Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
#dogoodwork is not a label but a way of living.
It is the constant and diligent effort to achieve a new level of excellence in one’s own life.
It is the hidden inner beauty behind the struggle to achieve excellence.
It is not perfect but imperfect.
It is the effort, discipline and focus that often goes unnoticed.
The goal of this podcast is to highlight that drive.
The guests I have on this show emulate this drive in their own special way. You’ll be able to apply new ideas into your own life by learning from them.
We will also have 1on1 episodes with me where we’ll dive into my own experiences with entrepreneurship and leadership.
Every episode is designed to provide you with ideas that you can apply and grow in excellence in all areas of your life, business and career.
Do Good Work,
Raul
INTRO
Hey, welcome back to the
Duke good work podcast today.
I'm excited to introduce Corey Quinn.
Corey is a true Testament
of resilience and success.
Corey's journey to becoming the
man who helped scale an agency
from 20 million to 150 million.
Wasn't an easy one.
Fresh out of college, he ventured into
the startup world, facing the highs
of raising 3 million in capital to
the lows of seeing it all fall apart.
Now these experiences were not
just financially taxing, but
emotionally draining as well.
With a new wife and baby on the way,
Corey shifted his gears from startups
to agency sales and eventually
moving into corporate marketing.
There, he discovered that success
wasn't just about the numbers, but
about forging genuine human connections.
In his last agency, Corey and his
team transformed their marketing
approach, leading to an incredible
growth from 20 million to 150 million
in just 7 years, and pioneering
the concept of deep specialization.
Now, Corey is on a mission to empower
agency founders through mentoring,
consulting, and coaching, and with
a 25 year track record of success.
He's sharing his insights
on this podcast today.
And I think going to be in on
a real treat where we dive into
his work on deep specialization.
Corey.
Hey, welcome to the pod bro.
Hey, thanks, man.
I'm excited to be here.
I love it.
I want to dive into a few things that
I think that we need to build off
of in terms of a baseline, because
I want to cover those bases first,
get your take on it, like your
flavor, your mix, your point of view.
But I really want to dive
deep on a few of these things.
And the two core axes that I think
that we're going to be pivoting
around are why specialization matters.
Cause I know that you talked to founders.
I talked to founder.
We talked to a lot of
entrepreneurs and marketers.
They're afraid of just.
honing or quote unquote,
pitching, holding themselves.
That's the first thing.
But I want to like break that idea around
when you do that, you can actually create
a new category and what that actually
opens up for you in terms of your
operations and how you can run things.
And the second, I think that it's closely
married, which I appreciate from the book.
Is relationships in marketing and in sales
because the things that you, your take is
like a fresh take on some of the David C.
Baker's work with some classy frameworks,
which I think tie back to like how
business should be done in our super
like personalization at scale ecosystem
that we're living in right now.
Definitely.
Sure.
Let's jump off.
Let's dive in, man.
So can you dive through some of the
frameworks and ideas you have around
deep specialization and why that matters.
So we live in a world, as you said where,
access to data is basically unlimited.
And an ambitious founder, whether
it be a agency guy wants to start
an agency or a SAS can easily go
and acquire a list of, businesses.
Across any any industry and do
effectively what is called spam your TAM.
It's basically do a bunch of emailing,
see what comes back and, all these tools
around email automation and sequencing and
texting and, all these different channels
have made it very easy to do that.
And I think the low the trend is
to take a low risk approach to
developing a business, which is
you do a tremendous, a lot of.
marketing, see what comes
back and go from there.
And I think that there's nothing
inherently wrong with that approach.
However, if you think about it from
the receiver's side, the person who's
receiving that message is you're not the
only one who's sending a message today.
In fact, I was talking to a
client of my client the other
day who is a med spa owner.
This 50s and somewhere in there,
it's a guess, but it's based
on the length of her business.
And, she's she's shared with me
as look, I love working with the,
my client, the agency but I get
approached every single day, multiple
times a day, 10, 15 attempts a day.
