EPISODE SUMMARY
Commonly, people believe top line growth is the most important aspect of business. However, in marketing, you need to be thinking about top line and bottom line growth, as well as the personal and professional growth of your employees. These four types are all equally significant and interconnected. In episode 486, Dave Mastovich talks about how to apply No BS Marketing and these four types of growth to change the world.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
It’s the No Bullshit Marketing Show. I’m Dave Mastovich, CEO and founder of MASSolutions, the world’s only No Bullshit Marketing consultants. I was in a meeting yesterday with a prospective potential new client. One of the four people there said, ‘I don’t want to just make it look pretty.’ And I laughed, because loyal No BSers know I use this phrase a lot. I said, ‘Tell me more.’ And she said, ‘I’m sick of whenever we have someone that comes in, and they immediately start spouting off what they want to do and how they’re going to do it for us. And it typically involves making things look pretty.’ The other person chimed in and said, ‘Yeah, when I worked on the corporate side, the same thing would happen. A lot of people would come to us and say, make this look better, make this look pretty, clean this up.’ You’ve heard me talk a lot about how that is bullshit marketing. It’s not really marketing, it’s making something look pretty. So from my standpoint, I want to talk today about how marketing of the No BS sort can drive growth and that there are four essential types of growth for world changing companies. Think about those world changing companies, there’s four central types of growth for them. What if we applied that to all of us who want to change the world? And we’re probably going to change our part of it. And we can, if we do No Bullshit Marketing. And it’s not making something look pretty.
When you dig into these four essential types of growth, inevitably, you’re going to come across one of the other things that happens with bullshit marketing. So the first of the four essential types of growth that marketing can help is getting more sales, more revenue. Top line growth. Now it’s good if your marketing team, internally, and the external strategic partners, the agencies, the firms that you work with think in terms of top line growth or increased sales. It’s good. There’s a flip side when that gets focused on too much. I had one guy who had given them an example of how a home medical equipment company that was doing oxygens for home oxygen to assess whether you need a respirator and whether you have sleep apnea, and so forth. And they were saying, we had told them how that company had only been getting 25 a month, and within 100 days, we were getting 50 of those a month. And this prospect hired us and kept saying, ‘I want more oxygen, so I want you to get me more oxygens,’ meaning he wanted us to sell more of his stuff. So it’s good if you have that top line focus, increased sales, increased top line revenue. But it can go too far like that guy saying to us, ‘All I’m worried about is selling more oxygens.’ And he didn’t even sell oxygen. He wanted to sell more chairs and cabinetry. Well, you can also go too far with that. Because marketing isn’t just about top line growth. There are four essential types of growth. It’s not about making something look pretty. It’s not about cleaning something up. And it’s not 100% about top line growth, revenue growth, sales growth, it’s not 100%, probably not even 80%. Now, there’ll be some people out there who will say, ‘What are you talking about? That’s all that it’s about.’ No, it isn’t. Because you also should be cognizant of how that company makes money. What is their gross margin? What’s their goal for a net profit margin? How are they doing that? What service line makes money the most? Who are their customers? How can we adjust our storytelling, not only to increase sales, but increase the better kind of sales? So there’s top line growth, and there’s bottom line growth for that organization. Those two make a lot of sense. I’m sure nobody out there is saying, ‘Whoa, this is something revolutionary that Dave said.’ It’s not. But the vast majority of people who think they do marketing or say that they do marketing don’t really have a true top line focus. Or there’s a small percentage that go too far with the top line revenue, top revenue, sales growth as their major thing. So most people don’t even get that right and put a proper importance to it. 
And then the second one is bottom line growth, which again, most people don’t. They just say, ‘We helped them with more sales.’ And a lot of clients don’t even want to talk about that. They’re uncomfortable with it. But if you really want to be that game changing, world changing company, or at least emulate that world changing company, you as a marketer, whether you’re the internal marketer, whether you’re the founder of that company, the owner of that company, the CEO of that company, you anyone on the internal side of the client, and your external strategic partner on the marketing side, your consultant, your branding agency, your digital, you need to be thinking about both top and bottom line growth. So that’s two. And very few of you are doing both as intentional as you can be, and should be. And that’s where the BS of marketing comes in. To have the No BS approach is you’re thinking about both those two, you’re putting proper context, you’re having conversations, you’re using strategic marketing KPIs, rather than just tactical marketing metrics. And we’re going to talk about all these things more, and we have, in other podcasts. And you can reach out to me directly. I’d be happy to walk you through ideas to just help your company, no charge, no obligation.
