Show Notes
In this episode, Scott walks through a case study from a recent build session. Stephen came in frustrated: spending money on marketing but getting no leads, no return. Scott diagnosed him in the visibility trap—lacking insight into why customers actually buy from him.
The core problem: Stephen was confusing activity with results. His team treated content as the goal, not leads and sales. Scott introduces the System 1-2-3 marketing framework: System 1 is believing everyone is your customer (wrong), System 2 is finding a market and participating (commodity), System 3 is finding YOUR people and creating YOUR market (differentiation). The aviation CPA example shows what System 3 looks like—a CPA who only helps business owners get tax deductions for planes, works less than typical CPAs, and dominates his niche.
Stephen's homework: find three competitors, pull their ads, use AI to analyze who they're talking to and what problem they're solving. Build a marketing system that turns pain into a lead-producing machine.
The bottom line: Content isn't the goal—leads that produce sales are the goal. Stop at System 2 and you're a commodity. Go to System 3 and you own your market.
Got a business question? Ask Scott here: scotttodd.net/ask
📜 Full Transcript (Click to expand)
Scott Todd (00:00)
Welcome to Fix My Business, the show that helps you fix your business. I'm your host, Scott Todd. And in the last 10 years, I've built multiple seven-figure businesses. And in this show, we help you get unstuck by looking at where other entrepreneurs are stuck and then helping to navigate them so that we can avoid the same spots that they get stuck into. So today's show is a little bit different. Normally I answer questions that are submitted from
the audience, but today I wanted to walk you through a case study from one of our recent build sessions. A build session is a multiple day ⁓ program. had ⁓ six business owners in our office for an intimate two day session where we look at frustrations, but also how we can build systems to support our business using our framework. And in this build session, ⁓ Steven
came in with one of his frustrations, one of his top frustrations was around marketing and the fact that he was going through marketing activities but not getting any results. And in fact, his quote is, you know, I'm spending money on marketing, but I'm not getting any leads. I'm not getting return. And he was feeling frustrated and annoyed and all of the other experiences that what we have.
You know, as I'm listening to Stephen kind of talk about his problem, I'm realizing that, hey, he's in one of the five traps. Now on this channel, we talk about the five different traps that business owners fall into. Today, I noticed that Stephen was in the visibility trap. And you might ask, well, okay, what is the visibility trap? Well, it's simple. The visibility trap occurs when you lack insight into data that drives your business. Okay, so when you don't know
the data behind why things are happening in your business, you're kind of flying blind. You're driving with no visibility and it creates frustration. And in Steven's example or Steven's case, if you will, he was lacking data on why his customers were even buying from him. Think about that for a second. So many business owners, they don't know why their customers truly buy from them. What
value do they generate into the marketplace? They might have some hunches. They might have some beliefs, but they don't know the value that they're generating for their customer. They don't know what to do or what to say, and it's just kind of guessing. And it creates a lot of frustration for business owners. It really does. And maybe you're in that same category. And Stephen's biggest problem
His biggest problem was that he was confusing activity with the desired result. And employees do this too. Let me give you an example. In Stephen's case, him and his employees, his marketing team, they were looking at content as the goal. Okay, they were looking at content as the end result. I produced this ad and I put it out into the marketplace. But that's not the desired goal.
That really isn't the desired goal. That's what we touch. That's what we see. That's what we feel. But it does nothing if it doesn't bring us back leads and ultimately sales. You see, success in marketing isn't just producing content. Success in marketing is producing leads that produce sales. It has to produce both. I talk to entrepreneurs all the time. They say, well, I get leads. I just don't get any sales. Well, then the marketing's not working.
or your sales team's not working, one of the two things. It's kind of what I talk about in the book, Fix This Next for Real Estate Investors is you have to find where the problem is and then go all in on solving that problem. And what this amounts to a lot of times is it amounts to the fact that when we don't understand who our customer is, we're just grasping.
We're grasping and it's very, very clear even in the content that we're producing. Again, in Fix This Next for real estate investors, one of the concepts that I teach is system one, two and three thinking when it comes to marketing. And specifically what that says is that system one is that you believe or you act as if everyone is your customer and they're not. Not everyone is your customer. It'd be great if it was, but they're not.
I don't care what business you're in, everybody cannot be your customer. System two occurs when you find a market and you just participate in that market. I'm gonna give you an example here in a minute. But when you find a market and you just participate in that market, well then you're just kind of in system two. The real value, the real money comes from participating in system three.
thinking, when you get into system three thinking, that's where you're just going to launch your business. So let me give you, let me give an example. ⁓ There's a CPA and let's just say that the CPA is new to, to, the world. You know, they've got their CPA license. They're going to go hang a shingle. They just go out there. Most CPAs understand that the entire world population is not their customer. That's system one thinking. They're like, okay, I'm not going to go do that. But what
happens a lot of times with CPAs is that they go out there, they hang their shingle, and they're like, hey, I'm going to target or work with people in this geographic area. I'm going to go and anybody that needs their taxes done, they can come to me. You need your taxes done, come to me. They end up competing against H &R Block and the non-CPA tax preparers of the world. They go out there and they do this, but they're not
digging deeper, they're not bringing their specialty, they're not focusing on where they need to be. But system three would say, hey, who is your market? Who are your people? And I know a CPA, for example, that his entire business is built around, funny enough, is built around aviation. And his entire business is built around helping business owners get tax deductions for their planes. That's his business, okay?
