Powerful Business Strategies
3 Reasons Why Everything You Have Ever Learned About Business Is Wrong – PART 2
3 Reasons Why Everything You Have Ever Learned About Business Is Wrong – PART 2
1) Strategic Marketing vs. Tactical Marketing
2) Outside Perception vs. Inside Reality
3) Crush the Competition vs. Copy the Competition
Powerful Business Strategies is broadcast live Mondays at 12 Noon ET Music on W4CY Radio (www.w4cy.com) part of Talk 4 Radio (www.talk4radio.com) on the Talk 4 Media Network (www.talk4media.com January Jones Sharing Senior Success is viewed on Talk 4 TV (www.talk4tv.com).
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- Duration:
- 48m
- Broadcast on:
- 12 Aug 2024
- Audio Format:
- mp3
The topics and opinions expressed in the following show are solely those of the hosts and their guests and not those of W4CY Radio its employees are affiliates. We make no recommendations or endorsements for radio show programs, services or products mentioned on air or on our web. No liability explicit or implied she'll be extended to W4CY Radio its employees are affiliates. Any questions or comments should be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for choosing W4CY Radio. Welcome to powerful business strategies where you will find out that everything you have ever learned about growing your business is wrong. Finally, a show where you'll learn the right way to grow your business by learning business and financial strategies that your competition isn't doing. And now here is your host, President of Next Step CFO Michael Barberita and joining Michael for today's show as an executive moderator is Chukie Obio. Yes, this is Chukie and I believe that gratitude is undefeated and growth is about the next step. It is an honor for me to moderate today's discussion with my good friend Michael. Michael, how are you? How you doing Chukie? As Chukie said, my name is Michael Barberita, President of Next Step CFO and Next Step CFO is a fractional CFO and strategic implementation firm. Our vision is to ensure overwhelmed business owners achieve the time freedom and consistent profits to build a legacy and live the life they desire. Our mission is dedicated to guiding small business owners to leveraging their time, exploding their profits and building a meaningful legacy. This show, Powerful Business Strategies, and our book of the same name is his step toward accomplishing that vision and mission. So with that, I want to hand it back to our my co-author and moderator for today's show, Chukie Obio. Michael, thank you. So today's episode is titled Three Reasons Why Everything You Have Ever Learned About Business is Wrong. This is part two of that discussion. We got such resonance with part one of the discussion, Michael, that the game plan here is to continue to drive insights on this topic and just a quick disclaimer before we jump in. So Michael and I are both affiliated with a number of different organizations. And I currently serve as the managing director of business development for better price of global business focused law firm. In addition to that, I collaborate strategically with Michael to moderate business round tables really coast to coast with business owners. We also document the best practices that we learn from these round tables. And we've put those in our book, Powerful Business Strategies, as Michael referenced earlier. So today's program is about our learnings and our personal success stories, but truly our personal success stories as well. Now, that being said, I should note, look, I've got a, and Michael, like you might, you might chuckle at this. I've got a mission today. My mission today is to be a fearless moderator. So I'm going to have a few questions for you, Michael. All right. The idea is to learn and drive the right kinds of strategies that the competition isn't doing. So Michael, I'll toss it back over to you. Great. Thank you, Chukie. So as I said last week, I thought it was time for us to finally talk about what we mean by everything you've ever learned about generating leads and growing your business is wrong. So what I really want to accomplish today is to talk about and what I, in part two, essentially, is talk about a system for marketing and growing your business to a point where it becomes instantly obvious to your prospects that they would be crazy to do business with anyone other than you at any time, anywhere, or any price. You know, at the beginning of the show, Chukie talked about that we talk about our successes. Well, I'm going to talk about a failure. So one of the businesses I failed at was a comprehensive outpatient rehabilitation facility called Freedom Therapy Center. And one of the reasons why I failed is because I implemented business and financial strategies that my competition was doing. I lacked incentive incessantly about how we had top-notch therapists, how we had a medical director on staff, how we were in a convenient, modern location, how we had free parking, knowing that my competition was saying the same thing and I wasn't doing anything about changing it. It's remarkable. I even marketed the same way as my competition was. Through doctor referrals. Although, one second, Chukie, I have a frog in my throat. Absolutely. Yeah, no worries. I call that wisdom in your throat, right, Michael? I