Competing with the World’s Wealthiest Man | Former Virgin Mobile CEO (Steve Logue) Shares Strategy for Competing with and Beating Carlos Slim

Audio Transcription

How do you climb the corporate ladder to become the CEO of Virgin Mobile, Mexico? How does one compete against the world’s wealthiest man and a game of guerrilla marketing? And how does one man learned to manage employees in 24 separate countries all simultaneously? On today’s show, the former CEO of Virgin Mobile, Steve Logue joins us

Credible audio experience. Today we are interviewing a man who was once the CEO of virgin mobile for Mexico. You Know Virgin Mobile, the phone companies. If you ever heard of virgin companies, is it mobile or mobile? We’ll get into it just because you kind of deep stuff we’re going to get into on today’s show said ways. This is what it means. It means that today’s show, today’s guest, Mr Steve Logue. He led his company into a head to head battle and ultimately a victory against Carlos Slim, who was once the world’s wealthiest man between the years 2010 and 2013. Steve, welcome to the thrive time show. How are you, sir?

Hey, I’m great. And I know, uh, uh, it’s good to be here. I know everyone. Sympathetic Mr Carlos slim is no longer the richest, but maybe he’s number seven or eight now. I think it’s dropped a couple of billionaires. I know the sympathy is just flowing from all of this.

Well, maybe you could buy a lottery ticket and win it all back, but I’m hoping I’m cheering for him.

He could probably buy the lottery.

No, I want to ask this. Uh, Steve, before we deep dive into your time as the CEO of virgin mobile or mobile, let’s get into the deep question. Is it mobile or mobile help educate us?

Oh, I, I say virgin mobile a sounds more sophisticated. Right?

Okay.

I think it all works. You know, Volkswagen people say Volkswagen, American say Volkswagen, but it’s really folks bogen, right? Uh, you know, so I think either works

now. I, I would love, I’d love to ask you about your first job after you earned your Mba from Georgia state university. Help us kind of connect the dots. So you got your Mba from Georgia state university. How did you start your career?

Yeah, well, you know, I started working actually 28 years ago when I got a bachelor of science and Engineering and, and uh, I was an engineer for the first three years of my career, um, you know, the degree enabled that and that was the early days of the wireless industry. There were very, very few people coming out of college with any kind of wireless technology expertise in. I was one of them. And so I was snapped up pretty quickly by verizon. That was a 28 years ago and um, you know, just latched onto a new industry that was poised for big time growth. And so I got lucky there I think. And then, um, maybe close to 15 years later, um, or maybe 10 years later I decided to go back for my Mba and I always recommend that to students to get a little work experience before going to your Mba because it helps put things into perspective. And so when I got that Mba, um, that was a catalyst for me to move from being in technical jobs to commercial jobs because beforehand, you know, uh, everyone is say, you know, looking at me saying, well, you’re an engineer, good engineer, but that’s what you are. You’re not a sales marketing guy. And so the MBA helped to change that perception of me. And so, uh, my first job after the Mba was a, uh, it was a marketing role,

z over the years. And ask us this question about, should I get my Mba? I could not agree with what Steve Logue said more. He started out working in the field, did he went back to get his mba to sort of jump to the next level. And I think there’s a lot of people that have never worked in an industry. They try to get the Mba before getting experience and they don’t understand what they’re learning and they almost become unhireable. Like if your first job out of college, you know, as your first job at a college begins with you getting a job after getting an Mba with no previous work experience, I think it can be hard to hire you. That’s good advice right there. Go in there, get some experience and then go back to get the Mba if you absolutely need to know Steve when did you.

Yeah, because he put the theoretical concepts. You’re able to test them with your real world experience. Right. And you’re, you’re there to learn more than you are to check the box and just get the degree. Right. When I went back it, yeah, it was for the degree, but I wanted to learn also, and you know, a lot of the young people that go straight from bachelor’s Mba are there to check the box, got the degree now start working and then just contribute far less to classroom conversations. So I recommend getting some work experience and then going back for your Mba,

I think a lot of people might look at your resume and go see, that’s intimidating, but I’d like to share with our listeners tear Steve, why you think that you were able to climb the corporate ladder and what our listeners need to do out there. They too want to climb the corporate ladder.

