Today's Guest

Dean Mercado is the founder and CEO of Online Marketing Muscle (OMM). OMM helps small businesses automate their repetitive sales and online marketing task. Through popular demand, business owners wanted to learn “how to fish for themselves” and evolve their strategies to grow their business to the next level. Dean is very passionate about coaching small businesses. Dean emphasizes identifying what you want and why you want it! Systems are important to help you solve your what and why; is it repeatable, can we make it more efficient? Tune in to learn the importance of having strong fundamentals and the right perspective!  

Resources Shared

• Dean Mercado: Small Business Coach, Bestselling Author, Speaker
• Sales and Marketing Automation Agency | Online Marketing Muscle
• Dean Mercado | LinkedIn
• Thryv
  

Episode Transcript

(Please excuse grammatical errors due to transcription)

Gordon Henry:

Hey, hey, this is Gordon Henry at Winning on Main Street. And this week, we're lucky to have one of the leading small business coaches, Dean Mercado. Welcome, Dean.

Dean Mercado:

Thank you, Gordon. I'm so glad to be here with you, man.

Gordon Henry:

Great to have you. So quick background on Dean. Dean is the founder and CEO of the small business digital marketing agency, Online Marketing Muscle, and the number one bestselling author of The MindStretch: 49 Inspiring Insights For Business Breakthroughs. He's a respected small business coach, author and speaker focused on marketing, technology and leadership. Dean has a great quote, I love this one. "With new technologies, small businesses can now easily compete with the big boys." And that's just what we believe here at Winning on Main Street, so we're going to get into that. 

Dean has appeared at Inc., Investor's Business Daily, Crain's business news, Fox, ABC, NBC, and many others. What should you, our listeners, get out of this episode? If you want to scale your business, listen to Dean, and maybe even consider bringing him on board for some one-to-one coaching. So, Dean, welcome to the show. Let's get into it. You have two businesses. One is a small business coaching business, the other is the Online Marketing Muscle agency. Let's take them one by one. First, tell us a little bit about your background and how you got into small business coaching.

Dean Mercado:

Sure. Well, I went your traditional route. Bottom-line was the college, job, family. So, I did the college, did what I thought I was supposed to be doing, went into corporate America, spent a dozen years there and then realized I hate this. This is not fun. This is not what I want to be doing. I had that entrepreneur spirit since I was a child. I was the kid out there mowing all the lawns, washing all the cars, shoveling all the snow. So I had that streak in me. So, when I decided I'm going to cut and sever and go, if I could just earn a little bit for myself, this would be great. And then when I came out and I did that and I left corporate America, I got my rear end kicked everywhere. And this goes back a little over 20 years ago because I didn't know what I didn't know.

And that was critical, because here I was ... I thought, I got my master's degree, I'm a smart guy, this should be easy, piece of cake. But again, I didn't know what I didn't know. So I got beat up a little bit those first couple of years as an entrepreneur. Finally, after a few years and a couple of companies that I said, you know what, no good, not happening, get out of technology, move into what I really want to be doing, Online Marketing Muscle was born. But then even as Online Marketing Muscle was growing, that desire to help other people not experience what I had just gone through in those couple of years coming out of corporate America, it was a burning desire for me. So, I was like, if I could just help a few. And then on top of that, all of our clients started asking for it. Hey, it's great that you could just do this for us, but can you teach us? Can you just teach us how to fish instead of just giving us the fish? No problem. And then the coaching was kind of born.

Now, those lived under one roof for a long time. Online Marketing Muscle had the coaching element. But then what we started to recognize was that Dean was getting in the way of Online Marketing Muscle and Online Marketing Muscle was getting in the way of Dean. So, I didn't want to be a bottleneck in my company. So, I allowed those two to split a few years back, and now I'm happy to pursue what I want. And I do the coaching for fun. That's my fun. When I get to take an entrepreneur who I see dealing with struggles like I had dealt with, and if I can help them navigate those, that's happy day for me. That's the fun stuff. Online Marketing Muscle just continues to cruise along and do its thing and play very heavily, especially in the marketing and sales automation side, which I know you're familiar with as well.

