DeepSpecialization_Ron Callis_EP 60_Audio _Edited_V1
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[00:00:00] Welcome to the Deep Specialization Podcast, the show where we blend focus, strategy, and client intimacy in order to scale and simplify our businesses and our lives. I'm your host, Corey Quinn. Let's jump into the show. Today, I'm joined by the CEO and co founder of One Firefly, Ron Callis. Welcome, Ron.
[00:00:20] Thank you, Corey. Happy to be here. I'm super excited for our conversation. Could you please just let us know to share with us a little bit about yourself, who you are [00:00:30] and what One Firefly does? Sure. I am a CEO and a co founder. You know, if you go way back in time, you know, I started this business 16 years ago, and earlier into the life of the business, I actually had gained a business partner.
[00:00:49] You know, I was at that time spinning off a lot of different ventures. I'm sure we'll get into some of that, but Initially, we were an engineering firm, believe it or not. So you're talking to an engineer that [00:01:00] started an engineering firm that morphed into One Firefly of today. But then down the road, I'll go really fast forward to 2021.
[00:01:09] I was able to buy that business partner back out. So now I'm the single owner and founder of One Firefly. We are an agency, a full service agency within the niche. Of, I'd say the niche within a niche. So I think we're in the right place on this podcast of serving the technology and contracting businesses that work within the [00:01:30] integration space, both residentially and commercially.
[00:01:33] And we are the leader, leading marketing agency, helping those businesses. And, you know, a little bit about me. I'm a degreed mechanical engineer out of Virginia Tech and, uh, 24 years ago. Was hired into this custom integration universe that I never left. And I originally worked for seven years for some manufacturers and I got to know the customer.
[00:01:59] And [00:02:00] I have served that same customer for 24 years. And so, yeah, there's really just a knowledge and mastery of understanding the space. Every day, I feel like I'm a student learning from these businesses. And I enjoy it. I enjoy helping these customers grow their business. There's a lot of passion for helping others and a lot of appreciation for maybe the science and art that is good marketing.
[00:02:23] And that keeps me inspired every day. Wow. Uh, can't wait to learn more about this journey. Um, I [00:02:30] think what you, what you have today is, is a pretty, pretty great business based on what you share, what I know about you. So maybe could you help Can you help us understand sort of the journey from, you said that about 24 years ago, you were hired into the.
[00:02:45] The world of integration. And then 16 years ago was the launch of One Firefly. What happened during those, those years leading up to One Firefly? Sure. So I was hired out of school as a sales engineer. So I equally [00:03:00] could have gone down the path of being an engineer, like an engineer that actually is designing and building things.
[00:03:07] And Lutron in particular, they're the global leader in lighting control. So if you look at your light switch in your home that many people listening may have Lutron light switches or dimmers or, or systems in their homes or, or commercial environments. And that company offered me a role in, it was very odd that they said, Ron, we're actually happy to bring you into [00:03:30] engineering.
[00:03:30] Let's go. Or if you want to go down the sales path, let's go do that. And I comically said, which one makes more money? And they said, the engineer would probably make more money out of the gate. And the sales role, if you're good, it's your, there aren't many limits on that. And I said, great, I'll take that.
[00:03:49] Sky's the limit. And so I went down that path and ultimately spent seven years, both at Lutron and another manufacturer called Crestron Electronics. And [00:04:00] I, I, but all along I had a fire in my belly. I, I was serving these businesses and I just, I knew that I had more to offer. You know, the ideas, you know, bet on yourself.
[00:04:11] And I was, I was just ready to bet on myself to go out and do more and bring more value. And initially, and, uh, there's a lot of lessons here and what not to do. I launched the business. I did create a business plan. But I, I failed to do a lot of the due diligence one should do when you have a [00:04:30] business plan or enter into a new venture.
[00:04:31] And that is. Not launch a set of services that you think the industry needs, but it's best if you've done the homework to find out if they're ready to buy those services for the price that you're willing to sell those services. And I didn't do any of that. That would have been really smart. So I just kind of spit and vinegar, went out there and said, let's go.
[00:04:52] Hired three employees, signed a three year lease for an office. And I said, I got a big plotter. I had these visions of being a [00:05:00] grand, uh, You know, technology, architectural studio. That was the picture in my mind. And if you now look at the calendar, that was November, 2007. And we all know what happened in 2008, the great recession.
[00:05:13] So I, I did that walking right into one of the greatest economic challenges in our country's history. You know, maybe only second to some of the challenges people have had recently, but you know, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. And I made every payroll and [00:05:30] fought tooth and nail, lots of war stories, lots of war wounds, lots of lessons purchased in those years, dealing through that great recession.
[00:05:40] One of them was that I, I joke about, uh, I'd launched services. My customers weren't necessarily ready to buy. But the reason they weren't ready to buy it is they didn't necessarily know how to position that level of service, that quality engineered product to their customers. And so being the ever, [00:06:00] the problem solver that I am, I said, well, then I need to help them improve the way they present their brands to their marketplace.
[00:06:07] So some of my very early hires were branding. people. I was started developing logos, brochures, websites, social media, email marketing. By the way, if you had asked me in those years, I was not a marketing agency. I was an engineering firm that was helping my customers position themselves so they could buy my engineering services.[00:06:30]
[00:06:30] I didn't know that I was a marketing agency. It sounds comical. And then fast forward to 2015 and we had some challenges in 2015 with some of our business units that weren't growing and I had burdened myself by, you know, overstaffing, you know, the idea is putting too much labor on staff before you have the sales, you know, I say if you build it, they will come.