mean, there's so much goodness that you've got to share that we've got to get it all out. Look, I'm also taking some notes on this and I see that there are quite a few business owners that are on and this is good, right? I mean, this shows for business owners and leaders really coast-to-coast. I also see that some of you are lining up your questions. You could chat us your questions. So, very excited. Michael, Michael. Okay, I'm back. I'm sorry, Chukie. I had a I had a bout with COVID and you know how that can be. And so, let me just say again, one of the reasons why I failed is because I implemented business and financial strategies that my competition was doing. I yacked incessantly about how we had top-notch therapists, how we had a medical director on staff, how we were in a convenient modern location, how free parking, ignoring the fact that my competition was saying the exact same thing. And by the way, notice I use the word we in front of every one of those statements. Remarkable. More on that later. But because I was yacking incessantly about the same thing my competition was doing, there was no reason other than a doctor referral to come to Freedom Therapy Center. Now, in contrast, in a business I succeeded at, which was a chain of specialty retail ski stores, we identified two specific problems that the customer had and didn't want while providing two unique solutions. Now, one of the problems that the customer had in the ski industry is they never really knew if the ski they were being sold was the right ski for them until they took it up on the mountain and skied on it. Now, we at our specialty retail stores and everyone had many hot-shot ski sales people. These are people who ski 50 times a year, all their lives and knew everything, knew everything about skiing. But despite the fact that customers had more reliance on those types of people, it was not convincing enough. You had the ski, the ski on the mountain to be sure it was right for you. So we had a ski guarantee. Buy the ski, ski at three times. If you don't like it, bring it back for a brand new pair and keep bringing it back until we get it right. Interesting. Yeah, it sounds simple, doesn't it? I mean, but it solved the problem. People could buy with confidence once and for all. They wanted to buy, they just, they wanted desperately to buy, they just didn't want to make a $300 to $500 investment or more and ruined their entire skiing experience. The second problem the customer had was they didn't understand how to kill a match. They're ski equipment with their clothing. So we created clothing packages that matched the most popular colored ski combinations. We took all the guesswork out of buying clothing and it created a great cross-sell opportunity. You see, everyone had packages for equipment, skis, bindings and poles, but no one had packages for clothing. And we put together color coordinated hats, bibs, parkers and sweaters in a package that was also color coordinated with the most popular ski equipment. So it's about solving problems and offering unique solutions. So there's a great contrast between a successful approach, the strategic approach and failure, which was a tactical approach. One scenario where I was doing exactly what my competition was doing and the other scenario where I was executing strategies that my competition was not doing. So Michael, a couple of questions streaming in from that and thank you so much for making that contrast very clear. So two questions related to this. So one is how do you start that process of identifying a unique problem that maybe the competition is not addressing? Well, there was a process called a position-of-market dominant. So we're going to go into that a little later on. And one of the steps to that process is creating a customer avatar. And I'm also going to talk about that later on. So to answer the question, I'm probably going to be addressing that a little later on. Yeah, looking forward to that. So that's that. And if I don't, call me on it. Oh, Michael, you know, yeah, this is the accountability podcast, right? We're going to hold each other accountable. This is probably a really quick one. It's related to the story. So how did you switch from one industry to another industry? I mean, the two sort of stories that you described seem like two very different industries. Was that part of the calculus for you? So in one sort of industry, with the medical and health care services, you were doing one thing and then in a different sort of business, the ski business, you were doing a different thing. Did the industry have anything to do with that? It didn't. But I got to tell you a secret. Go ahead. The ski industry was my first business. And so I did that right. And then I took stupid pills and didn't apply the same concepts to the medical business. Most people would say, oh, he probably was in the medical business first and then went to the ski business because he went from, you know, from failure to success. I went from success to failure. Well, Michael, look, I think a lot of business owners would resonate with that. Thank you so much for that clarification. Now that I'm inspired by that. Very helpful. OK, so the three reasons why everything you've ever learned about growing your business is wrong is understanding these three things. Number