SPEAKER_01: 0:00

This is the Empowering Healthy Business Podcast, and I'm your host, Cal Wilder. Each episode, we'll dive into topics important to folks who want to run businesses that are both nicely profitable, sustainable, and scalable, and who want to achieve balance in their lives and realize their potential inside and outside of work. The show is sponsored by SmartBooks, provider of bookkeeping and accounting for businesses. Let's get started. So all of us business owners at the end of the day, we usually have the same basic challenge, which is generating new leads who want to buy our services and products, right? We could have We think we've got a great service or product, but we need people to know it exists and to introduce them to it. Right. Um, and so today's guest, that's what he does for a living and his business, Defiant Enterprises. Uh so Tom Friedman, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_00: 0:55

Cal, it's so nice to be here and uh real pleasure to uh have the opportunity to speak to everybody and uh looking forward to being here today. So thank you.

SPEAKER_01: 1:04

Awesome. So, in a nutshell, Tom, um, what does your business do?

SPEAKER_00: 1:10

Yeah, we're uh a little bit of a contrarian. So the interesting part is we get a lot of um of conversation started based off of lead generation. However, our company says this, right, for our specific target audience, um, you need to stop focusing on lead generation. Leads is not where you're gonna get most of your clients. In fact, the data will suggest that nearly all of your clients, especially your best ones, come from connections, introductions, and referrals. So shifting over to a completely different philosophy and a system on how you get conversations to turn into clients is where the real success begins. This doesn't apply to everybody, but for our target audience, Cal, it works wonders and the shift in mentality is huge.

SPEAKER_01: 2:00

So, who who do you tend to work with?

SPEAKER_00: 2:03

Yeah, it's great. We typically work with solo micro and small business owners that are in the B2B services space. And typically there it tends to be something like white-collar services like professional services or technology companies. It can apply to plenty of other relationship-oriented sales. That's where we spend most of our time. But the simple question is this it is worth considering if what you're trying to sell is based off of relationship sale and not like high quality, I mean, uh high quantity, volumatic sales that is more commoditized. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_01: 2:43

Yeah, I mean, I'm just reflecting back on my own experience. You know, we do at SmartBrooks, we do bookkeeping and accounting and tax and CFO services, and it's very much a relationship type engagement we have. It's relatively low volume. You know, clients spend$10,000 to$50,000 a year with us, depending on what they need, but it's a relationship. And, you know, I've had, I've tried to crack the nut to grow the business in different ways. I've had salespeople, I spent a lot of money on marketing, I did a lot of money on Legion. Um, and I've had, you know, mixed results, but ultimately it comes back to most of our best clients are people that I have a relationship with or that existing clients have a relationship with. Um, we're not, you know, picking up the phone and cold calling.

SPEAKER_00: 3:35

Yeah, it makes complete sense, Cal. I mean, you're not alone in this category, right? I mean, uh, I think when I first state this, whenever I'm having a conversation with somebody and asks, they ask, like, tell me a little bit about what you do. And I always start off why by saying, hey, listen, we take a simple concept, right? A fact that nearly all of your best clients will come from connections, introductions, and referrals. And typically everyone nods. Why? Because even if they haven't checked, they they haven't fact checked that, most people that have been in business for themselves, right, know that in their heart. Like it's already true to them. They already know that most of their actual client acquisitions, and certainly their best clients, come directly for connections, introductions, and referrals. What is the problem with this, Cal, is this nobody really wants to accept that. So when a referral comes in, right, they go like, oh my gosh, that's great, right? And they sort of applaud it in a way that is more chaotic and haphazard, in that like they've almost earned it by like developing good relationships and that referrals are going to come in every once in a while. Or let's say doing a really good job for a client, and that client will mention something to somebody else and refer them in. What is problematic is this for most people that are doing relationship sales and in a small business, you have to concentrate on systematically growing your company through connections, introductions, and referrals. So much so that wasting any time, money, or efforts outside of that is going to burn through cash and burn through resources faster than you can imagine. It's not that we're ever, we're never going to get to, let's say, certain marketing strategies or different lead generation strategies or something like that. But know where you're at in the ecosystem and life cycle of your business. If you are doing relationship-oriented sales and you're a solo micro or small business, let's call it under 50 million ARR for most of these businesses, the concentration should be how do I get in front of my target audience with a no-like trust, deliver a clear, concise, and compelling message, and differentiate and distinguish myself based off of the relationship, not nearly as much as just volumatic legion. When you do that, almost any small business company can be very, very successful.

