Today on the More Cheese Less Whiskers podcast, we're talking with return guest, Jeff Moore from California. He has been a longtime friend. He's been around since the very earliest days of the I Love Marketing podcast and was one of the early guests here on More Cheese Less Whiskers.
Jeff had a lifetime of experience in the seafood business. If you ordered any kind of fish in a restaurant, it probably came through him. He built great relationships over the years, and now, after that company sold, he started and quickly grew a new business based largely on those relationships.
This was a great conversation looking at all the ways he's developing this new business. We talked a lot about the value of his 'After Unit' business and ways he can maximize that.
We went on to talk about his 'Before Unit.' He has a limited number of visible prospects he can work with, and this is the case for many B to B businesses, where you can identify the manageable number of potential clients you need to approach to be successful. So we talked about ways to establish a relationship with those people and look to make inroads and build that relationship over a longer period of time.
If your business is in a similar situation, there are a lot of ideas here to dominate that visible audience.
Show Links:
ProfitActivatorScore.com
BreakthroughDNA.com
EmailMastery.com
Want to be a guest on the show? Simply follow the 'Be a Guest' link on the left & I'll be in touch.
Download a free copy of the Breakthrough DNA book all about the 8 Profit Activators we talk about here on More Cheese, Less Whiskers...
Transcript - More Cheese Less Whiskers 199
Dean: Jeff.
Jeff: Dean.
Dean: Wow! Reunited, and it feels so good.
Jeff: So good.
Dean: That's it.
Jeff: I just want to do this. He's Dean. I'm Jeff More. And this is the More Cheese Less Whiskers podcast.
Dean: Thank you. I don't even need to do an introduction now. I can skip a step. That's perfect. We can just go right into it. Oh my goodness. So, it's early morning out there in-
Jeff: 7:00 a.m.
Dean: California.
Jeff: Out here. Yeah. California. Bright eyed and busy tailed, ready to do some evil schemes and experience your prolific profundity.
Dean: Oh my goodness. Wow. Don't hurt yourself.
Jeff: That's all I got! Goodnight, everybody.
Dean: I hope you stretched. That's right.
Jeff: I know.
Dean: Let's catch up. Because, there's been a lot that's happened since last time you were on the More Cheese Less Whiskers podcast.
Jeff: Yeah, and speaking of the last time, I want to thank you. Because after that podcast, I had somebody reach out to me from back in, I want to say Connecticut and say, "I want to talk to your wife." I said, "Great."
Dean: Hey, wait a second!
Jeff: Yeah. Right. Well, J. J. Virgin, when she says, "I want your wife." I went, "Oh, sweet!" She goes, "To help with my son's college applications!" I'm like, "Oh, all right."
Dean: Oh, man.
Jeff: So she worked with his son, and then he has been like this referral generating machine. He continues to share her to anybody that's got a high schooler that's looking to apply.
Dean: This is great.
Jeff: Yeah, so it was really, really cool. College Prep Roadmap, she's finally fully retired from her day joy. She's doing this full-time. It's been all word of mouth, for now, and we're starting to do a couple of things, including the 90-minute book funnel that we're going to start.
Dean: I love it.
Jeff: We're looking forward to that. Yeah. Thank you for that. That was really good.
Dean: You're welcome.
Jeff: She has worked with, like we said, she had worked with some financial guys, and we're still tweaking that. But, it's fun. She's making more money than she was when she was working full-time.
Dean: Wow, that's great.
Jeff: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so for me, it's, gosh ... Actually-
Dean: Yeah, enough about her. Let's talk about you.
Jeff: Yeah. Enough about her. Let's talk about me. Let's see. Yeah, it's going on two years now where I started with the company I'm with now. Going back to 2016, we had ended up selling our company, the seafood company, International Pacific, to our largest investor. He took it over, and we did really really well for a couple years. He owned the meat company that you and I have enjoyed those steaks from, West Coast Prime Meats. And so, they took it over. We kind of folded in. It was interesting. It's a long story.
But, I was a seafood guy in the middle of a meat company. While we did very well, we profited handsomely for a couple years, I knew that that was our focus, and so I found somebody to buy the company from him, a seafood company. And, that, in 2018 that happened. I orchestrated it.
Dean: Nice.
Jeff: I was really happy.
Dean: Nice.
Jeff: And within about eight weeks I went, "Oh, oh no."
Dean: Uh oh. Wait a second.
Jeff: "I'm not staying here. I'm not staying here." You and I have talked, and you have been the champion of lifelong relationships. That was me. I've got national restaurant chains that I've had relationships for over 20 years, and done half a billion dollars in sales with a couple accounts. I'm just like, "This doesn't work." These guys are very much a transaction. When I hear somebody say, "The customer should know," and they can say something after that, but I'm not listening.
Dean: It doesn't matter. Yeah.
Jeff: I'm like, "Oh, boy." And so, ended up waning to leave, orchestrating a move with a gentleman, lifelong relationships, 30 years. Ended up leaving in September 10th of 2018, left the company that was kind of my thing for, God, the better part of almost 20 years, and came over to a company called Global Protein Group, which is a division of, you're going to love this name, Porky Products.
Dean: Okay. Porky Products.
Jeff: Porky Products. It's funny. I'll make this story real quick. But two gentlemen, in Brooklyn, when they had a meat company back in the '50s said, "We need to start delivering to places." They went out to find a truck, and they found this truck that was like $300. And they were a different name of the company. But there was a big pig on the side of it. So they go to the guy and they said, "Hey, how much is it going to cost to paint the truck?" And all this kind of stuff. They guy goes, "I can do I for $300."
Dean: Oh, boy.
Jeff: They go to their brother-in-law, who's the attorney, and says, "How much would it cost to reincorporate or rename our company and change the corporation name?" He goes, "I can do it for $50." He goes, "Great. We want to change the name-
Dean: Porky Products.
Jeff: To Porky Products."
