Shownotes
Episode 147 Frederick Dudek (Freddy D)
Most service providers and small businesses struggle to compete with big-box brands. They’re buried in daily fires, stuck in short-term survival mode, and often left behind when it comes to digitization, AI, and PR. That’s where Roberto Martinez and his team at Braven Agency step in.
In this episode of The Business Superfans® Podcast, Roberto shares his mission-driven journey from diplomacy to digital empowerment. He reveals how service providers and small business owners can leverage PR, AI-driven workflows, and authentic customer experiences to create sustainable growth and loyal Superfans.
What You’ll Learn:
Learn practical strategies to:
- Digitize your service business with the right tools to stay competitive
- Use AI workflows to cut costs and scale faster
- Leverage PR for third-party validation and authority building
- Win Superfans by humanizing client experiences
- Respond faster to customer inquiries for higher conversions
- Transform your frontline team into brand advocates
- Turn challenges into ecosystems of support and referrals
Perfect for professional and trades service-based SMBs who want actionable strategies to grow profitably.
Discover more with our detailed show notes and exclusive content by visiting: https://linkly.link/2Fva3
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Guest Quote Spotlight
“You can’t authentically charge a small business what you charge a Fortune 100 company. To win, you have to win the hearts and minds of small businesses—and then bring in partners who believe in your mission.” – Roberto Martinez
Freddy D’s Take
Roberto Martinez brings heart-centered strategy and tech-powered execution together in a way few agencies do. What struck me most is how he combines AI efficiency with human authenticity. Too many entrepreneurs get lost in either high-tech or high-touch. Roberto proves you can blend both to win loyalty, referrals, and revenue.
S¹.U.P.E.R.F.A.N.S². Framework™ Application
Pain Point → Pillar Solution Mapping:
Overwhelm & Cost Pressures → Finance + Automate
- Roberto shows how AI workflows lower operational costs and speed up delivery, protecting margins while freeing time.
Struggling to Stand Out Against Big Agencies → Propel + Elevate
- Braven focuses on authentic marketing and PR campaigns that amplify small business voices and differentiate them.
Client Retention Challenges → Nurture + Rally
- Old-school recognition, authentic listening, and PR-driven third-party validation turn customers into loyal advocates.
Limited Long-Term Thinking → Strategize + Sustain
- Freddy and Roberto emphasize playing the long game with proactive strategies, partnerships, and stakeholder alignment.
Links referenced in this episode:
Companies mentioned in this episode:
- Braven
- Canada
- Thunderbird
- Wells Fargo
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Transcripts
Some businesses are always playing the short game because they have to keep the lights on.
Freddy D:But I am the world's biggest super fan.
Roberto Martinez:You're like a super fan.
Freddy D:Welcome to the Business Superfans Podcast. We will discuss how establishing business superfans from customers, employees and business partners can elevate your success exponentially.
Learn why these advocates are a key factor to achieving excellence in the world of commerce. This is the Business Superfans Podcast with your host friends. Ready D. Ready, ready.
Freddy D:Hey, super fans. Superstar Freddy D here. Welcome to episode 147 of the Business Super Fans the Service Providers Edge podcast.
In this episode, we're joined by Roberto Martinez, founder of Braven and Google coach for California, who helps small businesses escape the reactive grind by digitizing wisely, responding faster, and building systems that scale. Most service providers juggle day to day fires and lose leads, reviews and momentum.
Roberta shows how AI driven workflows lower costs, speed up delivery and turn reputation into revenue, even on a small business budget.
From his early stings with the US State Department to Canada's trade office to Thunderbird and into mission driven work helping local entrepreneurs, Roberto's path proves you can think globally and act locally while big tech partnerships amplify impact. If you're ready to move from scrambling to scalable, this one's for you.
Freddy D:Welcome, Roberto, to the Business Superfans podcast. Great conversation that we had before we started recording, so let's continue that conversation and welcome to the show.
Roberto Martinez:Excited to be here, Freddie.
It's very special to talk to someone that's been around the block, that has done it all, it feels like, and is able to share their insight for the past 30 years of how to grow, scale and help entrepreneurs get to that next level.
Freddy D:Well, thank you. Welcome to our listeners as well.
Roberto, you've got an interesting backstory, so share that with our audience because I did some research on you and we had a good conversation before we started talking. So give us the scoop. What's the backstory?
Roberto Martinez:Yeah, I owe a lot to United States and I felt that the best way I could help is by working in government. Silly me.