SPEAKER_01: 6:20

So I want to definitely get into this. Like, what's what's the system, the process that you follow?

SPEAKER_00: 6:27

Yeah, we take all of our clients through a five-step process. Um, and the process looks like this the first stage, uh, first step that we go through is what we call modeling. What modeling really is, is we actually have to spend some time with the business owner or the leadership team and make sure that it makes complete sense in how we're going to grow this business. So much so that I will not work with or grow, help grow a company that doesn't have a model that makes it simple and easy to grow. We really need to connect the dots with regard to with with with regard to does it make numerical sense to push the company, grow the company under the context that we're growing now? Is it going to get you the results you really want? Said in an easy way would be something like this. Cal, if you and I were working together, I would ask a simple question, right? What does what do you want in your bank account? You, as the owner of the company, at like the end of let's say 12 months, what do you want to see on a monthly or annual basis coming back to Cal's bank account? And once we have that, then we can reverse engineer it and find out if the way that you're approaching growth now makes sense. And if it makes sense, is it the best way to do it? So once we get through modeling, right? Modeling says, okay, great, we found the right approach, and then we need to get to positioning. Right? For positioning, it's all about you finding and re-engineering your solution so that you can make the most impact. We'll use you as an example right now, and say, Cal, for the service packages that you're offering right now, does that allow you to make the most impact per client, right? Based on what you're doing? Or can we rebundle your services so that we can increase your profitability, take less load off of growth, and get better results, right? So we need to repackage that. The second one is audience. And audience is so critical. Some people are really good at something, right? But they get so hung up on trying to actually sell it to a specific audience that is very difficult to get a hold of, to access, to sell, or possibly the sales cycle is way too long. So we really need to work on this target audience and say, is it the easiest one for us to grow our company? The last one in this step is messaging. And you know this, Cal. Every conversation that you have with somebody, right, your message is your number one weapon. If you've got a clear, concise, and compelling message, you will get interest. If your message is vanilla or doesn't really provoke deeper conversation, you can meet with 8 million people on planet Earth and very few of them will be interested. And if they do with a bad message, the best you're going to get is selling them at rates that you are not exactly thrilled about. In other words, you're selling at commoditization. I'll pause here for a second for questions, but we still got three steps to go.

SPEAKER_01: 10:00

All right. Um, at some point I am gonna, you don't have to answer it now, but at some point I am gonna ask you how you go about getting people to answer the phone because the world seems to have changed a lot. And I used to answer my phone when it rang, and I don't do that anymore. Because I just get so many cold calls that I have no interest in unless I recognize that caller ID. I just can't answer the phone, or I'd spend all my day taking phone calls all day long. And so I'm curious um how you navigate that dynamic.

SPEAKER_00: 11:03

Yeah, it's a really good question. So the first thing that I would have to ask is this why do you want to call in the first place? Is it necessary for you to hit your goals? This is such a great thing for you to bring up. And this comes back to modeling, right, from like step one. So if I would reverse engineer this and say, forget about calling for a second, and say, Cal, what do you want as a result? Right? Like at the end, the outcome here, what do you want in your bank account or what does the company bank account need to look like, or something of that sort? And then we reverse engineer it. And when we do the reverse engineering, we're not going to do multiple things like in like multiple things that could produce results. We're gonna choose the one or two things that are gonna give us the best results, and we're gonna do them in the best way we can we know how. And the way that we can do that is by saying no to everything else. So, to answer your question, how do we get people to pick up the phone? The first thing is do we really need them to pick up the phone?

