Flip The Switch Episode 55: LeadGen Day 2018

00:45 AUSTIN: Welcome to Flip the Switch presented by Power Digital marketing. This is episode number 55.

00:49 PAT: 55. Our Orel Hershiser episode, because it’s the World Series.

00:54 AUSTIN: Hey, hey. That’s right. Happy World Series. Joe is feeling a little anxious because he’s a big dodgers fan.

00:59 JOE: I don’t want to talk about it right now.

01:02 PAT: How are the nerves feeling Joe? How are we feeling about game three?

01:04 JOE: They’re running pretty high right now.

01:08 AUSTIN: Yeah a lot of sleepless nights for Joe.

But talking about sleepless nights, we just had lead-gen day here at Power Digital marketing. Which I know

01:16 PAT: That was a pretty bad transition.

01:17 AUSTIN: No pretty good. Because what I’m getting at here, is there’s a lot of work put in from our team to make this happen.

01:23 PAT: Oh, there we go.

01:24 AUSTIN: Thank you very much. So came all the way back around.

01:26 PAT: Full circle.

01:27 AUSTIN: But, in all honesty, an amazing day just to preface kind of what that was and why we’re doing the show today. Lead-gen day was an event put on by Power Digital Marketing—our company—to pretty much educate individuals in our community. Our clients, friends, family, on everything there is to know about generating leads for your business. So sales cycle, communication. How your business can get in front of the right clientele. All those details that can be pretty difficult to understand. And really without trial and error it’s hard to know the best way to go about it.

That’s what we all package, that’s what the team package to present to individuals.

01:59 PAT: Yeah, and I thought that it was super cool because you know we really got to see firsthand how much people were getting out of it. And we realized during the day that there was a great opportunity to bring some of those reactions and some of that content to you all. So what we did for today’s episode is basically compiled that days’ worth of lessons into 15 minutes set of reactions and interviews from key people who were here. As well as one of our keynote speakers.

02:30 AUSTIN: All right with us today we have teal cooper. She’s the co-founder of VendiBean, a fantastic company out of the San Diego area that provides coffee to commercial spaces and companies. So I think it’d be great to understand kind of you know who you guys are. Where you’re at as a business of what you’re looking forward to learning today.

02:45 TEAL: Yeah. Thanks guys for having me. So basically VendiBean is a barista robot for companies. We boost office culture, employee morale, and productivity by bringing the first office coffee solution employees are excited to drink in the office. I’m excited about today, because we’re trying to place as many machines as possible and with that you need leads. So excited to learn how to generate more leads from Power Digital because they’re the masters at it. Yeah.

03:11 PAT: That’s awesome so I guess… So how long ago was the company founded?

03:15 TEAL: So we launched 2016, February. Our senior year at SDSU. A second semester with our beta and then our beta ended up being a bust, so we relaunched in 2017. A year later. With our beta that we use right now.

So we’ve been in business for a year… Or actually sorry… Over a year

03:32 PAT: Which is awesome. And especially seeing the type of potency that you’ve had in the San Diego market we’ve gotten to observe it pretty firsthand because we have VendiBean here. It’s a fantastic company.

And I think it’s interesting too, because he talked a lot about like the minimally viable product, bringing something to market, getting that feedback. How crucial was that for you guys in the initial stages of your company?

03:50 TEAL: It was awesome, because you guys were basically our guinea pig for the company aspect of office packages. Because we started it for retail model. Where placing it in colleges, hospitals, airports was like the goal.

And now we’ve pivoted completely to doing just companies. Because we’ve seen a way bigger value that VendiBean brings to the office with employee engagement and the company culture. So it’s been a huge learning experience.

04:16 PAT: Which is awesome. Last thing. So fast forward to now. What are your guys’ needs now? And how does that translate into what you’re trying to learn?

04:24 TEAL: Yeah, so right now we’re about to place all 50 machines in San Diego. And we’re about to raise funding to grow out to 150 for next year. And our goal is to just place as many machines, as fast as possible. So that’s the hardest part of the business—is finding locations. So we’re trying to place VendiBean in companies with minimum 50 employees. So I’m excited to learn more about lead-generating today at Power Digital.

04:56 AUSTIN: Thanks to teal for coming on the show. Next up, we’re gonna talk to Jerry Rollins who is one of the guest speakers we had here at lead-gen day. We’re gonna get his takeaways on everything that he’s talked about.

05:05 PAT: Yeah exactly. I’m excited. Jerry’s the man. He has a lot of great insights about leadership and how to run a successful company. So here he is.