There are no shortcuts to hard work, right? Um, you, you’ve got to put a shift in and especially early on in your career when you’re, when you’re, you need to learn everything. You just really need to work hard. You need to be prepared to make that sacrifice to do that. And um, but you can’t do it alone either. You need to find a good mentor, uh, you need to look for jobs that, um, you know, where, uh, um, there’ll be a boss there that will look after you. They will open the door for you that a coach you, they’ll teach you, they’ll give you challenging opportunities, uh, and ultimately a mentor, right? That is there to guide you. And so you can’t do it on your own, but, and then I would say also, um, you know, it goes along with not being shortcuts to hard work right in that his take on the assignments that are difficult to take on any assignments that no one wants because it has to get done and, you know, a good things come your way. Um, you know, I hear a lot of young people talk about, well, my goal is to make money. Money comes from me. The money has always come. If you work hard, build the right relationships with people and deliver results, the money and money and the opportunity to just follow from that.

Can you remember back in the early days, maybe a hard assignment that nobody wanted to give a little kind of practical demonstration of that?

Let me think about that. I’m not just jobs but just projects, right? I mean, uh, you know, uh, uh, nothing that comes straight to mind now. But I just know that I was the first volunteer whether I was qualified or not to do something, uh, you know, uh, and then I made excuses later if I didn’t do it according to expectations. Right. But it’s just, you know, when, when something needs to get done and everyone’s tired and you jump in and say, I’ll do it. Um, you know, that goes a long way. You expand your skills, you, it is a good graces of the decision makers and I’ve just done it. I’ve just done it naturally and I can’t think of apple. I’m sorry. Give me a little more time. Yeah.

It’s one of the concepts we talked about. You know, you don’t want to fit in, you want to stand out and that’s really marketing yourself. I have a really good specific action items for the listeners out there because people want to be saying, okay, I want to, I want to overdeliver, I want to, I want to stand out. How do I do it? These are just five really easy tips. And Steve, you can take note on the show notes here. Um, one is play the beat your boss to working for your boss to work beat. Your boss does figure out when they get to work, get a steve from your career. Typically doesn’t the most successful person in the building tend to beat most people to work? Uh, yeah. When I, my first mentor and coach, that’s what was my game with him. I tried to get there before him. He usually got in by it. It’s about six and Steve Logo. Have you seen the same thing in your career? I mean, the most successful people typically get there early.

It depends what region. If it’s Latin America,

okay.

There’s no doubt. If you’re going to work hard, you’re going to put in more hours than most people. I mean, whether it’s morning or evening or whether that’s taking a shorter lunch for note, no doubt you’ll, you’ll have to put in more hours. Yep.

Tip number two, find your boss’s favorite beverage. I’ve had that happen twice for me. They’ve literally said, hey clay, what’s your favorite drink? And I said, I like the quick trip coffee, uh, with just a little bit of hot chocolate. Why do you ask? I said, okay, I just want to know. And in everyday this guy brought me this beverage for probably Steve, Steve Log here probably know two, three weeks and then I all of a sudden thought to myself, I wonder what his name is. Isn’t that a move, Steve Log? Isn’t that a great way to stand out? I mean, just, you know, ask your boss, can I help? Can I do something extra in that to move

some people, especially when you’re early on in your career are going to accuse you of ass kissing, you know, um, but you know, you have to be known to the decision makers, right? Doing good work is one thing, but being, you know, being recognized for that is, is another, right? And so you have to build relationships with people because especially as you move up the corporate ladder, everyone has long resumes, uh, as you move up the corporate ladder. But then for the choice jobs there, there’s got to be trust as well. And that comes through relationships. And so you’ve got to do it all.