One of the things that I did once I graduated college is I started interning and applied to become a Foreign service officer at the State Department, which is a fancy way of saying a diplomat representing the US Government abroad in foreign countries. I got to spend some time in Spain, I got to spend some time in Argentina and it really colored my perspective on the global economy.
Globalization was just taking off.
We're talking:Really fun experience, but realized very soon when I was in Argentina, I was lucky enough to cover the Argentine economy at that time. And unlike the current administration in Argentina, that economy was very bad.
The foreign officer that was my counterpart, he managed the Ministry of Economics and he looked at me, he said, what are you doing here? Go back to the States, get your mba, help grow the greatness of the United States.
Because that's really how you're going to have impact, by thinking globally, by acting locally. And that's what I did.
I went back to the States, I worked for another foreign country, the Canadian government, which amazing, they have a long term perspective, something that we need. Feels like nowadays they, they're able to identify issues that are going to affect the country 5, 10, 15, 20 years in the future.
that's been my mission since:And I'm very blessed to work with amazing entrepreneurs that have a conviction and a passion to help not just their families, but their communities.
Freddy D:Oh, what a backstory. A lot of experiences there. And I can relate because before we started recording, I've been to about 32 countries so far.
And you brought up an interesting point that I really want to emphasize was the fact that depends on where parts of the world you are. There's some places that are just looking at what's going on for tomorrow.
And then you go to places like Japan and they're planning out a hundred years out and then they work it in backwards. They always play the long game so they don't get caught up into the everyday minutiae of things. They're playing the long game.
So Canada's similar way. And I've seen that in other European countries.
Again, they're not planning for tomorrow, they're not planning for five years, they're planning for 25, 50 years out because they know that it's going to go up and down. They've been around for a while longer than the United States and so they've seen more than we have in.
Yes, this country has exploded and done some wonderful things in the world, but we also need to stop back that.
History is also something that brings benefit because you can actually learn from it provided that you actually pay attention to it and learn and don't repeat the mistakes that have been made.
Roberto Martinez:No, I love that. And that's exactly right. I was lucky enough to go to a business school at the time. It's called Thunderbird.
It's still called Thunderbird but Arizona State University bought them out as a private school. Plan of fame is international business. In any case, they teach you what they call present future, present past.
And this idea that as you pointed out with the Japanese, they have a very long term perspective. Germans also have that perspective. Their present future.
They could identify the future relative to countries that might not have political economic institutions that create stability. And so think about any civilization war that happened. I don't want to call out countries but let's just say that creates a lot of instability.
So folks and citizens don't have the incentive to think in the future because they're just thinking like how am I going to make a dollar today?
Freddy D:You're in reactionary mindset versus a proactive mindset.
And reactionary in business can be detrimental because you're basically don't have time to be putting in a strategy because you're always having to put out a fire.
Roberto Martinez:That's it. Yeah, you nailed it. That's huge for I think about our clients. I work with a lot of small business, a lot of small business.
,:I cover the state of California for Google where I help small businesses across the state of California digitize using Google tools and services.
And what you hear from them is that I'm dealing with day to day issues because it might be in a rural environment, I might be working day to day and I still this is my side hustle that I want to turn into my full time company. And so they have a lot of immediate needs that maybe corporate America doesn't really have.
And that really makes it difficult for them to think long term. Yeah.
Freddy D:And it's one of the things I was just recently in Australia and one of the things that I really realized there, well as it is in Europe and probably in Latin America as well is there's not so many big box agencies. It's a lot of really small businesses where in this country and I get it. But there's a lot of conglomerate.
They buy out people, they merge and then all of a sudden you got a big monster sized company.
What was cool is when we were in Australia in November of last year, that was the people that owned the sandwich shop and they were the ones that were making a sandwich and everything else. Some of the best food that we got because it was family made and people take a pride in that.
So what you just talked about with how helping those small businesses in California really kind of stand out is they need somebody to help them compete with the bigger boys and show what their uniqueness and what they bring to the table. Because that's the fiber of global growth.
Roberto Martinez:Yeah. And 90% of business in the United States is small business.
So it's an economic imperative for us to invest in our small businesses and help them grow, scale, and compete against the bigger players and make sure they're not left behind. That's a big one for us. Right. Make sure that these folks are adapting and adopting the technological tools that you're so well versed in.
SaaS, solutions, marketing solutions, but now AI solutions. And we want to make sure that they're not left behind.
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.com ninja prospecting hyphen: Freddy D:Yeah, let's talk a little bit about what Braven does as a marketing agency and what differentiates you guys from the other marketing agencies out there?
