Atomic Owners
Close More Deals with a Customer Journey | Ep 1
Armando Leduc, CEO of Leduc Entertainment, discusses the importance of strategy and intentionality in video production and personal branding. He helps entrepreneurs make money by being found online, giving authority to their brand, and creating their customer journey.
Armando lost several clients in a short period of time, which led him to reevaluate his customer journey and make drastic improvements. He emphasizes the importance of connection and joint ventures in driving business and making an impact.
Takeaways:
- Videos without strategy and intentionality are pointless.
- Understanding the customer journey and creating educational touchpoints are key to closing deals.
- Challenges and failures are learning opportunities that can lead to growth and improvement.
- Connection and joint ventures drive an impactful business.
Armando Leduc, CEO of Leduc Entertainment, discusses the importance of strategy and intentionality in video production and personal branding. He helps entrepreneurs make money by being found online, giving authority to their brand, and creating their customer journey.
Armando lost several clients in a short period of time, which led him to reevaluate his customer journey and make drastic improvements. He emphasizes the importance of connection and joint ventures in driving business and making an impact.
Takeaways:
- Videos without strategy and intentionality are pointless.
- Understanding the customer journey and creating educational touchpoints are key to closing deals.
- Challenges and failures are learning opportunities that can lead to growth and improvement.
- Connection and joint ventures drive an impactful business.
Today I have Armando LeDuc, CEO owner of LeDuc Entertainment. He is my mentor. I had just really funny interactions running into him and just kind of leading me into the path of having him pour into my business. So, Armando, I'm super, super grateful for you to be appearing as guest number one on the Atomic Ownership Podcast. Thank you, it's awesome man. Thanks for having me. I'm honored to be appearing as guest number one on the Atomic Ownership Podcast. Thank you.
Speaker 2:It's awesome man. Thanks for having me. I'm honored to be here. I'm glad you're doing this.
Speaker 1:Well, you've really pushed me into a lot of things, this being one of those big things, so really grateful for that swift kick in the butt. So appreciate that.
Speaker 2:It's what I do, man. I will say that's one of the big things that, if there's anything that I've been really able to attribute my success to, I think is just really motivating people to believe in themselves enough to like take action, you'll. You'll really discover things about yourself that you would have never figured out, you know, and so I'm super, super impressed that you, that you take action and most, a lot of people don't.
Speaker 1:It is helpful, it is helpful to have a good mentor, that that it's been down that path and so so knows knows these things. Uh, could you, could you talk just a little bit about your business, lude Duke Entertainment, just the people you serve. Talk to me about that.
Speaker 2:So here at Lude Duke Entertainment, we started off as a video production company and then we learned really quickly that videos without strategy is pointless.
Speaker 2:You can have amazing videos that are living in a Google drive, or you can have amazing videos that go out on social media but that they don't have intention. If they don't, they don't have any strategy behind it, then it's not really going to work out and you'll find a lot of video, a lot of businesses that go oh, I need a video for my business. Um, sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't. The reasons why it doesn't work out is because they don't have a strategy or intentionality behind it. So I would say that the people that we help are people that are visionaries, entrepreneurs that are really wanting to share their story and talk about and create impact. And so, as we've developed and grown as a company, we've moved more into the personal branding and PR side, where it's a holistic approach to the whole process, where we create videos still, but it's a lot more intentional, with an entire plan rather than just one spoke of the wheel.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I and I could see how that would be super valuable with owning multiple parts of that process and getting more and more off of the entrepreneur, your entrepreneur plate. Um, so I could see that just really exponentially growing your value. Um, speaking of those entrepreneurs, what, what would you say that their specific pain points are that you help really solve?
Speaker 2:So businesses do three things they either make you money, save you money or mitigate risk, and so understanding that about your business will help you position yourself to really help people. So if you understand those three things, we understand that we help people make money. How do we help people make money? To their brand, creating their brand, people that want to be found, people that want to increase their revenue, their top line revenue, people that want more time to be the business owner rather than the technician. So those are several things that we definitely help with.
Speaker 1:And specifically with the business. What are those service offerings that y'all offer to help in that way?
Speaker 2:So we have a three-prong approach, which is a podcast strategy, a customer journey strategy and then an organic social media strategy and those three things that we work sort of in tandem because I think they work all at the same time.
Speaker 2:So when somebody comes in, we help them develop their brand, who they're talking to, how they help the whole nine. We create a customer journey for them. At the same time, we're creating a podcast, because what we found is the best way to connect with someone these days, the best way to create joint ventures, the best way to create referral partnerships, has been podcasting, because it gives the other person an opportunity to talk about themselves.
