Rethink Your Marketing Budget: Is Your Strategy Driving Real Returns? [Endless Customers Podcast Ep. 72]

This transcript has been generated by AI and not checked for accuracy.

Tom DiScipio
0:00:00
Most people are looking at spreadsheets and looking at their budgets and thinking of it as a collection of numbers, but if that's the way that you're thinking about it, you're missing the point.

Alex Winter
0:00:13
♪♪♪ Welcome back to Endless Customers,

Alex Winter
0:00:18
the show that teaches you how to earn trust and win more business in the age of AI. I'm your host, Alex Winter, and today we're joined by a very special guest. He's our new client advisor and also a partner, OG here at Impact, one of the owners here at Impact, Tom Discipio. Welcome to the show, my friend.

Tom DiScipio
0:00:40
Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm so glad to be here. I spend a lot of time in this back room, but not in this particular seat. No, not... But this is the first of many. We've been itching to get you on the show. You have great insights. You've

Tom DiScipio
0:00:52
literally helped scale and build what Impact is today, and I'm really excited to pick your brain. So thanks for being on the show. Yeah, of course.

Alex Winter
0:00:58
All right. So we have a really good topic today, and I think it's something that a lot

Tom DiScipio
0:01:01
of listeners and viewers are going to be interested in. We're talking about budgeting.

Alex Winter
0:01:05
Money.

Tom DiScipio
0:01:06
Money. That's what it's all about, right? That's what we're in business for. But ultimately, budgeting sometimes seems like a blanket topic, kind of a boring topic. We're going to start crunching numbers, but that's not really the focus for today. The focus for today is for business owners to start thinking about into 2025 and beyond what they should be allocating and where and how to really maximize their budget so that they can scale and they can grow.

Tom DiScipio
0:01:31
So what's a good spot to start? And what do you normally... You interface with a lot of clients, so what do you tell people when this question comes up and they start talking about good old budgeting. Yeah, I think one of the earliest places to start, and it sounds sort of cliche to say it, is to try to think about budget as investment. And budget is there as a guideline for you to follow and make sure you're within, but at the end of the day, you've got to make sure that what

Tom DiScipio
0:01:59
budgeting has a return, right, over time. And so thinking about it more as an investment and understanding that we're setting these budgets primarily because we want to put a system in place that's going to help us grow. Absolutely. It's important to remember that what you're doing here, yes, has to take into

Tom DiScipio
0:02:20
consideration everything that's going on currently in the business, but also has to look forward and anticipate, but still be a guideline, a filter to work within. You have more experience with this than I do, just in the roles that we have here at Impact, but for me, the feeling that I get is a lot of companies, as they first jump off and they start to scale and grow, you're giving them a fire hose. You're just trying to make it happen, make it work.

Tom DiScipio
0:02:49
So sometimes budgeting can be an afterthought, or isn't really front and center, and obviously you don't want to spend too much. Everyone has P&Ls and all that stuff, but where do you start that conversation of like, okay, you want to scale,

Tom DiScipio
0:03:00
you're starting to get some revenue coming in, things are starting to hook up, and that's wonderful, but are you really maximizing it? Are you really investing in your future? How do you start to paint that picture so that business owners and leaders see the value

Tom DiScipio
0:03:12
in sitting down and really strategically looking

Alex Winter
0:03:14
at their budgets and figuring out how to maximize

Alex Winter
0:03:16
them?

Tom DiScipio
0:03:17
Yeah, I think one of the places you have to start is looking at what's currently working and not working within the business. A lot of times when I talk to folks in the front end of conversations, before we either work with them or they take action on something, they're telling me about things that aren't currently working. And so there has to be an evaluation process to say like, do I know what's working? Do I not?

Tom DiScipio
0:03:44
And is this something I need to consider going forward in the future? Again, I'll use that term investment or budget. And from there, it's really, really important to understand where are you trying to get to and to work backwards into a budget to help you get in the right mindset of you can't always just do what you've done before because with many companies, they've had a set budget for marketing for a long time. Maybe it's X amount of dollars per month and that's just what we do and we're going to

Tom DiScipio
0:04:19
continue to do it. But when I end up talking with folks, those things aren't working and they need to start thinking differently. So one of the best ways you can do that is to establish some targets, establish some goals, things you need to accomplish, and then work backwards into a budget from there.

