Episode 131 – Tim Fitzpatrick

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Tim Fitzpatrick 0:00
You know, I am a, I’m a very detail oriented person. And which makes my perfectionism even more complicated, because it’s so easy just to get caught up in all the little details. But in business, I think speed of execution is really, really important to success to long term success. And perfectionism absolutely gets in the way of that. And, for me, the thing that really stuck with me and helped me get past that perfectionism and shouldn’t even say pass, but work through it when it pops up, is I heard somebody say, and I don’t remember who it was, he said, done is better than perfect. Done is better than perfect. And so anytime I find myself falling back into perfectionist is trout. That’s my mantra. Done is better than perfect.

Richard Matthews 0:57
Heroes are an inspiring group of people, every one of them from the larger than life comic book heroes you see on the big silver screen, the everyday heroes that let us live the privileged lives we do. Every hero has a story to tell, the doctor saving lives at your local hospital, the war veteran down the street, who risked his life for our freedom to the police officers and the firefighters who risked their safety to ensure ours every hero is special and every story worth telling. But there was one class of heroes that I think is often ignored the entrepreneur, the creator, the producer, the ones who look at the problems in this world and think to themselves, you know what I can fix that I can help people I can make a difference. And they go out and do exactly that by creating a new product or introducing a new service. Some go on to change the world, others make a world of difference to their customers. Welcome to the Hero Show. Join us as we pull back the masks on the world’s finest hero preneurs and learn the secrets to their powers their success and their influence. So you can use those secrets to attract more sales, make more money and experience more freedom in your business. I’m your host, Richard Matthews, and we are on in 3…2…1…

Hello, and welcome back to the Hero Show. My name is Richard Matthews. And today I am live on the line with Tim Fitzpatrick, Tim you there?

Tim Fitzpatrick 2:00
I’m here, man, thanks so much for having me.

Richard Matthews 2:03
Yeah, glad to have you here, you said you’re coming in out of Denver area. And for those of you been following along with our journey, as we travel, we are still down in the Keys, we’re moving up to the Everglades here shortly. That’s where we’re our business is operating out of today. And I just I probably actually still have fish guts on my hands because I was fishing with my son before I came into this interview. So that’s, that’s always fun. So real quick Tim, what I want to start off with is just a very short introduction to who you are, then we can dive into your story. So you run Realto Market, and you help professional service providers and, you know, coaches and consultants with their marketing in a number of different ways. So with with that sort of, you know, very brief introduction, what is it that you’re known for? Right? What is it that people come to you for what services to provide that kind of stuff? Sure.

Tim Fitzpatrick 2:54
We, you know, I like to tell people that we help, you know, small businesses eliminate the confusion of marketing by focusing on the fundamentals first. And then we can help them put in place and manage a simple marketing plan so that they can grow, you know, I find a lot of marketing has, has become so complex, there’s all these different channels, and it creates a lot of confusion for people. And when they’re confused, it just makes it impossible to do anything. And so I love taking things back to the fundamentals because the fundamentals, lay the foundation for marketing success long term, you know, if you, you can’t expect to hit a baseball, Major League fastball, if you’ve no idea where to stand at the plate, how to stand there, how far away get the high anti coordination down, where to hold the bat, those are the fundamentals in any discipline, don’t change. Marketing is no different. But most people skip marketing fundamentals because they want to get tactical immediately right? Oh, if somebody told me I need to be on social or I need to be on TikTok. Well, those can be great channels, but if you you have to have the fundamentals first to be able to determine what you need to do. And so we focus on that and you know, so we offer a mix of done with you so coaching services or done for you marketing services, you know, where we get into marketing, consulting, and then various digital marketing tactics or channels to help people actually implement.

Richard Matthews 4:23
Yeah, and that old marketing fundamentals thing people a lot of times they they mistake fundamentals for tactics and strategy. Absolutely. And they think they think to themselves, you know, I you know, the fundamentals are being on social media or doing PPC or having email marketing and not realizing that those aren’t fundamentals those are tactics, yes they are, to have the the message and market match and you have to know what your offer is, you have to know you know, how to speak to your customer and let those kind of things those are far more like further down the line then you know, which meeting you choose to get that message across with.

Tim Fitzpatrick 5:02
Yeah, I, to me the marketing fundamentals are all about your target market, you know, who are you trying to reach? Who do you want to work with? It’s having great messaging, you know, that’s clear that’s engaging, and then having a marketing plan that you can actually follow. Yeah. And keeping in mind that the plan you start with is not the plan you’re going to end with, you know, your marketing plan is constantly going to be evolving as your business evolves. But you have to have some type of plan to start with.

Richard Matthews 5:29
Yeah. And the other thing that I’ve noticed, on the fundamentals is not just the messaging, but the actual like, offer, the offer has to make people stop. And yes, yeah, they have to actually look at it. Thank you. No, I want I need that in my life in some form of fashion.

Tim Fitzpatrick 5:47
Yep. Absolutely. Which I think does come back to your messaging, right? What do you what makes you different? You know, why do I Why do I want to buy it? Yeah, so but

Richard Matthews 5:59
You tend to be more in the product space or in the service space for the companies, you’re working with

Tim Fitzpatrick 6:05
More in the service space. So, you know, like you said, coaches and consultants, professional service providers, so you know, CPAs, attorneys, and then home service businesses, remodelers, contractors, painters, those types of folks. So people that have trade expertise, or knowledge that they sell as part of their business.

Richard Matthews 6:25
Okay, cool. Yeah. So what I want to find out, that is sort of how you got here to running this agency, right? We talked on this show about your origin story, every good comic book hero has their origin story, something that made you into a hero, right? Where you were you born a hero or a bit by a radioactive spider that makes you want to get into marketing professional services. Where did you start in a job and eventually, you know, become an entrepreneur? Basically, I want to know where you came from that got you to this point now where you’re where you’re helping businesses with their marketing fundamentals. Sure.

