#21: Accelerated Scaling Strategies

Date: August 21, 2020

Episode: 21

Title: Norman Farrar Introduces Christo Daigle, an Experienced Investor, Digital + Direct Response Marketer, and Business Development Expert

Subtitle: Pursuing Endeavors with Finesse and Planning

Final Show Link: https://lunchwithnorm.com/episodes/21-accelerated-scaling-strategies-chris-daigle/

In this episode of Lunch With Norm…, Norman Farrar introduces Chris Daigle, an experienced investor, digital + direct response marketer, and business development expert.

Chris is known for his success in scaling companies quickly, making the growth easy, and keeping the owners sane in the process. He launched a consulting firm offering M&A advisory and business development.

If you are a new listener to Lunch With Norm… we would love to hear from you. Please visit our Facebook Page and join in on episode discussion or simply let us know what you think of the episode!

In this episode, we discuss:

• • 5:17 : Chris’s background
  • 6:18 : Entrepreneurial Operating System Framework
  • 9:53 : Planning versus brute force and sheer ignorance
  • 12:12 : Thinking and asking bigger questions, and how to get to the goal
  • 20:13 : Financial Thermostat: Know your numbers
  • 21:51 : How do you know if you're winning?
  • 24:09 : Focus, Finish, Repeat
  • 26:50 : Compress learning curve; get a mentor
  • 28:15 : Keeping organized and creating discipline
  • 37:01 : What to do when we’re not thriving

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Explore these Resources

In this episode, we mentioned the following resources:

• https://www.eosworldwide.com/
• https://www.amazon.com/Everything-Business-Marketing-Learned-AVENGER/dp/1544219245
• https://rankbell.com/
• https://www.lynda.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/doctordaigle/
• www.ChrisDaigle.com
• doctordaigle@gmail.com
• https://www.facebook.com/doctordaigle

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Norman  0:02 

Hey everyone, I’m Norman Farrar, a.k.a. The Beard Guy and welcome to another Lunch With Norm.

Norman  0:19 

So while we’re broadcasting to you live on Facebook and YouTube and hopefully one of these days LinkedIn, what should we be doing Kels?

Kelsey  0:27 

Alright, well, you should follow us on social media, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, TikTok. Follow us everywhere and we do have something exciting to talk about our new website.

Norman 0:43 

Oh, yeah. So I guess we should just say, hey, look, this is like my birthday. I have a birthday week. This is like the launch week. So we had the launch on Monday. But we have the official launch of Lunch With Norm, The Rise of the Micro brands. It’s this week. So I’m enjoying cake and you can find it on all podcast platforms including Apple, yelling out there Kels.

Kelsey  1:07 

If you want to gather everything all at once, you can go to our website lunchwithNorm.com. There you can subscribe, you can see all the past videos that we have. I think we have 11 of the episodes, so right.

Norman  1:21 

You can search them if you’re looking for specific content. The other thing that I think is really great with what we’re doing is we’re putting all the information, the people’s, any of their guests bio, but also any references that they make. So  if there’s a book or if there’s something that they wanted us to go to or content that we’re covering, we’re actually trying to write blogs about those contents so we can keep you informed. Hey, Alan. So check us out. We’re also all the information is on YouTubes and on YouTubes. It’s like going to the Google.  Hey Kelsey, you want to go to the Google? We’re doing this Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays noon Eastern Standard Time and so there’s up. Yep. Go ahead

Kelsey 2:08 

There’s no show tomorrow, no more Thursdays. I think we have one Thursday, scheduled in September. But other than that, no more Thursday. So Monday, Wednesday, Friday. All right.

Norman  2:22 

Nailed it. All right. One last thing I wanted to go over is that you can go over to the website and we’ve never talked about this. We’ve been doing this for a month, and we’ve been getting some positive feedback from the people that have signed up. But we’ve put out a really amazing newsletter. That doesn’t suck. It really is good. We spend a lot of time, we either write the content that’s on there. It’s for entrepreneurs. It’s for online sellers. It’s about business. It’s about brands, social media. It’s everything you need for your online business to succeed. So once again, it really doesn’t suck. So please please sign up for it.

Kelsey  3:01 

It’s a good slogan. Yeah, it really

Norman 3:03 

Yeah, it really does. Trust me, it doesn’t suck. Okay, so I think that’s it for housekeeping. Anything else?