Tom DiScipio
0:04:35
Yeah, wow, that's a really good point. It almost seems so simple, but it's really not, because sometimes it's hard to address those problems. Like it's hard to look in the mirror and say, hey, these are the things that aren't working, versus looking at all the things that are working, right?

Tom DiScipio
0:04:49
So how do you start to bridge those gaps in a meaningful way that like, I'm just imagining when you're talking to clients, like there must be an artful dance where you want to establish these problems so there's relatability and also a chance to like really define these problems but you don't want to offend and like what do those conversations look like for you as you navigate that? Yeah, it's a lot of it is about what's important right now and what's going to be important for the business over the next 12 to 24 months.

Tom DiScipio
0:05:20
A lot of times you're going to learn and uncover everything you need to know in order to make good decisions about where your money is going to go. You're right, it's so simple but it's interesting when I have a lot of these conversations, a lot of folks are like, I never actually thought about it like that. I haven't looked that far ahead or considered something like this being a part of my budget. So, it's such a fundamental thing that I think folks might forget. Just stop and look 12 to 24 months

Tom DiScipio
0:05:54
out and understand where you're trying to go. Yeah. That's a good point. You mentioned marketing budgets earlier and I think that's a good conversation point because I've heard that before too. You know, I'm like, that's just the budget for marketing. That's what we do. And I've even heard marketer CMO say like, we got to spend all of our budget because

Tom DiScipio
0:06:09
if we don't, then we won't get as much next year. Like that's a recurring theme that we hear a lot. So when you start to talk about marketing and budgeting that specifically, what is, what does that look like? And I think the question is like, what different directions can you go? Because marketing is a blanket statement and every business could mean a different thing.

Tom DiScipio
0:06:26
And the strategy is different from B2B to B2C and all these different facets. So when you start to paint that picture, what does that look like? Yeah, so it's interesting. I'm a little biased obviously because I work at Impact and it's my company. But one of the trends that we started to see in the early 2020s, if you will, is many of these larger organizations, corporations, fortune

Tom DiScipio
0:06:55
1000s, there's a trend that they're starting to bring their marketing more in-house because over time they've been, you know, over the past many, many years, they've been working with these external ad agencies or marketing agencies or content firms and there's the data showing that many of them are starting to bring that in-house. Now we've been kind of preaching the same thing through the AskUAnswer for 10 plus years now.

Tom DiScipio
0:07:22
So where I'm going with this is the market in general is moving to a position where you should be considering it in-house and it's shifting your mindset from, am I just going to outsource this in the way that I've always been doing or should I consider investing in building a team and building it internally? And what's interesting about that The budget itself then sort of expands just beyond marketing because You're building a team and that team needs to be great and they need to be trained

Tom DiScipio
0:08:08
and so some other things to consider here are is It possible your budgets could work together with other parts of your organization or other budgets that you have So how does a training budget align with marketing? How does a sales budget align with a training budget? So on and so forth and thinking about that more holistically. And there's overlap too because we are talking about budgets but there's also the bigger picture we talk all the time about how does your sales and marketing team interact with

Tom DiScipio
0:08:40
each other and how do these, how is there overlap and in some organizations there aren't, there's like almost a division line between the two so it's really trying to bridge those gaps and I think to your point bringing it in-house, I haven't met a business owner that doesn't like control or that doesn't like keeping their brand as close to the chest as possible because it's their baby and they want it to be as authentic and true to their vision as possible, right? So bringing people in-house seems like a natural step to take

Tom DiScipio
0:09:05
some of that control back and to really have these experts in the seat, right? So I guess a good question for you is like how do you go about doing that? And you've helped a lot of companies do this, but it's easier said than done. Because there's a lot of logistics in, you're hiring staff, you're bringing people in,

Tom DiScipio
0:09:21
you have to have the budgets for it, the strategy for it. So where does somebody start off like, okay, I get the ownership piece, I wanna rethink my budget and I wanna make these changes. Where does someone start? Like how does that even look?

