Tim Dodd breaks down his PMA framework for marketing: Persuasion (how to convince customers), Math (acquisition costs and profit), and Avenue (where your audience is). He argues founders should pivot based on customer data, not emotional attachment to their original idea, and that the best time to start anything is now, not twenty years ago.
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All right, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Business Blast Podcast. I'm your host, Tyler Wagner. Today I have Tim Dodd with us. He helps small and medium businesses get customers and grow their companies. So welcome to the show, Tim.
Hey, Tyler. Thank you so much for having me, man. Excited to be here.
Of course. Thanks for joining us. We'll dive in. The first question I have for you, Tim, is what's the best story from your life that has an underlying valuable message?
The best story from my life with an underlying valuable message. Let's see. So definitely I remember being 19 years old. I'm 35 now. And being 19 years old and wanting to pick up the guitar, but looking around and seeing like, man, everybody that's awesome at music started at like 6 or 7. It's way too late for me to get started. I started, and it was so funny to look back 16 years later and thinking as a 19-year-old, I thought I was too late to the game. I would say the biggest thing is the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, and the second best time is right now. No matter where you're at, just to start right where you're at and start moving forward and never count yourself out.
And what's the most valuable piece of information we should know that's within your expertise or industry?
So, okay, I'm in marketing. I've been in marketing for 8 years. I've built 3 companies. They've all been profitable. The first 2 are owned by— I sold them and are owned by other people. And I would say the number one thing for your business, except for having a great product, is good marketing. And there are so many marketing trends and fads that they come and go, just like dieting, where like the paleo diet and all— All these different diets, but then there's core things that if you know, you can be successful with marketing. I've broken down marketing into an acronym called PMA, and that just means persuasion. You have to understand how to persuade your customers to buy your product. You have to understand sales and copywriting on some level. The second part is you have to know your math, so that's the M out of the PMA. And that's understanding like how much is it going to cost you to get a customer, how much profit are you going to make for that customer. And then once you understand your persuasion and your math, the third part is avenue. Then you go, okay, are my people on Facebook? Are they on LinkedIn outreach? Are they going to be on Instagram? So like really, instead of getting confused about your marketing, just understanding the PMA, you know, and ultimately where your customers are hanging out, like you can be really, really successful with your marketing. It's so important to simplify your marketing and just first go like, where are my customers hanging out and how do I bring them to my product?
What's your best piece of overall business advice and not necessarily industry-specific?
Yeah, okay, cool, man. I would say for sure, 100%, I've known so many startup businesses and actually just went through the Founder Institute. With my company, which is incredible. And I see so many businesses and startups, they get so emotionally attached to their idea and they start building a solution that they like when they really need to build a solution based off of customer data, based off of what the needs of their customers are. And don't get emotionally attached to your business or your idea. Because your idea might be crap and it needs— honestly, and it might need a pivot, or it might be good, but it's not, it's not on target and needs to move. So if you're emotionally attached to that, you're going to have trouble moving it. If you're primarily focused on giving your customers what they want, you'll be okay with changing your idea or your business model to serve your customers better, for sure.
And if you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would that be?
Same thing, man, the 19-year-old, like start now. I mean, never ever count yourself out. And like, no matter how successful you see somebody is, like they're just a human. So some of my mentors have started multi-billion dollar companies and had exits and are now venture capitalists. And you meet with them, like one of the guys that I've worked with, he was Randy Wood. He's the co-founder of Citrix. I've had several mentor sessions with him, and sitting down with him, he struggled building Citrix in the beginning. They had so many issues and so many things that they had to overcome. Just to realize, when you see these billionaire giants, that they're not some godlike creatures. They went through the same process. They went through the failures. They went through the challenges. And just to start where you're at and to not give up, for sure.
And in your opinion, what's the key to happiness?
Oh, that's so simple, man. Two things is thankfulness and progression. As long as you're thankful for what you have and you have a plan in place to be progressing, like, that's all you need, man.
And what's the best book that you've read and what was the number one thing you learned from that?
Yeah, 100%. Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill. I mean, you probably— everybody's probably heard of that or read that. I mean, I've read it many times. It's, I mean, one of the biggest things is like right now there's a lot of motivational hype around like thoughts become reality. And that's true. But like one thing I love about Think and Grow Rich is that it's about like thoughts producing actions that are producing your reality. So Very, very powerful. Like, if you're focused on, oh shit, like, our business is like, we just lost some customers, and you put your whole focus there, like, you're just going to— that's just going to keep happening because the way the mind's wired. So 100%, just focusing your energy, no matter how hard things get, on where you're going and what you're wanting to accomplish. Yeah.
And for everybody listening, I've also read that book. Absolutely incredible book. The next question I have for you, Tim, is what's your favorite quote and why?
I have two favorite quotes, but I already told you the first one. That was, "The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. Second best time is now." Since I already said that, I'll tell you my second favorite one, which is, "The difference between a warrior and an ordinary man is that an ordinary man sees everything as a blessing or a curse." Well, a warrior sees everything as a challenge, and I think that's— as an entrepreneur, we have to see everything that comes at us as a problem that we can solve, for sure.
Yes. Thank you so much for coming on, Tim. The last question I have for you before we let you go is, where's the best place for people to find you online?
Yeah, so the best place that they can reach out and talk to me is LinkedIn. If they just look up Tim Dodd, Tev Training, they'll find me, or they can check out my website as well. But if they want to connect with me and start a conversation, Check me out on LinkedIn and just search Tim Dodd, uh, tech training.
Perfect, man. Thanks again for coming on. We appreciate it.
All right, brother, have a good one.
Bye.
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