Dominic Cummins 0:01
Welcome to the Make More Keep More podcast.
Ron Caruthers 0:04
I'm your host, Ron Caruthers with Dominic, my co host, Dominic Cummins, will tell you guys a little bit about this thing. I'll go first. Sounds good. I'm gonna take the seniority here. But anyway, Dominic and I have known each other 32 years when Dominic was a wee young lad and I first moved down to San Diego. And it was actually your wife, Ivana, who came up with the idea that since you are really an expert in sales, and growing sales teams, and they say I'm an expert in finance and taxes, that we would really put this podcast together with the idea of making more and keeping more. So since this is kind of our test, run one, Dominic, why don't you tell them a little bit about yourself and your background?
Dominic Cummins 0:52
So officially, I've been in sales for about 25 years. 1996. So it's 26 years this year, actually. Unofficially, I my first sales gig was my lemonade stand when I was five and convincing people to buy my 10 cents a cup of lemonade. I never did one of those. Dude, it was awesome. You know, one of the funniest stories of this is probably totally off topic. But one of the funny stories that ever happened is I really wanted you know, people would bring like coins and stuff. And I really I was, I was five, maybe six. And I really want to cash like actual like, you know, green currency. And so I told the guy who came up and we all right, and he came up to me, and he was like, I want to get a cup of lemonade. And he had $1 bill on him. And that's all he had. And I told him, I didn't have change. So he bought 10 cups. And I realized that that was probably a good sales move. I also feel slightly bad about it, because it was probably messed up that I made the guy buying 10 cups of lemonade.
Ron Caruthers 1:52
I think with interest you probably owe him like $1,000 now or something right? Change but good for you.
Dominic Cummins 1:58
Yeah, so So I got green cash, then that in that transaction versus a bunch of coins? But no. So I've been in that that business. A long time. Started out in the banking world. You know, we both had our series seven licenses way back when and went through that, that upbringing and then and then took off more into the software space. sold a lot been responsible for a lot of teams, big teams all over the all over the world. Really. My biggest sale is 128 million on a single sale. But I've had some pretty cool sales opportunities. Actually, the one did you I don't even know if you knew this. I sold ESPN for a software company a few years ago, got to tour the ESPN facilities like had to go to Bristol, Connecticut, the tour is nice, every bit as cool as you would have thought it might be. So it was it was an awesome experience. So I've had I've had the opportunity like cuantas airlines, American Airlines, much big businesses that I've had the opportunity to work with. So a lot of that type of sales stuff. So yeah, I'm excited to talk more about it and bring it down to the average person. Now
Ron Caruthers 3:03
with all those sales and stuff. I'm getting intimidated. And my story is kind of sad. My background for those of you that don't know is I grew up in an only child. We grew up West Side Elway moved down to San Diego about 30 years ago when I met you, but we were not poor. But we were definitely lower middle class apartment. My joke is we weren't no shoes poor. But we did have a use pinto for whatever that's worth it. So those of you who don't know what a Pinto is, go look it up. It's it's not a car that you get when you're rolling in cash. Although my parent my dad had a CICT, like 280 Z, and also a really nice convertible Fiat. So again, we weren't poor, poor, but we just weren't. My mom worked for doctors. And so, you know, we certainly didn't have the resources that they did. And working. The summer between my junior and senior year thinking that I always wanted to go to med school and realizing I didn't want to go to med school. I really gravitated toward the accounting side of things, the money side of things. And because I also happened to be my High School's valedictorian, nobody cares. It's been a long time, right. And I didn't, in fact, go to USC, my daughter did, hence the hoodie, but we didn't have any money for me to go to college right away. And so later when I went to school to be a CFP and get tax certificates, I kind of tripped over the college rules. So that became my specialty. And then in the last few years, it's really been helping people get their money, right, and pay the least amount of taxes possible and also manage some of the risk where a lot of people take excessive risks, pay excessive taxes. So our hope I think both of us would say is really that this whole thing is about making more, keeping more.
