💰 Reducing Customer Acquisition Costs (Case Study Breakdown)

[00:00:00] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Christine: there's been, exponential growth in that way, , that I've shared within the kitchen. When you and I first started, I was, less than a hundred grand when we first started in annual revenue and now like approaching two.

[00:01:09] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Host: Welcome back to another episode of the Momentum Multipliers podcast. This is a special episode. This is a shameless plug, a shout out episode. We've brought Christine, one of our clients into the room in hopes of sharing all the magical wisdom. She's gained from working with us. Christine, how are you today?

[00:01:32] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Christine: Yeah. Doing great. Thanks Ernesto. Yeah.

[00:01:35] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Host: Are you ready to share some magical wisdom?

[00:01:37] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Christine: Yeah, for sure. I've been encouraging this conversation because there's been so, so much magic as you say.

[00:01:46] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Host: So much magic. , So before we kind of dive into it, maybe, some people it's the first time, who are you? What do you do? Some background.

[00:01:54] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Christine: Sure. Yeah. . My name's Christine Malfa. I, as far as North America goes, Ernesto is in the bottom right corner of the us. I am in the, not far north, but in the Canadian Iraqis. So, and we work together for, what was it, two, three

[00:02:15] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Host: Two, three years, something like that.

[00:02:18] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Christine: But anyways, , and I provide, , fractional marketing services for hotels. So, that's from advisory and coaching to fully done for use services with hotels. Mm-hmm.

[00:02:30] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Host: And so we did meet around two, three years ago. It's been such a nourishing relationship. Take us back though, to that time. I mean, we met through a mastermind group we were a part of, but what was life like for you around that time?

[00:02:48] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Christine: Yeah. , I was. I think back then I was managing tasks, so I was very much involved. The majority of my clients at that time were all totally, we take marketing off their plate. So if you can imagine four hotels that you're doing all the marketing activities for, , there's a lot of tasks in there. And so as managing it with.

[00:03:11] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Christine: In a Google task manager, which was bananas because I had all these different clients and some of the work was not exactly the same. I don't subscribe to cookie cutter versions of things, and everything was custom. And so I was definitely in the weeds and I had a team member that I had brought on that I was training and bringing along with, you know, sharing that workload.

[00:03:35] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Christine: But in terms of managing tasks, we kept bumping into. How to set priorities, what is priority? When we open this and everything's just like.

[00:03:44] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Christine: Spray in your face every day. And so you burn up brain power trying to figure out who needs what when, and I just didn't have like a lot of organization around that.

[00:03:55] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Christine: I carried most of the prioritization in my head based on what I knew the. That the client wanted and needed. , But it was difficult to translate that to another team member. So it became fairly acute at that point. It was like, I need a better system. And yes, I received that recommendation from that person that we mutually know through that mastermind group.

[00:04:18] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Christine: And then I looked at different options and. Clearly His recommendation was like, well, you need to call this guy, and that was you. And, when we first started, and I, like you mentioned notion and I went online and I was like, okay. Like I definitely, I knew at that time that I'm a very organized person and I like building things.

[00:04:42] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Christine: But I knew that this was like, you don't know what you don't know. And so that's when we really started, when it was like so acute, I was like, I am wasting so much time.

[00:04:53] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Host: And here we are two and a half years later,

[00:04:56] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Host: how many hours per week you know, rough estimate back then, do you think you were spending, investing in just keeping up with, with. status quo, with, whatever needed to happen. Like how much time did you spend thinking about what needed to get done?

[00:05:11] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Christine: Thinking about what needed to be done and reviewing the list on a daily basis, I think was easily 30 minutes. Probably conservative, but I would say 30 minutes a day.

[00:05:22] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Host: it adds up and then probably could be conservative.

[00:05:26] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Christine: It probably was conservative, like on a Monday that might be higher. , And after meetings that might be higher too.

[00:05:32] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Host: So three years later, I mean, how, how has your business changed at a high level before we get into the, you know, what it was like doing that change? Where are you at today?

[00:05:43] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Christine: Oh my gosh, there's so much growth. I mean, you know, some of the, big milestones along, the way of the aha moments and the breakthroughs, , where am I today? , I don't spend time thinking about those things, it's more of a very light touch maintenance mode. As opposed to this deep dog paddle in the deep end.

[00:06:04] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Christine: my weekly planning is less than 10 minutes right now.

[00:06:08] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Christine: and when we first started this process, you were encouraging like 30 minutes and it has become so stealthy like. And I just came back from a vacation, so I did it today 'cause it's Friday. And you helped build that discipline.