That’s fine. It’s funny, SSteve Logue, if you want to steal my move, you want to build relationships, you can’t just go to work and do your work and never meet anybody. I mean sometimes sometimes coby Bryant shares a story. He said that Phil Jackson told him coby a lot of players in the Lakers like to party at night and they don’t like you because you don’t party with them. And coby is like, I know because they need to quit partying and he goes, coby, I want you to go out and party with the other players. And he’s like, are you kidding me? I like no. And so Phil Jackson, the coach of the Lakers, told coby Bryant to go out and party with the guys. They’d like him because no one actually, people sincerely did not like him. And can you talk about how you throughout your career we’re able to build relationships. How did you do that?

I think it just depends on the. I’ve had a career has taken me and I’m very privileged, I think to 35 different countries and there are some countries that value those personal relationships more than others. Um, and you know, some countries where things just don’t get done unless the other guy really trusts you and that doesn’t come through email. And so you just get to know each other, uh, you get to know each other better and you know, you ensure your rowing the boat in the direction together. Right. But, uh, you know, speaking of relationships, I mean, I, I owe a lot of my career growth to my mentor, a Mexican name, Roberta paone and uh, you know, I worked hard in the early days when we didn’t know him to get to know them and learn from him. And uh, uh, you know, uh, what’s happened, but he’s still my mentor to this day. I will talk more about the experience in Mexico later, but, uh, when I had the biggest problems, I, you know, when you get to the CEO level, it’s true. It’s lonely at the top. You’re, you don’t have any peers as a CEO. And so there were many times when I was caught and didn’t know what to do. What did I do? I pick up the phone and called my mentor and it’s a relationship that’s built over 20 years still going to this day

Z. I’m sure you’ve seen this in your officers. There’s some people who have great skill, but they bring weird energy. They always seem kind of like they’re up going through some personal drama. They bring it up. So it’s like play. How was your day? And I would say if I’m bringing weird energy echo, definitely be drama through. I’m going through a relationship thing right now and uh, so it’s kind of hard for me to be positive today. You know what I’m saying? And you’re like, what? I know we all have an excuse to be in a bad mood. We all have an excuse to be grumpy. We all have that excuse. So nobody’s drawn to that. People are drawn to the light. People are drawn to positivity. Steve, look, how do you bring the positive energy on the daily basis?

I try to live that everyday. And it doesn’t mean being silly. It was silly optimism and saying something is good when it’s not right, but it does mean believing. And, uh, it does mean believing and recognizing that as a leader, you the vibe that you bring to the table filters down and so our culture throughout the organization and so and so it’s important. Um, you know, I guess just no alternative to having great doesn’t mean everybody needs to be an extrovert. It doesn’t mean everybody needs to be able to crack a good joke and it doesn’t mean native whether he’s really laughing 24 slash seven, but you know, you have, you need to stay positive and not negative. No doubt.

A little tip for getting ahead, I want to tap into Steve Logue is you really, really wanted to be a committed lifelong learner or at least as long as you’re working there, you always want to be getting better. You want to be committed, lifelong learner. Steve, why can’t you just get your certification, get your Mba and be done if you want to become the CEO of virgin mobile or any other top organization

because technology changes so rapidly, um, consumer behavior changes. And if you’re not on top of trends, you’ve become a dinosaur. And, you know, I’m in, but Korea, I’m 50 now and so the last few years I’ve been leading a digital transformation and it’s just opened my eyes to how business has changed so radically over the last decade. And so, you know, you always constantly have to refresh your skills and, and uh, um, and, and learn new things, otherwise you become a dinosaur. And I’ve seen many guys my age that rest on their laurels and they looked back and said, well, I did this 12 years ago. Great success. And they just sound like dinosaurs. And so, um, if you want to continue to grow throughout the course of your career, you have to continue to learn. It goes together.

