389 – High level help at a fraction of the price: Tom interviews Andrew Deutsch

Episode 389 – Andrew Deutsch
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey, everybody it's Tom here with episode three hundred and eighty nine of Screw the commute podcast. I'm here with Andrew Deutsch. Now, this guy is going to teach us about fractions. What? It's not really about a math lesson, but it's a lesson on how we can get big time business experience without hiring a five million dollar a year CEO. So he'll be on in a minute. And hope you didn't miss Episode 388. That was one of my Monday training sessions Life Experience to Side Hustle. In this episode, I told you about how you can take things that have happened to you in your life or things that interest you and turn them into money. Now, how would you like to hear your own voice here on Screw the Commute? Well, if the shows helped you out in your business or given your ideas to help you start a business, we want to hear about it. Visit, screwthecommute.com and look for a little blue sidebar that says send the voicemail, click on it, talk into your phone or computer and tell me how the shows helped you. And don't forget to put your website on there and you'll get a big shout out on a future episode of Screw the Commute. Now make sure you pick up a copy of our podcast that our podcast app. I do want you to get that. But even bigger, I want you to get a copy of our free ebook that we give away on how to automate your business. You go to screwthecommute.com/automatefree. And this is a book that's helped me handle up to one hundred and fifty thousand subscribers and 40000 customers without pulling my hair out.

[00:01:55] In fact, we figured it out a couple years ago and this is no hype. We actually estimated it. It's just one of the tips in the book has saved me seven and a half million keystrokes, save me for sure carpal tunnel. And it allows me to steal customers from other people who are too darn slow to get back to him. And it just really automates my business. So I put all that in a ebook for you at screwthecommute.com/automatefree, and then you can pick up a copy of our podcast app at screwthecommute.com/app, where you can put us on your cell phone and tablet and take us with you on the road. All right. I know people are still freaking out with this pandemic, but myself and my students aren't because we know how to sell from home. I mean, I've been selling on the commercial Internet since it started in 1994, and it's the best I've been in business forty four years, but this is the best ever to be able to sell from home. And I've been preaching that to people for, you know, 22 years or so. And now it's more evident than ever how important it is to be able to do this. I mean, people are having to quit their jobs if they even have one to stay home because their kids are being forced to do Zoome lessons. And oh, it's I know it's a mess and it's painful out there for a lot of people. But if you have these skills, it wouldn't be.

[00:03:24] So I have the only licensed, dedicated Internet marketing school in the country, probably the world. It's IMTCVA.org. It's certified to operate by SCHEV, the State Council on Higher Education in Virginia. But you don't have to be in Virginia anywhere. You can hear this. And if you can speak English, you can be in this school and it's hard core skills that every business on earth needs. We have students making significant money just a few months into the school and we even have one of the students. We had her making electives, so to teach you how to do it. So it's beautiful. And if you hang in there a little later, we'll show you how you can get a scholarship to the school. If you're in my mentor program and you can either use it yourself for extra training or gift it to somebody. And I'll tell you what, to be the one of the best gifts you could ever give to a young person, rather than sticking him in a four year college where they all they learn how to do is protest. And then they get out with their MBA and then they compete for jobs at Starbucks. So. So we don't like that around here. So check that out later.

[00:04:33] All right. Let's get to the main event. Andrew Deutsch is the founder of Fangled Tech. In addition to its global marketing services, Fangled also offers consulting and know how to small businesses and startups. He told me through mentorship advisory programs at a very low cost service, his services can be described as having an executive level member of your company at a fraction of the cost.

[00:05:00] Andrew, are you ready to screw? The commute? How are you doing?

[00:05:06] Oh, you meant you meant the commute.

[00:05:08] Yes, the commute. Right, I misunderstood. Right.

[00:05:12] Well, yeah, the people that know the show know that I get bizarre sometimes. So I got to ask you the name of your company fangled tech. How did you come up with that? What does that mean?

[00:05:25] It actually came as the result of kind of a joke conversation I had when we were doing a rebrand of the company, someone jokingly a southern a southern boy said to me, you doing that new of that old fangled kind of marketing? And I said, hey, we're fangled right in the moment. We're not old, we're not new. We're here now with with with eyes of the future. And it stuck.

[00:05:47] Well, I can appreciate the crazy names. One of my corporations was called Heap's Inc. Well, I was really fat as a little kid and and I was the baby of six boys. And I'm playing baseball with my my brothers and all his friends. And of course, they're abusing me. So I'm running the first base. And one of the guys said he looks like a heap of S H I T and it stuck. And ever since I was my dad's little hippie and those heap's so I did heaps incorporates has really funny.

[00:06:27] Years ago I was aware of a pet store down in Orlando, Florida, and the owner of that store had lost a poker game and the loser of the game was told that they would have to name their business the Woolly Booger. And he did it. And it was it was a prominent pet store in the 90s in the actually the late 80s, early 90s in Orlando, Florida, for years specializing in reptiles. And it was called the woolly bugger hat store.