Speaker 2:Give them a platform right, and really connect and really understand who it is that you're working with and who you're dealing with. And when you understand that, then you can actually help that person and then that's how referrals happen. That's how you really understand. How many times do we go to a networking event and somebody tells us what they do and five seconds later we forget? Right, how many times do we go to a networking event and we ask their name and five seconds we forget? So, let alone what they do?
Speaker 2:So spending time with them and really letting them talk about who they help and giving them that platform has just been revolutionary. And then we take their customer journey and we put them in video touch points. So that way, when prospects come in the door, it's amazing, right we're a marketing company. If we can bring you 200 qualified leads in a month, if you don't have a strategy for how you talk to them, for how you get them through the funnel and how you convert, it's pointless again, right, it's just like having great video that sits in a Google drive.
Speaker 2:You have to plan out the journey and we help with that. We also help with the shooting and editing and distributing of that content and then the authority building. That is social media. And when we create content on a regular basis that answers people's questions SEO strategy then you start to really show your authority, thought leadership online. And when you combine all three, you really have a winning formula for getting a robust lead generating machine and the fact that you're going to create authority, credibility and trust through that process so that you can close more deals and, more importantly, help more people.
Speaker 1:That's cool. Um, when, when talking about personal brand and the and the and the business owners that you serve, how do you go about um like fine tuning that Like does? Do you have? Do you have a goal for your clients as far as personal brand or do you really um try to get them to fine tune it and you work around their personal brand, how they're developing it?
Speaker 2:people are really good at what they do right, and they should they should stay in that space. We're really good at what we do, and so I would never bring in a plumber to my house and then proceed to tell him how to do his job right. But there's so many times where marketing professionals they go oh, this is not a one size fits all.
Speaker 2:We really need to figure out some things, and when I hear that, I'm like, hmm, that's a marketing professional that hasn't figured out what they really do what they really do, because if you have a strategy that has worked for all of these other people, then you should put everybody else through that same assembly line right. The reason why their franchise models exist is because they figured out what the process and procedure is to get the result. Marketing is no different. So that's a big red flag, in my opinion. When you start to see somebody that talks about, oh well, we can do this and this and this and this and and and. We have to figure it out. And how much does it cost? Well, it depends. When you start hearing that, it means that they're probably throwing spaghetti on the wall no pun intended, because that's my podcast and it doesn't mean. And what it also tells me is that they haven't created a process that creates true results For us. We've created it. It's called content into clients.
Speaker 2:Everybody goes through it, no matter what the level in which they do it can change, right in terms of budget, but every single person goes through our process the same way.
Speaker 2:I don't care if you're a plumber, personal injury attorney, family law attorney, plastic surgeon, whoever you are, we still need to go through the entire process Creatively. Those things change the different questions and that's where the creativity comes in. However, the template of how we get you from point A to point Z is all mapped out, which is part of the customer journey, which is why what we try to tell everybody is hey, everybody has a process, everybody has a customer journey, whether you plan it or not. Hopefully, you're planning it so that you know and you can, at the end of the day, show the analytics that what you do is working and that you have case studies to back up what it is that you do, so that you can close deals. A lot of times when your marketing companies are struggling to grow, it's because they've created results for somebody. They haven't done the work to identify or analyze what was it about their approach that worked Once again, throwing spaghetti on the wall, and they're like oh well, we helped this person, can you do the same for me?
Speaker 1:Well, I don't know Not to encourage.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So our approach is you know, come in, trust us, follow us. We've seen what works. We've done this, we trialed and aired it out. We know that if you follow this process on the outside of this, you're going to get results. It is the implementation that people need help with. It is not whether or not this approach is going to work. So that's what we do.
Speaker 1:That's cool. So with this podcast, my aim is to talk about both the highs and the lows with the entrepreneurial journey. Everybody, every business owner, has had many of those challenges that some that they've overcome, others that they did not, but still learned in the process Um is there. Is there a time that that either you are going through right now or that you have in my have in mind about um, if a failure or challenge that you faced and just I'm curious if you could talk me through that as a business owner- oh yeah, I mean, I have a ton.
Speaker 2:I have a ton right Every every day as you're growing. It's a new level that you've never been at before. Right, every day, you, you're growing, the people you come in contact with, the revenue that you have, the amount of employees that you have, like every single thing, every time you grow a whole nother set of problems. I'll give you one story that just rocked my, my, my world and was a result of, I think, a lot of times when you encounter something that like throws you down and like you get drug, those are pay attention, those are learning moments, and this is what I learned we lost close to $35,000 a month in retaining business within a five day period.