[00:06:54] That was my, I'd seen that on, I'd seen it was a movie that said that. Yeah. And, uh. Kevin Costner. It, yeah, it didn't [00:07:00] work. No, I built it. They didn't come. And I had a lot of bills to pay. And that meant that I had to make some very hard decisions. And that included ultimately looking at what was working in the business and what was not working in the business.
[00:07:15] And what was working was my marketing business. I had 30 clients that on the first of the month paid their bill. It was recurring revenue. It was magic and it was, uh, [00:07:30] it was the happiest day of the month at the beginning of that month and when so many other things in the business weren't going well, and so I'm, I'm sure you'll have more questions, but a short version of that closure is we ended up closing those other business units, ended up closing the physical office.
[00:07:48] going to a virtual company to cut expenses and to expand our ability to hire from a diverse workforce that was not geo locked into South Florida. And so there were just [00:08:00] a lot of very big decisions that were made. I'd love to say that we were sitting in an ivory castle and made it out of having all the options.
[00:08:09] My options were limited. I had to make the right next move or I might actually have to go put a resume together. And I, that terrified me. I had no interest in putting a resume together. I'm unemployable. So I said, I'm going to figure this out. And I leaned in with my leaders and in particular, my right hand at that time, my [00:08:30] ops manager, now my CFO.
[00:08:32] And we said, well, this marketing business is in demand. Our customers love us. It's fun and easy to hire. It's fun and easy to sell. The lifetime value of these clients is significant. Let's lean into that and be the very best in the world at doing that. And so in a matter of a few days, a lot of significant decisions were made that have clearly altered my life and altered the trajectory of the business.
[00:08:59] A couple of detail [00:09:00] questions here. So. At that time, you had 30 marketing clients that were paying on time every month. The checks were coming in. Were they all part of the same space, of this integration space, or were there, was there a variety of clients you were serving? All CI, all custom integration clients.
[00:09:19] Custom integration. Okay. And did you, were these clients, you were also creating products for it by that time or is it just that they, that they found you through [00:09:30] whatever means and they hired you because of your marketing skills and capabilities? No, they, they likely would have all found us through our engineering services.
[00:09:39] So if you think about, I'll just paint the picture for the audience. If you have, there's a residential side to the world and a commercial side. So I'll paint the commercial first. If you're in a fortune 500 business, your, your building or office space probably has conference rooms. Those conference rooms have technology.
[00:09:58] They have projectors, [00:10:00] screens, lighting control, shading control, and so on, sound masking and whatnot. If you're in a home, I'll paint the higher, the upper end of the marketplace. If you live in a 10, 000 square foot home and that home is worth 10 to 20 million, that home probably has a lot of technology in it.
[00:10:19] It has music systems, home theaters, lighting control, shading control, today, very robust home networks, so on and so forth. Well, the businesses that [00:10:30] design, install, program, and service those customers, those are my customers. Those are my people. And so they were finding us initially because of our ability to do.
[00:10:43] world class engineering documentation for them. It was their client. We were the white label engineering documentation service provider to them. They would have found us because of that reputation. And then they would have been sold into various [00:11:00] marketing services that would aid their ability to position themselves as a market leader.
[00:11:05] Why? Because I needed them to take my fee, double it, put it as a light item on their proposal and be confident in the eyes of the customer to make that sale. Well, then I needed to position them with marketing assets that helped them tell that story. And up until that point, that generally in my industry did not exist.
[00:11:28] That was my next question, which is, [00:11:30] were you, were you pulling them from another agency? Or was this concept of branding, positioning, and marketing, was that new to this audience, relatively? No, I don't want to, my knowledge is limited and I'm mindful of that, but I know this industry very well. And I know that this industry generally does not think poorly of marketing agencies.
[00:11:52] And generally they've had a poor experience in the past. Generally, now that's no one's fault. [00:12:00] It is because this, when you know a space, say as intimately as my team knows this space, there's a lot of value that comes with that. So then when you talk to someone that does not intimately know the space, they don't know the types of customers, the ICPs you're appealing to, the value propositions of your service offering, the hundreds of brands of solutions and manufacturers you represent, they don't speak that language.
[00:12:28] That's our first [00:12:30] language. And so when they are dealing with those other people, these, you got to remember, all of these contractors are small business owners. The last thing they are an abundance of is time. And so when they're spending time with other agencies, and it's again, no one's fault, but that interaction to simply discover how to serve them takes significant time.
[00:12:55] And then often the work product is often lacking. just because of [00:13:00] a lack of awareness and understanding. That's what they come to us with is a knowledge or awareness of having, quote, tried things with other people and generally been burdened with significant frustration. And we promise them one thing, we will save them time.
[00:13:17] We will help them hit the bullseye in what they're trying to accomplish more quickly and more effectively, more often than any alternative. And that. That's a promise that we [00:13:30] keep with every single customer, and it's not that we're frankly that magical. We're not. We've just chosen to focus, and that focus is powerful.
[00:13:40] It's just like the sunlight that shines on you when you walk outside. Well, it doesn't burn you. Well, put a magnifying lens and then put your hand under it. It'll burn you. Focus is powerful, and it delivers a lot of value to the end customer. So back in 2015, when you were going through this transformation [00:14:00] of saying, Hey, you know, there's a, there's a demand in the market for, for these services.