Dominic Cummins 4:56
Absolutely. Alright, so
Ron Caruthers 4:57
since making more comes first I think that means you have to go first on,
Dominic Cummins 5:00
oh, isn't that nice? Well, you know, here's the funny thing is I'm sorry. Here's the funny thing is, is my parents had a Pinto as well. So that's crazy. So it's kind of funny though,
Ron Caruthers 5:11
my dad used to joke and call it his pin, Tara. And it was that ugly, ugly, baby blue. And again, if you guys don't know, this, they used to if you hit them just right, it was a design flaw, the whole thing would explode. And this was back, you know, in the 70s. So there were no, nobody worst seat belts. And I would sit back in the hatchback, we just put the seats down, and I'd kind of scrunched over there. So
Dominic Cummins 5:34
yeah, my parents had my mom's claim to fame was that ours was made in the UK, I don't even know if that was true or not, and that ours had some sort of protective plate so it wouldn't explode. But it originally started out as a cherry red Pinto. And as all I remember, is about the color your sweatshirt. That's it just I don't think they really that was just not a quality car. But yeah, so the CIO talking through that, let me see what looks like my microphone might be a little hot here. Yeah, I think just dovetailing with what you're saying is, is yeah, I've sold a lot. The interesting thing is, is had I applied some of what I've learned from you over the years earlier in my life, I'd have a lot more. And that's where a lot of this comes from is the ability to go out there. And probably a lot of people listening to this, they don't have a problem probably making sales, or could always use some effort to get more on the top line. But then bringing in you is to talk about how to keep more of that right like that is you got to do both right. So yeah, Ivana came up with that idea. So why don't you to just talk about that stuff. And we tend to talk about God only knows what else. So along the way,
Ron Caruthers 6:40
we're going to talk about whatever we feel like yeah, watches, probably. Cars, wine, whiskey. Yeah.
Dominic Cummins 6:47
Yep. All that except for your dry right now.
Ron Caruthers 6:50
I am I'm doing the 75 hard challenge from 10 days in epic, the absolute you know what's going on? Personally, I pick the absolute worst time to do this. But I guess the point is, it's hard as the guy says, Andy, for Sela, is it supposed to be the 75? Hard? Not the 75? Medium or challenge or whatever? Yeah. So um, what are you going to do now? What are you going to do some wine tasting or some whiskey tasting at some point? 60 days from now? Actually no 65 days from now? Because I'm 10 days in. But I'm to business? Yeah. What would you say is the I know, we're going to talk about mindset the next time and getting your mind right. Which I got a lot to say about that. But I'm particularly having as we both going through divorces or recovering from challenges and things like that. But what would you say is if you could only give one tip to someone who is in a sales position or to Business Growth position, where they need to get a business, get more clients in the door? What do you see? I'm gonna give you my take on it afterwards. What do you see as the number one thing that they could do?
Dominic Cummins 8:00
I see that number one problem that most salespeople do is we make it about us. So if you read like any sales process, and the whole, like, you know, you're supposed to do this and set, you know, you know, get to know the person and do all that everything about it is in order to get them to do to buy from us which you go well, duh, yeah, that's the idea. The reality is though, if you can reverse that and make it all about them, people tend to gravitate towards you to buy. So what I mean by that, let me give you some statistics around this. I'm a big stats guy. HubSpot, which is a big CRM tool for those who don't know, CRM tool out there for people they have, they have well over 100,000 companies on their platform, so their data is pretty robust. As far as what they're pulling pretty representational. And one of the things that they did, they did a survey of buyers just across the board, and two surveys, actually. And one of them was that almost or a little over 90% of buyers find find no commercial value in their discussions with salespeople. In other words, they seen interest, no worth in talking to a salesperson. So that got HubSpot going like wow. So they came back did another survey where they asked, well, what would be interesting to you, or you know, what would make you want to talk to a salesperson and the survey was, again in the 90% range? 9496 Something like that said, if a salesperson were to come with relevant industry insights, and like basically teach me something about my world, show me how it applies to me and and do that, I'd be happy to talk to them. But as salespeople were, it's like, hi, nice to meet you. Let me show you. I got watches I got watches like a you know, street vendor in New York, right? Like, we just jump right into all that which is what I mean by it's all about want to see
Ron Caruthers 10:03
my thing want to see my thing? Yeah, not that thing you guys behavior so but yeah want to see the thing
Dominic Cummins 10:08
that's your audience my audience my answer is wholesome and clean but your fear though so it's probably the other way
Ron Caruthers 10:16
I learned actually early on particularly my Twitter is you do not ever click on your clients profiles unless you're really sure of what they do because I'd be like,
Dominic Cummins 10:27
oh, yeah,
Ron Caruthers 10:31
you gotta catch Cool.
