Search Interviews:

Chris Herbert is the Founder of Mi6 Agency, a technology marketing and customer development firm dedicated to fostering small business growth and entrepreneurship. A former professional squash player, he has held positions as a marketing specialist and marketing director for various organizations, including laser eye care centers and technology firms. Additionally, Chris hosts the Rural Entrepreneur Podcast, where he explores sustainable and responsible business growth within rural communities. He is also a founding member of AREA 81, a firm committed to the development, acceleration, and success of rural entrepreneurs.

Apple
Spotify
stitcher
tune in
iheart

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

  • [04:05] Chris Herbert talks about Mi6 Agency and how it assists small businesses
  • [05:07] Marketing lessons from past companies
  • [11:18] The power of patience, understanding, and value delivery in the selling process
  • [18:09] Mi6’s marketing framework for business sustainability and growth
  • [26:49] How Chris transitioned from corporate success to starting his own agency
  • [32:54] How Mi6 acquired its initial clients and the evolution of its services
  • [36:19] Mi6 pricing process
  • [42:17] The “key person of influence experiment” and its potential impact
  • [46:52] Chris explains how AREA 81 aims to empower rural entrepreneurs in Canada

In this episode…

In the dynamic world of entrepreneurship, the ability to turn challenges into opportunities is a hallmark of successful leaders. By identifying innovative solutions and adhering to core values, they pave the way for sustainable growth in their ventures. What essential strategies can aspiring entrepreneurs adopt to navigate the complexities of launching and scaling their businesses?

Chris Herbert, a professional marketer, delves into the practical marketing insights and solutions he provides to small businesses. He discusses the importance of relationships, responsiveness, and how to integrate marketing into a business’s core. His innovative agency aims to combine community engagement with entrepreneurial ventures to foster sustainable growth in rural Canadian markets, using his well-honed marketing framework. Chris’s approach involves creating value exchanges, developing search-optimized content, and strategically analyzing stakeholders and channels.

In this episode of the Inspired Insider Podcast, Dr. Jeremy Weisz interviews Chris Herbert, Founder of Mi6 Agency, about practical frameworks for sustainable business growth. Chris talks about Mi6 Agency and how it assists small businesses, Mi6’s marketing framework for business sustainability and growth, how AREA 81 aims to empower rural entrepreneurs in Canada, and the power of patience, understanding, and value delivery in the selling process.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Special Mention(s):

Related episode(s):

Quotable moments:

  • “The most important asset that any individual has is their network.”
  • “People have to like you first; they care more about whether you understand their problems.”
  • “Always be closing, but ensure you’re truly solving problems for your customers.”
  • “Execution today is a combination of speed and quality, an essential duo for success.”
  • “The only focus of a business really is to get and keep customers.”

Action Steps:

  1. Integrate marketing into daily operations: Avoid treating marketing as an afterthought, which can lead to missed opportunities for growth.
  2. Leverage networking for business growth: Building and maintaining a strong professional network is crucial for gaining new clients and opportunities.
  3. Adopt a value exchange mindset: Build sustainable businesses by ensuring that all stakeholders, including customers and partners, find value in their association with your company.
  4. Utilize frameworks and methodologies: Implementing established frameworks and methodologies can streamline business operations and improve decision-making.
  5. Experiment and iterate: Continuously test new strategies and learn from their outcomes to refine your business approach.

Sponsor for this episode

At Rise25, we’re committed to helping you connect with your Dream 100 referral partners, clients, and strategic partners through our done-for-you podcast solution.

We’re a professional podcast production agency that makes creating a podcast effortless. Since 2009, our proven system has helped thousands of B2B businesses build strong relationships with referral partners, clients, and audiences without doing the hard work.

What do you need to start a podcast?

When you use our proven system, all you need is an idea and a voice. We handle the strategy, production, and distribution – you just need to show up and talk.

The Rise25 podcasting solution is designed to help you build a profitable podcast. This requires a specific strategy, and we’ve got that down pat. We focus on making sure you have a direct path to ROI, which is the most important component. Plus, our podcast production company takes any heavy lifting of production and distribution off your plate.

