Monday Manufacturing Motivation – with Nicole Donnelly

Nicole Donnelly 0:00
If you haven’t showed that picture. Yeah, this the time is now the time is now.

Curt Anderson 0:06
Time. Hey, speaking of now, I think we’re live. So hey, happy Monday, everybody. Happy Thanksgiving week one in every role amazing, incredible blessed week. This is great. It was a good football weekend, baby. How was your football weekend? How good were you guys successful? How’d you do?

Unknown Speaker 0:23
Washington state one, I guess the Huskies One, two.

Curt Anderson 0:27
It’s all good. Right? Good. No. You know and we’ve got a short week this week, but we just it’s family time but we’re gonna dig into some really hot topics here. So I thought we would bring in none other the authority the rock star, the one and only Nicole Donnelly. Nicole, happy Monday. How

Nicole Donnelly 0:47
are you happy Monday you give me way, way, way too much credit girl. I’m just excited to be here and have a fun conversation and just kick off this Thanksgiving week strong because there’s a lot to be thankful for lots of fun stuff. So

Curt Anderson 1:01
lots to be thankful for lots of good speaking of thankful How about have a gratitude for this guy right here, man? How about

Nicole Donnelly 1:09
Italian American Hi, John. Good morning

Curt Anderson 1:12
to the most handsome kids I’ve ever seen. So John, Happy Thanksgiving to you your family in Jersey. Hope you have an amazing weekend. We just kind of through this little program together kind of impromptu last minute here. So we’re going to take a deep dive we got some really juicy topics to cover. Speaking here on Thanksgiving week. It’s like we were thinking of like juicy food. We’ll call it topics that cover right here. So hey, how about this fine person here? Whitney, and Thanksgiving week to our friend Whitney, she’s you know, she’s had enough of this LinkedIn stuff. Daymond. So she cheated on you to be jumped right to YouTube. So Whitney, Happy Thanksgiving to you, your family appreciate all your amazing, incredible support. So let’s dig into digital self serve solutions for manufacturers digital self serve solutions for manufacturers. Now, Nicole, when I say that, what does that mean to you? What are we talking about digital self serve solutions?

Nicole Donnelly 2:07
Yeah. So basically, what this is, is it’s letting your customer have more control over the buying process and creating an experience for them on their website, where they can self select what it is exactly that they need. And there’s a whole bunch of different ways that you can do that, you know, so immediately, you may think of E commerce, which is a great solution. But for people who are just getting started, manufacturer is just getting started and dipping their toe into it. It could be as simple as creating a simple configurator that you could build out through your CRM. If you have a CRM that has workflow capabilities, where you can create a simple landing page with a workflow and set up several different questions. That’s a really great way to get started with creating a self serve digital self serve experience.

Curt Anderson 2:56
So Nicole, for somebody that’s that if this is new to somebody out there, so when he when we say serum, just explain what to somebody what a CRM is. And then you’re describing these questions. So it’s just a series of questions. I mean, basically, so when they hear configurator, they might be like, hey, wait a minute. Well, you’re talking over, you know, you’re not speaking my language. But you’re saying, hey, just a bunch of questions. That almost sounds like a little bit of a survey. Right? It’s about talking about that. Let’s go one step further with that CRM, and that question process for the configurator.

Nicole Donnelly 3:27
Yeah, absolutely. So CRM is your customer relationship management system. Some very common ones are Salesforce, HubSpot Pipedrive. And so basically, what you do with these systems is I’ll give you a couple of use cases that we built for some clients. So John Buck lino, one of our amazing clients here at Up Tessa we build out a recovered profit calculator through their CRM through HubSpot, where basically people could identify and see how much profit how much they would save by investing in this particular tool, and they’d be able to get specific, you know, output that would be emailed to them that would say, okay, based on what you’ve your answers to these questions, you’re gonna save X amount of dollars. Another client of ours, one of the biggest questions that customers are that their sales team was getting over and over again, was, how do I figure out what size system I need for my plant, they sell air filtration equipment, they need to size out the equipment. So what we did is we said, Okay, this is one of the top questions were getting, how can we create a digital self serve experience for them where they have control over the process, and they can build out what they need rather than having to call someone and do that whole thing? So we just built out a very simple three question survey, if you will, they answer those three questions and they get emailed their recommended system with the drawing. So this is a very like for thing started with this. This is a really great way to just dip your toe into it if you’re maybe not ready to go full hog with a full blown, you know, e commerce configurator, if you will.

Curt Anderson 5:08
Yeah. And so you’re talking about John McClintock test and he says, yes, the recovered profit calculator is amazing. Damon, we had a man two week geek out on Friday are what man with Andrew hood at Kadena solutions. And we were talking to like CAD drawings and like deep dive configurators you’re talking about that more and more with your customers. I know you’re practicing what you preach, you’re doing it with ads at your way. Just talk a little bit like digital self serve experience for solutions for you, your clients, kind of walk us through what that means to you. What are you sharing and preaching with folks you’re working with?

Damon Pistulka 5:41
Well, it’s it’s really about, we don’t go quite as far as maybe being able to, to, you know, select a product or service based on on the thing, sometimes we do, but really, it’s about giving people the information they need to help make an informed decision. I mean, when you’re when you’re looking at the very beginning for like us like a business valuation or something about selling a business or even growth by acquisition or something like that. There’s, there’s just a lot of questions, right? So really, what we’re trying to do is, is allow people to take an assessment or do or even just get to the information of articles like FAQs, that then drive into okay, if you if this is a question, if we’ve answered it, then you can go into something to answer a question, maybe an assessment or something like that. Or if it’s if it’s appropriate to get to the right person to talk to them about that specific thing. But really, it’s it’s about giving people all the information that you can think of that you’ve been asked, like Nicole said, the biggest questions is more about the reducing the friction by giving people the information they need to make the decision that is right for them. And it because everybody the biggest the biggest in anything you’re buying, I don’t care if you’re buying a car, you’re finding a new supplier for $10 million for the product yet, it’s you don’t want to screw up on your decision. Right, you will make a good decision. That basic concept applies to everything. And that’s what we just tried to do with ours is make it simple to make a good decision. And then when you’re at that decision point, make it simple to understand that steps of getting through that purchase.