Alex Winter
0:09:35
Yeah, it's a big question. It's an important one. But again, I think it starts with the mindset and

Tom DiScipio
0:09:36
you've already touched on this is that, you know, maybe you're in a position where you've been working with an outside agency for a number of years thus far and while it's been fine, maybe you haven't seen the results that you've been looking for and so you're wondering what are the other options that I have. And of course, building that functionality and capability inside your organization, it requires a mindset shift to something like that. And from there, then it's understanding what does that team or what do those people need

Tom DiScipio
0:10:22
in order to be successful.

Alex Winter
0:10:24
Yeah.

Tom DiScipio
0:10:25
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And the mindset shift is really huge. That's the biggest piece because traditionally you always outsource to an agency and you bring the creatives in and you pay them the retainer or whatever that looks like for your business and they bring the ideas and they bring the content, right? And this shift really is an investment. You were talking about making an investment earlier. This is really an investment because there is a lot of upfront cost.

Tom DiScipio
0:10:52
But the return on that investment, long-term when you're talking 12 months, 24 months, we've seen it time and time again what it can do and the scale that it can bring to these companies. Yeah, and I think one of the unsung benefits here in relation to working with an agency,

Tom DiScipio
0:11:07
and again, there are points in time where companies need agencies, but at the end of the day, you have to remember that you're investing in the growth of the people at those agencies. And while it might provide a short-term cost reduction or a level at which you can pay

Tom DiScipio
0:11:29
that's more palatable, you're not investing in your own team and your own people and your own company as an asset, right? You can think of it as your company is an asset. So by shifting the mindset here and realizing and looking at your company like an asset, in many cases you want to invest in that asset.

Tom DiScipio
0:11:50
And part of that means making sure you can have talent on your team that can execute. And of course with that talent comes payroll and all the other expenses, health benefits, and spending time with that person. But to your point, over time, that asset should pay dividends. Should pay big dividends. That's the ultimate goal.

Tom DiScipio
0:12:12
What do you say to business owners that maybe have read They Ask, You Answer or Endless Customers and they're fired up and they think they can just do it themselves and they don't really budget for like coaching and training or having some outside help to really navigate the hiring process and getting these people on. And they think like, I got this,

Tom DiScipio
0:12:31
I'll find a content manager, I'll get a videographer, I can do all those things. And some people can. Some people can pull it off, but more often than not, it's more complex than you think. And most people aren't necessary specialists in those areas.

Tom DiScipio
0:12:43
So like anything, if it was me, if I go to the gym, I can throw some weights around, but I'd much rather have a trainer show me how to do things properly. Does the same thing apply here? And then how can business owners start to think about that

Alex Winter
0:12:54
and budget for that accordingly?

Tom DiScipio
0:12:56
Yeah, I think it's a conversation of like,

Alex Winter
0:12:59
can you do it?

Tom DiScipio
0:13:00
And can you do it sustainably? So that little word at the end there, sustainably. The answer is I would never want to shut down anyone's excitement around getting started with this. I was actually just speaking with someone earlier who's starting to gather a whole bunch of questions

Tom DiScipio
0:13:17
that they're going to work on answering through articles and videos and stuff like that. That's great, yeah. But the other part of that is, how sustainable is that effort with everything else you've most likely got on your plate as the CEO,

Tom DiScipio
0:13:31
as an entrepreneur, or somebody who's leading a marketing team? And the answer is, what we've seen is it's not very sustainable. So yes, kick things off, get the momentum going, but the important part is budgeting for something

Tom DiScipio
0:13:50
that can make it sustainable for you. Yeah, so can we talk, this is a great segue, can we talk a little bit about endless customers? And when we talk about coaching and training, how you get people to see the value and why why coaching and training is important and like the cost associated with it and how they can budget for that and start to think long-term about

Tom DiScipio
0:14:08
The consistency the accountability and the reason why you need to have they have this as a way to take positive steps forward Yeah, I think you know a lot of it just comes down to Results. Yeah, you know Alex, you know you were here when Impact was the do it for you agency. Folks would hire us and we would execute the place for them. And the results were good and we did well.

