Consulting Spotlight

Michael Bernzweig (00:02.811)

Are you ready to unlock the secrets of consulting success? Tired of sifting through endless noise to find actionable insights that actually move the needle?

Welcome to Consulting Spotlight, your weekly deep dive into the transformative world of professional consulting. Your host is Michael Bernzweig, who in 1998 launched Software Oasis as one of the first platforms enabling businesses to download, license, and deploy software instantly across their networks with a single click. Today, Software Oasis has evolved into one of the leading communities where businesses find top consultants across the USA and Canada.

Each week, Michael sits down with industry titans, innovative leaders, and game-changing executives to bring you exclusive insights you won't find anywhere else. From emerging methodologies to market trends, Consulting Spotlight delivers the strategic intelligence you need to accelerate your consulting career and stay ahead of the curve.

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I'd like to welcome everyone to today's edition of the Consulting Spotlight Today, we're joined by Brandon Falcon. He's the visionary founder of Falconics, a company revolutionizing marketing strategies through empathy-driven approaches. With a proven track record in building customer loyalty and driving business growth, Brandon will share insights on how empathetic marketing transforms relationships.

and creates lasting success in today's competitive landscape. So with that, Brandon, welcome to the Consulting spotlight.

Brandon Falcon (00:40.988)
Hey, thank you so much for having me here today.

Michael Bernzweig (00:43.663)
Yeah, no, it's really great. And I can see by some of the questions that have come in from the community prior to the show, a lot of different executives and SaaS founders and all kinds of different entrepreneurs are tuning into this episode to hear a little bit about your journey. So I was hoping maybe we could start by giving us a little bit of a peek behind the scenes as to how you got to where you are, a little bit about your company and

where you're heading.

Brandon Falcon (01:15.152)
Yeah, absolutely. So it goes back about 10 years this month. Founded my company right outside of our ending college. Was trying to find a way to, a nine to five like everybody else. And wanted to find a way to help at the time local businesses. I kept seeing it regularly, coming from like a tech background and joint technologies and such. I would be asked regularly about this and that, computers. And eventually it of started morphing into

to marketing questions and at the time I didn't obviously know all the answers either and I don't think anyone obviously can but I knew I could point them in some directions to kind of help them solve some of those immediate problems they were having. Started off in web design and then moved into organic social media and then paid ads at the time. So again, this was back in about 2014. So at the time when I started moving into that it was still.

Michael Bernzweig (02:07.473)
Sure.

Brandon Falcon (02:11.856)
I want to it was a new thing. wasn't new, but a lot of my local businesses I was working with, it was new to them. And quickly climbed through the rankings locally and was getting noticed by a couple different larger marketing companies that eventually reached out to me. And fast forward a couple of years, we were working with two separate Fortune 500 marketing agencies as a white label provider, basically coming in and helping them provide organic social media, paid ads, things like that.

and really blew up our brand, our processes, our team, because we working in so many different diverse markets, helping and assisting just anything under the sun. And around that time, this is about five years back, we started realizing that we really liked software. Software was just fun to us. It was ever-changing, always evolving. And we liked the chase. We liked the chase and the hunt. So at that time, the, again, about five years back,

Michael Bernzweig (03:01.233)
Sure.

Brandon Falcon (03:09.868)
The software becoming more more popular and SASP really becoming a thing more frequently talked about. We really started to niche down into that space and figured out that the B2B space, the software B2B space was where we were the best at and where we enjoyed the most. My entire team across the board enjoyed doing it. And we really just narrowed further and further down until we got to the very specific parallel that we're at now, which is more so in the relationship building.

Michael Bernzweig (03:16.241)
Sure.

Brandon Falcon (03:38.46)
We noticed a pattern of software founders consistently saying, I have a great product. I know I solved this problem, but no one knows what I do or they don't understand it. I wish I could just talk to this person and show them why what I have built makes a big difference. And that was kind of the light bulb that went off was, was we could help them do that. We were great at connecting people coming from the ground up, starting a little bit, he start up, moving into white labeling, such, we just understood how to talk to a bunch of different types of people.

So we figured out how to incorporate that or empathy and emotional resonance into our marketing approaches for our SaaS founders. And we would help them connect. That was basically the business.