SPEAKER_01: 12:16

So this comes back to your modeling question. What is the most effective model to go to market?

SPEAKER_00: 12:22

100%. And look, I know tons of people that are very successful with cold and warm calling efforts, but that doesn't mean that it's right for everyone. You really need to figure out what is the best way to get in front of your target audience. And for you, Cal, I would say this it's not cold calling, right? It's finding the best partners, right, that align with your services and your target audience. In other words, finding really good reciprocal partners that do synergistic work to you within the exact same ecosystem. In other words, they're trying to get in front of the exact same target audience as you, but doing work that is parallel to you, not the same as you. And if they can make key introductions and referrals for you, that is going to be your best way of acquiring ideal clients, not cold calling. Right?

SPEAKER_01: 13:27

Yeah, I mean, that was pretty much my experience when we had um a sales team at SmartBooks. Um, what they really did was they serviced inbound leads that came from somewhere else. They didn't self-generate because self-generating is really hard in my industry, I guess. Maybe everybody says that, but um you know, we had sales reps who are very good, but at the end of the day, the leads they were servicing and trying to help came from somewhere else.

SPEAKER_00: 13:58

100%, right? I mean, look, again, I'm not against all of these different strategies. What I'm saying is just understand where you're at in the business life cycle, right? For most small businesses. Again, it could be from startup ideology all the way to very mature small businesses. For most of them in B2B services space, it's going to be that your concentration must revolve around getting better conversations that turn to clients as opposed to lead generation. The biggest misconception of most is that they equate lead generation with client acquisition. They are not one and the same. Just because you can get leads does not mean that you're going to acquire uh ideal clients. On top of it, you mentioned something like this, right? Like before, we've had a sales team, we've had tried different lead generation strategies, we've tried different marketing strategies. The issue above and beyond lead generation is that somebody has to follow up with it. So I always ask this question, right? What would the company look like if lead generation works? Who fields all the calls or the meetings, right? Who qualifies and disqualifies all of these? Oftentimes, lead generation will bury companies, not because they're the fact that they're not getting leads, it's that they're getting too many bad leads and can't even manage it properly, paying in an exorbitant amount just to manage bad leads, causing them even a more of a drop in their overall profit levels. So, again, going back to this, the modeling really needs to make sense for whoever is taking control of the growth process.

SPEAKER_01: 15:56

Could you walk us through an example of a very effective model that one of your clients has employed?

SPEAKER_00: 16:03

Yeah, for sure. Uh, a model that's really simple, and this is what most of ours employ uh like employee would be this. Um, per unit, meaning that whoever is responsible for, let's say, growth. So, for instance, Cal, if you said, like, I'm gonna be responsible for one growth unit, right? And let's say you had one other person on the team also responsible for growth units, we'll call you a sales rep, right? Even though you own the company, you're let's say you also have the responsibility of producing one unit of defined growth. Does that make sense? Yep. For most people in relationship sales, you can you can successfully net new approximately eight to 20 new clients in relationship sales per unit, right? So model looks like this. If I need to get so many dollars out of a unit of growth, again, cal is a unit of growth, and that that unit of growth needs to produce$1 million in either profit or revenue, right? Something like that. The first thing that you have to do is re-engineer your solution so that you can sell eight to twenty of them to hit that goal. If you haven't done that yet, you're almost destined to fail.

SPEAKER_01: 17:21

So let's just think in terms of uh if one customer or one client equals one unit, talking about eight to twenty, that's more or less one to two per month over the course of a year, right? That adds up to bingo.

