Speaker 1 00:00:05 Hey there, a thoughtful listener. Are you looking for introductions to partners, investors, influencers, and clients? Well, I've had private conversations with over 2000 leaders asking them where their best business comes from. I've got a free video you can watch with no opt in required, where I'll share the exact steps necessary to be 100% inbound in your industry over the next 6 to 8 months, with no spam, no ads, and no sales. What I teach has worked for me for over 15 years, and has helped me create eight figures in revenue for my own companies. Just head to up my influence. Com and watch my free class on how to create endless high ticket sales appointments. Also, don't forget the thoughtful entrepreneur is always looking for great guests. Go to up my influence. Com and click on podcast. I'd love to have you. With us right now it's Corey Quinn. Corey. You help agencies specialize simplify and escape founder led sales. You are found on the web at Corey quinn.com. And anyone, not everyone.

Speaker 1 00:01:22 Anyone. Not everyone.com. Great to have you. Thank you Josh. Super excited to be here.

Speaker 2 00:01:28 I'm a follower of your follower of your show and it's great to be a guest. So thanks for having me on.

Speaker 1 00:01:33 Yeah, absolutely. By the way, that's the title of your book as well, which we're going to talk about anyone, not everyone, but Corey, give us a just kind of an overview of the work you do and who you serve and the impact you have in the world.

Speaker 2 00:01:45 Sure. So the the 10,000 or the 30,000 foot view is I have 17 years in the agency space and running. I started as a sales guy selling PPC and SEO and made my way all the way up to being a chief marketing officer for an nine figure agency. The last role I had was that chief marketing officer role. I started there when it was doing about 20 million as an agency, and we grew it all the way up to 150,000,000 in 6 years. A lot of the learnings that I, that I had in the executive team had at that agency resulted ultimately in the book that you just mentioned, anyone, not everyone, combined with a lot of other insights from best practices, my experiences as well as other successful agency owners.

Speaker 2 00:02:31 So yeah, today I just, you know, I, I'm passionate about helping agency founders who are stuck in founder led sales. I help take their hand when they're ready and we walk the walk down the path together. At the result of that is that they are no longer tied to that founder lead sales role.

Speaker 1 00:02:47 Yeah. do you mind sharing a bit about the typical life cycle of folks that you, by the way, and I, work with? and, and listen, you know, for our own company. you know, we've got a great team now, I've set it up in a way that it's pretty easy for me. So I wouldn't say that I'm too burdened in the way I do it, but, truth be told, you know, my influence is largely, as of today, founder led sales. and if we're thinking about the typical life cycle, this is normal. This happens every day. This is, you know, someone's very good at what they do. They start a company and, well, who's going to do the sales? They're going to do.

Speaker 2 00:03:26 Exactly. This is exactly the natural part of an agency or any service based business. This is a natural part of the growth. Right. You like you said, you are a specialist in a specific service. You provide great value. You start a business, you start working with clients, you start building the business. But then eventually what happens is that, and this isn't true in every case, it's for those founders who want to really kind of scale and get to, you know, 7 or 8 figures that that they get they find themselves stuck in that founder role when it comes to sales. They just can't get away from it. And it's it is for those folks in that situation. It can be really tricky, you know.

Speaker 1 00:04:08 Now, so why is it that most founders aren't able to escape that role? Yeah.

Speaker 2 00:04:12 Well, it's a great question. Thanks, Josh. So there are three reasons why.

Speaker 1 00:04:17 Here comes the stars and the pitch.

Speaker 2 00:04:19 Yeah, that was beautiful. I was hoping you'd go there.

Speaker 2 00:04:21 So there are three reasons. Three primary reasons that cause founders get stuck in founder led sales. Number one is that they lack a focus and who they serve, which I don't think is a challenge that based on my understanding of your business. Josh, I don't think that's necessarily something you're faced with. But I'll tell you an example of someone who came to me. His name is Tyler and he is an agency founder, very well connected. He, he runs, EOS and he's involved in the EOS community, and he's involved in vintage. And so he has this fantastic network and he's this he's the he's the CEO of an agency. And as a result of this network, he has all these opportunities to say yes. And so he says yes to the retail business owner to do marketing for them. He says yes to the manufacturing company into the attorney and to the lawyer and to the dentist and so on and so forth. And as a result of that lack of focus, saying yes to everyone, his sales process is extremely nuanced.