Gordon Henry:

Yeah. So, let's talk about the coaching. So, who hires you and what do they hire you for?

Dean Mercado:

Ah, great question. Typically, who hires us are service businesses. A lot of times, they're that company that is right under seven figures and they can't find their way to crack through that glass ceiling that seems to exist to get through to the seven figures. And then we get a lot that are in those low seven figures that really want to get to eight figures, and they just can't seem to get there. What they don't realize is that what got you here won't get you there, and what got you here won't get you there. So, the strategies, in other words, that you use trying to get to seven figures are not necessarily the strategy you're going to use going from 3 to 10 million, if that makes any sense. Those strategies have to evolve. Just as you do as an entrepreneur, you have to evolve as well, along with your systems and your strategies and so on and so forth. So yeah, typical is a service-based business, cracking into the seven figures and then moving on to the eight.

Gordon Henry:

And with your marketing background, I guess I'll assume, that the challenges they face are often marketing related. How do I get more customers? How do I get customers keep coming back? Or is it something else? Is it operational? 

Dean Mercado:

Yeah. It has a big element of the marketing and sales, definitely no doubt, because it's an area that I'm fairly strong in after many decades of doing it. However, it spans the whole gamut. A lot of times where, many times, for example, sometimes I take on little pet projects where I'll take on an entrepreneur who's just getting started and they don't know how to do anything. So it's okay, we need structure, we need to build in systems, we need to teach them systems, team controls, and we have a whole methodology for that. That's where the mind stretch comes in when I work with my coaching clients. On the Online Marketing Muscle side, we have our methodology called Clone the Owner, which is a little bit different, which has to do more with the automation and systems and so on and so forth.

Gordon Henry:

Okay, so I want to ask you about that. So, on Online Marketing Muscle, just shifting to that for a second, it's obviously an online marketing agency. So, I assume that you're helping businesses build a marketing campaign, figure out where to spend their money, how to do it most efficiently, generate more customers, keep them coming back. Is that sort of the world you guys live in?

Dean Mercado:

Yeah, yes, and it's evolved also, Gordon, over the years. I mean, when you span back 20 years, the internet was just getting its bearings under it, its feet underneath it. So, when I first started Online Marketing Muscle, I got laughed at. "We thought you were a smart guy. Why would you start an internet-based company? The internet's a fad. Why would you do that?" So, yeah, in a nutshell, we do. We do help people a lot with their marketing and their systems. And Clone the Owner, that methodology we have, that's what evolved and what's come out of 20 years of doing this in the online space, figuring out what exactly has to happen to take a business from here to here. It's simple, but it's not easy.

Gordon Henry:

Yeah, yeah. I saw that. That's, I guess, one of your most popular speeches is "Clone the owner." And it is a great way to put it because so many small businesses have the problem being dependent on the owner, and if you ever want to sell your business, it can't depend on you, right? It can't-

Dean Mercado:

Correct.

Gordon Henry:

The owner leaves and the business sort of stops. So, how do you clone the owner?

Dean Mercado:

That's a great question. And with every single entrepreneur, it's going to be slightly different where the emphasis goes with that. But when we speak of the methodology itself, at the course, it's a vision. You have to know what you want and why you want it, or else, good luck. Which many entrepreneurs that we deal with, when you ask that question, that's like the hardest question for them to answer. What do you want? And why do you want that? Why is it important for you to create that? And most can't answer that. A lot of times, they think they know what they want, but. Programming, we all have a thermostat of programming. That program either restrains you and holds you back or allows you to flourish.