[00:14:05] And we're familiar, we're intimately familiar with this, this market. We, you know, our first language is their world. How did you, in those early days, how did you break into sort of building out your, your, your agency. Like what did you do next to go from 30 clients to beyond that? Well, first we cut all expenses that weren't part of this new future [00:14:30] vision of the company.
[00:14:31] So a lot of hard decisions, a lot of people that we loved working with, we parted ways with, we cut operational overhead to streamline the business. And from there we redesigned our messaging, our website, cut all ties to all legacy service offerings. And we were only the marketing agency for this space.
[00:14:52] And you then get into strategies. Well, how do we, how do we build? Well, when you're in a space and this, [00:15:00] this likely goes for anyone that's focusing on a niche, well, niches and industry has trade shows, has trade associations, has buying groups. We joined all of them. And we started participating in them. I started being invited onto boards of various entities within the space, and we lean in.
[00:15:21] We lean in strongly, and I've listened to your show, Corey, and a lot of your folks do what I'm about to describe, and it's, um, very much. It's, it [00:15:30] seems obvious in hindsight and it's just simply a good idea if anyone's listening and isn't doing this. We lead with education. We're the educators for the space on the subject matter of marketing.
[00:15:41] We go to their trade shows and we teach. We don't sell anything. I don't stand on stage and try to sell any product or service at, at One Firefly. I lean, you know, I believe in depositing, depositing and depositing and the withdrawal will come at a later date. And if we deposit [00:16:00] and teach and train and coach and support and love and nurture, they will reward us with business.
[00:16:07] Like I don't need, I don't need it to be overt and upfront. So we teach them what does it mean to build a great website? What does it mean to have a great email strategy? What does it mean to be great at social media? What's the role of paid advertising versus organic? How do I go in and do SEO? We'll teach.
[00:16:25] And some of those, and we tell them on stage and. Have someone on your [00:16:30] team learn these things. Go hire a local agency to do these things. And if you're interested, talk to us about the value we might bring to your business. I will accept that A B comparison any day of the week. I love nothing more than someone worth considering these options.
[00:16:48] And we'd like to know why you. Well, I'll stand and tell them why us all day long, because I have so much conviction. I say, I, my, my sales team and account managers, and I, we have so much [00:17:00] conviction in the value we bring this customer. It's not hyperbole. It's not speculation. It's like proven when you're around long enough, you survive and you have gray hair.
[00:17:10] There's a lot of proof in case studies and success stories and testimonials where your clients do a lot of the positive, you know, they do a lot of the selling for you. Where does that conviction come from? You think it's, you know, test it's failing a lot. You know, when you're at, when you're an entrepreneur, all my [00:17:30] entrepreneurs are shaking their head.
[00:17:30] You buy so many lessons. No one wakes up and knows how to do this stuff and be perfect, but you got to be gritty enough and stubborn enough that every time you fail, you know, like Jocko Willick says, you say good. Because it means there's now an opportunity to get better. Yeah. There's an opportunity to fix it.
[00:17:51] And so, I mean, we, I say that all the time to myself and to my team. When we fail, good. Now what are we fixing so next time it's a [00:18:00] little bit better? And you keep doing that and you get those reps. And if you stay focused on incremental improvement, and you're really diligent to that, it's not words, but it's actions demonstrated.
[00:18:14] That isn't just from the leader, but it's then practiced by your team. And every team at every level, and this absolutely happens at One Firefly, they practice that failure is normal. It's totally okay. Failure is [00:18:30] acceptable as long as we're learning from it and modifying people, process, and product as we move forward to get a little bit better.
[00:18:38] The problems, air quotes, occur when that same problem occurs again and again and again. Now we haven't appropriately addressed the people, process and product and made the improvements. So, I mean, that's it. It's a track record. We've been growing since we pivoted in 2016 to only being a [00:19:00] digital marketing agency.
[00:19:02] The minimum we've grown year over year top line revenue is 20%. We've grown between 20 to 40 percent every year since then, and we are a 20 percent plus bottom line net profit company. We're a growing profitable company, and that only happens with diligent focus. It's focusing on our, our customers, focusing and loving on our team.
[00:19:26] If we do that, our team takes care of the customer and it's a self [00:19:30] fulfilling cycle. It's, it's, it's positive and it's not words. You know, here at One Firefly, we have an ENPS score. So everyone's familiar with like a net promoter score for your customers. Well, we also, we, we do, we do NPS scores and our scores are very good.
[00:19:45] And, but we also focus on ENPS. What does, what does the team think about One Firefly and the culture? 2023, our ENPS score at One Firefly was 70 It's good. Maybe [00:20:00] it's not the best in the country, but it's right up there. And it's not because we're not a demanding place to work. We're a very demanding place to work.
[00:20:09] But when we hire the right people and we focus very diligently on the right type of people, then those people are in their happy place when they're around other high achievers. And that gives us a competitive advantage. So hiring is always a challenge for any business, especially for agencies. What are some of [00:20:30] the lessons learned or the best practices that you've developed over the years to ensure that you're building the team that that's going to get it?
[00:20:38] I had a religious experience in 2013. I found a book. It's one of my most referred books. And, and so I'll give the backstory before I give you the special book. And that was around 2009 or 10. I was very early in my, my business. And I was, I was struggling, [00:21:00] struggling terribly with hiring and, and of course, trying to sell and trying to manage and HR and oh my God, doing everything, keeping all the plates spinning that every entrepreneur has to deal with.