Tim Fitzpatrick 6:55
So I you know, I would say that my entrepreneurial journey, it didn’t start at a young age, you know, some of the entrepreneurs and business owners, you talked to, you know, they were selling base card baseball cards when they were eight. And, you know, they’d had this entrepreneurial bug early. I did not, you know, I, when I was growing up, you know, I never questioned that I wasn’t going to go to college. So I went to college. You know, I went to UC Berkeley, I was a math major, had no idea what I wanted to do, but figured math was was something pretty universal. You know, it teaches you how to think how to analyze and solve problems. And so that’s what I did, I graduated, still didn’t have any idea what I wanted to do. But my dad had been an entrepreneur for years. And shortly before, it was about a year or two, before I graduated, he had started a wholesale distribution company. And when I graduated, I, you know, he did not have any full time employees in that company at that point. And, you know, I said to him, I knew he needed help. And I said, Look, why don’t I, let me help you over the summer. I don’t know what I’m going to do. Let me kind of get my feet wet here, figure that out. It’ll give me time to, you know, look for some jobs, figure out what I’m going to do and help you at the same time. Well, you know, that was, that was it. That was all she wrote. I, you know, so I was the first full time employee in that company. I ran it on a day to day basis, I eventually became a partner in it. Man, I learned more in six months doing that than I did in four years of college. You know, it was just, I it was just, it was an amazing experience. I loved it. It didn’t feel like I was going to work every day. I was learning new things every day. And we grew that company, for it was about 10 years, we averaged about 60% a year in growth. So we It was very high growth, it was dynamic. And, you know, I learned how to hire people how to operate a business, how to market, how to sell all of those things. And it was amazing. We ended up selling that company. And once we when we got bought, I worked for the company that bought us for another three years, which was an interesting experience. So I was so used to doing my own thing we got bought by a public company. And fortunately, I was somewhat insulated from that because there were people above me, but you could still tell it was just different. It wasn’t the same. Yeah, and when I got it, so when I got out of that, I, you know, actually it took some time off. I was like, what, what’s my next chapter gonna be here? You know, the first one was great. I loved it. I had always been interested in real estate. So I decided to get involved in residential real estate. I became a realtor, figured I’d learned the real estate market that way I could eventually, you know, invest in real estate. And what I found was man, I did not I didn’t like being in that business. So it wasn’t a good fit for me. You know, three years in I was like, man, I can’t I can’t stand this. I hate going to work every day. I’m not enjoying it, one of the huge benefits of being in real estate was it put me out of my comfort zone all the time. So that aspect of it was really helpful for me, because it got me to push myself. And you know, when I pushed myself, I just continued to expand my my boundaries. But I wasn’t enjoying what I was doing. And to me, if you’re not enjoying what you’re doing, why are you? Why are you doing it? So that’s when I shifted gears. And I got back into marketing, you know, when when I was in distribution, I loved working with our clients, which were were businesses, we were helping them grow their businesses, and because of that, ours grew naturally from that. And so, you know, I’ve always been interested in marketing, it’s dynamic, it’s changing, which I love. And so, you know, I got involved in marketing, and that’s what I’m doing today. So my path was not straight. It was winding like most entrepreneurs, I think.

Richard Matthews 10:58
So how long have you been running your agency then?

Tim Fitzpatrick 11:01
Since 2013, early 2013? Yeah, so and I would tell you, that’s not that hasn’t been a straight path, either. I mean, we’ve had some shifts and, and pivots within our business as well. But I think those those things happen, you know, you just have to be, you have to be open to change and willing to adapt.

Richard Matthews 11:23
So I’m curious, out of all those things, that story, the thing that sticks out sticks out to me, just because I’ve not heard or heard that happen a lot more, is that being involved in the selling of a company? What was that process like?

Tim Fitzpatrick 11:35
Man, again, it was, I was a sponge. In that case, you know, because we were, it wasn’t just our company that was being bought. So we had, we owned a wholesale distribution company in Northern California, we ended up actually partnering with other distributors like ourselves, across the country, and formed another company. So when we got bought, the purchaser bought the holding company, and all the other 12 distributors in it. So it was a pretty complex transaction. With a lot of attorneys, and some, you know, mergers and acquisitions, people involved in it. There was a lot of due diligence, you know, so there was, at the time, you know, we I could we couldn’t say anything about it, we couldn’t tell our employees because we didn’t know what was going to happen. So, you know, there was about a three or four month period where I was doing a lot of backend work to provide information, you know, reports, you know, financial information, you know, when people buy your company, they want to know what they’re buying, and they’re not going to just look at the bottom line and go, Okay, great. We’re gonna buy they want to know exactly what they’re getting into, to figure out, you know, do are there are there any hidden landmines here that that we don’t know about? Because they, we sure as heck don’t want to buy somebody and find out about those landmines later. So they want to know that they’re getting a good value, that they’re buying a business that’s going to give a return that they expect. And so there was a lot of work initially there. And then once we got purchased, there was a lot of integration. You know, there was a lot of unknowns, you know, employees were wondering, hey, what, okay, you know, we got bought, I mean, I’m sure this is great for somebody, but what does this mean for me? You know, am I gonna lose my job, are things gonna be consolidated, and what’s going to happen there, so there was a lot of communication to, you know, guide our teams on, hey, this is what’s happened. But here’s the plan moving forward, you know, and, and so there was a lot of balancing there to keep our team on track and make sure that they were comfortable, you know, because, you know, fortunately, we didn’t get bought, and they just, you know, got rid of a bunch of people, they didn’t buy us for that. They bought us for the infrastructure that was there, the, you know, the niche market that we were in, and we were already doing a great job. So fortunately, those first, you know, two to three years, they didn’t make a lot of changes, when they started to make changes, because we got bought in 2005 at a contract through 2008. In that 2008 timeframe, we all know what happened, I mean, things started to melt down, that’s when they started to change things. Because, you know, it was a public company, they, they had to manage things based on the the, the quarterly financials and they ended up making, I think, some a lot of decisions that may have benefited the short term financials, but they were detrimental long term to the business.

