In today’s episode, we sit down with Bert Martinez, marketing strategist to celebrities, consultants, and companies, EOS Implementer, and the host of the Money For Lunch podcast.  Bert is also the author of Dominating Your Mind: 10 Simple Affirmations That’ll Crush Your Fears, Destroy your Doubts, and Make you Unstoppable. 

“You have to be willing to fail a lot and continue to fail a lot. That’s where innovation comes from,” says Bert, when asked about his secrets to growth, longevity, and relevancy in business.

We’ll chat with Bert about EOS implementation, finding your ideal client, as well as…

• How automation can help you filter out bad client matches
• How to determine if your marketing strategies are working
• Why focused marketing will get you further
• Narrowing down your message
• The trial and error process, and how it pertains to products and services
• And more

Listen now…

Mentioned in this episode:

• Bert’s Website
• Bert’s book: Dominating Your Mind

Transcript

Doug Hall: Hi everybody. This is Doug Hall, host of Doug Hall’s Go for Growth Podcast. Hello, Bert. 

Bert Martinez: Great, Doug, how are you doing?

Doug: Doing super. glad to have you today on the Go for Growth Podcast.

Bert: Well, I’m happy to be here.

Doug: Good. We’re connected through Steve Gordon, Unstoppable CEO. And I was 

Bert: Love Steve Gordon. Love the stuff he does. 

Doug: Awesome. Yeah, I sampled a bit of your Money For Lunch Podcast with him. And I’ve been a client with Steve for about a year and a half and kind of following his stuff for a couple, three, four years. So I, and actually, he’s my client too. So it’s kind of funny.

Bert: Oh, perfect. What do you do for him?

Doug: So I am a certified EOS implementer. And EOS is, do you know what that is from the 

Bert: Yeah, sure do. Yeah, I’ve had more than two guys that are involved.

Doug: Good.

Bert: There’s Gino, and I’m trying to remember the other guy 

Doug: Don? Mike? Or Payton? Yeah, well, there’s, have you interviewed them? Or do you have clients using them or? 

Bert: Both. Both. So I’ve interviewed one of those guys and I can’t remember exactly which one. And then yes, I’ve come across clients that use them and I, you know, I’m a big believer in that and the EOS system. And quite frankly, I was a little disappointed that I didn’t come up with it before they did. But 

Doug: Yeah, Gino, he just jumped through the rabbit hole there and pulled it all together and kind of aced everybody else out. 

Bert: Yeah, yeah. Well, and the thing about it is to me, the other side of the email. Yeah. Are you familiar with E-Myth? You know, and I,

Doug: I am a big E-Myth fan. I’d say that’s one of the earlier books on entrepreneurialism that I read. And it really resonated with me, right? It’s simple when you take the whole book but it’s well, it’s shocking when you think about it, like oh, yeah, that is the way entrepreneurs are.

Bert: Exactly. No, exactly. That was the first book that I had a monumental Aha, you know, like for like a whole year as I’m restructuring stuff because I can see all the holes and all the flaws, and I’m trying to fix everything and putting systems together. That book was monumental. And, you know, Michael Gerber had him on the show as well and stuff like that. And so it’s just, so to me, E-Myth is kind of gives you an overview and then the EOS books, if you will, kind of give you the nuts and bolts, the gritty blueprint step by step, you know, here’s how you implement the stuff, right? And so to me, they’re kind of very complimentary.

Doug: Yeah, I would agree. And that’s what appealed to me. My story is about five years ago, I was meeting with a potential client and he asked me about my favorite business book. And oddly enough, I said well, the E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber. Literally what I said. And I also threw in Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey because it fits everywhere. 

And he said, Yeah, Doug, those are great books. But this is the best business book I’ve ever read. He pulls Traction off his credenza behind him, sticks in my face, points at it and says, I’ve read it 10 times. I looked at him kind of arch my eyebrow like, he says, Okay, okay, hold his hands up. 

