Looking to Grow, and Looking to Grow Fast

and looking to grow fast.  However, growing a small business isn’t easy, and typically is one of the toughest challenges many businesses face. No Marketing Marv joins us to try to figure out the right way to grow.

Video Transcript

Harry Brelsford 0:02

Hey Nation Nation Harry back with Marvin Bee of Podnuts Pro Did I get that? Right?

Marvin Bee 0:10

All right, sir.It's not It's not my brand, but it's the show.

Harry Brelsford 0:14

It's the show. There we go. So coming to us from sunny Florida. First of all, how you doing? I mean, are you your wealth? You know, I have to ask everybody helping.

Yep. Still doing well haven't really, you know, been in anybody's you know personal space lately. So still masking up down here and Oh yeah, we're good about Yeah.How about you?

Well, I'm doing good. I as I told you, during rehearsal, I made the move from the tech forest, silicon forest of Seattle to the silicon. I don't know what you called Austin, Texas must have it must have a nickname but made the move. And Marvin The point is, is very careful. I was very careful. I stuck to myself and my Penske truck, double mask, hang cleaner, stayed at nice hotels, you know, I mean, just really took took the extra effort.

Marvin Bee 1:26

So no motel six along the way

Harry Brelsford 1:29

No, I was Embassy Suites is kind of my favorite. I like a suite with the living room and then a room. But that's not why we're here, sir. We're here to talk March Madness and not the virtual basketball tournament or whatever they're doing. But you have a little March Madness going on with a marketing series. So talk to me what's going on over your relm?

Yeah, so I decided that it was time for us to put a focus on marketing. And from my perspective, most people know me as no marketing, Marv. I've had my business now 24 years, and I have done very little in terms of marketing, most of my business has been through referral word of mouth. And I've got a small segment of the legal industry, that basically I can kind of move about and get referrals and attorneys talk and that sort of stuff. So I've never done much in terms of putting out my brand, or putting out you know, what everybody does with flyers and canvassing, and I've taken a slow growth type of approach. But I know that a lot of MSPs and a lot of tech companies and shops, they're looking to grow, and they're looking to grow fast. And they're trying to figure out what is the right way to do it. So I figured I'd do a entire series through the month of March calling no marketing Marv presents. And I've got several marketing experts in the industry that we're going to come on and talk about, what do you need to know to grow the business? And what's working right now? what's hot, what's still, you know, is relevant from the old days, you know, from those of us that are used to doing flyers and papers and that sort of thing to the new digital, you know, age of marketing?

Yeah, yeah. And what I found and by the way, let me express my thought, and then maybe, and tell us about who some of your guests are. But what what's interesting about marketing, other than marketing, 101, and everything we all know already. But in an economic downturn, I learned this very early in my career, I was just fit not to date myself, but I was just finishing college in Denver, an oil region, and there was an oil bust. Okay. And again, I won't say the decade or the century, but there was an oil bust that industry is always doing that. And so you know, you have your two three year dip, and then you have good times. And that's the nature of natural resources. And what I saw, and by the way, the dip was caused because Prudhoe Bay came online and flooded the market with oil. And so what I saw was companies that invested in marketing in a recession got more real estate more, it was a land grab, right? It's actually a really good time to invest in marketing because your competitors may be hurting for certain, and they can't invest in marketing. And so one example I recall, was in the grocery store business, and this was actually back up in Alaska, but cars car Goldstein's now acquired by Safeway, but they invested forward into the Alaska recession, the oil glut and grab market share and Marvin You know, they're probably in grocery service staple and they never really go up very much or down because he had about the same 2500 calories a day, right?Good or bad.

Marvin Bee 4:52

I was supposed to. Yeah.

Harry Brelsford 4:55

Sometimes a little more when times again, but for them to just get an instant incremental increase in market share in a really stable market. That's how it works in a recession, if that makes sense. Invest forward. Yeah. So with that said, Who are some of your guests.

So we've already kicked off one of the shows with one of your friends, Jennifer Fields, from Aztec marketing at haoran. And we kind of hit all of the corners as to, you know, what MSP should do. I have a guest, Matt Rodella, from a company called tech marketing engine. And he's got a business that started as kind of a website design place for managed service providers, IT shops to kind of automate their website. And he's kind of moved into a lot of the digital marketing, helping people with their newsletters, and their digital content and that sort of thing. And then we also have to powerhouses when you talk about larger companies, we have Dave Scott from Scott Digital Marketing. And Chris Wiser from seven figure MSP Yeah, yeah, Chris. We're gonna hit all levels here, small and large companies. Yeah. Yeah,

I'll ask you this, and then I'll let you run for this visit. But we've dabbled over the years with trying to help SMB Nation, community members market better we tested and then withdrew a marketing service, okay, it for us. That's just not what we do. But we, you know, I'm an entrepreneur, I'll try anything, and I'll even talk to anybody. And so it was your basic, we're going to do your newsletter, we're going to do your tweets, we're going to do your Facebook, we're going to do your LinkedIn, we're going to do your Hootsuite, we're going to do this, that and the other, and we're going to charge you money. And what we found was, there's just some of our audience members that don't get it when it comes to marketing to, to your point and present company excepted, but maybe they've grown by referrals. And, and, and there's a lot of that. And then the other thing was they didn't want to pay. And, you know, Marvin, when we looked at the hours we had to put in, I mean, everybody should make money, right? We we need to make a little money, we want you to make a lot of money. We hit resistance on paying for marketing has that topic come up yet, or any thoughts on that, because that that was very sad.

Marvin Bee 7:26

It has come up even though we have not done a deep dive into it, maybe I'll ask one of the upcoming shows to do a deep dive. But it's it's not just that they don't want to spend money, they and I'm meaning they just the general people out there, I don't have any specific set of numbers. So don't think I'm talking to you if you're listening to this show. But in general, companies don't want to spend a lot of money. And they don't want to spend a lot of time. And it's almost as if, you know, I've been around for a while I guess that I've done this 24 years. Yeah, and I don't mind a little hard work. But it seems as though now everybody thinks that it should be instant. And things just aren't instant, as you know, the TV world and the Twitter world makes it out to be it's, it takes time to build up your business to build up your brand. So and to pay somebody you know, a decent compensation for doing so is what needs to be done. So that's that's a difficult thing. And of course, everybody's looking to spend the least amount of money for the biggest return. And I think that's where the struggle is, is what is that balance? And I know that when I asked Jennifer, Jennifer had a percentage of your income that needs to be dedicated to marketing, okay? Because you have to just keep doing it. And the percentages have to be substantial. It can't be, you know, you're going to spend 100 bucks and make 100,000. Right. So I forget what the num percentage is. I'll have to go back and listen to the notes on that show. But I will ask the others out there if they have percentages, but it's usually in the in the frame of you know, minimum of five to 10% Oh, yeah, of your of your annual revenue that needs to go to marketing. And so most people if they're, you know, making 500 grand, and they're thinking, Oh, I get to spend, you know, 50 grand on marketing, ouch. Well, you do, but if you want to grow, you know, get it it takes money to make money, right?

Harry Brelsford 9:32

Yeah, yeah, that's make that the final word. Where what's your URL? Where can people find these resources?

Marvin Bee 9:40

The easiest place to go is podnutzpro.com. And pod nuts. It'sspelled with a Z. So Podnutzpro.com. And you'll find all of the back episodes for the show. And we might be starting a blog soon, but everything is partners pro.com. All right. Well

Harry Brelsford 9:59

The hardest working man over in Florida and the MSP community, sir. Thank you. We'll see you next time.

We'll see you soon. All right.