Nicole Donnelly 7:21
Yeah, I love that. And that’s that’s kind of like creating a learning center, if you will on your website, where you’re basically answering all those questions through blog posts, video, etc. And one of the things that we do with our customers is what we call a customer journey map exercise where we basically break down the different deal stages for them. And we just have a brainstorming session we say okay, this is the first stage of the buyers journey. What are the questions that you’re getting from customers at this stage? And what are the objections that you hear from them, that keeps them from moving to the next stage of the process? And so if we can identify those questions and objections, those things turn into really great pieces of content that’s going to help them have this digital self serve experience on your website. And they don’t before they even talk to a sales rep right so you’re able to scale your sales team and answer those questions for them and not only that, but it helps your sales team now they have resources that they can give to their folks so it like kill it kills two birds with one stone.

Damon Pistulka 8:23
You’re right it trait your you can train your salespeople, a lot of your salespeople by allowing them if you do your FAQs. If you do this information in this customer journey, like you’re saying document it right, your salespeople can grill them up to speed much faster. And also, when people are if this is done right when people get to the end. They know what they want. They’re comfortable with what they want to buy. It’s like okay, let’s work out the details and get done with this thing.

Nicole Donnelly 8:52
Exactly. You’re right. Pull them along right there their selves along because you’ve given them that control. So yeah, makes it so much easier for the sales team. That’s a great point, Damon of it.

Curt Anderson 9:03
Yeah. Okay. The call. I’m giving you guys a moment of silence to the BOTH Yeah. How’s that that was just transferred John. And that was for Dan on. Hey, Dan Biggers in the house here today. So give a shout out. We’ve got Dan bigger. He’s like, Hey, thanks for the invite. We’ve got Dan. Back here. Hey, Janney is in Michigan Janee. Happy Monday to you. weekend my dear friend Janome got Justin king here today. All that content learning has to be bubbled up to the customer and search bar. So when they don’t know exactly what they’re looking for, they still find it So Justin, thank you for jumping in Mike on that one. What we love to say is how do we help that ideal buyer we call them soulmate. Somebody helped that soulmate make a buying decision on a Friday night at midnight, without having to wait for for us open up the doors on Monday morning. Nicole I love what you’re saying. So basically, I mean really stripping it down in simplifying it, you know, again, so for digital immigrants, that’s, you know, mine and Damon’s generation, folks that are new to this might be a little overwhelming intimidating, you have a really nice process, to simplify it to speak their language, help your ideas help you deal with manufacturers almost exclusively. So when you’re let’s go through, take it another step further. And that the mapping process, let’s go, let’s go there. Let’s go deep right there for a second.

Nicole Donnelly 10:26
Oh, let’s go deep. How deep do you want to go?

Curt Anderson 10:31
What’s Thanksgiving week? Let’s just repeal gratitude today. Let’s, let’s let’s get,

Nicole Donnelly 10:35
man, a lot of meat

Curt Anderson 10:37
on the bone from intended. How’s that? Yeah.

Nicole Donnelly 10:41
Oh, man, it’s just you know, it’s really a revelatory process for everyone involved. So usually, we have someone on the sales team who’s involved in the discussion and marketing. So immediately, you’ve got that alignment between sales and marketing. So that’s step number one, if you’re going to do something like this, you got to make sure you’ve got buy in from your sales team. And yeah, like it is, the first step really, is to talk, you have to figure out what your deal stages are, you know, so first stage, you know, how are they finding you? That’s your awareness stage. Okay, what’s the next step? Are they signing up for a webinar? Are they requesting a quote? Are they you know, what is that next phase? So the first step really, is to outline those stages. And then once you do that, then you can really dive in and, and identify what once you have that outline, if you will, of all those stages, it’s very straightforward and easy to just go think about and say, Okay, well, when someone comes to us, and they need a quote, for something, what are the questions they’re asking at this phase, because they’re gonna be different at each phase. So it’s just a big brainstorming session. And then from there, what we do is we take all of those questions and objections that we get from that customer journey map. And then we create a content strategy, that we use Keyword Research combined with these questions, to see what’s going to make the most sense from a Google perspective that we want to target those keywords that are going to help them get those first page rankings. So we’re combining, you know, making sure we’re making Google happy with making sure we’re making the customer happy. And if we can do both of those things really well, then it’s, it’s a home run.

Curt Anderson 12:09
Let’s talk about keywords for a second. I love that you said that. So again, so folks, we’ve got a few we’ve got J minds here today, John wiggliness, he dropped a great comment here 60% of research is being done. without you even knowing it, how about we give a moment of silence or John right there, man 60% of research is being done without you even knowing it.

