Brad Martineau 13:53
Well, I might be doing a little bit of I want to make myself look better. But it is way more frequent than people will want to admit publicly that it’s okay to go rewrite. No, I’m fine with this many hours, I’m fine doing this type of a job, and I’m fine with this much money. And if I can get more than I’ll be happy for it. But I’m not going to let that slip into an expectation that is now the requirement for me to be happy. So that’s number one. The other one I’ll make much shorter, because this was going to be sort of a tangent before we got into the dentists. But the other one was in the leading of my team. And there were three cycles of this. One of them was healthy and two were unhealthy. I call them the exodus, there had been three — exodus is where we basically have to recycle our entire team. The first one was very healthy, because the team we had was a bunch of great people, but part time and not really committed to what we were doing. And that was when we were trying to figure out like this SixthDivision even exist, what are we going to do. And we had a moment that like, put us on the map early on. And it’s like, okay, this is going to be a thing. And then we realized, like we can’t like this is a thing, we’re going to be a business there’s something here, but I need people that are like, this is what they’re doing. Not I’m trying to like contend with. The other thing you have going on which again, none of it’s a bad thing. But it’s like just decide which one is most important. So we did that exodus, but then, in my attempt to be a leader and my attempt to get people excited, I created visions, that while they were possible, like visions of how our team could be successful. So one of our part of our mission statement or like one of the things that we really believe in is we exist to help entrepreneurs build the businesses that they want, so they can enjoy life as they see fit. That includes us. And when it says us, it’s not just me and my business partner, it’s actually all of our team members. Like I don’t believe in the business where I create one where my life is great. And I’m doing it on the backs of 10 or 15, or 20, or 50, or five or one other person where their life sucks so mine can be great, like no, the whole thing’s got to work where everybody’s job and schedule is like reasonable. So I created visions of how we could make their lives great. But then what I didn’t do is I didn’t expose to them or just demonstrate to them the work that it would take to actually make that happen. And I didn’t show them and require that they actually do the work. So I tried to take the responsibility on after casting this vision. And if anybody has kids or has employees or whatever, and you try to do this, I’m telling you right now, what you’re going to create is you’re going to create entitlement and resentment, and not negative intentional entitlement, you just created a vision of how cool it would be, you got them all excited. And then you did nothing to tell them that they were not doing what they need to do to earn it. So they assume that it should be there. And so you create resentment in them when they don’t get it and they get really frustrated. And then they leave. And that half we had a whole Exodus. And then we did it again. And then I was like, oh, hey, I should probably figure out the numbers and how this is actually going to work and then just be like, yo, here’s how you get paid if you can produce this way. And we can make that happen. And if not, then you need to get better. So that would be the other big one was not realizing that leadership is more about casting a vision of the outcome and the work. And then requiring that they do the work so that they can earn the outcome. You’re not a great leader, just because you can get people excited about something and then you can do the work to actually make it happen for them. And the other thing, by the way, is it’ll create resentment in you. Because you’ll get frustrated because you’re doing a bunch of work and you’re not actually getting any more benefit. You’re actually just doing the work for them and you’re doing your own work. So those would be the two. Those were two big ones.
Jeremy Weisz 18:54
Right? I love it. I think you have a book in you there with like the 12 biggest mistakes you made and mapping them out. That’s really interesting. And I don’t know if you’re listening to the audio, you can see I have SixthDivision website pulled up. And I thought this was, right now we’re looking at the code of the Sixers. Right? Yeah. And you have six core values. And each of them are quote from someone. I want to talk about one of these, which one should we highlight here?
Brad Martineau 19:31
Well, we already talked about the first one and my first problem of not knowing what I wanted to accomplish so we can skip that one. We kind of try to see…
Jeremy Weisz 19:40
So if you’re listening and not looking we have know where you’re going to do the work, figure it out, create awesome, improve your awesome and be a force of nature.
Brad Martineau 19:51
We got to talk about be a force of nature, which is if you’re watching us over on this other side behind me, because dollar really embodies, do the work, figure it out, create awesome and prove you’re awesome that really embodies those four values. And then the first one is like, like, what are you actually doing? You’ve got to know where you’re going. And then the via force of nature, I think it’s one of my favorite one. That’s why I have it up behind me here because it forces you to really, really live in the gap between like the quote that goes with it I love is like, how do I be bold? But not bully?
Jeremy Weisz 20:27
Jim Ron you have on here? Yeah, the challenge of leadership is to be strong, but not rude. Be kind of not weak, be bold, but not bully. Be thoughtful, but not lazy. Be humble, but not timid, be proud, but not arrogant.