SPEAKER_00: 17:34

You know, twice relationship sales. In relationship sales, unless you're an absolute all-star, without a doubt, you will not be able to hit much more than that on a conservative basis. Clearly, some people are better than others, and like there's a wiggle room in it, but a conservative approach needs to be this UCal, as a unit of growth for your company, has to structure your solution so that you can acquire eight to 20 new clients net new over the year to get your goal of whatever that revenue would be or profit bit would be. In this case, we just used a random one of saying, I want to add another million dollars, right? Of ARR, right? Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_01: 18:18

Yeah, and so you hit you can hit the plateau though, right? Because you're gonna have some natural churn. So if there's a limit to the number of new relationship sales you can execute, but you're losing some clients out the back door due to natural attrition, hopefully not too much that's preventable. Um, you're gonna hit the ceiling there and you may plateau. Because you could bring in 12 to 24 new customers a year, but if you're losing 12 to 24 because you've got 100 to begin with, and there's a little bit of natural 10 or 15% churn that's gonna happen, you've kind of hit that plateau of what you can accomplish.

SPEAKER_00: 18:58

Yes. So, how do you address the plateau? First of all, that's why I call it net new, not just new clients, right? So you really need to figure out what your churn rate is and minimize that as much as you possibly can. But once you've done that, Cal, then the next thing says this, and this is where a lot of people have issues, right? They say, I want to like grow and scale my company beyond that. So let's say you, Cal, at the end of the year, you are able to get like eight to 20 new clients, right? Net new clients, and get another million dollars in ARR coming back to your company. So then the question becomes how do we get on top of that, like more ARR? Well, that's the point where instead of you trying to figure out how to produce more on your own, the only way in relationship sales that you're gonna be able to scale it is you have to reproduce yourself. So, in other words, you would hire another sales rep at that point to follow the model and get another million dollars, right? But in relationship sales, I want to make this clear, right? You can only handle a certain amount of net new clients over one year per person responsible for that unit. Unless you're going to increase your price or impact per client, there's only a there's always a limitation in relationship sales of how many net new you can produce per unit. So the only way to scale it is to find another cow, another you to add on to that. Make sense?

SPEAKER_01: 20:41

And at the risk of sounding egotistical, it's very hard for a founder to replicate themselves. Right?

SPEAKER_00: 20:48

Uh it goes both ways, right? Number one, it's very, very difficult to um to replicate yourself in the exact position of everybody likes to talk to the man, right? Like or woman or whatever it is, right? Everybody wants to talk to the owner, the founder, the whatever, right? So getting in front of people is a lot easier when you're that person.

SPEAKER_01: 21:13

Yeah, you have an unfair advantage over a standard sales rep.

SPEAKER_00: 21:18

Without a doubt. Here's the only disadvantage, though. Um, owners, founders, everything else, right? While they're very passionate, they tend to be the ones that do not follow rules. So, in other words, they because they rely so heavily on the fact that they can get in front of people because others want to talk to somebody that actually owns the business, it makes it easier to get those discovery calls. But the problem is if you really don't exercise the skill sets and follow your messaging and your sales process, right? You're never going to be able to maximize it. You're never going to be able to create a system and process. And guess what? There's no way to bring on another sales rep and have them follow your system. Instead, they rely on following you, which is destined to fail. Why? Because they're never going to be the owner of the company, and you they don't have the luxury, right, of doing what you can do and haphazardly selling things. Sales is best suited, actually, outside of the founder, even if it's the founder to start, but creating literally the process that everyone must follow, the system that everybody must follow, so that you aren't pigeonholed into always being the number one or only producer.

SPEAKER_01: 22:45

Yeah, this conversation reminds me a lot of part of my discussion in uh episode number 33 back in January with Chris Filipiak, where he basically we talked about how the founder needs to be the chief salesperson, needs to model it out, develop the SOPs, and you're gonna fail if you just try to hire other salespeople that expect them to be successful unless you've modeled it first yourself. And so that kind of sounds like what you're saying. You know, founders can get away with things, but if they want to hire successful salespeople, they do need to standardize a good process to insert other salespeople into yeah, absolutely, you're absolutely right.