We make distribution easy.

We’ll distribute each episode across more than 11 unique channels, including iTunes, Spotify, and Google Podcasts. We’ll also create copy for each episode and promote your show across social media.

Cofounders Dr. Jeremy Weisz and John Corcoran credit podcasting as being the best thing they have ever done for their businesses. Podcasting connected them with the founders/CEOs of P90xAtariEinstein BagelsMattelRxBarsYPOEOLending TreeFreshbooks, and many more.

The relationships you form through podcasting run deep. Jeremy and John became business partners through podcasting. They have even gone on family vacations and attended weddings of guests who have been on the podcast.

Podcast production has a lot of moving parts and is a big commitment on our end; we only want to work with people who are committed to their business and to cultivating amazing relationships.

Are you considering launching a podcast to acquire partnerships, clients, and referrals? Would you like to work with a podcast agency that wants you to win?

Contact us now at [email protected] or book a call at rise25.com/bookcall.

Rise25 Cofounders, Dr. Jeremy Weisz and John Corcoran, have been podcasting and advising about podcasting since 2008.

Insider Stories from Top Leaders & Entrepreneurs…

Never Miss an Episode and get Free Updates

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:01 

You are listening to Inspired Insider with your host, Dr Jeremy Weisz.

Jeremy Weisz 0:22 

Dr Jeremy Weisz here, founder of inspiredinsider.com where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders today, is no different. I have Chris Herbert Mi6 Agency. You can check him out at mi6agency.com. Chris, before I formally introduce you, I always like to point out other episodes of the podcast, people should check out. Some of my favorite ones when we’re talking about since this is part of the top agency series, I did one with Todd Taskey. Todd Taskey, he runs a Second Bite Podcast, but he helps pair private equity and agency owners. He helps sell agencies. And what’s interesting, he talks about the valuation space agency space, and he finds, sometimes those founders that sell make more in the second bite than they do on the first, they sell the private equity, then private equity sells again. They roll equity into that. So it’s interesting to hear that model of selling not retiring on a beach, but actually keep doing what you’re doing and roll it into a larger entity. So I thought that was very interesting.

Another of my favorites was with Adi Klevit. Adi Klevit is an agency, and she does done-for-you SOPs for companies, okay? And we geeked out on our favorite software productivity tools and systems and processes, which is, kind of makes things run smoother from onboarding staff, onboarding clients, so we really walk through those things. So people can check out more on inspiredinsider.com. This episode is brought to you by Rise25. At Rise25 we help businesses give to and connect their dream relationships and partnerships. And how do we do that? We do that by helping you run your podcast. We’re an easy button for a company to launch and run a podcast. We do the strategy, the accountability and the full execution. Chris, we’re kind of like the magic elves that run in the background to make it look easy for the host in the company, so they can create amazing content, amazing relationships, and, most importantly, run their business.

And we were talking a little bit about this before we hit record. For me, the number one thing in my life is relationships. I know that you feel the same, and I’m always looking at ways to give to my best relationships. I have found no better way, over the past decade, to profile the people and companies I most admire and share with the world what they’re working on. So if you thought about podcast, you should — we’ll talk about Chris’s podcast, and if you have questions, go to rise25.com or email us at [email protected].

I am excited to introduce Chris Herbert. He’s the founder of Mi6 Agency, and for over 15 years, they’ve helped small businesses with really practical marketing insights and solutions to face all the challenges that they have in business, and there can be a lot of those. And he also advocates for sustainable and responsible growth, hence his Rural Entrepreneur Podcast, which kind of extends that mission. And he really adopts a comprehensive approach on focusing on building sustainable businesses, which includes community engagement and active participation in entrepreneurial ventures. We’ll talk about some of the frameworks he has around this as well. Chris, thanks for joining me.

Chris Herbert 3:52 

I’m honored to be here today. Thanks for inviting me. Jeremy, conversation.

Jeremy Weisz 3:56 

Me too. Just start off and tell people about Mi6 Agency, and what you do?