[00:06:22] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Christine: Thank you. And now I'm like 10 minutes. I have full view of what's happening next week and if it's happening the week after that, I do not need to look at it. Discipline that you, , have taught as well. So I think that's one of the biggest ones is I don't burn up the time on that and I'm able to, manage everything that I'm doing right now.

[00:06:44] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Christine: Like, yes, I have other tools and things that facilitate pieces of my business, but in terms of managing tasks, relationships, pipeline content. It's all in the system.

[00:06:59] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Host: 10 minutes a week.

[00:07:00] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Christine: Yeah. Well that's not building content of

[00:07:02] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Christine: course, but we're planning it. Yeah. And looking at what, here's all my meetings. Here's who I need to contact, here's who I wanna reach out to. Actions like having a balanced week to make sure I have a heavy meeting day. I don't have very many actions on that day.

[00:07:18] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Christine: I used to be so terrible at. thinking I could do so much in a week and then be disappointed at the end.

[00:07:24] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Host: I literally was talking to someone today about that. He's like, I wanna attack my week so hard. And I always. Shame myself for not having done that much. And it's like, I think that's just entrepreneurs. I dunno if it's a you thing,

[00:07:37] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Christine: No, it's for sure a thing where we just like, I just think I can eat this whole elephant and do, like last week I came back from vacation. I had a lot of meetings this past week,

[00:07:46] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Host: you, have

[00:07:47] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Host: to catch up.

[00:07:48] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Christine: Yeah.

[00:07:48] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Host: describe like three years. I mean, what, was it? How would you tell a friend like what we did or what I helped you do?

[00:07:57] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Christine: I think a lot of it would be summarized in like, I know that you used the word chaos, but that is the truth, it was chaos. And it's chaos. Not because I'm disorganized, I'm fairly organized person. , But it was chaos because I was spending so much time, like in the spinning wheel, trying to figure things out.

[00:08:17] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Christine: And now I only have one dashboard that I look at, and there's all these other things that are working. You know, show up on a one page and this is what I do, so I don't need to be distracted by tomorrow or next week or next month. So that has been one of the biggest gifts of going through this is just that freedom to be like, I don't need to worry about those things I planned last week for what this week would look like.

[00:08:44] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Christine: So there's more control and freedom.

[00:08:48] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Host: If you were speaking to a lot of my clients. Time to value is a, is a very fairly popular concept in the world of entrepreneurship. I wouldn't necessarily describe my work as like, oh, you're gonna get it overnight. would you open up a little bit about your experience and your time to value or time to aha with our work?

[00:09:10] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Host: And then maybe offer some encouragement to other people who. Are kind of in those beginning phases and like, you know, they wanna eat the elephant day one and, and they can't because it's just naturally the work that you went through, it's not like an elephant in a bite type of a

[00:09:26] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Host: experience.

[00:09:28] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Christine: I think any transformation like. One that a lot of people know really well is like the road to fitness or health, right? And there's no real shortcut, but when you start to see changes, You lean in and you're like, it's coming. It is happening. And so I think that there are markers along the whole journey that we had where it was like, okay, we are gonna just focus on, could I have done this without you?

[00:09:55] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Christine: No. that's not me. Like, you know, pumping your tires. That's just the truth. It's because you need somebody who's on the other side. who's been there, who can be the guide? and so that helped me be persistent because there were times when I was like, this is too much and I wanna pull away and default to something easier.

[00:10:18] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Christine: And that was certainly a choice, but I'm glad I didn't make that choice. I'm so grateful that I stuck with it because I knew on the other side, like you're standing there at the end of the end zone saying, come, come, keep coming. Right? And I'm going like, marker by marker by marker. One of those markers is, one piece at a time.

[00:10:41] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Christine: So what is it that feels priority right now? Well, actions. Your daily tasks, that was like, how do we get a handle on that? So then when we got a handle on that and we were, you know, moving and grieving there, then you can move on to something else. Some things were, things I had never done before, like manage a pipeline, you know, so that came a little bit later, but if it all came at once, I would've thrown it in.

[00:11:08] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Christine: So I think it's important to just go. Step by step and just get good as you go and know that the process isn't like, there's no way to hack this. This is building a system,

[00:11:18] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Host: Mm-hmm. what struck me? While you were participating that the kitchen is a community,

[00:11:26] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Host: , Or it's designed to be a community experience. And many of the times it was just you and I on a call. I would say a majority of the times it was just you and I on the call. On one end you was like, Hey, where's everyone else in the community?