Okay, I read it three times and listened to the audible four times. I said Dude, that wasn’t my point. Like, I believed you, right? I believed that. Why did you read this book and listen to it seven times? So he proceeded to tell me the story about Gino Wickman, tell me the story about EOS, the Traction book itself. You know, it had been out, I don’t know, five, six years by then. I’ve never seen it. 

So I’ll give that guy credit for opening the door. And I segued from one on one coaching of business owners and running CEO roundtables, sort of peer groups like a mini low-level thing. And I flipped over a year period 2016. I flipped over entirely in my practice to only teaching EOS and going and getting trained and authorized in three years ago, February. So I’m in my fourth year of committing to that course. And what Steve’s helping me with is using the podcast as a tool to sort of build authority, get the word out there, you know, meet more people like you and spread the good word. 

And what I created that appeal to Steve is, I went to my folks at EOS worldwide and said, Look, I have a vision for people who are self-implementing EOS. They’re never going to hire me or one of my 300 colleagues. They’re not going to budget the money and the time to do that. They’re going to do it themselves. But instead of doing it themselves alone, how about if they did it themselves. They were still their own implementer but they were in a group context. They were in a peer group. They were in a support group, an accountability group. 

So they said, Oh, that’s an interesting idea. develop it. So I wrote up a proposal, ran it by them. They said, Sure, you can do that. So I run what I call traction groups. And Steve is a member. And it’s a peer group that meets on Zoom meetings once a month. And I encourage them as self-implementers. I teach him, I answer questions, we issue solve, we have a hot seat. So that’s what I do to help extend the reach of Eos. Because not everybody can hire one of us to come in and do a full eight-hour session.

Bert: Right. Well, and you hit the nail on the head, there’s two types of people. There’s the people who frankly cannot afford or will not make the sacrifice to afford somebody who can, you know, save them thousands of hours and thousands of dollars is the way I think of it, right?

Doug: Exactly.

Bert: And then there are those who, you know, because they think they’re smart and, you know, they think they can do it all by themselves. And that’s great. There are some people that no matter what, to them, it’s not an affordability issue, it’s just the fact that, hey, I can do this. I can do this on my own. I can, you know, I’m the guy, you know, who can do it, you know, and hats off to you. 

I mean, you know, it’s just when I look at the EOS system, you know, I’m not the implementer guy, you know, I’m, you know, and I think that if you’re the implementer guy, that certainly gives you a leg up in doing it yourself. But if you’re the more creative guy, then you need an implementer. You need to be part of one of your traction groups to help them plod along. 

Doug: Right, because everybody gets stuck. And when you doing it yourself alone, where do you turn? We got a great web-based learning center, but there’s no conversation there. There’s no help. There’s just watch another video, download another implementer guide, you know, do this do that. So I think there’s different strokes for different folks. And that’s what excites me about the world of EOS. 

And partly the reason I named my podcast Go for Growth is because EOS is a growth management system. It’s a leadership and management system that’s designed for growing companies. If you’re a dying company, if you’re standing still you’re dying. That’s our view, right? I think that might be your philosophy.

Bert: Absolutely. And I think that’s the right view for any part of your life. Even if you’re not an entrepreneur, if you’re standing still you are dying or you’re however you want to phrase it. You know, you’re going backwards but you’re not really standing still. And you can apply that to your spousal relationship, to your health, to your spiritual, to your money management as well as to your career because, you know, I think that the universe is all about expansion. It’s constantly changing. It’s dynamic. It’s not, it doesn’t stand still. 

Doug: Correct. So, my topic is about growth. So my conversation with you today is what have you experienced in your own business, right? Because you’ve got a successful practice. I want to hear about that. And what have you observed with your clients or your audiences, you know, when you’ve gone out there and given speeches and prescribed things, what are some common growth hacks or growth lessons that you’ve seen out there? Your own business and your clients’ businesses. So that’s sort of my opening question for you as a business owner and fellow helper of business owners. 

Bert: Sure. 

Doug: Go where you want with that. 