one, strategic marketing versus tactical marketing. I talked about that very vaguely earlier, but I talked about it a little bit more specifically next week, last week. And we're going to review that again. Outside perception versus inside reality. We're going to review that again, review that again. And then crush the competition versus copy the competition. We're going to get into that more today because we ran out of time last week. So let me review the strategic versus the tactical. There are two main components to any marketing plan, strategic marketing and tactical marketing. Strategic marketing is the content of your message. It's what you say and how you say it, including the concepts that you choose to focus on. The words, images you use to communicate those concepts and the tone in which the message is delivered. So tactical marketing, on the other hand, has to do with the execution of the strategic marketing, such as placing the ads, building a website, attending trade shows, focusing on colors, fonts, and things like that. I ask a business owner what their marketing plan was. The answer almost always comes back in terms of tactical marketing. They send direct mail, they run radio ads, they create a website, those kinds of things. But the key to effective marketing is to master the strategic side, not the tactical side. What you say in your marketing and how you say it are almost always, always more important than the marketing media where you say it. Now, I don't want to totally minimize the tactical part. The tactical part is important to a point, of course, but the real leverage is in the messaging itself, and that's the strategic side of marketing. In fact, when a marketing campaign fails, and I used to do this all the time, the tendency is almost always to blame that marketing medium like the TV or radio station, which is the tactical part of the plan without any regard to how good or bad the strategy behind that marketing piece was. During the show, we'll learn how to see differently in a way that will make a profound difference in your marketing results. But I want to point out that when I was with Freedom Therapy Center, we used to run ads, and I was real excited when we went on TV. We had TV ads, but the messaging was all wrong. Of course, I blamed the TV stations, which was totally inaccurate. That's the tactical. That's thinking tactically and not strategically. Okay, now I want to review inside reality versus outside perception. Consider this, there are actually two sides to your business. First, there's what I call the inside reality, and second, what I call the outside perception. The inside reality encompasses everything you do, and everything that makes your business outstanding. It's all of your skills that people who work for you, your expertise, the way you service your customers before, during, after the sale, it's your systems, your operational procedures, your commitment to excellence, it's your passion and the way you conduct your business on a daily basis. Add these all together, and they equal your value to the marketplace. That's what I call the inside reality. However, your outside perception has to do with how customers and prospects perceive your company. The outside perception is developed through the interactions that your prospects and customers have with your business. But here's the problem. If you provide unmatched and unequal customer service like we did at Freedom Therapy Center, and your customers absolutely love you like they did at Freedom Therapy Center, none of that matters to your prospects. If number one, they don't even know you exist as an option. Or number two, they see your marketing and advertising, and because of your inability to market your business correctly, their perception is that you are no different, or no better, or no worse than your competitors, which is exactly what happened to me at Freedom Therapy Center. And I would estimate that well over 95% of all businesses are completely inept when it comes to this. And the end result is that your inside reality and your outside perception are perceived to be different. Interesting. Profile point. And we just got a, this is, I guess a quasi comment and a question, but I'll frame it as a question for you, Michael. This idea of your inside reality, how does that impact word of mouth referrals? So you mentioned, you know, your customers or clients may be getting really good service, but the prospects don't know about that really good service from existing clients. How does that impact word of mouth referrals? Should a business owner maybe empower clients, customers to do more word of mouth referrals? Well, the word of mouth referrals are people who probably have been to your have experienced your product, whether it's a product or service. And so they understand the inside reality and they're able to communicate that to somebody else. Correct. But but a prospect out of the blue doesn't understand your inside reality. And that's where the disconnect or that's where that's where the difference is. So they're great referrals. Okay. My God. Anytime you could get a word of mouth referral, it's always outstanding. But it's because that person who's giving the word of mouth referral in all likelihood has experienced your inside reality. It's your job to