Tom DiScipio
0:14:35
And it wasn't until we realized that the philosophies of endless customers and they ask you answer. When we're teaching folks how to do this, the results are phenomenal. Right. And so exponentially, exponentially. So it's, it's reinforcing that and making sure that that's, that's the mindset going forward. Yeah. So we were talking about coaching and training. And I think this is something cool that we should let the audience and our viewers know. I really admire this about you. I'm not blowing smoke when I say this, but you and Bob Ruffalo, the CEO here at impact, you both have always invested in the six and a half years I've been here at impact. You both have always invested in the six and a half years I've been here at Impact, you've always invested

Tom DiScipio
0:15:19
in outside trainers, consultants, you always are looking for ways to have professionals and experts come in with an outside perspective to bring it to the organization to help grow, to help personally, professionally, all the things. And I love that about you guys.

Tom DiScipio
0:15:33
I think that's part of why Impact is still impacting doing what we're doing. We love you. a lot of businesses doing. Some businesses do, I think successful ones definitely do, but not everybody does that,

Tom DiScipio
0:15:44
not everyone maybe is in a position to be able to do that currently. How does that play into, when we're talking about budgets, like how do you budget for that, and if somebody wants to implement something like Endless Customers, and they need a coach or a trainer,

Alex Winter
0:15:56
like what does that look like, how does that play out?

Tom DiScipio
0:15:59
Yeah, well, I think the first part, kind of going back to mindset, is it's one thing to invest in the do. We're gonna invest in doing this. But there's another element, which is investing in the how to do the thing.

Tom DiScipio
0:16:16
And I think that's what Bob and I always valued about having coaches and mentors and outside folks teaching us how to do this, is we're dramatically shortening our path to the performance of the company or the performance of our team. And that's exactly why coaching and training is so valuable is because the people that

Tom DiScipio
0:16:40
are doing it have gone through the process, have seen the end of the movie, and your goal is to get to the end of the movie as fast as possible and enjoy it along the way and avoid the hardship. And so that's where this idea of having mentorship, having coaching, being taught how to do the thing is as important as the initial investment

Tom DiScipio
0:17:04
and commitment to actually do. Yeah, I'm going a little off script but I have to ask you this. So Bob and yourself and the rest of the leadership team, do you sit down with Marcus and look at your fiscal year for next year and go, we should allocate X amount of dollars

Tom DiScipio
0:17:19
but maybe we don't know what it is yet but this is our bucket for consultants coming in and outside perspective so that we can continue to do exactly what you're talking about? Yeah, there's definitely a part of that and given that this is an episode about budget,

Tom DiScipio
0:17:35
I think there is a level of flexibility and rigidity that each company is going to have to feel out as they're building their budget. And I think for us, because impact moves so quickly, you're laughing. We call it the vortex. By the way, I coined that term. I want some credit on the podcast.

Alex Winter
0:17:54
You heard it here first, folks.

Tom DiScipio
0:17:56
Okay. The impact vortex. It's a real thing, by the way. It's a real thing. Yes, it is. Anyways, so, you know, each company is going to have to understand the balance of flexibility

Tom DiScipio
0:18:07
versus rigidity in their budget. And so, when we look at it, we obviously have this level of rigidity that we need to have in order to stick within the plan. But at the same time, as part of that budget, we have flexibility. So if we happen to get connected with somebody who we think is going to help us achieve a longer term vision, then we're going to make room for something like that.

Tom DiScipio
0:18:29
And just like building a piece of software or something like that, you have to understand that there are going to be tradeoffs. So if we're going to say yes to this thing, what might we have to say no to? And that's completely okay. Or we can borrow or allocate, again, depending on what it is to bring budgets together or to amplify what we're trying to do. So the long and short of it is, yes, there is planning and at the same time, because

Tom DiScipio
0:19:01
business is moving so fast, because we're moving so fast, because the industry is moving quite quickly with AI. Technology, man. I know all you listeners were probably listening to Chris's episode before mine, but you've got to be flexible with that kind of stuff Yeah, it's you have to keep up with with the curve and the curve is exponentially Going in a direction that you have to have that flexibility you do yeah