So, many times we find ourselves addressing that. And this is where my two companies come into play together a lot, because a lot of times if it's ... I don't really want to deal too much with that in Online Marketing Muscle because that's hardcore coaching when you have to go there. So, in that essence, we'll refer them over to my coaching company and say, "Hey, you might want to work with us over here and we can deal with that and address that and get you past that." But, again, with Clone the Owner, a lot of times it has to do with they got to get this right, they got to know what they want, and then they've got to get out of their own way, which is usually what the problem is when we talk about systems and team. That's the big problem. 

It's like, okay, in order to systemize or systematize your business, you've got to know what your core functions, what your core systems are. Those systems need to be documented. And as you guys work with Thryv as well, you got to be able to automate some of this stuff. You got to be able to find those ways of taking things off of your plate as the owner, and allowing other things to help you, help you achieve what it is you want to achieve.

Gordon Henry:

Yeah, exactly. 

Dean Mercado:

Leverage. 

Gordon Henry:

I'm glad we're on this topic and I want to break it down. Because sometimes people hear these words and they're like, what do they even talk about, what does systematize even mean? So, break it down for someone who maybe is sort of still kind of doing things the old way. What do you mean when you talk about systematize, when you talk about automation? What are the tasks that get systematized and automated? Help somebody who's really coming to this fresh. 

Dean Mercado:

Sure. Well, one of the first places that I would start with that is I would say you need to know the difference between a system and a project. A project is something that's finite. It has a finite start and a finite end. It's something that happens once. And then the next time, it's a different project. It's not the same thing. A system typically is something that you do that one thing, but it tends to repeat. Next week, you're doing the same thing again. Next week, you're doing the same thing again. Those are typically how we can easily, in the most rudimentary way, differentiate between a system and a project. So we're not talking about doing a lot of automation and stuff like that when it comes to projects. We're talking about the systems, those things that you tend to be doing all the time.

I'll ask you and I'll say, hey, if you see yourself doing something more than three times, it might be a system that you're really looking at and not a project. So, then it's about we say, okay, we're going to go through an exercise and we're going to identify all your core systems in your business. Now, we drop those into a couple of different categories. For one example, it might be marketing and sales category. There are certain marketing and sales systems that a business has. Lead generation would be one of them, how are you generating leads. Lead conversion might be another, how are you converting those leads that you get. And then there's much more granular systems on top of that too, like how are you collecting those leads, where are you storing those leads, what do you do with those leads once you get them, how do you follow up, follow through. So there's all kinds of systems that are related to sales and marketing. 

And then we look at operations and we start identifying what are all the systems that you have in operations. So, if your company does web design, there are lots of systems on how you build a website. If your system does cleaning, house cleaning, there are a lot of systems on how you go about cleaning a house. Everything from the moment they sign on as a client all the way through that follow-up and follow-through. So we take them through what we call a customer lifecycle. A buyer's journey, and then a customer lifecycle that follows that. And then we've got all the administrative systems as well, and that includes everything from your IT to your finance and to your HR. So there's lots of core systems there too. So, one of the benefits when somebody brings us in is we know what a lot of those systems are already.

Most entrepreneurs, they kind of know but they don't really. But when we come in and we say, look, we know you have this, this, this, this, this, this and that. If you're a service business, you're likely to have these 20 systems under sales and marketing. You're likely to have these 25 under operations. You're likely to have these 20 under administrative. Including when we talk about automating, we know what systems are more easily automated than others. Again, the intention is to get leverage, is to give that entrepreneur, that business owner a leverage on their business. Because if they could buy back their time, they can grow and scale. Right?

Gordon Henry:

Yeah, really well put. I think so many business owners, it takes them a while to realize that there's a lot of similarities between their business and the next business and the next business. Everybody wants to find new customers. Everybody wants to bring those customers in. Everybody needs to capture their customer's information, name, address, telephone number, email address, text number and so forth, right? Everybody needs to send bills, everybody needs to get paid, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. There's so many similarities. Your products may be different than the next guy, your personality coming through on your customer visits, but the basic core functions that a business performs are very similar from one to the next and those can be, many times, automated, which as you say, frees ... It doesn't just free you up. I think that minimizes the value of these systems. 