Dean: That's the best.
Jeff: Isn't it awesome. Yeah. It's a family owned, operated company. They do about 2 billion, plus, in sales.
Dean: Wow.
Jeff: And they have a big trading division, which is, they call it Porky Trading, out here in the West, that does about $800 million. They're pretty prolific. In Hawaii, they have a huge business in Hawaii where they're shipping 1,000 containers a year. Those are 40-foot containers that weigh about 40,000 pounds.
Dean: Wow.
Jeff: So, 1,000 containers a year or so. Remember Johnny Depp in Blow, when he said, "Hey, if you did cocaine in the 1980s, there was an 80% chance it came from us."
Dean: Right.
Jeff: Well, if you're eating protein, other than seafood, in Hawaii, there's about an 85% chance it came from us.
Dean: Wow.
Jeff: Yeah. It's a big, big piece of business. We have millions of pounds rolling on the road every week. I was the only seafood guy. I came in as the director of seafood and business development.
Dean: Nice.
Jeff: I got here and I was like, "Okay, well, I don't have any seafood to sell, because I haven't bought any, because it comes from around the world," and so I started selling chicken, right away. I just called a relationship that I had and started selling chicken into Las Vegas, and just growing. Then last summer, I hear them say, as I'm just still the seafood guy. My identity is the seafood guy. They go, "Yeah, we cornered the honeycomb tripe market."
Dean: Honeycomb tripe?
Jeff: I said, "That's a sentence I never thought I'd hear," right?
Dean: Right.
Jeff: So, I go, "Okay-"
Dean: You should put that right up there with brown stinky tuna.
Jeff: Yeah. There's meat for eating and meat for selling, evidently. These guys sell everything. Blood. Everything. It's amazing-
Dean: Wow.
Jeff: What they'll do. Yeah. So I go, "What'd you buy? 10? 15 loads?" They looked at me like I was the dumbest guy on the road. They go, "When you corner the market, you buy everything that's available in the market."
Dean: Oh my.
Jeff: I'm like, "Whoa! That's like 52 loads of everything that was produced." So, me being the story guy, I start telling that story to my relationships. And they're going, "Well, do you have any of this? Do you have this? Do you have that?" I'm telling you, Dean. We went, and I'm going way too fast. But when I came over here as the seafood guy, left the old company that didn't like relationships, and this is probably really important, within 16, within six months, I'm sorry, within six months, I brought over $18 million worth of annualized business overseas-
Dean: That's amazing.
Jeff: Yeah.
Dean: Yeah.
Jeff: That was the bigger part of the story. I was just like, "Oh my goodness." They really didn't treat their relationships very well when Cheesecake Factor, who's one of my biggest and most cherished customers says, "We're leaving. We're coming with you." I'm like, "When?" They go, "Right now."
Dean: Now.
Jeff: I'm like, "Okay." It was like December of 2018. I go, "I don't have anybody set up as a customer. I don't have this. I don't have that." They go, "Stop." They said, "We want you to know something. We're going with you because you make our problems your problems. Not the other way around."
Dean: Right. I like that. Yeah.
Jeff: They said, "We'll support you. We understand this is a challenge. You'll take care of it."
Dean: That's great.
Jeff: So, we did. The company that I left, that bought us, oddly enough, went into receivership in February, and every one of those customers that I was trying to talk to immediately went, "Okay, what do we do now?" We went from basically zero dollars September 10th to $18 million annualized by the end of February of 2019.
Dean: That's great.
Jeff: Yeah. And it was great. It was fantastic. Things were rolling, rolling along. I'm learning more about the meat business, but I'm still the seafood guy, and then all of a sudden this little crazy thing comes this year called COVID. And the rest is-
Dean: How has that affected your work?
Jeff: If all I sold was seafood, if all I was selling was seafood to the restaurants, I'd be on the corner with a cup and some pencils. Because, the thing that seafood, when you're talking about takeout, and delivery and things like that, seafood doesn't necessarily, unless it's sushi, doesn't necessarily travel well. Fish and chips. "Yeah, we'll be ..." It's sitting in a styrofoam for half an hour. That's not great. Any number of things. So when restaurants reduced menus, seafood was the first thing to go in the places that I was selling.
Even if I wasn't, these restaurants experienced an 80+ percent drop in their sales in March and April, until they started to figure out what to do. I was just like, "Oh my gosh." I knew that we had this huge trading arm and we sold a lot to retail. I knew that these major distributors were going to be stuck with a lot of fresh meat. Since we sold to retail, and the supply chain was broken at the time, I started texting all the buyers at these distributors and said, "Hey, you've got fresh meat in your refrigerator, your freezers, your reefers right now, and you've got fresh meat rolling on the road right now to come to you and deliver on Monday and Tuesday."
Dean: Yeah.
Jeff: "I just want you to know, we are a buyer." You and Joe did that interview with Jay, and I heard it after I did this, so I was super validating. Where you said, in the gold thing, where you had the problem, instead of selling gold they became a buyer of gold.
Dean: Right. Exactly. Yeah.
Jeff: It was the exact same thing. Exact same thing. We became a buyer. Literally from April until, and really kicked in May, but April until, goodness, June, parts of June, we were sill buying product from distributors and turning around and selling it to retailers.
Dean: Wow.
Jeff: Moving and arbitraging product. Honestly, my gross profit number in my plant, if you will, the business I was responsible for, if I was to take a graph, I would look like the Venmo logo. It literally dropped to nothing ...
Dean: And then right back.
Jeff: And then shot back up.
Dean: Wow.
Jeff: Now, I would say that even though restaurants are starting to open and my chains, my customers, like BJ's as well, Restaurants, and several others are coming back and we're self-selling them. A big, big portion of my business is now meat, or beef, and pork and chicken. Just really adjusting my identity to be that guy.
Dean: Porky Products. Right.