Michael Bernzweig (04:19.399)
And that is so interesting because it sounds like the origin or the roots in SEO, SEM really brought you to where you were heading. then, know, discovering B2B SaaS really was the space that you've ditched down to that you found you could really offer the most value. And that's interesting because B2B SaaS is obviously the most sticky of all solutions and that, you know, it does not...

not the same kind of churn or the same kind of, you know, short customer lifetime value that you might see in B2C SaaS or, you know, different kinds of solutions. So it makes a lot of sense and obviously is probably the right place to be. So, you know, one of the, at the top you mentioned empathetic marketing. Can you kind of quantify that or?

Just unravel what you mean by empathetic marketing.

Brandon Falcon (05:18.086)
Yeah.

Yeah, I'll give you a part of the best of our approach to it. So we believe there's a lot of micro metrics and really metrics or switches we consider internally that allow people or encourage people to go the way they go and make the decisions they make. So a lot of times in our marketing, our overall belief when we're bringing a new SaaS brand to market is

helping them identify, these are the elements that were the strongest out. This is the core beliefs, the initial leadership of the CEO or the founder had intended for really niching down to what they believe they were solving, getting it put together in a way that it resonated emotionally with the end users of their product. Because I feel, or we felt early on that a lot of software companies would like to focus on the features and the tech stacks and things like that.

the things that we all love in the tech space. But in reality, people made decisions and they stuck around because of what they emotionally felt. And I always tie it back to like, at least for me, I have a mechanic that works on my car. have a plumber that comes through if I need something specific. I have what we like to call it as a guy. We have someone we trust that can help us solve our problems that we maybe are not the most familiar with on a day-to-day basis. And that's what we wanted to help our clients stand out as for their end users.

Michael Bernzweig (06:19.111)
Sure.

Brandon Falcon (06:45.35)
So we identified the emotional triggers and decision-making factors for every one of our clients as obviously as they come in and figure out what allows them to resonate with that end user. And we put out marketing, we put out material, we just get them exposed to those brands and then start a consistent and empathetic dialogue with them, just showing we genuinely care and that we built it for their end needs and things like that.

So it really isn't anything super crazy. It's just humans being humans in a world that's overwhelmed by tech and data, basically.

Michael Bernzweig (07:23.917)
Yeah. And you know, it's so interesting because some of the most successful rockstar type products that we've known over all the years are really just very simple solutions that, you know, hit the nail on the head in terms of solving a real business problem. I mean, I look at SaaS solutions, like look at Trello in the early days, look at Loom, look at Basecamp.

other solutions like that, just picked a really narrow specific focus where they could solve a problem that really existed. you know, they found their product market fit very quickly. actually in the early days at Software Oasis, we actually put out a line of software utilities that were just that. They were single, you know, very single focused utilities. In the early days, we had a

Brandon Falcon (08:12.261)
Hmm

Michael Bernzweig (08:19.095)
a utility that, you know, if you think back to the early days of Internet Explorer, had all these pop-ups that would come up all over your screen. We had a pop-up blocker, you know, it blocked all those silly little pop-ups. And, you know, yeah, it definitely, you know, hit the nail on the head. That was before the SaaS days. But at the end of the day, like some of those other solutions we mentioned, sometimes finding product market fit is just solving.

Brandon Falcon (08:28.508)
I remember those days.

Michael Bernzweig (08:46.169)
a problem in the market space and figuring out what can do that, as well as having the right messaging and the right branding and all of the right things that are just, unfortunately in today's day and age, just kind of like a required ticket to entry to be in the SaaS space. But it's a much more competitive market than back in the 90s when we started. So I guess, how do you see...

you know, some of the brands, you know, going to market and what is life like before they start working with your agency versus after? What's that journey like?

Brandon Falcon (09:26.906)
Yeah. So most of the time they come in with the idea that, that we built something really cool that we, we, the, the visionary, the founder saw a problem. They went after it, they built it and somewhere along the line, they decided it could do more. could do more. We could, we could expand upon it. and they go a little feature crazy typically. and, we've all seen it and usually it's right around the time they're getting ready to go to market and they're just trying to bump up or pump up value and.

Michael Bernzweig (09:47.013)
Yeah, yeah.