Another really valuable piece is making sure things get done in a methodical way. I'll give you an example, one of my favorite examples, I guess. We're all customers as well as business people. You get things done for you, right? So, you're a homeowner maybe. So I'm a homeowner and I am amazed at the number of businesses I work with who don't send me a reminder for something that I need to do. And especially nowadays, I don't want it via the US mail. I want it email or text. I actually prefer text. So, whether it's time to do my annual house cleaning or air conditioning cleaning or roof inspection or car inspection for the state auto requirements, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, I got all this stuff that needs to be done periodically, and I don't want to have to remember it. I want the business to tell me. And just so many small businesses don't do that. 

And not only is it helpful to your customers, it's good for you because think of how many customers would sign up for another time to clean your air conditioner if you just reminded them to do it, you'd make more money.

Dean Mercado:

Exactly, exactly. And it's very unfortunate. And that's a huge point you're making there. And I hope anybody who listens to this pays attention to that because it is one of the biggest breakdowns as a coach that I see that people, they just don't do the proper follow-up and follow-through. And there's no excuse for it anymore. I'm sorry. There are a lot of tools out there that really simplify it and they're not that complicated to use. And the house example is a great one because whether it's cleaning your gutters, who's thinking of when's the next time I got to clean my gutters? If they would just reach out to me twice a year and say, "Hey, look, we're going to be in your area." It's so simple, but yet so few do it. So if you really want to differentiate yourself, stand out from others and stop putting yourself in a position where you're chasing sales all the time, then you'd automate something like that. So, the hardest thing you could do is have to go after a new sale, a new sale, a new sale, a new sale. Why?

Gordon Henry:

Everybody talks about, the big boys, talk about annual recurring revenue. Every big business today wants to be in the world of annual recurring revenue, which means the money just keeps coming in year after year and you don't have to go chase it to your point about I don't have to go chase it. And most of the small businesses, and our listeners are small businesses too, are in the kinds of businesses that you can turn into ... Like you said, gutters. I mean, if I clean my gutter once, I got to do it again every six months or 12 months. And if they just said, I'm going to put you on an annual recurring plan, we're going to be out every September 15th to clean your gutters before the fall, or something, or maybe December after the leaves fall down, whatever the timing is, and we're going to be in your area and just sign up and we don't even have to bother you again. We'll just be out to do it. Right? 

Dean Mercado:

Exactly. And done and taken care of. And we deal and we bump into a lot of small businesses that when you ask them who their target market is, a lot of them say, "Oh, the affluent. The people who got the money. I want the rich." Okay, well, great. One of the things that I know for certain that people with money, businesses with money, people with money, they're willing to pay for is speed. They're willing to pay for speed. If you could take burden off of them and you could have things done fast, they're willing to pay for that typically. So when you're able to provide that, and there's no reason you can't these days, at least provide speed in your follow-up and your follow-through. 

And then, you're also creating for yourself what I call predictable revenue. And that is key for a small business. Because, otherwise, you're doing this, it's what we call that rollercoaster ride. One month you're doing great, the next month you're not doing so great and you're going to sales mode and you start selling, selling, selling, selling. And then the next month, you have a lot of business so you're in operations and the sales machine stops, until all of a sudden, the well runs dry again, and then boom, you're back in the sales mode. So you create that rollercoaster effect, which is horrible. It's horrible and it's not sustainable. It's stress. It's stress. Right?

Gordon Henry:

Yeah. I wanted to talk to or ask you about The MindStretch. So that's the book you wrote. Tell us what is the core message of The MindStretch.