Nicole Donnelly 12:34
It’s only going to get more like that in the years ahead, too. So so

Curt Anderson 12:39
as consumers and like Daymond, like you were saying, like, nobody wants to make the mistake. Like even if, you know, if we were all gonna go out to a restaurant, you know, like, who wants to be the person that picked the wrong restaurant, right? Yeah, you’re gonna go to Yelp, you’re gonna go to get Google reviews or whatever it might be, let alone in a b2b space when you’re targeting these manufacturers that are making massive big buying decisions. So Nicole, keyword research, we make a widget we are positive. This is what our soulmates our ideal customers are calling it however, we’re thinking about the solution. They’re thinking about the problem. Can you go there a little bit of like, how can we how can we marry that and not be have that disconnect between the keyword and the solution in the problem?

Nicole Donnelly 13:20
Yeah, I mean, one of the great things that you can do is just ask your customers what they’re searching. So make sure you do that research upfront, you can ask them, and what they’re, you know, ask your sales team when people are calling? What are the things that they’re asking for when they call and ask for something? I mean, we have a client, for example, that sells filter bags. Well, we were hearing a ton of the time that people were calling and asking for filter socks. And that was something that they were searching in the search bar, we wouldn’t have known that if we hadn’t talked to the sales team to understand what are these people asking for. So that helped clue us in like, hey, we need to make sure we’re optimizing our website pages for this particular keyword filter socks. And so that what that meant is we needed to make sure that the pages had those key words on it, and that we were creating content that spoke specifically to that. So again, it’s it goes back to just making sure that you’re aligned with your sales team. And they’re involved in the process and really listening to and talking to your customers to see what it is that they’re talking telling you. You got to get on the front lines. You got to get on the front lines,

Curt Anderson 14:16
get in the trenches and look at Justin’s comment here. I love this. So you can stop at aligning the sales team sales will take a digital project faster than another, get them aligned and compensated drop the mic. Yes, really is possible. Yes. I said compensated. Nicole, what do you think about that comment there?

Nicole Donnelly 14:34
Absolutely. Justin, you hit the nail on the head. You’re not kidding. I think what’s happened over time is that there’s there’s this merging happening between sales and marketing. Yep. So what used to be two very separate, you know, you know, or, you know, units, if you will the business are now I think really becoming more and more integrated and the companies who can recognize that and see that there’s there needs to be integration and that these teams need to be speaking together. I think Eventually, it’s not even going to be sales and marketing. It’s going to be some smarketing, you know, new new department and I think that the most visionary companies that see that are going to be the ones that are going to be most successful in the years ahead. Because absolutely the the digital sales experience is completely shifting.

Curt Anderson 15:21
It’s totally blurring. So, guys, so again, happy Monday, we’re here with Nicole Donnelly, president of of Donnelly Marketing Group, Jamin, dropped a comment here, he said, identify a pattern, then add train to the database, to the database that is phenomenal. Alright, so I’m going to go to both you guys, let’s talk e commerce. Let’s talk configurators let’s talk to the, you know, OEMs, the product based companies and the custom manufacturers that don’t have that proprietary product, but boy, they have a proprietary process. Nicola, like putting the price out there, what’s your opinion, you know, like, there’s a lot of resistance, you know, a lot of like, ah, um, you know, people are cringing to, you know, you want me to put my price out there. What do you say to folks about getting those prices out there?

Nicole Donnelly 16:04
I say you got to do it. You got to do it. Why? Because you have to think about what is it that your customer wants to know, you got to put yourself in the position of your customer first and foremost. And price is like the number one question, they want to know, that’s a qualifying question. So qualify them early, you know, put the price out there so that they can decide it for themselves. Like I said, give them the control, right, they decide if they’re going to be the right fit for you early in the earlier in the process. So you don’t who’s been in that awkward I have talking to a vendor, you’re going in this awkward situation where you’re doing this courting dance, and you sit on all the calls, and you do the demos, and you’ve talked to him like three times, and then you get to the to the you know, the third call, and they finally present the pricing to you at the very end of the conversation. And you get like sticker shock. And you’re like, you know, man, I just wasted all this time talking to this vendor. Whereas if they would have just told me upfront what the cost was, you know, it saves everyone a lot of time, you know, and so I think everybody’s looking for opportunities to save time and work more efficiently. So help your customer just be transparent about it. The other thing I would say is transparency builds trust. I mean, people, you know, sales is a trust, it’s all about trust. And I think if you don’t put your pricing up there, people are gonna start to not trust you, they’re gonna be like, what is what do they have to hide, you know, just, you know, just, it’s a trust building thing to publish your pricing. So and, you know, there’s, you know, if you have a very like custom product, right, that’s requires a lot of customization, there’s ways you can talk about prices, actually saying, this is you know, 990 $1,000.99, or whatever the case may be, you can talk about what goes into the pricing, you can explain what the starting points are for this particular product, you can talk about all the variables that go into that price, so that when someone sees the price, they have context to know that like, Okay, I know why this costs so much more, because it all of these other factors are involved with building this, you know, product or service, you know, so there’s different ways that you can go about I mean, we’ve seen great success, just creating blog posts for for clients, just talking all about the price, and it’s a huge way to start the conversation with people and get them to take that next step of, you know, feeling comfortable to reach out and get a quote,

Curt Anderson 18:18
yeah, and it works both ways. Even, you know, like, you know, as a vendor supplier, whatever business that you’re in, you know, like, get that price out there because you know, if there’s gonna be a disconnect, like you said, on you get enamored meeting that third date, and like, there’s a total disconnect on price. You know, we’re there anyway, Damon, what do you tell him folks, what’s your, what’s your opinion on pricing,