Tom DiScipio
0:19:26
And I like the idea of the mindset like that really is I've never really thought about it that way But when you put the label on it mindset is a good word you and Bob have always had that mindset as long as I've known you, of like being open to hearing outside ideas, bringing experts, going like, hey, we could probably figure this out over the next 12 to 15 months, but if we bring in an expert, we can figure this out in four months and be that much better that much faster. And that's up here. That's something that is a perspective shift that you have to have as a business leader and an owner. That might be something that people struggle with. So how can

Tom DiScipio
0:20:01
for business owners out there, what would you say to them to be like, hey, this is how I got into this mindset? Have you always been that way? Or is that something that you've learned and grown and honed in on over time? Well, we've experienced it with some of our coaches where we began with working with a coach and over time, many of you listeners may have heard of the term pride cycle. We would go through these cycles where we'd be like,

Tom DiScipio
0:20:30
okay, we got it, we can do it. We're great, we're great. And we start to lose the essence of what we were taught. And we noticed performance differences. And so when you get back to this mindset of coaching and having the training and having that as part of your investment in your budget, it keeps you

Tom DiScipio
0:20:53
on track and it reduces this idea of a cyclical high performance, low performance thing. Yeah, good point. So for businesses maybe that don't have the budget to do this and they want to, they just aren't quite there fiscally, they're not there with their revenue, whatever the case may be, what can they do? What's a good way to start taking steps in the right direction to get into this cycle that we're talking about? Yeah, I mean, the first thing is to read the book. Got to read the book. Yeah, read the book. Any owner or business leader that I know reads

Tom DiScipio
0:21:28
multiple books a year, if not a month. They're always reading and absorbing information. It's like a sponge. It's a recurring theme. What's that term? Leaders are readers. And readers can be leaders. But yeah, you know, as it relates specifically to implementing this within your organization or factoring in as part of your budget, it doesn't necessarily have to be like, let's do all of it right now and go all in. It's important to think of it as it could be in stages, right? And starting with the text and then moving into the community and connecting with other people who are already doing this and

Tom DiScipio
0:22:08
picking their brains. And a quick story I'll share is when Bob and I first started working with HubSpot in the very early days, I would say 2011 or 2012. Early days, yeah. I mean we were the new guys, we were the new kids. We didn't know much about the tools and the software. And the first thing that we did was call other agencies and talk to them and see what they did to be successful. And guess what? We are indeed. Rip off and duplicate. But in the best way. In the best way. It's like we learned what they did and we adapted it to the way Impact does it and that was how we got our start.

Tom DiScipio
0:22:54
And eventually from there, you know, bringing it back, you go from the person asking the questions to the person answering the questions. But so thinking about it from a communal perspective early on, great way to learn and understand what's working and what's not and the steps that you can take And from there it could be some initial education through courses through attending events

Tom DiScipio
0:23:22
For ours specifically impact live where we actually run through the fundamentals of the book and how to execute that in the best way And it's a great way again bring it back to the theme of mindset, all of those initial activities help you get into the right mindset so that when it does come to the time where it's like, okay, I'm ready to go all in and train my team and build this marketing and sales asset, you're ready to do it. Community is huge. You just saying that really sparked something for me because it's true and it doesn't matter if it's impact live with Endless customers or if you're at inbound and you're in the HubSpot community or if you're at EOS and you're doing that like there's all

Tom DiScipio
0:24:13
These different communities out there but if you really don't have the budget the best thing to do is to start interfacing with these communities to start hearing from other people because I Get fired up I get inspired when you start to see people that are that were in the same spot maybe you're in right now, and they're a few years ahead of you, and you start to see the traction they're getting

Tom DiScipio
0:24:29
and what they're doing, that, at least for me, it's like, yeah, if they can do it, I can do it. That gets me excited to want to just go all in on this thing.

Alex Winter
0:24:38
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Alex Winter
0:24:40
Okay, where do we go from here?

Alex Winter
0:24:42
That's all the questions I got. I'd love to do an example if we can. Can I pick your brain and say, do you have an example of somebody that wasn't sure, didn't have budget, and you've helped them along the way

Alex Winter
0:24:53
and they now are coaching and training with us and have had success, or should we not go down that rabbit hole? Yeah, no? I'm also thinking right now,

Alex Winter
0:25:01
is there a way we can get more tactical with some of this?