All right with us now we have Jerry Rollins. Jerry was actually one of the keynote speakers today at lead-gen day. We found his part in particular—like his presentation—to be so valuable. And I know it’s tough to compress some of that into like a five-minute span, but would really like for you to share with our listeners. What’s like one key takeaway that they would have had if they could have attended today from your presentation?

05:32 JERRY: That’s a great question. And a big one. So how do I put 30 minutes in one? So I believe whether it be in sports or business, teams are everything. And building great teams whether it being in the sporting community, or in a classroom, or in a business, it all has a lot of the same dynamics. It has to do with leadership. With building great culture. With having great values.

And you know having fun while you do all of that. And so you know my takeaway from today is “boy, I wish I was 25, because I’d love to work here.”

06:21 AUSTIN: Ha-ha yeah we definitely like to have fun.

06:23 JERRY: If you’d hire me. Since I’m a high school dropout. That’s the big question.

06:26 PAT: That is actually something that’s super interesting. I’d like to talk with you a little bit about that too. So you dropped out of high school. But have gone on to be wildly successful in helping businesses scale and grow. Is that correct?

06:38 JERRY: Well wildly successful is all relevant, so you know I like to tell people I’m the world’s tallest midget. Even though I’m 6’3″.

06:49 AUSTIN: I was about to say…

06:51 JERRY: So you know success is all you know can be measured in many different ways. So let’s say I’m happy with where I got in life. But when I was a young man growing up, probably would have gone the traditional road of high school, college, college sports, and professional because I was a really good student. And I was a good baseball player and hockey player.

07:16 PAT: Nice.

07:17 JERRY: But at the time in Canada, in the 70s, when you went away to play major junior hockey which was like developmental league for the NHL. They often paid you to become a full-time player. And it was probably… I think it’s been outlawed since those years. And I like it now because every year you play in major junior hockey now, they give you a year scholarship at a college. They’re forced to pay for that.

07:46 AUSTIN: Right.

07:47 JERRY: So yeah I was faced with you know do I make a couple thousand dollars a month at age 16, 17? And have a pretend job in the mine and play full-time hockey? Or do I go to high school and make 150? And having to support myself at that age, it was an easy financial decision.

08:04 PAT: Oh I’m sure, I’m sure. Well it definitely sounds like a lot of the lessons that you learned in the sports world translated to successes in the business world. Which I think is so cool. Especially you know a lot of us here came from a sports background at one point or another. And it’s just kind of bringing that competitiveness, bringing some of that relentlessness into the office is what I’ve at least… In my very—admittedly, short career have noticed what separates high performers from highly talented people if that makes sense.

08:30 JERRY: It makes a lot of sense. And I don’t think you may even know how much it makes sense. So I’ve actually done a study of our hundred and fifty CEOs and it was a straw poll. So I did not do it technically. It was merely a question I asked each group and I said “how many of you by show of hands were competitive high school athletes?” it was in the 98 percentile. That were either competitive high school athletes and/or college athletes.

The outliers, which was interesting, were all in band or debate.

09:07 AUSTIN: That group mentality.

09:09 PAT: So there was a team mentality.

09:10 JERRY: It was how to coexist with others and get along.

09:16 PAT: That’s so interesting. Well, jerry, don’t want to take up too much of your time. We know how valuable it is. But really appreciate you coming in to talk to us in general today at lead-gen, but especially taking some time afterwards to come chat with us and share that with our listeners. We really do appreciate it.

09:30 JERRY: It was a lot of fun.

09:31 PAT: Thank you.

09:32 JERRY: Thanks for having me.

09:35 PAT: All right with us here, we have Nick Brune of Eco Caters. Nick thank you so much for hopping on.

09:41 NICK: Glad to be here.

09:42 PAT: So just kind of want to get your sense of it. How is lead-gen day been going for you? And have you found anything to be particularly useful?

09:48 NICK: I love it. I’ve definitely gotten some useful information. I think you guys should do this more often.

09:55 AUSTIN: Yeah.

09:56 NICK: For your customers. I think it’s great to really… You know, in our hour meeting that we have with you guys we learn a little bit, and we kind of dig in. But to really see what’s going down and like why is great for sure.

10:08 PAT: Was there anything in particular that stuck out to you as like “oh wow. I didn’t know that?” or maybe like something that was especially applicable to the Eco Caters business?