Damon Pistulka 18:37
we have a rule. And our second meeting we taught we range the price of everything we’re going to do. Nice, we now I mean, because our consulting takes typically, because of what we’re doing, it can take four or five meetings before we really fully understand and can develop a overall scope and price and everything. But in the second meeting, we will will range it, we have to range and I said worst case, best case, you know that this this is the range, we kind of say and it might be big in some cases might be small, but it’s the second meaning first one, you always want to get to know somebody and just talk to them about what’s what’s going on. What are you looking for solutions for because you really don’t know. And then in the second one is where we go, okay, we listened to you, this is kind of what we’re thinking. If this resonates with you, this is where we see that the range and price going on this if that makes sense. Let’s keep working on this thing. And we’ve done that all along and then you know my partner Andrew, he, he just shutters at at doing price and I you know I’m against that on the other side because I say listen, I if you don’t put a price on something people always think it’s gonna be too expensive, right? It might not be in our case, it might be a really good price. So like for our products that have a tighter range like business valuations. We have a we have a PDF on our site. Now, that did give you this is the range evaluations are based on what you’re gonna get. And it’s not good. And we also the other thing we also do says, If you want a zero cost kind of solution, go here. Right? They’re not even ours is somebody else’s just because, listen, if that’s what you’re looking for, that might be the best place to go.

Curt Anderson 20:20
Right? Well, kudos to you, team. And I love that. I’m gonna pull up a couple of comments here real quick. And Justin, man, Justin, thank you for joining us today. Great comments, in addition to price getting shipping costs, you know, I’ve got Michael here in Michael was with us, I believe on Friday Damond. So even the best CAD configurator is useless if the user journey doesn’t map it. And the user is confused beforehand. UX is king, I guess that’s coming from an engineer. That’s awesome. Michael, thank you. I love your comments, man and Whitney jobs a great comment protocol, I would you answer this one, how do we go about marketing department?

Nicole Donnelly 20:58
That is a great question, you got to start with the leadership team, all about getting buy in from the leadership team. And you got to show them the value, you got to show them some sort of results that you can that they can, that you can show them that this is what happens when these teams are aligned. So try a pilot, you know, try a pilot, you know, try to get maybe one salesperson who’s you know, seems to have like a marketing, you know, bent if you will, and get them involved, and then do a pilot and then bring that to your executive leadership team. See, look what we did. We worked together on this, and we created some content around this particular product. And you know, and then go from there. We’re asking permission.

Curt Anderson 21:42
And Polly’s here today, great advice. We’re working on a blog post about pricing for our company. Now, it’s tricky with a custom product, but doable and worth the effort. So you know, so let’s go here. So we’re talking about, so go ahead, Damon.

Damon Pistulka 21:53
One last thing, just he made a write up about shipping costs. And I think this is a big deal. If you’re trying to sell something on an Amazon kind of solution, and you don’t have a fixed price, including shipping, you’re missing out. And if it’s something that’s bought in multiples, and you’re manufacturing it, you should, you should list it in multiples, too, you should say if you buy one at this price to at this price, five at this price, 10 at this price, because listen, people don’t want to worry about getting Oh, I love this item, because it’s $50 and get to the shipping and no, it’s really $70. Right? Now, it’s $70. They want an all in cost. This is not just for the the consumer based product. If you’re if you’re shipping 1000 widgets to this company, say we intend on shipping them in a pallet of 1000. Every week based on this or whatever the heck it is, that’s your landed cost to them. Because what what is in back to what Nicole said, making it easy for the buyer? What’s the buyer gonna have to do? If you if the next question, how much is it gonna cost? They gotta figure it out on there, and how much it’s gonna cost to ship or you can tell them what you think it’s gonna cost, make it easy.

Nicole Donnelly 23:07
I completely agree and shipping, especially with these, you know, manufacturers, that’s a huge expense, that’s a huge part of it, you know, this stuff doesn’t weigh nothing, it’s usually has to be shipped freight, and it’s a big part of the overall cost of the item. So you’re absolutely right, Damon, you have to make sure that you’re building that upfront, so that they’re not going to get surprised later and then back out of the deal. So I completely agree with you

Curt Anderson 23:31
in great comments here. So Jay mine says consistency and publishing the relevant content. So the target group consistency is King consistency, competitive pricing. How about this one a call of psychological pricing? What any any takeaway on that question? Ooh,

Nicole Donnelly 23:46
that’s a great question. I don’t know. What do you guys think?

Curt Anderson 23:50
You know, I think, you know, every buying decision is emotional, whether we want to agree with it or not, you know, I’d love to, you know, I’ve always said Daymond, you know, we’ve talked extensively about when somebody sells their business, Nicole, you come from a long lineage of entrepreneurs, and we talk about, you know, selling businesses, it’s very emotional. Now, it can be emotional, again, like a three of us are gonna pick a place a lunch, it’s emotional, because I don’t want to pick the wrong place and have to hear it. Hey, Kurt, pick the bad restaurant. Right. So, you know, I think any decision is very emotional. And when you think about the buyer think, you know, in the industrial b2b space that, you know, this is where our conversation is, Dan, John, Justin, most of us are in the b2b space. You know, either if you’re at a big company, your job might be an ally, and or, you know, if you’re a small entrepreneur, supply chain has been disruptive this past, you know, past couple years, labor shortages, you’re under immense stress as an entrepreneur, the last thing you want to do is make a bad decision on you know, a bad buyer. So, Nicole, what do you know? Or Damon, if you guys want to chime in, like how do you feel about that psychological side?

Nicole Donnelly 24:52
Oh, it’s huge. Yeah, absolutely. It’s such a big part of the process. And people think and b2b It’s not important but absolutely disagree that you’re working with P Pull. And if anything, the stakes are higher, right? Like, because the purchase price is higher, there’s so much more involved, there’s more people involved in the decision making process. So, you know, psychologically, the more that you can build that trust, right? With the, with the, with the buyer throughout the process by being transparent about your pricing, you know, by even comparing them to your competitors, right and saying, This is how this is why we’re different than our competitors. And this What’s makes us you know, and just being really transparent, it makes a big difference, right? Yeah.