Brandon Falcon (09:55.994)
and their belief of it. And though I understand where that's coming from, we usually help the line from the beginning is just let's narrow it to what we initially after, what's the biggest pain we're solving and how can we solve it easily and consistently. If we can solve it easily, consistently, we can scale it. We can add on, can add value over time. But like you were mentioning with some of these other brands like Trillo, like Lumen, et cetera, they know who they are. They know what they solve and they solve it well. I'm a big fan of tools like that.

because of that reason. And so usually that's the first thing is we want to speak with that founder and understand are you coachable to narrowing the focus temporarily and getting really fine tuned on the messaging around this is who we are, this is what we provide, this is how we provide it. And this is what we solve for our end user better than anyone else. And then lastly, we tie in, we want to know for a fact that we're solving that problem. So we have them doing one-on-one interactions with their first, if their startup.

their first 100 users on their platform. If it's a little bit bigger than we find to tune it to like niche or what we consider VIP audiences to truly understand from right from the mouth of the customer. This makes sense to them. This solves a big problem for them. We use that information to reiterate and redraft a lot of the messaging again and just kind of do a consistent iteration to get that end result of consistent people coming in, loving, believing in and sticking around.

So it's a lot of iteration early on, but I think it's very valuable and impactful to do that early on as soon as possible to have the rest of the business fall in line and all the other channels that we've discussed, marketing ads, SEO, et cetera. They work so well once we've gotten this portion so well solved.

Michael Bernzweig (11:41.357)
And, you know, a lot of these tools, in fact, I think all of those tools we mentioned, including what's that tool lot of companies are using for communication and chat between themselves and their partners, Slack, we're all, yeah, all internal tools that were developed to facilitate, you know, communication or dialogue or...

Brandon Falcon (11:52.006)
Slack? Yeah.

Michael Bernzweig (12:03.153)
project management within organizations and then, you know, came to light as, you know, products that would help others. And, you know, I think they started from the right place, but when you're looking at different clients that you're working with, where you're helping them out, what are the things that you're doing as an agency that are your core focus or the things that you do better than others? And what are the things that you may...

push back on a client and say you may need to reach out to somebody for help with this or that or the other thing.

Brandon Falcon (12:37.732)
Yeah, definitely. So I would say early on is the CEO coachable? they able to take feedback? Because all of us, at one stage or another, come in with like, we know our product, we understand what we solve, but we sometimes miss the connection of what that end user actually needs. So we have a belief of what they need, but their belief, their goals may be a little different.

So coming in and having that open perspective that there may be other perspectives that we need to take into consideration and make alterations for our tools. Next, would say would be that they are clear on that, but really they're willing to have those one-on-one conversations, those networkings with those initial customers. If they're a startup, if they're a founded company, once we identify their top tier, what we consider, again, VIP customers, that top 5 percentile customer when you're like a mid-market SaaS.

Michael Bernzweig (13:08.721)
Sure.

Brandon Falcon (13:33.308)
Are you willing to have those one-on-one conversations or interview those individuals from your level? A lot of times as the organizations grow they want to pass down customer customer relationships and and and things like that to the The lower level staffing members like that But in reality those are the conversations you as a founder need to understand to be able to steer that ship so that could be both a Absolute yes for us if they they're coachable and they're willing to have those types of conversations

For the most part, we're open to help any of those types of people. We can find strategic ways to make sure their solutions get visible and seen and such. It's the flip side of that is when they're like, no, I don't want to do those. I want to pass this offer. I want to do all of it through a funnel. And we lose a lot of that human touch that really makes humans build trust in things, especially in the B2B space where they stick around typically for a long time. They want to know you can solve their complex problem. And even if you can't, you can clearly say, no, I can't solve that.

Michael Bernzweig (14:11.111)
Thank you.

Brandon Falcon (14:29.904)
but you can do it this way. You can go about it in this way. I think a lot of times I've coached people on, just setting clear boundaries that you know what you solve, your organization solves, and just letting them know so they can plan around it. Those are the things that I've just found been so successful for our clients that win versus the ones that we don't necessarily take on or go a different route. It's just being human.

Michael Bernzweig (14:40.791)
and

Michael Bernzweig (14:52.549)
Sure. Yeah, and what's really interesting is I think for any SaaS founder, if you haven't actually picked up the phone, sold your product to that end consumer and had those conversations, if nothing else for your first 100 customers, just understand the different challenges and solutions and needs of the customer.

