How to Get Your Company Ready for 8 Figure Growth

Jeffro (00:03.466)
Welcome back to digital dominance. You know, the longer you’ve been in business, the more hype pitches you hear. Things like double your revenue with this one easy trick. You’re still doing blank, do this instead, a three X your profit. You know, and these can sound really enticing because running a business is hard work and who doesn’t want to dramatically increase their profit. But as time goes on, we start to get numb to these headlines. Maybe you tried a course and it didn’t work or you hired an agency. It wasn’t helping as much as you expected. So you stop believing that anyone is actually having this sort of success? The truth is many of these offers require a lot more time and effort than they let on. But if we’re honest with ourselves, maybe we weren’t quite ready for it too. So the question becomes, how do we get ourselves ready for dramatic growth? My guest today is going to help us attack that question. Her name is Nicole Glover, the owner of Glover Strategic Marketing. And this is not hype. She actually specializes in doubling top line revenue for eight and nine figure B2B companies. Nicole has been leading marketing departments since 2009 with a demonstrated track record of doubling multimillion dollar businesses revenue. So please help me welcome Nicole Glover. Welcome to the show, Nicole.

Nicole Glover (01:11.017)
That was a fantastic intro. Thank you, Jeffro. And thanks for having me here. And yeah, it, you know, I always love when people put something out and then just assume because they’ve done it once, they can do it 18 times again. And, you know, 80 ,000 times again, you know, and charge everyone to do it. But then they need you to do certain things. And then at the end, it’s all your fault that it didn’t work out. Granted.

That’s often the case because you didn’t actually do anything and expected them to do everything. But they told you they would do it for you. And that’s really where the issue comes in is that if you’re not changing to be more effective, you’re not changing what you’re doing, how you’re approaching your clients, making sure you’re actually targeting the right clients. Maybe some of those things aren’t going to work for you.

sometimes they’re not going to work for you no matter what you do. And that’s really where marketing people end up with a bad name. But at the end of the day, um, you know, just try to make sure that when someone is telling you that they’ll do this for you, make sure you know why and how it’s going to work and what is expected of you to make that happen. Because that’s, that’s where a lot of marketing people and clients, you know, struggle a bit is because they’re not on the same page. And,

Jeffro (02:33.322)
Right. And I think there’s a balance between, you know, delegating the tasks and the outcomes, but you don’t want to give up responsibility, right? Because as the business owner, you have to pay attention to what’s happening and take notice of what’s working or not and try to course correct when needed, which is of course easier said than done, but you do have to stay involved. It’d be nice if you could just push the magic button and say, hey, it’s working now, right?

Nicole Glover (02:33.961)
That’s I guess.

Nicole Glover (02:42.761)
Mm -hmm.

Nicole Glover (02:58.601)
Yeah, and especially as we get larger, our businesses get bigger, we’re seeing more success, those magic bullets just aren’t going to happen. You have to do the work. You have to have your foundations correct. You have to do the best you can when you’re working with clients. You’re past the point where having one good client is going to transform your business. You’re probably past the point of having 10 good clients transform your business.

That should be just a Tuesday for you. So what’s going to get you more of those good clients? And that’s not just passing everything off to someone else who can just run it for you. You have to be engaged and know what they’re saying and make sure it’s authentic to your company so that when someone says, oh, this is someone I might want to talk to, you’re still the same company that is that marketing people and advertising people and your digital marketing person is putting out there in the world. So, yeah.

Jeffro (03:56.202)
Yeah. Well, and you know, I love talking with entrepreneurs because we have such big ideas and you know, the drive to make them a reality. But a lot of us do get bogged down at some point, whether we realize it or not. You know, maybe we made a financial mistake that we end up taking years to recover from, or we’re just drowning in the day to day and we never get to the fun stuff that we have all these ideas. We can’t get to it yet. Right. So, I mean, how do we, you know, get past all that? You know, I imagine a big part of your job is identifying bottlenecks and finding ways to

Nicole Glover (04:00.937)
Thank you.

Jeffro (04:26.058)
remove them. Is that the case? Does that connect here?