[00:21:11] And I had this vision that they're, you know, and I'm an engineer. So I was like, there has to be a process that's like proven. This wheel has to have been invented before. I'm not the only person in the world trying to figure out how to grow and scale my business. And I had come across a book called top [00:21:30] grading and top grading is a book written by Brad smart, Brad smart.
[00:21:35] was the head of HR at GE under Jack Welch. And he invented a lot of different philosophies and beliefs that I believe in today. They seem very logical to me. And I don't want to knock that book. It was a fantastic book, but it was still read like a dissertation. It was very hard for me as a, maybe I was a five or eight person business at that time, trying to think about how to do this.
[00:21:59] [00:22:00] You know, we're talking about a two inch thick book worth of HR best practices that GE practiced. I was like, all right, I believe it, but I don't know how to do that. And in 2013, I came across the book, uh, Who, by Jeff Smart, The A Method of Hiring. That was a religious experience for me. Yeah. Because suddenly that was, I have chills right now.
[00:22:22] I have chill because I, I had a civil, I, I have chills because I had the same, well, I'll let you finish, but I had it, it was transformational in that book from, from [00:22:30] my, it was transformational. It gave me a process that I had confidence that I could do, I could execute. And if you're process minded and you're design, you're focused on growing your business, then all you want is show me a way.
[00:22:45] I'll go do it. I'll go work hard, but give me, you know, guide me, show me a good way to go about things. And that gave me a method. And that method ultimately led to me going through a nationwide search for an [00:23:00] operations manager. And I, it was a role that was, it was a separate big event for me and aha moment where I realized I didn't need sales help.
[00:23:08] I needed operations help in the business. So both of those things happened in the spring of 2013 for me. So I had the aha moment. I needed operations help. And then I, I now found a method that I could follow. I did that. We have now institutionalized the A Method hiring at OneFirefly. We've trained, so originally it was me [00:23:30] doing it, and then my operations manager was doing it, and then the operations manager trained our leaders to do it.
[00:23:36] And now all of our leaders are involved in this methodology of casting a fantastically wide net, having a great job ad, bringing people in, appropriate screening. We do culture, personality testing, as well as phone screening, ultimately resume reviews, leading to top grading law, you know, long format, uh, tandem interviews.
[00:23:59] [00:24:00] I love the science and art of a good two hour tandem interview and watching, uh, good candidates rise to the surface and bad candidates melt under the pressure. And then the subsequent interviews that lead to a hire. And so by following, you know, it's a slow, methodical, expensive process, but it's a fraction of the cost of a bad hire.
[00:24:25] And so you just have to believe that. I believed that because I had had enough bad hires [00:24:30] that I believed there had to be a better way. So when they wrote about it in the book and they said, this is slow and expensive, but trust us, here's the math on a bad hire. I was like, you don't have to, yes, I agree. A bad hire is very expensive.
[00:24:45] So I did it. And when I talked to, I mean, I talked to, I've talked to small business owners every day of my life for the last 24 years. And I, so often I hear them talk about their woes in their [00:25:00] business. And I'm going to go as far as to say, 90 percent of the time it's people problems. They have the wrong people on their team.
[00:25:07] They're misaligned. Whether it's at the leadership level or down through leaders and down through members of the team. Like Patrick Lencioni in Five Dysfunctions of a Team says, if you aren't rowing in the same direction, you're going in circles. He doesn't say exactly that way, but that's my paraphrased version.
[00:25:23] Yeah. That's what he's saying. So you want your team in this finely tuned, [00:25:30] aerodynamic, hydrodynamic boat that's designed to glide through the water. You want you all rowing at the same time. And if you do that, you can go very far and very fast. You don't even have to put that much energy into it. And that's what we do.
[00:25:42] We focus on our people and, and process and the rest of the org we'll talk about. But that's one of the biggies for me, getting the right people on the bus and making, making sure they're in the right seat. Agency owners in 2024, do you want to finally escape founder led sales? My book, Anyone Not [00:26:00] Everyone, gives you a unique solution to a big problem that digital agency owners face, serving too many types of clients.
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[00:26:55] You'll also get access to some early bonuses just by signing up to be [00:27:00] notified today. Go to anyonenoteveryone. com. That's anyonenoteveryone. com. Now, back to the show. Sales is usually one of the last sort of departments or areas of an agency that a founder lets go of. What was your process for, assuming you're no, you're no longer directly in sales.
[00:27:23] I dabble now. What was your process for, yeah, when you, when you want, you, you, you're the, you're the founder or the co founder, so you can do that, [00:27:30] but you're no longer, you're no longer, the agency's growth and success is no longer directly dependent on your, you spending time in sales. I love a good challenge.
[00:27:41] So I have to admit anyone that knows me that listens to this knows this is true. I love selling. I love the art of selling. I love the science of selling. I love the psychology of selling. I love the challenge of selling. Selling is not for most people, but if you love it, you love it. [00:28:00] And people that are listening that know they love it, they know they love it.
[00:28:03] And so for me to quote, let go of it. And by the way, I have let go of it. It's, it was very hard, but the reason I did it is because I also love, maybe something I love more than selling is I love a good challenge. And as I started in the last three years or so, picking my head up. You know, out of my foxhole that's mostly been spent in the custom integration industry.[00:28:30]
[00:28:30] And I've, I've leaned in with my leadership team as like, well, what, what is best? I. E. what are the best agencies in the country? What are their benchmarks? What are, like, what's achievable? I don't even know what's achievable. I've never asked. And so we started to, you know, ask the question, what should be our gross margin goals?