Brandon Falcon (15:06.844)
Yep.

Michael Bernzweig (15:19.429)
That's a big mess. But I think even more so further down the line, if you've taken too far a step back and you're not connecting with the end consumer and understanding how they're using your solution, what their needs are, all of that, how the heck could you know how to market to them? So I think that that's really important.

Brandon Falcon (15:42.468)
Yep, you nailed it.

Michael Bernzweig (15:45.029)
Yeah, I mean, it's a really, really important detail that you bring to the table. So as far as the different organizations that you've worked with over the years, you, are there, could you break down into, or is it mostly funded organizations, bootstrap startups, somewhere in between? What is the best fit for your group, your team there?

Brandon Falcon (16:11.76)
Yeah, definitely. So historically, the funded ones are the ones that we've seen the most momentum on typically because they are coming with that funding. That's one less thing we have to stress about from the start. That said, we are just as much passionate on our end, just as much passionate about that. That solo founder that is bootstrapping it 100 % in-house. Like we understand this is where we came from as well. Started with a thousand dollars and said, hope and a dream. And so let's make this work. And, and

Michael Bernzweig (16:21.915)
Right.

Michael Bernzweig (16:34.769)
Sure.

Michael Bernzweig (16:40.058)
Yeah, yeah.

Brandon Falcon (16:41.562)
So I understand it. again, if they're coachable, if they're open-minded to different perspectives, if they truly want to make a difference in the world, let's talk. I want to understand what you're doing and I want to help encourage that. Yeah, I know.

Michael Bernzweig (16:55.751)
I love it. love it. $1,000. That's luxury. I started 26 years ago with 500 bucks in a one-bedroom apartment. That was bootstrapping back then, but maybe that's the same as $1,000 today.

Brandon Falcon (17:03.653)
Yup.

Brandon Falcon (17:08.636)
Yeah, 2014 that was that was it wasn't much but it was a Christmas bonus partly and some savings I had saved up and I said I'm going to figure this out and buy a domain and some tools and try this.

Michael Bernzweig (17:14.181)
Yup.

Michael Bernzweig (17:20.683)
I love it. love it. Yeah. that, that, that's the other thing I think, you know, we all have friends, you know, coworkers, people that are, all around us saying, you know, when I come up with that perfect idea, I'm going to launch. it's like, the reality of it is sometimes you have to do just what you said. You have to just get out there, try some things, take some swings, miss, you know, and then iterate and, know, definitely.

Yeah, evolve along the way and at one point or another, you'll find your product market fit. sometimes it's more of a journey than most people would expect and you have to have a thick skin. So that's a big part of it. Yeah. So can you...

Brandon Falcon (17:56.4)
Absolutely.

Brandon Falcon (18:05.35)
Absolutely.

Michael Bernzweig (18:08.699)
Give our audience, you know, because I can hear a lot of people out there saying, yeah, okay, so talk to us a little bit about, you know, some wins and losses. Can you give me an example of maybe some clients that, where they were before they started working with you and some of the successes, you know, that you saw over the years?

Brandon Falcon (18:29.02)
Yeah, definitely. for the communication portion of it, like I said, I think that's the foundation or for internally we call it our core offering. Our core immediate goal for any SaaS coming in would be, let's make sure this founder is coachable and able to hold a conversation. So what we do is like you had mentioned that first 100 customers, if they're a startup and if they're not that VIP list like I mentioned, we want to almost

force those into conversation or start practicing immediately. That's our first goal. So we actually help them start dialogue with their ideal prospect. We help them generate that audience, what that looks like, ideal customer profiles or ICPs and help them start that dialogue with bonding and networking with those right individuals. That's going to run off the bat in the first month, really 60 days, is what we call internally, call it 60 conversations in 60 days.

We want to get that genuine feedback as quickly as humanly possible. Because I have a feeling, yeah, I have feeling, and we know for a fact, but we have a feeling that they will recognize it once they've done the activity enough times, they're going to start to see, wow, this actually makes a difference, genuinely having these conversations versus just staying in development. So we're off the bat. That's usually what we start our clients with. So the one in mind here built a software company

Michael Bernzweig (19:43.943)
Sure.