Brad Martineau 20:39
Yeah. So how do I live in that gap? And anyone that’s actually trying to be a leader? Again, I don’t care if you’re married, just married, I don’t care if you’re married and have kids, I don’t care if you’re running a company, and you’ve got employees or whatever, that is the challenge. How do I have the conversation with this person that is like, hey, that’s not acceptable, or you didn’t earn this, but how do I do it in a way where I don’t come like I’m not being a prick, I’ve got to help them see a better outcome like that is the challenge. And so that one I love, that’s a constant cycle that’s going on in my head is I can’t be weak. But I also can’t be timid. Like, we’re not gonna go anywhere. And I’ve lived all of those on the wrong side of every single one of them. So that’s one of my favorites to really explore how you create a culture and an understanding within your team and within your organization, to where everyone’s want aware of that challenge that exist, because we’re humans. And then you start to create some agreements about how you’re going to operate, so that nobody has to worry about it. Like, I don’t have to worry about whether you’re going to interpret my being bold as me being a bully, or my being strong as me being rude. Like, no, we can take all the extra gaming out of it, or whatever term you’d put on and take it all out. And it’s like, no, if I say something, you know that I’m not trying to be rude. I’m not trying to be a jerk, I’m not trying to be any of those things. It’s just something that I see. And it’s real simple, either it’s true, or it’s not. And so either acknowledge that it’s true, and you might need to change something, and that’s fine. So then you don’t need to be defensive about it, or acknowledge that I don’t have all the information and tell me and then I don’t have to try to defend what I said initially, because I didn’t have all the information. So it’s like, you take all that out of the equation, and you create a really, really cool environment to work in.
Jeremy Weisz 22:25
Thanks for sharing that Brad. Thanks for going on. I don’t consider it a tangent at all. But those stories, it’s really instructive, so talk about the dentist for a second, okay, did you do with the dentist and as you’re talking about that, I’m gonna pull this up. You can see I’m at SixthDivision, you can see who they’ve helped. And what’s cool about this. Brad, I was telling you before he record, I was trying to get to the bottom of this page just to see who else they have. And I just gave up. Like, I was just like, there’s too many exemplary videos.
Brad Martineau 22:59
There’s a lot of them, it’s on purpose. It’s like, okay, there’s a bunch of them, I get it, they worked with a bunch of people, which we have all different levels. But so the dentist, the dentist is a really interesting one. Because I feel like it’s a great example, for almost anyone that does like professional services, or some sort of service or something where you’re going to meet with somebody before they actually really officially become a client, you’ve got to then convince them to want to become a client. And then you got to set up expectations and have them be happy and excited. And the other thing I love about the dentist one is there’s nobody on the planet, unless you’re in excruciating pain, who wants to go to the dentist. So it’s a great like, all the like, oh, but what I do is whatever it’s like, bro, you got nothing on a dentist. So with the dentists, they had, like their normal, you know, family dental practice or whatever. And they also did, he had a part of his business that was doing just like high end like elective procedures, cosmetic dentistry type stuff. And the first time that he would meet people, usually is like, in the office, like you meet the dentist in the office, and the dentist is like putting fingers in your mouth or whatever, like no, it’s like, that’s the least exciting way to meet somebody to like, kick off this relationship. So there were two things that he did that were really, really interesting. And I think these would be principles that really anybody could take away one of them he was already doing. We helped him put technology and systems behind us. We could scale it and eventually that whole thing turned into a whole separate business that he coached other dentists that he spun up, ran and then eventually sold like in the last 12 months he sold it. And what it was is he would do he called it virtual smile consoles. So he would do a Virtual Console. So somebody would come and without them having to go into the office to acknowledge and show somebody face to face that like their teeth are jacked up and they want to get changed. They would fill out this form to request a console, they would send in pictures of their teeth. And he had this, he would basically take it. And he would do like a mock up or like a demo of like, well, here’s what it can look like, here’s what we can do. And then he’d do a little video recording over the top of and then send it back. And so he was doing that kind of a manual process. So we helped him really streamline the whole thing, the whole thing was systematize structure down to the and that’s free. And that’s free. Yeah, that’s totally free to do like the whole process, we totally systematized it. And then what we did is we added in some pieces, where he would actually he would do a little bit more intentional introduction of himself and the practice. And the whole point of this is, before these people ever got into the office, we wanted them to feel like they already knew him. And so the way it would work is they take pictures, his assistant would take those pictures, and basically drop them into like a prebuilt copy of like a Google Slides template. That was his little promo he was going to do, he would do the work. I can’t get the word right. It’s not a mock up. He would do like I’m thinking…
Jeremy Weisz 25:59
A rendering or something.