Are you okay with us going into, you know what, I would feel a lot of remorse. Career. You’ve worked with Dr. Z. you’re welcome with verizon, bellsouth, Nokia, huge telecommunication companies previous to becoming the CEO of Virgin Mobile. At your time with, with verizon or Nokia bell south, any of the places you were at, do you have a most memorable moment or some of your most memorable moments with your time spent at verizon or Nokia or bell? South Nokia,

Nokia. How they pronounce it in Finland, Nakia. So when I was there, the company went from hero to zero. Um, when I, when I started a company, um, it was before the iphone came out and Nikita, I dominated the communication to the handset industry.

Yeah,

yeah, exactly. They also, they put texts and phone cameras on foot. They were just dominant and you know, and then the iphone comes out and absolutely just destroys a over the course of let’s say five years the company. Right. And, and not just Nokia, blackberry, Sony Ericsson. There doesn’t handset manufacturers that just were just taken out by the disruptive force of this iphone. And so what a great case study that is and how a company went from hero to zero in the course of five years. And uh,

real quick, I don’t know if this is appropriate, but back in the day, I know this probably I should have asked you first, but before I knew you, before I even knew we’d have this podcast, the, I just have that kind of what year, by the way, did Nokia fall off the map? What year was I want to make sure we had the same year as your, what year did they fall off the map?

Yeah, the iphone I believe was launched in 2007 and they launched first with a t and t in the United States and then went global global. Was it 2017

still owned DJ connection.com at the time was just finishing selling. And I thought to myself, you know what I need to do, I need to put microphones, the nokia stores without Steve Logs permission to Mike. How the store sounds since the introduction of the iphone into the marketplace. We’re absolutely. And so Steve, this is the audio of the Nokia store. Five years after they introduced the iphone,

it did not go over. Well, I’m sorry I didn’t ask you, and so to keep it fair, Z, I went, I went back over there to the uh, to the most. Was it the, uh, the, the blackberry store? Yeah. And yes, after hours I snuck in. A lot of people sneak into steel things. I snuck into add things. Sure. I added an audio recorder. Why wouldn’t, this is audio from the manager of one of the blackberry stores talking to a star moments before his boarding team, building meeting moments before his morning meeting. This is what he had to say to his staff. This is what he said to himself, looking in the mirror, given himself that positive self talk before the meeting. This is what he said to himself.

Like, I picked the wrong. We quit smoking

the wrong week. So again, I mean, you saw an iphone completely discombobulate the industry. What did you do? What did you do at the time that you have to switch companies? Switched team. What? What, what did you do? How did you, with your career?

Yeah, I, um, I was responsible for the largest account in the world at that time. Nokia voted the Vodafone account, multiple multimillion dollar account and just trying to do whatever we can to reduce the revenue erosion, right? You know, we’re just losing market share and hold on to our market share versus iphone. And you know, you think back to those days I’ve been, I think there’s a lot of books and articles written about. No kids dancing. What happened, right? And, and, and I have to say, the one thing that comes to my mind is there’s a philosophy in Korea called the Yin and the Yang. And one of the elements of that is the seeds of defeat are sewn in victory. Nokia was so good for so long that they got blinded. It got blinded that, uh, an arrogant thinking that no one can unseat them.

And idea came from the outside through this company called Apple. The first reaction was going to fail a or we can do it better or what. And so there was just no urgency there. And so, you know, uh, you can say, okay, well Nokia didn’t have an iphone. That’s true. We’re not going to privilege. But why was that the case? It was cultural, there were for technology decisions regarding the operating system, but more than that, it was just cultural. It was, no one can take us off our thrown here. And so, you know, uh, it took them years before they realized

what did your daily life looked like when you were working at Nokia? What was your position at Nokia?

So I first managed the h and t account here in the US, the largest account here. And then I moved to London as an expatriate to manage the Vodafone account.