Dominic Cummins 10:33
We'll talk about Bible. Christmas, we'll have to talk about we're just closed. Exactly. Modest clothes, we're going to talk about when I went to go do research for the names for this and the backboard, keep more and doing all the like, buying all the domain names and a couple of variations that I did, came up with some really interesting things
Ron Caruthers 10:56
to show me after we tell ya.
Dominic Cummins 11:00
It's of course, now everybody's gonna start Googling variations of that, let's just put it that when I shortened it to the initials, that's what you start getting go there at your own risk. But yeah, I think making it about ourselves is really a big issue with salespeople. And like, I blame sales leaders. Salespeople are just trying to make a buck, I get that. But I think as owners of businesses, entrepreneurs, any sales leaders in this, we have to change that behavior, we have to train that behavior out of people, because they do want to make money and I get it. And I've been commissioned only like you have and where you're in, you know, I'm an entrepreneur now, which is where you could argue is just commission only all the time. You want
Ron Caruthers 11:41
a business, your commission. Yeah, I mean, like, yeah, great point. You gotta have clients coming in the door. Yeah, there's certain businesses that lend themselves to recurring revenue. But at the end of the day, somebody has to go get those clients in the first place, unless you're buying a business, right, an existing revenue stream. If you're building that sucker, you got to go get some clients. So you would say making it about the client not about themselves. And so how would that manifest?
Dominic Cummins 12:11
Well, the first place is it actually starts back I'm also a marketer by background too. Right. So
Ron Caruthers 12:16
and by the way, Dominic's kind of a big shot I don't think you do as much with him anymore, but you were like on the stage at Traffic Conversion for any of you guys that are familiar with you know, digital marketer Ryan Deiss. Perry Belcher, those guys like Dominic rubs elbows with those guys. Dominic's like the guy behind those guys, at least as far as the sales? Sure, that's fair to say, not gonna get you in any trouble? No, I don't think so get me in letters from lawyers or anything. All right,
Dominic Cummins 12:45
do a little executive coaching for them, and then did a lot of the sales training side of things for them for their teams that went out. And yes, spoken at Traffic and Conversion summit a couple of times, and then done a ton of their events, for their partner community and some of that stuff. So I've spoken in front of those guys a lot. But backing it up to the marketing side of things is is actually here's the funny thing, if you really want to make it about your audience, you got to know your audience. And that's, you know, I think we as salespeople, it's so hard. I mean, even when I come out with a new product, it's like, Oh, everybody could buy this and then you start thinking about it, and they go well, okay, but it would be better like the expression the riches are in the niches. Now if you pronounce it niche, then that doesn't really rhyme but the the idea of like getting that audience color reaches the of riches in the niches. Yeah, that doesn't work either. That one's for you, Brian, plan if you happen to live, one of my buddies is from the UK, Brian plumb, and he we had this whole discussion and he's like, You guys mispronounce it. So then the, so you make the expression work. But anyway, that's another story. But that said is, is if you don't know the audience, and then what they really want, then how are you possibly going to convey anything towards them? Now the interesting thing is I teach this like concept called the triad, I'm sure we'll jump into that in another in another session. But I teach this concept around a triad, which is just three points of interest that you come on with like data. Well, the cool thing is by researching that, I've found more clients and more people that I've coached, that start to go, oh, this is what I do on a great, let's start creating your triad. I teach them how to do it, they start doing the research, and they're like, man, none of what I'm finding here is what I'm trying to sell. Exactly. When you start researching what the actual problem is, you start to like really narrowed down or really hone in on what your actual product offering is. And so that started that's where I would start and then then you can make it very much all about your audience.
