welcome to visionaries where we believe your powerful message is the best way to grow your business and live a meaningful life uh today we have on doug brown welcome doug thanks for joining me hey dallin thanks for having me on the call i really appreciate it yeah yeah of course you know i'm so excited to get into a conversation today uh but to kind of set the stage tell us a little bit more about who doug is and your journey to uh to the brand you have now well who doug is is he still figuring that out are we all there exactly um yeah it's a continuous journey but i would say who doug is right now is the guy that he's had a lot of experience in business and life and some lots of failures and lots of successes and uh what bread brought me to this place where i am right now building the brand that i'm building is i think originally it was my father's business so i started working at the age of three for my dad and i worked for him all the way from three to eighteen uh until i went into the military and then but what i watched was my father building a business working lots of hours really hard but he built it on his back because he didn't really understand how to leverage certain strategies to create the the revenue growth in the company now don't get me wrong he fed you know five boys and every other neighborhood kid that came through and you know they work for my dad in a lot of ways so it was a great family business but um what that brought me to today is because i worked with you know very large corporations and i've worked with you know tens of thousands of small and medium-sized businesses i decided that i wanted to focus on bringing the revenue growth strategies that you know we would employ in these very large companies down into the mid-size and smaller business market
yeah oh that's far sorry i thought you're going to keep going yeah and that's that's so powerful too and we we kind of talked about as briefly you know pulling from those large corporations right who have done so many things right to grow to that level uh and applying it to smaller you know small to mid-sized businesses who need it you know they're doing something right and following proven principles so why not get that applied especially with the amount of businesses that are being built today you know and starting from scratch so um and what ways do you find um that you've worked best with these small to mid-sized businesses who need this kind of growth well the challenge for small and mid-sized businesses is that you know their revenues are small right or smaller and mid-size so a lot of times these larger companies you know they'll pay high high dollar consulting fees because they want the results and so when we apply that to a company doing you know even 20 million dollars compared to what say you know intuit would would be able to invest um it's it's not really affordable for for a mid-sized business and you know smaller business doing three million it's even less affordable so you know what what i find is though that the principles and the techniques are the same what same thing a lot of times these larger companies um they've made a lot of mistakes and then they found the right thing right it's just like a lot of small and medium-sized business the only thing that really changes is the ability to be able to deliver what the the the truth of the the tactic or the strategy is and what so i would found for most of the midsize and small size businesses is doing this in a group format in a small group actually benefits them more than actually having the one-on-one consulting not that some of them don't want that and and some of them can't afford that but the reality is that in that mastermind type smaller group setting a lot of times they'll learn different things off of owners of different companies more so than they would if they just had the one-on-one relationship and i would say i mean you would i'm sure definitely agree right like you get different insights from different industries and kind of um new discoveries that say like oh my gosh like this type of industry although it's completely different than mine i could try applying this principle um in my own business and so there's probably a lot of um value in that shared mastermind that you that you've created and curated so um what what kind of uh additional i guess benefits have you seen with doing this this style group coaching um for these different business owners well this the the information transfer is number one but the the other thing is is the camaraderie right it's always nice to have somebody that's striving to go for the same type of things or similar types of things that you know let's face it business is easy when you take out the people right so when the people but the people are yeah but they're essential to the business right so so you know because people have wants needs desires they have all these emotions right um but business is very simple right i mean it's money out money in equals something oh yeah and and so if we apply these formulas and then we work on the strategic plays and the tactical plays to raise revenue it applies to all businesses and you're absolutely right alan because the uh somebody who owns a restaurant and somebody owns a manufacturing company or somebody owns a florist and or somebody owns a you know a pro tennis shop they all have to generate revenue and exceed their expenses and for them to continue to stay in business so the concepts of doing that are universal but the application might be slightly different and one business might say hey i did this this way the other business picks up on and goes you know that's a really good idea never even thought of that and so they get that power and leverage of you know camaraderie and a lot of times i put them into kind of a boot camp style where it's just like get right to the point you know i brought that from the military when i was in the military yeah and so sometimes people will say to me they'll say doug you know what we absolutely we hate you but we absolutely loved what we got for results because you just kept pressing us and pushing us and moving us along in a nice respectful manner but you know um i find that's another success trait is when people are in a group setting they'll bond together even to support one another even if they're being challenged in the process and uh it it tends to because of the um who said this that napoleon hill you know the mastermind concept the collection of brains uh the you know the growth factor and the compounding interest factor of a multitude of brains coming together it's very very helpful yeah and i couldn't agree more i'm currently in a business mastermind and i see the camaraderie and i just think of years past before mastermind was probably even a term used in business or just other social circles um i think of um some of my favorite authors like c.s lewis j.r.o tolkien you know lord of the rings author sure chronicles ernie right uh they they were peers and they