Exploring Cultural Influences, Entrepreneurship and the Power of Storytelling with Armando Leduc

Speaker 2: 0:11

Welcome to Side Hustle City and thanks for joining us. Our goal is to help you connect to real people who found success turning their side hustle into a main hustle, and we hope you can too. I'm Adam Kaler. I'm joined by Kyle Stevy, my co-host. Let's get started, all right? Welcome back, everybody to the Side Hustle City podcast. Today, armando Leduc joins us. Armando, you kind of do it all. You're just an entertainer, content writer, you name it.

Speaker 3: 0:43

That's it. I mean you tell yeah. Whatever man, you tell me what to do, I do it. That's right, hey, where?

Speaker 2: 0:50

do you live at? Where are you calling in from?

Speaker 3: 0:53

Well, I live in New Orleans, but I'm in Atlanta at the moment.

Speaker 2: 0:56

Oh, okay, I was going to say if you were in LA, you definitely need to do whatever you can to make money, because I was just there and the housing costs are ridiculous, crazy. It just doesn't make any sense. Actually, atlanta's going up Atlanta. I just heard most of the homes I think of the higher percentage of homes are owned by institutions in Atlanta more than any other city. Really, yeah, yeah, that makes sense. It's wild. I thought it was in the teens, I thought it was in the teens or something crazy like that. I think on average it's like 2%, so it's like way different. Wow, yeah, yeah, they're making money in Atlanta. Something's going on there, but I'm sure the property values have been spiking there as well as everywhere else in the country, but some places more than others.

Speaker 3: 1:43

Unfortunately.

Speaker 2: 1:44

Unfortunately, yeah. Yeah. So you know, overall, I mean you've done a lot of stuff, I mean you've got a background as an actor, you can sing, filmmaker, entrepreneur, coach, you know, you have, I guess, kind of an agency that helps people with their content writing and kind of positioning as well. I would probably imagine. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 2:05

That's probably the main focus. Okay, I did. You know I'm always acting. I've started in 98, so I'm always doing television film in some capacity. I sing for fun these days, so I have a Latin band and you know we play in New Orleans, we have festivals and things like that. So you know that that fulfills my music, you know thing. And then I just focus on helping businesses grow with content marketing and you know, if people can't afford my services then I help them. On the coaching aspect, Nice.

Speaker 2: 2:38

Well, whenever I see a French name, I assume New Orleans, either New Orleans or, like you know, up near Quebec, in Canada, somewhere Although I'm not from New Orleans, so my dad's Puerto Rican and my mother's Portuguese, and I grew up in Germany, so oh, my God.

Speaker 3: 2:55

Yeah, wow, so I'm all over. I'm confused man.

Speaker 2: 2:59

You're confused. No, no, no, no, that's culture, man. That's just a bunch of cultures coming together. How long were you in New Orleans?

Speaker 3: 3:06

I've been there since 2005.

Speaker 2: 3:08

Oh, okay, so plenty of time to learn some cool stuff and meet some cool people and some great musicians, pretty much.

Speaker 3: 3:14

Yeah, you know, my wife is is from there. When you marry a New Orleans girl, you don't leave. So you know that's my home now and my, I have a daughter there. So yeah, new Orleans is my home.

Speaker 2: 3:27

That's your place. Dealing with a little humidity down there too Every once in a while, huh.

Speaker 3: 3:31

Nice. No, no, no, no. Real nice right now.

Speaker 2: 3:34

Oh, yeah, oh, I would assume. Yeah, I mean it's. It's still getting. It's a little chilly up here in Cincinnati, especially in the mornings right now, but it's coming. It's coming and you're going to be just sitting pretty while the rest of us are up here shoveling snow. So yeah. Yeah, it's going to suck. You don't want it to go up there. Oh we, we used to, I think more than more than we do now. I think you know if we get some snow every once in a while we might get five or six inches, but it goes away pretty quick. It's not as bad as it used to be. But I mean we still get cold. You know we still get down to 20s most of the January and February, and then, you know, after that we do get all four seasons, so that's awesome.

Speaker 3: 4:10

Well, you know, they talk about that. That's how jazz was born, you know, it's because of the heat, oh, really, yeah, it's because of the heat. Yeah, so when you have, you know, people weren't staying in their homes, and so what would happen is, on Sundays, they would give the slaves off and the slaves would go to Armstrong Park right now Congo Square and Congo Square is where they would all meet up and they would play music. And you had a melting pot of, like, french and Spanish and Cuban and like so, because it was a port city, and so you had all of these people that were like hanging out outside because it was way too hot to hang out inside, and so the music fused together. And that's how jazz was born, you know, and a lot of the culture comes from the heat, you know.