communicate your inside reality in the form of whether it's marketing or advertising or networking for all that. Well, very helpful. Yeah, not quite insightful. So in essence, it's back to the idea of the content. So the content of messaging should incorporate some of those inside reality points. Right. You are engaging with a prospect that's not heard of you is not interacted with you. Yeah, very helpful, Michael. That's right. And but you can't do it with, I hope so marketing is we'll get we'll get to that though. Great. When you look like everyone else, the only way to differentiate you from the rest is price. And that's why your marketing must do the heavy lifting for you. But here's the brutal truth. If you're always competing on price, it's because there's no discernible difference between you and your competition. There have been no additional parameters or relevant issues introduced to educate your prospects as to what really constitute the best value when it comes to buying what you sell. And if you feel like you're always competing on price, it's because price is the only relevant variable that you've given your prospects to consider. From the prospect's perspective, all things appear equal so they default to the business offering the lowest price. It's not your fault because every business school teaches the same old theory based on a broken model. However, I'm about to show you how to fix that once and for all. And what we're going to talk about is to finally allow you to first be better than your competition and then second, do better marketing than your competition. This allows you to separate your business from your competition and become the obvious choice for your prospects to do business with. I want to challenge the audience today and I'm going to talk a little bit about jargon but I'm going to ask a question at the end of my explanation of jargon and see if we get any reaction. Interesting. Most marketing out there is jargon. It's rarely commonplace and predictable. It lacks power to evoke interest to overuse and repetition. And so let me give you some examples of jargon. Largest selection, lowest price, best service, highest quality, most professional, most convenient, been in business for x hundred years. We're honest. So does my inside reality, what really makes me good at what I do, does that really shine through when I say those things? Can you tell specifically what makes me valuable to the marketplace when I say highest quality or best service? Absolutely not. Yeah, absolutely not. Yeah, right, right. So I'm not saying that you shouldn't be those kinds of things. Those actually make up a foundation that you want to use to build your inside reality but consider this. If my marketing says that I offer high quality and great service, isn't that drearyly commonplace and predictable? Doesn't it lack power to evoke interest to overuse a repetition? Does my inside reality, what really makes me good at what I do, does that really shine through when I say those things? Can you tell specifically what makes me valuable to the market place when I say highest quality or best service? You see, you simply can't describe, demonstrate, exhibit, reveal, or even display your inside reality using jargon. It's impossible. And unfortunately, the end result is an outside perception that you're no different than anyone else. There's absolutely no distinction, no separation, no differentiation, none. You just flat out cannot make your inside reality and outside perception match up when you use jargon like this. And in fact, let me give you a way you can easily and quickly evaluate your own marketing and your competitors marketing to see if you're getting caught up in the jargon trap. This evaluation is called, well, I would hope so. When you make a claim, don't think about it in terms of the words coming out of your mouth. Think about it in terms of the words entering your prospect's ears. This will enable you to realize how absurd most jargon is and how it sounds. So here's my challenge. Look at your competitors marketing messages and then ask yourself if the prospect's immediate response might be, well, I would hope so. Because when you think about it, why would anyone buy from someone who doesn't have the highest quality, who doesn't have the best service or honest people? So look at your competitors marketing and then look at your own. Are you saying the same thing? Or if your competitors are saying something different, is the customer still saying, well, I hope so stuff. I think you're going to find that we're all doing the same thing. So that's my challenge. Check out your competitors. See if they're doing, I hope so marketing. Check out your your communication, your marketing messages. See if you're doing, I hope so. That's a great challenge. In fact, we're actually getting some ideas from business owners. So folks are saying, I should probably check out my social media post as well as my competitor social media posts to run the same challenge. In addition to the website, it's funny, someone else made this comment about an elevator pitch. So I should maybe audit my elevator pitch compared to my competitors and see if I would pass this challenge or not. So yeah, Michael, really practical advice that you're providing there. Thank you. No problem. But I