The $100M Entrepreneur Podcast

The $100M Growth Flywheel: Marketing That Compounds

15 min
Nov 26, 20256 months ago
Listen to Episode
Summary

The episode outlines the $100M Growth Flywheel—a three-part system of marketing, sales, and retention that creates compounding business momentum. The host emphasizes that modern buyer behavior has shifted to 80% marketing and 20% sales, with 40% of buyers wanting self-service purchasing and most wanting to complete 60-80% of their research before speaking to a salesperson.

Insights
  • Marketing now carries 70-80% of the sales burden; sales should focus only on the final 20-40% when prospects are ready to buy
  • Buyers conduct research across 7 hours, 11 interactions, and 4 different channels before deciding—companies need substantial educational content to support this journey
  • Customer retention and proper onboarding (especially first 100 days) directly impact business scalability; limiting customer intake ensures quality onboarding
  • Social media has evolved from purely social engagement to 'social proof media' where 1-in-5 posts should explicitly market your offering
  • Predictable sales systems built on flowcharts, scripts, and questionnaires replace traditional relationship-driven sales approaches
Trends
Self-service purchasing preference growing (40% of buyers avoid salesperson interaction)Shift from sales-heavy to marketing-heavy business models post-COVID and with AI adoptionMulti-channel buyer research becoming standard (7 hours across 11 touchpoints in 4 locations)AI-powered content generation enabling daily thought leadership publishing at scaleTrust erosion with AI interactions driving need for transparency in AI-assisted salesBrand and social proof becoming primary decision factors in bottom-funnel conversionIntentional customer acquisition limits (like luxury brands) as competitive differentiationCustomer experience mapping and training as retention and upsell strategy
Topics
Marketing funnel optimization (top/mid/bottom of funnel strategy)Lead nurturing sequences and CRM systemsSales system design and flowchartingCustomer retention and onboarding strategiesSocial media as marketing and social proof channelThought leadership and content marketingAI in content creation and sales processesBuyer research behavior and decision-making journeySelf-service purchasing and e-commerce optimizationCustomer experience mappingPredictable revenue systemsBrand building and positioningSales scripts and questionnaire designCustomer acquisition cost and capacity planningAI transparency and trust in business
Companies
Google
Referenced Zmurt (Zero Moment of Truth) study showing buyers conduct 7 hours of research across 11 interactions in 4 ...
Amazon
Cited as example of two-click purchasing that trained consumer expectations for frictionless buying
Tesla
Host's personal example of online vehicle purchase with minimal salesperson interaction
Lamborghini
Host's example of building and ordering a vehicle online with minimal sales involvement
Netflix
Used as analogy for proper customer onboarding—starting at season one, episode one rather than mid-series
HubSpot
Named as CRM/nurture sequence platform used by the host's organization
GoHighLevel
Named as alternative CRM/nurture sequence platform used by the host's organization
Rolex
Referenced as example of luxury brand limiting customer acquisition to create exclusivity and demand
Ferrari
Referenced as example of luxury brand limiting customer acquisition to create exclusivity and demand
Cambridge University
Cited as source of study showing one hour face-to-face interaction equals five hours of Zoom time
People
Marcus Sheridan
Author of 'Ask Your Customers, They Will Tell You' and creator of seven-area content framework for article writing
Gary Vaynerchuk
Referenced for insights on content posting frequency and volume needed for market presence
Daniel Priestley
Author of 'Oversubscribed' book about using the word 'only' in business strategy and positioning
Quotes
"40% of people just want to click a button to be able to make a purchase. They do not want to have to interact with the salesperson at all."
HostEarly in episode
"We've got to build better marketing so that people can make decisions on their own."
HostEarly in episode
"Your social media isn't just about being social anymore. It's also social proof media."
HostMid-episode
"Most people want to be between 60 and 80% of the way through the sales process before talking to a salesperson."
HostMid-episode
"You've got to train them to be A grade customers. You don't want D grade customers, people who are annoying to you."