Chris Herbert 4:05 

Sure. So we’ve started 15 years ago, and our primary focus is to help entrepreneurs start, build, grow and scale their businesses. And in some instances, we’ve helped them exit. So we want to integrate marketing into everything that they think and do in order to achieve the success they want to do, they want to achieve, both as an entrepreneur and for their venture. So, the only focus of a business really, is to get and keep customers, and helping them navigate through the markets they’re targeting, helping them think about their business from a business model perspective where they can create, deliver and capture value, is at the core of what we do. And then the program and services we implement focus in on helping them go to market and get and keep customers.

Jeremy Weisz 5:07 

We’re going to get into the framework. I like framework. You like frameworks. And this comes from over 30 years. I’m not going to age you too much here, but you could probably whoop some people in squash. But 30 years of experimentation implementation. So we’re gonna go through this marketing framework that you’ve really honed in on over the past couple decades. But I want to start before we get into this on some of the things you learned from these previous companies, organizations experience. Because when you look at your track record and experience is pretty interesting and eclectic.

You were a professional squash player. You were a marketing specialist and business development and director of marketing of even, like laser eye care centers, even you were marketing at Squash, Ontario, looking at American commuter experience, just so many interesting experiences. I’m wondering what you took from some of these other companies working there into Mi6, what sticks out as learnings?

Chris Herbert 6:20 

Well, the most interesting thing of my past. Gosh, 25 years, I’m 61 and enjoying life with no plans to retire, the most sort of gratifying thing that’s helped me get to where I am today. And the way I think about helping other entrepreneurs start and grow their businesses and become successful is that I’ve worked with entrepreneurs who have started and grown businesses and learned directly from them. So I have had experiences working with companies that were rocket-like, let’s say, and again, we’re always working with entrepreneurs and trying to figure out ways to grow the company with little money to no money, and that’s always sort of stuck in my mind, is, what can I learn from these entrepreneurs? And are there common things that I’ve learned from them?

And some of the things have always been really not getting too far away from understanding and knowing what your customer needs and wants, and figuring out ways to stay engaged with them. So when I was Director of Marketing at a software and system integration company, before I went out on my own, I was there at Unis Lumin? Yeah, yeah. They were acquired by soft choice. But during that time that I was there, it went from 14 million to around 70 million. But by the time it was sold, I was involved in the day-to-day activities as a marketing director and inside sales manager, learning about the selling and marketing of complex solutions, which takes time to sell, takes a lot of time to educate customers in terms of the value that the solutions offer.

Jeremy Weisz 8:39 

It was like a, B2B software with, like, a long sales cycle. Very long sales cycle. How long was the sales cycle?

Chris Herbert 8:47 

Minimum six months. Could be as long as 18 months, depending on whether they were kicking tire, starting to plan for budgets and things like that. But at the end of it all was, it’s all about human act, human interaction. And I remember, I remember the owner telling me that, you know, first of all, people have to like you first. So if you’re a sales rep, or if you’re a marketing person or customer support rep, you got to figure out a way that somebody’s gonna like you, or at least feel comfortable about interacting with you, and then they’ve got to sort of like the solution or the solution idea, and then they’ll like the company. And that sort of stuck with me, is how do you create a situation where people want to work with you? And that’s interesting, it’s an interesting way to go to market.

You know, it’s figuring out ways that people will want to work with you. And it’s not just about you knowing how to solve a problem. It’s whether they actually want to. They care that you can solve their problem, whether they want to work with you. So the other thing that stuck with me, if I might elaborate on is, everybody needs to understand how to sell. Not just the sales reps, but the market marketing people need to learn how to sell. Boundaries need to understand how to sell, and even if it’s not their strength, just having an understanding of how selling works is so, so important, and that should feed into how marketing can support sales and vice versa. Very important thing, whether it’s B2C or B2B, it’s the same thing, is, how do those two things work together? Very important.