Kelsey  3:09 

Hello, Sharon. Thanks for tuning in.

Norman  3:13 

Aaron, Allen! Hey, just a couple shout outs. All right. So tell us, do you have anything else to say?

Kelsey 3:20

No, I think that’s it. I think it’s time to welcome our guest.

Norman 3:24

Alright. So this guest is really incredible and he scales businesses, and he does it like nobody else. I had the pleasure of meeting him. I met him through Rob burns. So this is the beauty of networking. So Rob said, Hey, you got to meet this guy. So we talked briefly, about an hour like time of my mouth had dropped. I could just hear from the second we started talking the passion that he had about what he was doing. So anyways, I want to just introduce you. I don’t think he does a lot of Amazon talking. So this is about how to grow your business, how to scale your business. Great guy’s name is Chris Daigle. So we’ll be talking about how businesses can scale strategically. It’s a difficult transition for many online, I’ve seen it myself, I’ve tried to, as the book says, cross the chasm, and it’s very difficult unless you know how to do it. So stay tuned, you’re going to learn more and as always, if you have any comments whatsoever, put them in the comment box and we will try to get them. So sit back, relax, grab that cup of coffee and enjoy the show. So now,

Norman 4:39 

Mr. Chris, Dr. Daigle, how are you Sir?

Chris  4:42 

Fantastic. Thank you for that intro. That was amazing.

Norman 4:46 

Well, you know what, it’s true. I mean, it’s I talked to you, Hey, you got to get on to this podcast and he said, You got to get on my other podcasts because it’s really about the most interesting people I know and like I said, when you were talking to me, just a passion and I got to get you on that podcast, I want to hear about the struggles and successes that you had which is by the way, shameless plug, I know this guy. So anyways, let’s talk about a little bit about your background. So tell us a little bit about yourself.

Chris 5:17 

I guess the thing that would be most applicable here to this audience is that I’ve been involved in direct response digital marketing since 2002. So, I’ve  been around this space like this. I’ve got 20,000, my 30,000, 40,000 hours in this space in particular. So it’s an area where I’ve been able to have a lot of impact when it comes to accelerated growth and businesses. So I do a lot more, I’m a daddy, a husband, a friend, all around nice guy, I guess most would say, but in business it’s primarily direct response marketing and the digital landscape. Alright,

Norman  5:57 

Alright, so I think the topic today is really interesting, because so many Amazon sellers or e-commerce, I mean, we probably have a few people just in general online business listing as well. But they do it wrong from the start. So what are some of the things people can do to prepare themselves for growth?

Chris  6:18 

First and foremost, know what that looks like. There’s a model that I use whenever I work with a client to create the framework for accelerated growth and that framework is called EOS,  Entrepreneurial Operating System. I think 150,000 plus entrepreneurial enterprises are run on this model, very effective, but one of the first things they do in an EOS implementation is they get all the leadership team together and they say, Okay, guys, like where are we going? It’s interesting when you do that, because this guy wants to get to 10 million, this guy wants to get to a billion. She wants to get to half a billion like, it’s interesting to see that all these people who have been working so closely together haven’t gotten calibrated on what exactly? Where are we going with this, I’ll tell you why that’s important. The person that wants to get to a billion dollars or whatever that number may be, they’re going to behave a lot differently and their thinking and their strategy and their execution and the people they reach out to, then somebody on their team who thinks that, Hey, we’re going to 5 million bucks, that’s our goal, the behavior is going to be completely different, the resources tapped into we’re going to be completely different. So if you don’t have a team, the point still stands, you need to be very clear on where, like, how do you know that you’ve won? So first and foremost, that’s the number one thing and the reason that I think this is important Norm, is because I learned this quote from Lao Tzu and it’s when the cup is full, stop pouring. Most of us don’t have any idea that we’ve made it because we never stopped to say, how will we know? Like, how will I know when I’m successful? Like how will I know that this endeavor has like achieved what I’m looking for. So first and foremost, be very clear on what the outcome needs to be.

Norman  8:07 

You know, the other day, it was just last week we had Jeff Sass on. He’s a brand builder. He’s a guru. I hate using that word. I say too much. He’s an expert when it comes to brand building and one of the things that he was talking about, exactly what you said, before you can build your brand, you have to have everybody from bottom up, as you know, as well as everybody he was saying that, from the top down, usually it’s dictated by the CEO and everybody loses the message and so when you get everybody on board, then that’s when you can start being a brand and that’s exactly what you’re saying here when you can grow your business. Exact same thing.