Dean Mercado:

The MindStretch, well, real quick, came out of my bumping into another business coach who was about 20 years my senior. And we just had a conversation and we just loved each other. We're like, "This guy's great. We got to just ..." Our stories we were telling each other about what we were experiencing were just amazing. And so we were like, we just need to put a lot of those best practices down on paper, so somebody could just read that book. Even though you could read it in an hour, I don't suggest it. You could read one sentence from that book and that one sentence can change your business, and that's no lie. 

That book was, intention was to, it's like 49 insights that we came across, across seven different disciplines. Sales being one of the disciplines, vision being another one, things like that. And what we did is this is when the Twitter generation was first coming on with this, and I was like, you know what, I don't want a big fluffy book. We came up with a thousand pages, a manuscript. I'm like, no one wants to read that. What they want is just get to the point. We're from New York. Get to the point. So we took a thousand pages and we boiled it down to its essence. So it's a hundred-page book of just nugget, nugget, nugget, nugget. What do you want to know? Take one sentence from there and just think it through. So it covers seven big disciplines and it's all about helping the entrepreneur evolve.

It's all about evolve, what we call evolving to actualization, becoming who you're supposed to become. And that takes some thinking time to be able to take that and just not only bite it, bite into it, but actually taste it, and then actually take the time to digest every single nugget of information that you can get out of a book like that. And again, one of the problems with our society now is there's too much information out there. So, this book is not meant to be read cover to cover. The book was meant to be a supplement to, let's say, a coaching program. It was meant to be a supplement to being an entrepreneur. Take one statement a week, work on that one statement a week, and your business will be different in the year, guaranteed.

Gordon Henry:

Right. Sure. What are some of the main roadblocks you find entrepreneurs face and what are some practical ways of addressing them? You obviously have spoken to many entrepreneurs and business owners, they come into you. What's the typical thing they say? Dean, help me with, what?

Dean Mercado:

Right. And because I've been doing this so long, it really does vary, and it depends on ... Sometimes it's seasonal as well. But a lot of times, people will tell you that it's this, but it's really not that, that's the problem, it's this. So, many a time, they'll come in and they'll say, "Well, I need more clients." Okay, that's all fun and great, but have you looked at how many you're letting it go out the back door, your attrition rate? Because you wouldn't need so many new clients all the time if you would shut the back door and stop attrition. So many a time, it's that. Many a time, it's things like, hey, you know what ... It usually has something to do with sales. Something. "We don't have enough business. We're not making enough money. Our online presence isn't what it's supposed to be, therefore we're not getting the sales we need to."

So, a lot of times, it's about helping them get clear on what it is they want, why they want it, getting a proper strategy in place. And this is part of the problem with all the clutter going on that I'm mentioning, there's too much information, that we're like this. Everybody's telling us something else to do, and there's no way you're going to do it. And so, a lot of times, we're ratcheting people back, getting them to understand that you got to get back to the fundamentals of the game. If you get back to the fundamentals ... You mentioned a few earlier with the follow-up and the follow-through, how are you capturing your leads. It's a fundamental thing, but it's a fundamental breakdown that I see in the majority of businesses that we engage. They do not know how to properly collect leads. And then, what do you do with them when you have them. 

Again, these are typical breakdowns that we see. But a lot comes from no vision and weak mindset. They don't really truly believe that they deserve what they want. They don't truly believe that they can create what they want. They think they have to do it all themselves. So, most of the time, it's getting them out of their own way long enough so that we could talk about lead generation and lead conversion.

Gordon Henry:

It's really interesting you say it that way, that they always come to you and it sounds like a sales problem, but often, once you dig a little bit, it's not a sales problem. It could be an operational or a customer service or, as you say, shutting the back door. Sales is sort of the symptom or whatever. They say, "I need more customers." Well, if you fix the product problem or the retention problem, you wouldn't need so many new sales. That's a really good insight. 