Speaker 2: 5:03

And yeah, this is why I do these podcasts. Somebody always has something really cool that I can add to my like information database that I've gotten my head here. So if I'm ever on Jeopardy and I win Jeopardy, I'm gonna have to look you up if that's a question I'm gonna like it's all because Armando Leduc he's a guy who told me about this and I won Jeopardy off of it. You never know.

Speaker 3: 5:24

Yeah, new Orleans loves to talk about history, though, so oh, I bet, I bet.

Speaker 2: 5:27

Well, I love beignets so I need to stay away. Heck, yeah, I weed all their beignets. So tell me a little bit about how did you start out, like, did you go to school for acting? Did you go to like? What did you start out at? Is this like a thing you've had ever since you were a kid? You just wanted to sing and perform for people and entertain. Or how did this all start? Because I went to a performing arts school up here in Cincinnati pretty well known performing arts school and I, you know, I did acting for six years but you know my passion was art. So, you know, going to a magnet school eventually led me into owning an advertising agency and it's like the power of early education and helping people to kind of craft their talents and grow their talents and experience those talents and see them all the way into adulthood, I think is very powerful. So tell us your story.

Speaker 3: 6:20

I grew up with a camera. My dad had a camcorder. He's a trumpet player, was a trumpet player in the army band for 22 years, so I was around music all the time. I learned trumpet but, and I was always telling stories at a young age but never really did anything with it. And then I got a friend of mine convinced me to audition for the school play when I was in a senior in high school. My life was going nowhere up until that point. As a matter of fact, I remember the counselor was like Armando, I don't think you may need to learn a trade. The old train talk college for you and you're on a road to nowhere.

Speaker 2: 6:59

Quick oh yeah, I had that talk to.

Speaker 3: 7:01

I understand, yes, so good, so I auditioned and then I got the lead role and I was like, wow, okay. And from then on it just changed. Like I did the boys quartet, I graduated, started doing a community theater you know, barbershop quartet. I went to school at Augusta State University for vocal performance and opera and then I was like I don't think that this is what I need to be doing to get a degree in opera. So you know, so I was always singing. And then I moved to New Orleans to pursue my television and film career because I had done you know enough theater and I was like I really want to do film and New Orleans at the time had a lot of tax credits. So I moved to New Orleans 2005, before the storm Katrina hit, and I was like and it was six months before and I was like, oh, wow, what do I do now? Left and I was like, you know what, let me see if I can help somehow ended up getting into construction and restoration with a company called Bell for stayed and helped out the city and, you know, help rebuild. And I was like that. That I felt like made me a New Orleans at that time and I was like, man, okay, this city is something special.

Speaker 2: 8:13

You were part of the rebuild. I mean this is like your hands help to rebuild the city. I mean that's, that's awesome. And I mean you know, from tragedy comes opportunity. You know you had this great tragedy but then you had opportunity for a lot of people to move down there and build, rebuild that city and make money and start companies and you know probably a lot of entrepreneurship down there at the time.