Those are two, but you also need to be focused on your people. And there has to be professional growth. They get better at the skill you’ve hired them to do. So third, a central type of growth. And there has to be personal growth. Or they grow as a person, how they think, how they organize themselves, how they prioritize the confidence they have, their growth personally of their view of the world, and how they can be better and more self-confident. So there’s the professional growth, which is, ‘I went to a seminar about leadership. I learned Project Management Certification, I took storytelling mastery to get better at storytelling.’ That’s professional growth, third one. But personal growth is when you’re helping someone to be their best self, you’re helping them to understand themselves stronger through something with a science to it like predictive index, which helps to understand what energizes and what drains them. It’s helping them with how they prioritize their day so they have a proper amount of time to recharge so they’re energized. They have a proper amount of prioritization of what’s done first, second, and third, that they look at how they’re actually going about doing things. That’s about personal growth.
Now, the reality is, those four central types of growth that world changing companies push and have a part of their culture aren’t intentionally done by many companies or people. I didn’t say they’re not talked about, because they are talked about. But there’s not the intentionality of saying that my marketing, me as a founder or CEO of that company, me as the Chief Financial Officer, Chief Executive Officer, Chief Operating Officer, Chief Marketing Officer, me as the director of sales, the marketing manager, I want to be intentional about my company. I’m putting the hat on for you. I want to be in touch about my company, looking at top line growth, bottom line growth, professional growth for team members, and personal growth for your employees and team members. There’s not enough of that done by companies. And then, when they hire firms to help with their storytelling, to help with their target market segmentation, to help with their marketing insights, to help with their marketing strategy and plan, to help activate or implement aspects of their marketing plan, their PR, their storytelling, that firm that they’re working with, that agency they’re working with also doesn’t havethe intentionality about top line growth and talking through an understanding of bottom line growth, gross margins, net margins and understanding of professional growth for their clients’ team members and their own team members, and personal growth for each member.
You’re saying, ‘Okay, Dave, you babbled on for about seven minutes, whatever. Why does it matter? What’s it mean to me?’ What it means to you is recruiting, retention and results, the productivity of your team. All three of those are impacted by professional growth and personal growth. If you aren’t helping your team members to grow personally and professionally on a regular basis, you’re getting less productivity, less results from them. And they’re going to leave because someone’s going to tell them, maybe not do it, but tell them that they’re going to focus on their personal and professional growth. So you’ve lost someone, now you have to go recruit. And if you kept them, you kept someone whose results weren’t there. So that’s precisely why personal and professional growth should matter to each and every one of you watching this video or listening to this podcast, whether you are a manager of people, a director of people, a VP of people, whether you’re the founder, whether you’re the owner, whether you’re a digital firm, a digital agency, a branding agency, a marketing consultant. You have to think in terms of these four essential types of growth. Top line and have a rigor around it. Bottom line, understanding the margins in that industry, and in that industry’s section of where they play, but then focusing on professional growth for team members, current and prospective, and personal growth, for current and prospective team members.
So those are the four essential types of growth for world changing companies that are doing this right now. The ones you know, off the top of your head, the ones you’re thinking about right now, and I’m not going to say them because you’re thinking of your own world changing company. They’re doing these four central types of growth. They have it as part of their culture. You need to have it as part of your culture. If you’re the marketing outside agency working with them, you have to bring that for your agency, but also bring that for your clients. And if you’re the founder out there, you’ve got to make this part of your culture.
Thanks for listening to another episode of the No Bullshit Marketing Show recorded in MASSolutions studio here in bold, beautiful, downtown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Remember, ask yourself, what’s the big idea? And build your story around the answer. It’s all about bold solutions. No BS.
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