Richard Matthews 14:50
Interesting. Yeah. Cuz I know, one of my, my goals in the next, you know, five to 10 years is to sell a couple of the companies that I’m working on. So just fascinating to sort of hear that experience and what it’s from someone who’s actually done it, I think there’s, you know,

Tim Fitzpatrick 15:03
there is a balance, you know, if you’re, if you’re going to build a company to sell it, you may run that company differently than if you’re just building a company that’s going to fund your, you know, your lifestyle, and something that is going to be something that you really enjoy. Right, because what a lot of business owners don’t realize is, you know, their business may be crankin. And they’re making a ton of money, which is great. But oftentimes, they’re pulling out so much money, and they’re trying to reduce their profits at the end of the year, so that they limit their taxes. That’s not if you’re going to sell your company, that’s not the best thing for you long term. And mind you, I’m not an accountant or an attorney, but your company will sell for more, if it is profitable, if it has recurring revenue, you know, and if it doesn’t depend on you to make money, those are all things that you have to keep in mind. If you don’t have those things in place. You are You are not going to maximize the sale of your business.

Richard Matthews 16:05
Yeah, it’s really, really fascinating, good and good information to just think about our, you know, our plans over the next five to 10 years. Yeah.

Tim Fitzpatrick 16:14
Well, that was an amazing experience.

Richard Matthews 16:16
Very fascinating, set of like things that you’ve been through. And I’m curious if you discovered your own superpower in that experience, right. So we say every iconic hero has a superpower. But that’s a fancy flying suit made by a genius intellect, or the ability to call down Thunder from the sky in the real world. Here’s what I call it zone of genius, which is a skill or a set of skills that either you were born with, or you developed over time, that sort of ties together things together. It’s the common thread that runs through all of your, all of your skills and the superpowers what sets you apart and helps you help your clients lay their villains, so to speak. So with that sort of framing, what do you think your superpower is?

Tim Fitzpatrick 16:55
I think mine is actually pretty simple. And it’s it’s discipline. So, to me discipline, I think it’s the one thing that you have to have to achieve any goal that’s worth having. And so, you know, my, my discipline allows me to push the roadblocks to remain focused amid noise. I mean, we know there’s so much noise out there at this point. And it keeps me motivated when most people are at the point where they’re going to give up. You know, and so I think my discipline ends up helping me there’s so many bi-products, and benefits from having discipline that I benefit from, but it all stems from having that discipline to just, you know, and look being an entrepreneur at times, it’s not easy, you know, I mean, it can be incredibly rewarding. It can be incredibly fun. But it’s not always easy. And if you don’t have discipline, you know, that you can pull from to motivate you. It’s, you won’t make it. Yeah, and so I think my discipline is really that foundation. And then there’s all kinds of benefits that come from that.

Richard Matthews 18:11
So, so just talk me through discipline a little bit, what does that mean, practically, in your like, day to day life?

Tim Fitzpatrick 18:19
To me, it means being able to take the little steps that you need to take each and every day, to get to where you want to be, right. I mean, I work from home, I this whole pandemic, you know, it hasn’t been much of a change for me because I work from home. So, you know, but for a lot of people, they don’t have the discipline to work from home. They sit down at their computer, and they go, Oh, man, I got some laundry that I need to do. Or maybe I should watch that show where I get some yard work I need to do. You have to be able to sit down and say to yourself, what are the essential things that I need to do today? To move the needle towards where I want to go? To me that’s discipline, because it’s sometimes it those little steps seem inconsequential. It’s like, well, I took that step today, did it really get me to where I want to go? Over time, those little steps actually have a huge impact on whether you’re successful or not. And to me, that’s what discipline is all about.

Richard Matthews 19:23
And what what’s fascinating to me is I used to think that I had to take a lot of steps every day. And it was the volume of steps that mattered. And yeah, not importance the steps. Yes. And so my first several years in business, I was focused more on taking a large amount of steps every day, and not really thinking about how important or whether which direction those steps were going. And I struggled because of that and it wasn’t until I sort of realized I say like if if you take the right step, every day, you can take one step today and then go live the rest of your Life. Yeah.

Tim Fitzpatrick 20:01
Right. And if you do that every day, it compounds really, really well. You know, one of my mentors always talks about what’s the next measurable step, you know, so here’s my goal, whatever that may be, what’s the next measurable step I need to take? Because if you think about I mean thinking about larger, loftier goals, and all the things that you have to do to accomplish, those can be Oh, absolutely overwhelming. And when you’re overwhelmed, then you can’t even you don’t even know what to do. But if you break it down into the next measurable step, all of a sudden it becomes simple. I wouldn’t say it’s easy, but it becomes simple, because you’re just like, this is the next step I need to take. And once you take that step, okay, what’s the next measurable step I need to take? And just? Yeah, that’s it.

Richard Matthews 20:50
Yeah, absolutely. And you take those steps, and you move forward. And it’s funny when you were saying that I was like, the first like, what are my next steps? I was like, I’ve got people to follow up with and like, just it pops into your head, you’re like, what’s the next the next important thing that you need to do to move forward? Yeah. And I was just on a podcast where I was being interviewed yesterday, and they asked me like, what, you know, what’s your advice to our audience? Kind of silent question. And it was, it was, you know, that next step, right, in your head, you know what it is? And it might be something you’re procrastinating with, or you’re afraid of, or whatever. And the discipline is to just do it anyways. Right? Yeah. Make it happen. And take that step. And you know, then reward yourself for it. So you start giving yourself that dopamine that says, hey, taking the right steps is the is a good thing to do. Absolutely. Right.

Tim Fitzpatrick 21:45
I think it’s important to reward yourself, right? Because if you go too long without a reward, you start to wonder Am I is what I’m doing worth it? Yeah. Which I haven’t always been great at take at rewarding myself and acknowledging the small accomplishments, but I think it’s important to do.

Richard Matthews 22:05
Yeah, so for me, I’ve managed that in my life by living a full time adventure. and what is like, get my work done today. I get to go play with the kids. Right. Yeah. And cool places to do cool things. So

Tim Fitzpatrick 22:19
Yeah, that’s awesome.

Richard Matthews 22:22
Cool. So what I want to talk about next is the flip side of superpower. Right? So every Superman has his kryptonite, or Wonder Woman has their bracelets of victory, they can’t remove that going mad. So in your business, you probably have a flaw that’s held you back, something you’ve struggled with. For me, it was things like perfectionism that kept me from shipping, right, or lack of self care, which at some point, I let my clients walk all over me, or a visionary, but lacking the discipline, like you mentioned, to implement the important things on a day to day basis. But I think more important than what the flaw is, how have you learned to rectify it? So people who are listening might struggle struggle with same thing, but learn something permanent?