Curt Anderson 25:33
I’m fired. Up a cute little warm thing to leadership is incorporated into a corporate strategy. Comment, no, we’re gonna we’re gonna we’re gonna change gears here.

Damon Pistulka 25:43
psychological pricing is is really important. Because, you know, what’s the difference in between? $1,000.09 $199? Right, right. So a lot more than $1. Right.

Curt Anderson 25:56
Right, exactly. Okay. So now, Justin’s been talking strategy, we’re talking strategy. And so Damon, you and I had a gift, had the blessing. I cannot thank you enough. So if anybody caught this, we had a gentleman that was on our program. We could go Friday, Don Schmidtke. And Don is a leadership guru. And he dropped a bomb that was just absolutely amazing. And he talked about for almost any anybody out there as an entrepreneur. He was talking about the difference between companies that are the winners, the companies that don’t make it and we were given examples like the Kodak’s the blockbusters, compared to like Southwest Amazon, and he used the term saga. The four letter word saga is the difference maker and Daymond. He went on to talk about how some can so many companies confuse their strategic plan, when in fact, it’s actually tactics. We’ve talked about this extensively. Nicole, you caught Donje. Mickey, what’s your What was your take way what you’re gonna share with us and you have a little family history on the word saga. So share with saga mean to you as an entrepreneur?

Nicole Donnelly 27:03
Oh, I thought it was really such a great interview that you guys had with them. And such a fascinating way to look at how the businesses that are successful so and I love the term saga it Actually, me personally, because my I think you guys know about my grandfather’s motel that I worked out when I was in high school. The name of his motel was called the saga in. Yes. And so and he had like this little mascot, which was like a knight on knight in shining armor on a horse or whatever. So anyway, that really struck me.

Curt Anderson 27:38
Can you see so I Nicole, I apologize. I didn’t pull it up on the computer. But if you guys can see that. That is Nicole Donnelly’s grandfather’s hotel. It’s across the street from Disneyland. I mean, literally right smack in Disneyland. And it’s called the saga hotel Damon, how you see the night, there’s a night is the is the logo symbol. So Nicole, talk about like, why, let’s let’s talk about like as entrepreneurs and even you know, if you’re in sales, you’re in procurement, wherever you are, you know, we’re in marketing, wherever you’re at talk about the in what Don talked about with the belief system. But just you’re like, what this has meant to you, your family, your grandfather, great, wonderful, successful entrepreneur. What does saga meant to you? Well, yeah, I

Nicole Donnelly 28:23
mean, it just makes me think about the reason why I started my own business, right? Like, one I’m very passionate about small businesses. And that is like the saga that I’m trying to preserve, right, like that legacy of helping small businesses. They’re like, the David against the Goliath, right? They are like absolutely fighting against these corporate companies trying to be relevant, you know, trying to have an impact. They’re like, you know, gritty and scrappy and just making it you know, trying to make it work. And I saw that firsthand, growing up with my family. And I just like that, as my saga, I’m just so passionate about helping these small, small manufacturers and small businesses succeed, because, you know, what they bring to their communities is so remarkable. So I think what it is, is it’s about just like having that passion or that vision that you can use to galvanize the people on your team, right? Yeah, it’s bigger than just okay, we’re creating HubSpot workflows for our clients that are going to show them, you know, we’re going to help them create a workflow that creates a configurator right a calculator, right? Like, that’s the tactic, but it’s so much bigger than that, right? Like, what we’re doing is we’re trying to I’m trying to galvanize my team to say like, this configure that we’re building is helping our customers fight that big Goliath so that they can be relevant so that they can, you know, have the impact and lift their communities and lift their families like it’s just so much bigger than in that that’s so much more motivating to people Well, to me anyways, then just like okay, we’re gonna build these, these workflows.

Damon Pistulka 29:54
And that’s, that’s, you know, Don said in he talked about the Vikings and he said, The Hunter Vikings leaders, how the heck would a Viking leader get people on a boat with them? Knowing that, hey, it’s going to be horrible conditions, you’re probably not coming back and seeing your family again, right? Hey, we’re gonna go off and do this. And that that saga that that purpose bigger than yourself is really the only thing that would get those Vikings onto the ships to go conquer other lands. He said, But that saga in your business does the same thing is what they what they did to get those Vikings on the ship knowing that they could go down in the fight. And that just that hit me like a ton of bricks because I’m like, all these years. We talked about strategy and his tactics. Yeah. Yeah. But when you put it like you’re talking about Nicole, and give people the reason why we want to be in here now. And it’s just so much more powerful.

Nicole Donnelly 30:57
Yes. And the thing is, people everywhere are looking for purpose, everybody’s looking for meaning, you know, we’re all looking for something that’s going to that’s bigger than ourselves that we can be a part of, right? Like, you know, nobody’s just wants to just phone it in. We all are craving that that sense of purpose and meaning. And if you can create that people are, they want to be part of something like that. I mean, we see businesses all the time that are building amazing, amazing products and services. And they’re doing it because they’ve created that saga that’s really like galvanized all the people behind them to say like we believe in this week, so much we you know, we want to help it be successful. So,