Nicole Glover (04:29.289)
Yeah, yeah, there’s oh my gosh, bottlenecks are definitely a thing. One thing, you know, as entrepreneurs, we get excited and we get ideas and we’re ready for the next big thing. And, oh, someone said this, oh, we need to do this. And oh my gosh, am I doing it wrong by not doing this? So I like to slow down and step back and engage with the clients, their clients.

or your clients, if you’re the one doing it, and talk to them and see what you’re doing right, see what you’re doing wrong, see what they wish you were doing. And surprisingly for a lot of people, it’s not price. They’re not looking for cheaper prices from you. They wanna know, especially in the B2B world, they wanna know that you’re engaging with them well and you are going to take care of them and be there consistently. Like they don’t need to know that you’ve got a new…

TikTok dance. And I know that’s like so cliche at this point, but that’s how we think, Oh my gosh, everyone’s doing TikTok. Do I need to have my own specific TikTok dance for my business? Like I’ve talked to people, they get that thought, you know, and it could be the new platform. There’s, there’s new platforms all the time, but we forget why we’re doing business and what we’re trying to do. So if the business owner’s trying to find that next big thing, always trying to get.

you know, out in front in a different way, in a new way, and not even considering what it is that is good about your business, they’re struggling trying to deliver. And a lot of times we need to pull marketing away from the leadership so they can be in charge, pay attention to what’s going on, but they’re not so focused on the next big thing. They just want to know marketing’s being done. They know it’s saying the right things, the right people when they’re looking for it. And

knowing that those milestones are being hit, those key performance indicators are being reached, and then they can do what they need to do to run the business and take care of their clients. And then they can focus on the teams, on what’s working, what’s not working, and how to make that work better, I guess. But it’s so easy to have bottlenecks when that leadership is trying to do way too much. And oftentimes they somehow get left with marketing and marketing’s…

Nicole Glover (06:44.809)
really it’s a struggle when you’re trying to run the business and do marketing and think about how your clients are thinking and you know just take a step back figure out if you’re actually serving your clients the way they want to be served and see if you can get some help.

Jeffro (07:00.746)
Yeah, and I think, you know, the role of a founder or the business owner, it changes over time. In those early stages, maybe you’re figuring out your product or your service, and then you’ve got to figure out some agreements and contracts, or then you figure out how to sell your stuff or who wants to buy it and the pricing. You’re constantly shifting. So if you stop after you feel like, OK, I’ve got this figured out, I’m done. Well, nothing’s going to happen. And I think part of it, too, every founder is different. Some people like marketing and are good at it.

Others just like the operations and they want to hand off the marketing. But if you haven’t established a vision, the marketing is not going to really align with what you’re trying to do. And so that’s why I watched a video last night about crumble cookies and just talking about their founders and how they went through it. Neither one of them were bakers or chefs. They just started making cookies. And so their first thing was figuring out what tastes good. So they actually had a feedback loop asking customers, friends, family to taste stuff. And then they had to go get equipment.

And they had to figure out how that works. And they had to get a location. And so at each step, they had to figure out, okay, now we’re going to franchise this location. So there’s iterations of what we do, but they didn’t figure out the marketing at first. They finally did. There were drops of different cookie flavors and they posted on social media and stuff. But the point is you can’t just copy them because you’re not their company. That worked well for them because of what they’re doing and what they’re offering. But you kind of have to go through those steps of figuring it out.

And then as you figure it out, yes, okay, bring people in to help you with it, keep the train going in that direction. And I think that’s what a lot of us miss, because we kind of just stick with what we know and are comfortable with.

Nicole Glover (08:38.825)
Yes, and you’re so right. We evolve as people, but definitely as businesses. I mean, something, and your message when you were a two person team could be much different from when you’re a 12 person team. So we have to keep in mind that it’s okay. It’s okay to not be right the first time or even the fifth time. And maybe it was right then, but it’s not right now. And that’s okay too. We evolve to…

be better and that’s, that’s so exciting. There’s so much opportunity. And you know, when you have, you know, a lot of times I talk to clients and they have, you know, their ideal client is anyone who pays. I mean, if you’re listening right now, you could probably raise your hand and say, that’s me. You know, anyone that pays is a terrible ideal client base. I mean, how are you going to target for them? How are you going to do that? So, you know, I tell people, think about,

Jeffro (09:23.082)
Hehehe.

Nicole Glover (09:37.865)
who you really want more of, like who was your best client and why, and what was good about them, what specifically was awesome, and why do you want more clients like them? And then we can start targeting more like that. So rather than just getting anyone that pays, how about you get all of your clients are your favorite clients and they all pay because that’s what your favorite clients do. Like it’s not even a, oh, I just want them to pay. Like, hey, let’s maybe raise our…

our standards just a little bit and try and get really good clients that we can really help who appreciate us. Like, what a lot of fun.