Ron Caruthers 14:43
You know, something very interesting that you brought up about marketing a second ago is I studied under Dan Kennedy. A lot of you guys may be too young to know who Dan Kennedy is. But Dan Kennedy is the OG of marketing and client attraction. Shen and the number one thing that I learned from Dan and Dan even said this himself, and if you guys have never been exposed to Dan Kennedy, please go check out some of his books. And I think next time we're going to talk about wealth attraction and money mindset. Dan wrote a great book on it. And I actually had the privilege of writing one of the chapters for for one of the earlier editions for it. But Daniel has made an interesting comment about, there's two businesses that you really need to get good at. One is the doing of your thing, right? Whatever it is, whether you're a salesperson or a business owner, a chiropractor, a doctor, a dentist, a lawyer, an accountant, but then you have to get also equally good. If not better at marketing, the service of whatever we you do. And the marketing is different from sales. And the better the marketing is, the less sales you have to actually do because your clients come to you pre sold. So my thing would always be, learn how to follow up with clients learn how to attract them to you in the first place. While we're saying this, let me just throw a disclaimer in there. For anybody listening to this from Instagram or Twitter. I can not barely even keep up with people that reach out and direct message me. So I am not the one direct messaging you in the middle of the night asking how your crypto strategy that almost got me shanked, Dominique, because my wife wanted to know, the very first time this happened, like, why are you DMing Lisa, in the middle of the night asking about our crypto strategy? And I'm like, What are you talking about asleep in the middle of the night. And so there are a lot of bots on there. I just want to throw that out there. But we work really hard in danza this first to have people want to reach out to us first. And so I will never reach out to you guys first, on direct messages, particularly talking about crypto, which Yeah, I know some about but that's certainly not right to chat about. But marketing is the thing, but I would say is absolutely learn marketing, learn how to attract. And let me give you an old school from something we used 30 years ago and finances was we would offer reports on tax strategies, or nine retirement mistakes, we had a report on that, like we had one on seven mistakes parents made when planning for college. And then people would raise their hand to want that information back to what you were talking about, which is being valuable. And then a certain percentage of them would want to come and talk to us. And some would make good clients, some didn't, you know, but at the end of the day, the whole relationship change and changes when someone seeks me or you or the salesperson or business owner out rather than the business owner trying to reach out to them first. And I'll tell you, it's actually like gross in some cases, we had, like I was telling you off camera kind of a bad situation, this last week with a death in the family. And there's going to be a lawsuit and things like that. And literally a lawyer was like, hey, I'll come to the house and just help you with it. By like, that's definitely not right guy and Ray. You know, why would you do that? So I think that's kind of my two cents on it. What else do you want to throw in there?
Dominic Cummins 18:42
Yeah, I think so as words bring you bring up an interesting point is that you actually need that lawyer, like you need a lawyer. Absolutely. You're going to you're going to need a lawyer given your circumstances. And yet the approach like it's not about what people need, per se, it is has a lot to do with the intent and the approach. And I think that's where, again, we go wrong if we're not really thinking about it, like if that guy was thinking about you and thinking about what your family is going through right now. He's not going to approach that way. But no, it's all about him and trying to land a deal. Even though he frames it in a way that like you need a lawyer so let me come help you Well, hey, seats, right, like Yeah, exactly. You need a car. You want watch this watch. I
Ron Caruthers 19:33
kind of felt like I kind of felt a little early days Saul Goodman vibe. So it man sounds good man.
Dominic Cummins 19:42
The I think again, going back to that piece is if you really understand your client and where they're coming from and what they're really interested about it. It's like I'll run a program with people and when I when they start up with me like on identifying that side of it. It's always fascinating to watch them go through where we get into It's not just the demographics because that's important. But it's also like the psychographics computer shut off here. The psychographics of what we're we're talking about right so it's not just is it you know, a male from this age to this age, but what are they like? What are they? What are they worried about at home and I love to use the illustration with people is, okay. Most people are comfortable with stress from eight to five, or whatever their working schedule is if you're an entrepreneur from you know 4am to midnight, but if we're comfortable during our working hours
Ron Caruthers 20:36
with your entrepreneur friends are sleeping for hours they really don't want it Yeah, Gary Vee we call them slackers. Right losers. You need to be massive amounts of trucker speed and not sleeping.
Dominic Cummins 20:53
Coming from the guy who works 270 days a year right. But and then it's divorced out. That's interesting news.
Ron Caruthers 20:59
I don't know I love rolls up on the fall. Yeah, he
Dominic Cummins 21:03
went Instagram official was some young young lady the other day. Yeah.