had other authors and and uh knowledge experts of that time join together in a mastermind right these social circles where they would share ideas together and get inspired uh and so i mean those principles right they date back many many more years before that around that needed camaraderie um i kind of want to shift gears a little bit actually i i'm interested uh for you to share more around your your frameworks a little bit um you know an overview you don't have to share necessarily all your all your secrets and strategies but um i'm fascinated by the sales revenue growth that you uh the expertise you have and what you help these businesses do like what does that process usually look like as far as like the first step someone should take to feeling like they're doing things right the first step is getting ultra clear on the truth of the business direction that they want to go so the challenges with a lot of businesses and even super large ones is you know it's great to have all kinds of innovation going on but the question is between the choice and the commitment to what it takes to actually get there let's get truthful because now i don't mean honest because honestly subjective we're all like oh i really want to do that but the truth the truth is objectively measured right we can quantify it so that's one of the biggest challenges that i find that a lot of companies have in the beginning they want to grow but they're really not clear on what level they want to grow to and you know i mean everybody thinks it's nice to grow from you know x to y right but i can tell you i mean i was involved with one company and we went from 58 million to 362 million in two years that was not fun so so you know great we were there don't get me wrong and the company did even better later on and sold off for a couple billion dollars but the the reality is that sometimes growing too fast is worse than growing too slow now when you grow fast you usually have money and you can arrive at your problems in style so to speak but the reality is that getting truthful in the initial direction of where they want to go once we got that then it's about assessing okay where are we what do we have as assets what do we what are we missing right because before we even build a plan out we need to know what's there and then so once we do that then we start to assess the processes to people and once we have that then it's about building a growth plan out and then following that growth plan so that's kind of the four-step process if you will uh that we take people along um and most of it is focused on you'll have you know getting new clients increasing transactional value the increasing the buying frequency uh getting much more optimized on around the effectiveness of of of doing that uh and then you know the people part of it too you know how are we handling the assets that we have in the company what do we need are they being trained appropriately are they being held accountable are there processes in place to make sure that it runs as a system versus just running you know tactically where everybody's wearing 12 hats um you know and then looking at that whole customer journey and saying okay what's missing what's not missing what's working what's not working optimized and you know how do we increase the i would say the small percentages along that whole customer journey path to actually add up to a big number at the end
yeah wow that that's so i mean you can tell you know that bad crits and forwards the ability to guide through that process um with the with the group coaching program um that you do uh is as a lot of it that you step into their business and kind of review what is going right what's going wrong is it that you have a team that does that like what is i guess like how hands-on do you get with these businesses in order to assess and help guide them in the right direction well i love to get involved right not i guess that's my own ego but the reality is that i know the pain of having to be in positions that other business owners have been in because i i've been in them and you know sometimes we still go through them right we went just through a growth phase last year in 2020 we grew by 22 and a half percent um you know there were some challenges at the end of the year like okay how do we uh what do we gonna do for taxes because we grew in the last quarter very quickly um so i like to be involved as much but i do have a team that handles people and and we have to have that team um and the team actually brings other expertise and and uh points of view to the process for for people so we discover more but in general i like to be as hands-on as possible so i do a lot of the teaching i like to get in and first understand their business so we have them fill out a profile assessment on the company which is pretty lengthy it usually takes them about a couple of hours but it tells us through that assessment process through the profile process but what might be their big open blind spots that they're not seeing and a lot of times these blind spots just fixing one to four or five of these things throughout the business just turns the business in a whole new direction uh and just huge growth right no matter what size they are um as long as they're willing to commit to the process that needs to go through yeah yeah and that's actually you you hit on a question i was going to have as a follow-up you know i i feel like going through that process especially if it's you know multiple hours to assess and answer questions to really discover you know what are the holes we need to plug you know how can we fix different areas it can get probably pretty overwhelming as a business owner especially one that has a smaller team uh versus a large corporation to see that oh my gosh you know there are so many issues with things we need to address um how do you help prioritize a business to know what's my next right step um and how can i simplify this and remove the overwhelm of trying to implement and do everything at once so the way we prioritize is first getting clear on that on that business direction right because this is where people do get into trouble as they they hyper inflate the real goal so then they're setting out you know budgets for these types like like it's way too ambitious uh too yeah yeah i'll give you an example i mean i had a gentleman he came uh just the conversation you know he's he was doing uh three million dollars a year and i was talking to him and i said well you know what's your goal over the next 12 months he said well i want to be a 53 million dollar company and i said hmm by the way i never say that's impossible because i've had companies that have grown by you know leaps and bounds right um so so i asked him a quick question i said okay so what's your game plan he goes i don't have one i said well all right uh what kind of kind of budgets do you have put out you know for prospecting marketing etc oh we don't have any money right so so it's like all right