Speaker 3: 8:35

For sure. You know, yeah, definitely a lot of opportunity. Right after the storm, you know, because people were pouring the money in and they wanted to get the city back up and running, films came back, I started auditioning, started getting all kinds of a sort of getting all kinds of roles and, you know, sort of paying attention to the set and the cinematographers and the directors and what they were doing and how they were doing things and I was like, man, I love that. So I started doing my own stuff, like. So I started an improv group called sketchy characters and we started doing sketch comedy. Then we wrote a movie called bourbon whiz. It's the Wizard of Oz meets bourbon street. Oh, it's on. It's actually the 10 year anniversary this year. Oh, wow, nice. Yeah, so we took all the music and made it into Orleans style and instead of Ruby slippers she landed on a stripper, of course, yeah, and I worked on bourbon street for a long time, you know, as an entertainer, and so I wanted to tell that story. And so so, yeah, I made that movie, kept doing behind the scenes stuff and I was like how can I take this concept of movie making and storytelling and apply it to? You know business and you know COVID hit a friend of mine I went to high school with has a super successful personal injury firm here in Atlanta called Bader Scott, and, and he was like Armando, I want to create a consulting business called eight figure firm, where I teach other attorneys how to scale their businesses to eight figures. And I was like great. And he was like, can you come up here and shoot content? And at the time I had only done, like, I think, a commercial here or there. You know I was doing one offs, so my revenue was like up and down, up and down, you know. And he was like Armando, you have a million dollar business, you just don't know how to get there. And he's like I can mentor you. It's going to cost you 2,500 a month. And I was like, oh boy, yeah gonna be kidding me bro. It's like, look, I know that I can grow your business, you just have to make the decision to make it happen. And I was like all right. And so I went in, started going to all of the masterminds, started getting mentored, you know, monthly and like, learned a crap ton and my scale my business very quickly. I mean, we went from, I think, $70,000 in revenue in 2019 to half a million dollars in a year's time, and you know. And then we hit seven figures and we just kept growing and scaling with this model right Of doing content marketing. And it wasn't until about two months ago where it really hit me the epiphany, and I don't know if anybody has ever thought about it. But I think part of the reason we, part of the reason why content marketing works so well, is it because it forces the business owner to live what he's talking about right On a daily basis. If you're putting out content, then you better be living that life right, like you're not if you're going to be a personal trainer and telling people how they need to lose weight and you're not in your fat like there's a problem, they're just gonna. You know, how can I tell somebody that they should be doing content if I'm not doing content? And so I'm living, yeah, so I'm living the life, you know, and and it's forcing me to live the life and in in so doing, my clients started doing that and they started scaling their business as a result, because it forced them to get more, more clear about their what they're, what they're about and their messaging and all of that. So through that process they started. I mean, I've seen these guys go from like 700k a year in revenue to 2.4 million in six months, whoa, and then they've six months, yeah, and then became eight figure businesses and I was like and so I started seeing it and I was like, oh wow, success leaves clues, right, this is all predictable. And the big thing that he told me it was like you know, the speed of growth in your business is tied to the speed of implementation, right? So if you implement fast, you're going to grow fast. And if you keep the ratios at 36% employees, 25% marketing, 10% operations, and then the rest goes into your pocket, if you keep those ratios as close to that as possible, you will scale your business. But the problem is most people don't want to put in 25%. If you ask somebody what their marketing spend is 5, 10%, nothing, yeah, word of mouth Word of mouth, word of mouth, right. And so you end up pocketing 50, 60% of the revenue. You get, you know, inundated with bills because you're buying cars that you shouldn't be buying, buying houses you shouldn't be buying, going on vacations you shouldn't be doing, you know, and not putting that money back into the business. And then you wonder why, every month, you're getting more and more in debt. You don't know what's coming in and out. It's not, you know, it's not scalable because it's not predictable. So so that's part of what I do in the coaching aspect is I'm also, I'm also coaching and I'm helping you create content, and it's all sort of intertwined, it's not necessarily separate. Oh yeah, I'm just going to create content for you. I'm actually going to, like, step into your business and help you grow.

Speaker 2: 13:55

But every business needs a story and people. It's really hard for people to craft their own story. A lot of times, it's like what do you do? It's even hard for them to tell you what they do, and they'll want to download a bunch of stuff on you. It's like, oh, I do this and I do that, and I do this, and I do this and this and that, but it's like well, what is the story though? What is the like? Even a 30 second elevator pitch is hard for them to come up with, but they really do need that other set of eyes. I would say that that person from the outside that says, okay, okay, I get it, I see what you do. If I was to put myself in your customer shoes, this is what I would be asking for. This is what I would assume you would do for me. Is that? Is that the case?

Speaker 3: 14:41

Yeah, for sure. I mean, it's what? Confused people don't buy the, the you've read Storybrand, yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah, yeah. So he talks about that all the time. If people are confused, they're not going to buy from you Nothing, and so I think that that's what happens. Is you know? You try to force feed everybody with this giant hose, you know, and everybody's like, ah, I don't know what this is. You know, let me get this out of my face.

Speaker 2: 15:08

Right, right, yeah, it's just too much stuff. And then how do you put that into an ad, like, how do you distill that into a? You know you mentioned advertising and your advertising spend being what? 25% of what you, what you bring in. And it's like, well, if you're going to spend that much of your revenue, 25%, you got to put out the right message and it's got to be consistent. How many people put out a message and then you know, a week later they don't like it. So they change it in a week later they don't like that, and they change that. And they keep changing it and changing it and changing it, and they're not even a be testing it, they're just changing it every single time. And it's like, if you're confused and you're not putting out the same message consistently, well then your customers confused and you need to hit them with the same message. What? Seven times, I guess. Actually. Now I think that's gone up, I think that's even more 17 now, 17 now. Back in the day, when it was television advertising, it was six or seven times. Now 17, apparently. And you know, how are you going to get their attention if you're constantly changing your message or changing your logo? I'm a designer, I have this problem with people wanting to change our logo all the time, or wanting to change their brand colors or whatever. It's like, guys, just as soon as your customers start to get it and they start to see that consistency, you're changing it because you're sick of it, because you've seen it a whole bunch of times, or you've heard it a whole bunch of times. Your customer hasn't yet.