Brandon Falcon (19:54.056)
around executive assistance at the highest level. 20 years in the military working for a general, high level executive activity regularly going on and interacting with diplomats and other generals and government officials. And their whole goal was to get others in the space to recognize that, there's a need here that just no one knows about that helps these executive assistants and such. So we actually helped her generate her ideal audience.

Michael Bernzweig (20:07.751)
Sure.

Brandon Falcon (20:23.706)
and then start reaching out to other executives in her space first to let them know this exists. And we gave them material like, Hey, this is something that could be beneficial to your founders or your CEO or your, your superior basically, start the dialogue with her peers first and then moved on into the dialogue with the actual decision makers. so right off the bat, they were coming in with probably three to five conversations. She was having a month before we came into the picture.

Michael Bernzweig (20:38.075)
Go.

Brandon Falcon (20:53.664)
coming to the picture and helping start that dialogue and that system in place of those conversations, we quickly jumped within about a month and a half or six weeks, basically, to about 13 conversations a week. we were having like one-on-one genuine conversations with the ideal audience. And we're talking an audience that's about 2000 strong in the United States. Like that's, that's it. But it was solving their specific needs, their specific problems, and they didn't even know that she could help solve those types of things. So.

With those conversations, we then moved on to similar like we're doing here, podcasting, getting her exposed to the audience, the space, to other founders and decision makers, and just really building an awareness around her now that we had proof of concept that she believed in her product further because she's getting responses from her immediate audience that, hey, yeah, this is a great idea. This worked for me, et cetera. And then lastly, we took a step further. Once we started getting them to show interest,

we offered VIP setups, which was basically you hopped on with the founder to have a conversation around this tool and she helped you set it up. from one executive to another, let me show you how I've done it. Let me help you do it. And we build long-term customers. They stay around indefinitely because they see the need, they see the benefit it solves for them, the time savings, and they got to have a one-on-one conversation with someone that was actually solving it and came from their world. Invaluable.

So lots of examples like that, that's just very recent when we've had, it's seen a lot of success.

Michael Bernzweig (22:24.315)
Yeah, no, that makes a ton of sense. I think, you know, it's really sometimes just back to basics in terms of, you know, getting to take a step back to get take a step forward, you know, and in a lot of ways. So, you know, are a lot of the engagements other than the strategy and understanding what the founder is trying to accomplish and all of that are a lot of the product.

Brandon Falcon (22:38.3)
Definitely.

Michael Bernzweig (22:50.321)
projects related to UI UX, a lot of the projects related to messaging, a lot of the projects related to conversion rate optimization or SEO or SEM or all of that or none of that. Give me an idea of what a project might entail.

Brandon Falcon (23:04.06)
Yeah. So yeah, it's a, a, it's a great question. So because we've been doing this for so long, we've done it. We kind of did a lot of it in reverse. Like I said, we started with the, the development, moved into marketing and expand the agency to full blown marketing agency, doing white labels, et cetera. so we provide a full blown holistic approach. So usually when they come in, when I have those conversations or like, Hey, I just want to know what could be done. Like what's your suggestions?

we're going to look and see holistically what is needed. it messaging? Is it UI, UX design, like you mentioned? We can kind of tailor it based on what those needs are to fine tune it. And it's not that we want to get everything perfect. So think a lot of founders get stuck in that trap. I myself have done the same exact thing where I want to make a perfect solution. And in all reality, it's the imperfect solution. It's making those gradual, small 1 % changes daily in the right direction. So we help.

We look with them together and say, hey, this is what we've seen from the outside. Messaging can be improved here. We can do a little bit on the UI design, UX design, just depending on what's going on there. And then we back it up. If they need additional things like SEO ads, et cetera, we can implement those as well. We have those capabilities, but we don't lead with those types of things. We believe in starting with, hey, let's get the dialogue going first. Let's make you a founder that when people see you, hear about you, or communicate with you, they're like,

I like that person. I trust that person. I would do business with that person even if I don't have a need of their service right now. That is what we want to instill first because once that's installed in their life and their organization, everything else becomes so much easier to provide and help them make leaps and bounds movements on. So a little bit of everything is ultimately the solution we provide depending on their actual need.

Michael Bernzweig (24:54.105)
No, and that's so important because it really is a lot of micro details that all roll up into a final solution. And I think, you it's so interesting because so many organizations and, you know, I was actually just having a conversation with someone in the consulting community that's on our software Oasis consulting platform earlier in the day.