Speaker 2 00:05:19 He has to be able to go into a conversation with an attorney and be able to be able to make sense of their world at the same time, have the next phone call be able to do the same thing with a manufacturer. As a result of that complexity and all that various variables floating around. It's very difficult to have a salesperson, you pull off the street to be able to handle those conversations with skill. Right. And so what he's lacking is a sale system number one. Number two is having watered down positioning. Okay. What I mean by watered down positioning is many agency founders are in love with their technology, with with their specific unique approach, their IP. But the problem is they're selling to buyers who are not sophisticated, very unsophisticated buyers won't be able to tell your eye from the next guys eye, and as a result of that, you end up losing deals to competitors and competing on price despite having this wonderful differentiator. So they struggle with that. As a result of that, the founder has to use their relationships to bring in new deals, right? They can't rely on the market because they're undifferentiated.

Speaker 2 00:06:23 That's number two. And then number three is when the founder says, enough is enough, I'm no longer going to sell, I'm going to hire an SDR, SCR, or I'm going to hire a VP of sales coming here, or build this for us. The minute the founder leaves the sales drop to the floor, there is no pipeline development. And that's really just having a lack of a great system and a strategy to systematically build the pipeline. Any time you have all three of those, a business that does it doesn't have a clear focus, that has a watery positioning and doesn't have a clear strategy to just build pipeline. The founder gets sucked in every single time. Yep, yep.

Speaker 1 00:07:00 And you know, there is something in this I'd really love for you to address this. I mean, there's a there's a concept or a dynamic, you know, this, you know, about founders who might struggle with bringing in a team or bringing in an individual or setting up these right systems because they say, well, listen, at the end of the day, I'm actually very good at selling because I've got so much and they wave a magic wand in the air.

Speaker 1 00:07:24 Founder. Magic. Yes.

Speaker 2 00:07:27 Right. And, you know, look, the other day, Josh, it is not if a founder is happy selling, then I'm probably not going to talk to me. Right. I know, I know many agency founders who have a boutique agency who love working with the clients hands on, loves to take all the sales calls. That's fine. It's those agency founders who are struggling to get out of that role. Maybe they've, you know, outsource the the marketing and sales piece to someone who does like LinkedIn, lead gen or cold calls or cold emails. Those rarely work, by the way. Or they've hired an SDR or a sales manager or someone to come in and what they find invariably, by the way, because they don't have a sales background, typically they are more of a technical founder, like an SEO background or whatnot, or a PR or media background. what they find is that a sales team really needs a tremendous amount of time and effort to babysit and to help, you know, train them up and do coaching calls and stand up meetings.

Speaker 2 00:08:24 And you need to have a system, too. So all these things are required for success building an in-house team that they typically don't either have the experience or just the raw resources to be able to do that.

Speaker 1 00:08:36 Yeah. tell me a bit about your your book, Cory, and it's titled anyone, not everyone. So obviously I'm looking at the title here and I'm I'm curious. I think that's intentional.

Speaker 2 00:08:51 Yes. So the fundamental problem that I solve that we solved that, my last agency that grew from 20 million to 150 million, was the fact that we were specialists in a specific vertical market. We started off with attorneys. We mastered that. Then we moved into home services. We mastered that, and then we moved into franchise and multi-location businesses, and we master that. Most agency founders come into the business as generalists. They're serving businesses of all shapes and sizes. And as I mentioned, that's one of the very things that's holding them back. And so one of the things that I write about in my book, and I give a lot of tools and resources in there about how do you choose a specific vertical market and industry, if you will, or a niche to specialize your agency in.

Speaker 2 00:09:37 And once you've decided to specialize, then you can begin to do the marketing that becomes much more powerful than before.

Speaker 1 00:09:46 Yeah. so who should be reading the book and and what would you expect the transformation to take place when somebody reads?

Speaker 2 00:09:55 The person needs to read this book is going to be the agency founder who wants and desperately wants to escape founder led sales, but has struggled to do so. Okay, this is meant to be. It's a really hard working book. It's like, you know, it's a little bit of theory. Most of it's practical. application. Right. You can go in chapter by chapter, you build versus first set of chapters all about finding the right vertical market. And then it's about really, positioning your agency relative to that vertical market so you can communicate your, your, your customer empathy and care. And then the third section is all about helping to grow your agency. So it's really a roadmap for that agency founder who has done everything that they can. They tried everything, and everything is failed as it relates to growing their agency.

Speaker 2 00:10:44 And once they've suffered enough from none of that working and then they realize, okay, I'm finally going to take this idea of specializing in niching down seriously. That's when they typically are ready for the book.