SPEAKER_00: 23:25

Um, and again, just want to stress the the importance of as an owner or founder, typically you're the worst employee that you can have because you are the ones that that rarely ever follows their own rules, right? So, like be careful and like treat yourself in the respect of this, even if you're a solopreneur, ask yourself constantly if if I were working for me, would I fire me? Would I coach myself up or out? Am I actually like doing what the company needs, not what I feel like doing? And it's very difficult when you're the owner of the company to be able to do that. But the sooner that you actually commit to that policy, the better your company will be and the more scalable it can be in the future.

SPEAKER_01: 24:19

I find myself having those conversations with myself regularly. It's funny you said that. Um so when you engage with a small business owner who's looking to grow their business, what what what do you what's the process you go through with them? What does it really look like?

SPEAKER_00: 24:39

Yeah, for sure. So we talked about again the first step being modeling and then the second step being positioning. But the third step that we go through out of a five-step process is managing. And everybody like has their opinions on, let's say, a CRM, right? A like a customer relationship management software piece, right? Some people love them, some people hate them, some people all have all these discussions. What I can say is this when we get into step three, what we have to find is an actual system and process that you can handle the day-to-day and that you can adopt it. And I'll be clear with this nobody that I've ever met has enough brain power to manage all of these relationships, these tasks that happen every single day without the help of some type of technology. The critical point is that we bring to the table is this. We've seen it time and time again that setting up the CRM in a specific way is the most important piece. Unfortunately, a lot of CRMs are set up opposite on how they should be set up for day-to-day adoption, which is why most people hate them.

SPEAKER_01: 25:58

So tell me more about that.

SPEAKER_00: 26:00

Yeah, for sure. So first thing is this. For instance, most CRMs have like are not set up at all to manage their their, we'll call them like um their center of influences, their they're they're uh reciprocal partners, they're you know, they're the people that are getting them key introductions and referrals.

SPEAKER_01: 26:24

Yeah, if I think about my own CRM, I have the standard Gantt chart with different stages, but nowhere does it tell me where the where the opportunity came from and what relationships are associated with that opportunity, right?

SPEAKER_00: 26:39

Without a doubt, right? So let's make this clear for you, Cal, right? Like in your CRM, your your source pipeline, these are the people that are getting you in front of like of other people in your ideal space. They're the ones giving you key introductions and referrals. Those guys are your assets, they are your unpaid sales team. If you're not managing those relationships very specifically in your CRM, it is virtually impossible to optimize growth for your company. And yet, most people for a CRM that doesn't exist at all. At best, they'll take a couple notes or something like that, but that's about it. But there should be an actual pipeline set up in your CRM specifically for sources and set up in a very specific way so that you can manage your best, better, okay, whatever, like you know what I mean, your levels of sources. And so much so that the configurations of the fields should be set up in a very certain way to make it very easy to track and manage those those relationships in a reciprocal format. The second thing that I'll bring up is the sales category for you, right? Unfortunately, most people have like the typical stages of sales, right? But what they they don't realize is this for most small businesses, long-term nurturing is an absolute joke. It's a waste of time. You're better off suited taking somebody that is a long-term play, giving them over, like introducing them or referring them to one of your partners, and getting the partner to appreciate that action and getting you in front of somebody new to talk to. But instead, what we do is we pretend that there are a lot of people in our sales pipeline that stands a chance of being a client. But if you look back at the data for most small business owners, most client acquisition happens almost immediately. Not so much that they sign up with you that day, but you literally talk to somebody, they understand what you do, they need what you do, and it progresses in a pretty quick sales cycle. You know what I mean? We get another meeting set up, we discuss the scope and some pricing. I send over some pricing options, we go back and forth a few times, they sign a contract, they're a new client. Very rare would like you cow, let's say, meet somebody, send them a newsletter or like, you know what I mean, like for several years, and then out of the blue, they become a client. I'm not saying that it doesn't happen ever, but it's a pretty like ridiculous waste of time and money, like trying to keep up with a lot of these folks. You're better off figuring out how to get your partners in front of new people in your target audience with a clear, concise, and compelling message that goes direct to client acquisition. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_01: 29:47

Yes. It uh definitely conflicts with other opinions. Um yes.