Jeff: Yeah, Porky Product. Yeah. And global protein group being the food service arm of this thing is perfect for me. But we're selling the meal kit places. So customers, like I used to be at that Wild Things that are doing lots of meal kits. We're seeling a lot of those people. Honestly, Dean, I'd love your thoughts on this.
Dean: Okay.
Jeff: I'm limited to the amount of offers I can make. But people are so, they've got so many things they're concerned with personally or whatever. Is, I continue to tell stories about, "Oh my gosh, we've got pork bellies that we're selling like crazy right now. Here's why." I'll sell that stuff. But I'm so limited to ... I guess there's just so ... When your cup runneth over it's like how do I choose the story to tell today? Am I exhausting my customer base by continuing to tell stories about different items almost on a daily basis. You know?
Dean: I don't think people can ever get tired of the stories. I think the thing is that you've got ... Would you say, if we were going to overlay the 8-Profit Activators on your business there, if we were going to overlay it, would you say that the majority of your business is after unit business? That's profit activator seven, where it's nurturing lifetime relationships with people, or are you consistently bringing in new customers as well?
Jeff: Honestly, Dean. It is definitely seven. I don't want to sound arrogant or anything like this.
Dean: No.
Jeff: But, I'll be 56 this Friday-
Dean: No, listen. It takes effort for that to be true. That is like, you're in the sweet spot of business that way. You know?
Jeff: Right. I don't ever have to cold call somebody again. I'm losing money if I'm cold calling somebody. The Rolodex, it's how deftly am I working through the proverbial Rolodex. Even customers that are relatively new, I talk to them like I've known them for 20 years.
Dean: Sure. Do you get referrals from these people, or are they in a situation where they don't really mingle with each other, or talk to each other? Or are they competitors of each other? What happens there?
Jeff: There's not an, "Oh, call Jeff for this particular product." It is usually, I worked with somebody at a different restaurant chain, and they moved and said, "Hey, let's call this guy." People move all the time.
Dean: Right. So they just stick with you.
Jeff: And really, just having the same the distributor.
Dean: Right.
Jeff: And the distributor, what I do like these distributors that they don't have as many sales reps as they used to. But, you can always go to the buyer. But instead what I do is I choose, at the distributors, I choose who are their VIPs? And they're usually district sales managers or sales reps that are writing an excess of $10 million a year. I'll go to them and share those stories. Then they'll go, "Hey, I've got 100 accounts. We can go here and sell this." So I've established relationships that are indirect. But, I orchestrate my referrals through the VIPs that are selling to these end users, if you I guess will-
Dean: Got you. How would you estimate the ... I'm trying to get a sense of the scope of your business there. How many relationships would there be in your after unit? How many customers are you serving? How many accounts? Yeah.
Jeff: I have distributor accounts that, because they sell to the end users that I have.
Dean: Right.
Jeff: I would tell you that I have probably more distributors than anybody in this company. I think I'm selling to 80 direct buying accounts. But, as far as end user operators, it's smaller because those are chains. But my relationship base is probably a list of, I would say real strong, strong relationships. I'd say they're probably 50 or 60.
Dean: Wow. Okay. Yeah. When you look at this, two things. There's nothing wrong with your business being after unit. It's a blessing if you can get to that point.
Jeff: Yes.
Dean: All these financial advisors have business that's very after unit based. You know?
Jeff: Right.
Dean: Anything with a recurring element is after unit based. So the goal is to get to that point, that everything is moving along.
Jeff: Exactly.
Dean: What I Look at is I'm wondering then what level of capacity do these, the ones that you already have have? What level of relationship, depth do they have? Would you say that you're getting 100% of the business that they have? I don't know whether-
Jeff: Not even close. Not even close. Yeah.
Dean: Right. So, proximity-
Jeff: When I'm working, like Sysco Food Services before, pre-COVID, was a $56 billion corporation. U.S. Foods is 27 billion or 30 billion or something. It's not even ... On the distributor side, on the end user side, I might have two or three items in these end users with the opportunity always to do five more. But, they have relationships with more than just me as well.
Dean: So I wonder about that, the whole ... One of the most impactful things that I heard was about Gamal Aziz. Do you ever remember me talking about him?
Jeff: No.
Dean: Gamal Aziz was the guy who took over the MGM Grand when he left the other ... What's the big hotel? What was the fanciest hotel in Vegas at one point?
Jeff: At one point, it was Bellagio or the Venetia-
Dean: Bellagio. That was it. Yeah. Yeah. He left Bellagio, and went with Steve Wynn and took over the MGM Grand. One of the things that he did was he had a process where he looked at all of the components of the business, all of the revenue producing components individually. Like, he broke it down to restaurants, and gaming, and conventions, and hotel rooms, and retail, and entertainment shows and all of that stuff, all the revenue generators.
The one thing he would look at it is, instead of looking for an opportunity for 20% improvement across the board, he would ask the question, "How high is high? What's the most that we could be doing in this arena here?" That really led to some interesting kind of thought processes. Because, he would look at the restaurants, for instance, and say, "Okay, we're doing well. Our flagship restaurant is doing $4 million a year. It's not broken It's profitable." Nobody would look at it and say, "Oh, we've got to fix that." But, he would be in the lobby, or the entrance of the hotel night after night, and he would just pay attention, and greet people and see all these people getting into cabs and limos from the hotel.
He'd say, "Where you going tonight?" They'd say, "We're going to Spago," or, "We're going to Nobu," or, "We're going here." They would name these hot spot restaurants that you've got to go to in Las Vegas. He knew that if they had a destination restaurant, a celebrity restaurant in their hotel, then they could have people stay there. Because, they're the biggest hotel in the world. 5,000 rooms. People would stay there, or people would come from other hotels to come there for dinner, and that they could be doing $8 million a year, instead of $4 million in that same footprint, same amount of space.