HostLate in episode
Full Transcript
40% of people just want to click a button to be able to make a purchase. They do not want to have to interact with the salesperson at all. We've got to build better marketing so that people can make decisions on their own. Your social media isn't just about being social anymore. It's also social proof media where we've seen the market shift to 80% marketing and 20% sales. Now what do I mean by that? Let me give you some statistics to share with you. The $100 million growth flywheel. In this episode I'm going to explain the marketing sales and retention practices that create compounding momentum and how to fix the weak link slowing your spin of the wheel. So how does the $100 million growth flywheel work? How do you do the marketing the sales, the retention, so that the flywheel kicks in? And your customers keep coming back and the business just keeps growing and growing. It gets faster and faster as you grow. Your customer acquisition doesn't slow down. It speeds up. How does that happen? Let's go through it here today. Making sure that your idea of $100 million business becomes a reality. So let's explain that flywheel. Each turn builds momentum, but the weak links will kill the speed on that thing. So marketing, let's fundamentally understand that. And I'm going to do a lot on marketing over the time that we are together. Marketing is subject. I literally have a two day course I do every year on marketing and I could probably make it a five day course. It's amazing how marketing works out there. I own shares of two marketing agencies out there in the world. But the reason I bring this up is because what we're looking at part one of the flywheel is that marketing momentum that consistently generation out there. Now how do we get to that consistently generation? Well, let's break it down into the three layers of lead generation. So top layer is that in top of the funnel. And that's where you get a high volume of leads that are maybe interested just on the surface to be an interested, possibly interested, but they're interested in a subject around that. We're going to get into detail on these. So stick with me. The second layer, the mid funnel. That's where people are interested in the product or service. But they don't know who to buy from, where to buy. They don't know the details of the product or service. They're starting their research and starting to understand. The bottom of that is the bottom of the funnel where people are ready to buy and they're trying to decide from whom should I buy. OK, so what should I buy? What is it that I'm buying? Who should I buy from? That's really the three layers of the funnel. Now, I want to give you some statistics. Historically, you could do a lot of work in that top of funnel. And then you had nurture sequences and stuff that would work them through type thing. When you're doing that, about 8% of people are ready to buy. But 92% of people need nurturing and working through. That's why CRMs became a massive thing. Nurture sequences, email sequences, all of that stuff. Even social media became a big nurture aspect of what we were doing. Well, since COVID really and with the changes in AI and changes in tech, what we've seen is a shift away from marketing being 20% marketing and 80% sales, nurture, et cetera, to where we've seen the market shift to 80% marketing and 20% sales. Now, what do I mean by that? Let me give you some statistics to share with you. At the time of recording, we're now over 40% of people do not want to speak to a sales person when they are making a transaction. That's right. 40% of people just want to click a button to be able to make a purchase. They do not want to have to interact with the sales person at all. OK, now what does that mean to us? We've got to build better marketing so that people can make decisions on their own. A few years back, Google did a study called Zmart, zero moment of truth, which showed a 7-11-4. People wanted to do seven hours of research in 11 different interactions. So they might do some today, some tomorrow, they might email you, they might have a phone call with someone, they might have a WhatsApp chat, they might watch YouTube videos, et cetera. But they want to do seven hours of research in 11 different interactions in four different places. Now by places it could mean a Zoom call, it could mean your YouTube channel, it could mean your, an actual meeting with you, it could mean coming to your store, it could mean your website, but four different places, 11 interactions, seven hours. Now I ask most people, do you have a seven hours of material for someone to study about your business? Whether it's reading e-books, reading articles, blog posts, watching videos, is there seven hours of study someone can do to make a decision around it? And it's like if I go back to when I was a kid buying a car, you went to all the dealerships and made your choice today. You go online, you go to all of the different things, you use GPT probably or A prompt of AI somehow, and you ask it to narrow down the choices, and then you get to those choices, you go on the website, build the car, and you almost hit the order button right there and then. I'm pretty sure if they had credit card facilities, you would be able to order the car right there and then. I remember that's how