Roberto Martinez:We're exactly what we're circling around. We are entrepreneurs we're small business owners as well. And my family comes from a long line of small business entrepreneurs.
What I realized, my aha moment was when I was out of New York working for a fairly large company and they don't really need me, I'm a replaceable asset to them because, ah, another MBA student, we could just plug one in and plug and play and keep rolling.
What I realized is these small businesses, they want someone that understands them, that kind of have experienced their trajectory and their community. They want someone that doesn't patronize them, doesn't look down on them and just understands their plight. And what do I mean by that?
As a marketing agency, some agencies are trying to make them look, feel and touch like the big box stores like you mentioned. And what we do is we take a very unique approach. We like, hey, you're your individual and you create your own value.
And we value that as a representative and as a leader of the community. Because we all know entrepreneurs are so brave. They take on a lot of risk and they should be rewarded for that risk.
And that makes them distinct and unique. So our agency digitizes those businesses.
We get them the assets and the online tools that can compete not just in their local markets, but nationally and internationally.
So we help them modernize, we help them sell online, we help them identify niches in the market, segment their audiences, and then promote using digital marketing and operational tools. So that's our claim of fame. We've been doing that for the past 10, 12 years.
We've been working with cities across the state of California and even in Texas to help digitize small businesses. And now with the advent of AI, we're starting to incorporate AI.
We're launching this new solution all around AI SEO to help educate our small business owners. This is the tools that you need to remain competitive into the future. Sure.
Freddy D:Because you can leverage AI for competitive analysis.
You can leverage it to take a look at who your top competitors are, what's their marketing strategy, what's going on, how many opportunities are they getting? You can get really down to it, deep, deep dive with AI provided how to use the prompts and all that stuff.
And that's where you guys come in, is helping them put up. But now that gives you some statistical data that you can actually make decisions.
So you're not reacting anymore like we talked earlier, you're being proactive because you can say, okay, based upon this, I need to tweak this because this is where I'm ranking, or this is where the guy's getting the reviews. Or the social proof and etc. And so I need to improve because in comparison, I've got 50 reviews, they've got 150 reviews.
And that's I need to change now I can analyze and say, oh, but let's take a look at the reviews that they've had in the last six months. Because that's what Google looks at is what's the current stuff, not what you did five years ago.
So there's all kinds of aspects that you can actually help these guys leveraging AI for their business and scale without breaking the bank.
Roberto Martinez:That whole idea around scale and the whole idea of teaching our entrepreneurs how to fish, not just feeding them for a day, so providing them the tools, walking them through how to leverage those tools for growth and then seeing them take off, they're resilient, they have this chip on their shoulders where they realize, hey, there's a need in the marketplace, I want to fulfill that need. We just provide them the tools and the capacity to show them how to do that. Especially around AI, there's so much functionality on that.
And really when it comes to operations, lowering your costs to do business is really the beauty of it.
And now with this idea of AI agents and AI workflows, I spend the first half of my day today meeting with my different departments identifying our AI workflow. We all know what a workflow is. What does A happen and then fa, what does B happen and then C and nd how do we operationalize that workflow using AI?
And that's going to lower our time to produce the product or solution that we want. And if we can do that, we can lower the price to our consumers.
All businesses can follow this process to improve their sales, to improve their operations, to lower their cost, to get that product out to market and get as many folks buying. Yeah, sure.
Freddy D:And then the other thing is that one of the things I tell people is that if you get an inquiry through the Internet, you get a 15 minute window to respond. If you go beyond that, they're already someplace else. So you can leverage technology to engage and first off, recognize that that came in.
So I can come in via AI in a sense. Hey Roberto, we received your inquiry. Thanks so much.
We passed it on to somebody and they'll get back to you within the next 30 minutes or something like that, or faster, within the next 15 minutes. But the fact that you already responded and you created an engagement with them shows that you're on top of your game.
And that's what people are looking for is I'VE closed more sales by being the first one to respond. Because by doing that, I also set the bar. And if they're shopping someplace else, good luck because my bar is going to be really high.
Roberto Martinez:Yeah. That's one of the first lessons I learned as a marketer is time to consumer is huge.
I don't know if the statistic is true, but when we were first creating landing pages and the whole lead funnel thing, they were saying that if you respond within the first three minutes of that inquiry, your chances of converting was 80%, which is insane. It's that whole piece. It's responding and showing that you care about your customer. And that's all around your team.
Who is your frontline team that's touching that customer, prospective customer, and making sure they actually care. Hey, I care about this person and I care about their problem and I will provide them a solution.