Brad Martineau 26:00
Yeah, like a rendering. There we go. Yeah, you do like a render, like, hey, here’s what it’s gonna look like. So they could actually see the difference. But in this presentation, he’s like introducing, you know, the company and what they stand for and what they believe in, which is all about getting somebody to start to trust him more, and to feel like they already knew him. So that would happen. And then once they go through that the next step is like, hey, so do you want to come meet in person. And that in and of itself, again, his idea, we didn’t come up with that idea. It was his idea. We have since replicated in other industries. But it was his idea, we just streamlined it that in and of itself made a massive difference when somebody came in to have a conversation about buying. It’s like, oh, yeah, like, I already know you like, you told me before we got on that you have just gone down the rabbit hole of Brad Martineau videos, and research. So my guess is right now, you’re like, I feel like I kind of know that dude. Like, I’ve got him a little bit more figured out. So he was just proactively creating that for us prospects. The next thing that we did for him that helped cement or really even increased the conversion percentages were like, okay, listen, when people come into your office, and he did this for cosmetic, and then also for the Family Dentistry said, when people come into your office, they’ve never been there. And I’m not talking about someone coming back for a cleaning, I’m talking with a new client that I’m trying to sign it the first time they’ve never been there. And I don’t know if you’ve ever done this before. But if you ever watch people, when they’re going somewhere for the first time, it’s kind of hard to replicate this because you never know if someone’s going somewhere for the first time. But I had a chance at an event. This was a theory of mine had a chance to validate an event. So we’re at an event and I was speaking at the event, but I had some downtime. And so I just went I’m sitting like there’s, typically video like the main hallway that people walk along. And then there’s the main room over here. And there’s this one hallway, the bathrooms were in a really weird place like you had to go down this hallway. But when you look down the hallway, it looked like a dead end. But it like turned like this and then turn like this to get back to the bathrooms. So they would ask people where the bathroom is. And this was the spot, I just wanted to like, let my brain process so I wouldn’t I sat in this hallway just to kind of stay away from people. And I’m sitting there watching. And I would see people come and you could tell, they knew that the bathroom was supposed to be at the end of this hall. So they would come and they’d walk. And usually when they turn the corner, heads down, they’re on their phone, they’re like, I know where I’m going and they look up and then you see him literally start to slow down. Like you can imagine this on a movie. It’s like, they slow down, look around, look back, take one more step. And then they leave. This is like a 20 foot hallway. And they wouldn’t make it 10 feet before they stop and they leave and they’d go back. So the reason why I share that story, and the reason why it’s really, really important is for anyone that’s doing any sort of I’m going to meet you for the first time, especially if they’re coming into a physical location. We said look, they don’t know what your building looks like. They don’t know where to come in. And every person that’s ever gone somewhere for the first time knows what they do. They know now, especially with phones, they get their look at their phone, they walk up like I think this is it, I’m gonna double check my phone and make sure this, like we’re deathly afraid of going to the wrong place, even though there’s not a soul that’s paying attention and nobody cares. But we’re definitely afraid that is not the environment that you want somebody to come in when they’re considering dropping some money with you. So what we did is we had them start outside of his office, and we’ve done the same thing with our stuff start outside the office, you’re like, hey, welcome. We’re excited to have you come for the first time. Videos like you’re probably going to come in from over here. So there’s a parking lot like I’m going to show you the parking lot. You’re going to come right here. We come here every day. But this is probably your first time. So let me just show you where to look right here. You’ll see this sign right here, you’re gonna walk through the door, and then you’re gonna see this person sitting right here and they’re gonna greet you, they’re gonna ask you if you want some water, and then they’re gonna sit you down right here in this chair while you wait. And then once we’re ready, we’ll take you back here and you literally give them a tour. So the first piece of that virtual smile console was let me get you to know and feel comfortable with the dentist. The second part was let me get you to know and feel comfortable with the environment. And in that case, it was a physical environment. And between those two things, I forget the specific numbers. But between those two things, what happened is like people had already decided to buy by the time they were sitting down in the chair, like his conversion rates is ridiculous with the conversion rates, and then for anybody else, like the ability to make a very easy way for people to get some initial information like that initial rendering or whatever, but then also the, let me introduce the company and myself and where we’re going to be before you ever get there so that when you get on the call, I’m not fighting you making sense, or getting your bearings and then understanding what you understand to then be able to decide, like, you’re like, oh, yeah, I recognize this. I know where we aren’t like, I got it. We’re here. Even if it’s virtually it’s I’m okay, I got it. I know you’re here. You’re there, whatever. Like it makes sense. I already feel kind of like I’m home. Like I’m revisiting a place. So those were a couple of the of the big things that we did that a really big impact for him on conversion rates, and then also retention, because you’ve got people that are like I know these people, I have a connection to them, rather than just like, oh, yeah, I knew that I needed that thing done on my teeth. And this guy’s a dentist and dentists do tea. So I guess I’m here. I don’t want to go to another dentist. So yeah, you can do it. But there’s no personal connection. Right? So those were a couple of things that are the dentists that I think have really good application really for anybody else that’s in that similar kind of we’re gonna have a sales conversation meat type of thing.
Jeremy Weisz 31:24
So Brad, how did he end up then rolling this out? Because he ended up spinning this into a different business it sounds like.
Brad Martineau 31:31
So, yeah, the virtual smile console part he did. And that was the thing that got sold. So he took that whole system of how to capture the lead booth requesting a virtual smile, the process of how then you create the rendering, and like what to say and what to send back. He actually built some software that was specifically designed to handle that part of the process and then went to other dentists is like low do you want to make it so you can do way more consults for your high dollar, high profit procedures, and get the people that are likely to buy to be way more willing to buy because they already know you? Then here’s how you do it. So they would install that system. And then he had a mastermind component that was built onto it as well, where he would do some coaching around like dentistry, you know, in general and stuff. So they built that up, and I don’t even know who came along and bought it. And somebody bought it though.