think you'll find that there's a lot of hopes, I hope so marketing out there, a lot of a lot of jargon. So remember, it's it's not who can do what you do. It's who can say what you say. And if your marketing is full of jargon, then sadly that answer is all of your competitors can say what you say. You know, my competitors never copied my ski guarantee or package clothing. Now they could have, I don't know why they didn't. But even if even if they did, it wouldn't matter because they would have been too late. Okay, they would have been too late, but they never copied it even though it was working famously. It is evident that this might be a problem for you now and a tremendous competitive advantage if you could figure out how to fix this for your own business. So let me see if I could show you how to fix this. Let me explain how you can follow a very simple process. We call the conversion formula. We talked about this in previous shows and we'll keep talking about it because it's critical. It's a critical formula and you need to understand it. And if you're going to differentiate yourself from your market, which is a very difficult thing to do, this is way to do it, the conversion formula. And when you use the conversion formula correctly, you will eliminate jargon forever and your outside perception will finally become an excellent reflection of your inside reality. And finally, begin to get the results from your marketing that you should be getting. Now the conversion formula has four main components. Let me start with a brief introduction and then I'll go into more detail. The first component of the conversion formula is called captivate. This is simply the process of interrupting the customer and getting qualified prospects to pay attention to your market. This is often accomplished by affecting the prospect emotionally. It's the problem the customer has and doesn't want. Sounds simple enough, doesn't it? Unfortunately, it's a lot more difficult to pull off in real life unless you understand what you're about to learn during the course of all of our radio shows. You remember one of the problems the customer had in the ski industry was that they never really knew if the ski they were being sold was the right ski for them until they got it up on the mount and skied on it? That's not jogging. That's a real emotional problem that the customer has. The second component of the conversion formula is called fascinate. Once the prospect is interrupted through the captivate, it's critical to give them the promise that information is forthcoming that will help them make the best decision possible or in other words facilitate their decision-making process. This is also best accomplished on an emotional level. More simply put, the fascinate engages the prospect because it's the solution to the problem that they can't find. The solution we had to the problem for the customer in the ski business was ski the skis three times. If you don't like it, bring it back for a brand new parent so we get it right. And by the way, the conversion formula works like any other formula. It has to be executed in the right order, otherwise it doesn't work. Chuki and I believe that these first two components are so important that we have a name for them. We call the captivate and fascinate which are the first two components of the conversion formula, the position of market dominance because if you don't get those first two components right, forget about the rest of the formula. Agreed. It's interesting, Michael, and this might go to the heart of your earlier point about why your competitors in the ski business did not necessarily copy your strategy, right? Based on the fact that you had already created a position of market dominance. Well, that's it. But I still to this day wonder why because I'll tell you why, Chuki, they were getting people doing comparison shopping and I found this out from salespeople over at competitors. They were getting people asking what their ski guarantee was. They were getting people asking where their clothing packages were. Interesting. Using your lingo, the lingo that you had inserted into the marketplace. Right. That's right. I don't understand why they didn't do it. Maybe they didn't want to copycat. This is two or three competitors, not just one. There's a lot of competitors in the ski retail arena. To this day, like I said, I don't know why they wouldn't have implemented. I would have at least tried to implement the variation. I would have called it something different. I would have at least tried to come up with an alternative. This might relate to the next step in the conversion formula. But how did you educate the marketplace? You certainly got customers to start to use that lingo. How did you educate the marketplace? Good question. One of the great features of the position of market dominance is that it flows freely into that third component called educate. Because once you've captivated and fascinated the prospect, you now have their attention, which is hard to get today. Yes. And as a result, you have the time, a little time to give them more information that allows them to logically understand how and why you solve that emotional problem. Now, in the educating that I did, I just simply went into the fact that most skiers or beginners just never know