Jeffro (10:13.162)
Right, well I mean, budget can be part of that conversation. You might say, okay, I can only work with clients who have a minimum X per month to spend on marketing. That’s important to know, but you gotta go beyond that, right? You gotta know, okay, these are people that are gonna trust me to do things and not second -guess me at every step of the way. Or, you know, start defining what that person does and how they work with you, and then you’ll kind of get a better idea of who you want to work with.

Nicole Glover (10:17.033)
Yeah.

Nicole Glover (10:39.721)
Yeah, and that actually will make your marketing more effective. So when you’re talking to someone who’s doing your digital marketing, they know, okay, it’s not just women who are 18 to 85. I mean, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve talked to eight and nine figure businesses that tell me those things still, you know, and they, they don’t grow quickly because they just take anyone. When you are saying, Hey, like I’m looking for,

Jeffro (10:43.594)
Mm -hmm.

Nicole Glover (11:08.905)
balding divorced dads. Wow. All of a sudden that is very specific on who you’re looking for, especially, you know, if they’re a CEO of a business, oh my goodness, that’s you can target those people. And then your message is exactly targeted for those people. And then, wow, all of a sudden your marketing works. Holy cow. It’s such, it’s so effective now. Like it’s, it can be so basic knowing who your target audience is. And it’s not anyone that pays. If I can be clear on that, you know,

Let’s think about what’s really gonna work for your client base. So, yeah.

Jeffro (11:43.722)
So another thing, we’ll kind of come back to this. We touched on how, you know, at every level of business, there’s different types of challenges and issues, right? But problems don’t just go away automatically because you get more revenue. And I think sometimes we fall into this chicken and egg situation where we’re like, okay, when I get a little more revenue, then I’m going to invest into improving this area of the business. But then it can take a lot longer than you thought. And maybe it took two years. By then, maybe the goalpost shifted or, you know, and so then you end up stuck.

So the question is how do you make progress now without waiting for something else to happen?

Nicole Glover (12:12.969)
Okay.

Nicole Glover (12:19.113)
Yeah, so a lot of times, you know, you brought up budget earlier and that’s a huge thing. I mean, we all, you know, I mean, it’s all a numbers game. We’re looking at the numbers and can we do this? Should we do this? Does it make sense to do this? Should we wait? But you know, when you have your marketing budget and I’ll tell you, like, I like to throw numbers out there too, that, you know, if you want massive growth, you’re going to have to invest.

10 % of your top line revenue into your marketing or more. And that’s B2B, that’s not a beauty salon where you’re trying to get new people, new consumers to come in. If you’re just trying to maintain your business, you’re looking at like four to 6 % of your top line revenue often. But we don’t always think about strategy and sometimes pulling some of that strategy investment into, you’re not just.

putting ad dollars out there. You’re also putting investment into your strategy and looking at what is working, what’s not working. And if you don’t get your internal working correctly, it could be your internal operations, how your communication is working between operations, you know, all the different silos within your organization, or just how you’re serving your clients. When you start telling people, I do these things,

there’s a disconnect because you’re not doing these things. You can’t serve your clients well if you’re not doing these things. So, you know, at the very least you’re gonna have that, I don’t know if I really can say that I do these things, I kind of wish we did. And they can feel that even if it’s not being conveyed, they can feel that. So on those sales calls, that’s not effective. When you have a team that is, you know, should be on board about you doing these things and you’re like, hey, we’re telling everyone we do this. And they’re like, what?

don’t do that. Why would you say that? And they’re, they’re putting that message out there. They’re laughing about that. They’re looking for their next job. So, you know, cause if you can’t even be consistent in how you are presenting your best self because you’re not actually doing that, no one’s going to trust you. It doesn’t work. So do it, invest it, invest in yourself, invest in your operations, invest in what you’re saying you want to be doing.

Nicole Glover (14:37.097)
because your marketing needs to be authentic. It needs to be, this is who I am. And you can still say, hey, we’re growing, we’re building, we are adjusting and growing and fixing as we go along, but invest something into it. Even if you can’t do the whole overhaul, good is better than nothing. A little bit’s better than nothing. So yeah, invest in your business, invest in yourself. Marketing will come.

when you do the things right.