Speaker 3: 16:30

Yeah, yeah, people get uncomfortable with monotony and they get bored with being consistent, and that's the thing that makes you rich, that's the thing that creates that traction. It's the everyday, small, consistent thing that you do on the regular that gets you where you want to go. I mean, we are 500 videos deep with my company now and we're not even like, in my opinion, scratching the surface. You know what I mean. We are only now 2023, starting to get the attention from these videos. Not to like, the people that know us know us, but people that don't know us now are starting to find us, and it took three years.

Speaker 2: 17:25

It took three years and these YouTube videos? Or where do you have these videos, or is this part of the course?

Speaker 3: 17:32

Yeah, so I put videos out every day, sometimes multiple times a day, and it's on YouTube, it's on Facebook, linkedin, tiktok. I post across all platforms on a daily basis. Threads, all these places, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 17:50

So how does that? Now? That helps people, and I keep trying to convince folks. You got to have videos out there. You've got to. If you want to showcase your brand and you want people to find you, you have to be on these different platforms. People don't read a lot of information anymore. You need it. You do need a website with content on it, because Google is going to read it, right, but that content needs to be consistent. Like everything has to ladder up to your objective, whatever that objective is, whatever that thing is, you want to tell customers about your brand. Like all these different channels you're pitching on, they all kind of have to ladder up to that thing that you're trying to pitch, that really simple message that could go in your ad, you know, on your Google ad or on your Facebook ad or whatever it is you're doing. But people have to be consistent with this thing, and they've they a lot of times. I think they need somebody to manage them, otherwise they're just not going to do it. They're not going to stick with it. They're going to. They're going to fall off at some point. They're going to stop doing their, their videos, they're going to stop doing their blog writing. They really need somebody to kind of pull everything together for them, put a calendar up there and hold them accountable.

Speaker 3: 18:58

I mean, that's, that's what we do a lot of the times it's it's a monthly coaching session where we're like stay with it, stay consistent, I don't get bored, let's keep going. You know what I mean. Like it's, it's. It's a consistent effort, concerted effort, but we try to like take it out of their hands as much as possible, you know, just so that we can go hey, all you need to really do is show up and shoot, that's it, everything else we got, we're going to come up with the scripts. We're going to come up with the topics. We're going to shoot it. We're going to edit it. We're going to put it out. We're going to write the copy. We're going to put the hashtags. You know, we distribute it. Don't, don't worry about any of that, right? And so I think that that's why people like working with us is is because we take the, the questions out of it. I know a lot of marketing companies wait on the client to make decisions so that they can move forward, and they're like oh, you know, I'm waiting for the client to give me content, or I'm waiting on the client to do this, and I'm never waiting on the client. I told my and I tell my clients when they first start with me. I said I'm going to create you. If you don't, I'm going to send it to you for approval. If you don't approve it, I'm going to assume that it's approved and it's going out and that's part of the contract. So that's that's how we operate. I'm not waiting on you. You know what I mean. So if you want to be involved, please feel free. We're you know we're going to correspond all day, but I know you're busy. You're trying to run this, you know, multi-million dollar company. I know we already know what you want, so I got it. We're going to create the content. You're going to get to see it three times. Right, we're going to send you the topics and the scripts for you to approve. That's the first time you see it. Then you're going to see it because we're producing it. So the day of you're going to see it and you're going to be actually performing it, then we're going to send it to you as an edited piece. So you're going to get it three times. If you don't approve it within those three times, it's going out.

Speaker 2: 21:00

Interesting.

Speaker 3: 21:01

Well, and so wait.

Speaker 2: 21:03

Yeah, yeah, and think about this too. People need to create habits eventually. So you're working with them, you're helping them do stuff, you're helping them produce videos, but at some point they build a habit and they get used to it and you don't have to pull teeth to get them to do these things. And it probably gets to the point where then they say, okay, take the wheel, do the thing, I trust you, and they're just providing what they need to provide to you to continue this thing, and it becomes easier over time. Oh, 100%.

Speaker 3: 21:36

I think the first month is always the trickiest because it's the first month, right, they're experiencing you for the first time. They have their own hangups about how they look, how they sound on camera, and so it's a lot of that, it's a lot of me going, hey, don't worry about this first shoot, just write it off. It's one of these things that you're just going to have to go second, third, fourth month. That's when we're really going to hit it. So you have to think about this as an investment of your time. And so they do it, and I have. I even have like before and after videos from my current clients. I'm like watch this client first day, watch them six months from now, this client first day, six months from now, first day, six months. So they get it. You know what I mean, and I have to reinforce it because I think I read in a book the Ultimate Sales Machine by Ted Holmes, which is great, says people only retain 17% of a conversation, and that is if they are looking at you in the eye. They don't have their computer up, they don't have their phone, they're like all of their attention is here. They are only going to remember 17%, wow. So if that's the case, then I have to, on a regular basis, explain to them over and over and over and over and over again what it is that we do and how we help. And that's part of the marketing too for them. Is people seeing it over and over and over again to your point? They say, oh my God, how many times do I have to say this? 30,000 times you have to say it. You have to say 30,000 times, just like yes, it's true, yep, yep.