And if I can't get the answer, I'll find the right person in our team that can get them the answer. Yeah.
Freddy D:When I was selling manufacturing software pre the Internet days, I used to leverage a lot of old school stuff and we would come in and present the manufacturing software to a tool and die shop. Okay.
Talking full blown blue collar guys running milling machines, lathes, wire EDMs, making mold holds for cell phones and mouse and all that kind of stuff. And one of the things that I would always do is I got everybody's name and I would send them all a letter.
Old school back then it was not old school, but it still works today. Direct mail is one of the most powerful marketing components that people seem to forget. And I would thank everybody.
So I would say, okay, Roberto, thank you so much for your time today. Really appreciate the input you gave in our presentation.
More importantly, when we're excited to help you get this thing implemented into your company and all that stuff.
My verbiage was that we're already working together and you're the guy on the shop floor running the milling machine or delay that nobody ever recognizes. And you got a letter sent to you. Actually, everybody did.
But more importantly, the guys out in the shop floor that were actually going to be doing the work, we would win the sale and I would ask, well, why did you pick us? And he says, well, we felt after the sale you would provide the best your company and you would provide the best post sale support.
Because I planted that seed from that perspective. Plus the verbiage I used was. It was a done deal.
Roberto Martinez:Yeah, that's a huge one. I call it breaking away from the script. And everyone Follows the script. Everyone's on autopilot.
And what you did, Freddie, is really see them as individuals, as humans, as people and not following the same script, not verbatim, running through and just checking a box, but saying, hey, I acknowledge your existence and I appreciate you allowing me to be part of your space. It sounds kind of new age, but the truth is it's just giving respect to your fellow man.
Freddy D:This is global. And one of the things that I wrote in my book, and it's one of my quotes, is people will crawl through broken glass for appreciation and recognition.
Roberto Martinez:Yeah, that's it.
Freddy D:It doesn't matter where you are in the world. Everybody wants the same thing. They want to be recognized and appreciated for what they do. It doesn't matter.
And you can have language barriers and it still works.
Roberto Martinez:It's this whole acknowledgment of the individual. I love that. It's one of the things that we try and instill on every single team member, especially the ones that are touching the customers.
Just because we don't want scripts, we want authentic experiences as customers. We don't want to meet with the client or vice versa. A client meet with us and then they're just kind of glazed over.
We want to feel that they understand our mission, our vision, why we exist. And not everyone's going to have this. I just want money. I get it. Some people want to make sure that they have a roof over their shoulders.
But creating that authentic experience, connecting with that person is going to go a long way for them. Championing you and defending you and referring more clients to you.
Freddy D:Super fans, that's exactly how you start creating super Fans. They're championing you. They're your brand advocate. But Super Fans is a cooler name and I trademarked it. So there you go. Business super Fans.
But that's it. You want to really create business super fans out of your whole ecosystem. And that's how you begin.
And like I've shared with that mold shop type story, that's how I created the super fans was I recognized everybody. And sometimes when I would go there to my customers, they're having a bad day, we go out to lunch and I was a shoulder.
Talk to me, tell me what's going on. Sometimes you got to just shut off the business and actually become a human again. And that's how you build those long term relationships.
Relationships to where you get invited into people's houses and all that stuff around the world and stay in some of those people's houses because you built those relationships and Like I say, it's not always all business and it doesn't have to be. And that's how you create those super fans globally.
Roberto Martinez:I like the piece that you said. Listening and just sometimes just listening to them and really understanding their pain point.
It could be personal, painful, professional pain point, but really understanding what they're going through and not just interjecting and just listening and not always trying to solve the problem. I think one of the things that we do sometimes is trying to solve for X, whatever X happens to be.
Sometimes you just gotta listen to them and ask the right question.
Freddy D:One of the guys I share a story was he was going through divorce. He was the IT guy for one of my customers. He was my biggest super fans. They referred me so much work, it was crazy. And I won contest.
I still got the plaques for him and because of these guys. But when he was going through a divorce, who was at the bar listening to what was going on and he just needed somebody to talk to.
And since we had built a relationship and there was trust between us, his stuff didn't go anywhere. But he needed that person to just offload.
Roberto Martinez:It's amazing. It's amazing what just shutting off the business side and just seeing someone as they are and who they are and passing judgment. Hey, I'm here.
What do you want to do? Yeah, it's very powerful.
Freddy D:It's very powerful.