Identify Your Ideal Client

Bert: Yeah. And so I think that the number one lesson that I have seen time and time again is that people fail to understand who their ideal client is. And I want to make a distinction between an ideal client and a client, right? So, you know, an ideal client might be, you know, a business that’s doing 100 million dollars, I mean, doing a million dollars a year. 

And, you know, they have some money for marketing and they understand, you know, the ins and outs of let’s say, marketing and advertising and they have this, they have a kind of a support system already. And, you know, they have the, like I said, an understanding and they have a budget for it. As opposed to let’s say you’re dealing with a company that’s doing $500 million a year, I’m sorry, five Yeah, $500,000 a year and, you know, they’re not really, you know, they don’t have an infrastructure. 

They look at advertising and marketing is kind of an expense kind of something that they’re forced to do. But they don’t fully grasp it. And so could you help that company that’s doing $500,000 a year? Yes, but it’s going to be a little bit of a fight as opposed to helping the company that’s doing a million dollars a year and they’re already open to it. They already believe in it. And money really doesn’t matter. The money doesn’t really matter because there are companies out there that do over a million dollars a year and they hate marketing. 

They just believe it’s you know, crap. And so when I come across those types of companies in the past, I would try to change their mind and help them. Well, you can’t. It’s a waste of time because it’s the old adage, you know, a person convinced against their will is of the same opinion still. And those are the kind of people who will just drain you emotionally, beat you up all the way, and after you spend time with them, they’ll either give you a bad review, they’re gonna want to refund. It’s just, they’re not your ideal client, as opposed to helping somebody who says, Man, I get it. 

I want to do my, I want to get my marketing down. I want to, you know, I want to get, I want to do better, you know, those people who are open to it. Those are the distinction, at least for me, between an ideal client and a client. They both have the affordability but they don’t have the mindset. And so everybody has an ideal client. And there’s this, especially today with today’s technology and everything that we have available, finding your ideal client is so much easier than it was just 10 years ago or even five years ago. 

It’s just, it is so easy. And there’s so much automation that you can use to filter out bad clients that there’s no excuse for you not working with your ideal client. So that’s probably the biggest lesson is really understanding who your ideal client is versus let’s say a sub-client of an ideal client is. And then the other thing is this complacency that everybody hits when they, you know, when you start becoming successful, whatever that term means to you, a lot of people start getting complacent. 

They start feeling as though Hey, man, I’ve hit it. I’ve made it. I’m at the top now. And, and a good example of that is I like to, you know, use Blockbuster. You know, here’s this company that’s a multi-billion dollar beast. They are the big fish in this big pond. They’re so massive they cannot fail. They have cashflow. They’re, you know, and so here’s this, this little bitty company, this startup that is beyond broke, and they meet with Blockbuster, and they try to put a deal together. 

And Blockbuster says to Netflix, we don’t need you. You know, we’re Blockbuster. You know, we’re too cool. We’re too big. And so they had a conversation, I believe a total of two times with Netflix to possibly do a deal. And they couldn’t put a deal together, mainly because Blockbuster had this complacency that this that, you know, this idea that Netflix was going to do something was just ridiculous and so they did not do anything with, they blew off Netflix. 

Five years later they’re scrambling. They stopped doing late fees, which was a $300 million investment for them, or $300 million revenue loss. Then they started doing the online streaming type stuff and they tried to, you know, compete with Redbox by putting out blue boxes. And Carl Icahn, who was one of the major shareholders at the time. He got upset by all this. He ended up kicking out the CEO. They turned back on the late fees and all this other stuff. But anyway, bottom line is from the first meeting with Netflix, 10 years later, they’re out of business. This multi-billion dollar business was gone. 

Doug: Yep, they were a behemoth. I mean, there were nobody bigger than them. And they went down. 

Be The Netflix In Your Business

Bert: They went down. And what’s amazing to me is that this is appropriate for anybody out there right now who’s complacent, who thinks man I’ve gotten there, or there’s, you know, we’ve climbed the mountain. We’re now at the top. And let me tell you, there’s a Netflix right now in your business, in your territory in your industry. 