And that's across phone
calls, it's across email, text
messages, and so on and so forth.
And she's just it's all
noise, it's overwhelming.
Unfortunately, or
fortunately the world that.
Maybe existed five, 10 years
ago where the, sort of the spam,
your TAM approach would work.
And I use that term with, tongue
in cheek, but really it's,
it's a broad based approach.
It is, it's very difficult to get
any real traction in that approach.
And in fact, what I've seen through
my experiences as the chief marketing
officer of a digital marketing agency
that we were able to grow from 20
million to 150 million, and as well as
working with my clients, as well as.
Interviewing folks in my, successful
agency owners on my podcast.
The thing that sort of the thread that
ties all of these success stories across
each of these experiences, these business
owners is number one, they've verticalized
or they've taken this approach, a
specialization approach, and it's not
just a sort of a volume based approach.
They take what I call deep
specialization, which is effectively
the combination of focus.
Which is saying yes to one vertical
market and saying no to many others,
it's like, it's harkening back to what
Warren Buffett said, which is that the
difference between successful people and
really successful people is that really
successful people say no more often.
And so it's this idea of having a focus.
Number two is having a strategy.
And I call that, what I mean by strategy
is having a massive action plan that
gives you a durable competitive advantage.
You're doing the right
things in the right order.
And then the third thing is having
something called empathy, caring, giving
a damn, which is not typically discussed
a lot when you think about what's our
target, our TAM, a total addressable
market, or who are we targeting?
And what I found in these conversations
and in my own experience is that
you really, in some ways, need to
become dedicated or committed to
serving a specific vertical market.
And empathy certainly
plays a role in that.
And when you're able to take.
That the combination of the focus, the
strategy and the empathy, what I call
deep specialization, you're actually
able to build a a business that has a
long term sustainable business model and
one that has things like profitability,
scalability, and also is a type of
business that acquirers like to buy.
So that is a big part of my passion today.
which is to help help other entrepreneurs
embrace deep specialization.
When you talk about the empathy
approach, it isn't just care
because you have to care.
And that's part of the mission statement,
you slap it on the wall, but it's more
in approach to you're building a long
term like thinking in 25 year chunks.
I don't think you explicitly say that,
but the actions and the activities
that you outline of when you host go
to associations or host booths, or you
give away things like you're actually
building a deep network, like an actual
deep relationship based network in that
being known for something specifically.
So it's more of a.
For me, it was like a refresher.
Like it was very refreshing to see that.
And okay, this is really interesting.
This is different.
Versus, just the quick hits, quick
wins mentality that I've been seeing
a lot online and which is not ideal.
The one thing that that you hit, like
one of the aha moments that I want to
lean into now that we understand that
specialization allows you not just to
cater to services for one market, maybe
create peripheral offerings in that
same market with SAS or consulting,
or the done for you services is the
adage that only three or 5 percent
of your market is buying right now.
But you don't focus on them.
You focus on what I
like, what you called it.
And I appreciate it.
The zone of indifference.
It's so true.
Thank you said that I thought I saw
some of the agencies that I hired and
that I'm working with, I am indifferent.
If someone came with a better offer and a
better relationship with a better outcome,
or like just a better relationship,
really, I'd be like, why not?
Like, why not just make the switch?
Talk to me more about that
zone of indifference and how to
like actually lean into that.
Sure.
Let's say for argument's sake, let's
say you're a digital marketing agency
targeting attorneys and out of all,
let's make it even more specific.
Let's say family law attorneys are
the area where you specialize in.
You have empathy.
You care about that industry.
You might have a point of
view about that industry.
And out of all of the family law
attorneys who use agencies, statistically
speaking, about 80 percent of them
are in this zone of indifference.
What is this zone of indifference?
If you lay all of those law firms in
a normal distribution curve, you have
obviously the hump is in the middle
and you have the tails on the side.