Jeremy Weisz 32:20
Does someone, a company have to have a certain technology to work with you, I want to talk about the evolution of your services. And I know obviously it started off because of Infusionsoft now Keep in you basically map everything out within there. I don’t know if that really is a limiting factor matters or not like if they use something else.
Brad Martineau 32:43
No, it did. It doesn’t now and it did maybe for the first year or two and then we’re like, okay, the other tools are going to come out. And really what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to simplify what it takes for the entrepreneur that really like our target, target, target sweet spot typically is the entrepreneur that’s going through the six figure to multiple six figure range into the maybe into the seven-figure, multiple seven figure range. The people we work with, we have clients that are in the like higher multiple, seven figures and eight figures. They’re usually the ones that are like, okay, we blew up. But our processes are crap. So we got to go back and get that stuff, we got to go back and get that stuff handled. And the reality is, it’s the process that you have to go through as a business to make your client journey be automatic. And there’s a ton of different software tools. And you pick the one, we tell people, we talk a lot about, you don’t go by a tool, and then ask what the tool does, you get really clear what you’re trying to make happen in your business, then you go by the best tool for the job. So the tool that you use, whether it’s Keep, whether it’s Active Campaign, whether it’s HubSpot, whether it’s high level, I could go down the list, it’s drip, it’s whatever. They’re all automation platforms, they’re all designed to help you execute a more consistent client journey. And what we’ve found is the biggest and first hurdle to being successful with software in your funnels and in your client journey is not, never has been never will be the software, which one you choose, or how good or bad you think that particular software is. That is not the limiting factor. The limiting factor is always your clarity about what you should be doing. And then your process about how you get things done in a systematic fashion. So know that the software tool, the software tools are matter of fact, we have a handful of clients at any given time, where we’re not actually even implementing, we’ve done stuff even up with like white people that are like, hey, I’ve got Marketo and I got Salesforce, great. We’re not going to implement that. But if you have something to implement, we’ll help you get clear about what you should do and then plan it. And then we can help oversee the implementation because that’s actually where the value is, is to organize your thinking. And then systematize your implementation, you have those two things down where you can handle any problem that comes to you without getting overwhelming or without getting overwhelmed. And then you have a system of how to go implement something once you’ve greenlit it as it needs to be implemented, I don’t really care what software tool you have it like then you just go find some of the notes of software tool.
Jeremy Weisz 35:05
And you mentioned, clients do say that to you a lot. You helped me organize my thinking. What did you do with Dave Ramsey’s team?
Brad Martineau 35:16
Yeah, so it was the Entree Leadership Groups. So Dave Ramsey’s empires, like several different groups. And so we worked with their Entree Leadership Group, which is the group that helps entrepreneurs with leadership and systems in their business. That was bellshill thing that they did. And at the time, the entire business line was my details on this a little bit fuzzy, because a while ago, so if anybody goes, in fact, checks this, know that my numbers might be off, but the basic concept is right. Okay. So I want to say they had two or three events a year they had a single thing they sold, it was a $300 month membership. And I think you signed up for the year and they were trying to end isolation. So their whole membership was get entrepreneurs together, create these little like micro mastermind groups, and then they would come together a couple of times a year. And so when they would do their events throughout the year, it was to get clients. So they really had like two or three, and maybe it was four times a year where they would sign people up into the membership. And they’re like, all right, we got to figure out a better way to do this. So they wanted to launch a webinar, where they could and this was, again, this was way back in the day. So like now webinars like there’s a million different platforms to run it now, there weren’t as many back then they were using some Adobe something or other, which even then it was like, Adobe, what are you talking about, and they couldn’t figure out how to get the webinar to go, they didn’t want to have an hardly any registrations, like almost no conversions. And I wish I had the numbers because these numbers were when it went from like they had one sign up in an entire year outside of their events to like, they like doubled the number of people that they put into the entire program just through like some ridiculous, ridiculous thing. So they wanted to launch a webinar to build to sell people into the membership outside of just the events. They were having trouble actually executing the webinar. And then also they were like, technically just like organizing all the pieces, and what to do on the webinar, what the pitch was like. And then also, they weren’t getting very many people to register. But Dave Ramsey had this podcast like he’s on all the time. So when we went to him, he said, okay, look, first off, let’s get your system dialed in to where we’ve got the webinar, we’ve got your offer, we got the follow up. So we built the whole system around, like, let’s make that thing just churn. So we can actually, like once people get into that webinar, they’re gonna get followed up, we’re gonna make offers, we’re gonna get them to buy. And then let’s do a client onboarding, so that people understand what they’re signing up into. So they don’t just turn off the back end. So those were two big levers: systematize your sales machine. And then systematize your client onboarding machine, which by the way, if you’re paying attention to the dentist, one, it’s the exact same thing that we did on that side, too. And then we said, look, you got this podcast over here, you should just take one of your resources you have, let’s make that be something people can opt in for that will be a tie in into this webinar, and then just start to mention that at the end of your podcast, like