Roberto, share a story with our listeners of how you've kind of started working with a small business and they didn't really have a good digital presence and how you've transformed them and they became your biggest super fan, where they're telling everybody that they know and they become your sales machine in a sense.
Roberto Martinez:There's a couple. I think one of the things that we realized really early in our agency is that the model that we have is not a growth model.
You can't make millions and millions of dollars because you can't authentically charge and realistically charge a small business on what you would charge a Fortune 100 company. And that was very clear to me. So what we had to win is we had to win the hearts and minds of small businesses so that we can grow our following.
And then we had to find partners, big tech partners that could say, hey, what, we appreciate you doing that type of work.
We are willing to offset some of that cost for the small business that you're providing them with our funding, with our grants, scholarships, donations, what have you. And so what we realized really quickly is some of our superpants were third party partners. That weren't giving us a contract.
They were just saying, hey, we want to refer you out to this program or to this event or to this situation. So the city of LA would be a great example. I would walk in and the city of LA say, hey, yeah, we know you're Google, coach. What can you do?
And I was like, we'll give you all these free services at no cost to a small business owner. I'll take time out of my weekend.
And sure enough, you start doing that enough, and they start realizing that you're not in it for necessarily to make a quick buck, but you're there because you believe in the mission which is helping small business. And then right after that, two years passed, three years passed, and we hit the pandemic.
And I got a call from the mayor's office saying, hey, how about when you come in and you become an entrepreneur and residential and help us create a program that really helps small businesses, really gets to digitizing them so that they can sell. During the pandemic, as you knew, everything was shuttled. Shut up. Everything was closed. I'm like, yeah, how much does it pay?
You're like, we don't pay anything. But we know you'll find the money. And so that's the best part. Like, all right, we don't have money yet. We have some seed funding, like $10,000.
But with that $10,000, we were able to show and tell that great story of let's get businesses back online, let's help businesses sell online. And it resonated with different companies, including Google, including Meta, including Shopify, Square.
And they all opened up the checkbooks and gave us money. We raised a quarter of a million dollars to help small businesses. Our super fans were not necessarily the folks who were giving us the money.
It was the folks that believed in our mission and vision and said, this guy might know something about digitizing small business. Let's give him a platform so he can go out there and connect with different partners that do have the money.
Let's open up our network and our Rolodex and make sure that they meet the Shopify's of world and meet the metas of the world. And sure enough, we were able to raise a quarter of a million dollars.
That program has grown from a quarter of a million dollars to over seven figures to help businesses in Los Angeles digitize. Very proud of that.
And sure enough, more people hear that, more people reach out to us and say, hey, we want a similar program within our city, within our county, within our state.
Freddy D:You're transforming businesses and helping businesses from all walks of life to be play in the game at the level that they should be playing at the game.
And so you're creating multi point super fans because basically the agencies and the companies that are helping you fund it, they're super fans of you, otherwise they wouldn't be giving you five cents number one.
Number two, the network that you've built has become super fans of you because they're referring you to all these smaller businesses and those businesses are basically super fans of you because you're transferring, forming their business. So you've created a really unique ecosystem that's basically everybody's being lifted up and.
Roberto Martinez:It'S a knock on effect. Like you said, you do go by one and it just trickles down and they start realizing I think one of the things people, oh, you're so confident.
It's not confidence, it's competency. You have a competent team and I can't do it. There's no way. It's the team that I'm part of.
And you talked about greeting your frontline blue collar folks and talking to them. That's how I feel about my team. We have to find the right fit within your team, within your company that believe in helping small business.
It sounds silly. Marketing is great and people can go out and work with Fortune 500 companies and change the world.
I appreciate folks that go to best schools and work with the best companies. But what I really want to do is change the way small businesses work.
And I know there's marketers out there that want to help small businesses as well. So the type of folks that we work with and we hire are folks that have a passion for helping small business. And I don't have to instill that passion.
They know it, they feel it. Maybe their parents were entrepreneurs, remember that answer? Uncles were entrepreneur.
So they know the impact disproportionately that they're going to have by helping out the small business. And the small business owner can feel that and then that trickles back up to this.
Google's of the world, the metas of the world, the Amazons of the world.
Freddy D:Saying these people care because like you were saying Roberto, is that's your front line.
So what you're doing is you're empowering to be able so they don't have to run back to dad to ask for permission, they're able to go ahead and make the decisions that they need to do the right thing for the customer to help them out and so that they feel empowered that creates a synergy that goes throughout the whole company. Because you talked earlier about taking your whole team down to Mexico and meeting with the team down there. And that's really what it boils down to.