And what you find on one end of
the extreme of the distribution
curve, our clients or attorneys
who are extremely happy with their
agency, they're the evangelists.
They're the ones that are promoting
the agency to their colleagues
and they're actively, advocating.
And that's a very small percentage
of all agency relationships
for these family law attorneys.
On the other end of the
distribution curve, the other tail.
Are the ones that are in the market, this
is the 3 percent to 5 percent that you
referenced, who are actively searching.
They're on Google.
They know they need to make a change.
But then in the middle is like about
80 percent of these businesses, these
family law firms are indifferent
to their current solution.
To your point, if another agency came in
that had a better offer, that understood
them better, that had maybe better client
success stories and so on and so forth.
I'll give you an example.
So my wife, I mentioned this in
the book, my wife has an iPhone 11.
We're on, as of this recording, it's
an iPhone, we're on the iPhone 15.
She loves the phone, but unfortunately
the battery life is, not great.
The phone, the memory is shot
and it crashes and whatnot.
And so she's really needs to be
in the market for a new phone.
She needs to be at that, that one end of
the dissatisfied end of the market, but
she's really in that zone of difference.
And I think the thing that causes
her to pause before just going
out and getting another phone, is
that she's really worried about.
Losing all the photos on the phone,
which of course is not a real thing,
but, but that's keeping her in this
situation where it's yeah, it's not the
best situation, but I'm it is what it is.
I hold onto it.
It is what it is.
And you know what, if there was a
concierge service that would come
and, carry, get her photos off
the phone and helped her just get
set up on the new phone, of course
she would switch in a heartbeat.
, in many respects, based on this example,
she's in that zone of indifference.
She's , she's not so much in so much
pain that she is looking to make a
replacement, but she's certainly not.
Yeah.
Screaming from the rooftops about
how happy she is with her iPhone 11.
And one of the things there too is going
back to the MPV piece is understanding
the fears of inaction because it's almost
like the death of a thousand lashes or
like the drip, the constant water drip of
it's not annoying, but after 10, 000 days
or five, like it becomes like an issue.
And that's something similar to
keep in mind as we're looking to.
Either break into a new market or
go deeper with your current market.
It's what are the real fears or
beliefs that are holding them back?
I have a simple image that I describe
where your solution is from A to B, right?
But there's beliefs and actions
that are drawing and weighing
them down to not take action.
It's identifying what are those internal
beliefs and how do you speak to them?
And how do you approach them?
With that any thoughts on better?
The way I like to approach it is,
Sort of borrowing a discipline from
the lean movement and certainly
product marketing, which is you do.
Client interviews.
. And the purpose of an interview is to
understand how and why this specifically.
It's a buyer's journey inter interview,
and you're trying to understand through
a discussion, a structured conversation
how and why your clients bought from you.
And the reason why it's a conversation,
it's not a survey, it's not like
scraping reviews off of Amazon or
something else, is that the benefit
of being in an interview is that
you get to ask follow on questions.
So you may ask a really well-formed
question, you get a response.
But the gold is really in the follow up.
So you said that, the reason why you're
not getting more reviews is because you
forget to click the button Can you tell
me more about that and then more and more?
And you get to really the core and of
course many in many cases It's not a
the thing that's stopping them is not a
thing of That's a functional challenge.
It's more of a belief based challenge
and there's no way you're going to
be able to get to that through any
of these other forms the surveys
and the, the online reviews.
It's only through discussion, which
is why I'm a big fan of these.
And I think through research, but
also a sales agency that I had
on the pod mentioned that it only
takes about 12 interviews to find
statistical significance or themes.
I like to bring it up to, it typically
is around, what is the number nine or?
Yeah.
Between they say, yeah
it's a net ballpark.
Yeah.
Like seven seven to seven to 10 to 11, 12.
What happens is that Any additional
interviews you do after that, you
don't get any new information.
Yeah.
You get just a repeating.
Yeah.