The distinction that he made was that he treated that $4 million as a loss. He said, "Right now, we're losing $4 million on our $4 million profitable restaurant because we don't have a celebrity chef and a destination restaurant." He went to the board, and he got them to approve him ripping out the restaurant, partnering with Michael Mina and opening Nob Hill. The first year out of the gate, they did $11 million in sales.
Jeff: Wow.
Dean: Then he continued to do that whole thing. He ripped out the, they had the show EFX, which they'd alternate with Tommy Tune and David Cassidy. It was a staple of Las Vegas, right?
Jeff: Right.
Dean: He knew they were doing $28 million a year in ticket sales. He knew if they had a Cirque de Soleil show, that they could be doing $80 million a year. So he went to the board again and said, "Let's get rid of this cash cow show that we have, and let's partner with Cirque de Soleil." So they ripped it all up. Same size theater, same everything. Partner with Cirque de Soleil. Now they do over $100 million a year in ticket sales. Because, he felt like they were losing $50 million by not having the best show that they could possible have.
He went through every element of those things, and it was quite an amazing way of thinking. It's been very impactful. I remember the details of it, because that was all the way back in 2006 that that article came out, and I still talk about it to this day. Because, I'd never heard anybody think about how much you're losing by not winning that excess capacity. So whenever somebody has an after unit thing that is based on relationship, that's what I always look at.
If you say you've got 50 relationships there, just on your self assessment of it, looking at them, what percentage of capacity could they? How high is high on that? What could the depth of that relationship be for you?
Jeff: Absolutely. Absolutely. That's a great, great one. I wrote down, "How much am I losing by not winning?"
Dean: Right. Exactly. By winning. Because otherwise, you feel like you're winning. Because you wouldn't say-
Jeff: Yeah.
Dean: That's the thing. It's not even by not winning.
Jeff: That's interesting.
Dean: It's how much am I losing by complacently winning?
Jeff: Yeah. Right. Wow. That's a great point.
Dean: Right. That's really the thing. Because, that's what gets sneaky, is that you say you're applauding the longevity of the relationships, the consistency of it, the fact that you've got this relationship, and you're maintaining it, and they're consistent. So, in most regards, you would consider that winning.
Jeff: Right.
Dean: But if you look at it in the context of what could we be doing with them, or for them or in collaboration with them? How could you make their problems your problem and increase the level of business that you do with them? What could that be?
Jeff: Yeah. That's -
Dean: I don't know whether that's an opportunity for you. But do you think that that resonates?
Jeff: It absolutely is.
Dean: Like it sounds like it is? Yeah.
Jeff: Yeah, yeah. It does. Honestly, Dean. I think it's psychologically, when we have these relationships, and like you just said, that I'm proud of these longterm relationships that I have, and these are the components of the relationship. So my first priority is to maintain and protect that. It's almost like subconsciously, if I alter the frame of the relationship, the relationship might not be as strong. But that's not true. It's how do I continue to make their problem my problem. I think you're the one that actually taught me this one. And in lack of a problem, create one.
Dean: Right.
Jeff: Meaning not the cause of the problem, but to help them see that, "You don't have any problems? You have no idea how many problems."
Dean: Right.
Jeff: I'm not putting it that way either. But I'm just saying through the course of asking questions, right?
Dean: Yeah.
Jeff: That's what you taught me at the second ever breakthrough blueprint, is you don't go, "Oh my God! You've got a problem here. You've got a problem there." It's just asking them questions that will lead them to understand that it is a problem. It's funny, because I do that but I don't do it as consistently. Because, it would just be like yesterday talking about these, they're called sheet bellies, pork bellies. I'm having this conversation with this guy and he goes, "Yeah, I don't do very much of that stuff."
I said, "It doesn't matter. You've got a truck coming anyway." I go, "Back in my seafood days we said a little fish is better than an empty dish." I said, "If it's five cases a week, I'll take it. I'm not telling you have to do anything." I go, "You already have a truck coming." Then at the very end he goes, "You know what?" He goes, "I've been getting all this stuff from X, Y, Z." He goes, "I'm going to look at that and give it back to you."
Well the phone call that's going to happen today is, "Hey, can you give me that list and let me work on it?"
Dean: Right.
Jeff: From that guy. And by the way, and going back to the question, "What is it about him that has had you buying from him for so long? Was it just availability? Do they do something special or whatever?" And what I'll find is that, "That's just the way we've always done it."
Dean: Inertia. Yeah. An object in motion stays in motion.
Jeff: That's true. That's powerful. And I love that. I'm going to have that question on my computer from now on. How much am I winning by losing? I mean, how much am I losing by winning? How much am I losing by winning?
Dean: It'd be good really to calculate. Just to see as a motivation. It's an interesting, it's a great exercise. It's a really good way to think there. Especially in your after unit. Because, you've already got the relationship.
Jeff: Right. That's really good.
Dean: Are you consciously growing now, or are you maintaining? What's your grand scheme?
Jeff: Yeah. I'm consciously growing. When I have something that works, let's call it sliced three-bone short rib, which are great. They're the things you get at Korean barbecue and that type of thing.
Dean: Yeah.
Jeff: Just a fantastic ... Then, somebody will go, "Well, do you have a sliced chuck roll for the bulgogi?" I'm like, "Yeah, I do. I've got all this stuff."
Dean: What are those ribs that are ... There was this place in Toronto. You mentioned Korean. KOKO is the place in Toronto. I was introduced to, somebody said they were ... I don't know how to describe the cut, but they were thin cut, but they were almost like little Tomahawks that were ... They were already split, and they had the little bone. But then there was the meat at the end kind of thing.
Jeff: Those can be like ... We've done it in the past, the lamb chop lollipop.
Dean: Yes.
Jeff: But that's lamb chop lollipops. Those are-
Dean: No, this was real-
Jeff: Pork. Pork or beef?
Dean: Beef, I think.
Jeff: Yeah. You know what? That's a good question. I know that that probably sounds like a different cut of a short rib.