Tom DiScipio
0:25:05
I guess somebody listening going, all right, what should I really be thinking about for my budget? Like how much? But I also don't know if I wanna do that either. Okay.

Tom DiScipio
0:25:24
What do you guys think?

Alex Winter
0:25:25
I like that, but I don't know if you don't wanna get into the tactical.

Alex Winter
0:25:28
I love that question.

Alex Winter
0:25:29
Let's just try and see what happens.

Alex Winter
0:25:30
Let's talk about it.

Tom DiScipio
0:25:30
We should, cause we could talk about like, people, tech, costs.

Alex Winter
0:25:37
Alright, so I'm fired up.

Alex Winter
0:25:38
I'm a business owner. I want to get tactical, right?

Alex Winter
0:25:41
We've been talking high level budgets and mindset and accountability and buying and all that stuff, right? What do I do? Like, I want to get granular with, Tom, I'm ready, I'm bought in, what's my next step? And how can I start to actually make a budget?

Alex Winter
0:25:55
How can I start to plan out my next steps

Tom DiScipio
0:25:58
so that my company, my team, everybody can start to level up and move forward. Yeah, so we're looking at the budget. We talked about some categories that need to go into the budget, like flexibility is an important one. There's also technology, there's people, and there's services related to that, right? So let's break down those things. So we're like auditing now, or like let's do a full breakdown. Let's do a full breakdown.

Tom DiScipio
0:26:29
And listen, I might not be perfect in all of this, but hopefully this gives y'all a great way to start and to think about it.

Alex Winter
0:26:35
Totally, this is just an example, but just to give you a taste.

Tom DiScipio
0:26:38
Yeah, so let's start with services. You know, if you've been a long time listener of the podcast or follower of Impact, you know that we believe the best results come from building an in-house team, right? But there are still some things that you may very well need an agency for and that's typically for the more technical

Tom DiScipio
0:26:57
aspects, right? Like building a website, that's not necessarily something that an in-house content manager, videographer or creative person can do. Some can, but many can't. Same thing with like paid ads and like getting through the algos of like trying to get all your paid and retargeting campaigns out and all that stuff.

Alex Winter
0:27:18
That's where you start to bring in specialists basically.

Tom DiScipio
0:27:20
Exactly. There's ways to get started with those things and then there's ways to get really complex with those things at which point you probably require outside services to do something like that. setting a budget for those types of services and probably starting around $5,000 a month if we stick with the idea of a paid ad agency and the fees associated with that and then any other ad spend related to that. So as we move on, we got to think about like technology, right? So if you are going to invest in an internal team, what types of technology are you going to need?

Tom DiScipio
0:28:04
And of course, from a marketing and sales suite of tools, we're always going to lean on HubSpot for that level of technology. Or at a bare minimum, some type of CRM to have a centralized place for your data and

Alex Winter
0:28:17
to house everything.

Tom DiScipio
0:28:18
Of course. Somewhere where you can watch the customer journey unfolding and measure it, right? And some tool that connects with your website, so you can tell that full story and understand it. But the big component today is AI. And I feel like I need to be like, dun, dun, dun.

Tom DiScipio
0:28:40
AI. And listen, there are free ways to get started with all of these things. But when you start to lean heavily into something like that, and if you plan to leave lean heavily into AI, there are so many benefits to having paid versions of these

Tom DiScipio
0:28:55
tools. And that can come down to making sure that you have educated models that know who you are and can execute based on who you are. I think an example from Chris's previous episode, and why he was leaning so much towards chat GPT and using it is because it knows him. And it does things the way that he would want them to be done in comparison to other models. So these are things you should think about.