Speaker 2: 23:15

And now you were able to jump into entrepreneurship. You had all these successes. You've, you know, you've. You've been on stage, you've, you know, been on film, you've produced films. You've done some of the things that some people only dream of doing, but those you, you're talented, right, you have a talent at this thing. I think everybody can start a business. I think, yes, there are entrepreneurship types, right, but I think everybody has something in their personality type that would align itself with entrepreneurship, right. There's some people that are just more likely to start one because they can't stand their boss or they just don't have that worker, listen to rules, personality you know what I mean and I think you and I probably have that. But there are people out there that are starting to feel the pinch of the economy right now, and you have these times I mean, I see some gray in that beard down there. You probably remember 2008, right, I remember 2008. I remember when stocks were taken a nosedive. I remember when, you know, interest rates got high. I remember when it was it was hard to get a house. I mean, there were. You know, history kind of repeats itself. We go through these cycles. We're in the, you know late stage of the business cycle, heading into a recession right now, and people are struggling. I was sitting there at a restaurant yesterday and I was eating and this couple and we couldn't help but hear them. I wasn't trying to snoop on them, but they were talking about their bills and what they could cut back on and the subscriptions that they could cancel. And the guy goes I could take our money down to the casino and do some sports betting I'm really good at sports betting. The woman goes honey, we can't afford to lose $40. Yeah, these are the decisions people are making right now and it's, you know, maybe they lost their job. They put their faith. They put their faith in another human being who's no better than them. They just took the, they took the leap right, they, they started a business and and for some reason, these people are trusting in these folks and the bigger the company, the more of a number you are and the more expendable you are, and when times get hard, your company loses money because you know they're cutting back, their customers are cutting back, they're going to cut back on you and I think you know there is no stability, I would say, in working for someone else, unless it's, maybe, the government. Let's be honest, the government only expands, it only grows right. But if you're not, if you don't have a cushy government job, you know you're at risk of losing your job. You're at risk of sitting at that table wondering what kind of bills you can cut back on because maybe things aren't going the way you. You expected them to go all of the sudden, and this happened to all of the sudden. So so talk to people a little bit about pursuing their passion, because everybody's passionate about something. You had talent, you were passionate about your thing. I liked art. I was passionate about that. I own an agency now, but becoming profitable, not just jumping into something because you hate your boss. Jumping into something with a plan, knowing that this can be profitable and you can have a seven, eight figure. Well, you could definitely have a six figure business, I'd say your first year or two, but you can eventually turn this into a seven, eight figure thing, maybe even more, depending on what you're doing. Talk to little people about that a little bit, about just trusting in yourself and how you can build a profitable business and go into it with a plan.

Speaker 3: 26:41

I think it starts with the vision. I think it. You know you have to have a vision, mission and core values. There's a really good books called Traction.

Speaker 2: 26:49

I love that book the chart I keep going back to that chart in the book, All the.

Speaker 3: 26:53

what is it?

Speaker 2: 26:54

The 16 ways you can advertise or whatever. It's great.

Speaker 3: 26:57

Yeah, have you. So there's a. There's a software out there called 90.io. Are you familiar with 90? No, no, no, tell me about that. This will change your. This will change your life if you're in business.

Speaker 2: 27:10

Like the number 90.io, 90.io yeah.