Yeah, it was, it was basically in that business of selling gazillions of handsets. There’s no recurring revenue. You have to do it over and over again every month, every quarter, resale handsets. And when that iphone came out, before the iphone came out, it was pretty easy to do and in fact we couldn’t build enough phones fast enough to meet the demand with the large operator customers like 18 team, Vodafone. But when the iphone came out, it was the beginning of the end and we were just swimming upstream just to hold on, do everything we can to hold on. And then it went to our market share and then personally speaking, you know, as the revenue of the company started to decay, the company reacted in the only way they knew how start cutting costs cutting people. And so I kind of jumped off that ship before, you know, uh, um, you know, before it became a recurring thing, just to hold onto your job.

Interesting question for you. So, and I’m not sure exactly when you realized, oh, but maybe a little thing for you to talk about, but the sales guy that you were with the largest account in your company, did anybody come to you and say, Hey, Steve Logue rogue, rogue. They might come to you and say, what are your thoughts? And, and on flip side where you were you screaming up the ladder going, these are my thoughts.

Yeah. Well I’ll never forget the reaction. I went straight to the head of R and d of Nokia and I said, look, this was actually before the iphone launch and I said, who would call them touch screens at the time? And if you believe that the phone was going to be more than just something to make phone calls, but to access the Internet, um, you know, then why waste half the physical space in our heart keyboard, what make us make it a big screen and that transforms into a keyboard when you want it, when you don’t want it becomes a screen like your computer. And so I’ll never forget going to the head of r and d in The u. s and the guy basically said, look, this technology has been tried before. It’s not mature enough. Point number one, point number two, um, no American will ever pay more than $9.

Ninety nine cents for a phone. Anything else besides those cheap phones? In point number three, it was the best part. Steve, you’re in accounting, you’re in sales, you sell what we built. And so that, that was the resistance that I got the head of r and d states the itching t counts. So you can imagine I didn’t take no for an answer. So I went to the head of r and D in Finland, number two, guy. And I made my case, and here’s the best part. The Guy Responds to me and basically says, Steve, great idea. We need to touch phone. In fact, I’ll look at the presentation on and I’m exaggerating now on page 64, bullet point three. You’ll see that we haven’t touched phone, uh, in our product roadmap. And basically what I call that passive resistance. That’s basically saying, shut up. Go do your job. Leave it to us.

That was the reaction.

Well, they went

from hero to zero in about five years.

You lead a team in 24 countries. So I have just a ton of questions about that. I’m going to try to condense it into one concise question. Multiple languages, multiple countries, multiple cultures, one company. How in the world were you able to lead a team in 24 separate countries?

It’s not easy to do because those people in those countries are in Matrix reporting structures where they have their own local bus taking orders from both me and their local box. And usually your local boss takes precedent. And so first lighting them up and getting them to all participate in it. In a call or a meeting, it was always a challenge. The language of the company was English. No, mostly the multinational companies on the planet. The language just by default is English, including boardroom in the boardroom. And so, you know, and the other big challenge there at Nokia was, you know, uh, uh, um, and this was symptomatic of the company, is that I had a lot of responsibility in managing the largest accounts in the world, but I had no real authority to change things in the company. And so this team, I lead a but they were all in Matrix reporting and I didn’t control any money and so it was very, very challenging I would say.

How many languages do you speak?

I think for, uh, but, uh, I’m most proud of my ability to order a beer and 50 languages. I just take my hand up to my mouth and do that little motion there. You linked to the, to the, to the waiter.

So you can speak four languages fluently?

Yes. Yes.

What languages do you speak?

A Spanish, Portuguese, German and English. Um, yeah. So, uh, you learn Spanish and Portuguese. I learned working in Latin America for over 10 years off and on in my career. And German was my first language. My mother’s Sharvin, father’s Irish, wife’s American, and so big, big

50 languages. Your father was Irish. That makes sense. Now, total sense.