Chris 8:56 

It’s a good comment. Who was that?

Norman  8:58 

It was Jeff Sass. If you don’t notice, Jeff. Oh, man, I’ll introduce you. But he’s got this book called, everything I learned about marketing came from the Toxic Avenger. So it really is a good book, by the way, and Jeff’s a great guy. So everything that he does, when you’re building this business, so this is what he does. He goes into corporations, econ businesses, and he says, let’s build your story. But inside out, not from the outside. He says, let’s build that story. It’s like a four or five page book on your company and it’s got, you know, the beginning, it’s got a villain, he lays it out really incredible and I don’t think enough businesses do that. I think this is something that would apply to this model that you’re talking about.

Chris 9:53 

So here’s what I find interesting is that entrepreneurs and I think I may have shared this with you before, but I’ve worked with a lot of entrepreneurs, coached and mentored a lot and the default speed or the default production protocol is brute force and sheer ignorance. Let’s just get in there and figure it out, right? A little planning. However, if you were to talk to people who are at the highest levels of achievement within any industry, I think one of the commonalities would be that they were very clear on that rock. The reason that they’re at the top is because they had a plan. It may not be something that entrepreneurs like to do, we don’t like the plan. We just want to get out there just make it happen. Because like that’s what we do, right? But without that plan, or without that target or without that, and I can tell you that for every hour of planning, you’re gonna save yourself at least four hours of production. So why not plan right?So don’t pursue your endeavors with brute force and sheer ignorance. Do it with finesse and planning.

Norman  11:00 

I didn’t go through Eos. I’ve heard of it. But I went through old school here, Michael Gerber and the E myth. So he talks about the typical entrepreneur pattern where you’ll never get anywhere. It’ll be a constant struggle. It’ll be constant crisis management. If you don’t sit back and price and create processes for your team and if you don’t create the proper or break the sales cycle, the entrepreneurial sales rollercoaster, where the entrepreneur has the passion, he goes out there, he’s selling but he’s working 25 hours a day, he brings on a VA, the VA doesn’t know what to do. He gives them really crappy instructions, no training, she fails or he fails, and they get fired because he’s the only person or she can do it properly and then he does the same thing. He hires another VA with no training, and it just goes on and it goes on and it goes on and he can’t understand why he can’t grow the business. Yeah. So, right.

Chris 12:12 

So most of you are gonna find yourself in that pattern unless you identify, oops, I’m in that pattern. So another thing that I think would be really helpful, Norm for people who are interested in how do I grow my business? I’ll bet that the questions are asking aren’t the best questions when it comes to that, for instance, I had a mentor, Paul Limburg of Formula Five Fame and I remember how much it blew my mind when we were on a call and Paul basically said, Okay, great. So I’m gonna ask you a question. You call me back when you get the answer. Ready? Yes. How do you 10 x your business? This was not a car, don’t think it was just like, well, I don’t know. took me about two weeks and it was one of those questions that a friend of mine sold his business to the golf network. He calls it shower time, he wants his employees shower time and what he means is that he wants to be such a part of their lives that when they’re in those quiet moments, and they’re thinking that their mind doesn’t go to, I gotta feed the dog, it goes to his business, right? So as an entrepreneur, this shower time, watch what you’re saying, if you’re not asking yourself, how do I 10 x my business questions like that? You’re not going to get those answers. If I asked you how to double your business, you want the answer, work twice as hard. But at some point that falls apart, you can’t work 10 times as hard 10 times as long. So you have to actually start asking yourself, like, the result of answering that question is going to mean that you come up with systems and processes that you were just identifying, or potential clients or whatever, that weren’t part of your thought process prior to you asking that expansive question. So what ends up happening is most entrepreneurs, they and here’s what I’d asked you to do if your goal let’s say your goal is a million bucks this year in your business. Shoot for two. If you fail, like, here’s what’s gonna happen if you don’t hit two, you did more than one usually in most cases. So like, just by pushing yourself to think a little bit bigger, even if you have no idea how to do it, that’s okay. Ask the question the mind will tell you the answer or you’ll be, you’ll be asking that question around the right people and that answer will come to you. But if you’re not asking those questions, you’re going to be in that cycle, in that e-myth cycle that that Norm was just talking about. So think bigger, ask bigger questions. It’s amazing the impact it will have.