Speaker 1 00:10:59 Corey came this out for me, for someone that maybe, they're the founder and the CEO and the entire sales team. and yeah, maybe they're a little bit burnt out, but they say, you know what, though? That's why I get into business so I can work really hard. And this is just what it takes in order to succeed. And so maybe they take that as a point of pride, but they also would acknowledge that, you know, it's hard and I don't always enjoy coming to work. I don't like dealing with rejection. I don't like having sales conversations from time to time. They feel uncomfortable if that's the way that they're doing sales. help me understand why it's pretty important to be proactive on this topic. Yeah.

Speaker 2 00:11:47 So I just it's funny, I just reread a book called The E-myth Revisited, and by Michael referred to a classic book and one of the big takeaways, I was just thinking about this and writing an email about this is one of the big takeaways I had from rereading this book.

Speaker 2 00:11:59 And I recommend your listeners like, everyone should read this book. It's really great. is that the business is the product? In other words, that the thing you're building as a business owner is a productized business that operates independent of you. So what does that mean? It has to have operations. It has to have systems and processes that allow it to be able to effectively be a sellable asset. Now, you may never want to sell your business just like Ray Kroc sold McDonald's, which, by the way, is a very systematically run business. You can go to McDonald's in new Jersey, in Florida, in California, you're going to get the same experience, right. The reason why is that it's all processed, driven. You want to build a business that is extremely processed, driven so that if you decide to sell it one day, a buyer can come in and take that system and be able to continue to make money off of it. But even if you don't want to sell that business, you can you can run a business that doesn't require you on a day to day basis.

Speaker 2 00:12:58 Is process and system driven, which means that it is typically very profitable.

Speaker 1 00:13:05 Now, Corey shared just a bit about how you work with, with your clients or how you, how you help, you know, aside from the book, and obviously your thought leadership, how are you creating change within these founder led and operated companies?

Speaker 2 00:13:25 A typical founder will come to me when they are generalists. They they are ready to specialize, but they are one and an expert to be able to help them, guide them through the process of going from a generalist to a vertical market specialist, including finding the right vertical market, doing the positioning around that and then doing the attracting new clients. And so the transformation is really it's typically a three month program, and we help them to go from that generalist to what I call a deep specialist. And by the way, deep specialization is the combination of having focus, having a massive action plan and having empathy. Now, empathy is usually the one that people miss when when they think about narrowing a business.

Speaker 2 00:14:07 Typically agencies, if they're going to focus on a vertical market, they may go and do research and say, well, you know who which which vertical market has the most businesses and has the most spend in terms of agencies. And what they typically miss is this this fact that you actually to be successful today, you actually have to give a damn. You have to actually care about the audience that you're serving. Because I remember I was talking to a med spot owner the other day. I was interviewing her for my client. and she is this wonderful woman up in up outside Portland, Oregon. And she would say that, you know, gosh, I get calls every single day, five times a day. I get text messages. I get emails from all these agencies trying to get me to do business with them. Right. And all of it is just complete garbage and complete noise. The reality is, is that for you to break through the sort of the sound barrier to or to create some signal amongst all this noise, you have to care.

Speaker 2 00:15:01 And the way you care, the way you demonstrate that you care is through your contents, how you show up. You understand their problems at a deep level. You understand how to solve their problems at a deep level. And you do that only by specialization. Right. And so that's really the thing that my clients are getting through. The book is an understanding of how to predictably specialize in such a way that allows you to separate from the competition and create a pipeline of predictable revenue.

Speaker 1 00:15:28 Yeah. Your website is Corey quinn.com. And then of course, there's the website for your book. Anyone? Not everyone.com. next steps from here to our friend that's been listening to our conversation there. Like Corey, you've been singing my song. I am burnt out. I don't want to be doing this forever. I want to increase the value of my company. I want to be able to shift and become maybe more of an evangelist out there. I don't want to have to be doing as many retail sales. I would love to be, you know, kind of leveling up in my focus.

Speaker 2 00:16:01 Absolutely. It's such a great question, Josh. So the best place to get to get started with this process is for your listeners. I'm going to give a special offer, which is that they can go to anyone, not everyone. Com and they can actually begin to listen to the book that I published for free, like the audiobook. I'm it's available on my website. Anyone? Not everyone. Com and they can start to go through the steps in order to escape this founder led sales trap that they find themselves in.

Speaker 1 00:16:31 Yeah. Again. Anyone? Not everyone.com or I, by the way, I purchased the book as we were talking. Right now. I'm excited to read it. Corey. but Corey Quinn again, your website's Corey quinn.com and anyone not everyone.com. Corey it's been a great conversation. Thank you so much for joining us.

Speaker 2 00:16:48 Josh I appreciate the opportunity.

Speaker 1 00:16:55 Thanks for listening to The Thoughtful Entrepreneur Show. If you are a thoughtful business owner or professional who would like to be on this daily program, please visit up my influence.

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