Latest / The Jeff Crilley Show / Steven Paul Matsumoto, President, Stigmare | The Jeff Crilley Show
Transcript
- Coming up next on the Jeff Crilley Show, you're gonna meet the great Steven Paul Matsumoto. He is a marketing genius. We're gonna share his journey just ahead. Many are predicting that the worst is yet to come, which is unfortunate, said one person here. Until now, they've enjoyed the reputation of being the nation's icebox. Watched a burglar in his home this morning by webcam. As a journalist of over twenty five years, stories are what make my world turn. Reporting live from The Dallas Newsroom tonight, Jeff Crilley, Fox four news. But in 2008, I took the jump from my familiar life and started a PR firm from my home. We're talking about anyone with a camcorder like the one I'm using becomes a television network. We started slowly growing the company, and we now have over a 100 clients, and we branched into the world of live digital broadcasting. I now own eight different TV studios and have a huge team. And the stories that I now get to share are sometimes the most important of my life. Life has a funny way of coming around full circle. This is The Jeff Crilley Show. Well, you when you spend more than two decades in marketing, you learn a thing or two and the really bright people share that with others and that perfectly describes my next guest. Steven Paul Matsumoto is in the studio. He's the president of Stigmar. Thanks for coming on the show. My pleasure, Jeff. It's always great to sit down with you. Well, I can always tell a good marketing guy because you've already had you've got the statement. Glasses. Yep. I literally sat down with Nano Banana yesterday and took a selfie of me and these glasses and turned it into a personal logo. Well, I I love it. AI is great. It I'm sure I'm sure people will stop you in the elevator and say, nice glasses. Every like, I wear them to every networking event I go and inevitably, it's like four or five people come in. It's like, I love your glasses. It's brilliant. It's brilliant. Yep. Alright. Tell us about your, marketing journey. How how did it begin? Well, mean, it really began when I was in the corporate world. I used to be a senior leader for fixed operations, specifically parts operations for an automotive group called Lithia out of the Northwest. And what made me successful and exceed benchmarks there was my ability to be a good marketer and and think outside of the box. An example I give everyone is car dealerships are often have a service department that's open on Saturdays as a convenience to customers. It is not a big revenue day for the dealership. You would think otherwise because it's Saturday, people have free time, but typically it's just everyone coming in for kind of just their oil changes. Right. But as you know, it's like vehicles also have their 30,000, 60,000, $90,000 or not $90,000, 90,000 mile maintenance schedule. Well, it depends on the brand of the vehicle. This was at a Dodge Chrysler Jeep franchise. And so there was a movie theater not far from the dealership and and I came up with a promo. It's like, if you came in for a thirty, sixty, or 90,000 mile service on Saturday, we'll give you two movie tickets. The company shuttle will take you to the theater and pick you up as a way of turning what was a really a loss for the dealership for the day. Right. In terms of labor and materials, into something where we were at least breaking even. And that's kind of where my marketing journey began, was as a parts manager for a Dodge Chrysler Jeep dealership for Lithia. I love it. Okay, we're gonna pull up your website, as we scroll down the website, stigmar.com. Correct. Tell us the kinds of services you provide. So our three core services are fractional CMO services. There's a lot of small and medium businesses out there that can't afford a full time marketing team, so that's where we can come in and act as that strategist for their marketing and make sure that their marketing messaging and what they're capable of delivering are in alignment. Worst thing you could do as a business is say x to the customer and then not be able to deliver on it. Yes. Now you're, now you're, now you're fighting three star reviews on Google. And that doesn't do you any good. And so fractional CMO services, with the age of AI chat dominating the news and business right now, AI chat does not function the way old school search engine optimization did. So people aren't even getting to the blue link and I've got a great example where I had a roofing contractor that we've been talking to about coming in and helping him out, and he came to me with a story how he lost a bid on a project, because the prospect got three bids, he fed all of them to Claude. Wow. Claude came back with questions for the customer to ask each of the roofing companies based off of their bids, and highly technical questions, not something that these guys are used to answering. And he's like, well, knew it's like, first I was surprised by the question, but because of its how technical it was. I knew how to respond to it, but