Tim Fitzpatrick 23:00
Yup. I so I’m, I got plenty of flaws, man. But I think the one, the one that I will focus on today is is one you just mentioned, which is perfectionism. You know, I am a, I’m a very detail oriented person, and which makes my perfectionism even more complicated. Because it’s so easy just to get caught up in all the little details. But in business, I think speed of execution is really, really important to success to long term success. And perfectionism absolutely gets in the way of that. And for me, the the thing that really stuck with me and helped me get past that perfectionism and shouldn’t even say past, but work through it when it pops up. Is I heard somebody say, and I don’t remember who it was, he said, done is better than perfect. Yeah, done is better than perfect. And so anytime I find myself falling back into that perfectionist trap, that’s my mantra. Done is better than perfect. You know, it’s if that doesn’t mean that you that I put out substandard work right or anybody that’s not a professional puts out substandard work. It’s far from that. But it’s no different than think about the the software industry. It’s a perfect example. You know, Microsoft puts out, you know, a new version of Word. Is it perfect? No, it’s not. It’s never perfect. There are always bugs. There are always added improvements. Does that mean that it’s worthless? No, it’s still a very valuable program. But what they’re doing is they put it out there. And then they monitor it. And they create bug fixes. They added improvements to it, and just continually perfect it along the way. You know, and so that’s how I that’s how I look at it right is when I have something that I need to work on, I get it to a point where I think that it has value. It’s a valuable product or service. And I’ve put it out there and I start using it, learn from it and then perfect it along the way. Absolutely. And that’s it, you know, so it’s I just when I find myself falling back done is better than perfect. Is this good? Are people going to see value in this and still get value from it? Even though it’s not perfect? If I can say yes to that, then Damn, I need to move.

Richard Matthews 25:32
Yeah, I’ve got I’ve got two things that I, I do for my, my perfect book three, my perfectionism problem. And so the first one is actually it’s a mindset that’s similar to the done is better than perfect, but it struck a little harder for me. And it was a friend of mine. And she said that perfectionism is the lowest standard you can hold yourself to. Because it doesn’t exist, right? So. Right, right, you can’t you can’t hold yourself to perfectionism. So you’re holding yourself to nothing. So the lowest standard you can hold any of your work to is perfection. And she’s like, so you have to come up with a better standard. Right? And that’s where like done is better than perfect. Is it better is a better standard, right? It’s done. Yep. So for me, my standard and this is the second part is when it comes to shipping a product or a service, I want, I want my and this is just because because I work in an ROI style industry is I want I want the ROI of product to be three to 10 times what they invest in it. And you know, a lot of that comes down to figuring out how to put the offer together and how to talk about it and how to actually like enumerate the value, because sometimes the value is not monetary. But I want that, I want that ROI to be there. So when someone looks at it, the the ROI speaks for itself, right? And, and that helps me get to the point like, hey, I’ve hit my ROI goal in terms of value exchange, then I can ship. It doesn’t have to be perfect yet, because I don’t know what perfect is. And then my third little self hack is once I started hiring and bringing on staff realizing that, like if I could take the last step out of like clicking publish or turning it on, or whatever the thing is, or hitting send, and get that onto someone else. And it’s not me that I don’t have, I don’t I don’t have to get squirrely about maybe I could change some things or fix some things right? Better. Because I just say like, hey, it’s ready to go. So if someone else you were charged to publishing it, and then you know, that’s their job is to publish it. And then I’m like, yeah,

Tim Fitzpatrick 27:41
You know, the other thing that I also keep in mind, too, is that nobody expects you to be perfect. So why why should you expect that of yourself? So, you know, it’s, it’s, you just got to you got to get it out there. And

Richard Matthews 27:57
there’s some fascinating psychology behind that, where if you actually appear perfect. You appear fake? Right? Yes. So, so with, even if, like we do we do ecommerce stuff. And we have, you know, like reviews on products, if you have 100% positive reviews, your sales will tank.

Tim Fitzpatrick 28:15
Yes. Right. People don’t see it as authentic.

Richard Matthews 28:18
Yeah, people expect like 80% positive reviews. And we’re like, if you have no douche nozzles who personally purchased your product and left horrible reviews, you’re not real, right.

Tim Fitzpatrick 28:29
Yeah, yeah, we get that question all the time when we talk to clients about, you know, putting in a review system, and they’re like, well, what if I get bad reviews? Well, that’s okay. The bad reviews lends credibility to all the other ones. And if you’re getting too many bad reviews, you have some internal issues, you know, some delivery issues or product issues, something that you need to fix. So don’t be afraid of getting that information, because it’s going to help you do better.

Richard Matthews 28:57
Absolutely. So yeah, that’s a that’s a cool point. Hopefully, people are listening, understand that right idea because it’s, I think people miss that, that how important it is to, to just sort of have like, you can’t have perfection. Nope. And if you are, you know, you’re it’ll, it’ll hurt you if you’re striving for it. But then it also, like, when people are actually looking at you, and considering you, and they see that, hey, they have problems and you get that negative review and you respond positively to it. That positive response does more for you than the positive reviews do.

Tim Fitzpatrick 29:32
Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. So

Richard Matthews 29:36
cool. So my next question for you then is about your common enemy. Right. And this is, you know, in the comic book world, it’s your arch nemesis. Yeah. And it’s the thing that you constantly that heroes have to fight against in their world, right. So in the world of business, it takes a lot of forms, but generally speaking, it’s in the context of your clients or the people that hire you. And it’s a mindset or a flaw that you’re constantly have to fight to overcome, so that you can get them better, cheaper, faster, higher degree of results, right? If you had your magic wand and you know, every time they hired you, you just pop up on the head and you would have to deal with that. What is what is that common enemy or your arch nemesis in your business? Yeah.