[00:06:51] Well, you know what? As crazy as that sounds, I mean, think of stuff like Yahoo! And Google. And I mean, you're a branding expert, you know, so, no, I'm not in favor of super little guys doing this because they put, you know, they have enough money to put ads on the side of every bus and park bench in America. But but still, those are, you know, household names now. And they're just weird, you know, names, you know, can wonder what's funny.

[00:07:21] In my opinion, the smaller you are, the more memorable you have to be. So if you if you have the ability to not spend a fortune getting some branding guru to spend, you know, a fortune to figure out a name, if you've got a name that makes sense and people remember that's a powerful tool for a small business.

[00:07:39] Yeah, that's that's that's for sure. I just what I what I always worry about with the super small people.

[00:07:46] And I think you are in my corner on this one because you kind of don't really like these big marketing agencies. They talk people into branding themselves into the poorhouse. Absolutely. You know, they they you know, people want to match the color of their website to the color of their brochure. And then and then you look on that. You good on the Best Buy and look at their site on 50 different computers. It looks different on everyone because you.

[00:08:14] Absolutely. You've heard the pitch. We were we were kind of joking about it before before the call. If you get in a meeting with a marketing agency and you hear this pitch, hey, we can build you a website, drive hundreds of thousands of people to it, we can get your social media off the ground, print me. We're going to grow your business, run like hell, because they haven't even looked into who you are, who's your customer, how how are you going to serve that customer? And all of that has to be understood before you start spending any money and trying to grow who you are.

[00:08:44] Yeah, I mean, I've critiqued over in my years over 10000 Web sites. And and that's I see it all the time. And they tell me how much they spend on it. And I'm like, oh my God, this is one hundred and fifty dollar website with a couple plug. And then you spread.

[00:09:02] I mean, I literally I had one company had spent forty six thousand dollars on it and they were paying fifteen hundred dollars a month maintenance. And I'm saying for what you know me, you put up a couple dog pictures, that's a dog company.

[00:09:19] Not to get too technical, but if I know I know guys in the marketing arena that have built their houses on what they called project management fees. Exactly. Yes. And in a project management fee is is basically me keeping an eye on what you're already paying me to keep an eye on.

[00:09:39] I think so. So tell us about this fractional thing. You know, I didn't even know what it was when I saw your first bio. Yeah. And I've been in business for four years, you know, very successful in lots of businesses. Never even heard of it. So tell us what this fractional CMO thing is.

[00:09:58] It's it's big words to describe a very a very important tool for for small businesses. So it's kind of the idea of fractional chief marketing officer is the top the top level marketing guy in any major corporation is the chief marketing officer. It's sort of become the new title. So what would it mean to a small business to have access to that level of knowhow for a fraction of the time? Of the price, so what we do for for some of our middle sized to smaller sized companies is they look at, you know, I need marketing skills. I don't want to go to an agency. They're going to overcharge me. I need someone to consult me on that or become part of my team and a part time basis. So the word fractional is fancy talk for part time. And what happens is you get you get someone on your team for as little as one day a month or as much as is needed at a at a significantly lower cost than maybe hiring that kid you were talking about just graduated with his MBA has yet to have any experience. And even with that, if he gets a job in marketing, he's going to be 60, 70 grand a year minimum. We have clients that, you know, we're talking a grand worth of services to take them to the next level or even less. So what a fractional chief marketing officer is in layman's speak, regular guy talk. It's a part time marketing guru at significantly lower cost than you would find any other way.

[00:11:29] Well, it sounds like possibly a godsend for a lot of people that not only are they the CMO, they're the CEO, they're the janitor, they're the soccer transportation.

[00:11:43] So when I got my start as a kid, I wish that I had access to somebody who has that level of experience to help me not have to learn the hard way. So many different times as I started to build little businesses as a youngster.

[00:11:58] Yeah, literally. I wanted to take you back there and let's see where you entrepreneur. I guess you're saying you were entrepreneurial as a child.

[00:12:05] Yeah, even even when I was a kid in middle school, I found these catalogs that you could buy stuff online and would would buy, for example, the ceramic pins or T-shirts from the most popular bands in town. Mm hmm. And I would get them at a really low price and keep them in my in my backpack at school and sell them to the other kids at fair market price. But it made money for me. Yeah. Yeah. I was the same guy was always looking to I would I would go to garage sales and buy audio equipment and clean it up and turn around and sell it in the classified ads and do a whole bunch of things to make money.

[00:12:43] Where appearances were your parents entrepreneurial?

[00:12:47] Where I did this, my grandfather on my mom's side during the Depression made his living making literally a nickel at a time sweeping the floor at printing factories. Mm hmm.

[00:13:02] When I was a kid, he owned one of the largest full service, letterpress adhesive printing companies in the Cleveland area. Eighty five percent of all the car batteries in the US, as I understand it, had his labels on those batteries. Wow. So, yeah, I come from come from entrepreneur. Of course. My other grandfather was third generation in the first full service funeral home in the whole Midwest of the United States. So there's a little bit different business service.