Only two ways. There’s only one way to learn a language. It’s immersion. You just gotta go and just speak it everyday and make mistakes and ask people to correct you. And the other way is love, right? You meet someone and you know, they only speak another language and you learn to talk, right? So it’s just emerging. You just got to get out and do it. That’s the only way to learn a language. But the other. You asked about the defining moments, we talked about Nokia hero to zero, but the other one I’ll just mention quickly is when I was with bellsouth in Brazil, um, it was a startup, very large startup. We invested 4 billion in the country and you know, we’re running along there a building the company and everything’s going really well, captured almost 50 percent of the market in the first year. Um, granted it was going against a very weak government control competitor.

But, um, you know, growing, growing, growing, everything’s going really well. And then suddenly in, I’ll never forget the day in January of 1999, the currency crashed. And this is one of those things that you’ve got to deal with when you do international business is currency devaluation. And so what happened there was, you know, you make revenue in the local currency and then you convert it back to dollars. And so, you know, uh, um, when the currency crashed, suddenly your revenue, our revenue was cut in half in dollar terms overnight. However, the debts of the company was in dollars. The debt stays the same at $2,000,000,000, but the revenue suddenly just cut in half because the currency in dollar terms, because the currency crashed. So suddenly you are a healthy gut. You went from healthy to unhealthy overnight. You went from being able to service your debt one day to the next day, tripping up every single covenant, a loaner agreement, and so and so, you know, it taught me a lot about you and that’s where you learn in your career, you learn is when your, when your back’s against the wall and companies about to go under, you learn what’s important and what’s not important.

And I would say that’s the other big, I would say learning moment in my, in my career

ultimately earned the position as the CEO of Virgin Mobile, Latin America. Did you know Richard Branson? Did you, did you made that? How’d you get to where you were as the CEO of Virgin Mobile, Latin America?

Well, is the startup that I joined eight years ago and I first started as vp of sales and marketing and I was hopping from country to country starting up companies from Scotch, virgin mobile from scratch. And, uh, you know, went to my boss, uh, in that into entailed, you know, uh, hiring leadership team, developing the new launch products, lunch advertising campaigns, uh, building out the ecosystem of sales channels, building out the call center, basically the catalyst struck the company and then I would hand over the authority to a local CEO that sometimes that would recruit and sometimes my boss would require. And so I did that in three countries and then finally went to my boss and said, Hey, I’m, you know, I’m ready to hand over the authority from my left hand, my right hand. I’m ready to get it. Have a shot at CEO and uh, um, and so, uh, he bet on me.

This was about three years ago. So I got my first shot as CEO working for virgin after five years of establishing a track record and uh, um, you know, it Kinda went smoothly because I did the same job. I got everything going, brought the company up to the launch phase. But then I stayed and then I operated the company and my first assignment was CEO of Virgin Mobile, Peru. Uh, the business was a failure and I ended up having to exit the marketplace by selling the company, but at the same time, uh, the board was looking for a change in Mexico. They didn’t blame me for the failure and peruse. So then I was appointed in Mexico as a ceo there. And so, um, that’s the, uh, that’s the storyline. And um, yeah, that, that project, uh, I can, uh, I know you have a question about it, but I can, I can tell you about it.

We competed against Carlos slim and Carlos slim is the one of the richest men in the world. He controls Mexico. He controls the sales channel. She controls the media, obviously controls the telecommunication sector and he controls the regulator and uh, that has many different connotations. Um, and so how do you compete against someone so dominant? There is no company more dominant than the telecommunications company controlled by Carlos Slim and Mexico. How do you compete against that? Right? You could carve out your, first of all, you don’t go head to head with him, right? You’ll die. You’d crush you in an instant. Right? So you have to compete it, you can’t try to do everything he’s doing and you have to try to compete on a, on a different playing field. And so what we concluded there was the only way to build a successful business is to digitize business. And so I’ve been leading the digital transformation, um, you know, uh, I lead the digital transformation for just over a year in Mexico because we couldn’t compete in the traditional channels, the traditional media and the traditional, very dirty business tactics that take place in Mexico and in all of Latin America, frankly. Um, so we went, uh, we went to digitize and uh, uh, yeah, the company’s heading in the right direction. Now,

what does it mean to digital?