Norman 14:37 

So when you’re thinking bigger, are there any things, because a lot of people don’t understand.  A lot of people don’t have any sort of systems, SLPs, policies and procedures in place. Where do they start? So yeah, I want a 10 x my business? You know, Isabella Hamilton?

Chris  14:55 

I don’t.

Norman 14:56 

Oh, great lady. So she owns this company called Rank Bell and she came from Romania. Yep, rank Bell, because she helps Amazon sellers with launch and rank strategies. So she came over from Romania. She was a nanny, and then she got into Amazon rebates and anyways, she just said, Yeah, the reason I’m successful is she listened to a bunch of people that Grant Cardone and a bunch of others and said, Yeah, I want to make this a $10 million company, I am not satisfied with anything less and why should I start at $50,000 a month, I want to hit a million dollars a month or I want to hit whatever it is. So she just says, you know, if you’re gonna dream, dream high and make it happen and work backwards.

Chris 15:45 

Yes and unfortunately a lot of people, like that’s the part that we forget. We just get into the production side of things, but we don’t want to take care of today’s cash flow needs. We want to keep the lights on. We know that like, there’s some shiny future that exists once we hit that certain thing, but we’re doing it now we don’t know what that is. But because she said $10 million. She was thinking, How do I do 10 million bucks a year? Not how do I be successful? That’s nebulous. That’s your definition. My definition of success may be completely different. But arithmetic is not an opinion. So by setting a specific number like that, that was the only thing she had to think of. How do I get to 10 million? That’s the only question she had to ask and everything that she saw, whether it was a blog post, video or something like she was looking for that answer, this will help me get to 10 million, does it help? I don’t know where but I’m assuming like, that’s the process that happens. So if you’re not asking yourself now, like, for those of you who aren’t doing $10 million a year, try it. Try asking that question whenever you catch yourself just kind of like at a stop sign or whatever would that moment, let your brain chew on that question. How do I get to blank? Let’s call it a 10 million and give yourself a couple of weeks, don’t force an answer and watch the things that start to pop into your head. You’re like, oh, shoot, that’s actually a really good idea. How come I didn’t think of that sooner? Because you weren’t asking the question. So that’d be a little bit of advice for scale. I guess, you know, another piece of advice would be, I don’t know the skill level of everybody on this, but entrepreneurship, it is a journey. It’s a marathon. It’s certainly not an event that occurs, right? So for those of you who haven’t made the breakthrough yet, or even a million dollar business sounds like it might be a stretch, the people that are doing that number now, the people that have achieved the things that you want, that you’re aspiring for, they were where you are right now. Confused, uncertain, whatever those of you who are just getting started may feel. So my advice would be, do exactly what they did and be, be, do,have. You be the thing that you want to be, You start doing the activities and you will have that result. It may feel weird at first, it may feel like I’m a phony. I’m a fake. I’m not that person. I’m not smart enough, rich enough. I don’t have the resources. I’m not whatever excuse you’ve got, just like, let those things keep playing. But take the next step, right? Eventually, you’re gonna be able to look back and go, damn, he was right. I’ve made it some well, but rah rah advice there

Norman  18:24 

A little rah, rah. But you know, this is interesting because I go out. I used to go out to a lot of events, and certain events. It’s almost like building a brand culture or corporate culture is that you have this anticipation of success and by getting the right people, the right company, the right people always drilling that message into the course or the event. You go around and you start talking to people and It’s not uncommon to say, Oh, this person’s doing $500,000 a year, a million dollars a year in eight figure seller and there could be a lot of new people there. But the people that are doing it are really doing a good job and then I’ve gotten to events where the products have been out there for over a year. Product isn’t on the water, the highest person I see is making $5,000 a month and it’s just sort of a completely different message that the course couldn’t, it just didn’t have the management or the trainers to get that message out there to tell people you can do it and to get them, it’s not impossible. I know so many people out there that are very successful. Success could be $50,000 a month. It could be 10,000 depending on who you are. But I know a lot of millionaires out there that made it and not doing it that hard. It’s a struggle. You’ve got to work and especially if you’re going to go over a million, and you’ve got to get these processes in place. So I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed that as well. But depending on the trainer, depending on the course, you’ve got a way different outcome coming out of different events.