wait a minute if you're not willing to invest to go from three to 50 million you know they're going to have to invest a lot of money into marketing and people and upswing right so we had to have that uh that that truthful conversation like what really is the real number and then he told me oh if i grew up by 10 this year i'd be fine right so but if we're going for 50 million growth and you only want 300 000 that's a different game plan might have some similarities um but it's a different game plan so we prioritize what needs to happen based on on the truth of the goal and then how do we keep them out of i think you said overwhelm or um them feeling like they're they're you know kind of spinning it's very much the same thing we only work on things that first we start looking at what can we get to get a short-term return right so because it's just you know everybody loves to watch marathon runners but you know who wants to run you know three marathons in a year right i mean um a few people yeah so however if i said look let's sprint from here to the end of i don't know the baseball diamond right uh and do that a lot of people say okay i can do that so when we get them there each base they touch they're picking up revenue they're seeing this is working so now the enthusiasm level goes up for the for the two things number one continuing and number two working through the long term so i have this concept i call short short long and it's like let's focus you on two or three short things first then a long term thing and that's a big mistake that people make they try to put these huge initiatives in that's what the gentleman was doing on the 53 million dollar play right he was looking at long term i can do this and there's nothing wrong with that but there has to be short-term strategic and tactical plays that happen to get to that next level did this answer the question for sure for sure you know and honestly part of the questions are just to further expand on these ideas right so i there's not a specific answer i'm always looking for and i think that was so powerful because what i find especially a lot of those listening or watching um this uh this episode in this podcast they they find themselves uh in need of this growth with their sales and revenue right exactly where you come in to help businesses and a lot of the struggles do come in with some of those main pillars in their business whether it's the cells the operations the marketing right client success and uh it can feel overwhelming um especially if you're a small team um some are even solo entrepreneurs trying to get out of that startup phase uh and and it can feel like a struggle like i you know there's still stages i'm going through and there will always be new stages i'm experiencing for my own business and uh and so i think it's powerful to hear that idea of honesty versus truth um that you said even earlier uh and that really stood out to me that like you gotta speak to the truth of the situation um versus like maybe the honesty or reality of like what you may have in a further future but focus on you know like what's the truth now what queen what can we do now in the short term to actually help hit these different levels and levels and milestones uh yeah no i i think that's so powerful and and how uh so i know you do this group coaching program um is it true that i think you're an author as well right and you put out other types of content out there i have to learn about this um what inspired you to to write a book about your experience in in these strategies so over the years i've written a lot of books not a lot i've written four or five books okay right but i never released anything it was just me writing to i don't know get a creative outlet but to also think through how do i help clients better that was kind of kind of it and then um a friend of mine at the time i told her i wrote a book and i wrote it all on one subject matter because i wanted people to understand one of the things that for sales people in general or people selling getting you know the right amount of qualified prospects is their number one challenge the number two challenge usually is in the conversion side in in the number one challenge on the conversion side besides messaging is objections they just don't know how to handle objections and they they go to sales training and i know i did too and it was like man you know crush that objection knock that person down right and i'm like this doesn't feel right to me like this is not a win-win play this is like one person wins one person loses so i sat down one day and i started writing a book and i said you know what i like to teach the philosophy the why behind why it happens if you will so i started writing about the whole philosophy and and psychology behind objections and i was as i was going through i'm like this is pretty interesting even i'm interested in writing it right so it's well and it goes like you know we we sell in every form of our life like i you know yeah i've got a four-year-old at home you know and so it's like you're trying to sell him on an idea or why you shouldn't do something right so the principles apply not just to like sales and revenue but all areas of life and it's incredible yeah that's exactly what i discovered too as i was writing this right because you're you're right i mean you you're into personal relationships where we're selling all the time i think daniel pink wrote a book to sell as human right um and the concept is like look we're human beings and and children especially four-year-olds uh they're the most brilliant sales people on the earth or manipulators you know i guess well but they're brutally honest yeah number one right and and number two they ask for what they want and uh they usually do play win-win when they understand how to play so uh i remember with my daughters the same thing right they were and and i would be like wow they just closed that sail on me and i didn't even know it was coming oh yeah oh that's so funny so so yeah i read the book and i got the book done and honestly it sat there for about a year and a half and a friend of mine said to me hey i you know how's that book going and i said oh i finished that you know a while back she goes well can i read them you know read it i said well it's not released she said how many books have you written i said oh i think four at this point she goes can you send me the manuscript and i said sure she said i just want to see what you wrote so a couple days later she calls me up and says hey doug i've read the manuscript it's pretty good i really learned a lot out of that uh can i ask you a question i said sure she goes uh why'd you write the book i said well i wanted to help people with you know handling objections and interpersonal communication and all that stuff she said oh that's really interesting she goes um you know in the chapter and she named off a chapter she said this this was there uh what do you think of that concept i thought this we talked about it for a minute and she asked me two or three or four other questions and then she asked me the ultimate question she said doug did you really write the book to help people and i said sure that's exactly what i did she goes well then how are they going to be helped unless you release the book