Dean: I think he said like a St. Louis. St. Louis cut or something-
Jeff: St. Louis! The St. Louis rib.
Dean: What is that? Describe that to me, and then I'll tell you if that's the one-
Jeff: I'm going to tell you. From the rib, from the beef, from the steer, you have this large rib, and they call it the spare rib.
St. Louis, and it goes all the way down in notches, like you know you can see how ribs would kind of narrow down.
Dean: Yes.
Jeff: St. Louis ribs, they square them off and they trim them off. Then they would cut those for you. Yeah, a St. Louis rib is a spare rib. It starts as a spare rib, but then it's just a really square-
Dean: They're kind of dainty ribs. They're not-
Jeff: They can be. Those are called light ribs. We call those light ribs in the business.
Dean: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But they're, I mean so good, they were so good.
Jeff: They can be. If they're cooked well, if they're cooked well and they're done well. Yeah. Koreans are big into their ribs, that's for sure.
Dean: Yeah.
Jeff: It's a big piece of it. And we do, again, we do, as far as ribs, spare ribs, baby backs, all that type of stuff, millions of pounds a week of all of it.
Dean: Wow.
Jeff: So for me, if I'm having, like I was telling you, like the short rib or whatever, and I'm having that success at a distributor, I turn around and say, "Hey, man. We are really crushing it up here in this particular region on these items. Can we get together with your Asian specialty person? Are you already buying these things? Let's work together." I'll tell the story of how they've got the Asian specialists going out where they weren't able to ever penetrate this type of business with these type, we've made it so competitive that they're actually penetrating business and growing in the time of COVID. They're just like, "Whoa, geez. Get me that information."
For me, that's how I grow. That's how I grow, Dean. I succeed in one place, and then I share it somewhere else. When you talk about, do they talk with each other? They do. But I'm actually orchestrating that referral, that word of mouth by saying, "Hey, you've been really successful here, and this is why." So, yeah, I'm in growth mode
Dean: Yeah, yeah. Part of that thing is the metrics of the after unit. Looking at, I've been calling them proprietary metrics, because every after unit generally has a unique way of looking at things. But the basic ones of return on relationship, like if you look at the people that you have and the ones that you maintain or the ones that have maybe not ordered in a while, or that you had but have slipped off kind of thing, or are all of your relationships on a once somebody's in, they're kind of ordering consistently every week, or month? What's the cadence of your relationships with someone?
Jeff: The relationships, the strong relationships that I have that are active relationships with me right now are ordering on a regular basis.
Dean: What kind of cadence is regular for your-
Jeff: At least monthly. At least monthly.
Dean: Got it. Yeah.
Jeff: I've got one particular distributor where I'm doing a lot of this Asian business, Asian style business. It's weekly. It's weekly. Honestly, Dean. I'm going to tell you. That complacency thing rears its head very quietly. I think that even the one that's buying from me weekly, I just know that there's more to do. I just know there's more to do but I'm like, "Oh, man. they're buying from me weekly. I don't need to mess around with that."
Dean: Right.
Jeff: I kind of look somewhere else. It's like, "Whoa. Hey, wait a minute." Even when we grew from zero to 18 million annualized, I can tell you by probably almost to the end of the year, I didn't realize how little I was really working until COVID hit and I had to really get down and work. That does. How much am I losing by winning is something that I need to ask. What am I not getting here? Who's getting my business and how can I capture that?
Dean: Right, right. That's great.
Jeff: That's really powerful. But the return on relationships, I'm going to go back through again. There were some that didn't transition over to the new company when I left, because there was somebody waiting in the wings.
Dean: Right, I got you.
Jeff: And snapped that up. They were on a regular cadence with them. But there's business that I do have, and I think that's where I really need to focus is that penetration part of the business of what's going on.
Dean: Yeah.
Jeff: One of my national chains that just buy seafood from me is now looking at a slice chuck roll for their Philly cheese steak.
Dean: Right.
Jeff: Just because of the story I was telling.
Dean: Yeah.
Jeff: I'm not sure it was purposeful for me. I'm just sharing those stories, and something manifests out of it.
Dean: Right. Yes. Yes.
Jeff: I think I'm okay with that, as long as I continue to make offers. When I stop making offers is when I stop growing.
Dean: How do you communicate with your after unit? How are you communicating with these people? Is it by email, or do you mail them? How does it ...
Jeff: Email and phone. Then, getting together. I just started getting together again with people personally face-to-face. Those have been ... Or, mask-to-mask, as the case may be. Intimacy, scaling this kind of intimacy, you really, it doesn't scale. I remember you and James Schramko talking about that with my videos that I used to do.
Dean: I loved that.
Jeff: And how were all trying to put the name in there, and all that kind of stuff. It's like you really can't scale that level of intimacy.
Dean: Right.
Jeff: Like that. So, that's really kind of it. I can call customers and share stuff with them, and it's almost like the ones that I'm closest to, if I tried to say, "Hey, I want to sell you something today," they'd be like, "What the hell is the matter with you?"
Dean: Right.
Jeff: Like, "What?"
Dean: Yeah. No. Exactly.
Jeff: In these types of relationships, there's a purpose for me sharing the story, but as a natural response of what's going on. It's definitely that same kind of intimacy that I seek in those relationships.
Dean: Yeah. Let's talk about your before unit.
Jeff: Okay.
Dean: Okay. What before unit?
Jeff: Just okay.
Dean: That's so funny. Are you doing-
Jeff: But ... Go ahead.
Dean: Are you doing anything in the before unit, or is it all growing internal, like after unit stuff? The reason I'm asking this, if we think about part of the, one of the fundamental things we think about about the after unit, or the before unit, is as a separate business. A separate division.
Jeff: Yeah.