That's what he does. That is the only he's not a he's not a tax preparer. He could be a tax preparer, but that's not his business. His business is helping CP, helping business owners set up their entities so that they can get, you know, better tax treatment from their from their planes. He works less than a normal CPA. I know he does. OK, he's not.
He's not worrying about tax time when all he's got to do is he's just got to review flight logs. He's just got to review flight logs and help his clients avoid the IRS in that case. Now that's system three. Like that is taking and finding your people. It's creating a market that you can serve. And so many times when it comes to marketing, we don't think that way as business owners. We don't go.
deeper like that. stop at system two, like we just find a market. Hey, here's people that need tax returns done. I'm just going to stay here. But the true value that you can create is when you go deeper. And that applies to every single business. You have to find out who you can serve, who you can be a hero to, and then you need to go in there. You see system problems. This is a system problem at its core. Stephen was
dealing with a system problem. may not feel that way, but what he was lacking is a marketing system. And Stephen's homework during this build session that I gave him was to go out and find three competitors, go find some ads that they're running, and then use AI to analyze their ads. Who are they talking to? What problem are they solving in the world? I mean, today with AI, we can do this so fast. You can do it so fast.
I mean, you can take, go find three competitors, take, I don't know, five to 10 of their ads, put it into AI and say, hey, analyze this. Who are they talking to? Who are they marketing to? What are they, what problem are they solving? And AI can help you analyze that. And I'm not telling you to copy what they're doing, but when you can understand that successful businesses are already deploying this.
and then you can have AI help you leverage it, man, you're gonna move at a much, much faster pace. So you wanna understand, hey, what problems are they solving? What pain are they solving? And then really what you wanna do is you want to build a system, a marketing system in this case, that turns that raw pain into a lead producing machine. That's the goal.
How do you do it? Okay, and that's oftentimes what's dismissed in system building for businesses. And this is where the build sessions come in, is that, hey, we want to think in a system approach first of how do we do this? And the goal is not, in Stephen's case, the goal isn't always more content. mean, we could have AI just produce content, content, content, AI slop, but that's not the goal. The goal is to produce content.
that produces a desired result over and over and over again. And then when you have that system in place, now you can scale. And more importantly, now you can automate that. And that's the process, all right? So I want you to think about this week, a problem that's in your business, figure out, okay, hey, wait a minute, maybe I need to attack this in a different way. And I think that you'll see a different.
All right, hopefully that helps you. And if you have a business question, be sure to head over to scotttodd.net forward slash ask, get your business question there and let's see how we can help you grow and scale your business. And I'll see you in our next episode.
Welcome to Fix My Business, the show that helps you fix your business. I'm your host, Scott Todd. And in the last 10 years, I've built multiple seven-figure businesses. And in this show, we help you get unstuck by looking at where other entrepreneurs are stuck and then helping to navigate them so that we can avoid the same spots that they get stuck into. So today's show is a little bit different. Normally I answer questions that are submitted from
the audience, but today I wanted to walk you through a case study from one of our recent build sessions. A build session is a multiple day ⁓ program. had ⁓ six business owners in our office for an intimate two day session where we look at frustrations, but also how we can build systems to support our business using our framework. And in this build session, ⁓ Steven
came in with one of his frustrations, one of his top frustrations was around marketing and the fact that he was going through marketing activities but not getting any results. And in fact, his quote is, you know, I'm spending money on marketing, but I'm not getting any leads. I'm not getting return. And he was feeling frustrated and annoyed and all of the other experiences that what we have.
You know, as I'm listening to Stephen kind of talk about his problem, I'm realizing that, hey, he's in one of the five traps. Now on this channel, we talk about the five different traps that business owners fall into. Today, I noticed that Stephen was in the visibility trap. And you might ask, well, okay, what is the visibility trap? Well, it's simple. The visibility trap occurs when you lack insight into data that drives your business. Okay, so when you don't know
the data behind why things are happening in your business, you're kind of flying blind. You're driving with no visibility and it creates frustration. And in Steven's example or Steven's case, if you will, he was lacking data on why his customers were even buying from him. Think about that for a second. So many business owners, they don't know why their customers truly buy from them. What
value do they generate into the marketplace? They might have some hunches. They might have some beliefs, but they don't know the value that they're generating for their customer. They don't know what to do or what to say, and it's just kind of guessing. And it creates a lot of frustration for business owners. It really does. And maybe you're in that same category. And Stephen's biggest problem
His biggest problem was that he was confusing activity with the desired result. And employees do this too. Let me give you an example. In Stephen's case, him and his employees, his marketing team, they were looking at content as the goal. Okay, they were looking at content as the end result. I produced this ad and I put it out into the marketplace. But that's not the desired goal.