that was the closing question or the test close right yeah and and so i went ah so that's what got the book out and to my surprise stalin um you know it it quickly started being consumed and i think it went best seller in four countries you know in the first 30 days or something like that so yeah so amazing congrats on that by the way thank you testament that it did help people right yeah well her her name is houston uh and and so we had been friends for over six years and um we just got married last month so oh no way yeah even more congratulations that's amazing thank you wow wow well you know if anything um you know she obviously in turn helped you right oh absolutely i i i published you know when you're lying around with the you know new relationship and in marriage yeah that's right and and much much more she's been a great great help and and uh and a blessing in my life and you know sometimes i'll get a little cute and say you know i i married you because i became a bestseller and it was your idea right so yeah that's not the question to say to your wife folks that's what i watch that's the reason why yeah oh man i i think that's such a great example and all the time like when we hear content like my business is called content supply yeah and content's such a general word uh and to me at the end of the day it's it's the ability to get a message out you know like the only way to deliver messages with content and content comes in many forms in a book you know it's a written word uh it's visual it's something we can hold in our hands you know videos or another form podcast but on that idea that we can have something of so much value that is inside us but if we're not willing to go out of our way to publish it and get in the hands of people who need it um then people won't discover or know of that value and i think that's a perfect extra story an example of how more and more people do need to um recognize and discover what's in them and you're like yeah i'm writing this my reason is to help people not necessarily make tons of money off of it you know that's a byproduct but to help people uh and then get it out there you know and see and see if it works to test it um and uh and so i think it's so amazing you know that that experience is an author in doing that um what would you say to kind of shift gears toward this idea of a vision um you know it evolves i think for everyone in some form you know it's it's hard to know exactly what the the beginning to the end may look like um but uh but yeah i mean what it what is your vision like what what's that future you're looking to paint for yourself uh and your business moving forward so i have i have for business purposes i have two one is i want to bring this concept well i am bringing this concept yeah to the the mid-size and small smaller size businesses as well as continue to help the larger ones um but i also have the uh the desire to build a software program that helps people build relationships and communicate better and um so i've been actively working on that now for about a year and my guess is mayish if uh the developers hit the time frame we'll roll out the the the mvp of the of this yeah um and again i you know i did this to help people because i remember when i was a corporate sales rep and my gosh you know i had all this business going on and then they tried to bring in this crm system and said hey you got to put everything you have to you know speak about somebody put it in the crm and in my head went through this exercise i'm like this is going to cost me 25 000 a year in commissions there's no way i'm doing this right so what i decided to do was find something that would give people who are selling an roi a dramatic you know or instant roi and so i thought about it a lot and one of the big challenges that people have is staying in contact with one another you know we all like to do it through facebook or linkedin or whatever but it's not proactive it's all reactive most of the time so i built something that was proactive so that we can help people build better relationships and make them relevant so instead of you know sending out a an email to everybody it's it's personalized to each person but how do you do that in a more automated fashion so that's that's what i'm doing in 2021 as well as uh continuing the uh the revenue growth oh that's so powerful um keep me posted by the way in that software because um i i've been i'm in the mode right now of finding a good fit software for that front-end um you know top of the funnel type stuff uh and in those conversations because i mean at the end of the day like all the all the sales and marketing we do is to build up those relationships right um and so any way to help automate that but do it in a genuine way is is definitely solutions i'm looking for for my business and i'm sure many other people are like yeah like there's got to be something out there that that includes the human element inside of automation um right release so i think that's so powerful well hey doug this has been amazing um there's a wealth of value i know i've taken from this and many other people will as well um where can people learn more about um the software in the future you know what you're up to your books and and all the all those amazing things that you're up to well they can go to the website which is
www.bot
um you know we're pretty accessible so they can send me an email at doug businesssuccessfactors.com call the phone number 603-595-0303 if they want a free copy of my book just pay shipping it's a win-win sellingbook.com or they can go to amazon and yeah i tried to make it um because i'm not good at remembering things like that myself so um and you know i mean just uh you know i have some quizzes and different things that people can take uh the website is going through another transformation so it'll it'll change and hopefully the next 30 60 days a little more um but you know if they have questions or whatever just shoot them forward and if we want a conversation together then by all means my linkedin profile is doug brown1234 at uh link you know the linkedin address um and if it doesn't come up there go to berkeley college of music doug brown for some reason that comes up i don't know why but yeah but that would be the way to get old perfect thanks so much for listening uh once again if you would like to learn more about how you can use your unique message and share with the world through video and create videos that actually are professional and perform bring you money and all of the results and influence that you want to make then i invite you to learn more by going to contentsupply.com thanks again for listening and we'll talk to you very soon