Dean: I know that, because often when you get very busy in the during and after unit, that your after unit relationships are keeping you on your toes serving everybody, keeping all those relationships happy and everything. I know that sometimes the initial reaction to thinking about a before unit is, "Oh, boy. I don't have time for that," or, "I've got my hands full here." But the reality is that some of it, we're talking now about people that you don't have a relationship with. You've got 50 relationships right now that are doing a really great job with you. If we were just to, not to actually have to do anything with it, but to just identify a number of potential clients for you, how big is that universe?
Jeff: Dean, it's uncountable.
Dean: Uncountable. Like the stars in the sky.
Jeff: It really is. Honestly, what I end up doing in my before unit is going to to those people that are consultants, or advisors, or influencers and sharing stories with them.
Dean: Yeah. Because, all I want at that point is for these guys, even if they're working with a brand new customer, I want them to call me and say, "Hey, what can you do for me here?"
Jeff: They're really carrying, I've utilized that influencer model, which I'm a champion of. I use that influencer model utilizing my VIPs and my consultants. So they might introduce me to people that I've never known before, and are comfortable letting me talk to them and deal with that.
Dean: Yeah.
Jeff: So, that's really how I do it. Honestly-
Dean: How many of these consultants are there? If you take that, that's a viable marketplace, right? Like when you look at it.
Jeff: Yeah. There's ... If I was to probably look and do a thing in LinkedIn, I could find hundreds of these guys.
Dean: Right. Yeah.
Jeff: Hundreds of these guys.
Dean: It's kind of an interesting thing, if you were to think about those guys as a potential target, and I get that because each of them may have many, many clients, many possible key accounts. When you start to think about those guys, just identifying them, how many of them know who you are right now?
Jeff: Some of my 50 or 60 are these guys.
Dean: Okay. Yeah.
Jeff: So they know me very well. They've known me for 20, 30 years.
Dean: Yeah.
Jeff: But as far as consultants, I don't know if they don't know me, but I'm sure we are one or two degrees of separation away from having a common acquaintance or friend.
Dean: Yeah. Got it.
Jeff: Because, you can't be fourth generation in an industry and not have connections that go pretty deep.
Dean: Right, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jeff: That would be as ... If they don't know me, like know me, know me, they would know of me pretty quickly. They'd go, "Oh, yeah. Okay." That type of thing.
Dean: Yeah.
Jeff: Yeah.
Dean: But you're not in their Rolodex, or you're not ... Maybe yet.
Jeff: I'm not in their Rolodex at this point. Yeah. Exactly.
Dean: Okay. Part of what I would think about that is the ... You realize who those people would be. Like, are there ... What would be a median or average revenue for a relationship like that that would come from something like that? Like if you had one of those referred you to someone, what's kind of like the lay of the land on the low side or the high side? Medians of how much revenue that would be worth if you were to get a new customer-
Jeff: The low side would probably be at about $100,000 a year. High side would be probably two or three million a year.
Dean: When you look at that, then it's one of them. Minimum could be 100,000. But what kind of margins would you have on something like that that would be-
Jeff: Margins are low. They'd be low double digit, meaning low, like in a 10%, even single digit, depending on what kind of protein and how much they're moving. I'll move something for three cents but make $3,000 on it. You know?
Dean: I get it. Yeah, no, I understand. Each one, so a relationship might be worth 10,000 to 200,000 revenue to you. That's what I mean by-
Jeff: In profit, it's gross profit. Yeah.
Dean: Yeah.
Jeff: In gross profit.
Dean: Right. With a median around ... What I'm trying to get is to do the math on what it would be-
Jeff: It's about 500,000. It's about 500,000. It would be about 50K in gross profit.
Dean: Okay, so there we go. If we were to land one it's worth $50,000. What I look at is if we were to say, to identify could there be 1,000 of these consultants, potentially? Or 500?
Jeff: Yeah. Yes.
Dean: What would make sense? Right? Yeah.
Jeff: Yeah, I think that honestly, and you know this to be the truth as well. Somebody that's been lifelong working for a restaurant chain or working at a distributor and all of a sudden loses his job has become a consultant.
Dean: Yeah.
Jeff: What I would say, as far as active client active accounts, I would say there's probably, worth kind of dealing with, there's probably 300.
Dean: That's perfect. Let's say there's 300 of them. What would be really amazing is if these 300 people all had you in their Rolodex. They all had you at the ready and they knew exactly what you could do for them. Right?
Jeff: Right.
Dean: This is one of the great things of having what we call visible prospects. You've got visible prospects you can vote to them and say, "These 300 people right here. John Jones at Porky Products is a potential guy for us."
Jeff: Yes.
Dean: So, you can communicate right to them.
Jeff: Right.
Dean: Do these guys, do they typically ... They would have a physical address somewhere that you would have access to, through their LinkedIn or whatever.
Jeff: Yeah.
Dean: So, part of this thing is to establish a brand in their mind. We need to establish the Jeff brand in their mind. I don't know whether you've heard me talk about this. I finally have come to a definition of what brand is. Because, I've really thought a lot about it. It's always a question. What is brand? I look at a brand now as the acronym of, when we say we're trying to establish a brand, that's what we're trying to do is we're trying to establish a buying reflex affecting now decisions. That's what a brand is, if you do that right.
That's what Coca-Cola has done better than anybody. They've established a buying reflex. That when somebody says, "What would you like to drink with that?" "I'll have a coke." Millions, billions of people all over the world, that's the established buying reflex. When the now decision of, "What am I going to have to drink?" pops its head up. What we want to do is with those 300 people, we want to identify what's going to be the trigger that would be the now decision that we want to be the first thought in their mind for.
Jeff: Right.
Dean: I had something that was, I'd say it was both amazing and startling at the same time. A couple of years ago, in my real estate forum, with our GoGo agents, somebody posted in the forum and said, "Does anybody know where I can get carpet replaced today? Because, we have a closing tomorrow and the painters just spilled paint all over the carpet, and it's ruined. My mind, without any conscious though, Jeff, started singing the Empire Flooring jingle. I don't know whether you get those in California.
Jeff: Yes.
