler Wagner. Today I have Corey Quinn with us. He is a father, husband, marketing coach, and business leader who inspires others to be their best and do their best work. So, welcome to the show.
Hey, Tyler, very excited to be here.
Yes, very excited to have you on. And Corey, the first one we ask on this show is what is the best story from your life that has an underlying valuable message?
About 4 years ago, I was working at an agency and I was looking for the next sort of opportunity and I was in the fortunate position to have two opportunities in front of me, two offers from two different businesses. And the offers themselves were quite similar, actually. They were similar businesses, similar titles, both sort of a progression in my career, both chief marketing officer roles, similar pay. They both had— sorry, I'm out of breath.
No, no, you're good.
Did 10 burpees before I started this. Nice.
I was wondering. I was like, that's awesome.
I was like, this is an intense story.
I was like, this is a really intense story.
Yeah, sorry. Yeah, it will not be that intense. So, okay. But they both had— so both opportunities, they were very, very similar in a lot of ways, but they also had a lot of risk. Both of them. One of them was an apparel e-commerce platform that was kind of trying to disrupt the apparel e-commerce business, and they were getting some traction there. Then the other opportunity was a web development or web design company that was getting into local marketing. And the, uh, in my mind, you know, uh, the risk with the web design company was that, you know, this is 4 years ago, it seemed to me at the time that websites had kind of been there, done that. There's not much sort of alpha or growth in that area, especially with websites or companies like Wix. And I think GoDaddy has a website builder. So there's some concern or some risk in joining a company that did that as their primary business. So I remember I was in Santa Monica with my wife and we were eating dinner at an amazing Mexican food restaurant. We were having a delicious meal, had a couple margaritas, and we were discussing these two options. And it was through that discussion I began to realize that one of the two options was more logical. It made more sense. It was sort of the safer route between the two. And it was also at that time when I realized that the other one was the right one for me. And I knew that because I listened to my heart. So I communicated this to my wife. I shared with her the fact that I was really drawn towards the second opportunity. And the conversation sort of devolved into an argument because she didn't understand why I would do something that would be more risky, that may not work out. Of course, I did that, took that second option, which was to join a company called Scorpion, which is where I'm currently at. And I'm very, very happy that I did because the business itself went from about $20 million to about $120 million in annual revenue, annual recurring revenue, tremendous growth. And during that time, I've been learning a tremendous amount about leadership, about marketing, storytelling, branding. And it's been a real gift to my family as well. So the sort of the message or the lesson is that in life, you know, we will come across these forks in the road where we have an option to make a decision. And sometimes we don't have perfect information. And although sometimes the logical sort of the head-driven option may be interesting, every time I've followed my heart, It's always worked for me. This case, every other case I can think of. And the lesson really is to, number one, listen to your heart and then follow your heart.
Absolutely, dude. Dude, that is a profound story, man.
That's awesome.
And another lesson there, sometimes those margaritas can get you into an argument.
I think almost every time. Yeah. Something about tequila, man.
Oh, that's awesome. So the next one I got for you is, what is the most valuable piece of information we should know that's within your expertise or industry?
So the piece of information is that clarity is key. And the domains that I operate in is in leadership and in marketing. And within leadership, within my team, if I'm not clear about my vision, about the goals for what I want to hit for this quarter or this year, communicating that to my team, if I can't do that clearly, then that doesn't set them up for success. As well as if within my team, if they're not communicating with each other clearly, then that lowers the probability that we're going to hit our goals. And within marketing, you know, our job, my job is to communicate our message into the marketplace to our target personas. However, our target personas, people just like you and me, are being marketed to every single day. We are exposed to 10,000 messages every single day, marketing messages. And these are businesses just like mine trying to get the attention of that consumer. And so one way I can guarantee that my message will not be received, it will fall flat, is if it is confusing, if it's convoluted, if it's long. And so really, clarity and clarifying your message as a marketer and being very intentional about simplifying, you're communicating very simply and clearly, will increase your probability of actually getting a result that you're trying to drive with your marketing.
Mm-hmm. And then a good tie-in, but what is your best piece of overall business advice? So not necessarily industry-specific.
What I've learned in my years is that client retention is probably the most critical health metric for a business. And, you know, the reason why I really believe passionately about this is because, you know, I operate in the agency world and particularly in the SMB, small-medium-sized businesses, the industry norm is that there is a tremendous amount of client attrition and their client retention rate is extremely low. Many businesses in this industry, many agencies have a 6-month client retention rate, which means that they have to replace their entire client list every 6 months. And that's something that is extremely expensive and it's very hard to scale a business that way. And when you, on the other hand, if you have high retention rates, if you're able to keep your clients for a long period of time, it extends extends the lifetime value of that client. At Scorpion, our client, our client retention is 2, 2.5, 3 years for SMB. For enterprise, it's much longer than that. And what that's allowed us to do is to be able to have these very nice lifetime value for our clients that allow people like myself and the marketing team to be able to invest more upfront to acquire that customer. Because we know we're going to make that money back on the back end. So that gives us a tremendous advantage in the marketplace. So that's, that's the biggest, I would say, the biggest piece of advice.
And then if you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would that be?
What I would give myself, the piece of advice I would give myself is to trust and speak my voice. I've had many, many experiences in my life where I did not I did not show up or I hid at the critical moment where I did not communicate authentically. So one example is I wrote a book about 10, 15 years ago, about 15 years ago, I wrote a book on SEOs back before people were doing PDFs and books. And I remember going to Santa Cruz for 3 weeks, locked myself in a room and wrote this book all about SEO and how it works. And my plan was to publish it and push it out and it never published. I never pushed. Sort of the publish button. And, you know, that, that's just one example of many times I've done that in my life. And my life might be different if I had published that book, and maybe bigger, maybe better, maybe not. But those are, those are the, the big sort of regrets I have.
And then kind of going a little bit down a different path, in your opinion, what is the key to happiness?
My key to happiness is daily growth. In expansion. And what I mean by that is that just like a muscle, if you're not using a muscle and putting weight on that muscle every day, it begins to atrophy. If you've ever had a cast on your arm or on your leg for any extended period of time where you're not putting any weight on it, when you take the cast off, you'll notice that the muscle has shrunk, it's disappeared. And the reason why is because the body literally consumes the muscle fibers and gets rid of it however it does. But the point is, is that if you're not using it, then you're losing it. And so the way that I sort of apply that belief in my life is that I have 4 domains that I focus on every single day, which is my body, my being or spirituality, my balance, my relationship with my wife and my son, and then my business. And if I'm not actively growing in all 4 of those domains, then I'm sort of eating my own muscle, if you will.
I agree. And then next one for you is, what is the best book that you've read and what was the number one thing you learned from that?
The number one book that I've given away the most to friends and colleagues and teammates is a book by Robert Cialdini called The Psychology of Influence. And the number one thing I've learned from that book, I've read it multiple times, is that in order to drive demand, You need to make your product, your offer scarce, and you need to be able to provide and show social proof.
And then what is your favorite quote and why?
My favorite quote is from Jim Rohn. He said that successful people do what unsuccessful people are not willing to do. Don't wish it were easier, wish you were better. The reason why I like that is just because it really exemplifies sort of my belief system in and grit and taking ownership and accountability in everything you do.
Mm-hmm, I love it, man. Dude, thank you so much for coming on. The last one I got for you is where can our audience best find you online?
Sure, please go check out my website, coreyquin.com, C-O-R-E-Y-Q-U-I-N-N.com. You can check out my blog posts, you can connect with me on social, and I look forward to connecting with you guys.
Perfect, thanks again for coming on, man.
Thanks, Tyler. Appreciate it.
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