basically become your own sponsor on your podcast, and be like, hey, if you want this, so whatever you’re talking about, if you want this thing, just text in, so we built this thing where there’s somebody could just text in after listening but didn’t have to get on their computer, they text in became a lead, they pushed them to the webinar, the webinars sold them into this thing. And they went from like it was I almost want to go look up the numbers, it was one of those like holy cow, it completely transformed. It completely transformed how quickly they were putting people into the membership. And then also, like people’s satisfaction and the value they got out of the membership because of how they did their onboarding. So, I tend to talk fast when I get excited, let me just call out there were three things that I mentioned that I think are important number one, after somebody bought, we scripted the ideal onboarding experience, so people can be excited and know what to expect. In addition to that thing, number two, we built an airtight webinars system that when people came in, they watched the webinar, we follow up with those who don’t attend, when they do we make the offer that whole thing. And then the third thing is we used their podcast to get people into the webinar system. And so they didn’t have to go spend any new money. They just like it just started, they we connected the assets that they already had in place, so that they all work together. And they leveraged each other. And a lot of times with entrepreneurs, that’s one of the first things we recognize is like, well, you got this thing going on over here. And you’re trying to do like a sales call here. And then you got this thing going on over here, but none of them talk to each other. We should make this be cohesive, like let’s make it a client journey, not just a bunch of disparate kind of broken funnel pieces. Let’s actually string this whole thing together. So that was great. Like the revenue numbers were great. And we ran into them. I don’t know several years after we ran into some of their team members were talking with them and one of the comments they said was exactly what you said. In fact, I think what it was they came back into town a couple years later and they’re like, hey, you guys in town, we’re like, yeah, we got clients, we just come out we’re gonna go into the top golf, we’re hanging out. And it was just like, what was like so catch us up. He’s like, so we talked about all the things and the like they had done in the progress. And then he said, the most valuable thing that like, oh, that’s great. But the most valuable thing is that you organize how we think about what it is that we’re doing. Because that’s the asset, the organization of thinking is the asset that allows me to now go address any additional problem challenge or opportunity moving forward in a much more effective and efficient manner without having to get overwhelmed. So certainly, that was Dave Ramsey, that’s what we did. And then that was sort of the outcome with it.
Jeremy Weisz 40:30
Love that. Love that. Thanks for sharing that, Brad. I want to talk about what you do a little bit. And you mentioned out of one of the lessons you have the wrong business model. But talk about the evolution of your services. And I’m gonna pull up here, where we have your programs, right here. So if you’re looking at the video part, I have watched the three ways we can help. And then the Academy, the lab, and the master builder program. Okay. What was the mistake with the business model?
Brad Martineau 41:12
So, okay. The mistake with the business model will not directly correlate to what you’re showing on the screen, those three things, but I’ll tell the story, and I think I’ll tell the story, and then maybe we’ll get into like, what we’re looking at doing moving forward, just so it’s not like, oh, like, I don’t want to set some of these sights on what we did when we’re looking at potentially, you know, reconsidering some stuff. So when we started, we sold one thing, this was what Andrew came out for, it was called the makeover. And the makeover, and it’s not called that anymore. We don’t offer that as a standalone upfront, and I’ll tell why. So when we started, we actually initially started trying to sell something almost similar to what these three were. And I mean, initially, we went to our very first event. And we sold nothing of the first two, but I was speaking at night, and I was going to sell this makeover. And we’re going to charge, model six grand or something for it. And it was like, Look, we know this better than anybody, which is true, because I was the one that designed all the like, I knew the software to about anybody at that point. So come spend two days with us, we’ll get more done than you’ll ever get done anywhere else in that amount of time. And it was called the makeover. So we sold a ton of those that night. And there’s a whole other story about like not having any money in bank accounts and all of that, that if you listen to any other podcast, you probably heard that story at some point. But that was sort of a pivotal, not sort of that was a very pivotal moment in the history of SixthDivision. So we had the makeover, and we sold a bunch of those, we schedule them out, we kept selling those. And for the first probably two to three years, that’s all we did, is we sold a bunch of makeovers, we delivered them, and we had five or six coaches that were on our team. So we’d have five or six businesses come to the office at the same time. But they’d all work with somebody one on one. And then we’d send them off on their way, we got better over time and send them off on the way back. Now we’re done. Because you can’t let your projects have a tail and continue to spill over. And then we’re like, hey, you know, we should probably start to do like people want additional help. And initially, if they wanted additional help we just did, you got to come back and do another makeover. And then there’s a time where it makes sense. And it was probably too late, not too late. But it was later than it could have been that it was like, hey, we should just offer that will work with people on an ongoing basis, if they’ve done this upfront makeover, because we’re on the same page we understand your business really, really well. So we added a thing called the elite 100, which is now called the master builder program, which in the very near future will just be called the agency just because I like the and one word is the naming of almost everything and this one kind of slip through. But so we added this ongoing component, but the way we sold it, so this is where the business model stuff starts to come into play. You