Speaker 3: 27:14

You got to write it out. So this is based on the entrepreneurial operating system, the traction. You know your rocks, your issues, scorecards, kpis, all of that stuff right. So you start with your VTO, your vision, right? What's your 10 year goal, three year goal, year goal right. Then you create your rocks out of that and your rocks are the things that you know that are going to move the needle forward. Right? Could be revenue goals, could be marketing goals, could be hiring goals, operational goals right. So you figure that out with your team in in annually. If you don't have a team, I would recommend some sort of mentor. Right, cause you don't want to, you don't want to navigate this on your own right. Find a mentor that that's in business, that can add at least someone that you can talk to about it, cause that's that's where the magic happens. Right, cause if you're a visionary and then the, the, the book, after traction, is rocket fuel and it's the relationship between the visionary and the integrator. Right, because if you're a visionary, you're going to be really good at coming up with ideas and you're going to be coming good at at, like you know, just the, the, the 30,000 foot view stuff. But when it comes to actually pulling the trigger and getting things done. That's when you, that's when you need the implementer, right, the integrator in your company to help you get those things done. And there's another book it's called the six types of working genius. We'll come back to that. But if you don't have the vision, if you don't have your mission, if you don't have your core values, if you are starting a business and you don't, passion for it has to be number one, cause that's the why, right, like that needs to be the the the first thing. You why you're wanting to help, right, and you better go into business because you want to help people and not because you want to make money, cause I think if people start with, I want to make money, and that's the thing. It's going to always be elusive, it will always be out of your grasp. That is the one thing that I learned off of another book, and I can get to that one too. It's called Never Lose a Customer Again, and it's based on your customer journey. And don't get it twisted Everybody's going to go on a journey with you if they're going into business with you. Now, hopefully you write it out, hopefully you have an actual customer journey, regardless of, because then you know that they're going to have a good experience with you, right? So, for instance, I just finished with a personal injury attorney yesterday. On every shoot we give them a little gift basket, right, Thank you for the shoot. It's a little champagne bottle, I think, cost us maybe 40 bucks, right, nothing major, but it's a thank you card. And every time we come and shoot they get this Now and we have other customer journey stuff. And then that book is really good about it Never Lose a Customer Again talks about the wow experiences that you can create through every phase of the customer journey, from the admit phase where they say, hey, I want to do business with you. Right, like, when somebody does choose to do business with us, we immediately send them a help, welcome to Ladoo Entertainment Video. And then they get another basket Right With their production guide in there. It's a little gift, it's a welcome gift, oh, wow. And then they get these, the customer service calls and all of that Like. All of that is like planned out to a tee. So now when Andre Dennis says, hey, I have a referral and they refer me to another personal injury attorney if I don't keep up with sending him a gift basket and then doing that like that is what they've been accustomed to receiving when doing business with Ladoo Entertainment, right? So if I'm messing out on that now, I'm no longer providing the service across the board in the same way Right, and that's what we want to start doing. We want to start creating a customer service experience that is the same at every turn, right, and those become your KPIs, your scorecards, right, your key performance indicators, letting people know that are we on track or off track to get to our rocks, our goals? Right, so every quarter we can go, you know. So I'm back in 90.io now, so you get your quarterly stuff. And part of your rocks could be creating a customer journey Right, and sitting with your team going okay, what, how do I get my customers from point A to point Z? Right, and what are all the steps in between? And the Domino's Pizza Tracker is really nice because it tells you where you are in that, in that journey. Hey, the pizza is getting made. Hey, the pizza is now in the oven. Hey, now we're cutting the pizza. All right, now it's getting delivered. Right, same deal, whether you're a plumber, whether you're a personal injury attorney, family law attorney, plastic surgeon, whoever, like everybody, has the customer journey, so I hope that you take it and you put it together Right, so you get this customer journey together. Figure out what your rocks are on a quarterly basis. Right, have your level 10 meetings every week. Your level 10 meetings are meetings so that you can make sure that you're on track to keep your rocks as a target. Right, it has deadlines. Make sure that everybody knows that we're all on the same course. Right To making sure that, hey, weekly, are we on track or off track? Are the to-dos being pushed off? Is it because you don't have clarity on what you need to do? Do we need to turn it into an issue? Great, now it's an issue. We talk about it. Now we can delegate again. Boom, boom, boom, traction, traction, traction, traction. You implement fast. Now, all of a sudden, all these things are happening, and that's how you scale the business Right, without stress. Because that's another thing too I know a lot of people talk about oh, scaling, oh, you're going to lose quality. You're going to lose quality. You lose quality because you're unorganized and you don't have everything spelled out. If you have everything spelled out, there's no way everybody should know who's doing what? And then now, when you, if somebody's not doing their job, it's not a personal thing, sorry, john, you're just not hitting the KPIs. We see it every day. Every week we're checking and for the last two weeks, every single time you're missing your KPIs and it's numbers. It's not a personal thing. So, and it's not, and look, I don't do it so I can catch somebody. I do it so that I can help people, right Like that's. That's how I view it. If you're not hitting your KPIs, I wonder what I'm doing wrong. To make sure that I'm clear enough for you to understand what it is that I need you to do, because maybe that's the problem, maybe you're confused and you're paralyzed because you don't necessarily know how to do it. That's what happens?