I got to tell you this story as an example of that. My wife and I, we ... I'll out this company since it's a big company. We drive a Range Rover. A good car, by the way, a good car. It's time for us to either get a new one or renew. Our lease is coming up. We called the Range Rover dealer. I guess it maybe was after hours, so maybe it was after 5:00. We got the voicemail. This is recent. We got the voicemail. We said, "We're an owner. We need to renew our lease or get a new car." No call back, no email back. We left all our information on the thing. And now it's a week later and I'm having to remember to contact them. And I reached out to them. Not only aren't they reaching out to us, but they didn't return our phone call. And how many small businesses have that problem of following up when someone reaches you? I mean, the guy's on the roof or under the sink and the call goes to voicemail and they don't even return the call.

Dean Mercado:

Right. That is a huge, huge point, Gordon. I can't tell you how big it is. We always say the power's in the follow-up, because it is. And what you pointed out and just exposed, and I hope the small business person listening to this, here's what you said. Because their breakdown, that breakdown that you see, even the big boys doing, they have the same weaknesses that you can take advantage of. Their weakness is your opportunity, if you learn to leverage it properly. So, don't allow that to be your weakness too. You know, you see they're ... You're talking about Range Rover, that's a big company, but yet they are human. They are fallible also. They can break down when they don't have proper systems or they don't train their team properly on how to use the systems that they have in place. There is no excuse for them not calling a client back and addressing that.

Gordon Henry:

Yeah. Unbelievable. 

Dean Mercado:

So, again, their breakdown is your opportunity. So, this is your opportunity to say, you know what, it doesn't matter how small I am. With proper tools, proper systems in place, you can make a one-person operation seem like a hundred-person operation. I know. 

Gordon Henry:

Absolutely. Absolutely, yeah.

Dean Mercado:

Yeah. I lived that for years. People always ask me, how do you do what you do? I could never do it all without automation. Could never do it all. And I've been using that for over a decade, automation, and it just works. And why? Because I programmed that automation. That automation is just carrying out things the way I would carry them out. So, the only one to blame then is me. I set it up. But again, there's no excuse for not doing proper follow-up and follow-through. And there is opportunity everywhere. 

Most of us, small business, would throw up our hand, "Oh, I can't compete with them." Baloney. You certainly can. You can compete with them. And that's why I say the playing field's been leveled. Now, if you stay in victim mentality and say, "No, I can't. I can't play and I can't compete," then that's all you're going to have and I can't help you. No one can. The only thing that's going to help you is you. You've got to get out of your own way and realize, hey, there's opportunity here. How can I leverage this? How can I turn this into something that can make us money, something we can grow off of, something we can ... You might even become known for it. Hey, even if you're just that company that just calls people back within 10 minutes, that word will spread. People will start to talk about your customer service. There's no reason not to have that. 

Gordon Henry:

Yeah. Yeah, true. 

Dean Mercado:

My opinion. 

Gordon Henry:

We're going to go to a quick break. We'll be back with Dean Mercado. Don't go anywhere.

Thryv:

This episode of Winning on Main Street is brought to you by Thryv, the small business management platform that you and your customers will love, no matter where you are. Thryv helps you run your business, keep organized, and get paid faster, all from one login and dashboard. Thryv makes it easy for customers to find you online, instantly interact, and stay engaged. And with free unlimited support 24/7, there really is no comparison. Go to thryv.com/pod for a quick demo to see everything Thryv can do.

Gordon Henry:

And we're back with Dean Mercado. Great insights on small business, how to run a small business, and his coaching and his Online Marketing Muscle agency. I wanted to ask you a little bit more about the agency, obviously called Online Marketing Muscle. What are the most effective forms of online marketing, particularly for a small business these days? Do you find it differs by industry or vertical? And are there any effective offline marketing methods?