[00:28:52] What should be our net profitability goals? What, what is possible in terms of top line growth? What is terms of market [00:29:00] penetration in a vertical? Like all these, I have no idea what's normal. And so one of these things that I learned was that it's a sign of maturity of a business to move away from founder led sales.
[00:29:14] And I could step out of my business and look at it as an advisor and go, I can totally see how I'm a bottleneck as much as I love it. And a good customer loves to have Ron show up for a sales call and act, you know, nutty and client always knows he's buying if I show [00:29:30] up, right? That's fun. But it's also very limiting to the business.
[00:29:36] And I could go as far as to say it's demoralizing for a sales force, especially if they're compared against what you're doing. Because I did not always see this. I see it with absolute clarity now. When I walk into a sales call, I have so many advantages in that call that the other sales members of our team, that their numbers might be put against mine.
[00:29:59] They could be [00:30:00] amazing salespeople, but they're immediately disadvantaged because they don't have the title founder next to them, or they don't have the title CEO next to them, or they haven't, you know, and you can name these other things that are experienced in the space. And so the next level that I just, I took on and I communicated to my, my leadership team is I want to move away from founder led sales and I want to grow a sales organization.
[00:30:26] I want to have sales management, salespeople, and I want to [00:30:30] package and bottle what I do for better and for worse, but ultimately train my team to take that and then run further. And now we have a saleable structure. And so today I own no territory. I have a sales manager, I have a sales team. And I will help with a curriculum around developing the sales tactics.
[00:30:52] If we're launching a new product or service, I will be involved in supporting them, particularly if it's something new [00:31:00] and they, they, they need support, but outside of that, all day to day activities, I'm not involved in. Prior to this transformation out of, of directly being involved in sales, did you. have a sales team that were you were managing that reported into you, right?
[00:31:16] What did that look like? No, I, I, I, we never designed it. My CFO and I shared the management and oversight of the sales team. So I was a sales person. [00:31:30] Slash sales coach, which is not a great combination. And my CFO was accountability oversight to the sales team. And it got us to, it, it, it enabled us to grow 20 to 30 percent year over year until he and I agreed, it probably wouldn't allow us to continue to grow 20 to 30 percent year over year.
[00:31:54] And it was at that point, it was just kind of stepping back, but always looking always looking into the future [00:32:00] around, well, what do we look like three years from now? You know, five years from now, three years from now, one year from now, one quarter from now, one month from now, one week from now, what happens tomorrow?
[00:32:10] And it's just looking at that. And we said, I see the future state where it's, it's harmful to the business. If, if Ron, you know, talking about myself in the third person is in that seat and it's, can be a little hot sometimes. Then we, so we started to envision what that would look like. We actually went and hired [00:32:30] a, and by the way, I'm also comfortable not knowing how to do the big thing that we're aspiring to do.
[00:32:37] Like just because I know how to sale doesn't mean I know how to build a sales organization. And so we went out and hired a sales consultancy out of London, a company called Immerse. Mornay and Ollie, fantastic people. And you should have them on the show at some point. They're, they're brilliant. And they kind of took us by the hand and [00:33:00] said, we'll show you how to do this.
[00:33:02] And so it started by packaging, you know, I don't know how deep you want to go into that, but packaging our best practices into a sales playbook, and then ultimately designing proper accountabilities for salespeople, proper roles and responsibilities for sales management. Identifying the right sales manager.
[00:33:22] We were able to hire that role from within 10 year veteran of the business that that was the right career move for that person, the skillset [00:33:30] matched up. And so it was a wonderful institutional knowledge. We're transitioned into that role. A lot of confidence in authority from the sales team. That can be a challenge with sales team.
[00:33:41] Will they trust and respect the person in that seat? And it's been a really neat transition. I love that very methodical approach to this, which I, which I love. What are some of the, let's call them, major milestones for you, Ron, as a leader? I mean, you started [00:34:00] this business, you know, 20, well, I guess you graduated college.
[00:34:03] You started in, in the world of custom integration 24 years ago. Then this evolved into 2016, where you're now an agent, you know, leader of an agency. How have you changed as a leader over these years? I think my favorite food is humble pie.
[00:34:21] I think that running a business will humble you 10 times over in a week. And you put enough weeks together, you can't help but [00:34:30] change. You either change and evolve as a human. or you do something else. And so I'm a different human being. You know, the Ron today is a very different human being from the Ron 10 years ago or 20 years ago.
[00:34:45] I think the key is understanding the impact I have for positive and negative on others and just always being mindful of that. Also, knowing it's not about me, today I can say with confidence, the best thing I can do is look at [00:35:00] my team and how do I build them, build their career. I'm an adult and mature enough to say they may not be with me forever.
[00:35:07] So how can I, in the time that they're with me, impart some knowledge or wisdom? to ultimately help them on their journey. Now, I want them to be with me forever. We both win if that happens, but it also might not be the case because life happens and people make choices. And so it's just, it's really trying to not, you know, if, if talk about like working [00:35:30] with your team or your leaders, it's, it's not always needing to be right.