And it's good to be able to
predict what they're going to
say in the follow up interviews.
It's, I think it's just validating
like, Hey, I know what's in your
mind and you get to that point.
One of the things though, as you think
you lean into heavily is in terms of,
What's what Scorpion is known for and
what you did were the gifts, the unique
unique and striking and impressive tell
me why that works to shake people up
and there's only a difference and Yeah.
Can I want to just dive into that
first as we lean into the context?
Yeah.
So I'll start by telling the end
and then I'll tell you where we
started and how we got there.
So the end of.
Was that by the time I left
Scorpion at the end of 2021, we
were spending, we had, so I was, my
role was a chief marketing officer.
My job was to help to grow
the revenue of the agency.
And we had a sales department of a
hundred people, not all salespeople.
And of my 6 million annual budget,
3 million was going to gifts.
That's how important it was to our, the
success of the growth of the agency.
So that's where we ended.
I'll tell you about where I started.
So back in 2015, when I joined the
company, the reason why I was hired
at Scorpion was that the founder
was really eager to grow the agency.
And he was doing the chief
marketing officer role.
And what that means is effectively.
Every six months or so, he would hire an
agency to create a brochure and he'd buy
a list on Dun Bradstreet and just send
out the brochure to a bunch of attorneys.
But ultimately, when I arrived I, what I
saw was a six person sales team that was,
They were all really great guys driving
great cars and not working very hard.
And they were just subsisting
off these great inbounds.
That was this really
great inbound machine.
And of course the challenge with inbounds
is that you can't scale on inbounds.
And there's no, no lever to pull.
You cannot, there's not, there's
you're not in direct control
of inbounds or referrals.
Those things happen more organically.
And so while there, the
inbound machine was great.
We wanted to do something else that
would help us to accelerate the sales.
What's the other thing that we could do
is obviously going outbound going out and
buying lists and doing all these things.
So the way we started was Probably
like what a lot of other agencies
start which is start cold calling and
in if you've ever cold called into
attorneys This is true today as it was
back, you know in 2015 16 You have a,
something that's called a gatekeeper.
It could be the front office
person, the admin, the assistant.
And their primary job is to prevent
people from Scorpion to actually
get in touch with the attorney.
Like they're screening these
vendors out because they are
perceived as being low value.
And so like everyone else, it was a
low, it was a low yield investment of
our time and of our sales team time.
So we decided to send
ahead of a cold call.
We would send ahead a.
A FedEx box of gourmet cookies
that were put into a beautiful
tin box, put into a FedEx.
And then of course the FedExes bypass
the gatekeepers because they're important
docu they're important documents.
They have to go to the
right to the attorney.
So it goes right to the attorney's desk.
They open it up and They experience
these cookies and by the way,
these are like earth shattering,
amazingly delicious cookies.
Like you have to hold the wall not to
fall down like eating these things.
So eventually they end
up in the break room.
And then of course everyone's
trying the cookies and everyone's
who brought the cookies?
And of course the name Scorpion is
like bouncing off all the walls.
Everyone's talking about Scorpion.
Who's Scorpion?
Why'd they bring the cookie?
I don't know.
By the time the sales,
the salesperson calls.
The Scorpion is an already known quantity.
And so instead of the typical
resistance of, Oh, no, I'm sorry.
This, the attorney is
not available to you.
Oh, you're from Scorpion.
Okay, hold on.
Let me put you through.
Yeah.
And so it bought us a little bit of,
I don't know what the right term is,
but effectively it was different.
You mentioned USI or
uniquely striking impression.
Yeah.
Yeah.
What we built was based on this
success, obviously became a really
important part of our marketing.
We realized it needs to be unique.
The gift has to be unique.
It can't be just a logoed pen that
everyone sends has to be striking.
What that means is that it has to actually
interrupt the attorney in a positive way.
Like we're all walking through life
in this kind of half, hypnotic state.
And so we had to wake them up
a little bit with this gift.