Speaker 2:We had like five or six clients drop like within a five day period, five or six clients drop like within a five day period and I was like, oh my God, what are we going to do? And so I did. I did an exit poll and I was like, hey guys, like I, I'm not going to try to stop you, you know, I just want to know why. You know, why are you dropping Armando You're? You know, your videos are great, but your, your organization is just messed up.
Speaker 1:Hmm.
Speaker 2:There, there's no organization, we don't know when we're getting this, we don't know when we're getting that, we don't know what we're paying for. And I was like, thank you, thank you for that. I'm going to internalize this and I'm going to move forward and sat, meditated on it, got with my team on it and I had a. I had a decision to make. I was like I could fire everybody and really streamline this thing down, or I could really sit and think about, okay, what is it about what they said that I need to change? And so I started reading books, read a book called Never Lose a Customer Again by Joey Coleman, and he talked about the customer journey and what does it mean and how do you put it together and what is the activate phase, what is the affirm phase? Where are people like? How are people experiencing your business and what's going on with them psychologically at those different points, right when, when they buy from you, are they having buyer's remorse? Or when they, you know, why are they not buying from you? Why are they not staying with you, all of that stuff? So we mapped it out. We got on this product called Lucidchart and it's just like a flow chart mapping software, which I love. For me it's really good visionary-wise, because then I can see the whole thing.
Speaker 2:And we mapped it out. We go, ok, what are people? How do we deliver on our thing, right on our service? And we put that together first. Then we went back and we went, OK, how do we take this and explain our customer journey to a prospect in order for us to educate them, to get them to buy? So then we took that and then we put educational touch points all the way through the prospect journey, because our sales cycle sometimes anywhere from three weeks to six months, depending Some people, they have their budget outlined for the next six months to a year, so it's not like they don't necessarily not want to buy from you.
Speaker 2:They just can't do it right now, right? So if you don't have a way to constantly hit those people up in a way that's meaningful and the way that shows you as the authority and the expert, you're not going to close. Right? If Canon, I'm trying to sell you and I only contact you, I contact you today and then two weeks goes by and then I contact you again and then maybe the other month goes by and I contact you, like there's no consistency, right.
Speaker 2:So we create a customer journey, a lead journey, and we really mapped everything out and because we did that, the customer experience became amazing. People love to work with us, right, and it wasn't. It was easy for us to collect on invoices. It was easy for us. It was easy for us to like, really keep people educated through this process and we grew as a result. So I would you know cause? I think if you're, if you're not learning from your mistakes, yes, then yes, those are failures, but if they're learning experiences and you learn and you become better as a result, then that was an amazing learning experience, yep.
Speaker 1:Priceless, probably, oh yeah, because no one, yeah, you would. You would have to have gone through that particular pain of losing these clients to know how unstable and how faulty that foundation is. And so once you learned that, you patched it up, you saw where those holes are. And now you're even more intentional with your um clients and customers than you ever were before. And and that's gonna that has to make them feel super cared for um throughout the process, whether they're leads or closed customers.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a hundred percent. I look if you're going into business, if you're in business, if you're in startup, if you've been in business for a while, um, going through your customer journey on a quarterly basis is just a necessity, because here's the thing, too right, I consider us a tech company If we're not going through our customer journey on a regular basis. Things we're constantly updating, there might be new tech, there might be something new, maybe something that we did two months ago is no longer relevant. So how are we staying up to date with that? Got to go through that customer journey, man.
Speaker 1:Cool. Just last question how do you plan on growing Leduc Entertainment and how do you plan on what does the future look like as far as further impact that you desire?
Speaker 2:connection. Um, I just came back from an amazing mastermind called flight club and one of the speakers was talking about connection, and connection is the biggest thing that you're going to see here from here on out, and it's not like it's a new thing. People want to connect, people want to be a part of something. People want to connect with other people as AI keeps growing and as AI keeps replacing things and making things easier and all of that. What are people going to want to do? They're going to want to connect. What are people going to want to do? They're going to want to connect.
Speaker 2:So, if you guys can learn how to connect and that's what we're we're creating connection tools in order to drive business, drive connections, drive, commerce, drive impact, drive all of these different things, because when you bring minds together, amazing things happen right. That's why I'm a super huge proponent on like joint ventures and referral partnership. You know I'm going to write a book next month called trade your way to the top, because I have trade partners that I love working with, because we have that joint venture. They need what I have, I need what they have. We create this trade partnership and it's just a beautiful thing.
Speaker 1:It's awesome, that's awesome. Yeah, I really appreciate that. I jive a lot with the core values that you personally have, as well as Leduc Entertainment, so I'm just so grateful to be having my own joint partnership with y'all. Very grateful for your listening ear and the business wisdom that you have. Very grateful for that.