Ron Caruthers 21:09
Judgment, Gary. But yeah, I so I've really only heard Gary a couple times. Like I didn't have the energy to follow the podcast even though I you know, because his message is pretty simple, right? It's like three things like social media is great. Market a bunch. And what's his third? Well, hustle,
Dominic Cummins 21:24
hustle? Yeah, that's it. And don't listen to your parents about college. And so, yeah, I mean,
Ron Caruthers 21:34
sorry, man, I totally lost you. While you're recomposing yourself, let me just tell you, we're talking about psycho graph. Yes. Of your market. Yeah. What I actually it's funny, I had a buddy in the financial planning industry, who would only market I had one who only marketed to strippers, which was very interesting. But I had another one,
Dominic Cummins 21:58
it would have been about your audience being a little twisted, dude. No,
Ron Caruthers 22:00
it's not my audience, his audience, man, don't talk me into this. But what's interesting is I had a buddy who would market only to financial services to guys who sold their companies. And his whole thing was you sell your company. And you would, generally you're on your second wife, so you had to take care of the first wife, but you're on your second wife. And it was a very interesting market. Because we'd go I can't think of the name of the magazine, I want to say Town and Country, but it wasn't Town and Country. It's like a she she Western magazine for like guys who have never really worked on a ranch in their life. But like the idea behind it, and that's where he got all his clients, because he could relate to that he was, you know, twice divorced. And he could relate to someone going through a divorce, he could relate to someone selling a company. And what I'll just say is like, in our process, the very first thing that we do when someone reaches out to us, whether it's on the phone, you know, we're doing a phone interview, because I have clients all over the place, or they're coming into my offices. Why are you here? What do you want to get out of this today? What made you make this appointment? And then we actually I have a checklist of 10 questions that I go through, I may not get all of them, because a lot of times they'll overlap. But it's just finding out like, why are you here? And really, in our case, trying to determine Do you have a problem that we can help solve? And then again, it makes so much easier rather than me trying to think like, I have this thing? You need my thing? So I don't know for whatever that's worth Yeah, for sure. Well, psychographics on your side of things, right.
Dominic Cummins 23:45
Before we got off tangent with Gary Vee. No. So the exercise I'll run people through kind of in a similar vein, I mean, like, what you're trying to figure out is what is your audience really need, like, really, truly need. And I talked about, again, we're prepared to have stress during our work day, whatever that workday looks like, but we're that we're just used to it. Like, if you work in corporate America, chances are, you know, to some level, you like your job and some level your job sucks, right? So if you're okay with that, what starts to bother people, is when they have to take that home. Like if the part that causes problems in people's lives is when work comes home with them or the stress of something. And then I say to people like just would if you just thought of this one thing when your ideal buyer comes home, what's still nagging them when they're trying to open that bottle of wine, or that poor that cocktail. Yep. What's that thing that's bugging them then that you can solve with what you're doing? And a lot of clients especially I've worked with a lot of service based businesses and things so it's, you know, marketing agencies and consultants and coaches and all those kinds of people, but they tend to be able to it's not so much what you solve during the day. If it's what you solve that they took home with them, right, that makes it because and I think Dan Kennedy talks about this too, is people aren't really necessarily all that interested in improvement, but they'll pay big for transformation. And the more that I can create transformation to me, I've found that when we unlock what stresses them out when they go home at night, you know, we're all work from home these days, right? But the but whatever stresses them when they go to their living room, you know,
Ron Caruthers 25:29
from from Dominic shed in the backyard that we're in right now, which is Office, which is really nice. I
Dominic Cummins 25:34
like to call it a studio thing.
Ron Caruthers 25:36
Oh, I'm so sorry. You're an artist. I didn't know that. And he's got a sick view. We're looking basically down to the Queen Mary. Yeah, Queen Mary's. Yeah, I can see the Queen Mary over there. And the waters so you know what?