SPEAKER_00: 29:55

Yes. Uh, and we've been in heated debates over a lot of other folks that are thought leaders in different categories, such as lead generation and nurturing and marketing and things like that. And don't get me wrong, Cal, what I'm I'm not saying is this that there's no room for nurturing. If you depending on your company, what you offer and your target audience and things like that, yeah, nurturing may be a wonderful way to do it.

SPEAKER_01: 30:21

As long as you can do it on the cheap, right? You don't want to spend a lot of money on a person to go do a bunch of one off nurturing. I think we definitely agree there. If there's a way we can automate the nurturing, Nurturing, maybe it's worth doing, um, depending on the industry and everything. But um, yeah, I I agree completely. We don't want to have a sales rep whose job is to spend 37 hours a week nurturing and three hours a week selling.

SPEAKER_00: 30:46

Yes. The main thing is just look at the numbers. As a small business owner, you cannot accept doing everything just for the the possibility of a few wins here and here and there haphazardly. As a small business owner, you must commit to the things that are giving and driving the best ROI because you don't have the luxury or bandwidth in spreading yourself thin. So let's look at nurturing for a second. Cal, what if you did nurturing yourself? My question would then be this what if it works? What happens? In other words, you send out all this stuff, and what if if if, like on your nurturing efforts, people just come back to you and say this? You send this email out, and there are then 50 people that respond to going something like this, hey Cal, thanks a lot for sending this. How's the family? Well, somebody's got to reply to that email now, right? So now it's pulling you from other things that you could be doing, right? But instead you're you're managing a nurture campaign that isn't really generating new leads or something like that, but all it's doing is creating more work. When I would literally say, why don't we just kill the whole nurturing like campaign and focus on really building your relationships for your source partners so that they can get you in front of other people that need your services now. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_01: 32:21

Yes.

SPEAKER_00: 32:25

So again, it's not necessarily that I'm saying no marketing, it's not necessarily that I'm saying no lead generation, it's not necessarily that I'm saying no nurturing. All I'm saying is that in my ecosystem, if you are running a B2B services company in a solo micro or small lane, it's very likely that those things are probably not your priority. In fact, you should really concentrate on getting more connections, introductions, and referrals with a clear, concise, and compelling message because that's where the data will show you where you're getting almost all of your best client acquisitions.

SPEAKER_01: 33:08

So, uh, Tom, how did you get to this point? Like walk me through kind of the key milestones in your career that got you to where you are today.

SPEAKER_00: 33:18

Yeah, for sure. Um I've owned six different companies in my life. I've been an uh entrepreneur uh going on uh 26, 27 years now, um, and worked with hundreds of companies along the way. Um, so what I've seen is this with my own companies, I've learned a lot of things about what works, what doesn't work, right? And all in between. And same with working with a lot of clientele. While I can do a lot of different things, I've chosen the thing that aggravates me the most. So when I put on my little cape every single day and get excited to wake up in the morning, I've selected one thing to solve. And that one thing for me is this with all of my companies that I've built on my own, as well as companies that I've worked with, all small companies, there's one thing that is consistent. I have blown and seen people blow a ton of cash, money, time, resources, you name it, confusing lead generation with client acquisition. So, my entire job is to say, what is the one thing that I want to take my experience and apply it to small business community? And that is this stop chasing leads, focusing on, focus on turning conversations and into clients, and that will solve so much of your pipeline development issues. It will solve a lot of stress issues on how to grow the company, it will increase your LTV impact. Everything can be solved by one paradigm shift, and that is this leads are not the answer, right? Conversations to clients are the answer for my ecosystem.