And you either have to find them, you know, and make a deal with them, you just have to be open to it. And the other thing that I want to also point out is that the other thing that was astonishing to me, and this is another extreme example, or case study, but again, it’s worth investigating and that is Kodak. Another behemoth. Another multibillion-dollar company. And so Kodak, at one point, owned all, ALL, all of the patents for digital photography. 

And they sat on them because they didn’t, they were afraid of cannibalizing their film business because there were a film company. And so again, they weren’t so much complacent as they were afraid of competing with themselves, which is kind of a dumb thing. And those patents expired, you know, and people started going digital. And, you know, the Kodak was like the last people to enter the digital race. It was like, you were sitting on all the patents. I mean, they could have licensed them, they could have, you know, done something. 

But, you know, you’re sitting on a goldmine, but you’re afraid that it’s going to erode your business so you don’t do anything with them. And guess what, it erodes your business anyway. You just put it off for 17 years or whatever it was, right? And so those are some massive lessons there. But you know what, that happens to, you know, it happens to all of us. Look at you know, you can Point to the magazine industry or the print industry where newspapers and magazines were very much against going digital.

And first they didn’t want to embrace it. And of course they didn’t want to understand it and they were dragged and pushed and bullied into making those changes. And, you know, a lot of these big papers have been wiped out. Look at Time Magazine at the beginning of 2019, I believe, Time Magazine was sold for $2 billion dollars.at the end of 2019. Michael, I think it’s what was his name, Michael Burnenoff the guy, the CEO from all that sales CRM company and Salesforce. 

Doug: Marc Benioff, Marc Benioff.

Bert: Thank you. He bought it for like 150 million bucks. And so in a 12 month period, they lost $2 billion worth of value because they can’t figure out what to do with it. So, I think that kind of to put this in a nutshell, the thing that stops a lot of people from growing and continuing the grow is A, they don’t understand who their client is. And your client can shift. So you may understand them perfectly. 

Your ideal client is this person today but make sure that you survey your clients every, you know, 12 months, maybe every 24 months and make sure that you still know who your ideal client is. And then be open to innovation because it’s going to happen. You cannot run from it. You know, you can’t hide from it. Somebody is going to come in and disrupt your business or your industry and what a happy person you are, if you can benefit from it versus being crushed by it. 

And I think that one is extremely hard to do because if you spent 10, 15, 20 years building your business on these set of parameters and now somebody else is saying, Hey, we got to change this, you know, most people’s reaction is no, I gotta save what I built, you know? This is my baby, you know? And so that fear or that unwillingness to innovate is the other thing that stops companies from growing or sustaining that growth, right? 

Doug: Right. Yeah, those are really important points. So when you get in front, so your basic business is platform speaking, right?

Bert: Well, no. 80% of my of our company’s revenue is in the nuts and bolts consulting, specifically out in the arena of marketing. So we help companies implement marketing strategies. We help fix marketing strategies that are no longer working. We, you know, we get in there and we find out what’s happening. And then we, you know, we fix it for lack of better terms. I do some platform speaking. And so about 20% of my company’s revenue is from, you know, speaking, doing some, you know, pay for webinars, which is another, you know, form of speaking and stuff like that. And that’s primarily it.

Doug: So, when you, obviously this ideal client profile thing you’ve made a big point there and I’m 100% in agreement with you. When you get in that typical client start turning nuts and bolts and looking, what comes up next? What’s sort of the second thing you see?

Be Clear On Your Message

Bert: So the second thing, if they understand who their ideal client is, then we start looking at where are, you know, what is their message? So does their message, is their message in line with their ideal client? And if so, you know, can we get that message to be better? You know, because if you know your ideal client and you have a, you know, a good message, can we make it a great message? Can we make it more focused? 

Can we, you know, can, you know, people are one of the things that seems weird to a lot of people and that is you focus down versus going wide. And you probably understand this. You know, focus is the fastest way to go wide but it just seems counterintuitive because most people think well, I want my message to be, you know, very big in general so I can catch as many people as possible. 