Eighteen months ago,

I would’ve been fiddling with my lips, you know, um, so, uh, the way the telecommunication services sold is through physical stores in Mexico and the way it’s advertised this through television, radio, print, all the traditional billboards, traditional media, uh, and the way things get done is through very corrupt business practices. And so, you know, we, we couldn’t, we couldn’t play that game. We couldn’t play the game of all the traditional channels and media because we didn’t have the resources, uh, and those channels we’re embedded with Carlos slim and the others. And so we basically moved all our advertising online. We pushed all our sales efforts online, so sell through the website to advertise through facebook and Google and all the other digital media to build relationships with the consumer via the APP to do customer service, not through inbound call centers but through chat and email and the chat bot and so basically digitizing all aspects of the business because there’s just no way it would’ve worked competing in the same playing field as, as Carlos slim and the other stuff.

So rather than do battle against a massive brick and mortar company who has the potential, they have the revenue to advertise on TV and radio and traditional advertising with big billboards and big buildings and big brick and mortar. You decided to go social media, search engine optimization, chat, email. You went z. He does with all successful entrepreneurs. Do you have found the third door, the front door you can get at the backdoor? You found the third door and it sounds like with your career now you’ve made another pivot and now your newest project is all about providing entrepreneurs with the third door. Steve, could you tell us about the newest project you’re on and what you’ve been doing here for the last 30 to 60 days with your, uh, uh, Steve Logan? Two point. Oh,

thanks for asking. Clay, you know, digital bugging. So I’ve joined US president of a digital marketing agency or really a Martech firm based out of Atlanta that a service franchises or any business with multiple locations. And so, you know, what we do is through our programmatic technology, uh, we are able to run one to one marketing campaigns to drive repeat sales and through look a like audiences to capture more share of prospects. And so that’s our, that’s our core technology. It’s proprietary to us. And then beyond that we do all the traditional digital work such as new paper, quick, uh, social media, Seo and the rest of the story. And so I just started about a month ago and uh, yeah, super excited. And um, um, you, I invite anyone to have a look at it. Definitely.com.

Spell that out for what are we got? Infinity, infinity.com.

Oh yeah. It took me three weeks to be able to say the name of that.

Can you spell that for our listeners out there?

Yeah. A D, F I n t e l y.com. We’re Martech. Turmeric. Most people would know us as a digital marketing agency. We do all the online marketing world activities to drive repeat sales and a new prospect. Advertising. Advertising certainly will take you to get that stuck in your mind right now. Building new neural path.

Okay.

Brilliant.

Okay. Now here’s, here’s what I want to. I want to ask you because I was talking to your partner, I’m just kind of show prep, getting ready. And I used to former life a decade ago, I guess the same life Zea former career for me after sold dj connection, I traveled around. A lot of people asked me to speak. So you know, Hewlett Packard, ups, maytag farmers, you’re speak and there’s a thousand people, they’re typically and they’d have like a great speaker or some big name like Joe Montana. I remember one, I told him that though, quarterback speaking, you know, first I gotta follow him up. I mean it’s the ultimate hell Gig. And because I’m funny, my job was to be sort of like business meets comedy and I did that and there would be, these guys would come up. We had companies kind of like what you’re talking about here with admittedly they would come up and say, ah, you know, they give a talk about digital advertising and the future of advertising and I’d pull them aside and go cocktail hour, cocktail hour, you know, after the speaking of it. And I’d say, hey buddy, how much does it cost to get started? And they go, oh well it’s a minimum of $30,000 a month to get started and it’s minimum. And I’m going because all these maytag store owners are going, I can’t afford $30,000. I’ve heard with an infinitely you guys can help somebody out as little for as little as $10,000 a month. Does that, is that accurate? Can you go that low? Can you go that low?

That’s the average revenue of our customers. We have close to 40 customers now, but we we’ve worked with small franchises and multi location businesses with only two stores, three stores and and charging just north of a thousand you get started because the belief there is that as they grow will grow with them, so we’re one of the few agencies that are structured in such a way that can work with smaller businesses as well.