That's one of the ways that people feel that they're part of something. And more importantly, they matter. And when they matter and they're empowered, it's transformative.
And 95% of the time, do the right thing for the customer.
Roberto Martinez:That's exactly right. And just listening, we sometimes are the therapist of our customer. We're just there to listen. And they're fighting every day.
And so sometimes we don't need to fix anything. We just need to listen to them, you hear what they're going through.
We just had a client last week talk about the current situation in California, specifically in Central Valley, where there's been a lot of challenges because these families are being deported. But they have assets, they have a home. They've been living in Central Valley for 20, 30 years. They have cars. They have all.
And so what happens to those assets? Who retains those assets?
And so this particular partner of ours, she said, I want to help those folks, and I offer estate planning, and I want to educate them on their rights. They still have property rights, something so basic that we take for granted. And we created a great lead funnel and we help them understand.
How do you communicate and educate those folks who are not. Are being left behind in some way or shape or form? This is great. This is so exciting.
And that has a direct effect on not just her business, but on the communities that she's helping. So we're indirectly helping other communities as well. So identifying that, for me, has always been the mission of the company.
It's not just good enough just to make money. It's like, how do we help our society? How do we help our community be more resilient?
Freddy D:Yeah, the money will come. The money comes. You do the right thing, you help enough people, it comes. I think it's Jim Rohn said it's either him or another guy.
But you help enough other people accomplish what they want, you don't have to worry about yourself. It'll come about. It's either Zig Ziglar or Jim Rohn. One of those two guys said it. One of your other things, I wanted to kind of dive into that.
I think that one of the things that you guys do is the PR part, because I think that a lot of businesses overlook the importance of pr, like press releases and a multitude of other things. And that really becomes third Party validation and a lot of businesses really don't leverage that. So let's talk about that a little bit.
Roberto Martinez:I love that.
I think sometimes we get so caught up in on the shiny new tool that we don't realize that the old tool is just as powerful and as useful as shiny new SEO, social media tools and pr. It's a great big hammer and it amplifies your voice.
It's all about amplifying and reaching share of mind, share of voice within a very crowded environment. And so from our standpoint, PR really helps on all those things.
If you do a great PR campaign that's going to help your social media, it's going to help improve your online traction. They have a synergistic correlation and integration and you do great content with pr. Guess what?
Your videos, your press releases are going to be online and it's called search authority and domain authority. If the New York Times, LA Times, cnbc, Fox News picks up your story and has it in a positive light, that's going to be living online.
And we're not talking a huge spend, we're talking 5,000, 10,000, $15,000 to change the way your business is run. Especially if you have a compelling story, especially if you have something to say. It's game changer.
We're going through that same experience right now. We just had a meeting with UCLA yesterday and last week around amplifying their story using pr.
How do we amplify the work that they're doing around small business, specifically women owned businesses, and how do we make sure we get that word out that you guys are doing amazing work that's changing the way we create policy. And if a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, it doesn't even matter. And giving the word out through PR is one of the strongest tools.
It's a big mic and it amplifies and can drastically change the way your business operates.
Freddy D:Sure, yeah, I leveraged that when I was growing as the software product I've talked about and I've worked with multitude of software products, but this was the one I was in charge of global sales and I grew that within a three year window to million. But I would fly out to publishers for magazines for the industry and I would actually physically demonstrate the product to them.
It all started with them trying to sell me ads into the publication. I'd say, all right, I'll commit to four ads, one per quarter, but you got to write a story on me.
And so I would either come out and they would write a story Or I would turn on to a customer that was beta testing the software. And so they were in turn would interview that customer. So so now it gave me a third party with a customer actually utilizing the technology.
So that's even better because they're talking about how it's impacting their business and then the publications talking about how we're changing the industry. And plus I had the ad in there because that was the deal, but now I had third party validation and that was my marketing.
Roberto Martinez:There's something to be said when your customers speak on your behalf. It legitimizes you. We call it the halo effect when it comes to online presence.
When a bigger company, a bigger organization is giving you your flowers and saying, you're doing an amazing job, Freddie, and we're going to communicate that out. And so that creates a halo effect around you because you have a third party validating you.
And you could do a macro with a large corporation or industry leader or you could do a micro with your frontline customers singing your praises and really appreciating how your solution has drastically changed their life. And I think there's something to be said about that. I think referrals and third party referrals, it's always going to win out.
Then you yourself, it's a company owner talking about your business. My friend would always say, no one cares. They care about the people who are using your tool, they care about the people using the solution.