But that’s not the way it works. It’s the more focused you are, the more fine-tuned that message is to those ideal clients, the quicker you start developing a position in that industry. And more importantly, the position isn’t quote in the industry, it’s really in the consumers’ mind. So an example of that is FedEx. FedEx owns the category for overnight shipping. So if I, you know, and this happens a million times every day around the world, when somebody says, FedEx that package.

I need to FedEx this to so and so. And they don’t mean really, they’re not saying us specifically FedEx, but FedEx now owns that term in our consumer’s mind. In my head when I hear somebody We say FedEx it, they mean get it over there overnight, whether it’s using FedEx, whether it’s using United States Postal, or whoever you use, just FedEx it. Just get it over there. It’s urgent. I need it over there tomorrow. And same thing with Google. You know, whether you use Google or you use any other search engine, the term is just Google it. 

Doug: Right. Generic. 

Bert: So, that is a very focused, I mean, FedEx and Google and some of these other brands have got their message so focused, that is positioned in our heads and it means that one thing. That is when you know that you have arrived. That is when, you know, at that point, you know, that’s a very huge thing.

Doug: Yeah. You kind of own that market then don’t you? 

Bert: You do. You do. And it’s very difficult to get there and, you know, but the bottom line is that’s really kind of the target. You want to own that position, that term, in your consumers’ mind and that’s why you want to narrow down your message. Because if they can understand your message in, you know, fewer words that’s just a huge advantage. It saves you time. It saves you marketing. It’s just, it is in the marketing world and it’s like the golden rings, right? 

So, you know, if you have again, if your message is 10 words, there’s nothing wrong with that, but if you can get that down to three words or five words, again, yeah, the message becomes very important. And then after you’ve gotten the ideal client, you’ve gotten this very focused message, then of course, now we’re looking at the media. Where is it best to find these people? Because I have a client and they do private charter, jet cards, private planes. 

And they have an ideal client. We’re still working on a better message. We’ve gotten a couple of messages that worked pretty good, but we’re working on a better message. And that ideal client, yeah, I’m sorry, their ideal medium is going to be different from somebody else’s medium that say that they might have the same client, like for instance, maybe a company, maybe people who own Bentley’s or Rolls Royces might be the ideal client. You know, I have the same clients that overlap with the Jet client but the messaging is going to be different, right? And so 

Doug: The medium may be the same. 

The Necessary Process of Trial and Error

Bert: Yep, the media may be the same, or in some cases, and I kind of stumbled, so in some cases, the ideal client may be the same but the medium may be the difference, right? So, you know, so you got to find out, and that’s why it’s important to know who your ideal client is. Because if you know that your ideal client, they happen to, you know, let’s say that they’re also big into wine, well, then that might be a place to have your message, especially if none of your competitors are in there. Because it doesn’t, you know, they don’t value that medium as well, right? 

You know, what does wine have to do with jet planes? or What does wine have to do with, you know, insurance or, you know, whatever? Well, if your ideal client likes wine, and they also like, you know, investing in whatever, small rocks, then that’s where you need to be. So the message, then the medium. 

And the thing that’s the hardest when doing all this that really hurts people’s growth is you have to understand that it’s trial and error. No matter how good it is, it’s still trial and error. Because you and I can get together and we, man, we think we know it all. We think, man, you know, we spent all this time and energy and money and got our ideal client, we got this great message. And, you know, we’ve put together, we’ve identified the medium, and we put together an ad that we think is going to rock. 

And we start using that ad and, you know, you’re just getting crickets. And so now you have to figure out what’s, you know, again, you got to figure that out. So there is a little trial and error and I’ll give me an example. Again, this is an extreme case study. But there’s this newspaper called The Wall Street Journal. And the Wall Street Journal, and people can Google it, Wall Street Journal letter, the famous Wall Street Journal letter. So they, their ideal medium was direct mail. And they tried multiple different direct mail messages. 