Speaker 2: 33:48

Yep, that's exactly what happens People. People usually procrastinate because they're unsure of what the next thing to do is. They lack information, so then they procrastinate. And this, this 90.io that you're talking about. I was just kind of glancing through the glossary of terms. I see rocks on here, but I mean this is pretty thorough. This has got a lot of stuff on here. What is it? Scalar versus Scalar? Scalar is like a company that doesn't grow and then Scalar is the company that grows. I mean, there's a lot of people out there that just have these lifestyle businesses and they they're just kind of cruising on, you know, cruising along, making the same amount of money every year. You know, nothing really ever goes up, and that's probably because they don't have these goals, they don't have these business goals and they don't have a path to achieve those business goals. And also, for a lot of people, man, like the scary part is hiring people Like that first hire, like do I have enough money to pay that person? You know where is the money coming from? And a lot of times you have that fear because you don't have an appropriate sales process in place. I think you don't know where the money's coming from and and, of course, that's going to be scary because you're like, well, you know, I'm going to hire this person because I, you know, I need some help. I need help just doing the admin stuff. I need help answering emails. I need help, you know, with somebody that just is doing client service work for me. Well, that person's not necessarily making you money. That person is just an expense for the most part, and they do add to the quality because maybe, like you said, there was an implementer. Maybe I hire that implementer. Well, that implementer's job is to just is to make sure that our quality stays, that we're going through these processes, that we're actually doing what we say we're going to do. That's not necessarily. And somebody that is tied to revenue they're not bringing in more revenue, but they could be keeping customers around. And what does it cost? 10 times more to go find a new customer? That is, to keep a customer that you already have. Yeah, so you know you got to think of things like that and I think people they get scared of scale sometimes.

Speaker 3: 35:50

You know and you bring up a good point. I think goes back to that customer service right or relationships in general. When you get married, you're married, yeah, yeah. If you want to stay married, you better keep dating your wife.

Speaker 2: 36:02

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 36:04

If you want to keep your client, you better keep dating your client. How are you making them feel good? Like are you bringing them in? And then you're forgetting about them, and that happens a lot, because then they're just the oh, I got your money, now I'm focused on new business. I got to focus on new business. It's like, dude, you better take care of your clients. How are you helping them on a monthly basis? And that better be there and you better have a process for it, right. And then here's the thing it's like I'm always thinking about how I can upsell my current clients, and not because I want to upsell them is because I want to help them, because I know that what I'm doing for them is just one part of the piece of the puzzle. Right, like, I'm writing a book right now. It's called Scale With Speed and it's just my, it's just my based on, you know, going to all of these masterminds and learning and seeing like people like Gary V and Alex Hormozzi, and I'm like what is the through line here that they all, they've all done right, and so you talk about, you know, the phase one is the fundamentals, right Like building the vehicle, landing pages, websites, email, nurture sequences, branding, you know all of the things that you need to do to make sure that the company is established, the messaging is correct, right, all of that, all of that gets done. Then you roll into content marketing right, and that's podcasting, that's social media on a consistent basis across all platforms right. Then we're talking about the sales intake. Right, what does that look like? Making sure that we're the lead journey, is there the customer journey, the post customer journey? Right. Then we're talking about what's the book, and it goes back to what's the offer. Right, you want to get clear, you don't want to confuse the people. So, what is the? What is the book that you're writing? Right, and you can write a book about personal injury. Has it been written before? Of course, but what makes you different? Right, like, what is the experiences and what's the lens that you can put this through? And then that becomes the book, right. So we're writing the book, right, while we're creating the content and this is what I did for a few of my clients right, I'm like dude, if we're 200, 300 videos deep, give this content to a book writer. They're going to ghost write the book for you. And I've got a couple of people that I know that can write your book for you, make you an Amazon bestseller, right? You take all of that content and here's the thing when we're creating the content, it is all, it's all focused, it's all intentional, because we know that end result is going to be your your keynote, your book, your online course right. So now you're not only are you providing the service that you provide, right, but we're creating the influencer right, and you're getting better at better and better because you're putting content out every day. You're growing that confidence, you're getting better at speaking, you're getting better at the conviction. And now we have a book, we have all your landing page, we have the offer. We have all of that stuff working together and you will scale your business to new heights, and I don't care if we're in a recession or depression, it doesn't matter. If you do this on a on a regular basis and you can implement this fast, you will grow exponentially.