[00:11:39] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Host: kind of like a negative perception of the experience. Like, is this even working? Like, am I showing up? like why am I the only person here? Where are other people I like to Encourage people to think about, like, you know, what are you committed to doing?

[00:11:54] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Host: independent of what the world is looking like, like independent of how many people show up or don't show up. I certainly was committed to showing up because, you know, I sold a product and here I am

[00:12:03] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Host: fulfilling. But for you as a client, I, feel like so many clients can throw in the towel or like, you know, just see that like they're the only person here.

[00:12:12] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Host: What was the reason that like kept you? Coming, like what was your drive, your internal driving force? Because this work it's, not easy.

[00:12:21] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Christine: , Well, I, I think the only reason is that commitment, and you could say, okay, but why? And that, is because I just wanted to be out of that previous state. And so once I was in it, it was like, how far can we go? How much can we do? And we got to a point where I felt like, oh, this has met expectations, my actions are far easier, but I wasn't doing pipeline or planning then. So it was managing actions and projects overall and looking at how they relate to each other. That was what I really came in to do. But then I saw,

[00:13:02] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Christine: oh,

[00:13:04] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Christine: this opens up other possibilities and the time in the hour or once a week at that time, that's what it was, and that just meant more time down the road.

[00:13:16] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Christine: And that's how I saw it going. All this time is going to come back to me.

[00:13:20] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Host: Going to come back and, and more. I want to talk about, we did joke a lot about the Big Mac and even at the beginning of this episode, you were like, I used to do full custom done for you marketing fractional CMO services. And I cannot remember exactly when, at what point you were like, okay, I think I need, big magnifying my services.

[00:13:41] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Host: Be helpful. Would you mind sharing one, what is a Big Mac contextually, and then two, like, When do you realize, oh, okay, productizing my service. Yeah, this could be beneficial. And then where you are today with all of that.

[00:13:57] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Christine: Right. , I'll actually start with the trigger because the trigger was going through and looking at that allocation of time, and it started more so with like the formula of, , capacity equals bandwidth minus admin. so I was looking at it going, how many meetings do I have a week? How many tasks am I trying to accomplish?

[00:14:16] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Christine: so when I brought on a team member before it was just me. So I developed a lot of very bad habits. and then when you bring on a team member and you're both sitting in the same meeting, and I actually did a time, like a compensation based on. , You know what?

[00:14:29] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Christine: I was really paying myself and in some of those meetings I was paying myself $11 and I was like, there, there is a problem here. And you know, nobody wants to admit that, but here I am saying it very publicly now because that was the revelation that sort of kicked off that.

[00:14:49] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Christine: Oh my gosh. I need to change how I do this , because I had had some clients for over 10 years and so it's been a long process. Very grateful. But it was, it was like, oh, I've got, I'm making $11 in these hours. What do I need to change? And so when you introduce the, this is how it's always done. the concept of the Big Mac, how the Big Mac is actually built. It's consistent. It's the same. , And it becomes a flywheel in essence. Right? and then looking at. clients that I've worked with for some time, I've been moving that way that's a trickier turn.

[00:15:25] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Christine: But, , adjusted some agreements at that time, adjusted how we worked to make things more profitable for myself in the business. that was a huge revelation. And then going forward, saying. Here's the services and developing an offer portfolio.

[00:15:42] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Host: let's get an example before you were full custom. I'll do everything for you. And so what does a Big Mac look like now? One example,

[00:15:49] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Christine: so before it was, yeah, we're gonna do all these pieces and now we're doing core, core pieces that we are very strong with, which is like content creation, not social, but mostly web and all online. So we developed sort of core categories of expertise, , for hotel marketing and the rest we.

[00:16:13] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Christine: Actually in one case helped train hotel members like onsite teams to take some of the things that I was doing And so it's really been about just making sure it's consistent and then that really helps my team member understand, you know, what we do, but it's not. Nuanced. Like the activity doesn't change.

[00:16:34] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Christine: The activity is the same. This is how we do it. We create a playbook for it. We have a, you know, protocols to follow. It's so great. It's really good.

[00:16:46] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Host: You sound excited. How,

[00:16:47] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Christine: Yeah.

[00:16:48] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Host: okay. Now that you, you did the work of kind of taking everything gourmet custom, a la carte special

[00:16:54] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Host: to your Big Mac, how do you see. The next year or a year and a half now, like you have your Big Mac offer, you have your Big Mac acquisition tool, like your monthly workshop that you do.

[00:17:08] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Host: Everything is a lot more standardized.