And, it has to leave an impression.
So at Scorpion, we were really
positioning ourselves as a high high
quality, high cost, but high quality,
high, great experience type of brand.
So the experience had to
be a premium experience.
So we began to use this concept of
a USI in every gift that we would
do to help us to get that reaction.
So I guess a long way of saying it's
not good enough just to send a gift.
It actually, you actually
have to be intentional and
thoughtful about how to do it.
I appreciate what you've just mentioned
too, is that the marketing itself is
a premium experience, but then your
fulfillment and then your customer support
and the actual experience onboarding has
to marry that same, the same front end.
Like it has to be matched.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The reality is, and whether we want to
admit it to ourselves or not, every single
touch point That an agency or a company
sends out is a reflection of your brand.
Yeah.
And that includes cold calls by the
sales team and emails that go out by the
client success team and your booth at
the conference and everything speaks.
And so to do it right, in my opinion, you
have to understand that and make sure that
everything you do, all the touch points
are in alignment with the positioning
that you want to have in the marketplace.
Yeah, because there's so few positioning
or communication channels that are
available while you're a client.
Remote work makes every communication
piece more important, but it's also
they don't see the behind the scenes.
They don't see the hands or the
website builds with the code.
They don't see that.
They just see small aspect, maybe three
or 5 percent of what you actually do.
So I appreciate that.
One of the interesting
pieces that I thought about.
So do you have a framework of what
makes something actually a unique
and striking and impressive gift?
Oh, let's don't send pens.
Obviously don't send
something silly like that.
But yeah, I've seen maybe podcast
companies send microphone, not the whole
thing, but on onboarding, they send a mic.
But what are some ideas of that?
Is a book qualified there?
Do you have tears?
Cause some people are thinking
right now okay, send a gift.
What can I send?
Do you have a tears?
Yeah.
And so there's one detail that about
the gift based outbound that is actually
really important to talk about, which
is that you can't just send a gift once
and expect it to transform your sales.
That's like going to the gym
once and expecting to, walk
away with, six pack abs.
And then they say
working out doesn't work.
Exactly.
And gifting doesn't work.
And how many times have you, or
anyone in the listening audience.
Have you received a gift from some vendor
who randomly came in the mail and you
didn't hear anything about it from them?
They didn't follow up and then
that was it and you left wondering
like what the heck was that?
And that's more of the norm And so the
way that we would do it and the way that
I teach my clients to do it is that you
first you base the campaign the gift based
campaign off of The typical product life
cycle of a client think of it as the LTV
how many months or years does a typical
client stay in your industry at scorpion?
You know a client would stay for two
to three years you know the example
that is outside of this is on average
americans buy a new house every nine
years And they buy a new car every five
years it turns out that attorneys buy
a new website every two to three years
And so we knew that once we had built
an amazing list of businesses That we've
curated, I call it your 20 percent list.
We would commit to sending gifts
to that attorney because we already
knew they'd be a great client for a
total of three years every quarter.
And what happens is the majority
of them are going to, even though
you follow up, you have a six step
follow up process that I teach.
Even though you do all this follow up, not
100 percent of them are going to respond.
Some of them are going to ghost you.
But.
It's when you send them another
gift in three months and then
another gift in three months and
then another gift in three months.
And if these are good gifts, they follow
this USI principle, uniquely striking
and leaving a positive impression.
You're building up all
this amazing reciprocity.
And then of course, when you
meet them at the conference or
you invite them on your podcast.
They will know without a doubt that you've
been genuinely interested in reaching out
and building a relationship with them.
Yeah, that strikes at the second, so
LTV tying back to it and quarterly
gifting and it has to obviously tie
back to the main offer, the main
support, like actually being there.
But one of the questions that I have
and I haven't heard anyone else ask
us, it's like the CAC payback period.
It's how do you calculate that in terms
of being comfortable to send the gifts?