[00:35:36] It's about, you know, practicing meritocracy and letting good ideas win, best ideas win. And putting a safe environment in place where, again, I go back to Patrick Lencioni, Five Dysfunctions. That was a transformational book for our business. When we workshopped that, we book clubbed it through the whole business, top to bottom, every person in the business.[00:36:00]
[00:36:00] This is a couple of years ago, back in 2021. And, you know, in that concept, the philosophy, the base is trust, building that trust and having that ecosystem of trust so that you can go to the Not the more, but the very necessary next step, which is healthy conflict. So being in a place of trust so that you can disagree with each other to debate and discuss, but then also ultimately align around decisions and everyone track results.[00:36:30]
[00:36:30] and work towards the success of that initiative. And really practicing that, believing it, practicing it. And you know, I, like everyone I know, is a work in progress. But I think just really that concept of empathy and seeing that others are trying to provide for their families. Or provide for their, you know, the lifestyle that they want or the career ambitions they want, empowering them.
[00:36:56] And if we do that, and if we stay solely focused on [00:37:00] loving and supporting our customers and nurturing their growth and prosperity and accepting we're very human and we fail often. And if we fail, we pick ourselves up and make it right. It's just, you know, I've gotten better at those things. And as I get better at those things, the business gets better and we're more successful and I make more money and we grow like it's, it's self fulfilling.
[00:37:24] It's very positive. And everyone around me is growing and succeeding. What has helped you [00:37:30] to accelerate that growth? Have there been, you know, external resources, coaches? Do you believe in working with coaches? Like how, how have those played a role, if at all? Yeah, it's great. A lot of people in my life that have helped me get where I am, you know, what is it?
[00:37:47] We, we stand on the shoulders of giants and I've, I've had a lot of giants in my life and I could go back in 2011. When I initially gained a business partner, that meant we put [00:38:00] a board of advisors together. And so we were very early in my, my professional career at that point. And my goodness, did I need those advisors?
[00:38:09] And they were wise, experienced people from my side and my business partner. We both brought people to the table. And so that was kind of round one of, of consult and advice coming from the outside world. and fast forward In, I guess I would say in 2017, I was just [00:38:30] desperately seeking the counsel of other marketing agency owners.
[00:38:34] All of my counsel was inside of my, my niche, but they were all contractors. And yet I'm this marketing business that's trying to figure out how to best serve it. And I, all my knowledge I was gaining from podcasts, all my exposure, I discovered podcasts. That was another big thing. pivot in my life in 2015.
[00:38:54] But I started to be exposed to this world of knowledge and education out there. And that [00:39:00] led to me ultimately reaching out to one of those people that was running one of those podcasts. And we connected and bonded. And he said, let's do a mastermind together. And we brought in a few more agency owners.
[00:39:11] And fast forward to today, I am in three different marketing masterminds. with three different pods of agency owners. There's so much value in just knowing with confidence the problems you're having, you're not the only one having those problems. The ambitions and [00:39:30] the things you're trying to solve, others have solved it before you.
[00:39:34] And so just being open and receptive to the input of others, it's, I mean, we're being able to fast forward our productivity and effectiveness. Like right now, this week is a big week. We're launching some new products. And over the fall, I was workshopping with other agency owners. That have nothing to gain other than their willingness to share their time and opinion and critique of what we were [00:40:00] developing.
[00:40:00] And we just, I showed them everything and they show me everything. And I give them my price sheets. They give me their price, like we help each other. Uh, we, you know, I could, I could talk about a lot of different things that have been shared over the years, but it's like, I believe in an infinite world.
[00:40:15] It's not. I'm not worried about them taking my business. They have to be better than one firefly and deliver more value to do that. And if they do that, good on them to win the business. There's enough business out there to be had. So if [00:40:30] we just see each other as brothers and sisters in arms, trying to figure this game of life out and how to run a business and deliver value, we help each other.
[00:40:39] And so I've found a lot of value in masterminding and And then the other big one for me in 2019, and the joke is I had, and I'll, I'll hold the book up. I had at, you know, I have a lot of friends in business and in life, and I had five different people give me this book and I have all [00:41:00] five on my bookshelf.
[00:41:01] I think they were telling me something, so I'm gonna hold it up now. It's, uh, I don't know if that's, you can see that Traction, Gino? Yeah. Wickham Traction. DOS Yep. EOS. Yep. And in 2019, I finally made the move. reached out to an implementer, had the consult, adopted, and we're all in on EOS. So we went all in in the fall of 2019.
[00:41:26] You know, it took us maybe about a year and a half to fully get that [00:41:30] penetrated through the business at every level of the business. And it's life changing, game changing. It's not perfect, but it's pretty damn good. And so it's a really nice structure to build processes. It's a nice set of processes and beliefs and methodologies to think about the different aspects of your business and to give rubrics and structure on how to approach moving things forward.
[00:41:56] And I found that incredibly effective, you [00:42:00] know, so it, you know, in, within One Firefly, we speak the language of L10s and IDSing and running People Analyzer and rocks. And it's, it's our first language now. And it's, it's really been helpful to getting us where we're at. I want to be mindful of time. We're at the top of the hour.
[00:42:17] I have a little bit more time. How does your calendar look? I'm good. This was my last thing. Meeting of the day. Okay. Well, it's six o'clock there, so I won't, I won't keep you for very much longer. This has been fantastic, by the way. Along the way, [00:42:30] you've been, you've been focused in on custom integration.
[00:42:32] Sounds like, you know, from the start, but has there been any mistakes as it relates to taking this vertical or this, this niche approach? I can see no flaws with tackling a niche. I mean, if you, I never considered any alternative. It was never on my board of options. And that's, you know, I can see that if someone's, and I understand many people maybe say, I want to be a marketer and [00:43:00] I want to open a marketing agency.