That really isn't the desired goal. That's what we touch. That's what we see. That's what we feel. But it does nothing if it doesn't bring us back leads and ultimately sales. You see, success in marketing isn't just producing content. Success in marketing is producing leads that produce sales. It has to produce both. I talk to entrepreneurs all the time. They say, well, I get leads. I just don't get any sales. Well, then the marketing's not working.
or your sales team's not working, one of the two things. It's kind of what I talk about in the book, Fix This Next for Real Estate Investors is you have to find where the problem is and then go all in on solving that problem. And what this amounts to a lot of times is it amounts to the fact that when we don't understand who our customer is, we're just grasping.
We're grasping and it's very, very clear even in the content that we're producing. Again, in Fix This Next for real estate investors, one of the concepts that I teach is system one, two and three thinking when it comes to marketing. And specifically what that says is that system one is that you believe or you act as if everyone is your customer and they're not. Not everyone is your customer. It'd be great if it was, but they're not.
I don't care what business you're in, everybody cannot be your customer. System two occurs when you find a market and you just participate in that market. I'm gonna give you an example here in a minute. But when you find a market and you just participate in that market, well then you're just kind of in system two. The real value, the real money comes from participating in system three.
thinking, when you get into system three thinking, that's where you're just going to launch your business. So let me give you, let me give an example. ⁓ There's a CPA and let's just say that the CPA is new to, to, the world. You know, they've got their CPA license. They're going to go hang a shingle. They just go out there. Most CPAs understand that the entire world population is not their customer. That's system one thinking. They're like, okay, I'm not going to go do that. But what
happens a lot of times with CPAs is that they go out there, they hang their shingle, and they're like, hey, I'm going to target or work with people in this geographic area. I'm going to go and anybody that needs their taxes done, they can come to me. You need your taxes done, come to me. They end up competing against H &R Block and the non-CPA tax preparers of the world. They go out there and they do this, but they're not
digging deeper, they're not bringing their specialty, they're not focusing on where they need to be. But system three would say, hey, who is your market? Who are your people? And I know a CPA, for example, that his entire business is built around, funny enough, is built around aviation. And his entire business is built around helping business owners get tax deductions for their planes. That's his business, okay?
That's what he does. That is the only he's not a he's not a tax preparer. He could be a tax preparer, but that's not his business. His business is helping CP, helping business owners set up their entities so that they can get, you know, better tax treatment from their from their planes. He works less than a normal CPA. I know he does. OK, he's not.
He's not worrying about tax time when all he's got to do is he's just got to review flight logs. He's just got to review flight logs and help his clients avoid the IRS in that case. Now that's system three. Like that is taking and finding your people. It's creating a market that you can serve. And so many times when it comes to marketing, we don't think that way as business owners. We don't go.
deeper like that. stop at system two, like we just find a market. Hey, here's people that need tax returns done. I'm just going to stay here. But the true value that you can create is when you go deeper. And that applies to every single business. You have to find out who you can serve, who you can be a hero to, and then you need to go in there. You see system problems. This is a system problem at its core. Stephen was
dealing with a system problem. may not feel that way, but what he was lacking is a marketing system. And Stephen's homework during this build session that I gave him was to go out and find three competitors, go find some ads that they're running, and then use AI to analyze their ads. Who are they talking to? What problem are they solving in the world? I mean, today with AI, we can do this so fast. You can do it so fast.
I mean, you can take, go find three competitors, take, I don't know, five to 10 of their ads, put it into AI and say, hey, analyze this. Who are they talking to? Who are they marketing to? What are they, what problem are they solving? And AI can help you analyze that. And I'm not telling you to copy what they're doing, but when you can understand that successful businesses are already deploying this.
and then you can have AI help you leverage it, man, you're gonna move at a much, much faster pace. So you wanna understand, hey, what problems are they solving? What pain are they solving? And then really what you wanna do is you want to build a system, a marketing system in this case, that turns that raw pain into a lead producing machine. That's the goal.
How do you do it? Okay, and that's oftentimes what's dismissed in system building for businesses. And this is where the build sessions come in, is that, hey, we want to think in a system approach first of how do we do this? And the goal is not, in Stephen's case, the goal isn't always more content. mean, we could have AI just produce content, content, content, AI slop, but that's not the goal. The goal is to produce content.
that produces a desired result over and over and over again. And then when you have that system in place, now you can scale. And more importantly, now you can automate that. And that's the process, all right? So I want you to think about this week, a problem that's in your business, figure out, okay, hey, wait a minute, maybe I need to attack this in a different way. And I think that you'll see a different.
All right, hopefully that helps you. And if you have a business question, be sure to head over to scotttodd.net forward slash ask, get your business question there and let's see how we can help you grow and scale your business. And I'll see you in our next episode.