if the skier they're being sold is right for them. They have no idea. And people resonate with that. And that was just part of the education process with that particular program. And educate is accomplished by giving detailed, quantifiable, specific, inside reality revealing information. The educate turns the corner from an emotional cell to a logical cell. So people make buying decisions emotionally and then back them up logically. The educate provides the logic to the emotional problem and solution that you presented. So this conversion is a logical cell. It's easier to do if you just follow the conversion formula. The conversion formula does that work for you. So the emotional component is the captivating fascinate. The logical component is the educate. And so that's really why this formula is so effective. That's a remarkable point. I was just saying, Michael, that's a remarkable point. It's interesting, right? And I appreciate the way that you've broken that down, right? So the first two steps, the captivating fascinate, that's the emotional. And as we know, and we found this out from our research, all buying decisions are based on emotions, right? And people just rationalize the decision later on. We had sort of a funny comment from one of the business owners. I need to rationalize the new flat screen TV that I'm thinking of buying. There you go. Football season's coming up. That's right. There you go. That's rational. And so the fourth and final component of the conversion formula is the close. Now, the prospect has been captivated based on problems that are important to them emotionally, fascinated by the promise of a solution to that emotional problem. They've examined the educational information that makes your solution to that emotional problem real and believable. So the last step is to give the prospect an offer, and that has to be compelling. So compelling that the prospect can't turn it down. So I want to review the five components of a compelling offer. So we have the first component, and we've gone over this in other shows as well. And once again, it's just critical information. We really want this to sink into the business community. So first is scarcity and urgency. So scarcity is there's only three left. But urgency is the offer ends Wednesday, Thursday, whatever day the offer ends. That's urgency. Second component of a compelling offer is risk reversal. And by the way, it's good. It's important to note that if you can incorporate even one or more of these components of a compelling offer, you enhance your offer. So if you combine scarcity and urgency with risk reversal, and risk reversal is where the seller in the transaction takes all or most of the risk, like I did in the ski business example, our ski guarantee was actually a risk reversal because a ski depreciates dramatically once you put a pair of bindings on it and ski on it. I mean, it depreciates incredibly dramatically. So we would take a loss for every ski that was returned. But we were so confident that the ski that they were being sold was the right ski for them. And as a matter of fact, we sold 8,000 pair and only eight came back. Oh, wow. Yeah, it's really. Yeah, it shows the people want to buy. They don't want to be sold. And they want to buy. And when they buy, and it's the right thing that they bought, they're happy. I mean, that's as simple as that. Great point. The third component of a compelling offer is adding value to your product to service. So let me see if I can give you an example for that. So when I was in the frozen cookie dough business, the problem the customer had was they didn't want to take up valuable oven space baking cookies. So if they were a pizza parlor, they didn't want to put cookies in with the pizza, or they didn't want to interrupt the flow of baking of baking the pizza. So what we did is we gave away a free convection oven with every opening order. Now, did we make money with doing that right away? No, no. But the key is, is we understood the long term value of a customer. And it was always worth it when we understood that once the customer started buying our product, there was a value to them buying it again and again. And there was a history that we had that they would buy it again and again. And so because we understood the value of a customer, we were willing to take a hit early on because we knew that the customer in all likelihood would love the product and continue to buy from us, which is what happened. But one of the two most important financial metrics for you to especially understand is especially if you want to scale, is to understand what your cost to acquire a customer is and understand what the long term value of a customer is. When you understand those two metrics, you really understand where you stand with respect to scaling. And in a future show, we'll talk more about that. I'm glad you said that. Yeah, you predicted some of the questions. I mean, we had a couple of autos like, oh, wow, like tell me more. Right. So we'll cover that because they are two important metrics, especially if you're thinking of scaling. You've got to get your get a handle on those two. So packaging and bundling multiple products and services is the fourth component of a compelling offer. And if you remember my ski business example, where everyone