10:16 NICK: I would say more or less just like that refresher of “oh god, yeah. I really need to finally do this.” a lot of the stuff we know. I mean part of being part of peer groups and networking groups, you hear a lot of this information. But actually the guy who was speaking… With the accounting firm.

10:33 PAT: Matt Garret.

10:34 NICK: Matt. I thought he was really awesome. And just kind of like… Kind of builds energy there. And those are things that I really need to accomplish in my business. You know, my business is pretty tough when it comes to food.

10:44 AUSTIN: Quick background—Eco Caters is a client of ours and they also cater our lunch here at the office. Which we were just talking…

10:52 PAT: Major shout-out for that one.

10:54 AUSTIN: Has been a massive game-changer for everyone. We love their food.

But we want to just quickly talk about your business. Kind of let everybody know who you are.

10:58 NICK: Yeah so Eco Caters has been around now for 11 years last month. We are here in Los Angeles and Washington, dc. And Eco Caters really specializes in catering events of all sizes. Corporate events, weddings, private events.

And of course, like our name says we’re all local, all organic food. Trying to be as sustainable as possible within our business practices. And all those great things.

And then on top of that we just recently launched our lunch model, which you guys get to enjoy every day—”simply lunch”—and that’s where we’re really… We’ve been in the wedding game for the last decade. And we’re finally getting into the corporate world. And this is our entry basically.

And what “simply lunch” does is basically takes the idea of lunch or having to deal with lunch off of the HR person’s hands, and like really allows us as food experts. And off-site food experts to bring in really quality food. And really support the staff in a different way. And man we’ve been loving it. It’s really kind of changed our business. It’s been a monthly recurring model as you know, which has definitely been an upgrade for us.

12:07 PAT: Very forecastable that way too.

12:09 NICK: Absolutely. And real connection to corporations. Because we want to… We want to be a partner just like your accountant in your law firm is. I mean people spend a lot of money on f and b and they don’t realize it throughout the year. It’s a big part of your cost. When you got 20 plus employees, you’re spending 150 grand a year on f and b. And a lot of people have random people who aren’t experts, dealing with all of that money. And it normally doesn’t make sense. When we can come and actually save you money and give you higher quality product by being that provider

12:39 AUSTIN: And two things, you get to impact that typically a vendor wouldn’t is health and energy level in the office. Those are two things that obviously companies are really worrying about with their employees, but it’s hard to find something that they can impact on a day to day basis.

And with you guys, it tastes great, we feel good after, and we know it’s coming from the correct sources. So, of course, it’s benefiting us from a health standpoint.

12:59 PAT: And I think another thing too… Even thinking about it from a business owner’s standpoint, I’m upping employee productivity, so output is gonna likely be higher. And at the same time I’m saving on time cost. No one’s going out and getting lunches, because it tastes good. And it’s good locally sourced food that people can get behind

13:14 NICK: Well health and wellness in the workplace is at the forefront of conversation right now right? How you can give benefits to your employees right? And retention of these great employees. And so it’s just yeah… It’s another great benefit for that. It’s another great way to show your staff that you really want to take care of them.

And it was really created by focus groups and bringing in all these people from the corporate world, and them asking their companies questions and saying “we want to be healthier.” Now that didn’t necessarily mean lunch right off the bat, but just like you know your individual interview… I don’t know if you got… I’m sure you guys do that at Power Digital, as far as what you want personally out of life.

13:51 PAT: Always.

13:53 NICK: And a lot of these things are monthly goals to start working out. Or start eating gluten-free. Or less sugar. Or no sodas. Whatever that could be.

13:59 PAT: I couldn’t cut sugar if I tried.

14:00 NICK: Well these are ways to really kind of educate. And inspire your staff.

14:08 AUSTIN: Absolutely.

14:09 PAT: Well that’s so awesome. And nick, thank you so much for taking a few minutes to hop on. I know we’re going to the breakout sessions. It’ll be especially useful for you as you starting to scale that new offering. But appreciate you taking the time and kind of sharing that with us today.

14:19 NICK: Cheers. Thank you gentleman.

14:25 PAT: All right, with us right now we have Scott Walker from Fishermen’s Landing. Scott thank you so much for coming to lead-gen day. Hope it’s been useful for you.

14:34 SCOTT: Thanks for having me. It’s been very enlightening so far.

14:38 PAT: So really quickly just what is Fisherman’s Landing, and I guess what were your needs or what were you looking forward to learning a little bit about today when you came in?