Dean: But for years of 800-588-2300, Empire.
Jeff: Empire.
Dean: Today.
Jeff: Empire, today.
Dean: And I realized that that message had been smuggled into my brain without my permission, and had been living there rent free for over 20 years just waiting to get triggered by somebody saying, "Where can I get same-day carpet?" "Same day carpet? 800-588 ..."
Jeff: 2300. Empire-
Dean: It was a reflex.
Jeff: It's been in my brain, too.
Dean: It was a buying reflex. I've never thought of it, you know? I've just thought about, it's going on all around us. When you start to see now, if I ever got a crack in my windshield, I'm sure my brain would be going, "Safelite repairs, Safelite replace."
Jeff: Safelite repairs. It does. Yeah. That's where I went! I got a crack in my windshield. I'm like, "I've got to call Safelite." Is there anybody else?
Dean: Exactly. That's exactly it, right? Now, you look at it, and I start to think, okay, what would those 300 people, what would be the now decision, the conversation, right? All these decisions are coming by some stimulus, some conversation. Something is going to trigger that they need to make this decision or they need to reach out to somebody, or they have a need. What would be a couple of those things, or is there one specific thing that you, if we could successfully smuggle the equivalent of the 800-588-2300 meme-
Jeff: 2300, Empire.
Dean: Into their brains.
Jeff: Yeah.
Dean: What would be the occasion that you would want that to be triggered by?
Jeff: At some point, when they're talking about anything that's walking, flying or swimming, as far as protein, we've got all these taglines sitting in our minds.
Dean: Somebody's talking about where do we get it, "Where can we get it?" That's got to be the thing, right? Is that they're considering a new line, or they're considering price shopping, or switching, or something, right?
Jeff: Yeah.
Dean: Or some new product. We need something new, or we need some kind of thing. Those would be the kinds of things that would be potential.
Jeff: Yeah. I guess we've been working on ... The biggest challenge we have in marketing here is articulating what we do and what we mean to our customer, because Global Protein Group is literally the company that says, "We have all this purchasing power from the trading company, so we can buy better than anybody, but we can actually, we can produce this product specifically for you, so you're not only buying great," because usually if somebody's like, "Okay, I want this custom product," that means they're going to pay more for it, right?
Dean: Right.
Jeff: Here, we can actually get a custom product and get them a better price than the other custom product guy, right?
Dean: Right.
Jeff: Because, he's not attached to 800 or so million dollars in purchases. He's not putting over a million pounds of meet on the road every single week. He isn't the top one, or two or three customer for the largest pork and beef producers in the world. That's really-
Dean: Do you think that ...
Jeff: How to articulate that is still kind of the ... I guess I just did.
Dean: Well, I mean, but there it is. Yeah, you feel like you have insight, hard earned experience, that would you be the best guy in the world to answer the questions of any of these consultants?
Jeff: Yeah, absolutely.
Dean: Yeah.
Jeff: I think that the way to present that too is, in a way, I guess, is to be able to say, "Look, whether we ever do business together or not, it's my obligation to present options, opportunities and offers on everything you're doing."
Dean: Yes.
Jeff: And it doesn't mean that because I gave you that answer, I lay claim to your decision. I just, I want to be the guy you call first. And so, in order to do that-
Dean: Did you ever see, do you remember the full-page ad that was running in Success Magazine, the nine-word email ads?
Jeff: Yeah.
Dean: We've used that format now in a lot of ways with people who, as an opportunity to kind of distribute an article, education, to a distribution of 200 people. Imagine, this is part of the thing is, where I was going with that. If you found those 300 people, and each month you were able to send them an oversized postcard that's an 8.5X11 sized postcard. And on one side is a full-page article, "Education, insight, analysis," whatever you think would be valuable to these people.
That was the question that I asked when I was writing that ad was, "What would I do if I wanted to make this the most valuable page in the magazine? How can I pay for somebody's lifetime subscription to Success Magazine by them just reading this article?"
Jeff: Wow.
Dean: The nine-world email is the fastest magic trick that I know that somebody can get instantly, test and get a result. I shared the entire strategy. Everything that they would need to know to do it with an offer to get even more, if they wanted to, with a free copy of the email mastery book. I wonder if the way I would be thinking about this is if you were to send a postcard that would be on one side an article like that insight, education, stories, case studies, all things that are going to be valuable to them, with an offer of some anchor thing.
Like a, I just had a big discovery of just offering market data to people is something I think to offer somebody your report on something, prices, or a catalog, or some sort of market data that would be valuable to those people as a way to trigger this conversation for them. But then on the backside of the postcard ... Do you have a podcast that you do for the industry or for-
Jeff: No.
Dean: These guys?
Jeff: No.
Dean: That might be the kind of thing.
Jeff: It could be. These guys, the one thing about meat men is that they sell the same ... Getting these guys, the USDA, actually, as a packer, you have to post your pricing. You have to post what you're selling these things for. The USDA compiles that every morning and afternoon. Urner Barry does the same thing. It's funny, beef, it's what for dinner, you know the big, for the beef council, they've done all those commercials and stuff like that.
Dean: Yeah.
Jeff: They actually take all that information, and they put it into a website, and they update people. But what I'm thinking is, is that we can tap into the wisdom of some of these guys. And every morning, I'm on a call with a guy that we respectfully call the Warren Buffet of the meat business. He will tell us, but he's one of the guys that if it was more than the 30 people on that call, he'd never speak.
Dean: Right. I've got it.
Jeff: But to take that wisdom, because I think at some point we're drowning in information, but we're starving for wisdom.
Dean: Yeah. Right.
Jeff: To be able to make heads or tails of stuff. That's really, you mention that, and it's funny because another thing that I started to do, but I didn't do I consistently, is the deep dive report. It was kind of the seafood thing where, "Helping restaurateurs navigate the waters in a sea of uncertainty," was the tagline.
Dean: Right. Exactly. Yeah.