build a business one way when your sole thing that you sell is a $6,000 or $7,500 or $10,000 service that is delivered, we’re typically six to eight weeks out, we would sell them deliver them and they’re done. You build a team for that model, it looks very different than the team that you build to fill up recurring revenue program clients not going to use the word retainer, I don’t want to put too many tangents we could have. But it’s not a retainer. That’s the worst thing you can do as an agency, recurring revenue clients. So we added this recurring revenue program. The problem with that is like well, do I incentivize with the commission the sales rep on the recurring revenue program? And if I do, how long do that? I do it every single month at what point is it flipped to the coach. And if we start stacking up these recurring revenue clients, then that starts to take away from the number of makeovers that we can do, which now decreases the commissionable opportunity for the sales rep on the front end. Unless I’m starting to add a bunch of coaches. The problem is a coach handles whatever the number of clients is that they handle. And so then you’ve got to balance the model of well when do I go higher? And so for us what happened is we try to push the gas pedal on a business model that was based on selling one time services while we started to add this recurring revenue, and the reality is ultimately if I fast forward, ultimately what we came to is, look, the business that I want as an owner, my business partner is I want one where recurring revenue is greater than recurrent expenses period. And I’ll take less money for it. See, back to the return that we talked about the beginning of this call, I’ll take less money for our recurring revenue to be greater than recurring expenses. So that I don’t have to wake up at the beginning of the month and be like, what am I gonna go kill this month. And again, there’s a lot more details. But if we had more time we could get into because it was my life for like three years of traveling and speaking and it was goes crappy. So we’re trying to push a business model that doesn’t actually live what we want. And part of it is because I didn’t know what we wanted at the time. And also we’re on a path for, we’re going to create something where sales reps is going to be dissatisfied, because they don’t have the ability to sell. And then their incentives are no longer aligned with our incentives. So the first cycle through that was that and then also, it creates some weirdness for clients too, because we sell them into this two day makeover, they’ve come out, and then we let them decide at the end if they wanted to continue going. But like when you’re done with the makeover, like your business hasn’t actually absorbed, anything we just did in two days. And I’m really confident now like I can out implement, in a half a day I can implement more than your business can, your business will need like a month or two to digest it and use it. So they’re like, well, I got all this stuff down, but we haven’t used it. So I’m going to start paying you right now for a monthly fee to go do more stuff. But we haven’t actually done this. And I don’t really want to just pay more money just for us start using the stuff that was a little bit weird for them. And it was hard to predict for us. Because we were always wondering like, well, I have eight or 10 makeovers coming out in the next six weeks, right? Which of those are going to roll over? And if they roll over, do they affect my ability to sell future make like there’s a lot of weirdness, the whole the whole thing. So that was the first mistake. The second mistake was once we got that sorted, we basically we combined them together. And I was like, no, you’re buying into our ongoing program. And you start with this upfront, but they’re not separate, like we’re not interested in, in working with you if all you’re trying to do is buy something up front. So that temporarily solved the problem. But the next problem that we failed to plan for was, when do we hire people. And so we went and hired people in anticipation of this growth based on some three months track record product we’re gonna grow into this hired a bunch of people, and then the growth didn’t like it didn’t continue at the same rate. But we were like, we like wait, I wouldn’t say wait pre-hired, it was just probably normal with what most agencies would end up doing is like, I got to go hire to grow. And so we hired first. And then it’s like, well, now we got to go find the money. And that was exhausting. Because I’m out the analogy, I finally came to his like, it was like I was wearing a double XL shirt. And I really fit into a medium. And my solution to solve the problem was that I was going to train three times a day, and eat like 6000 calories a day. And I was going to grow into the shirt. And I remember, like, it was kind of laughing. But I was really exhausted like a lot overwhelmed at the time. In hindsight, though, and I laugh because like, it hit me as I was walking out the moment, you know what else we can do, I can just go buy a medium sized shirt. And we could just write this ship immediately. And all I had to do, there were some tough decisions in there. But we went from I think when we did that, if I remember at the numbers, right, we went from like $250,000 in expenses in one month. And we trimmed it back to this was an in conjunction with recurring revenue greater than recurring expenses, we trimmed it back to like 84.4, within 90 days. And then we built back to where we wanted to be, but it’s like, no, we’re gonna make this thing recurring revenue. And we’re gonna eliminate like, we’re gonna go buy a medium shirt, we, we might have, in that case, bought a small shirt, but I’ll tell you what, it felt really good after wearing a double XL. So that was the other one. And then since then what I’ve learned is, you just if you’re growing based on body, like a team member has to serve a certain number of clients, we built into our model that our current people flex, they carry more than the normal load, they get paid more during that time period, you go get the money first, then you go hire for it. And you don’t have if you can’t pause in your business. And just like flat line and not always, if you’re always have to be growing for your business to work. That is literally the definition of robbing Peter to pay Paul. So I was like, you know, we’ll sit here and incrementally grow and we can go hire somebody else. And then we’ll grow up. It’s like, just let it run. So that was a couple of the iterations of the business model problem.
Jeremy Weisz 49:31
And then you mentioned where you are going now.