Curt Anderson 31:35
absolutely. So a couple of things that John talked by, I have a couple of guys. It is so mind blowing. He talks about, you know, folks confused tactics for strategy. And so like, you’ve got the motivational thing on the wall, you’ve got your mission statement. He says, you’ve defined your why, but you’re still missing the point. And he says the difference is when you define a strategy for winning. He said as such, most strategic plans are not strategic. You’ve got to be thinking about winning in a strategic advantage. You need to you need to have a shift in your beliefs. Yeah, there’s three things that he taught and he talked about the battle with General Patton and Rommel, in World War Two and he were Damon, you and I are huge. Yeah, we did. I just watched a world war two movie My daughter last night. She’s She’s a big exam tomorrow on World War Two. So we’re studying World War Two. But he said three things on what you’re believing. Number one, where is your battlefield? Number two is where? Who is the enemy? So where’s your battlefield? Number one, number two, who is your enemy? And how are you going to outmaneuver him? And are that him or her your enemy? It could be complacency. It doesn’t need to be a person. Well, we’ve talked about that. There could be resistance. It could be something much, you know, well, it’s not just like, hey, we’re McDonald’s and Burger Kings, our competitor. It’s that status quo. But he went super deep. So Nicole wood, and I’ll stop on this. So the battle the battlefield situation, he laid out with General Patton and Rommel. So when the Americans beat Rommel, patent, and if you guys ever caught the movie, Pat, and he goes on to the description on how he said, he stands there. And he says, Rambo, I read your book. And it wasn’t about that. I knew what you were going to do. He talks about I understood your belief system. And I went in a different direction to out believe you. So when you can get your team to just believe in themselves and out believe the competition. He talked about Southwest talked about Amazon. Nicole, what do you what any takeaway here from your perspective?

Nicole Donnelly 33:40
Yeah, I mean, I think that’s a great example of Southwest. You know, he says in the interview that, you know, naturally, everyone would think Southwest is trying to compete against United and all the other big airlines, but really, he was competing against greyhound. Yeah. You know, and so that’s just a fascinating take. Like sometimes what you think is like your big competitor really isn’t? You know, it really you have to and I think it just goes back to like making sure you’re really staying close to your customers and what their needs are. That’s the most important thing because you’re going to identify what it is that they’re you know, fighting fighting for, and then that will help you outmaneuver your competitors because Yeah, bring them first.

Curt Anderson 34:19
You’re the perfect example. I’ll tell you Damon, a dear friend of ours is here today. Bonnie, if you’re still there, my friend so Bonnie is here. Hey, guys, pop in and say hello. So you talked about a saga? Bonnie, I have your product right here. Barney is a fierce entrepreneur. manufacture. Damon, you’ve got your samples. This is a plastic container. It goes on top of a soda cup. So if you’re at a ballgame, you’re an event you’re in the car. You can put your sandwich hotdog doughnut, you know, whatever, snap it to your soda or your coffee, whatever you’re drinking. And so finally you do an amazing job of like, you know, that’s your solution. That’s your saga. I love what you’re doing there. Daymond talk about like your saga like let’s let’s let’s go there a little bit like what What do you guys do in an extra way? Like, how do you how do you clean? How do you declare your Saiga?

Damon Pistulka 35:06
Yeah, I don’t really think we’ve got a great song. I mean, you know, honestly, though, you know, our business started because we, we saw the injustice of, of most business owners will get to the end of the their business career or in their business career and decide they don’t want to be in business anymore, only to realize that their business is not sellable or worth nearly enough money, or the money that they expect it to be in, and we just want to stop that. Right. And, you know, it starts back with the data, you know, 80 80% 75 80% of the businesses don’t sell that people want to sell and all the other things and, and there’s an industry that that yes, they sell businesses, but they don’t do the owners justice in the way they do it. So it’s pretty simple. It’s pretty simple. And we haven’t developed a saga like we want to yet but we know, we know the bigger purpose of what we want to do. Right?

Curt Anderson 36:00
Well, you know, what, and you’re just you’re such a modest, humble guy, I you know, as I’ve, you know, wonderful friendship with you, you definitely have a sight, you do a great job of helping entrepreneurs, like you said, like, you know, you know, we have examples we have, you know, our friend, Kelly, of course, is just doing amazing work of your clients, you’re super passionate, helping those clients, so they don’t just vanish, you know, like, you want your sag as I getting them successfully into that 20%. So, Nicole, let’s come back. So, Donnelly marketing group, you do an amazing job helping manufacturers with marketing, we’ve talked about the mapping process, we’ve talked about pricing content, so and so forth. Let’s take it one step further. So talk about okay, you’re working with your team, and I know your team personally, you are a great leader doing amazing things with your folks. How do you like how do you fire up your troops? How do you get your team to, you know, buy into that belief system that you want to create, coming from a long lineage of successful entrepreneurs? How do you pass it on to other folks?

Nicole Donnelly 37:00
Oh, that’s a great question. You know what I would say, like, You got to get them involved. They are building it with you, you’re not building it for them. So having them be involved in the building of it, right, making sure they have a voice in like, one of the things we did in one of our team meetings recently is we needed success markers, like we needed, like some clear markers that would say, okay, no matter what’s happening outside with clients, no matter what, you know, what’s going on, internally, we are going to decide that these are our standards of success as a team, and if we can meet these standards, that’s great. It doesn’t matter what’s happening out here in our little world, you know, we’re doing great and so what we did is we as a team, like I we talked about it, it wasn’t something where I was like okay, these are our standards of of success as a team we came through it together and I have to tell you like it is incredibly amazing when you involve your team in those conversations how surprising it is what they come up with, they came up with things I would have never come up with on my own. So I think like to get your team involved or or you know, excited about the saga, you’ve got to make them be part of it. You got to help them build it with you and give them you know, give them the respect you know to be part of that process. And then another thing that I thought was really cool on the show with Don as he mentioned symbols and rituals. He said that all of these you know successful companies that have a good sock or they have symbols and rituals, so like I love trying to incorporate that and I’m still trying to figure this out I’m like yeah, by no means am I an expert so like one of the things I’m thinking about is like that picture Kurt of the saga like that is a symbol that that is a symbol that I can use to galvanize the team right around and they see it and they remember it but what other symbols do you have in your business that you can use to kind of like get your your your kids get

Curt Anderson 38:52
a whole nother saga right?