Chris  20:13 

Yeah, you know, I think it could be traced back to the narrative that’s being used by each of the instructors. If there’s an instructor and his worldview is that $100,000 a month is crushing it, and you go someplace else, where everybody else in the room is listening to somebody who’s saying, Hey, guys, here’s how you get to a million a month, the outcome from those cultures, those audience, those brands are going to be completely different. So I think it kind of goes back to where that instructor T. Harv Eker. called it your financial thermostat, right like how high or low each instructors financial thermostat is, is really going to determine how uncomfortable they’re willing to get around big numbers and that sort of thing and guys, just a number, right?

Norman  20:58 

Yeah. I guess one of the things that you just touched on it, you really do have to, don’t you hate this expression? But you really do have to know your numbers to understand growth and even like Tim Francis, a great guy, he’s got this mini course, just knowing your numbers, you don’t have to be an accountant. But you’ve got to understand at least that to grow your business, if you can’t read a p&l or a balance sheet. Or if you don’t understand cash flow, that is an issue. We’re not here to talk about that today. But you know, if you can go on to what is it, it used to be lynda.com now, it’s learn.LinkedIn or something. Just take a bloody course on understanding your financial numbers, and that will help with growth as well.

Chris  21:51 

That was another thing where I see entrepreneurs have a lot of resistance and I’ll tell you a quote, I’m not sure the exact quote was something along the lines of when Warren Buffett’s saying, unless you know how to read the scoreboard, how do you know if you’re winning? Right? So and the scoreboard in business, I mentioned it earlier, but arithmetic, it’s not an opinion, a million dollars in China as a million dollars in Chicago, right, like so, if you’re not able to read the scoreboard, which is the cash flow statement, and the balance sheet, if you’re not able to read those, you don’t know what the score is truly in the game of business and there’s another I don’t know what you’d call them, a wise old man named Keith Cunningham. He has a quote that something along the lines of business is too important of a sport for you to learn by trial and error. Okay, very powerful statement to me like, this is business. If there’s a way that we can borrow on somebody else’s success to compress the new curve, a resource to make things easier, like don’t do this with brute force. There’s a plan, don’t do it by trial and error. Do it with intention and business. It’s a lot easier. So, but that’s a big tip. If you guys aren’t, there’s so many free resources in 10 or 15 minutes, you would be functionally capable of being able to look at the three key documents in a business to understand its financial position, right? It’s not complicated, but for whatever reason, entrepreneurs just like, I let somebody else do that, or I’m not even going to look at it at all. I’m just gonna I’m too busy and not do that. That’s your numbers. Like, that’s why we’re doing this thing.

Norman  23:28 

Exactly. I just, I say this a lot. I hope I don’t say too much. But I know we brought on a client once and they did over $10 million a year and they were ecstatic and they puff their chest out and then we looked at their numbers and they lost 100,000. Go puff out your chest now.

Chris  23:50 

Go watch a YouTube video first.

Norman  23:53 

Right, right. So let’s talk about simple mistakes that people make. So we’ve talked about going and working to get that in what you want to kind of work backwards? What are some mistakes that people are making that they can avoid?

Chris  24:09 

This was taught to me a long time ago by Rich Schefren. It was this concept of that as entrepreneurs, let’s say we’ve got three projects, five projects going, right, we got this one, this one, this one, what Rick was suggesting is that we start A and finish A, and then move on to B because what ends up happening if you’re not doing that, if you’re not closing the loops and your business projects, you’ve got a bunch of open loops and what ends up happening is that like a laser, your focus, right? Laser is just light, if I focus it, I can burn with it. If I diffuse that focus of light, I can read by it, it’s benign. Same thing with your focus as an entrepreneur. If you’re focused on one project singly, and seeing it complete before you start something else, it will happen and watch what happens over the course of a year. Let’s don’t measure it like who’s ahead this week, who got more stuff done. Let’s look at it over the course of the year. If I’ve  started A and finished A and repeated that process maybe only got three projects done. You as the other entrepreneur, you probably don’t have any of them fully fleshed out. Like maybe some of them are working but you’ve got a lot of open loops and as a result, you’re introducing your anxiety into your life that is not like running a business is already challenging. We don’t need to introduce anxiety by making poor decisions and that poor decision would lose the shiny object syndrome. We all know what that is. Create a discipline for yourself. That is I’m going to start and finish this thing. Once this thing is made its first buck, then I’m gonna go and look for the next shiny object. But let’s don’t chase four or five rabbits at once. Focus on one and finish it that’s the biggest tip for any entrepreneur who wants to be successful in my mind.