by 9AM, he'd already gone with another bidder. Even though Yes. Because AI made the decision for them. And so this is one way that people are using AI to vet potential service providers. So if that business had done more to build their reputation within the AI environment, They could have won that bid. Yes. And I don't know about you, but the last roofing bid I saw was tens of thousands of dollars. Exactly. So that's a huge impact to a lot of small, medium sized businesses. Then on top of that, we also kind of tiptoe a little bit into your field of public relations. We focus mostly on digital PR, so getting things into Yahoo Finance. Yes. And I think we're gonna see an article on me that I got into Yahoo Finance. Actually, since you teed that up so nicely, let's go ahead and pull up that article, because you have to be so proud of this. Tell us about this. Okay. So this was surrounding my exit from Junos. That's how you and I met was we filmed our June, if you Junos, you know podcast here at your studios. Well, I exited that investment at the October. I got a nice three x ROI on it. And so, unlike a lot of marketing consultants that have a lot of theory, I've been there, done that. As you know, it's like I took that business from one location to three locations. Incredible. We four x top line sales in less than three years. And it was just, you know, I kind of outgrew it and needed to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up and Okay. We need the audience's help because you are up for a major award. Why don't you share that with us? Yeah. So I got nominated for Entrepreneur of Impact through Entrepreneur Magazine. Currently in the top 10, they are cutting it to the top five in about, at the end of tomorrow at 7PM Pacific Time. I think we're gonna put a link in the description of the show, so that people can go and vote. And Entrepreneur of Impact supports Gen Youth, a non profit that helps provide nutrition and physical activity to students in school districts that may not have the financial resources to do that. Wow. And so, it's not just about patting myself on the back and an ego play, it's really a great way to help children suffering from food insecurity in the country. I just checked before we started filming, I dropped from fifth place to sixth place and only the top five advanced, so everyone out there, if you could go, you can vote for free once per day. If you feel like it, please make a donation to Jen Youth. You know, there are some self interests in it. I do get a $25,000 cash prize should I win. I get one hour of mentorship with Damon John from The Shark Tank. Oh, cool. That would be amazing to have him tell me everything I'm doing wrong. And he will. And that's what I love about mentors is they don't care about your ego. They're like, you need to fix this. That's very cool. And I think a spread in Entrepreneur Magazine, so those would and because I love Toys for Tots, being a former marine, I've also committed $5,000 of that cash prize to Toys four Tots in the DFW area because this is the fifth year that we have done a toy drive for Toys four Tots through Stickbar. Wow, beautiful. Alright, let's let's go back to marketing. Sure. What is your ideal avatar? What is what is My ideal customer like I I I love working with the construction guys in the trades because in all reality, a general contractor is no different than an advertising and marketing agency. We go out and we find projects and then sometimes to do those projects, we use internal sources, but a lot of times we have to use subcontractors, so it's really easy for me to communicate, hey, here's here's how this, we work the same way you do. You give me the building you want me to build, and then I go find the trade craft to execute. Yes. And then I'm the project manager just like you're the project manager. Well, have a theory that a great mechanic can hear the problem with the engine as it's pulling into the garage. Yeah. They know exactly where to look. If, let's suppose I was a roofing contractor from Plano with a very small company, one crew. Yep. Where would you look under the hood first? First, I would do a digital marketing audit and we'd So we have a a really generic audit that we can do for free, no obligation, just to kind of give you an A, C, D, F grade on what your digital presence looks like currently. Yes. Now, some of those metrics, because it is just such a catch all report, don't really apply like, to a roofer's not going to have an e commerce page. Right, right, right, exactly. Unless he wants to sell swag for his business. Exactly. Which you can help him with. Which I can help him with. And so that's where we start. And then with AI search being, that's a little more complicated, a little more labor intensive, and the tools are a little more expensive to do that. So there is a nominal fee that we would credit to the first month's engagement fee. Yes. Should they want to see how AI is talking about them. All right, let's talk more about search because there's kind of a grudge match going on right now between Chad GPT and Claude and