Nicole Donnelly 38:54
Oh my mom brand my mom brand came on there for a minute get your team excited about it and then also rituals What are you doing regularly to help them feel connected again and again because it’s all about like they have to remember it so it has to be something that you’re constantly bringing forward not just like a one time one and done thing so like to me I keep thinking okay as a leader symbols and rituals, what are the symbols and the ritual is going to be that’s going to really help the team you know get behind it and be excited about it.

Curt Anderson 39:26
Yeah, I love that and when he has a great comment here your employees want to build with you not just for you, man Whitney there’s a drop the mic moment right there thank you for sharing that. J man says hey be like that alpha. Absolutely love that. And Bonnie our dear friends some of the best ideas come that way smart Nicole? So okay, so I know everybody’s super busy today. It’s a it’s a wonderful holiday week. So we’re gonna wind down any other Damon Any other thoughts from dawn the saga and I think Justin dropped a note on where can you catch that? Justin if you go to the Damon’s profile. Yeah, I’ll have a posted this probably tomorrow on my website be on Damon’s website we’ll have social but if you go to Damien’s LinkedIn profile and you check his activity, his posts, it was from a week ago Friday, Don Schmidtke great interview just fast forward over Daymond myself I was I was just so overwhelmed by his brilliance that don’t even listen to me. But listen to Dan. It’s a great interview. Damon, any other thoughts before we change gears in our last section here on saga? No,

Damon Pistulka 40:29
I was writing notes down that one because of symbols and rituals. I mean, it can be as simple as as you know, call to actions and then the rituals I really think this is the team meetings are so powerful and so underrated and a meetings overall, I think they suck. But they’re the right kinds of meetings are so powerful that they need to happen.

Curt Anderson 40:52
Yeah. Well, when you say you know what, and I’m gonna segue there when you say need to happen. Damon, you just put out amazing man, dude, you made my weekend you put out a post. I just spent a weekend with Damon and his wife. I stayed at his house. We were out on my birthday having a great time. Dave and I went out and wigs was absolutely hysterical. We went to a football game together. Nicole you and I have been together in person we had a great week together in Texas working on a client together we were together in Cleveland a month before I encourage invite welcome great. Take your online relationships and in person. It is a such a game changer like my love my respect. my admiration for these two folks is just off the charts but when you meet them in person, they are just as great as they are in line. One thing I’m going to add about saga guys every you know I’m not Mr. Motivational speaker but I’d like every single one of you out there has a God given talent. You guys are just you are on fire. You guys. It is such a gift for us to be part of your circle your world, man that just put ourselves out there I tell Nicole like, Nicole, I probably make a fool of myself every day. But man when you just come out with a passion and just bring your A game and just bring your best. And man we’re gonna stumble, we’re gonna make patterns. We’re gonna fall down. But man, just keep driving and help your ideal clients help us folks win the day. And we’ve got some great comments. David Chrysler, my buddy David’s here, catching the last few minutes here, David, Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family. David. We’re having a great conversation. So let’s close down on this. Nicole. It is Thanksgiving week. Man Damon, you and I love talking about gratitude. We use the term radical gratitude. Boy, if we could just live a life. I wish somebody would have taught me that in my 20s 50s to figure this one out. Nicole, we talked about the term radical gratitude, you have an amazing beautiful, wonderful family. wonderful gifts in your life just share a little bit like what what are you just just filled with gratitude about this week?

Nicole Donnelly 42:50
Oh, my goodness, I’ve been thinking a lot about this. Because Thanksgiving is here. There’s so many things I’m grateful for. I’ll tell you one year ago, today, I made a goal for myself. I had never done a public speaking event ever, for in my career, okay. And I made a goal for myself for the new year, I was like, I need to do just one event, just one next year, where I actually like, you know, get on stage and share, share what I’ve learned one event, okay. And I just am so incredibly grateful for you, Kurt and for you danamon. And for all the people that I’ve met through LinkedIn, because I look back over the last year and I can’t even count the number of public speaking events, I’ve now been a bid that I’ve done over the past year, and it’s absolutely transformed my business. And it’s just made me a stronger, better leader. And I just so incredibly grateful for you and for you to you know, let me you know, join you on the stage at so many of these events. So I’m hugely grateful for all of my LinkedIn community, all the people that are watching you guys, you know, Whitney, John, Dan, Dave, all of you have just been, you know, entrepreneurship is such a lonely journey. And it’s just so nice to have people who you can go to for support. So I’m hugely, hugely grateful for that. And I’m just, as you mentioned, like, above all else, incredibly grateful for my wonderful family. I mean, when you’re a business owner, your spouse really has to carry a big load. Yeah, right. It just is what it is. And I am like so incredibly grateful that I have a husband who is just unwavering, and just really steps up in big ways. So so that I can live my dream. And so I’m just grateful for him and for my beautiful girl. So anyway, I can go on and on and on and on. But I don’t

Curt Anderson 44:47
recall it’s been an amazing year. I’d say you’ve spoke at Purdue University, Temple University, multiple ma MEPs. You’ve been I know you’ve done numerous podcasts. You’ve been here with Daymond and myself Multiple times. And so I’d say you are truly a gift a blessing. Tons of love and a chatbox for you coming out here, you know, so we’ve got Whitney same way to crush your goal. He’s a new heart. You know, John, it’s been one heck of a year. J man job to see definitely we need to understand team trends and support when amazing, guys grateful to meet you guys again, Shaman, thank you so much for joining us today. Amen to that couldn’t do it without their support. So, Nicole repack atcha man, it’s just been so you know, and boy, her two beautiful daughters, daughters Sharlyn Sophia and Joshua husband. She’s from a long lineage of may have successful manufacturers entrepreneurs. I had a chance I met your brother this year down in Texas, so I got to meet a little bit of your family. Damon, I met your amazing incredible wife and so what what are you grateful for this week as we’re celebrating Thanksgiving?