Tim Fitzpatrick 30:12
I for for us, it’s it’s the mindset that marketing is an expense and not an investment. Okay. And you know, so most business owners want to get tactical with their marketing immediately. You know, you and I were talking about this a little bit before we jumped on, where it’s, you know, most people come to us and they’re, they feel like they already know what they they need. You know, my website’s not converting well, or I need to be on social, or I need to start putting a podcast together. They want to jump immediately

Richard Matthews 30:44
You just came out with advertising, I have to advertise on TikTok, right? Yes,

Tim Fitzpatrick 30:47
Yeah, you know, Oh, God, I hear Reddit advertising is the new, the next best thing. It’s the next gold. But the problem is you, if people view marketing as an expense, it’s something that they can cut. And so oftentimes, when people come to us, and they want to get tactical, and they expect to see absolutely immediate results, they’re not committed to the long term. And to me, if you’re going to be successful with your marketing long term, you have to see it as an investment. It is like the 401k contribution that comes out of your paycheck each and every month, that you put back into your business. Marketing is not a light switch that you can turn on and on it is a flywheel. It takes a while to get it rolling. But once it gets rolling, as long as you keep feeding that that wheel, it is going to work is going to feed your business, it will grow your business. But if you stop that flywheel, you can’t start it right back up again.

Richard Matthews 31:49
You know, and suitable momentum building product. Yeah,

Tim Fitzpatrick 31:51
It’s that momentum. And so that is what we have we battle with, I would say, with prospects, because we don’t typically tend to work with clients that don’t view marketing as an investment, because they’re not going to be good clients for us long term. And frankly, they’re not gonna be happy. You know, I want to work with people that have realistic expectations. And if they have expectations, that I think are not realistic, and they aren’t willing to change those, then that’s not going to be a good fit for me.

Richard Matthews 32:22
Yeah, the metaphor that popped in my head while you were talking was so you know, like you, you know, you live in Denver, you’re familiar with snow, when you make a snowball and you roll it down a hill, it’ll get bigger and bigger and bigger until it stops, and then it just falls apart. Yeah. Right. Because it’ll look it’ll crush itself under its own weight. And that’s like, marketing does that if you stop the momentum, it’ll just fall apart.

Tim Fitzpatrick 32:44
Yeah, you can’t stop once you start. If you want to continue to get results. You have to keep doing it.

Richard Matthews 32:53
Yeah, that’s like our, our Push Button Podcast business that we run is all about building a content marketing machine. And it’s a we struggle with the similar type thing where people are like, I know I need to be in content marketing, right? Because they see all the big businesses doing it right. Apple does content marketing. Tony Robbins, does content marketing, Gary Vaynerchuk, does content marketing like they have they have a content marketing machine in place. And so when you look at big businesses, like I want to have that, and they think, well, I’m gonna get started with a podcast or article writing or, you know, a Facebook Live Show, or whatever it is, whatever the tactic is, and they’re like, well, I did it for four weeks, or three months. And like, I don’t like I’m not rich yet, or I don’t have a huge audience yet, unlike, you know, content marketing, like any other marketing is, it’s a long term play.

Tim Fitzpatrick 33:42
Yes.

Richard Matthews 33:43
It’s a it’s a, what is it? You know, what is what is your audience look like in three or four years? When you’re everywhere? all the time? Yeah. Right. And that’s the challenge. The clients that have done that. At big businesses. Yep. Right. And the clients that don’t, that give up?

Tim Fitzpatrick 34:02
No, that’s the thing. It’s so I’m with content. And as you mentioned, a lot of things in marketing take time. You know, you can do paid ads, you know, to generate more immediate leads, and paid ads is a great way to bring in leads while you’re investing in things that take more time. Which, you know, most people don’t have the patience to invest in content marketing, but like you said, Man, it’s it can be absolutely can blow your business up. But not in the first year. You know, it’s I have I’ve heard so many podcasts hosts say, you know what, my podcast is great for my business. If I had looked at my podcast numbers, the first year I would quit. I would have quit. But I’m so thankful that I didn’t because I reached that point of critical mass, where it started really driving my business and so you, you have to think long term, I think having a long term vision in running a Business is so important. Because if you run things on the short term, you’re always going to make business decisions, that they’re not always going to negatively impact your business. But there are, a lot of them are probably not going to be in the best interest of your company long term.

Richard Matthews 35:17
Yeah, I know even even looking at like our content marketing plan. But you know, this podcast is a part of our content marketing plan for Push Button Podcasts. And when we first started the podcast, I didn’t have a revenue model to go with the business, I just had a message I wanted to get across. And, you know, so I had all these things going and like, I didn’t have everything in place. And like, if I looked at and I did, like, I looked at my numbers, like eight months in, or, you know, three months, in four months, in five months in from everything that we’re doing, I’m like, it’s kind of disappointing. I look, it’s disappointing. But like, we’re 150 episodes in a year and a half in. And the clients that we’re generating out of our efforts now actually pay for everything. Yeah, and buy everything, like our whole lifestyle, everything we’re doing, including our team, and all that kind of stuff. And we’re just getting started. You know, because because we’re looking at this as a, you know, a 10 year plan for the business and having the content marketing be a central part of growing that. And, you know, it works out nicely for us, because we’re also helping sell content marketing. So it’s a good internal case study for our clients. But to your point, it’s, it’s a long term play, and it has to be a long term play. And, you know, I’ve run into that a number of times, it’s like, how do you help your clients understand that, hey, you’re looking at, you will vastly overestimate what you can accomplish in a year and vastly underestimate what you can accomplish in 10.

Tim Fitzpatrick 36:39
Yeah, yeah. Well, I, you know, the way I handle it is I just, you know, upfront with the client, it’s like, Look, if you want to invest in this, I think it could be, I think it’ll be great for your business, but you have to invest in it long term. You know, and if you’re not willing to do that, then, you know, we probably shouldn’t do it, you know, because I don’t, it’s so easy for people to forget that initial conversation, right? And if they decide to move forward with it, and in four months, they’re not happy because they’re not getting the results they expect. They just forgot about the conversation that I had with them four months ago, you know, and then it’s, it’s our, it’s our problem. So I would just rather head that off the past and tell people don’t do it. But you can look at all these other examples that are out there. And they’re being successful. They’re seeing success with this, but they didn’t see success with this in, you know, six months, or nine months or 12 months. There’s always outliers, right? I mean, people that already have a huge following can do this type of stuff and see more immediate results. But for most people, if you don’t have a huge following at this point, it is going to take time to build that.