And they, after I believe, two or three years, they put together the perfect message, still using direct mail. And the message was more or less there are these two guys and you may recall the story, but this is what, this has been their number one producing message. And it starts off with these two guys born in the same place at the same time went to the same school got the same degree, but one guy is, two or I forgot, I think it was like five times more successful than the other guy. What was the difference? One guy was reading the Wall Street Journal every day. 

Doug: Interesting. 

Bert: And it’s like, wow, that’s powerful. I mean, if you look at the letter, it’s a long-form copy, I believe it’s two pages long. But the story is so good because, you know, you want to know, as a reader, you become invested in the message and you want to know what separated this guy from this guy? Why is this guy five times more successful than this guy, I want to know. And so, you know, you’re hooked, and you’re reading it and you’re emotionally involved. 

And at the end, it says the difference was when I read the Wall Street Journal. And so they, once they put this message together, it outperformed all their other messages I think like 10 to one, and they’re constantly trying to beat that message, and they’ve yet to do it. And the other thing is that if you have an ad that’s working, so that now becomes your control ad, can you outperform the control ad?

Doug: Which requires trial and error, right? You have to keep trying and

Bert: Which requires trial and error. And, yeah, so that’s all from the marketing side. And I think that if you’re really into growth, if you want longevity in your industry, you have to be willing to fail a lot, continue to fail a lot. And that’s where innovation comes from. So I’ll use Google again. Google allows 20% of their employees’ time, they can spend it on any way or on any idea that they want. And, you know, they’re allowed to fail. They’re allowed to invest and come up with an idea and try it and make and, you know, and go from there. And so that’s why you’ll see Google will get behind a product or a service. 

And they’ll do it for a few years and then they pull the plug. And you know, they’ve done this with not one but two of their social media services. They’ve done it with Google short link. They’ve done it with multiple services. And Google had a product, I think it was like, ah, dang, I can’t remember the name. But so they were trying to bring small businesses together. And if you’re like a consultant or even a teacher, you could go there and you could register. 

Doug: Oh Circles. It was Google Circles.

Bert: No, no, this is a, this was an actual almost like Upwork.

Doug: Oh, okay. Okay. Okay, like a directory of services. And you could list your services there.

Bert: Yes, and I think it was called Help or Help Out or Google Help, something like that. And so, people were making okay, money at it. I mean, some people were making really good money at it. I mean, you could do it, you could learn anything from playing a guitar to running spreadsheets, you know, just ran the gamut, right? From A to Z. And that service was, at least from my point of view, if I was a smart thing for them to do. I thought it was doing well. I think after three or four years, they just said, Hey, we’re no longer going to do it. Pulled the plug.

Doug: So how do you take that? That Google’s a behemoth, right? And we’re talking to an audience of folks who are not behemoths. How do you scale that down to a small business? What does that trial and error in products? I get the trial and error in advertising, but how do trial and error and product services? What do you see there? What can people do?

Scaling Big Practices To Small Businesses

Bert: Oh, I’m so glad you asked that question. So in today’s world, you can create an entire product and or service for pennies on the dollars. And this is what I mean. And I do this all the time with our clients. Do it all the time. So let’s say that you have an idea for a product or a service. And it doesn’t matter which because either way, it’s the same. 

You can create a landing page, an actual sales page. So you got to do all the work to attract that ideal client, guess at the right message, find the right medium. Bottom line is you have a sales page. And the sales page, preferably should have a video explaining, hey, we’re coming out with a new service. And here’s the bells and whistles or here’s our product. 

And if you’re coming out with a product, you have to invest in some 3d printing and/or I say, if you’re not going to invest in 3d printing and have something that somebody can actually see in the video, you have to have a, some kind of visual. And just be honest with them and explain to them that hey, we’re doing a test to see how many people would really like this service and/or this product. And there’s, you know, multiple companies have been launched and have received hundreds of thousands and upwards to millions of dollars by crowdfunding an idea. 