Jeremy Weisz 10:37 

Expand on that a little bit. Chris, what have you learned on how to sell? And I want to just kind of echo that, because, like we say, I love that people have to like you. They also have to like the solution. This kind of came into play with, I was talking to a friend who went to a doctor, and they were an amazing doctor, but the person was not that nice, and they’re like, I don’t want to be their patient, right? So it comes into play in a lot of different arenas, even for a lot of professions. But what have you learned on how to sell?

Chris Herbert 11:18 

Well, what I’ve learned for the most part, and this is from my own personal successes and lessons learned, as well as really, really, really good sales professionals, especially in the technology industry, is patience. Really understanding the customer to the extent that you can. And trying to think about ways that you can deliver value to them throughout the sales cycle, even if they’re not in the buying cycle. You’re always thinking about ways that you can deliver value to them. And the other thing is, just realizing that they don’t really care that you’ve got a quota, they don’t care that you need to sell something, they care more about whether you really understand the problems that they’re facing, and if you can uncover problems that they didn’t think they’d be facing, and from there, you work your tail off to really figure out ways that you can solve those problems with them at a profit for your company obviously.

The other thing that I’ve noticed recently, you know, just responsiveness is so, so important, even more so today, but being responsive, being empathetic, but asking for the order. I found in some cases that people are reluctant to ask for the order, and you need to ask for the order. And I remember one CEO of a company. When I was working for him, heading up marketing, I said, what’s the one piece of advice you would give an entrepreneur if they were starting out? He said, always be closing. The challenge is, if you’re always trying to close, you have to be careful that somebody doesn’t always feel that you have your hand out. You’re always asking for something. What else can I tell you about that?

Jeremy Weisz 13:28 

I like the delivering value throughout the sales cycle. What were some of the things you did at UNIS? Because obviously we’re talking a longer sales cycle of 18 months, maybe, maybe even longer. What were some of the things you did throughout that year and a half or more to deliver value in the process?

Chris Herbert 13:51 

Yeah. So the challenge we had at Unis Lumin was we had a CTO, who was the co-founder, who was a rocket scientist like he was everything that a client would want in terms of an advisor. So he was in high demand. But the problem with that is, he would be asked to go out on four-legged sales calls all the time, and he was getting tired, so I turned it around and said, okay, so the buying cycle is what really matters. There’s a sales cycle, right? Which is our sales cycle. But what’s the buying cycle like? And understanding when people are searching for a solution, they’re basically information gathering, right? And they’re not really prepared to open up too much, they’re kind of careful, let’s say, in terms of how much information they want to give.

So Moro, who is the gentleman in question here. What we did is we spun it around and said, okay, so we know that you’re in demand, and we know the sales reps are all clamoring for you. So instead of doing one-to-one, we’re actually going to have physical events, like typical events, seminars, get togethers with a social component to it, and you’re going to get up and talk about emerging trends in technology. And what happened in the very beginning was the sales reps kind of pushed back and said, well, it’s your job as a head of marketing to fill the seats. I said, no, it’s not. In fact, you know how difficult it is to get more on a sales call, you have five seats out of 40 that you can fill. Two of them can be existing customers, and three of them can be prospects. You have five seats. So we told all the sales reps that you have five seats.

So they started fighting, because they wanted to make sure that they had their customers and their prospects coming to those events, and they knew that it was going to be easier for them to get in front of moral that way. So that was one thing that was really, really important. The other thing happened out of that was we deliberately made it so that customers are coming to the events as well as prospects, and introduce them to each other, so that the prospect could talk to the customer and said, what’s it like working with these folks? So that’s just one example, and we thought about the buying cycle, right? We were thinking about, where are they in the buying cycle? And in some cases, they’re not yet ready to buy, but they’re probably would get into the buying cycle if they learned something about where technology was heading, and they could talk to other customers who were already deploying the technology.

So very important to bring those people together as a group. So that was probably one of the most successful things that we did where we were aligning the sales and the buying cycle as much as we could, and integrating marketing into the sales process, and making it so that the reps actually were clamoring for seats as opposed to waiting for us to send an email blast out and just fill the room with cold bodies, sort of thing that worked out really well.