packaged equipment, but we also package clothing. And so when you package products together, there's a strong customer perception of value. And so if you could ever come up with an offer that that includes scarcity, urgency, risk reversal, adding value to a product or service, packaging and bundling, and then this final one called indifference to the outcome, where the prospect can tell when you're pressing to make a sale. And as a result, they surmise that you don't have their best interests in mind. That's a big problem. So by being indifferent to the outcome, it puts you and your prospect on the same side of the table where you're locking arms and getting to know that person in terms of their inspirations and goals and objectives helps with this process. So indifference to the outcome is a really important component of a compelling offer, because if done correctly, it puts you on the same side of the table as the prospect. So I think you can see from reviewing your competitor's marketing, and if you use the conversion formula, you'll be implementing a business strategy that your competition isn't doing. You'll be crushing your competitors versus copying your competitors, which is that third reason why everybody's ever learned about growing their business is wrong. So the conversion formula follows the formula for what marketing is supposed to do in the first place. In fact, at this point, we can simply say that your marketing's job is to captivate, fascinate, educate, and close. And here's something that almost no one understands, and one of the reasons everything you've ever learned about business is wrong is we've all been conditioned to believe that as long as you've captivated or interrupted the prospect, that's yet. That's good enough. Job is done. The job is done. No. But you have to realize that if you only captivate or interrupt the customer, that's only one fourth of that conversion formula. You've got to include all four components in the exact order, captivate, fascinate, educate, and close to get the maximum results from your marketing. So let me give you a quick example. When I asked most daycare providers why parents should choose them instead of the 17 other local daycares, they always give me the same boring answers. High quality, attention to detail. We supervise our staff better. We're honest. We've taken care of more than 200 kids and so on. Nothing but jargon. Unfortunately, this exact jargon shows up in boring and effective headlines. For instance, when I looked at the marketing of various daycares, they said things like safe, nurturing, and creative environment optimize your child's development, acclaimed by thousands of parents, accredited by industry professionals, a leader in early childhood care and education. Those are all real headlines from real ads, jargon and more jargon. But note this as well. These headlines all speak to the daycare, not the prospect. You could place the word we in front of all of that jargon and it would fit perfectly. We optimize your child's development. We are a claimed by thousands of parents. We are accredited by industry professionals. We are a leader in early childhood care and education. Prospects don't care about you and the daycare. They care about themselves and their kids. None of those headlines addresses their problems or concerns of the parents. You really want to interrupt John and Jane Doe. You've got to use more powerful language than that to get them to respond at an emotional level. So how about this headline to effectively communicate the concept of a safe, nurturing, and creative environment? Ever felt like your daycare treated your child like a number instead of a little person? Or how about this? One to convey being a leader in early childhood care and education. Is your daycare's idea of good educational curriculum watching Barney on TV? Or this one? Introducing a daycare center that doesn't consider mac and cheese to be one of the four major food groups. Or how about this one? How would you like your child to be reading at a first grade level before starting kindergarten? Brilliant. See all those headlines work in tandem with close up pictures that work to reinforce this powerful and compelling message. That headline that said ever felt like your daycare treated your child like a number instead of a little person. Next to it could be a four-year-old sitting in the corner with his head buried in his hands crying. Talk about powerful emotional and compelling. Talk about captivating and interrupting. Absolutely. See how these headlines speak to the issue of the prospect instead of the daycare? See how they reflect the fanatical attention to detail that is the foundation of the daycare's inside reality. It also passes the challenge. Michael, it passes the test, right? I hope so test. That's right. It cuts through at a very emotional and strategic level. Right. Exactly. Well, Chukki, I think it's time for compliments. Great. A compliment section. Absolutely. This is one of the segments in our show that's really in high demand and it's our contribution back to the business community. Michael, we have five business compliments that we want to spotlight today. We'll start with a business owner. You and I just have a lot of regard for. By the way, these business compliments are for business