So today it’s unprecedented if you and I have a great idea for really just a few bucks, less than $1,000 I would say we can put together a sales page or go to a crowdfunding and test out our ideas. And if others say, Hey, I love that idea, I would definitely buy that product, you can actually get them to give you money upfront. So now you can say, hey, you pay me now and I will deliver the product to you in five months, six months, whatever, depending on the complexity of that product. 

But now you can test the water for pennies on the dollar. And you can decide hey, you know what? We raised a million dollars or you know, whatever. We raised $100,000. People really want this. And you’re off to the races without any money, you can literally, you can literally pre-sell your product or service and then build it. You couldn’t do that 10 years ago You know, if you’re a small company, maybe it’s one or two employees. 

And, you know, you have different ideas and you want to test them out. I think that’s a great way of doing it. And I do want to caution people with this because, you know, entrepreneurs and to be creative, and sometimes we have great ideas but if they’re not aligned with your current business, you may want to just write that idea down, get it out of, you know, vent it out. Get it out of your system, and either sell it to somebody else or just hold on to it for another day. And, you know, because what you don’t want to do, and this is a real shortcut to failure is you don’t want to start three or four businesses simultaneously because they’re all great ideas. 

And yes, it was it did great in crowdfunding and you’re able to raise a bunch of money, but each of those ideas, or each of those businesses take time and money and capital and you don’t know all the nuts and bolts. And so most likely, it’s going to take you more money than you thought. And it’s going to take you longer than you thought. So it’s great to innovate but you have to make sure it’s aligned with your current core values of serving your ideal client and not necessarily going in a completely different direction. Does that make sense?

Doug: makes total sense. And as entrepreneurs, we do get obsessed with multiple ideas and we do chase down multiple rabbit holes. So I think that’s a great piece of advice. So if you were to kind of look back over all the things you surveyed with us today, what’s the number one piece of advice if you, if this is somebody with a growing business and they want to get to the next level, what comes to mind as well, make sure you do this?

Bert: I would go back to the number one thing I said in this. Make sure that you really understand your client. Make sure you really know who your ideal client is. Don’t guess, don’t assume, make sure you really truly know. And the other benefit of truly understanding your client, if you do this the right way by doing a survey asking your client what else can we do for you? 

What other things are you looking for, that we might be able to help you with? And I’ll give you a perfect example. We had a print client. And he hired us because he lost, he didn’t lose business or clients, but he had multiple clients that would hire him for this type of printing and then they would go someplace else to let’s say, get a brochure done. 

So if you’re in a business that has multiple lines, or services, you know, make sure that your ideal client understands everything that you have. Are you aware that we do this? Are you aware that we do that? And so, you know, email marketing is still very important. You know, and to me, that’s a great way to communicate with your client. It doesn’t always have to be some kind of salesy, hey, you know, buy this 20% off. 

You could say, Hey, I’m sending you this email because a lot of clients are not aware of the other five things that we do. And now you can start a conversation or whatever. But the, your ideal client, again, make sure that they understand everything that you do because there’s money there that is probably being left on the table because your client is not aware that you, you know, that you have all these other services or all these other lines. So 

Doug: Great, great advice. 

Bert: That would be it. Understand your client really deeply. Totally understand that client, what is keeping them up at night? What worries them,  and then your job is simply to solve problems for them the rest of your life. 

Doug: Beautiful. So how do folks find out more about you and your firm?

Bert: The easiest way to find out more about us, let’s go to Bert Martinez. That’s BERT Martinez, MARTINEZ dot com. Bertmartinez.com and be glad to answer questions, point you in the right direction. And that’s it.

Doug: Awesome, Bert. Well, look, you’ve been a terrific guest today. You’ve given us some terrific nuggets to think about so I appreciate that. And I thank you. And I look forward to staying in touch with you in the future. And again, thanks for being a wonderful guest on a Go for Growth Podcast with Doug Hall.

Bert: You bet, Doug. Thank you very much. I enjoyed it.