Obviously when you tie it to LTV it's
the answers right there, but I'm just
curious your take around that too.
Cause I have some people asking like
I, first of all, what do I send?
That's a different
question, but more about it.
It's yeah, it's more of when you send it.
It's not going to work day, nothing
works day one, very few things like
unicorn things 10, 50 percent of the
time, but when you send it and you
execute it, how do you balance the
CAC payback period towards the goal?
And the ultimate thing that every
business that I talk to is cashflow.
Sure, absolutely.
The short answer is you do a
self liquidating offer, which
means you just bake the cost of
the gift into the set up fee.
If you don't have set of fees,
then you're looking at a couple
of months worth of payback.
It's a couple of months to pay
back the cost of all of the gifts.
The example I give is let's just
say that you are an agency and you
charge 3, 000 per month in fees.
That may be high for this audience.
It may not be high.
And they stay for 24 months,
which is a LTV of 72, 000.
Okay.
Let's put that to the side for a second.
Let's say you send 100 gifts that
cost 100 each, that's 10, 000.
The expectation being super conservative
is that as a result of sent, being a
thoughtful about creating an amazing
list of businesses that are, that you
should definitely send gifts to and
making sure there are no businesses on
that list that you should not be sending
gifts to, which has happened to folks.
And you have a great list.
You've done the work and you've
really investigated the vertical.
Come up with a USI based GIF.
I lost my train of thought.
It's all good.
I was just getting excited
about the response.
Oh what was it?
Sorry.
You said 72K was the LTV.
Oh yeah.
I'm so sorry.
Okay.
Sorry about that.
So the 72K then you spend a hundred
dollars a gift times a hundred
gifts, 10, 000, and you should
expect three meetings and one sale.
That's super conservative.
And so the sale will cost
you 10, 000 in gifts, right?
That doesn't include commissions.
But if you're charging 3, 000 a
month, potentially you can offset
some of that with a setup fee of
one or two months worth of setup
fee to offset that USI cost.
What happens, or the gift cost,
what happens in practicality because
you're saying these quarter after
quarter you get a better better return
on the the number of meetings and
the number of closes because they
will have heard of you over time.
Yeah.
The compound effect occurs and
then you have the slope coming in.
Interesting.
No, I liked that approach because it
gives the framework to think about using
this as a strategy because the zone
of indifference is such a huge market.
To lean into like you mentioned, the
beginning of the conversation, the MedSpot
MedSpot is a very hot market right now.
Of course, they're being hit, but
if it was a different approach.
To make them think differently
about what they're currently
doing or who they are in that.
It'd be pretty interesting
to leverage GIFs for that.
But let me build on that because I
think it's, it is like we tend to as
marketers, we tend to think in silos.
We think about paid search or GIFs and
one of the benefits of having a vertical
focus and what I talk a lot about in
my books about having a specializing
in a vertical market is that you,
you do things That will help you to
build your visibility your credibility
your authority in that vertical
market And gifts is only one of them.
That's a very targeted part of part of
marketing and it's great for generating
new sales But then also as far as building
your authority and your reputation You
mentioned this earlier, but like you do
things like join the association and don't
just join it But become a visible member
in there add value All over the place.
And you'll start a podcast, like
a very interesting podcast about
the industry, about the vertical.
Go to the conferences,
speak from the stages.
There's a lot of opportunities to
really take a more of a 360 degree
approach to making sure that you're
a known quantity in this vertical.
Sure, some of the people, some of
the businesses in the vertical are
getting gifts, but everyone's hearing
about you because you're really
engaged and you're really present.
Which again, goes back to this
idea of deep specialization.
You're a part of the community.
You're a part of that that industry.
Yeah.
You're entrenching yourself,
which is again, going back to this
is not a, this is a more mature
approach to growing your business.
Besides like the tactical measures
Baker mentions 2000 people in
the target addressable market.
I think you mentioned around at
least a annual revenue of 1 million
plus that, you're working with
businesses that are sustainable.