Dean Mercado:

Yeah, I mean, to address the second half of your sentence or your question first, don't neglect offline folks, because what was old is new again. So, when you used to think about 10 years ago, your mailbox being full with junk mail, your mailbox has nothing in it now. So, talk about ways to stand out. Yeah, I play a lot online, but I'm not silly about it. You always have to find whatever works. And yes, the current environment is going to help dictate that a little bit. What are people open to that maybe they weren't open to five years ago? So, to address the first half of your question, yes, the strategy is going to differ slightly. However, there are elements that we all need. You all need to have an online presence. Let's face it, when people want what you do, they're going to go online and they're going to search for it.

Are you being found? If you're not being found, shame on you. You should be doing whatever you could do to be found. Google is smart enough. The Googles of the world, they're smart enough to know where somebody's sitting on the planet when they do a search. So, let's say you're a cleaning company, you do house cleaning, and somebody out in where out east, Long Island, searches right from their home computer and they search for house cleaning near me. If you're a cleaning company that's even remotely close to that, you better be showing up in those search results. Google knows based on the IP address of that person where they are on the planet, and Google will show them results of cleaning companies that are in that area. So, getting smart about having an online presence and you need to have a strong online presence. Your brand needs to be strong online. 

That doesn't happen overnight, but it can happen pretty quickly because most of your competitors suck at it. I hate to say it that way, but they do. They neglect it. They ignore doing the things that they should be doing. Add value. You add enough value and it will come back. So you find ways of when you're going to play online, you're always going to need a website, I don't care what anybody says. And not just anywhere. You need a great website. And there's a lot of junk websites out there now because a lot of people are starting to hear, oh, I could use this platform or that platform and I could build it myself. No, you can't. A website is more ... Yes, you might be able to put a template up there that looks cool because someone else built the template, but what does that website say?

You have to be able to talk about how you help the people you want to help. You have to make it enticing for them. You have to make it easy for them in order to be able to figure out, okay, yeah, this is somebody I could work with. They sound like somebody I want to play with. So, your website will always sit at the hub of all your online marketing. So, a great website, you're going to need one. You're going to need a proper search strategy. There's no doubt about that. And then a lot depends on what your situation is. So, if your situation is such where you need business today, the strategies that I would push out there and suggest to you would be very different than if you needed something for leads 60 days out, 90 days out, two years out. And you should be thinking short-term, midterm, long-term. And your strategy for each is going to be slightly different. So, building your brand online by putting lots of content out there, that's more of a mid to longer term strategy.

Gordon Henry:

Yeah, yeah. You mentioned you work with businesses, many of them that are around a million dollars, trying to become a million-dollar business, maybe just past a million-dollar business. In that range, how much should a business like that be thinking about spending on marketing? Out of their million dollars of revenue, what should their annual spend on marketing be, rough numbers you think?

Dean Mercado:

Well, I mean, that's one of the most difficult questions to answer, because it's relative. It's relative to where their pain is right now, what their current situation is right now. If you don't have enough business to sustain, you should be spending every single dime you have and can reinvesting that back into your marketing and sales process. And I hate to be the one to say that, but there's times where I'll say, hey, you should be spending 80% of everything coming in. If you've got no business, this is put up or shut up time. Because are you going to have a business a month from now if you don't invest everything you can right now in your marketing and sales? So, a lot of it depends.

If you are in a steady state where things are rolling along pretty good, I mean, I've seen businesses anywhere from 10 to 25%, they'll invest back in. And that may sound high, it may sound ... but it's not because it's an investment, a reinvestment back in yourself. And if you're only thinking about marketing toward somebody who doesn't know you, new clients, new clients, you're missing the boat there too. Because when I talk marketing, I'm also talking about how you're keeping in touch with your existing audience, with your existing clients. What's going to stop your client? As soon as they get a mailer that says, "Hey, I can do this for you for 20% cheaper than what you're paying now," what's going to stop them from jumping ship and going somewhere else?