Google. That had had the monopoly for the They're all, they're, yeah, they're all, well, and I think Gartner put out a report that, like, search is going to, about, was it 25 to 34% of searches moving into the AI environment. Wow. So they're not even getting to the blue link that you're paying your SEO guy for. Right. It's like they're going into Google, it's like, who are the top five roofing contractors in Plano? Right. And if you're not showing up there, you're already disqualified. Yes. Well, noticed that Google even has like an AI mode now when you Google something. Some people aren't just going to Google at all. They're just they're not even going to Google. They're going to Claude. They're going to They're going to Perplexity Yes. Gemini, any of these AI LLMs. Sorry. I I threw an acronym out. Language learning models. Okay. Well, without giving away any of your secrets Yes. What is a tip that you could you could share with the audience about ranking high on chat GPT? One indicator that the chat environments love is third party media. So, things that you and I specialize in. Yes. Getting them on Fox Business Yes. Or having a press release show up in USA Today, Yahoo Yes. Finance Market Insider. And it's like they can do those themselves through any number of systems, as you know. Yes. But they also, just like anything, it's like if you think hiring a professional expensive, wait until you hire an amateur. Wow. You're You're right. It's like, because you and I know that press releases have to meet a certain standard Yes. Or the news desk is gonna kick them. Alright. You mentioned one of your pillars is fractional CFO. Yes. Or CMO. CMO, sorry. That's alright. How do you how do you know when to bring in a guy like you? When you don't have a defined marketing budget and you're just basing your marketing investments on feelings Mhmm. Instead of data. Yes. So, and it's funny, it's like, the number of multi million dollar businesses that I have talked to, and I'm like, well, what's your marketing budget? We don't have one. Okay, well, how do you decide where to invest your, how are you doing lead generation? Oh, we get all of our business from referrals. I'm like, can you call your referral source up tomorrow when when your pipeline's empty and say I need five more referrals? Yes. And I'm willing to bet the answer to that is no. So, referrals are great. Word-of-mouth marketing is the best there is. Yes. But you do have to be proactive about lead generation. Otherwise, that's when you're that's when you start having the roller coaster revenue cash flow cycle. Yes. Is where, okay, well I got this referral, I'm working this referral. Okay, the project's coming to a close. Oh crap, I don't have another project in the pipeline. Right. And now you're struggling and you're stressing yourself out because you weren't proactive about finding customers. Yes. And so you've got no one to pick up the phone. It's like, hey, what's the progress? Have you, are you guys ready to move forward on this new hospital, this new Chick fil A Right, right. Insert project here. Well, so my experience when I'm talking to people about who who are spending money on marketing, I ask them, is it working? And sometimes the answer is, I'm not sure. And I find that unacceptable. There's an old saying and I forget who said it, it was some one of those guys that Mad Men was based off of. Yeah. Where 50% of my marketing budget is wasted. I just don't know what 50%. Yes. In the age of technology, you're correct. That is a completely unacceptable answer because there are so many ways to measure things now. Yes. But those measurements require investments in technology, using someone, whether internally or externally, that knows what to look for, having clearly defined KPIs and goals when you walk into the campaign. Yes. And, hey, the cobbler's children wear no shoes. I just rewrote my q two strategy yesterday. And I used Claude to help me do it. I love it. I love it. Alright. We have about two minutes left. Look into the camera on the left and talk to the viewer who might want to engage you. Listen, I'm not your average marketing guy as as we've discussed here with Jeff. I've been there and done that. Jeff was kind enough and several other folks were kind enough to document the journey of Juno's Liquor. While you may not feel that that applies directly to you, it is a showcase in taking a business that was failing. It literally did $8,000 in sales the month before we bought it, and when I exited in October, we were on track to exceed over $1,000,000 in top line revenue in less than three years. We took it from one rundown 800 square foot store that Jeff saw the pictures of it was not attractive into a design concept that our architect submitted for a retail design award. Wow. Congratulations. Thank you so much for coming on the No, it's always my pleasure, Jeff. You're always so gracious. Well, let's end with the website, which is stigmar.com. The great Steven Paul Matsumoto. Thanks for coming on the show. Outstanding. That's it for now. We'll see you next time. Thank you, guys.