Freddy D:And that's how you start creating those super fans.
Because those customers are that you've dealt with or whether it's a supplier or a distributor, whatever, they feel appreciated, they feel recognized, they're grateful for what you did for them and how you've handled them, they're happy to tell people, you can't buy that kind of PR people because if you get a machine going, and I keep telling people this is that, and that's my mission is basically you've got your leadership team, you've got your employees, you got your contractors, you got your suppliers, you got your distributors, you got your complimentary businesses and nobody even thinks about ancillary businesses. But that whole ecosystem, I tell people, just imagine 15%, very realistic, puny little number, 15%. That ecosystem was your sales force.
What would happen to your business?
Roberto Martinez:A lot of companies spend a lot of money on customer success management. I think you nailed it there. I think it's truly understanding their pain point and their why they want to work with you.
And each one of those stakeholders has a different reason why. And if you as a Business owner or as an entrepreneur, just take the time to really think through it. Deep think it. Why do they want to work with me?
What value am I providing them and how can I show them that I value them for me working with them, because each one of them is going to have a different reason why they appreciate you, why they want to work with you.
And then humanizing that experience, saying, okay, this one really cares about the end result, this one really cares about expanding their ecosystem, creating content around them, creating videos, creating PR campaigns around those key partners is going to grow your business regardless. It's going to have a knock on effect. Now what I always tell business owners is it's short term, medium term and long term. What are we playing here?
Are we playing a long game? Are we playing the medium term game or playing the short game?
And some businesses are always playing the short game because they have to keep the lights on. We want to get to the point, you're playing the medium to long term game where you can do what you just did.
Freddie, identify your stakeholders and show them that you care about them. Break that investment in the future so that when you walk out of that room, they're championing you when they're in.
Freddy D:The saying is really, what's the word on the street of your business? That's really, at the end of the day, that's the word on the street.
I had a guest on a show a while back and he with the supplier was a technology supplier. They get together for lunch and they would build relationships and birthday cards, all that stuff.
When the pandemic hit, he needed 500 laptops like that. Guess what? Everybody else was looking for laptops and guess who got his right away? He got him. It was first priority on getting those laptops.
Roberto Martinez:So some people see that's quid pro quo.
I think if you humanize and really understand that they're an actual person and getting to that personal level, I've been spending a lot of hours and when I said 30 hours a week on AI and it's all about the script, it's all about the language model, you're teaching it the data sets and information. But we need to break away from a script. We need to really connect to like the human experience.
And if you're able to do that to whoever you're working with, whoever you're partnering with, it's going to pay long term and not just seeing them as means or short term. I'm going to make money now, so that is it. But no, I'm a Built this relationship. And it's not as easy as I thought it would be.
It's not as easy as I'm going back to my classes where they talk about creating a personal connection using, not how you're doing. Great. Oh, where are you going tomorrow? The weather's great.
Stop that talk and really get into understanding the person, understanding them as who they are as an individual. And if you could do that, like I said earlier, they'll run through walls for you.
Freddy D:Yeah, that's how you create the super fans.
And one of the things that I do and I've done in the past, which again created my own team of super fans, was I recognize my customers on their birthdays. I'd send them a birthday card, old school, through the mail.
Not an email, not a text message, because that's probably the only real physical card that they got. And that's transformative because they're not going to toss that away. That's going to be sitting on their desk.
Roberto Martinez:Freddie, you mentioned Thanksgiving as well. Sending them on Thanksgiving card. I'd love that. I think that's brilliant. And so there's different ways to engage with your customers.
I think one of the things that we always try to do with our customer base is when they ask us for whatever favor, really understand that favor. So not just do what they're asking you to do, but think about what is the impact that favor is trying to ask for. So I'll give you a concrete example.
Can you promote this? Can you promote this event that's happening? We're doing this event, and downtown, we want you to promote it on your socials. Okay.
So what you're really trying to do is drive attendance. Let me get that. Okay. Now, I will personally be responsible for driving 15, 20 people to that event.
I'll do it in whatever shape, way or form so that when you finally ask them for a favor, they'll realize Friday dimensions provide me and did what I asked. But he actually went above and beyond what I asked.
And my first real true boss always called that like an ATM machine was like, you always want to invest or deposit more money than withdraw in people. You always want to do more for people do more. And if you follow that axiom in life, you're going to be very successful.
Now, I'll never forget that you always kind of deposit more than you withdraw.
Freddy D:And that's why you brought up Thanksgiving.