Brandon Falcon (25:03.964)
Exactly it. Yep.

Brandon Falcon (25:18.108)
Mmm.

Michael Bernzweig (25:20.441)
You know, he said to me, said, you know, the, worst conversation I ever have is with a founder after they've launched, haven't found product market fit and now spend a whole bunch of money on, research and analysis to figure out why. And, you know, he said the best conversations I have are when the founder is just getting started and you know, we're, doing the research studies, proper research studies, you know, to find is there.

demand is there an opportunity and should they you know take the next steps to develop versus developing something and you know what do they say build it and they will come not not always you know it's just sometimes a matter of you know taking all the right steps and and that's that's a big part of our consulting community on the platform it's

Brandon Falcon (26:02.714)
Yeah. Yep.

Michael Bernzweig (26:17.113)
just the top subject matter experts in the US and Canada that are working with a whole range of different organizations to help them in areas that they may or may not have the skills internally to solve for the different challenges. And we walk them through connecting with the right subject matter experts to help out with the different challenges they might have. So as far as misconceptions,

Brandon Falcon (26:44.774)
Hmm.

Michael Bernzweig (26:46.083)
What are some of the common misconceptions that you hear day in and day out from founders?

Brandon Falcon (26:54.106)
Yeah, going back to what you just mentioned that you were having a conversation on earlier was a lot of times a lot of founders want to rush to market or I'm all for being aggressive, but a lot of times I want to spend ad dollars right off the bat and a lot of these things. And then we go look and they don't even have pixels properly firing off or analytics tracking. We're just unable to see what's going on. An unclear ICP and things like that.

a of those early stage things that like we mentioned is what you want to do first before you take it to market, before we start those investment pads. Because it's a lot harder to go backward when or solve a lot of this when we're already pressed, we're already at the 10 yard line. like that. It's just we want to

Michael Bernzweig (27:39.526)
Yeah.

It's like changing the wheels on the car while you're going around the track, right?

Brandon Falcon (27:45.788)
Exactly, exactly. So that's what I've seen a lot of is where they just want to rush to the market as fast as humanly possible and get rich is what we hear a lot of times in the market. And those are usually indicators that, we need to, if this is going to actually go somewhere, we need to slow it down and think logically through this and make sure this is something that, can be solved. If we have no ad dollars, we have no budget or anything whatsoever, will people still show up and be interested in your solution? If you cannot.

pay to play in the market. Because that is where a lot of the world is right now with the software is there's a million tools that do a million different things. There's big businesses out there that can pay to play.

Michael Bernzweig (28:25.135)
Yeah, and there's a lot of, you know, it's the old red ocean, blue ocean. You want to be playing in a nice big blue ocean. is it possible for organizations without large budgets to really, you know, implement empathetic marketing or do they really need to have a big budget to get there?

Brandon Falcon (28:28.794)
Yup.

Brandon Falcon (28:47.802)
That's a great question. So the best part of it is no, like I said, the majority of it starts at the founder level. That is why we like to start with what's the beliefs of the founder or the coaching portions and stuff like that. Are they able to be guided to understand, not only just understand it, but be able to act on that empathy and that connection with the end users and get literally things that just like get feedback.

I mean, how many times have been people have been vulnerable and said, Hey, I built something awesome. I believe you're my ideal prospect. Are you willing to spend five minutes to look at this and tell me your thoughts on it? Is this a line? It's so simple when you think of it you break it down that way. But most of the time you're going to get someone that's willing to help and come back. Not, not every time. I say most of time up to 50 % of the time, but a lot of times it's 20%. But, who cares? We got someone that actually took a peek at it. Honestly, they weren't feeling.

Michael Bernzweig (29:15.527)
Right.

Michael Bernzweig (29:38.375)
Right.

Brandon Falcon (29:44.796)
like sold to for your solution and they can give you realistic feedback. Like I like it for this reason. I don't like it for that reason. It makes all the difference. And starting at the founder, then we can push it, push it down the organization and then implement automations and systems and ad spins and things like that. can leverage it. And obviously that costs more money, but we can start that founder level for literally $0. If you wanted to take it internally and just do it manually day in and day out, it could be done for $0.

