The next transcript features business coach Clay Clark (US Small Business Entrepreneur of the Year) and Dennis Meader (Thrive15.com Guest) discussing pro forma basics and how that relates to the Wheel of Wealth on Thrive15.com, one of the premier business schools in Florida.
Clay: Who all has to help you on this to do this with a business coach? To charge that fee and to offer that value? Again, do you offer marketing for companies?
Dennis: I do. I’m moving away from that because of what’s going on with [HeyBA 00:00:25] thing.
Clay: What is HeyBA? By the way, is Eminem a business coach?
Dennis: HeyBA is what I call a non-traditional media outlet focused only on Broken Arrow. It’s hyper local marketing. I don’t believe Eminem is a business coach.
Clay: What is the H and the B and the A stand for? It’s like Hyper?
Dennis: It’s just Hey, like, hey, what’s going on? Hey Broken Arrow.
Clay: It’s your company, HeyBA.
Dennis: My company is called Kitchen Sink, Inc. brand of [inaudible 00:00:51]. My product is called HeyBA. Eventually what I want to do is, I want to take this model, and have just [jinks 00:00:59], better [bixby 00:01:00].
Clay: You want to help market just to Broken Arrow.
Dennis: Exactly.
Clay: Hence the Hey, hello, BA, Broken Arrow.
Dennis: Yes.
Clay: $500 is what the per transaction. How many people does it take you to support that $500 transaction. How many people work on that transaction?
Dennis: I have, right now, myself and one part timer. I have about 9 volunteers.
Clay: How many hours does it take to support that client?
Dennis: I don’t know. Shop local is $500, but it takes an hour without a business coach to put into the system and then it’s there.
Clay: How long does it take you to put it into the system?
Dennis: Me, I don’t do it, but my business coach assistant does. It takes her about an hour.
Clay: It’s about an hour of work for her, right? For you, though, how many hours does it take you to gain a customer?
Dennis: The way we gain a customer is mostly through attraction because we’re the dominant media outlet and we’re new and everyone is like, “What the heck are you guys doing?” We take a week and we bring in customers and then we pause and get them all in. I’m trying to get out of that hamster wheel.
Clay: You’re going to have to at some point, figure out how many hours it takes you on average to get one.
Dennis: It takes me all day babying all our outlets to keep our numbers so high. Our engagement rate on Facebook is over 100 percent every week.
Clay: What would be, again, the number of hours that you think it takes to acquire one customer? Here’s an example. I do consulting. I basically work with roofing companies, neurologists and dentists and helping them. I know, if guy pays me $3,000 a month, or $5,000 a month to grow his business, I know that it takes me at least 10 hours of marketing time to attract that person through PR.
I’m on the news all the time. I’m constantly featured in things. I write books. It takes me at least 10 hours to acquire one customer.
Dennis: I think that that’s somewhat similar to what we do, but we’re almost like a non-stop news activities. Right now I’m the midst of trying to train people and get people but because I’m the one who has the vision in my head. Right now I cannot quantify that. Literally, from the time I wake up to the time I go to sleep, I’m checking what’s going on social media. I’m pulling pictures.
Clay: Here’s what I’m going to say. This would be one problem area that I would recommend that you would quantify.
Dennis: That’s something we’re working on over the next couple of weeks.
Clay: I’m going to say this, though. I want you to know this because I care and I want to help you. Every small business owner I deal with answers that question that way, in some capacity. I have a lady I used to work with years ago. She’s in the high end dessert business. She’s like, “Well, I only work on the cake for 4 hours, total. That’s all I spend on it.”
I’m like yeah, but who gets the customers? Who goes to the store to get the flour? Who knows what flour to get? Who orders? Who makes the molds? Who makes the designs? Who looks through the magazines on the weekends to come up with the ideas? Who meets with the bride? All of sudden, we’re look and she spends about 20 hours per cake. I’m going to make up a number just for the sake of this. I believe you’re going to spend about 5 hours. I could be wrong, and you could come back later and say, “You were wrong.”
We’ll just say you did spend 5 hours to acquire a customer. It ends up being a total of 6 hours is what it takes to generate that $500. When you get into it here, you start looking and you say, “All right now.” Basically, there’s $83 an hour that is available. That’s basically how much, if you had 6 hours of time and you made $500, that’s kind of like an $83.00 an hour, if you’re paying everybody $83.00 an hour.