Speaker 2: 39:22

Man, I love it. People need to hear this stuff because I, you know, I think you know people are one. They're afraid to put the content out there. And I think they're afraid to put the content out there because they don't have a message. And working with someone who understands storytelling, like anoid, like all these movies and stuff you watch, why do you watch these movies? It's because there's a story. It keeps you engaged for two hours, hour and a half to two hours. You have to be engaged. Some of these movies are three hours. Right, you get to sit through those things, but you're engaged. You're like, wow that. You know that was a long movie, but you know it kept my attention. Well, these people, people like you, I mean, you're born storytellers and you have to be able to keep attention. Attorneys, personal injury attorneys you know they do the law, that's what they do. What makes one personal injury attorney different than another one when they all have the same thing and they all have to follow the law? How are you any different than these other guys? Like, the law is the law. It's black and white, it's this is it and that's that. Where is the gray area? You know how and if you're working with multiple personal injury attorneys, you have to craft a brand new message for every single one of those personal injury attorneys that most people don't think have anything different, right? No, this one is just as good as the other one. You know well not when they have you, and if I'm the personal injury attorney, I'm going to write it like it's just boring. It's going to be. We follow the law, we do this, we do that. Like. Look at some of these personal injury attorneys websites and I'm just I'm picking on this industry because you mentioned it but look at their websites and look how plain and boring these websites are. I'm sure they got a justice, a scales of justice, somewhere on their website. You know they've got maybe an ambulance and some blinky lights. I actually had a personal injury attorney up in Chicago as a client one time and they, what is the story? Some of them have been in business a little bit longer than other ones. They're like look, I've been a personal injury attorney for 40 years. That's my thing. Okay, great, 40 years, we can work with that. What else do you got? Well, I've been in some crazy cases. What are those cases? We should put those on the website, right. We should tell the story of those things. This guy was freaking out, he didn't know what he was going to do and blah, blah, blah. So we helped him out. Like you know, you can't really do all this on your own. If you're trying to run a business, it's the same time, all the stuff you talked about. That's a lot for people to think about. Building building their story is probably the last thing. They're probably just putting up some generic info in their website. To be honest with you, and unless they have somebody, a third party with a new set of eyes, that is a creative person that is good at storytelling, that grew up telling stories, you tell stories through music. Yeah, dude, I don't know how many times I've been going through songs on my reels trying to pick the right song for my reel. Right, I'm terrible at music. I can't match my wife's way better than I am. You play a tune for her. She'll tell you who wrote it and everything about it. Me, I suck. So if I was to pick a song, I'm just not good at matching it, matching the mood and all that other stuff. A lot of people are like that. That's another key of working with somebody like you. These are creative people that can help you move the dial on your company, move the brand and give you a goal, a message that you can work towards with everything you do.

Speaker 3: 42:47

Yeah, it just has to be, and it starts with the vision. It starts with your story. Why are you doing this? Why are you helping? What's your backstory? What's the hero's journey? What brought you to this point?

Speaker 2: 43:06

That's it, yeah, the hero's journey. I was actually watching a movie last night on Hulu and it was this alien movie, this lady's alien thing. It was really confusing. It was a there's nowhere to hide or something like that. It's a brand new movie. It just came out and they were talking about, they were trying to explain the movie. Because I was like what the heck did? I just watch and at the end I get on this thing. It's like what is? What was the purpose of this movie? Right, and it said well, it's open to interpretation and you got to love those movies where the director just is, it's like open to interpretation. But they said that you know this woman, she went through these hard times and I don't want to give away the story here, but essentially it was a hero's journey, but in a different, a different way, right, but every movie has a hero, right, and a story has a hero. Well, when you have a brand, you have, you're the hero of that brand and and this is what it, this is what you have to understand. And not everybody understands how these things work. They don't understand the characters and understand, you know, that a story has a hero and they, a lot of times they're scared to talk about themselves. I know I'm going on and on about the value of working with people like you. You're probably a humble person, dude. You don't necessarily want to. You know, scream it. You know from the tops of a mountain. You know because you're probably a humble person too. But it has to be told. You have to tell your story. Sometimes you just got to get over the fact that you know you feel a little arrogant talking about yourself and talking about what you've done. But, pete, the customer deserves to know they do.

Speaker 3: 44:36

I Was in a public speaking forum and the guy on stage had said something that like stays with me today. He said don't deprive your audience of your message because of your own hangups. Right, like you. Just, we all have our own hangups, our own inner critic, and you know, just do it anyway. I love it.

Speaker 2: 45:02

Do it put it out there, man. Well, armando, this has been great man. I really appreciate it. Tell people how they, how they find your, your website, your company and in your YouTube stuff.

Speaker 3: 45:12

They can find me anywhere, armando Liduc, on all my social media. My website is Liduc entertainment. That's led you see entertainment calm, but if you Google me, I'm pretty easy to find and we're super responsive. I got a team that you know that's on social media. So if you guys reach out and have questions, you know I'm super available to answer questions.

Speaker 2: 45:37

You. I could see you're passionate about it. You want to help people. You found success and you want to see other people succeed the same way, and it's a lot of times through storytelling. Yeah for sure. I appreciate it, Armando. This has been great man.

Speaker 3: 45:51

Hey, thank you for having me, man.

Speaker 2: 45:52

Thanks for joining us on this week's episode of side hustle city. Well, you've heard from our guests. Now let's hear from you. Join our community on Facebook, side hustle city. It's a group where people share ideas, share their inspirational stories and motivate each other to be successful and turn their side hustle Into their main hustle. We'll see you there and we'll see you next week on the show. Thank you.