That's a perfect time to express gratitude to all your customers, your team, your suppliers, your distributors, your whole ecosystem, because it's Thanksgiving. You Flip it around. It's called giving thanks.
Roberto Martinez:Yeah, that's it. Love that.
Freddy D:And follow up is a monster thing. And I'm married to my wife now because I met her at a business networking function. True story.
And got her a business card and I sent her a nice to meet you greeting card through the mail with a picture of me on the COVID Cover. Inviting her for a cup of coffee to meet. And nobody had ever done that to her. And she took me up on it. And 12 plus years later, we're still married.
Roberto Martinez:Congratulations, Freddie. I think we need to apply that to modern dating. Definitely get away from the apps, get away from ig, get away from messaging and go analog with it.
Freddy D:Well, it's a blend. The people that really are exploding are the ones that are leveraging both. They're using a little old school with some new school school.
Because I'll just use a simple example. You can't spam email, but you can spam the mailbox. Think about that. Who makes money with spamming the mailbox?
Roberto Martinez:Government. Yeah, we get it.
Freddy D:That took a long time.
Roberto Martinez:Yeah. I always go back to, I had a wonky professor and those wonky hairstyle professors always leave a mark on you.
And he always, he talked about the stakeholder analysis. The stakeholder analysis you walk away from anything in my flat house is identify your stakeholder analysis. And he would call it the sleeping dogs.
You don't target your champions and don't target the folks that are already promoting you. Target the sleeping dogs and target the ones that don't like your product or service. And if you flip them, you're going to have an evangelist.
That's really where you should be focused.
I always thought of who are folks that we're not thinking about, that we need to be thinking about who are folks that might not be seeing our place right now. Let's go after those guys and let's flip them. While maintaining our base.
And that really has transformed the way we ended up partnering with different organizations. You might not see us as a partner yet, but we'll prove to you that we are.
And what I do is we create a lot of decks and a lot of presentations and sometimes we just mail them the presentation. We're just like, hey, instead of giving you the meme, I want you to actually hold the document in hand and see it yourself and just have it there.
You'll be amazed how much share of space and how much top of mind you get by just having that document, that presentation.
Freddy D:That depth old school still works. Well, Roberto, as We kind of get closer to the end here. Great conversation.
I can tell that you and I could talk on this stuff for at least another five minutes. How can people find you?
Roberto Martinez:If you want to reach out to me, I'll give you my email. It's robertravenagency. We also have this free tool out there that we're just rolling out, talking about that human connectivity with AI.
It's called Smarts. That's this AI tool powered by humans with marketers in there. And what we do is we help analyze your business. It's a business consultation tool.
The AI tool scans your information online, benchmarks you, but then the real human, the real marketer takes that information and makes this applicable to your business to drive sales, to drive growth. That's Smarts. Go and brave an agency. Just go to Braven Agency. You can follow us on Instagram, on LinkedIn. A lot of great content there.
A lot of free stuff out there. We're just doing a really fun workshop with the Wells Fargo foundation on helping people be loan ready.
We're giving away a ton of Excel sheets all around the five Cs, all around the checklist to be ready.
So when you do go to whatever loan provider you want to, you're ready and you're prepared and we give you free solutions, free consultations, free financial advisors if you want to join us in that endeavor. That's called the Wells Fargo Foundation's Digital Communities program. So you could find that as well.
Freddy D:Great, we'll put that in the show. Notes. Great stuff that you guys are doing and love to have you back on the show down the road. And thank you so much for your time. Great conversation.
Roberto Martinez:I appreciate your time. Yeah. And your community. Thank you for letting me come part of it.
Freddy D:Thank you.
Freddy D:That's a wrap of today's episode of the Business Super Fans, the Service Providers Edge. With Roberto Martinez from Braven Agency.
We explored how small businesses can level the playing field with big brands through smart use of digital tools, AI workflows and pr, while never losing the power of authentic human connection. The big lesson, technology supports growth, but it's the appreciation, recognition and long term relationships that truly create business.
Super fans, thanks for tuning in today. I'm grateful you're here and part of the Business Superfans journey.
Every listen, every action you take gets you one step closer to building your own business. Superfans.
And remember, if you're ready to map your growth strategy, schedule your free prosperity pathway Business growth discovery call at ProsperityPathway chat. And remember, one action, one stakeholder one superfan closer we hope you took away.
Freddy D:Some useful knowledge from today's episode of the Business Superfans podcast. Join us on the next episode as we continue guiding you on your journey to achieve flourishing success in business.