I bought my Tesla. My Lamborghini, I built it online and sent it in the order and they called me and said, yeah, hey, you want to add this, I think, and you probably don't need that here in Las Vegas, brilliant. So if you start thinking about that, and then we go to two more statistics, one is most people want to be between 60 and 80% of the way through the sales process before talking to a salesperson. In other words, they want to have done their own research, backing up Google's Zmart study. And then finally, we see a study coming out of, I think it was Cambridge University that says, one hour of face to face is worth five hours of zoom time. And I'm like, hang on, why is that the case? And then you start thinking about it, what it's doing. The trust with AI seems to be going down because is it an AI? And that's why our AI policy says that if you've got an AI machine making a phone call, you need to tell people, hey, I'm AI Brad, I'm here to help and I know that you don't, may not like AI's, but I can get these three things done now so that we can move on and move faster type thing. But understanding that marketing has to do the heavy lifting today, almost 70, 80% of the work should be marketing. And that final tipping over is where sales will kick in. And we'll go into a lot more detail on that, or come join my two day digital marketing program. If you scale into 10 million, I do five two day courses a year. They're all run virtually, so you don't have to travel. Those five courses help you become a 10 million dollar business. If you're scaling to 100 million, we add another five day full course to it, which is live in here in Vegas. So marketing, consistency out there. You've got to have thought leadership, you've got to be brand building. Brand is sort of that bottom of funnel when someone is trying to decide who to buy from. They go and look at branding. That's why your social media isn't just about being social anymore. It's also social proof media. If I'm, if I want to buy from you, I'm going to look you up on LinkedIn or Facebook or Instagram or TechTow. Somewhere and see if you are who you say you are. I'm going to do that research about your company or about you personally. Social media is also social marketing today. Yes, the media side of your company has to produce emotional, educational and entertaining content. But you've also got to do some marketing in that content. At least one, well, about one in five should be marketing. Tell the world what you actually sell. Don't just entertain me. Share with me what it is you sell as well. So that I know what I'm buying when I come to you. It's like whenever I do these podcasts, yes, you're learning a lot from me. But I should also be telling you a little bit about, hey, I do a course once a year where you come for five days and we plan your billion dollar business. And yes, it's a $25,000 investment. Do you know what I mean? Like I'm putting it in there, but I'm giving you huge value whilst giving it in there. If that makes sense. Social media is also, if you think about it on the ultimate end of the scale, a great nurturing system. If someone's found you and you keep talking to them and you keep communicating with them, eventually they go, you know what? I am ready for a business coach. I should call Brad or call action coach or do that sort of thing. So that's what you got to be looking at. Top of funnel, mid funnel, that. Now here's what you've got to be looking at from that perspective. And again, you can use AI to help you do this. My good buddy, Marcus Sheridan wrote the book, Analyst Customers, and they ask you answer. He's got a seven page, a seven area framework that tells you these are the articles you should be writing. I want to see you writing an article a day. Really, I do. And now if you want to do that using AI, jump on press masters AI. There'll be a link below here. You can use my link to press masters. It'll save you a few percentage. And yeah, it's probably an affiliate link. I'll probably get some dollars out of it. But I love press masters. I'm an advocate for them. I use them every single day and they interview me. Like the actual AI interviews me. There's someone talks to me, interviews me, and takes my words and turns them into an article every day. And I press stuff. I'm writing because even though I've written 18 books, my English teacher will tell you, I'm not the best writer. And any one of my team will tell you, I'm awful at spelling. Not good at spelling. In fact, I'm very creative at spelling. Let's put it that way. So that's what we want to be doing out there, thought leadership branding, getting ourselves out there in front of people. The more you post the better it is type thing. There's no two ways about that. When I interviewed Gary and you see, if you haven't watched my podcast with Gary Vee, go back and watch. In fact, there's two of them on there. Gary is very clear on how much you should be posting and how much you should be putting out there into the marketplace. Part two is sales. Now, sales again is changing. You still do have to have the ability to nurture people for a salesperson. But the majority of time sales should be handling that last 40 to 20% sort of thing. They've already done the research. They've narrowed it down. They've contacted you. Now, you might have had them