Jeff: It was talking about what was going on. The first edition that went out to just a few people was, "WTH is going on with shrimp?" And this was a bunch of years ago when there was a lot of mortality rate stuff, and it had the picture of George Costanza saying, "The ocean called. They're all out of shrimp."
Dean: Right. Exactly.
Jeff: All of this stuff. And it was fun to do-
Dean: - the jerk store called."
Jeff: Yeah, right?
Dean: "They're out of you."
Jeff: "I had sex with your wife!" Yeah, see. We could do Seinfelds all day. But, yeah, it became ... I think it was one of those things where we got so caught up at the seventh profit activator in the during unit that those tend to lose their way. I just needed to figure out. Like the postcard thing to me is the most simple. It's like, "Hey, guys. Every month we put this postcard together."
Dean: Yeah.
Jeff: I can go through my sales navigator on LinkedIn, and we can send this to people that we can start to rent space in their head, whether they know it or not.
Dean: Right. Then, you're also - cookies though, right? If you think about what would be the triggers, like why would they call you and make I easy for them, instead of saying, "Hey, if you want anything to eat or drink there's lots of stuff in the fridge," which that's the equivalent of saying, "If there's anything I can help you with, feel free to reach out to me or call me any time."
Jeff: Yeah. No.
Dean: Figure out what are going to be the things. Are they going to want to get a price on something? Are they going to want to get a question about a particular product? What would be something that you could package up as a cookie to make I feel like they're not making you go out of your way for them?
Jeff: There's a way to make this thing seasonal, or evergreen, but seasonal where we can have a postcard that we can send to these meal kit places, and the things that we can do specifically for them, and how we can handle making sure that this product is ready to go by the time they get it. And all they have to do is sort it in there, put it in their boxes. There's ways to do that.
It's funny, because the would you like a cookie thing for me, I've turned into kind of being a little bit cynical. When somebody introduces themselves to me or they know me and they go, "How can I help you?" I'm like, "How did you helping me become my burden?"
Dean: Right, exactly. Why do I have to do your work? Yeah.
Jeff: Yo know? Like "Why aren't you telling me?"
Dean: Like that's the worst. "What do you want for dinner?" Yeah. Even that. Nobody wants to ...
Jeff: Yeah. Forget it. I'd rather make my own than tell somebody what I want.
Dean: Why are you burdening me with what you're going to fix me for dinner? Yeah.
Jeff: Oh my goodness. But that's a good one. I'm going to run with that for sure. You've given me so much. I've taken pages of notes here.
Dean: I just look at it, if you just do the math that if each one of these is worth $50,000, if you get one. I look at it that those 300, if we can identify them, are going to be the 300. That they're going to have a need at some point. And, if you take that, let's call it $2.
I'm going way out on the thing here. It's probably double what it actually costs. But let's say that it's $2 each to mail that postcard to them, the oversized, nice postcard to them. That you're talking about a $7,000 investment over the course of a year to do it that you could mail this way for five years.
Jeff: Yeah. And $15 million in profit potential on an annual basis.
Dean: That's what I mean is that's the thing.
Jeff: That's powerful. That's a good one. That's something we need to dig in. Around here, and I guess rightfully so, they have an old website that's out of date. So, a lot of the focus is like, "How do we do the website, and do they ..." I'm like, "Guys, people only go to the website for the phone number commonly, or to validate their decision to buy from you."
Dean: Yeah.
Jeff: But they're never going there to say, "I'm going to start looking to ..." We need to go right to them.
Dean: Yeah.
Jeff: Yeah, not leave it up to them to find us.
Dean: No. I like it.
Jeff: That's good. I like it too. Dan, this has been fantastic.
Dean: It's always fun, Jeff.
Jeff: It really is.
Dean: It's always fun.
Jeff: It really is, man.
Dean: Once every four years.
Jeff: I don't say, "Ask that guy," anymore.
Dean: Right, exactly. That's funny.
Jeff: That's so funny. You're like, "Why would you say that about me? I'm the nicest guy in the world." I'm like, "You totally are." Just, I was mad at myself that there was somebody that could live by the rules of, "I know I'm being successful when ..."
Dean: That's funny.
Jeff: I use that to this day. "I know I'm successful with my customer or client when ..."
Dean: Yeah.
Jeff: "Now fill in the bullet points." They're like, "Uh, okay. Can I get back to you?"
Dean: That's so-
Jeff: And then I use the old Jay Abraham, "You don't have to answer me right now, but if you did have to answer me right now, what would be your answer?"
Dean: I love it. I love it.
Jeff: Yeah. Those are good.
Dean: That's great.
Jeff: Dean, this has been fantastic. I really appreciate you.
Dean: Awesome. It's always fun.
Jeff: And what you do. Yeah. It's just great to hear your voice and talk to you.
Dean: Stop losing so much money by winning.
Jeff: Stop. Yeah, no more winning. I mean, wait. All right, man. Thank you, Dean. Thank you so much.
Dean: I'll be talking to you later. Okay, Jeff. Bye.
Jeff: Take care. Bye bye.
Dean: There we have it. Another great episode. Thanks for listening in. If you want to continue the conversation, want to go deeper in how the 8-Profit Activators can apply to your business, two things you can do. Right now, you can go to MoreCheeseLessWhiskers.com, and you can download a copy of the More Cheese Less Whiskers book, and you can listen to the back episodes, of course, if you're just listening here on iTunes.
Secondly, the thing that we talk about in applying all of the 8-Profit Activators are part of the Breakthrough DNA process. You can download a book, and a score card and watch a video all about the 8-Profit Activators at breakthroughdna.com. That's a great place to start the journey in applying this scientific approach to growing your business.
That's really the way we think about Breakthrough DNA, as an operating system that you can overlay on your existing business, and immediately look for insights there. That's it for this week. Have a great week, and we will be back next time with another episode of More Cheese Less Whiskers.