Jeffro (15:09.29)
Yeah. And I kind of want to keep talking about this a little bit more because obviously a lot of listeners might not be an eight or nine figure business yet. Maybe they’re six or seven. And so we’re touching on some of the fundamental pieces that need to be in place in order to get there. So investing in marketing is one of them. I’m assuming there are certain structures or SOPs that you need in place, at least tracking some basic metrics before you could come in and really, you know, pour rocket fuel on there. So what are the things that you want to see in place in a business before you would take on?

a client.

Nicole Glover (15:40.745)
So that’s an amazing question, but at the bare minimum, I want to see the desire to grow. And everyone said, well, I guess not everyone. I definitely work with people that are just lifestyle business. We’re good. We’re going to retire in eight years and we’re just going to ride it out, you know? But there are most businesses really do want to grow, but they don’t really, really show that in their business, in their operations. Are you really?

proving to me that you want to grow when you don’t have any SOPs. Your standard operating procedure for dealing with a client is when it hits the fan, we talk to them. That’s not going to work. What are you doing to make your operations better now? What are you doing? So my goal is to pour rocket fuel on your business. The marketing is the fuel, that rocket fuel that fuels your business and gets you going. And

So if I’m going to put that into your business, what’s going to happen? Can you actually do it? Can you deliver on what you say or what we’re deciding that you’re saying that you can do if you don’t even know what it is, but you know, do you have the team ready? Do you have the possibility of having a team ready? I have a client that right now that we are working on making sure she is set up correctly to bring people on for new positions.

because every time we started to grow, she’d pull it back because she was afraid of what would happen. And so we had to get everything ready for her to hire. So as soon as she had a little bit more growth, she could hire. And granted, she’s not one of my eight figure businesses. She’s a little bit smaller because I get excited and take on new clients sometimes that don’t always fit my target market. Don’t do as I do, do as I say. But…

You know, it’s always, I love helping people. So that’s what happens. But, you know, if you’re not positioned to take care of your clients, when that growth happens, you are going to take like 10 steps back. It’s not going to be two steps back. So I need to see my clients are ready for growth. They’re positioned, you know, even if you don’t have the team in place, you’re ready to have the team in place.

Nicole Glover (18:02.505)
you have your in your mind, you know that it’s coming and you’re just ready for it. You are ready with those SOPs. So when someone needs to come on and you are overwhelmed and busy, they will know what to do because all those standard operating procedures are in place and they know they’re going to, you’re going to bring someone and you say, Hey, follow this, do this, do these things. And you know, it never hurts to have those things in place for yourself. Even, uh, I know even me personally, you know, you forget how to,

take care of a client one way, because you try and reinvent the wheel and rather than just reinvent the wheel, just have a process in place so that you know how to take care of them and you can follow through. And we all, I don’t know anyone who hasn’t fallen prey to just winging it at one time or another. But if you really want to see massive business growth, you want to double your revenue quickly, make it easy on yourself, make it easy on your team.

Jeffro (18:50.954)
Mm -hmm.

Nicole Glover (19:01.993)
have the things in place, have the procedures in place, bring in partners that will help you get there. Because sometimes, especially on entrepreneurs who are six, seven figures, we have it in our minds that we have to be the expert. We have to know how to do this. I mean, we’ve gotten it to here, right? We should be able to get it to there. That’s okay to bring in people to help you because you’re an expert.

Jeffro (19:27.53)
Well, it’s different skill sets, right? At different levels of business, there’s more things you have to worry about and you can’t do as much by yourself when there’s more things to be done.

Nicole Glover (19:34.281)
Yeah, it’s a huge bottleneck when you’ve decided you have to be the expert. You have to be that person. Let your people shine. Bring other people in that let your people shine. They want to shine.

Jeffro (19:44.938)
and put together trainings for your people. If you really are the expert, figure out how to train them well so they can come on and do a good job for your clients too.

Nicole Glover (19:52.681)
Yeah, videos. Oh my gosh, they’re amazing. You know, like just get started. You don’t have to be perfect to start. Just get started. Figure out what’s working. Then bring people on to help you and do a better job with the trainings. You know, like just build upon what you’ve got and you know, you don’t have to wait for it to be perfect. Just start doing something. Get something documented, get it on video and then bring your people on to help train your people. I mean, gosh, it is such a huge return on investment.

But sometimes we’re afraid of that return on investment when we start with zero. So starting gets you realizing where you can actually see that return on investment. So if anyone’s afraid to start.