raise their hand. Yes, I wrote a book, raise your hand marketing. What do I mean by raise their hand? They might have downloaded an e-book or they might have filled in a quiz or they might have jumped on a waiting list or they might have filled out a price analysis tool or whatever the thing is that has given them your contact details that you'll put them into a nurture sequence and whether we use both HubSpot and GoHide level for our nurture sequences. Whenever methodology you're using, then you've got to nurture them because the first raised hand when they download the thing or do the quiz is saying, hey, I'm interested. The second raised hand is saying, hey, I'm ready. And what's the second raised hand where they book in a phone call where they fill in the actual application where they do the thing that actually says, I'm ready to buy right now. And sometimes that second thing is actually buying right now off of your website sort of thing. And what's Amazon trained people to do? Two click purchasing sort of thing. Although lately they've started throwing in grocery things saying, do you want to buy this as well? And making it three clicks when I have to say no. And it's like, dear Amazon, get rid of the third click, please hurry it up. So sales becomes about predictable systems. Ask the questions, do the things, do the analysis and you've got to build a sales system. I like flow charting sales systems. And from the flow chart, we work out the scripts. We work out the emails needed. We work out the questionnaires needed. All of those flow charts. If you don't know what that is, it takes 12 weeks for us. And one of my coaches can coach you through the 12 week installation of our sales system or can train all of your people and install the sales system at the same time in your company. It takes 12 weeks to do that. And then finally we get to retention. I love great little book called Retention Point on this subject, but I love the theory of 100% client retention. I love the idea of never lose a customer type thing. What do you got to do to onboard them properly? And this is where sometimes it's don't take on too many customers at the same time. One of the things I love asking people when it comes to marketing is how many customers is the right number of customers for you? Like if you had an ideal number of new customers per day or per week or per month, depending upon the timing in your business. Now I'm not saying, oh Brad, we could get an unlimited number. That's the stupidest answer I can get because there's no such thing as unlimited. I had a guy the other day telling me that in a workshop and I said, dude, you can't have unlimited. He said, we're an online business. He said, okay, if I hit a million people to your site tomorrow, is it gonna crash? He goes, yes, that's great. You can't have unlimited. Right? So, and I love the word only in business too. And if you read my good buddy Daniel Presley's book over subscribed, he'll teach you more about only and that sort of thing. But understanding how it is you can grow a business. And by the way, if you haven't watched my podcast with Daniel, jump back on that episode, make sure you do. When you understand the word only, like if you work it out, that you can handle two new customers a week and you can do that every week of the year consistently. You onboard them properly, onboard them professionally so that they stay in their retained customers. You've mapped out their customer experience type thing. When you've done all of that, fantastic. And then you can use the thing, look, we only accept two new customers per week. We get 10 applications a week and we choose two people to work with per week. It's like Rolex Ferrari. You can't just walk in and buy one anymore. You've got to get on the list. You've got to get, you know what I mean? It's got to be that sort of feeling of building a phenomenal business with that. But that mapping out of the customer experience, especially the first 100 days of what is that customer experience. I find companies do one or two things. Either they overwhelm you in the beginning, which, you know, if you're thirsty, a couple of what is good at drowning you is not good type thing. They either overwhelm or they plug you in. If I use like a Netflix example in Netflix, you don't go and start at season three, episode five. You go back to season one, episode one. You learn the characters. You learn the plot. You learn the whole thing in your business. When someone connects with you, they've got to go back to season one, episode one. They've got to learn what do you sell? How do you sell it? What are the things? All that sort of stuff. Remember, your marketing is as much training at customer. Your customer service is an experience. Is as much training at customer. How to do business with you as it is, convincing them to do business with you, showing them how to be an A grade customer. You don't want D grade customers, people who are annoying to you. You want A grade great customers. You got to train them to be A grade customers. So take a look at your flywheel. If you need help, jump on actioncoach.com. Our first two weeks coaching a free for you. You just got to hit the button, fill in the details. And one of our coaches will get in touch with you and help you become a hundred million dollar entrepreneur.