[00:17:11] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Host: How do you forecast, you know, what your business can look like in, two years from now?

[00:17:16] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Christine: Well, I actually, , the growth scorecard is my springboard. The tool that you created cause conceptually we think that we know, but then when you actually apply it to a spreadsheet, that could change, and you know how it works. , but for the audience, when you're plugging in your leading metrics, the activities that you're doing that lead to sales, you know, when you don't do those things that adjusts. like, I think intellectually we know this, but it's when you actually put it into a spreadsheet and you change the numbers of like, oh, if I back off and don't do the thing. 'cause I did that for a while, . If I don't do the things I said I was gonna do, in terms of like building the business and the outreach and making the connections, if I don't do those things, this is how it will show up was a very clear picture.

[00:18:08] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Host: And now

[00:18:08] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Host: that you have that clarity, so,

[00:18:10] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Host: I mean, mindset and possibility aside, do you see the possibility of relaxing your business? And of course it's a combination of many things, but wonder if I had asked Christine two years ago, do you see the possibility of three Xing your business versus the Christine of today?

[00:18:28] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Host: the same question?

[00:18:30] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Host: Now that you have all this in place, the Big Mac, the standardization, the playbooks, how does this, today's Christine, , how does your conviction today change because you have all of this in place.

[00:18:41] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Christine: , I do see financially it changing because it will allow, , how I've built things requires less of me. and, , more revenue growth. as opposed to trying to do everything custom, it's now I know what I'm doing. I come in, I don't have to spend time and prep and activities and so on.

[00:19:02] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Christine: I bring the expertise that I know to the situation. I've designed offers that way. I think that's the key. It's you have to design offers this way. , And then it just becomes sort of the flywheel piece in terms of allowing for expansion of, , the audience. Like I'm on LinkedIn allowing for expansion.

[00:19:22] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Christine: Like, so LinkedIn leads to other opportunities like speaking and podcasts and so on. So there's been, exponential growth in that way, , that I've shared within the kitchen. When you and I first started, I was, less than a hundred grand when we first started in annual revenue and now like approaching two.

[00:19:43] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Host: The statistic every vendor wants to

[00:19:45] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Host: hear.

[00:19:46] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Christine: Yes. Yes. And that really wasn't like, that was through just facing the broken pieces that need to or get fixed.

[00:19:57] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Host: I got off a call literally today with, our mutual friend

[00:20:01] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Host: Nick,

[00:20:02] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Host: he's like, you know, I was thinking about you. The hardest part about your business is that what you're selling is something that very few people actually want to admit that it's a problem. Or even though once they admit it's the problem, they don't wanna work on it. I'm like, damn. How do we make

[00:20:19] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Host: facing your obstacles sexy again? I.

[00:20:22] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Christine: Well, you're in the 75 hard community. You just need to figure out how to fold that in Ernesto.

[00:20:27] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Host: Yeah. Yeah. there are a lot of things I'm figuring out how to fold in later, , well into this whole machine. , Is there anything that you would like, , our audience, , future multipliers to know about, kind of like parting words last, you know, three takeaways from your experience?

[00:20:48] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Christine: Oh,

[00:20:49] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Christine: three words really like, just stick with it. Stick with it. Because the time that you're putting in today is coming back to you like multiple x. And I think the freedom of mind, like when they say notion is your second brain. I think that there's different levels of that. Like having notion doesn't mean you have a second brain using notion as the tool to build.

[00:21:17] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Christine: The second brain is I. A piece that's important, and I think a lot of people get stuck on the notion piece as opposed to keeping their eye on the system,

[00:21:29] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Christine: on the end. Result notion is the tool. Don't get stuck on notion. Stick with it to the system and then don't go it alone.

[00:21:38] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Christine: get help. For somebody who, like I said, like it's a good analogy because it's true. Standing at the end zone cheering you on, you're, you know, every 10 yard line you're going over is somebody there who has built it, who can be the guide, who you know, you don't have to sit there and YouTube yourself to death, which is what I did before we met.

[00:21:57] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Host: That's it. I just have to tell people, Hey, I'm gonna save you 30 hours of time. From what? From YouTubing after this meeting.

[00:22:04] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Host: Let's start the day.

[00:22:06] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Christine: It's so true.

[00:22:07] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Host: Christine, thank you so much, for getting me out of my shell and having our first client spotlight.

[00:22:14] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Host: And I'm looking forward to our growth field futures.

[00:22:17] MOM - Case Study with Christine - Christine: Mm-hmm. Thank you, Ernesto.