Brad Martineau 49:34
Yeah. Okay, so that goes back to what you brought up, so right now kind of where we ended up and this is the traditional, I feel like traditional like if you just listen to gurus and what seems to make sense, like I got my agency I got my services, I’m cranking on that. I should create like a group model where I do some group coaching with people. And then I should create like a course I could just sell it online and it’ll scale and be ridiculous, like all those dudes that make multiple millions of dollars with their online courses. Right? And it’s funny because If you say it the right way, everybody laughs at it. But when you’re at home planning your business, like, that’s going to be freakin’ awesome. And the problem that I had like, and we went down that path, so I’m not making fun of anybody, I’m making fun of my like, we’re at the tail end of like, I don’t know that that’s the actual path, that people want to go down, there are people that will buy just the instruction manual 100%. And there are people that just want the coaching, my experience is that when you’re an agency, if you just teach people how you do what you do, or you just offer group coaching to how like to be like, okay, I don’t want to hire you, but I want you to coach me on it. It’s not just like, and then the floodgates will just, they’ll just open up, I don’t think that’s what most people want. So what we’re looking at is, we were going to make a big play, like we’re gonna grow this lab membership is going to be this big community or whatever. And then what we realized, like no, actually, if we really want to make a difference in helping people have automatic client journeys, and be better equipped to build them and maintain them. With the tools that are available today, I don’t need to give you the academy as the thing that I sell, I can actually give you an automatic client journey. Like I can take you through a program where when we’re done, you have one, and I can do that in mass, where you make a little bit of tweaks, but rather than you spending six weeks with me and I just teach how to organize your thinking so that you can custom build this thing from the ground up. The reality is, is you show me 100 agencies, and I’ll show you about two different playbooks. And they run all 100 agencies. So where I think we’re probably looking at going is more of an approach of how do we bring people in? And how do we have them walk out the door with like, weep, I have checklists, we call them the conversion checklist. And sometimes the experience formulas depending on we’re trying to position them, but I’ll tell you exactly what you need to do with a new client to onboard them so that they stick, they’re happy, they’re easy to work with, like I have exactly the outline of the tools and everything already built, I know what to do in a sales process. And that’s actually, that will actually make a difference first, and then second, I can also help you learn how to organize your thinking. So I think the approach we’re gonna go is the lab rather than it being this thing that we’re trying to like, let’s just go grow this membership. When you’re done working with us one on one, and a lot of our clients are because we’re not trying to like pigeonhole you in, then that’s a place you can go to come ask questions, because you totally understand our lingo. If you go through the sales process, and you get to the end, and it’s like, ah, no, I just don’t think the agency makes sense. It’s like, cool. Well, you understand how we think whatever you can jump in the lab, we’ll give you our academy, that’s more for it’s like a down sell. It’s just a thing that’s there, we do everything in the lab for all of our clients that are in the agency, the master builder anyway. So it doesn’t cost us anything extra to put people in there. But it’s really only for a certain number of people like this for the right person. And that’s not most people. And then the new thing that we’re going to want to do moving forward will be less, here’s the academy, because our academy right now is more like, I don’t really be like, let me teach you how to build a car, it’s like, no, I’m just gonna walk you through the process of actually having the car built. And then I’ll through that, I’m going to teach you how to organize your thinking. And now you’ve got something actually running in your business where I’ve given you specific things to do in your business, your client journey has already been upgraded, it’s already been automated. So whenever that that’s the shift is a little bit away from that traditional, like, oh, I’ll just do like a group membership. And it’ll be great. And then I’ll sell this course, it’ll be great. And what I find is, most people from the agency side, the membership, they put a little bit in there. And it’s exciting at first because it’s extra money that doesn’t require a person to look at it. But it doesn’t ever reach like a volume where it’s actually worth it. Like, you might be easier just to go get to new clients over here, and you got the same amount of revenue, rather than having to manage the whole thing. So as we look forward, it’s more rather than teach them what I know how to do, how do I take what I know how to do and build something for them, so that when they walk out at the end of interacting with me, they’re at the same place they would be if they were in the agency, which is their client journey has been upgraded, and is automatic, not they’re better educated to then be able to go do the work to make it be that way. So there’ll be some program, we haven’t decided exactly, we’re gonna call that some program that’s like yo, go through this, you kick out the other end and you got an automatic client journey already done. And then you understand how to think about it in a way that you can hand it off to somebody. You can make tweaks. It’s all organized. So we’re doing what we do in the academy, but at the same time you actually end up with a finished product at the end.
Jeremy Weisz 54:33
Brad, I know you have basketball to attend to I don’t know if you have time for one more question, but I do want to point out people should check out the website which we’ve been showing sixthdivision.com to learn more. My last question, you’ve been going obviously coach basketball, you’ve been going to these basketball camps all over the country with these universities. I’m wondering what’s the Learn Turning that you’ve had from maybe one of the coaches at one of these camps, or one of the top players, because I imagine there’s a lot of crossover to business life and coaching.