Dominic Cummins 25:52
And out here, it's not like the mountains when there's not smog. Yeah, it sounds really bad smog. But yeah, so I think when you can solve that thing, then you create transformation in people's lives. And I believe bear with me on affiliate analogy, but when I mean, when I talk about improvement versus transformation, I'll use an example of great. So like, you have table grapes that you can go to like bonds or Kroger, Ralph's, or whatever your local grocery store is. You can go buy table grapes there, why would you do? Okay? So some people would understand what but why. So people would buy table grapes, right? And they're $1.99 a pound, let's say, let's just say that's a, that's a good price for it. And but then, then you'll have the people who go well, but no, I want to organic grapes. And I'm going to go to Whole Foods for those. And they'll pay 399 for those grapes. Which, okay, cool. That's an input. That's what I call improvement. Now, if I were to say to you, you've got to spend $20 a pound for grapes. You'd be like, I'm not paying 20 pounds, dollars a pound for grapes. I was down at 199 By the way, well, okay, so great man, or not whatever you eat, but if you go to $20.99 a pound, you're gonna go like, no, that's, that's absolutely ridiculous. I'll buy the ones at Kroger or I'll buy the ones at Whole Foods, but I'm not paying $20 Yet, we all pay $20 A pound of grapes on a regular basis. Because it takes over a pound of grapes to put together a bottle of wine. Because you've now transformed it. Like, you know, I realized those aren't table grapes. And I get it. But let's not be overly technical with the analogy. I don't know the analogy saw. But when I transform it into grapes, in fact, the most expensive bottle of wine ever sold sold for roughly $18,000 A pound of grapes that went into that bottle. So you know and look at the look at the list to get on Screaming Eagles distribution list. I mean, how many years weightless? How many lifetimes? waitlist? Is that? Right? You know, you talk well. So we'll we'll pay big money for grapes because it's transformed into something else in our lives. Now, again, kind of a silly analogy, I get it. But like, what if we could unlock whatever that transformation is for a client, then we can pay? They'll pay us big for that?
Ron Caruthers 28:12
No, that makes a lot of sense. And I want to come back to one thing that you said one of the questions that we actually ask our clients and finances and if you anybody listening to this that has gone through an initial interview with me, you'll know we ask this. What keeps you awake at night? Is there anything keeping you awake related to money right now? What is it? And again, it's letting them tell us a week and determine again, I'm not a salesperson in the sense of salesperson, but I am a client, you know, we run a client firm and so we want good clients? And that's one of the things it doesn't mean you have to make up an answer because a lot of people are like, nothing, you know, and we can still help them save taxes and do whatever. But it's a great question to be thinking of, for any salesperson or business owner. Like what is it about what you do and can provide for them? How can you transform what you're doing? And how can you solve a problem that is keeping them awake at night or some portion of that. So the guy can or gal can go home and cracked up bottle of wine and be done with work for the day or one less thing off their plate.
Dominic Cummins 29:24
Yeah, and here's the funny thing of what that example is what I say to what I say to my clients is your goal is to make it that the bottle of wine is optional, not necessary. And I'm not trying to make light of people having drinking problems. That's not the goal of that but but but what I mean by that is go home and have a cracked open bottle of wine because it sounds good and
Ron Caruthers 29:45
not because you need it right from your crappy client. By the way, while the bottles airing out. You're gonna have three martinis you can pass out facedown on your couch, because it's the only way you can get to sleep because you're so stressed out.
Dominic Cummins 29:58
Exactly, totally and back creates transformation in people's lives. Makes sense. And then they'll pay for that. And so again, it all comes back to your original question of what do you say is your thing about what's your one takeaway, if you can make it 100% about them? One, it's what they want. They want you to come teach them, train them, show them what's going on in their world. And so the triad becomes this thing where I'll come in and say, Hey, did you know what I'll use for marketing agencies? Like give an example of it? Like, I'll come in and say, Hey, listen. Did you know marketing agencies, the average closing percentage for marketing agencies like closing qualified leads and turning them into sales is 11%. That's literally the actual number, which is usually the reaction. And I'll get agency owners will tell me like nice clothes, way higher than that. And then an hour into the discussion, then they come back and go, you might be right back. I have one one time. He was like, There's no way that we're way higher than that. I don't even believe the thing call me back later and said We rent reran the numbers were at eight and a half percent. And they were really successful. Oddly enough. I mean, they were multi seven figure agency, they did very well for themselves, but that that, that they had to hustle so much. So I'll tell that story. It's like 11%, and I go put another way, that means almost 90% of the deals, you work hard to get to go away. So that's if you picturing like this triangle that starts there. And then I say, so what here's what's interesting, too, there was another study done that, that were 60%, or about 60% of all agencies have less than 25 clients. And 40% of those have less than 10 clients. Now think about that for a second. What's that story starting to tell me? I've got 11% Closing percentage, which is probably contributing to why I don't have a lot of clients. Why you have no client, right? Yeah. So then what do you do you have every one of those clients matters so much, they all matter, I get it, but they but they matter so much. Because if you lose one of those, especially if you have less than 10 clients, you just
Ron Caruthers 31:58
lost 10% of your revenue revenue. Yes, of course. They're not all the same revenue, but each one's credit. Yeah.