[00:43:02] That was not remotely me. I never woke up and said that was an ambition of mine. So I never saw myself as being a marketer for businesses. I saw myself always for 24 years trying to serve this type of business owner. It's just there's something about small business. If you are a small business, you hear me.
[00:43:24] It's hard. It's brutally hard. College doesn't prepare you for it. [00:43:30] Life doesn't prepare you for it. Nothing prepares you for it. You jump off the cliff. You start falling. Gravity takes over and you throw a chute and you hope the chute opens. If you talk the chute opening, you say, well, what is the chute opening?
[00:43:47] Success. Well, I would challenge that most small business owners, I'm like, I don't want to be the skeptic or the pessimist, but most small businesses are not what I would call [00:44:00] successful. Those business owners are slaves to a crazy person. themselves. And they work tremendous numbers of hours. And if they really did the math, how much money are they really making?
[00:44:13] They're probably better off getting a job. And, except for the fact that they have this theoretical thing called freedom. They really don't have freedom. Because they're tied to working for this crazy person themselves. And so now they're going to go out [00:44:30] and work harder and harder. And so I could go down this road and I have been that crazy person.
[00:44:34] So this is me talking to me and it is hard to run a small business. And so I find joy in being the light. To the businesses that we work with, at least in this small little domain of all the problems they're trying to solve in their life of marketing. We at least will bring light to them in that category of [00:45:00] their, of their business.
[00:45:01] We will be their counsel. We will be their shoulder to cry on. We will be the person telling them what's coming around the corner. We will be the person that listens to their hopes, dreams, wishes, desires for the future state of their business. And we're going to be the ones that help put them in the driver's seat.
[00:45:20] We're going to pick them up, put them in the driver's seat, and we're going to say, here's how we're going to get there. And these business owners don't often have this person in their [00:45:30] life. And we are that for these business owners. And that's a joy to have that role. And it's a responsibility to have that role.
[00:45:40] So, how do you do that if you aren't optimized to help them or support them? This is just the engineer in me. Well, if you were a dentist, I don't know how to help you. If you're a florist or a lawyer, my God, there's like 50 types of lawyers. I don't have any idea how [00:46:00] to help you. But if you're in my niche, I'd I intimately understand how to help you because I've gone to your trade shows.
[00:46:10] I've spent, I say, I that's synonymous for my team. We've spent thousands upon thousands upon thousands of hours talking to them, listening to them, understanding them so that we're best positioned to take these tactics in our marketing toolbox. to help them [00:46:30] achieve that vision they have. And that is value.
[00:46:33] Value is what you receive, money is what you pay. We deliver tremendous amounts of value. So guess what? We get to charge a premium for our services, because it's worth a lot. Well, you cost more than the next guy. I hope I cost more. In fact, I'm insulted if you tell me I am not the most expensive vendor you're talking to.
[00:46:58] Because I am the most valuable [00:47:00] vendor you're talking to. A. B. Compare me. Hire them and then come back. It's okay, I won't be offended. And I have people take me up on that and then they come back and I say, let's go. No offense. Let's rock and roll. Let's go grow your business. Same thing happened with us in Scorpion, where we would have clients who they would get itchy feet, leave us, and then inevitably come back.
[00:47:24] Uh, you're, you're reminding me of a book. Are you familiar with a book called Peak by Chip Conley? [00:47:30] No, but I'm going to write it down. So Chip Conley, he was the founder of a boutique hotel chain called Joie de Vivre. And then his next venture was the head of Experience, that wasn't the right title, but head of like customer experience or, or, you know, traveler experience at a, at Airbnb.
[00:47:49] So he had a big role in growing Airbnb and it's all about hospitality in any event. He wrote in this book about sort of applying the, the Maslow's hierarchy of needs to [00:48:00] growing a business. And one of the, one of the chapters talks about. The thing that drives true word of mouth and, and customer loyalty is not just meeting the clients, your clients, your customers needs or wants, but it's meeting that unrecognized need, that unspoken need that maybe they can't even articulate, but you're coming in and solving that and providing that for, for them in a way that, that no one else can.
[00:48:26] It's like meeting them truly at a very deep level and, and, [00:48:30] and creating, as you said, You know, tremendous value. And when you're able to do that, as a part of your business, as a sort of institutionalized part of your business, that's where you get things like client loyalty and word of mouth and 20 percent plus year over year growth.
[00:48:46] All of these things are closely tied together, I think. It's a matter of actually giving a shit. And a lot of people say they do, and they don't mean it. And it's waking up in the [00:49:00] morning and going to bed at night, and when it's good, you believe it, and when it's hard, you believe it, and when the client's telling you they love you, you believe it, and when the client's telling you what you did wrong, you still believe it.
[00:49:13] It's like actually caring, and I, the client smells it a mile away. whether you actually care. And that's it. Every person, their salespeople, their account managers, the web developers, the designers, the writers, the account managers, the accounting team, my God, somebody [00:49:30] calling to collect money. Do they care?
[00:49:32] If everyone cares, the client feels it and they stay and the business is rewarded with lifetime value. It's magic, but it's not rocket science. It's also not I don't think it's talked about enough. I actually wrote a whole chapter, it's called, in my book, about this idea of taking a vertical focus. And the name of the chapter is Give a Damn, right?