SPEAKER_01: 35:06

And so say you you sign up a new client, a small business owner, maybe they don't have a sales team, maybe you got one salesperson, but nothing big. Um, how do you get their mindset to shift into the lane it needs to be in for your process?

SPEAKER_00: 35:25

It's a really good question. I mean, I look, the nobody nobody pushes back on the general concept because most people have already seen it happen. Let's go over the concept again. If let's say you and I work together, Cal, right? And I literally just said, like, are we in agreement that like your best clients are gonna come from connections, introductions, and referrals? There's not a disagreement there, right? So, like everybody's in agreement that that has has happened.

SPEAKER_01: 35:53

The problem is we all feel like we should be able to scale the business, and scaling is different than using relationships. That's kind of the mindset problem, right?

SPEAKER_00: 36:03

100%, right? And let's be clear with this. And this is where like a lot of the thought leaders and like lead generation, marketing, and other people that are like alongside what I do, right? And they sometimes get upset at my message. And so let me be clear with this. I'm not saying again, that like nurturing is never going to be part of your business, that marketing isn't going to be a key component of scaling and growing your company at some point, right? That lead generation, different lead generation strategies could apply at different times. What I'm saying is that you must understand where you're at in the business life cycle. If you are a solo micro or small business in the B2B services space, you will at that stage be getting all of your best clients or pretty close to it, right? From connections, introductions, and referrals. And you just need to focus on that. Every single mistake of chasing squirrels when you're in that space is a waste of time, money, and resources.

SPEAKER_01: 37:04

Yeah, that's a good way to put it. And many, many small businesses never really need to outgrow that. They can do just fine with a founder who adopts some reasonably good sales and marketing practices.

SPEAKER_00: 37:19

Yeah, you know, you bring up a valid point, right? And and everybody's different. And um, what I've tried to do um as I start to get a little bit older is to not judge, right? Um and what I mean by that is this we're pressed as business owners right now of more, more, more. And like honestly, if you talk to every uh everybody in the business community, right, if you somehow admit that you want to like actually revert your business, simplify your business, right? It's almost like shunned, right? Because we're like drip, this this whole message is driven into us that you need to create a business from scratch, and then you need to keep growing it, and then you're gonna scale it, and then get it so to the point where you can make like like crazy multiples off of an exit strategy or something like that. And while you can do that, what I find is it's very unreasonable for most individuals, right? I think what is m more realistic is to ask yourself go sit in a rocking chair with nobody else around and say, What do I really want from this company? What do I really want from this company? And really define that and be okay with it. And then what I would say is this whatever you want as the outcome, go to reverse engineer that and make it as simple and easy to achieve as you possibly can. Adding complexity, even if you're successful, is a monster that eats everyone alive. Don't get better or don't get bigger just because, right? The only reason that you should get bigger is that it's part of a grand plan that you really, really want in the end. Otherwise, make the company as simple and easy as possible. Do good work for your clients and call it a day.

SPEAKER_01: 39:18

So I gotta ask you um about the uh the name of your business, Define Enterprises. Is there a story behind that name?

SPEAKER_00: 39:29

Yeah, the Defined Enterprises is this. I I I've never I never was okay with the lifestyle of or the uh the overall uh overall idea of what makes a successful person, right? I hated the idea. Um because going back on the concept that we just talked about, it never ends. It's always more, more, more, more, more. And if you look at like um just basic statistics of like like of overall happiness of people in a multitude of categories, of let's look at the finances, you still look at so many people that are uber rich, right, Cal, that are really unhappy with their life, right? They're still constantly chasing these other things, right? Or look at the opposite end of the spectrum. I have no money, and these people are unhappy because they don't have any money and they're always trying to strive to whatever. And the reverse is always true. I've also seen plenty of people that are uber rich, right? And been very happy, or people that are very poor and very, very happy.