So, the marketing process is a multi-prong, a multi-tiered approach as well that you have to factor in what do I need to be doing to create the result that I want to create. So, a lot of that is going to depend on who your target market is, what kind of access you have to that target market. If you have horrible access to them, it's going to cost you a lot more. If you have easy access to them, it's going to be a lot cheaper. So, there are lots of variables. So when we step into a company and we evaluate that, we'll look at many, many criteria like that, and we'll come up with what we suggest for a specific business. Hey, you might want to consider investing this over the next 30 days. This may be over the next from 31 through 90. And then from 90 beyond, you look to do something like this.

But again, how much they invest and the strategy they choose is going to be very different depending on what their current situation is, who their target is, what kind of access they have to that target, so on and so forth. So, again, if you're a short-term and you're looking for something quick, yeah, paid advertising is going to be one way of going at it, definitely. Cold calling, cold email, depends on how desperate you are, how hungry you are. Sometimes, we have to shake you out of your own comfort zone, because your comfort zone has gotten you to where you are. And if you're not happy with where you are, you got to realize you got to do something different than what you're currently doing. Otherwise, your result's not going to change.

Gordon Henry:

Yeah, yeah. We just have another minute. Where do you see yourself going? What's next for Dean Mercado and Online Marketing Muscle?

Dean Mercado:

Yes. We are ... In 2023, we took a real solid, hell-bent stance on getting in front of a million entrepreneurs in 2023. And the reason we're doing that, and this is part of why I'm here with you, the reason we're doing that is because we saw the devastation that happened here in New York over the last several years, and it was unacceptable. Every major system, every major politician, everybody failed, and they put small business in a real precarious situation. And it was very unfortunate what we saw happen. We saw 50-year mom and pop shops go under. They just couldn't take it anymore. They didn't want to deal with it anymore. Not acceptable to me. So we took a hard stance that we're going to get in front of many. We're going to educate as many as we can. We're going to help as much as we can.

We're right now in the process of putting together our Clone the Owner Academy where we're going to deal with a lot of businesses and just try and move as many up the ladder as we can, and make the price point ridiculous, so that it's easy for anybody to get involved and there's no excuse anymore. We want to stop the trajectory that we're seeing. I don't care what trajectory we're hearing from our politicians and our news media cycle. We see what's really going on out there. We hear what's really going on there. My ears are really to the grindstone. I'm working with these people every day. I see what they're saying. And I'm a small business too. I see it and I experience it, I feel it. So, we're trying to alleviate as much of that as possible.

Gordon Henry:

Yeah, that's great. Well, I appreciate everything you're saying. We're all about the success of small business as well, so couldn't agree more. Where can people find out more about Dean Mercado, MindStretch, Online Marketing Muscle? Where should people look for you? 

Dean Mercado:

Yeah, the easiest two places would be deanmercado.com. That'll point you to everywhere I am. And onlinemarketingmuscle.com. If you're interested in the whole Clone the Owner concept or the Clone the Owner Academy, onlinemarketingmuscle.com is where it's going to be released, and that's coming very, very quickly. By the time this goes out to the public or everybody gets a chance to see it, we might be live already with that. But those are the two best places. But I mean, I've been around a long time. Just Google me. You'll find me everywhere. And I don't say that to brag. It just is, because I've been out there for a long time.

Gordon Henry:

Yeah. Fantastic. Well, Dean, I want to thank you for coming on the show, sharing all these insights. It's great to have you here and I hope some people look you up and find you. 

Dean Mercado:

Gordon, I want to thank you for your time, and I'm grateful to be on your show. Thank you. 

Gordon Henry:

And I want to thank our producer, Tim Alleman, and our coordinators, Diette Barnett and Daniel Huddleston. And if you enjoyed this podcast, please tell your colleagues, friends and family to subscribe. And if you don't mind, leave us a five-star review. We'd really appreciate it. It helps us in the ranking. Small business runs better on Thryv. Get a free demo at thryv.com/pod. And check out our new free product, Command Center, at thryv.com. Until next time, make it a great week.

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