But Jonathan Barnett to the CEO of oxy fresh, the founder of Oxi fresh, he speaks so highly of. You guys told me you guys don’t. You’re not going to take an account on a thousand dollars a month unless you think that the franchise can scale, which is why you guys have targeted franchises, right? Because you guys can work with hundreds of franchisees and just one account. Am I correct?

I’m sorry. Can you repeat that?

You guys are able to. You know, you’re able to bet on like, let’s say someone out there has two locations, so a guy like Dr z as to optometry locations dose and he wants to franchise in the future and have 100. So you guys are willing to, you know, maybe meet a guy halfway or bet on them if they have the capacity to scale, I believe, which is why you guys have chosen franchising to focus on them. I am I correct there. Am I getting that wrong?

You are correct that we have a number of customers with only two, three locations that are just getting started. And in fact we, we, there’s two bits of marketing that we do. One is the consumer marketing to drive more traffic through all the online marketing opportunities to stores into their website, but the other is to help a franchise franchises grow through digital marketing prospects from new franchises. Right? And so in the past franchises to grow, they turned to brokers or portals, right? And so there was a third option now, and that’s digital marketing. And so, uh, we, we also offer that service. It’s just a hell of a lot more efficient than spending big money on brokers and portals.

I want to make sure brokers and portals make sense. Let’s say hypothetically a, I own a business called elephant in the room, which turns out to be actually true business called Elvis hypothetical end of the real. Jonathan Barnett is also the CEO of oxy fresh and uh, I want to make sure I’m translating what Steve’s saying and if we wanted to generate prospects, people that wanted to actually by elephant in the room franchises you’d call them franchisees. People who potentially would like to buy a franchise. Traditionally before companies like Steve Logue here, we would have to pay brokers and these brokers, you know, you’ve charged, they’ll charge you $25,000 for what they call a placement to bring you a prospect that signs up with you or you have to advertise on third party sites like franchise gator and Steve People will be dropping, you know, 10 to $15,000 a month on leads from these third party sites. I mean, this is a, this is a real thing. I mean, this is a, were you familiar with franchising before joining the team or what attracted you to add efficiently add definitively had,

can you pronounce the word, but what attracted me was the founder of the company Christian a what? A quality a guy that he is. And so we both believe that we can, we have unique, different talents and we both, we think we can pull those together and really blow it out. And uh, um, you know, also just off caught the startup bug in the digital bug and this is where it’s all happening.

Anybody out there who is a franchise door, somebody who has aspirations to sell franchises all over this great country, what is the action step you want all the listeners to take out there who meet that criteria?

Yeah, well, um, you know, um, it all starts with identifying the likely a franchise buyer and then, uh, you know, uh, targeting, uh, through all the online marketing tactics, how to reach them and ultimately being qualified buyers to the table. And so, um, you know, you can go the route of portals, you can go the route of brokers, but it’s very, very expensive. Um, you know, I think that I would, I would recommend anyone in growth mode to at least trial, uh, the digital marketing tools at your disposal because I think you’ll find them to be more efficient.

Steve, I appreciate you for taking time out of your career, out of your schedule, out of your life, out of your day to hop on the show and to share with our listeners a little bit of insight into what it’s like to go head to head with one of the world’s most successful people. And before I let you go, my main man with a plan, Dr Robert Zellner has a final hot question for you. I’ve got a hot question. I know how to say, I know how to say boom in English. How do you say boom, and the other three languages? You have a concord? Ooh,

I can say anything and you’re not able to validate it.

We fact check everything. Everything. We do not let our listeners down one show, Steve.

One is international, many cultures and languages.

Wow.

First thing that comes to my mind, I have to say I haven’t used too often.

Why don’t we do this? We always end the show with a boom. Why don’t we end the show with the boom, boom, boom,

Spanish.

Okay, so here we go. A trace dose.