Tom DiScipio
0:29:20
Like free versions get you so far. Think about budgeting for the more advanced options. And so we've talked about services, we've talked about technology. The next thing is to talk about people and talent. Yeah. And so one of the things you can go read this on our website today if you wanted but content manager, videographer, the two key roles that anyone doing the Ask and Answer Endless customers successfully need to have on the staff. Yeah. When you're cranking out that much content on a regular basis you need to have it. Yeah. It's no question. And so the typical salary ranges, and this is going to change over time, you know,

Tom DiScipio
0:30:04
maybe even weeks from today with how fast the world is going. But around 40 to 60,000 per year annual salary is what we typically share. And again, a lot of that depends on where you live. Yeah, but that's a great place to start. And of course, as owners, factor in, you know, payroll, tax benefits, all that. So people, technology, services, training. I was just gonna ask, now we need to get into the training.

Tom DiScipio
0:30:34
Yeah, so we're back into the training. And this is all information that you can go to our website and check out. But consider factoring in somewhere between five to 10,000 a month to get the training to make sure your team is heading in the right direction, right? And that training can range from digital coursework

Tom DiScipio
0:30:56
and following the curriculum to actually meeting and working with our team. Okay, so you painted the picture. I feel like I have the different buckets of things I need to be thinking about, from people to breaking down this budget

Tom DiScipio
0:31:10
in a way that is tangible. Can we talk a little bit too about just the overarching, so like all in marketing budget for 2025 let's say. What should I just be penciling in here for my line item to go back to my team? It's like this is the full picture. Yeah, so when we're talking about people, flexibility, cash available, services, technology, training, all of that together.

Alex Winter
0:31:39
All in.

Alex Winter
0:31:40
Yeah.

Tom DiScipio
0:31:40
I mean,

Alex Winter
0:31:41
Pushing all the chips in, Tom.

Tom DiScipio
0:31:42
Here comes the river.

Alex Winter
0:31:43
Yeah.

Alex Winter
0:31:43
Red seven, red seven.

Alex Winter
0:31:44
Yeah.

Alex Winter
0:31:45
Throw the dice.

Alex Winter
0:31:45
Yeah.

Tom DiScipio
0:31:46
Listen, at this point, when you're thinking about budgeting for 2025, $250,000 to $400,000 for the year gets you to a point where you have a sales and marketing engine, an asset that's growing the value of your business and driving more customers.

Alex Winter
0:32:14
Got it.

Tom DiScipio
0:32:15
Okay, so 200, 400,000 is the range. Yeah. But with that, you have all the control. I think that's something that's really important to factor in is that that gives you the power. Yeah, really impressive. So, my favorite part of the show,

Tom DiScipio
0:32:30
I get to ask the one thing. And I'm stealing this from Marcus Sheridan. Yeah, classic, classic, but I love this piece because my traditional ad hat that I used to wear, I'm all about simplicity. And if you can say something as direct

Tom DiScipio
0:32:44
and as simple as possible, that's money. That's where it's at. So, from today's conversation, talking about budgets, talking about everything we've covered, what's the one thing business owners should take away from this? Yeah, you know, Alex, I'm going to bring it back to what I feel like has been the underlying theme of all this is mindset.

Tom DiScipio
0:33:03
So budgets get built on spreadsheets, but it's important to think of it less like a sheet and more like an actual investment in your organization. So budgets are guidelines, but remember everything you're putting in there is to invest in your own people, in your own organization, and that is an asset that you need to grow.

Alex Winter
0:33:31
Wow.

Tom DiScipio
0:33:32
I don't even, I couldn't have said that any better myself.

Alex Winter
0:33:36
That was powerful, Tom. Really well said.

Tom DiScipio
0:33:39
Thanks.

Tom DiScipio
0:33:40
Yeah. Well, thank you for all your insights. Thanks for sharing your knowledge and for being on the show. I know this is your first time, but this is definitely not going to

Alex Winter
0:33:45
be your last time, right?

Alex Winter
0:33:46
Well, I sure hope not. All right, good.

Tom DiScipio
0:33:48
We'll see. Well, it depends on how many downloads we get. Right? We've got to measure. Of course. Data's king. You know that. Thanks for being on the show. Really appreciate it. Yeah, of course. Good to be here. Thanks, Alex. Awesome. All right. And for everybody out there watching and listening, I'm your host,

Alex Winter
0:34:01
Alex Winter. This is Endless Customers. Alex Winter. This is Endless Customers.

Alex Winter
0:34:03
See you on the next episode.