[00:49:57] And it's all about There you go. Just, you know, [00:50:00] the requirement today, you can't just choose a vertical based off of the spreadsheet and, you know, like, oh, there's a lot of businesses and they spend a lot of money. You're going to fail. You need empathy. You need empathy. Put yourself, I just go back to the challenge of that business owner.
[00:50:15] That business owner has a lot of demands on their time. They're not just someone to approve a ticket or a sale. They really legitimately are responsible for their whole payroll. They're, they have commitments on projects, a lot of liabilities tied to them. They [00:50:30] have to not only honor their employees, but honor their family and their commitments there.
[00:50:35] It is wonderfully, fantastically hard to be that entrepreneur. And so when you are, even if it's only about, I just, I'm thinking of something right now, I have a client that, God forbid, had someone else built their website and we were only mildly insulted. And. Then, uh, my team has stayed on it for six months, tracking the performance of that [00:51:00] website post that launch, and I can say here, because I won't mention names, it's been a fantastically bad disaster for their SEO, online presence, we're talking about every mistake in the book that could have been made, was made in that thing, and we give a shit.
[00:51:18] Pardon my French. I don't know if I'm allowed to curse on your show. My team has drafted full reports and analysis, sent it to the client, texted the client, messaged him on LinkedIn and [00:51:30] say, I just want you to know you need to get your web company to go fix these things. We did not solicit. I need to fix it.
[00:51:37] I need to go do it. I just, that client's been my client for many, many years and we care about them and we know what he built. I even know what he was trying to achieve by going down this different creative route and I don't even knock him for it. I think I loved his vision for what he was trying to do.
[00:51:54] I'm going to challenge whether it's going to work out the way his vision, what he had in mind. And you know what, [00:52:00] when he needs help, we will be right here to help him. But it's like tracking it through, not words, but actions all the way through. And that, even if it doesn't pay us today or this year, it will pay, just faith.
[00:52:15] If you deposit, deposit, deposit, the return will come tenfold. I don't need to know when or how, I just know that it will. It could come in him telling someone at a bar, at a conference, You know, these One Firefly folks, [00:52:30] they went out of their way to help me solve this problem. I wasn't even, they weren't even paying them any money.
[00:52:35] I'm not, they're not under contract with them for any services. And they did this. And that's just, that's a neat thing to do. We don't always do it. We don't always do it perfectly, but I can tell you, we do it quite often. And I think that's one of the keys that's helped us put us in this position.
[00:52:52] Beautiful. Well, I want to leave it there with just one last question for you. And I think you've answered this maybe indirectly, but I want to [00:53:00] ask it anyways. Sure. What's your motivation? Oh, I love spending time with my family and my wife and my son. You know, I cherish my time together. I enjoy working out of my home office and I get to see my son.
[00:53:14] I've gotten to see my, I've had the joy of seeing my son off to school every single day since he went to preschool. He's in the ninth grade now and he gives me a hug before he goes to school every single day. Every single day when he comes home, he gives me a [00:53:30] hug before he goes to start his homework.
[00:53:32] And we, you know, we take four, you know, three, four, five nice vacations a year and go somewhere fun and enjoy each other's company. And I enjoy working really hard so that I can set up the lifestyle that I want to have with my family. So that's my top priority. Beyond that, it's, I, I enjoy helping people and I've done it.
[00:53:55] For my whole career, and I enjoy the way that we get to support our [00:54:00] clients now and our team. So if you look at our vision, and you'll see this on our website, onefirefly. com, you know, we call it our North Star. If you look at our North Star for the business, it's to help people feel proud, prosperous, and connected.
[00:54:17] So it's, you notice when I say people, I'm not saying my customers, I'm not saying my team, I'm saying everybody in our ecosystem. I, I want my team to feel proud, prosperous, and connected. Proud, proud of where they work, proud of the [00:54:30] work they do. Prosperous. I want them to make a lot of money and connected.
[00:54:33] I want them to have wonderful fellowship with each other. And then I'll look at my customers. Proud, proud of the business they are, the brand they represent. Prosperous. I want them thriving and making money and connected. I want them connected with their communities. And then you look at the communities that we serve.
[00:54:49] I want to go into those communities where our customers, where our team is located, and I want to help those communities through philanthropy and through giving back, right? So it's really a [00:55:00] matter of believing that, practicing it, acting it. Our mission is to help technology businesses grow. Right? So it's, we've chosen a niche.
[00:55:09] Why? Because niching is awesome. Why would you not choose a niche? It's so much easier. Go into that space and be the expert. It's just easier, full stop. And so it's, it's really about helping people. And I enjoy getting up every single day, including Mondays, going to [00:55:30] work, and I enjoy, and many of my team will have fun with each other.
[00:55:34] I mean, we cherish work life balance, but we also work really hard. I mean, we'll start early, we'll go late. Generally, there's very little weekends, but occasionally there is. And it's just, but when you're doing what you love, it isn't work. It doesn't feel like work, and I think we, we have something special here at One Firefly.
[00:55:52] Well, thank you, Ron, for coming on and sharing your experience, your wisdom, and lots of really great guidance [00:56:00] and wisdom, as I said here. So, thank you so much for coming on. My pleasure, Corey. I've been a fan of yours for a long time. I'm honored to be spending this time with you. It's awesome. Yeah, likewise.
[00:56:11] Thank you. That's it for today. I'm Corey Quinn and I hope you join me again next time on the Deep Specialization Podcast. If you received value from this show, please go to Apple Podcasts and leave us a review. Thanks and we'll see you soon.