Richard Matthews 37:54
Yeah, I had a client once one of my first first clients had a 20,000 viewership on Youtube every week already, and I sat down with them. And then like, 24 hours after we worked on product, like we launched to his marketplace and, you know, made 24 grand in sales. Yeah, right. It was it was like an overnight kind of thing. He was like, holy crap. And I was like, well, you you have one of three ingredients. You have an audience who trusts you. Exactly. All we had to do was put an offer in front of them. They already wanted it.

Tim Fitzpatrick 38:25
Yeah. Yeah. So he his his problem was he wasn’t putting out a good offer.

Richard Matthews 38:30
Right? Yeah. Yeah. So it was like you have an audience that knows likes and trust you. That’s like, half the battle. Yep. That’s what it takes for everything. If you’ve been doing that for years, like I think was like nine years, they’ve been building the thing and not doing anything, any sort of monetization with it. And over the course of the next 12 months, I mean, we we did $250,000 in revenue from his audience. Yeah. And so we did a quarter million dollars in sales, and it was just a matter of like, learning how to plug in some of the stuff that goes along with having an audience that knows like to trust you. Yeah,

Tim Fitzpatrick 39:05
yeah, that’s awesome.

Richard Matthews 39:07
Yeah. Okay, so the flip side, then, your common enemy, is your driving force, right? So common enemy, something you fight against your driving force is what you fight for. So just like Spider Man fights to save New York or Batman by to save Gotham, or Google fights to index and categorize all the world’s information was that the fight for at Realto Marketing?

Tim Fitzpatrick 39:26
My, my mission is, is to make a positive, lasting impact on the lives that I touch. Whether it’s, you know, personally or professionally, so, that’s what gets me out of bed every day keeps pushing forward. You know, it’s pretty simple one. But you know, when we no matter how small of an impact if I can have an impact each and every day, I feel like I’m doing something good in the world. And, you know, when we can sit down with a client who doesn’t know what to do with their marketing, they’re confused. But they want to grow. And we can help them put those fundamentals in place, lay that foundation and create that plan that we’re now executing, and their business is growing, and it’s helping them accomplish their goals, man. To me, it’s, that’s why I do what I do. It doesn’t get much better than that. Yeah,

Richard Matthews 40:17
It’s a I call that the ripple effect. Right? When you, when you do your work, it impacts more than more than just the person that you’re doing the work for, yes, people they’re working with and everything else.

Tim Fitzpatrick 40:30
You know, as entrepreneurs, we can impact so many more people than I think some of us believe.

Richard Matthews 40:39
Yeah. And you get to be, you know, to use theme of our show, you get to be a hero in those people’s lives, right, and help them accomplish their goals as they accomplish their goals, because of the way capitalism works. Right? It’s value for value. Yep, that there, you know, when you help another business succeed, you’re helping them provide a lot of value to their clients, their customers. So yeah.

Tim Fitzpatrick 41:04
Yeah, so you’re having a huge impact when you do good.

Richard Matthews 41:08
Yeah, I completely agree. Well, so then I want to move on to the practical portion of our show, which you know, is I call it the heroes tool belt. And just like every superhero has a tool belt with awesome gadgets, like, you know, batarangs, or web slingers, or lasereyes, you know, a big magical hammer like Thor, I want to talk about what top one or two tools you couldn’t live without it, your business can be anything from your notepad to your calendar, your marketing tools, product delivery, anything that you think is absolutely essential, essential that you use every day to get the job done.

Tim Fitzpatrick 41:38
Sure. I have two. So the first one is called loom LOOM . Yeah, if you go to loom dot com, it’s a screen capture software, it is so darn easy to use. But I use this every single day, we have remote people, I use it to provide them with instructions on what I need to have done. I use it for prospecting, when I’m reaching out to clients so that they can actually see me and hear me, I use it with existing clients, you know, to communicate what’s going on and what we’re doing. I use it to create standard operating procedures. Yeah, so feel myself doing something walk through it loom is amazing. It’s free, I’m on the paid version, even the paid version is like $10 a month, it is worth 100 times that. So that is one of my favorite tools. The second one is, is I think it’s pretty common, but it’s just G Suite. I mean, we run our entire business of with G Suite, I mean, email, Google Drive, Docs, Sheets slides. couldn’t do it without it. So those are those are my two.

Richard Matthews 42:50
So I I don’t, I don’t love loom as much as other people. I’m not sure why. It’s always just sort of bothered me, I actually use I use a competitor called ScreenFlow, which is an app on my computer, okay, and upload them into my folder, we actually upload all the videos, and I just I have a set little automatic button that does that. But the there’s nothing against them, all of my friends use loom and I’m just like, for whatever reason, I just like my other app better because I’m more comfortable with it. But either way, the the the whole idea of being able to record your screen and record your face. And you know, particularly with like reporting standing standard operating procedures, or you walk through how to do a thing, and then have you know, have a staff member or something actually write out the process for it and create processes is such a huge, huge thing in your business that like if you’re if you’re watching this or listening to us, and you haven’t, like taken the five minutes, like break down your processes into little five minute chunks and record them and then have someone take the transcription of your reporting and turn them into actual documentation for your business. That’s probably been one of the biggest wins that I’ve had in my business. I’m not sure how it’s been for you, but getting things done, its been huge.

Tim Fitzpatrick 43:58
Yeah, it’s, it’s game changing. And as you pointed out, Richard, to me, I don’t think it really matters what the screen capture software is, as long as it’s easy for you to use. There’s a ton of them out there loom is the one I use. You know, before that I was using Screencast-o-Matic there’s a bunch of them. Just find one that you like, and works for how you work. Recording things. Yes, and start doing it today. It will, it will change your life. And because you know, as you pointed out, if you don’t have standard operating procedures within your business, you’re never going to be able to pull yourself out of your business. Your business will always be dependent on you And to me, that’s not a business. You just created yourself a job.