Norman  25:48 

Right, shiny objects and definitely take your eye off the ball and the other thing too is a lot of new people, they decided to go for the masses. They pay $400 for this mastermind $400, $300. I went to Ben Cummings Launchpad once and you know, I was talking to a couple of people and it was $12,000 for the product, the app. I talked to another person whose product was on the water, and they were spending over $3,000 a month on tools and, and masterminds. Now I do believe and this is interesting, because all the guests that we’ve had on I know this guy, and it’s either entrepreneurs or it’s just interesting people. The one thing, the common denominator, and I think this is important with this is, get a mentor. Yeah. What do you believe in mentors? How can they help you grow your business?

Chris  26:50 

So it’s this concept of compressing the learning curve again, I mentioned that quote by Keith Cunningham about don’t do business by trial and error. How you avoid that as you say, hey, you’re further along than I am on this trail. How do I get where you are and they’re gonna say don’t do this, definitely do this, call this guy, call her, she’ll help you with that and make sure you hire this. Like, they’ll give you everything you need that otherwise without the mentor, let’s take a look at the economics of that. This mastermind more room, I think it’s about 30 grand a year, right? Sounds like a lot of money. However, if I can go in there, and at the scale of business where I typically operate, I can find somebody who’s like, Oh, dude, do not do that. Trust me, we did that. We tried it three different ways. This is the way that works. In the businesses that I operate like $30,000, that saved me years, because here’s the thing, money comes and goes, but time only goes. So if you’re like, I’m going to save my money and not work with a mentor or an advisor and I’ll figure it out on my own. That’s time that you’re losing. Again, it does not come and go, time only goes, get with the mentor or a peer group that has achieved more than you have and leverage them to compress your learning curve, your success curve the whole deal. Very quickly.

Norman  28:15 

War Room is great. Waiting for the invite. But anyways, EO is also another great organization where you go in, I’m not sure what the I think it’s a million and a half you have to have in sales right now. But anyways, you go in there, you have these monthly meetings, but then you have this form and the form is non competing people that you can absolutely 100% trust. My form group is 26 years old, and I remember having horrible like there was an experience that happened, where it was just horrible. I was gonna be going under, I was terrible. It was the worst you don’t want to go through it. I called up my form, they met on a Sunday, we sat around for the whole day, worked out a game plan, and then I was able to issue it, start going, going forward, got through these situations. I owe it all to them. But anyways, getting that mentor, getting into something like EO or, if you’re lucky enough, into the war room, and  I’ve heard great things about it. But also, I want to go back and it’s funny because you and I have two friends, while we probably have a lot of friends and yeah, we have Kathy and Rob. Kathy came on a couple of weeks ago and she’s an organizer. She’s putting up this book for remote organization entrepreneurs on how to keep their life in order. One of the things that she said was what you just touched on a little bit, just about two minutes ago and that was getting through the task, task A  and task B and organizing your life go in, plan your day, get the task A out of the way, go on to task B’s and C’s, and just have it laid out on your calendar. So you know, plan it out as an appointment. Like, I’m anal about this. I have, like, when I’m going to answer my emails, when I’m gonna go take a walk. If you take a look at my calendar, it’s just color coded every 15, 20 or every 15 or 30 minutes. But that’s what you need to do, is keep organized.

Chris 30:39 

Yeah, otherwise the day gets away from you and you’re like, you get life. A lot of week at life gets away from you.

Norman  30:46 

Yeah, right and especially remote touch off topic, but remote. I remember when I first brought my company back into the home, which was years ago, I had to do like, traffic in Toronto was getting horrible. Instead of 45 minutes, it was an hour and a half where I had to go. The only thing I could do was smoke cigars in the car there and back, but I didn’t mind that part of it. But anyways, what I found is that I slowly started watching TV and all of a sudden Judge Judy, twice a day was, you know, creeping in and it’s very hard to focus when you’re doing something remote. So you have to be disciplined, right?