Then that's like the simple side, right?
That's logic.
I know when you work with clients,
there's probably fear associated with it.
How do you overcome that fear?
Because it is Oh crap.
Like I, now I have to choose
what if I chose wrong?
That's the biggest, yeah, rebuttal there.
How do you work through clients
like, through that idea?
What's interesting is that clients
typically won't hire me until they
are ready to commit . Oh, okay.
Yeah,
And what I mean by that is that what
it is typically you have an agency
that is founded by Charismatic
founder, really great network.
We are able to build the business through
all their various different channels, EO
or Vistage or their local neighborhood.
And as a result of that, they
grow an agency, which is.
Which is great, but they've got, they've
got employees, they've got clients, but
there becomes a tax on every new client
that comes in because you're a generalist.
And you have to learn that business
and you have to, it becomes
very difficult to to scale.
And so the founder in that case will
typically try to do anything they
can except for narrow their market.
They'll hire, lead gen companies
and they'll outsource overseas.
And of course the chaos never
leaves because there's just too much
variability in the business and it's
hard to scale that in a meaningful way.
The founder also gets stuck in sales
and the sales role because they
have the most internal knowledge
about what they're selling and, the
sales team is going to get it wrong.
And so they had, they're
sucked back into that.
And so it's only when they are truly
ready to specialize, because, there's
no secret about the idea of the
benefits of specializing and all of
the facts are compelling, but it is
to your point, a there is a fear.
I think that there's, there's
an innate bias in humans that
prevent us from wanting to
limit the amount of opportunity.
That's especially true.
of of founders of businesses.
The reason why they're in
business is because they said yes.
And now we're asking them or they're
challenging themselves to do something
that's like the complete opposite
of that and start to say no to all
these things, all these opportunities
that are coming in the front door.
And that of course is the
psychological barrier.
And I think that's what, that's one
of the reasons why I wrote this book.
And the work that I do is because they
really, they, while they conceptually
understand the value of going through
this process, finding someone who could
take their hand and say, here's the path.
And I've done all the thinking.
I've made all the mistakes.
Let's go through this together.
Let's get the result of the
specialization quickly by
reading the book or, other means.
And that typically is when
they're, that's when I see them.
That's when they show up in my world.
It's okay, I know I need to do this.
And I'm looking for
someone who can guide me.
To implement and execute on that note,
on the deep specialization, I've, you
mentioned med spas I see on your LinkedIn,
a lot of agencies like where is your
deep specialization, the horizontal
that you focus to specialize, or is it
also based on a vertical in a market?
Who's your deep specialization?
Like personally deal.
Mine is 17 years in the space.
And so it is a, going to be a.
It's a generalist agency typically doing
greater than a million who is, who's in
the middle of that, that all that pain
of being in general is trying to scale,
tried a bunch of different things and they
they're looking for sort of an expert.
So that's really my, my my focus
and how I live that is, I wrote
a book to targeting that audience
about how to solve the problem.
I go to conferences, I'm going to Miami in
a couple of months to go speak on a stage.
I have a podcast about this.
Like I'm running the play for
myself as well, which is fun.
Yeah.
No, I like that.
And you have a lot of examples to go off
of, but what would be some interesting
or unique ways that you've seen either
clients or agencies specialize that
are, that it's different from like
your, I do this for this market.
That's crazy.
There's one that I love this story.
It is a gentleman I interviewed on my
podcast and his name is Luke Eggebraten.
He is a founder of a digital marketing
agency called Phaser Marketing.
And what's interesting and
unique about him is he focuses
in on the construction business.
And in construction, there's
a five to two problem.
What that means is that for every
five people who are aging out
of the industry in construction,
only two are coming back in.
At the same time, there's a
tremendous demand for construction
and renovation, all these things.
And of course, the challenge is that a
lot of this talent that would otherwise
go into construction is going elsewhere.