Richard Matthews 44:45
Yeah, I have a friend of mine who runs a podcast called Five minutes to freedom. And the whole whole concept is about taking whatever you’re doing and it’s like if you can take five minutes to explain a process and you can get a documented then you never have to do it again. Right? Yeah, that’s how that’s how you get you get freedom in your business. And also, it’s how you get yourself out of doing all of the things that aren’t those important steps we talked about earlier earlier, right? so you can start working on Hey, I need to do these big wins. Yeah, so

Tim Fitzpatrick 45:19
totally agree.

Richard Matthews 45:20
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So my next question for you then is about your own personal heroes. Right? So every hero has their mentors, right? Frodo had Gandalf Luke had Obi Wan Kenobi, Robert Kiyosaki had his Rich Dad, spider man had his Uncle Ben, Who were some of your heroes? Were they real life mentors, speakers or authors peers for maybe a couple of years ahead of you? And how important were they at what you’ve accomplished so far? In your business? Yeah.

Tim Fitzpatrick 47:20
So as I mentioned, earlier, you know, my, I was in business with my dad for 12, 13 years. So, you know, early on, he really was, he was my mentor, he was the person that really gave me the entrepreneurial bug. And I learned so much by watching him do business, you know, for him, hit him, you know, his, his reputation and his integrity were so important. And, and I watched him live that out, as he did business, sometimes he made really tough decisions based on those values, but having integrity and a solid reputation allowed him to build amazing relationships with people that that drove his his success, you know, and so I’ve never, ever forgot that, you know, and I really got to see a different side of him, you know, I was used to seeing him at home. You know, when I got to see him in business, it was just an amazing sight to see. And I really did, I looked up to him, I modeled the things that he did, because I, you know, I saw him doing great things. The other people that I learned so much from, were our other distribution partners, you know, earlier I mentioned to you, we, we were in business with 11, other distributor owners, and all of those owners, I was the youngest person in that room by 15 years minimum. So I just sat in that room, like a sponge. And, man, it was just every time I walked away from watching them listening, just with so much information, what I learned by being involved with them and, and just paying attention to what they were doing has diminished shaped my entire career. It’s I mean, it’s formed to who I am today. So

Richard Matthews 49:16
it is cool to have have opportunities like that I worked in a corporate environment for a couple of years where the the I reported directly to the president of the company, who had worked himself up from the bottom of the company is like a sales rep all the way to the president of the company. So he was like, it was really cool to sort of sit under his tutelage. And then the CEO of the company, was on the board of directors for 12 other companies and like had made his fortune in the Microsoft days. And so like getting to go into all the C level meetings and sit next to him and like listen to him talk about like, here’s where we are, and here’s where we’re going. And here’s the metrics that matter and all those kind of things. Yeah, and knowing that like, he does this every day for all of these multimillion dollar companies that it was like like the This guy knows his shit. Yes. And you’re like, to be able to just sit and learn from people like that. It’s such a cool opportunity.

Tim Fitzpatrick 50:09
It’s Dude, it’s one that I don’t take for granted. You know, I mean, I’ve certainly learned a lot from, you know, all the information that’s out there books, you know, podcasts, all those things have so much value. But man, it’s not to me, it’s, it’s not a substitute for that one on one interaction that I had early on in my, in my entrepreneurial journey,

Richard Matthews 50:34
I can, I can say pretty much without a doubt that the most impactful things that have happened in my business have been one on one with someone who is farther ahead than I am, where they had the what else to call it? The wisdom to call me out and tell me something that I needed to fix or change or improve. Yeah. And from somebody who’s where I want to be, and then me having the guts to actually listen to them and, and, and take action on those things have always been the most impactful things. Well, if you think about it, to bring this back to the to the comic book theme,

Tim Fitzpatrick 51:11
those people are your are your guide, right? every hero has has a guide, like you just talked about Frodo and Gandalf. I mean, the guide has already been where the hero is, right now. They know exactly how to solve your problem. You just have to listen to them and follow their directions.

Richard Matthews 51:31
Yeah, I remember very vividly one of my, one of my mentors a couple of years ago, and we were chatting and going through some things and you know, I was up, we get together yearly, and do a, like a group teaching thing where we all teach something from our business to the other people in the room. And I got down after my teaching thing, and he was like, you’re doing some really cool stuff. And he’s like, you have a problem here. He’s like, we make this change. It’ll, you’ll fix it. And and I remember thinking to him, like, I, like I can’t do that. Like, there’s no way I could make that happen. And I struggled with it for like six weeks. But I knew that he had results in that area that I didn’t have. And I knew that I wanted to be there. And I finally I just bit the bullet and did it anyways. And realize, like immediately, like on the other side, I was like, oh, not only could I do it, but I should have done it sooner. And if I just listened to him when he told me right.

Tim Fitzpatrick 52:24
Yeah. Yeah,

Richard Matthews 52:27
It’s, Coz like a perspective you don’t have.

Tim Fitzpatrick 52:30
Absolutely, sometimes we’re so in our business, it’s hard to see the forest through the trees. We need those, those outside eyes. And oftentimes when people give you those outside eyes, and you’re like, How can I not see that?

Richard Matthews 52:43
Yeah, yeah. It’s a it’s my, my, my best metaphor for it is something I tell my kids all the time. You know, we have our rules posted up on my refrigerator that house rules, we got seven of them. And the first rule on there is obey the first time. Right? And, and I always tell my kids, I was like, you’re always welcome to question my authority. But you’ll do it after you obey. Right? Yes. The reason is, because if I tell you to stop in the middle of the road, it’s because I see a truck coming that’s gonna run you over. And if you don’t stop, you’ll die. Yes, I have perspective you don’t have. So I expect you to obey me first. And then you can ask me later, why did you tell me to stop daddy? And I’ll tell you those. There’s a truck coming, right. And I didn’t want to die. And so like with that, that’s a really simplified version of it. But when you have someone who’s been where you want to be, they have perspective. You don’t have Yeah, right. And they can see things that you can’t see because of their perspective. Yeah. So that’s a my thoughts on that. No,

Tim Fitzpatrick 53:42
I love it.

Richard Matthews 53:43
Cool. So my next question for you, is about your guiding principles, right? It’s one of the things that make heroes heroic is that they live by a code, right? For instance, Batman never kills his enemies, he only ever puts them in Arkham Asylum. So as we wrap up the interview on to talk about the top one or two principles that you use regularly in your life, maybe something you wish you’d known when you first started out on your own entrepreneurial journey.