Chris  31:31 

Yeah. So that’s a thing that you have to create the discipline of discipline, which is tough. But here’s what I did early on, to make sure that that wasn’t a problem and I wouldn’t be distraction. I associated massive amounts of pain with me not getting stuff done, not completing my tasks. So like even now 20 years on of doing a remote operation. I have a visceral like a physical reaction if it’s the middle of the day, and I catch myself doing something that’s, but I take bike rides in the middle of day but I’m not doing it to goof around. I’m doing it because I’m thinking so it’s different. But like you, you have to know that if you work from home yet you don’t produce that you will not have a home to work from in the future. I look at it, I get it down to this food that’s being taken from my children’s plates like that’s how emotionally attached I am to not being disciplined, some unusual approach but for me it’s work because I can’t. If there’s something that needs to get done, I can’t goof around like I have to knock it out. But absolutely, if you don’t have the discipline, guys, it’s going to be tough. So here’s what you do. You create an accountability partner that’s also remote and or something along those lines. Good. Right, creating accountability working remote.The guys from Basecamp put out a book a few years back called Remote Work I think, great book to give you some structure and frameworks to work remotely. Big change for a lot of folks, but trust me, create the discipline, your life will be amazing. There’s nothing like the freedom that comes with, like, Who am I going to be today? How far am I going to take this thing today?

Norman 33:29 

Right. Yeah, and check out Kathy Burns’s book. So that’s going to be launching very soon. I think it will be within the next couple of weeks.By the way, I just got to give a shout out to my old buddy from seventh Toronto, Dave Apperley. So I’ll say this to you Dave, line bubble bubble line. I think you’ll know what that means. So anyway, let’s get on to and I’m gonna put you on the spot. I don’t care if you can do this. Just 1,2,3,4,5. If you can’t, maybe shoot something over after, but if you could give a breakdown, step by step five things, three things, whatever you can think of what people can do to get their business in line for scaling, what would those three or five things be?

Chris  34:17 

Sure and I can do this quick. If you go out there and you Google, this word, Samdor, a term that Frank Kern came up with and basically it’s an analysis that you can do a holistic analysis on the sales and marketing of your business and it’s a very thorough checklist process and it’s just like, you identify, oh, I’m not doing that. I don’t have that. Those aren’t my numbers. It makes it very easy for you to just take that checklist after a Samdor process and apply those fixes to your business. You’ll see immediate growth there isn’t going to take extra business probably not but he’s very big on this concept of stabilize first, then let’s optimize what we’ve got and then let’s focus on expand. So, if you can stabilize and optimize and expand, you follow that protocol, you’re going to be in great shape to grow your business. But it’s going to start with a deep dive on, do I have an upsell or down sell. if I don’t have a down sell? Do I have a follow ups like all of the little micro bits of marketing that can occur on a funnel? Do a deep dive and ask yourself or have somebody else find a buddy say look man and funnel hack my stuff and tell me where I’m dropping the ball or what you would do better? But that’s the key. It’s not about you coming up with the newest product, it’s not yet. It’s not about the first thing you have to do is stabilize what you’ve got, or else you’re going to be running, like shooting getting a little too close to the sun and then now you’re back washing bottles again, coming up with a new idea. So avoid that by stabilize, optimize and expand using Samdor method.

Norman  35:55 

Simple to the point. Very good.

Norman  35:58 

Yeah. Hello.

Norman 36:00 

Let’s turn the subject on to my favorite subject, COVID-19. Alright, so COVID kicking around, it’s affecting everybody. Luckily, I’m in e-commerce, so it hasn’t affected me too bad. But are there anything that you can say about COVID? Either, if people are failing, I guess this is it. If people are failing, and they’re in e-commerce with COVID-19. Any advice?

Chris 36:27 

Yes. One of the things that I’ve done during this time is really cranked up my acquisition activities. So, this is a great time for those who have the wherewithal in the process to be able to grow through acquisition, to reach out to those people who are having a hard time and throw them a lifeline, which is essentially synergy, okay. But for those of you who are having a tough time with this, other people are not,  find out why. What are they doing that you’re not?

Norman 36:59

Well, they’re bigger. They got more cash to burn with.