Michael Bernzweig (30:13.823)
So are a lot of these conversations, and I guess this might be a good question, with existing customers or both existing customers and maybe customers that have already churned, that are no longer on the platform?

Brandon Falcon (30:13.926)
It's just the lift.

Brandon Falcon (30:19.056)
Yeah.

Brandon Falcon (30:25.988)
Yeah. that's a great question. So it's a mixture of both. So we break it down into a couple of areas. So we have our warm audience, our existing customers on the platform that we can pull and collect some information from and have genuine conversation with. Staying, really retention is what that play is. It's retention and understanding. The flip side of that is, like you said, the cold ones. So I would usually say we go and look at their existing leads that have either went nowhere or they bounced.

and reach out to them, have that conversation. Now this doesn't always mean the founder themselves have to be the one to do it, but they need to be reviewing this information. for us, and we offer that as a service obviously, but we actually reach out to those Corollans and pull them and ask them, hey, what happened? What did we do wrong? Help us understand, is it your needs? Something changed that you didn't understand to use it, et cetera. And we collect that valuable information to be able to feed back to the leadership and say, hey, this is what we saw. This is what they're telling us. There's things that we can do to adjust that.

And then ultimately, it is cold audiences that match our ideal customer profiles that we reach out to and start connecting with and having conversations with. So it's really a three-step approach there that we like to build early on and just get all angles covered and only understand the people who love us, the people that don't love us or have seen us but just didn't make a decision, and the ones that have never heard of us. That's going to give us a truly unbiased perspective.

Michael Bernzweig (31:53.049)
And I'm going to wrap up with a question that came in so many times. It was probably the number one thing people wanted to know. So for an organization that we're reaching out to Falconics and looking to get up and running, what is the day in the life of how your team would onboard a new client? What are the different, you know,

details that are involved in going from that initial conversation to success.

Brandon Falcon (32:23.548)
Yeah, so once they reach out, you talk to a human within 24 hours. Within one business day, we are in conversation with you. For the most part, someone in our leadership staff, so either myself, my counterparts, Tyler, Ashley, someone that's going to have a genuine conversation with you and understand what you have going on. Typically, that's going to involve a follow-up call where we're going go a little bit deeper and pull in individual people once we've started to understand what you have going on. We have a little bit more of a background.

Michael Bernzweig (32:28.999)
you

Brandon Falcon (32:52.358)
But those are the initial steps. From that point forward, we're going to work with you and understand, hey, what do you have? you have a working product already? Is it already in the market? Who loves it? What's your lead list look like that's cold or falling off the bandwagon here that we can potentially have a conversation with and bring back around or learn from ultimately? And is there more out there, which obviously is usually the easiest one to solve? Is there more out there? How big of the market is?

How niche can we get? How big of a problem can we solve for those individuals? And how quickly can we educate them on the problem that we're solving? And letting them raise their hand, because again, the whole idea of marketing is not to sell someone, but to educate them, empower them, and they raise their hands and say, I want that, I need that. And that's my favorite thing to do, is to help them, help our clients understand that they're in customers want what they have. We just have to educate and empower them to ask the right questions and identify that

Michael Bernzweig (33:37.35)
Yeah?

Brandon Falcon (33:50.222)
our solution or our client solution solves that problem.

Michael Bernzweig (33:54.487)
And that's exactly the right way to go. It should be, you know, the type of thing where the customer is like, yeah, that's a no brainer. I need that. want that. How do I get started? Yeah.

Brandon Falcon (34:01.922)
Exactly. Yep, that's exactly the mentality that we bring into it is it should be a no-brainer. It should be easy as long as we found the right people and solve the right problem. They should want to buy your services. They should want to stick around. If we have to force it, something's wrong, something is broken somewhere along the line. That is where I would love to help.

Michael Bernzweig (34:21.593)
I love it. love it. So Brandon Falcon from Falconics. really appreciate you joining us on the consulting spotlight today. We're going to leave a link in the show notes so that anyone that would like to reach out can reach out to you and your team. And I really appreciate your time on the podcast today. I think that was a great deep dive.

Brandon Falcon (34:24.302)
You got it.

Brandon Falcon (34:40.454)
Yeah, thank you so much for having me and I love to provide the value and hopefully everyone's taken some value from this.