Tim Fitzpatrick 54:05
Sure. The first one is take responsibility for my actions. So not only is this a principle for me, but it drives me nuts, when I see people not take responsibility for their own actions, you know, so it’s just, it’s how I live my life. If I make a mistake, I’m going to own it. I’m going to learn from it and I’m going to move on. The second one is never stop learning. One of my early mentors told said to me, the day you stop learning is the day you start dying. And I believe that came from Albert Einstein originally. But it’s just having that mindset and living my life based on that principle. Just it It helps me to continually improve and get better. It keeps me engaged and interested in what I’m doing. And it just keeps me young at heart. You know, I just got that constant thirst for knowledge. So, yeah,

Richard Matthews 55:01
the first one about taking responsibility. I had a mentor of mine when I was really young. Sometime in high school, he mentioned that if it’s not your fault, you can’t fix it. Right? Yeah. And yeah, it’s like, he’s like, taking responsibility for something is taking all of the power in the situation, right? And giving up the responsibility is giving up all the power in the situation. Yes it is. If you want to be powerful, and be in control and be able to change the outcome. So you have to take responsibility. Right? And it’s a it’s just a mental shift, where you realize that taking responsibility isn’t a negative, it’s it’s a massive positive. It absolutely is.

Tim Fitzpatrick 55:42
So many people are afraid of taking responsibility, it’s so much easier to push the blame onto somebody else. But like you pointed out, if you if you just push the blame, then you can’t. It’s not gonna change can’t fix it.

Richard Matthews 55:56
You can’t fix it. And, you know, even with, with my clients, and I screw up regularly, even if it’s like my team that has screwed something up. I always was like, No, that’s, that’s my fault, right? Either I didn’t communicate something well, or I didn’t follow up the way that I should have more I illegitimately screwed something up, like, and I own that I go to the client, like, Hey, here’s what happened. Here’s how I, I failed you in this instance, and how we can fix it in the future. And people appreciate that. Right. Absolutely. Yeah. And, and it, you know, to, to the points that we talked about earlier, even your clients don’t expect you to be perfect. No, if you were, you wouldn’t be real. That’s right. Yeah, and on the second point, the the learning I had, I can’t remember who it was it said said this to me, but it was that a a fruit once it has stopped ripening, starts to rot,

Tim Fitzpatrick 56:55
Yes it is.

Richard Matthews 56:56
Right. So if you stop ripening, if you stop growing, then you start rotting, which I think is, you know, the same sort of concept is, you know, if you stop learning, you start dying. Yeah. And the other the other sort of mental picture I was had for, for that is sharks. Sharks have to constantly move if they stopped moving me Yeah, like they die. And that’s always like, I’ve always wanted to have that sort of I don’t know what you call it like that, that feeling of like always moving and pushing something. So one of the things that what do you call it that I’ve always done is even with outside of my business, is try to pick up new skills. So a couple years ago, like I started going through picking up piano, and it was just, you know, I got to a point where I was good enough that I was like, hey, I’ve learned this skill pretty well. And I move on, and I was like last year, it was I got into drawing. And then over the pandemic, it was, I started learning black letter calligraphy, alright, they’re just like, they’re just like ways to disconnect from the business. But it’s always like, it’s a skill. That’s hard. Right? And I have to learn how to do it to just like exercise that learning muscle. And of course, you know, you do all the stuff in your business to like learning how to hire people and grow and like reading the books and take care, all that stuff. But like, I always like to have something outside of the business that I’m learning how to do. So keeps things interesting. Yeah, keeps your life fun.

Tim Fitzpatrick 58:23
Yeah, that’s it.

Richard Matthews 58:26
Cool. So that’s basically a wrap on our interview. But I do finish every interview with a simple challenge I call the hero’s challenge. But we do this to help us get access to basically stories I might not otherwise find. So the question is simple. Do you have somebody in your life or in your network that you think has a cool entrepreneurial story? Who are they first names are fine, and why should they come share their story, on our show? First name that comes to mind?

Tim Fitzpatrick 58:48
Yeah, by the way, I love this question. Um, I have a young woman in my network on LinkedIn, by the name of Jordan. She started a medical company that that she created as a result of her health and well being journey after having brain surgery. She’s amazing man. She’s in her early 20s. Her story is absolutely captivating. She’d be a fantastic person to talk to.

Richard Matthews 59:19
Awesome. So we’ll reach out afterwards, see if we can connect with her and get her on the show. But in comic books, there’s always the crowd at the end of you know, their act of heroism to clap and cheer for the hero. So in place of that, what I want to do as we close is find out where people can find you where they can light up the bat signal, so to speak, and say, Hey, Tim, I’d really like to get your help with my business. And I think more importantly than where they can go to do that is who are the right types of people to reach out say, Hey, you know what, Tim? I really I really could use your help.

Tim Fitzpatrick 59:48
Yep. So the best place to find us is realto marketing dot com it’s ri a lto marketing dot com. I did put together some free resources for your audience. About the marketing fundamentals to help lay that foundation. So if they go to realtor marketing com forward slash hero dash show, they can get that information. You know, the typical clients that we hope best are, you know, we’ve talked about this a little bit as people that are selling their trade expertise or their knowledge, you know, so coaches and consultants, professional service providers like CPAs, or attorneys, or home service businesses, remodelers, contractors, those types of folks. Absolutely.

Richard Matthews 1:00:33
Well, well, that is basically it. And if you are listening to this, and you are in one of those spaces, I definitely encourage you to reach out to Tim, I mean, you’ve heard over the course of this interview, he definitely knows what he’s talking about. So make sure you reach out and pick up some of those resources and learn a little bit about the marketing fundamentals. We’ll make sure the link is in the show notes. Tim, thank you so much for coming on the show. It’s been a pleasure speaking with you today. Before I hit this stop record button. You have any final words of wisdom for the audience? No, just

Tim Fitzpatrick 1:00:59
Thanks. Thanks for having me. It’s been a pleasure, enjoyed chatting with you and for you that’s listening and just take that next measurable step.

Richard Matthews 1:01:07
Absolutely, thanks for coming on today Tim.