Brad Martineau 55:16
Yeah, so the first thought that comes to mind, because the first thing that comes to mind that has crossover because there’s a lot from a basketball standpoint, I was at KU, last week of Kansas, and I’m sitting next to Bill Self. I’m like, Alright, I got some questions for you from a basketball standpoint. And so two things come to mind now, now that I’m thinking about it, one of them is from my conversation. But the first one is this. Like, I’m a pretty good basketball player, I would say like, if you take the group of like, played in college, I can compete, like to the middle of the pack with the people that played in college, like, and I mean, like, the middle of the row, if you’re talking, if I get on a call with a bunch of D1 people, I know my role, I can shoot, and I can not get the ball turned over. But I’m not gonna go try to do a bunch of stuff. If you’re going like to the middle of the pack, and they’re a little bit older, like I can compete in there. You put me with people that haven’t played in college, and I’ll be one of the best players on the floor. Like that’s kind of where I sit like I played a bunch. When I never did, though, when I was growing up, I didn’t know or understand, like how to compete. I didn’t understand that. Like, I could look down the court and see some dudes that looked really athletic, and they’re dunking or they’re making every shot in warmups. And in my mind, I’m like, oh, crap. I know that I miss shots sometimes. And then I forget that they also do too. And then I forget how many hours I’ve spent practicing. And it’s like, no, this is just called competition. The first time this idea got planted in my head. I was actually in high school, but I didn’t get it. It was a Larry Johnson commercial. And I don’t know if you remember Larry Johnson. Yeah. Grandma, grandma. Yep, there we go. So for anyone that didn’t know.
Jeremy Weisz 56:45
UNLV gold tooth, if it refreshes anyone’s memory.
Brad Martineau 56:49
Yeah, the whole thing. So he did an interview one time and he was talking about playing and they’re talking about like, what do you do when you’re playing someone? It’s really good. He’s like, it’s real simple. Like, I’m good. You’re good. I’ve practiced a lot, your practice a lot, roll the ball at let’s see what happens. And it was the first time in high school my brains like, people think like that. Like I was just always, always afraid. So anyway, fast forward. I learned to compete maybe about 24, 25 is when I was like, oh, you just go compete. And that’s it. But at that time, like I was already married, we had that would be like two or three kids at the time. So like there’s like pickup ball, it wasn’t organized. And organized basketball with reps on a clock is very different than pickup ball. So one of the things that I learned and then I started paying attention to like stars in the NBA and in college, and I started going to these camps. And I think it was my third year at Kansas. And I scored like, I had a tournament where I played really well in one game, I score 30 points in a game. And I remember it’s actually wrote in my journal when I was coming home, because it was such a breakthrough. And it was oh, I think I get it. Now. The people that are really good they don’t ever take their foot off the accelerator. The people that get results, they don’t ever stop. And this was pre dollar being invented over here. Me coming up with that. It was like they’re relentless. Because what I did in that game, what I did in that tournament is like, it didn’t matter what the score was, no matter if we were up in men, if we’re down, it didn’t matter who was guarding me or whatever. And it wasn’t that I was being selfish and trying to take shots or whatever, like, I was in an aggressive attack mode all the time. So that stands out. Like that really stands out for me. Because I think as humans, what we want is we want to go into attack mode. And then we want to coast. And the reality is, is that to achieve success, and then maintain success you have to consistently constantly, you have to be in like a relentless, never ending attack mode. So that’s been one big thing that I’ve learned. And that’s been reiterated as I go back through different camps, like oh, yeah, that’s it, you just have to go, go, go. The spillover from that and this would be from like my last camp, this, there’s actually two camps to go. The spillover from that is, the most important thing you can do is take care of what gives you the drive to be relentless in attack mode. And so for me, what it is, is this the ability to basically tell the voice inside my head that tells me to stop and want to go take a nap to shut up. So I went to North Carolina this year, played really well and went to Indiana. And in between there I went on a three week humanitarian trip with my son to Belize. So I didn’t get to do any exercising, or any like training. Go to Indiana and Indiana, I couldn’t compete the way I wanted to because I was out of shape. And I wasn’t really that bad out of shape. But like I was out of shape enough that when it came down to the timer, I didn’t push myself like I wasn’t there. And it made me doubt my ability to push because I’m like I don’t know if I have anything in the reserves. So for the four to six weeks between Indiana and Kansas, I went to my turn. I’m like, look, we got to do conditioning and he’s got me on this Versaclimber thing. And I pushed hard and so Kansas like we didn’t win the whole thing but it was back to like No, I knew that I had done the work to prepare myself, in that case physically, to prepare myself to push through being tired so that I could be relentless. And so it’s the same thing like in business, the big overarching theme for me would be, what are the elements about yourself that you need to as David Goggins would say, callus your mind so that you can always be in attack mode? What do you like? It can be the doubt in the mind, maybe it’s a physical thing that you actually just run out of energy to keep going, maybe as soon as something starts to go wrong. You’ve got a bad habit of making that be way bigger than it is, but it’s how do you build and take care of the muscle that allows you to be relentless and to keep going. So that’s a big one.
Jeremy Weisz 1:00:44
Brad, I love it. Everyone, check out sixthdivision.com and more episodes of the podcast, Brad. Thank you so much.
Brad Martineau 1:00:51
All right, you’re welcome. Thanks a lot, man.