SPEAKER_01: 40:37

Yeah, that's it's amazing. It's amazing. Um, I think once you get, you know, you you probably need a certain level of money to, you know, not have to worry about certain things in life. But once you get to that point, I'll hear people say, Oh, I don't really care that much about money. I just use it as a way to keep score. Well, then it's like, yeah, it matters a lot to you. If if you're gonna keep score based on how many dollars you have in your bank account or your brokerage account, then that's how you even if you say it doesn't matter, you're basically saying, I'm keeping score and I'm beating you because I have more money. And maybe you're maybe I'm a better businessman or husband or father, um, but I happen to work in a job where I've made certain decisions in my life to prioritize other things, and I don't have as many zeros in my bank account. Doesn't mean I'm somehow less than somebody else. It's just decisions that we make in life.

SPEAKER_00: 41:33

Yes. And so what I would say to you, Cal, is this you and everybody else, be defiant. Don't go with what the the world is telling you to do or how to be or something like that. Defy that, and literally just say, This is who Cal is, and I'm okay with that, right? Like, I want to be Cal. And don't listen or follow anything or anyone else. Be defiant and focus on what Cal wants. You know what I mean? And when you do that, what you're gonna find is that the alignment of who you are and who you want to be is direct lockstep. And when that happens, people really like to be around other people like you that are comfortable in their own shoes. So not to get like crazy, but if you want a better world, in my opinion, what you do is eliminate that gap as much as you can for people, and that is what you want over here on this side versus what I have. And the bigger the gap, the more frustration, the more survivalism, the more issues with regard to like overall like frustrations, and and you can look at it as deep as like wars getting started, and so on and so forth. But the moment that people defy that entire idea of that I always want more or need more, you start to eliminate that. Overall, you become a better human being. And because you defied the normal approach that we're all taught, that defiance is honestly makes you a better person and the world a better place, right? So that's kind of where the the company, you know, company name got started.

SPEAKER_01: 43:22

Very cool. I can I can respect that a lot. Um, so Tom, uh really enjoyed this conversation with you. Um, before we wrap up here, is there anything else that you want to bring up?

SPEAKER_00: 43:34

No, I think the main thing, if I were to leave anybody um that's listening today with one thing, right? I'm I uh there are multiple things in my life I've no I have no idea about. There are multiple things in my life that I'm not very good about. But over 26 years of working with solo micro and small business owners, I would just urge you to this, uh urge you to consider this. Stop chasing leads, focus your and your entire attention on how to get in front of your target audience through connections, introductions, and referrals with a clear, concise, and compelling message. Why? Because the data clearly shows you that nearly all of your best clients are gonna come in this fashion. Don't waste any time, money, and energy on things that do not convert right now in your business life cycle into ideal clients. When you're able to get in front of the right people with an excellent message, it's everything you need to grow the company to where you want it wants to be. This solves so many issues. And if this message could just go from where we are today to anybody that's listening, I feel like it was well worth the time and truly appreciate Cal for having me on.

SPEAKER_01: 44:59

You're welcome, Tom. And if folks want to follow up with you, uh want some help from you, what's the best way for them to get in touch with you?

SPEAKER_00: 45:05

Yeah, real simple. Uh, you can email me at tfriedman at defiant defiantenterprises.com, or you can DM me on LinkedIn, just find my profile and send me a message over. Would love to connect with anybody that's running a business or has a few questions on what we went over today.

SPEAKER_01: 45:21

Awesome. And where physically are you located? Nice. Well, thanks again, Tom. Really appreciate your time telling your story, giving uh shrewd advice to other business owners how to think about lead generation versus you know, productive sales. So I really appreciate that. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00: 45:43

You got it. Well, thanks a lot, Cal.

SPEAKER_01: 45:45

All right. Another episode in the books. Thank you so much for tuning in. For show notes and more, visit empoweringhealthy business.com. If you would like to have a one on one discussion with me or positively engage smart books to help with your business, you can reach me at cal C A L at empoweringhealthy business.com or message me on LinkedIn where I am easy to find. Until next time, this is Empowering Healthy Business, the podcast for business owners, signing off.