Dominic Cummins 32:04
And, and typically, without getting too deep into the story, but a lot of them it's four or five clients. And one of them is 50% of the revenue right? By their so what do they do? That's when they're talking? Well, you're making the sort of joke about like working 24 hours a day? Well, yeah, you have to, because you can't sustain that. And then you can't fill the pipeline because you suck at closing. Like so now, now what it is. And then the final point, and I typically do the trial, like we're the top is sort of the dagger through the heart is the marketing agencies are one of the in virtually every survey, you see one of the most failed business types. Well, yeah. Because at some point marketing agency owners burn out. So the reason why I tell that story is just it. That's an example. And I do that with any industry I work with, I'll create that same story, because now I'm telling I have now, rather than asking them, what's keeping them up at night, I'm telling them, I already know what's keeping them up at night, because statistically, most agencies can't close a lot of business. And I know they don't have as many clients as they would like to. And therefore every single client matters so much that they can't take a day off. And then they burn out, they sell they do whatever they sell for last they I mean, they do whatever they can to get out of this agency or the agency just closes up, because and then that's like, cool. Well, now I can help you. What if I took you from 11% to 25%. And I have a whole formula for showing that. All sudden, their businesses night and day different without really doing anything other than just having a better sales conversation
Ron Caruthers 33:35
earlier? Well, and what I would add is, think of how much stress the ability to add new clients at will and get rid of the bad ones. Right? Because nothing I think we can both agree on this. There is no greater feeling than firing a bad call. And we got a couple right now that we're going to fulfill their contract in the next three business days. And they are done. Never like we did what we said you got the result. Please lose our number never darken our door again. And you know,
Dominic Cummins 34:12
look, look, I know my wife is behind on getting you some stuff, but I didn't think it was that bad. I mean, I know she's supposed to be good. Listen, by the time
Ron Caruthers 34:19
Yeah. And look, I have a lot of clients, my clients are great. We're pretty selective on the front end, you know, to make sure it's a fit, and but by the time someone gets to a point where I want to get rid of them, I'm very happy to see him go for sure. And it is the greatest feeling. And unfortunately, the worst feeling is having to keep a terrible client because you have to have the revenue and I think part of our reason for this whole podcast is to help you guys really get from a place of scarcity to a place of abundance both on the money coming in the door right as Well as retaining and yeah, if you want three Lamborghinis whatever, we'll chat about that, but really keeping it to eventually buy freedom. And that involves literally the three pillars of this whole conversation, which is closing more sales upfront, getting more clients, paying the least amount to the toxic man possible, and being smart about how you manage that backside. So you've reached financial independence quicker. And I think we would both agree that's really our goal of this entire thing. And what we're gonna do, yeah, for sure, Dominic, I feel like we've covered enough for our first thing so and especially because the 75 heart has you drinking a gallon of water a day, which Oh,
Dominic Cummins 35:42
lens down the worst part of the whole thing creates a different challenge. Oh,
Ron Caruthers 35:46
I fell behind on it yesterday, so I had to guzzle a bunch before bed. I woke up this morning with my wife and Emily. Look, if I didn't know that I drank like 60 ounces of water right before that. I would be at the call my doctor because I'm concerned. So sorry to get weird on you guys.
Dominic Cummins 36:06
But if that's the type of stuff you could expect on this show,
Ron Caruthers 36:09
if anybody has done the 75 hard challenge it it's yeah, for solos podcast on all the whys and wherefores is actually really good, too. But there you go in for diamond for dollar. Tom, do you have anything else you want to say to the group? Before we sign off for this first?
Dominic Cummins 36:29
Now keep it short? Because your bladder is going to explode. But no, I think I'm excited.
Ron Caruthers 36:32
I called it before there was a real problem, there was a real like that, you know, it's kind of like, I'm here. Yeah.