And so what the industry is dealing
with is that there's maybe a lack of
awareness, but then also maybe a negative
stigma about working in the trades,
which is absolutely ridiculous because,
all the people who I know who work in
the trades are, wealthy and doing great
and they have a great lifestyle, right?
And so one of the things that Luke
has taken on as a deep specialist, he
really embodied a lot of these things,
is that not only is he focused in on a
vertical market, which is construction.
He is also He started a scholar, a
scholarship, which he raises money for,
and he gives a scholarship to a a kid
who is leaving high school instead of
going to college, going into the trades.
So that's a big, that's
a that's a big thing.
He gives away a bunch of money every year.
He just did it again.
You can see it on his LinkedIn, Instagram
this kid, hold a big check and he won
that because he's going into the trades.
Luke also has a nonprofit
and he raises awareness.
Yes.
He speaks from stages.
And the reason why he does that is because
he knows that this is a big problem for
the industry that He is a part of now.
He's not an agency on the outside.
He's an agency within construction
This is a problem that the construction
industry of which he is a part of is
suffering from so when ultimately at the
end of the day when you work with Luke
and phaser marketing you're actually
funding you're helping a business that's
dedicated to helping the industry to
grow You Versus some, agency on the
outside who maybe says they specialize in
construction as well as dentists, as well
as, attorneys and has no real compassion
about the actual industry itself.
That's fascinating.
It brings back to what my book
mentor, Zig, would say is that
do you have to go that far?
Do you really have to lean in that hard?
And then he would be like,
yeah, you can, or you can't.
You can be mediocre.
And I think that's a really strong
it's like a punch, but it's so true.
Lean in, do it.
And that's the essence of the podcast.
Do you go to work?
It's this what else is there?
Relationships, lifestyle,
and then your work.
Excel at that.
But Corey, this was really fun.
I appreciate.
Your your approach.
I appreciate the book.
I'll put all the links in the show notes,
but for everyone listening here, where's
the best place for people to want to thank
you for being on and catch up with you.
Thank you.
I appreciate this opportunity.
It means a lot to me.
So the great place for people to go
is you can go to anyone, not everyone.
com and there, they can download a
free audio book version of the book.
So you can start listening to it today.
Okay.
So that's a gift to your audience.
And on there, you can
also get on my email list.
You can find me on LinkedIn.
But yeah, it's really the best place
for people to, to get some value.
I appreciate that, man.
Put those links in the show notes.
Corey, take care, brother.
Thanks.
Thanks, Rob.
Appreciate it.
Thank you for listening to the podcast.
If you'd like to get more of
these podcasts, please go ahead
and subscribe to wherever you're
watching or listening to the pod.
If you have any suggestions or questions
that you want me to answer on the
pod, or you have a guest that you want
me to interview, please go ahead and
email me all of your suggestions and
questions at podcast at do good work.
io that's podcast at do good work.
io.
If you'd like to give me public
feedback, you can go on Apple
Podcasts, and from there, you
can leave up to a 5 star review.
I would greatly appreciate that.
If you'd like more free resources where
you can get my best strategies to help you
increase your company's performance and
scale profitably, where you can get hand
picked articles to propel your growth, and
you can get trainings and discussions that
I give freely online, as well as low cost
resources, Such as my books and guides.
You can get all of that
by going to dogoodwork.
io forward slash free dash growth
dash resources 90 percent of all
these resources are not behind any
email opt ins you can get instant
access by going to dogoodwork.
io forward slash free dash growth dash
resources Now, if you'd like to accelerate
your progress and shorten the gap between
information and action and start seeing
results in your business, let's work
together to increase your company's
performance and scale profitably and
serve more clients without the overwhelm.
You can request a free clarity call
to see how we can best support you to
reach your goals by going to DoGoodWork.
io forward slash apply.
Again, that's DoGoodWork.
io forward slash apply.
As always, it's an honor to be
a small part in your journey.
This is Raul Hernandez.
Do good work.