14:44 SCOTT: So Fisherman’s Landing, we take people out fishing. Anything from a six hour trip to a 23 day fishing trip. But the interesting thing about this industry is… I want to say it’s about 10 years behind everyone else technology-wise. So just this year they brought me on as a marketing manager, because like “oh man. We are so behind, and people are kicking our butts. And we need to do something about this.”

15:11 PAT: Totally.

15:12 SCOTT: And I’m just trying to do everything that I can to benefit my knowledge that will in turn to help the company grow. So I have my hands in everything. From content marketing, SEO and I’m really trying to find like what niche is really gonna work for our company here.

15:27 AUSTIN: And today from the speakers who would you say, or what is something that you picked up on that you thought was really interesting?

15:33 SCOTT: So the last speaker actually.

15:36 AUSTIN: Matt Garrett.

15:37 PAT: The man.

15:39 SCOTT: He was epic. And so we were thinking about running this deal. And kind of have like a top of funnel kind of deal where we just put out a generic discount. Just on google ads and maybe some social ads, for anyone who wanted to claim it. The interesting thing is… What I didn’t really think about is that would actually hurt our margins significantly. And we were just about to jump into this without even thinking about the back end.

And now I’m kind of mind-blown. I’m like, “wow, like we didn’t even give this any consideration.”

If that’s the only takeaway I get, that’s gonna be 100% worth it.

16:14 AUSTIN: That’s massive. Absolutely. Yeah, matt takes his passion and turns it into just good business decisions. You know, numbers are maybe not the sexiest thing, but he brings a lot to the table about things that will impact your life. So not just making that little business decision with accounting, but actually impacting your life long-term, and the business long-term.

So yeah, I agree, he’s the man. We had him on the show recently. So anybody’s listening to this who hasn’t checked that episode out, just type in Matt Garrett’s name and you’ll see it pop up.

16:42 PAT: Absolutely. Scott, thank you so much for coming on. Hope you enjoy the breakout sessions.

16:45 SCOTT: I appreciate it guys. Thank you very much.

16:54 AUSTIN: Thank you to everyone who came to lead-gen day. We really appreciate you putting aside a large portion of your day to come and hang out with us and learn from our keynote speakers. And of course the keynote speakers, and the individuals that gave up their time just to talk to all of us and educate us was really incredible. And this is something that we’re gonna be doing a lot of in the future. The feedback’s been phenomenal on the takeaways, and just the impact it has on individual’s businesses.

So we expect that Power Digital is gonna be doing hopefully pretty frequently maybe semi-annually maybe?

17:23 PAT: Yeah

17:25 AUSTIN: Patrick’s laughing, because of the undertaking, but…

17:26 PAT: I was gonna say, well, we’ll talk to Amanda about that one. But I totally agree with you. And I think it was so cool to see how much people were getting out of it even in the moment. I remember there was a couple of individuals, who were there, who had planned only to come to the morning keynote. And after they saw the initial—the first presentation—they canceled the rest of their afternoon’s meetings and stayed the entire day. And it’s that level of impact is what we want to have. And I think that it’s so cool that people are really coming into this new age of kind of… Like really what it is, it’s a matter of replicating the sales process online. As opposed to in-person.

17:58 AUSTIN: Yeah and you heard it on this show a little bit. But our clients were really interested in learning a little bit more about the strategy in our heads right? And what we talk about internally with our teams. And how we generate leads and kind of that whole package. It’s not something that they get every time we meet with them right? So it’s really difficult, of course, to package everything that goes into our planning in just one hour. So it was great for them to hang out a whole day with us and really soak up what’s going on around here and you know we’ve got a big company that’s grown fast, with a lot of minds that get together and create this incredible package that helps businesses grow. So I think that immersing yourself in that… For these clients to immerse themselves in our business, was really a great takeaway for them. And of course we want to keep inviting as many people as we can to this, because we feel it’s a really important thing for businesses to understand. It’s a generation of leads through the internet.

18:48 PAT: Yeah. I totally agree. Couldn’t said it better myself. Again, this is gonna be the first of many. If you’re in a business owner who’s interested in learning more about today’s event or when the next one is gonna be—absolutely feel free to inquire to us at any time. We’d love to put you in touch with the right people and get you that knowledge that so many people found valuable. So definitely do that. We have another episode coming your guys’ way this next week. Thank you so much for joining us for this awesome recap of lead-gen day. Episode 55 of Flip the Switch presented by Power Digital. A special thank you to all of our guests, clients, friends and business associates who came through that day. Great to see the value that you got out of it. Until next time there’s been Pat Kreidler, Austin Mahaffy, John Saunders and Joe Hollerup signing off.