Dominic Cummins 36:39
And then you know, when you get to a certain age sharing is
Ron Caruthers 36:41
caring, whoa, whoa, easy. With the age leave the age out of it,
Dominic Cummins 36:45
I was gonna say me complete once I crossed 40. It was like
Ron Caruthers 36:49
what judges are sending you to corner and they're deducting a point for a below the belt shot.
Dominic Cummins 36:55
So it runs out that much older than me. But, ya know, it's, I'm excited to do this. Because I think that a lot of the stuff that we'll have in the guests that we're going to have on this show, it's gonna be exciting to be able to tell the both how to get more strategies around that making more money on the front end without like killing yourself, that's a big piece of it without doing yourself doing it the right way, being proud of your business not being that, you know, sales guy, and then on the back end, how to keep it and that those are big pieces of it, I've always been pretty good at being able to make it. But I have been less than wonderful at keeping it at times, not part of that the divorce. You know, that didn't help but my divorce a lot of my money went to, but it's also where some of the strategies and I'll tell you, we're working with Ron now on stuff, and we have a great CPA, we've loved him for years. But stuff that Ron is teaching us is just it's a whole nother ballgame and really helping us you know, do more with what we have. And then it's also really cool from that standpoint is it actually helps me sell more to know like, Oh, if I would do it this way, and we structure a couple of things like I could end up with this much at the end of the year, it makes you more
Ron Caruthers 38:05
excited about doing the work. Because if you've got a partner in business that does, you know, kind of nothing for you. Right, but you got to give them 2030 40% Of or 50% of everything that you make, and they don't show up, they don't help you out when times are bad being there. You know, and and frankly, I'm not saying the government doesn't do anything for us. If you're listening from the IRS, we love you guys, you guys are wonderful. Go IRS. But but at the end of the day, knowing Hey, I get to keep a little more of what I make. It is hugely motivating. And knowing what you can legitimately write off will free you because it will dollar that comes in. You get to keep more of that dollar. And like I always say is when you lose $1.02 taxes or any other expense that's unnecessary. You don't know if you enjoy it, that's great. But I mean, unnecessary. No one enjoys paying taxes. You don't lose the dollar, you lose the dollar plus everything it would have made over its existence if you hadn't spent it on taxes. And for you know, even older people, it's five $10 $15. For a younger person, it might be that $1 might actually cost you 2030 or 40. Right. So I think we're off to a
Dominic Cummins 39:27
brilliant start. Yes. And ourselves on the back.
Ron Caruthers 39:31
You know what we will if anybody's left watching this. If Dominic if 10 People watch this, I already have more than my radio show from 15 years ago, because I think our audience never broke like six and it was a really good radio show. But we had a terrible time slot and like zero advertising budget, so you know, we'll find out Yeah, well, they serve spouses a watch and I will speak for your own spouse. Mine's completely different. interested. Here's the other thing that I would say is in either of whenever you guys see this, like, let us know what you want. Yeah, so we're gonna bring on defi experts and crypto experts in NF T and we're gonna have a lot and we'll bring on some specialists like what to do. I don't know if you knew this, my daughter is now an expert kind of in what to do if you didn't file your taxes for a number of years, or you owe them a bunch of money. So we'll have a plethora, there's your SAP word for the day, a plethora of experts on here. And 65 days from this recording we will actually crack open some good whiskey. We'll discuss watches and what we're wearing each day and stuff like that. So any final words done?
Dominic Cummins 40:47
And then when the charger season starts back up? We'll have plenty to talk about I'm sure
Ron Caruthers 40:54
you will. They left San Diego man I was back to my to my original. You come every time I invite you. I do I do as long as I don't have to pay for the ticket. Because I refuse to give Spaniels for $1 and maybe another time we'll tell them the story have
Dominic Cummins 41:10
you got this meeting all the x Hall of Fame players
Ron Caruthers 41:13
we will tell you guys a great story about Dominic knock giving me telling me you know letting me read they're not giving me a heads up on who was in the room when I was a little more honest than I needed to be with someone Yeah, we'll tell you guys that story. Another day. Dahmer weekend.
Dominic Cummins 41:29
Awesome. We're good. Thanks for Thanks for joining us on the inaugural Make More
Ron Caruthers 41:34
and remember, it's not just what you make is what you keep. Absolutely right.
Dominic Cummins 41:39
We're out awesome guys.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