Chris 37:01

 It’s not going to be yet. It’s going to be they’re doing something, it’s either the way they engage with their clients, that’s having people come back to them. It’s going to be maybe they’re paid marketing. It’s something. So what your job to do is, as a business owner who may not be thriving right now, is investigate. What are like, you may be smarter than she is, or he is doing better than you, but it doesn’t matter. They’re doing something. There’s a habit they’ve got, there’s a process they’ve got and it’s usually not like, they’ve cracked the code. It’s the basics. They’re usually doing some foundational stuff for business, that you being an entrepreneur, you’re like, Oh, I don’t need to worry about that. I don’t need to worry about plan. I’m just gonna like whatever it is they’re doing, figure out what it is and apply it to your business to at least stabilize what you’ve got. There will be an end to this. Who knows what the landscape is going to look like after this is over. There’s been a lot of money introduced into the global economy. I don’t know what that’s going to do with pricing and that sort of thing. But I think for everybody listening to this, you have the best, like, you’re in a great spot. You don’t have to go show up every morning, unlock the door, and hope somebody wears their mask in your shop, right? You can do this stuff. Like, this is your time. So if you’re not thriving, like, we’ve made it very easy by introducing COVID into the landscape, we made it very easy for e-commerce people to get a captive audience. So if you’re not thriving right now, man, you’re just missing some piece of the formula, find out what it is from somebody who’s got it.

Norman  38:40 

One of the other things that I look at too, for successful businesses. There’s two types, a business that has and the ownership or the management have great intentions, or they’re action oriented and they also like even the people that I know and that I aligned with, they seem to be all action oriented. So if I hear people whining and crying, usually I find out that why didn’t you take the steps? Why didn’t you move on it? You’ve got to act, you know, quickly get going find out, like you just said, find out why, and then act on it. If you’re gonna sit back and have great intentions, well, that’s what your paychecks gonna be

Chris 39:21 

A big great fat intention.

Norman  39:23 

Yep. So, Alright, we’re coming to the end of the podcast. Any last pieces of advice that you’d like to give?

Chris  39:32 

Yes, you can do this. You’re going to encounter challenges as an entrepreneur, just tomorrow’s a new day, like for everybody going through this time right now. Like there is you may feel like you don’t have support, you’re working from home and blah, blah, blah, whatever, like Norm is creating these communities in these environments so that you don’t have to be alone like right now is a great time for you to be plugging into anything that he’s doing. So that you’re hearing how other people are coping with the same six, like, globally, we’re all dealing with the same stuff. Some people doing better with it than others, if you’re having a hard time, reach out and find out how they’re managing kids and spouse and work and all those types of things. But that’d be my advice, you can do this.

Norman  40:21 

Very good and just to end, I have gone through hell and back when it’s come to all sorts of things from huge failures to just doing things wrong. If I had the old hindsight, and one of the things, if you’re in this situation, and you’re worried about moving going forward, like risk management, maybe it’s too stressful, or maybe you’re stressed out right now. I’ve been kicked between the legs so many times that what’s another kick, so 20 years ago, which gave me bleeding ulcers on certain things that I’d be up all night throwing up, just thinking that the world was gonna end. If I look back at it now, it was just another day in paradise, you get used to it. So don’t freak out about stress, stress is a bad thing. It’s what and how you manage it.

chris  41:14 

Yeah. And the last bit of advice I can share on stress is, I had a mentor tell me the more stress you can handle, the more money you’ll make.

Norman 41:22 

It’s true.

Chris.  41:25 

Yeah, it’s true.

Norman  41:28 

Alright, Chris. So let’s do this. Thank you for being on the podcast. I can’t wait to get you on the next one. How do people get a hold of you?

Chris  41:40 

My social profiles are probably the easiest way, LinkedIn. If you look down here, Dr. Daigle is how I’m known in the industry. My name is Chris but they call me Dr. Daigle. So,  I’m on Facebook and I’m on LinkedIn. I don’t do a lot on Instagram. I don’t know if I’ve ever been on TikTok. But if you reach out to say, Hey, I saw you on Norm’s thing, had a question, wanted to connect, happy to connect with. Anybody happy to answer any questions you guys may have. It’s a privilege to be able to be on something like this with the community that Norms assembled and be able to help. So please lean on me if you need it. Alright.

Norman  42:17 

So thank you to everyone for joining us today on Facebook and YouTube. Like we said, we’re gonna be posting everything on the new website, Lunch With Norm and please give us your comments. We put a lot of time and effort into it and we think we came out with a winner in at least the graphic side, hopefully with the podcast side as well. So again, Chris, thanks for joining us and please join us Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays Lunch With Norm at noon Eastern Standard Time.