Jeffro (20:33.162)
Yeah. And I think also finding those bottlenecks and things, it can feel like a blind spot. You’re like, well, I know I have to do all these things, but I don’t know where I should start or what’s most important or what to allocate money for. Ask yourself, okay, if I got 10 new clients tomorrow morning, what would happen? All right. What if I got 50 new clients tomorrow? Think through the scenario and figure out what’s going to start breaking down. Like, oh, I’m going to start missing emails.

Nicole Glover (20:50.505)
Mm -hmm.

Jeffro (21:00.042)
or I’m not going to be able to do that. I’m going to be scheduling them three months out or stuff like that. That’s not a good customer experience. They’re going to leave and go to somebody else. So make a list from that and start solving those problems. And that can kind of get you moving in the right direction.

Nicole Glover (21:14.505)
Yeah, you want to make it easy for people to work with you. Right now is your process set up to make it easy for people to work with you? If it’s not, what do you need to change? If you get two extra clients than you’re expecting and it’s no longer easy to work with you, what do you need to change to make that work? 50 new clients, I think most everyone their operations would start breaking down, but…

You want 50 new clients, right? Even if it’s by the end of the year, well, what happens if your marketing works really well? I mean, goodness sake, isn’t that what we’re going for? You know, so what happens? What will happen? Look at that, figure out what you need to do. You’re exactly on the point with that, because that’s, it’s huge. It’s just awesome. That’s the moment.

Jeffro (22:02.794)
Yeah. And of course you can always bring in someone like Nicole to take a look for you. You know, if you’re busy and you’re like, well, I, I just need help figuring this out and knowing what to work on. That’s why Nicole specializes in this. Right. So, um, do you have, like, what’s your most important piece of advice for an owner who’s looking to one day run an eight or nine figure business?

Nicole Glover (22:22.697)
Oh gosh, you know, be really clear on what you want, who you want to be, what that vision is, because so many people do growth just for growth sake and then they struggle. So start with what you really want your business to look like and start building it out so that it can be that, you know, don’t just do something because you think that’s what you want, but.

once you say, okay, this is really what I’m looking for. This is really what I want. Then you can be really authentic with how you talk about it. And people love when you’re being authentic, you know, partners, vendors, clients, prospects, they love authentic companies. And that really, really will shine. So if you can really say, this is, this is what I want, whether it’s just to get to 10 million.

so that you can take care of your family or you want to completely transform the world. You know, having that clear vision is so much fun for us marketing people because we can really grab onto that and say, okay, this is what you’re looking for. And then when they say, this is what it’s going to take to get there, you can decide, yeah, I’m willing to do that. So it’s going to be work. I’m willing to put the work in. If you’re just like, yeah, I want to get to 10 million cause it’d be fun. Well,

then they’re like, hey, here’s all the work you’re gonna have to do. You’re gonna have to completely change the culture of your business. You’re gonna be like, ah, is it really worth it? Do I really need to get there? So if you can decide, and I mean, like that’s really like coaching here a little bit, but like that’s really true. If you can really have that vision and it’s really clear, everyone in your company, especially your marketing people can grab onto that and help get you there. Because if it’s clear, it’s defined, you’ve…

you have passion behind it, you can get other people to put passion behind it too. And then you can accelerate your growth. And then we can really put some rocket fuel on that and it gets so exciting and really amazing things happen. So be very clear on what that vision is, what you really want to see happen. And then everyone can have fun.

Jeffro (24:38.442)
Well, I think that’s a good place for us to kind of end today. Thank you for joining me, Nicole. I’m always fascinated by business and everything that goes into making it successful and how we undermine ourselves and what we do to fix it, you know, and get out of our own way. So for those of you listening, check out the links in the show notes, schedule a free consultation with Nicole. She has tons of experience and she gets fired up when she’s talking about your business. So set up a call with her. Nicole, any other last final thought that you want to leave us with? I mean, that was a pretty good one. So.

Nicole Glover (25:06.345)
You know? Yeah, no, you know, be yourself and hey, put some videos out about who you are and what your business is. Because videos are going to be, I mean, they’ve always been big, but they’re really big. So show who you are and what you are all about and what you care about on video. And thanks for having me.

Jeffro (25:22.346)
Awesome. Well, thank… Oh, definitely. And thanks for being here, Nicole. Thanks again to all of you for listening. Keep climbing towards domination, guys, and I’ll see you in the next episode.