Damon Pistulka 45:52
Well, you know, as you as you really think about your talk about radical gratitude and really being you know, it starts in the morning with me just the eyes opening man. And then he does go it does it is honestly, I mean this this last weekend, I was so fortunate we were able to go out and stay in a cabin with my my wife and our kids are with us. And I was out really early. It was like super cold. 20 degrees. I mean, super cold. For us, it was 20 degrees. So as frosty and as out and it was clear sky. And in that time. I got to see the stars like I hadn’t seen him in a long time. Yeah, just those little things like that. can just change your world if you let him. Yeah, and you know me my gratitude, Kurt Nicole. I just I I don’t know. I just gotta can’t express it enough. Right? Because it’s, it’s such a big deal. Yeah, it’s just changed my life change the way that the way that I can do it the way I can help people the way I can help in that and it just keeps building. That’s the thing. And it’s not really you don’t focus on business you focus on as John Gulino says, you build relationships. You have fun with it. You get put yourself out there. You keep working at this trying to do right by by the world around you and your family and friends. It comes around

Nicole Donnelly 47:19
Absolutely. Drop the mic. Oh. Say

Curt Anderson 47:26
riggin guys is so good. So how about Polly? Amazing. Nicole, you are a public speaker. She says, Polly I

Nicole Donnelly 47:34
love you.

Curt Anderson 47:36
So we will wind down my gratitude. Absolutely. Everybody out there. And my wife, my daughter, friends, family, what a gift what a blessing. And I’ll tell you I had I had I had the privilege. The reason I was able to see Damon I had the honor and privilege of going to Alaska to do a little business. And so I was like, Hey, I was Alaska. What was it like so and so forth. And you know what, and I was so busy, I really didn’t get to see a lot. But you know, what I did is I spent time because we’re working all the time I was with people. And so now when people ask me that I’m like, these folks that I met in Alaska were so amazing. And you know, I want to go back and do other sightseeing and all that. But going there on business was such a privilege because I was with people on there what their day to day looks like like that was there. Wednesday that was there Thursday, while I was part of their Thursday. Usually when you’re touring you’re part of like, you know, you hit a restaurant, you hit something touristy or whatever. I was with these folks. And I’d say that I was blown away by just the passion, the humility, just how wonderful they are. So many people complain, you know, like where I’m at. It’s been snowing all weekend. And people are like, you know, all this weather when you go to Alaska, they’re like, they love it. They’re embracing it, never complained about it. And it was just such a gift. So again, these relationships and as John will close out on this, so many incredible moments so guys, I know we could go on and on and paper we’re like okay, we get it Kurt whatever. So alright, thank you, Nicole. Thank you, Damon for everything tons of love to both of you. This tons of love to everybody on the program today. We are just so passionate about helping entrepreneurs in particular manufacturers and as Nicole said earlier, it’s lonely. It’s challenging, there’s no reason you are not going on this path alone. There are so many incredible resources to help you on your entrepreneurial journey so Nicole parting thoughts words of wisdom any coal isms that we want to like close out with today?

Nicole Donnelly 49:35
No. I’ll leave you with this Kurt.

Curt Anderson 49:39
I’ll leave you with this hello. How about your dad had some wonderful Jim isms any.

Nicole Donnelly 49:45
Oh, I should share a gym ism. I should you know my dad passed away last year that would be really cool. Okay. Can I share it with W he used to always say okay, one of the things he always used to say was make it happen. Okay, no, just Make it happen. I hear him on the phone all the time with clients when I was a kid all the time all day long, let’s make it happen and he always did. So make it happen out there. Make it happen.

Curt Anderson 50:11
Drop. Make it happen. Damon, parting thoughts, words of wisdom, any Damon isms that we have to leave every week with on this wonderful Thanksgiving week? I don’t we’ll still Nicole’s. Yeah,

Damon Pistulka 50:25
it’s it’s really, it’s really I don’t have any isms. today. It’s just things where I’m just feeling, feeling so much. That sort of fortunate to be able to do what I get to do.

Curt Anderson 50:39
Yep. Same here, so. And Whitney sums it up right there. Happy Thanksgiving friends, we will close it out. And so Nicole, you know what I tell my daughter every day right? Be your best, right? Make it happen and be your best. So guys, thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Damon. We’re taking Friday off enjoy. Family time. We are back here next Monday. Man. We have a great case study with a Purdue MEP. And Nicole you’re actually going to be back with us. We have a manufacturer in the great state of Indiana had a wonderful little success story with Edward at L popular foods. We’re going to have them back on game and we I’d say December is going to be hot and heavy man. It’s going to be a great month. So guys, God bless everybody out there. Have an amazing, wonderful thanksgiving. Enjoy every second with family and we will see you soon. Nicole hang out with us one second, and we’ll talk to you later.

Nicole Donnelly 51:31
Bye, everyone. Happy Thanksgiving.