owners that are coast to coast. Really a national scope here. The first business owner is Dr. Amanda Romine Nelson. She is a pharmacist, passionate about helping people decrease their meds, live healthy and thriving lives. You can check her out at askcoachamanda.com. We met her at one of our business round tables. We've just been really impressed. Fun fact about Dr. Amanda Romine Nelson. She is a pharmacist. She has an engineering background. She has a healthcare background. She's also done some work within the financial services space. I think it's safe to say that Amanda is a true problem solver. Right, Michael? That's right. Absolutely. There's no doubt about that. Right. A couple more folks. Second business compliment, Dylan Newcomb. He is with an organization called Uzazu. They just do fascinating work. It's a personal growth development work using a system that they call an embodied intelligence system to really drive your transformations, align mind, body and have that integration for higher performance. Again, just really interesting to check out what Dylan and his team are doing. Again, coast to coast. So Amanda's out on the east coast. Dylan's also out on the east coast. Let's go with the next business compliment, Gary DeJesus. He is in the Midwest and he's with G, D, J brands, effectively his initials, brands and top-notch brand management strategists. So some of what Michael has been talking about. I think touch and base with Gary might be a worthwhile exercise. Dylan and Gary provided some really good insights for our book interview. Another really good insight for our book interviews, the next business compliment, AJ Gowel. And AJ is in the Midwest, runs an organization called WordXin. The world's first ever human-powered cold email writing service. Michael, it's nice to have someone write an email for you, right? Yeah, oh my God. It only saved me about three hours a day. There you go. And then Michael, you've had quite a bit of success in your career working with tradespeople. The next and final business compliment is Jim Nadeau. He is out on the east coast. He's a master electrician. So in the trades with Nadeau electric, what I candidly want to spotlight about Jim and Tim is just their commitment to client satisfaction at a very high level. And Michael, maybe just a quick point, when you think of the trades and your experience with trades professionals, coast-to-coast, comes to mind for you. Yeah, no. They're a hard working group and they have, and you know, they really dig deep into, the thing I've noticed about the trades more than any other industry that I've worked with is that they care about the customer the most. Yes. They really do. They really work hard to make that customer happy. And when the customers are happy, they're in the press state, but they work hard to reverse that scenario. And so that's really one of the things for sure. And Chukie, in the three minutes we have left, I have some bonus content. Could I provide it? Okay. So what is one of the first steps needed to create a position of market dominance? You know, we've been talking about the position of market dominance, the captivate and fascinate. Well, it starts with what's called a customer avatar. Now, a customer avatar, also known as a customer profile, is a detailed profile of a company's ideal customer. It's a fictional representation of the type of person who is most likely to purchase a company's products or services. And the goal of a customer avatar is to help businesses understand their customers' needs and wants and how their products or services can solve for those needs and wants. And this information can help businesses create more effective marketing strategies and build a brand that resonates with their target audience. Now, the biggest challenge for business owners is they can't identify the real problem that their customer already has. That's how you separate yourself from your competitors. Now, you have to get very clear what your market is already screaming at the top of their lungs that they don't want, that problem that they don't want. And here's the key. In a customer avatar, you're speaking to one person and not an age range. I mean, how many of you have ever met a single you and being between the ages of 24 and 54? I mean, that's another problem with why we're all struggling because you're talking to someone who doesn't exist. There's a 27-year-old that you speak with them one way. And then there's a 50-year-old who's dealing with a completely different set of challenges, although the problem may be the same. But because of where they are in their life, it's different messaging. The customer avatar also has to capture the emotions that your prospect goes through. And so Chukie, with that, to get a copy of the book, powerful business strategy, simply go to our website, www.nextfcfo.net. It's totally complimentary. And until next Monday at noon Eastern Time, for Chukie Obio, I'm Michael Barbarita. And remember, don't keep doing what your competition is doing. Thank you. You have been listening to powerful business strategies, finding out that everything you ever learned about growing your business is wrong. Tune in next week and every week at noon Eastern Time on W4CY Radio with your host, Michael Barbarita of Next Step CFO and moderator Chukie Obio.