[00:13:29] There was what is what is not a full service. Would you have to dig your own hole or what?

[00:13:35] And not full service? Funeral Home doesn't have its own crematorium. They outsource the the prep, you know.

[00:13:42] So that's or do they have a drive through window or. If they do, they do.

[00:13:48] Yeah, it's in that neighborhood. We don't talk about it.

[00:13:51] All right. So so did you did you go to school? I mean, were you entrepreneurial all the way till now or what?

[00:14:00] Yeah, I went I did. I got my undergraduate in international trade, which was always my my interest was working overseas. And then, as you described, I, you know, didn't have the the master's degree that would have got me to the level of the positions that I wanted.

[00:14:16] Yeah. You and I knew it would have been high up at Starbucks. Yeah.

[00:14:20] No, no, no. But I looked at it, it wasn't there wasn't a job for MBAs in Starbucks. It was just unemployment. Yes. So but I knew, I knew that I needed to know more. So I went back to school and got a master's in in the field of psychology that that focused a lot on the industrial space to really understand that whole mindset, the psyche behind buying strategies on a global basis. So that was sort of my my beginning of being able to develop marketing strategies that work throughout the world, I've worked and sold into about 120 different countries in my career.

[00:14:55] So did you have the dreaded job and then transitioned in your own company? How does that that come about?

[00:15:02] Well, I, I did both. I while I was in school studying, I worked at psychiatric hospitals and the overnight shift, which is a whole other topic for a different discussion. I went to work for a company also while I was doing that, and as soon as I graduated because I had the skill set, I went in private practice and worked so that I could fund my consulting business. So I worked with as as a psychologist for a period of time or as they called it back in those days, a counselor. But until I was starting to develop these relationships in the Latin American market where I started as an entrepreneur working on these really interesting trade projects between Central and South America in the U.S. and then in 93, I hopped on a plane to work on a project in Brazil for 90 days and ended up living there for 10 years.

[00:15:52] Wow. And and that's where I really built my consulting business. We're all here. We're all the girls kissing you. I heard that it's easy to get kissed in Brazil. I have no comment.

[00:16:08] Your lifelessness. My wife is Brazilian. Oh, I guess. I guess there's the answer.

[00:16:15] Yeah, but but anyhow, so so when I came back to the states and, you know, 9/11 happened and things changed and I tried to I reopened my U.S. office and came back when the market crashed. So at that point I went back to work for a very large manufacturer who was one of my clients. So I became an in-house employee and ran the international division for several years while I waited out the economy to start to become better again and then got right back into the consulting world.

[00:16:44] So you're in and out of job and an entrepreneur job entrepreneur. Yep. So give us an idea of how you work with very small businesses.

[00:16:56] Well, one of the things that we offer on a limited basis, but but we donate a significant amount of our time to what we call the pick my brain session. So on the the most basic level, someone requests a session and we spend a good 30 minutes at no cost to really dig into whatever that issue is that that could be in the way of somebody taking a small business from from nothing to where it goes or getting to the next level or getting started or realizing that it isn't a good business model. And they need to go back to the beginning. So and then we sell our time at a discounted basis based on who that business is. But at the core of it, we don't even talk about those tactical tools of let's build a website, let's do all this kind of stuff until we really dig in and help the customer understand who is your customer, what are the pains, what are the difficulties, what are the challenges that you have the ability to solve? And how do you differentiate yourself from all the other guys trying to do that in a way that matters to that customer? And that's sort of the core in in that. Also, please, please keep in mind and also looking at how the other competitors are so that you can best them and be the right guy for that customer.

[00:18:13] And you're not talking 500 bucks an hour or something? Oh, no. I mean, because I got when I was first starting, I got taken for a ride. I was going to start a franchise and these guys gave me thirty minutes for five hundred and was nothing more than a pitch to get 50000 from me. So. So, yeah.

[00:18:30] You know, years ago a guy came up to me and said that, you know, he's an investment counselor and he tried to get me to brag about how much I was worth, how much my house was worth, and all of that to come up with a number. Oh, my gosh, you've got that much wealth. Well, you need this much life insurance. And I and I, you know, to cover that. And I, I learned that day that business is not about being parasitic. It's it's not about trying to suck every last drop out of your client. It's about helping them to grow so that they become an advocate for you. Every every client that I help add to their budget help has benefited them greatly, but also from a very selfish point of view. They're the guys who refer me to the next client.

[00:19:17] Well, on your website, it says helping you convert every touch into voracious advocates for your brand.

[00:19:24] That is the core of our business, that that is our branding statement. We don't I don't believe in mission statements. I believe in your living brand. And that's how we live our brand every day.

[00:19:33] Yeah. You just got to be careful who you touch. Now, that's so we were we occasionally wear a glove. Yeah. So.

[00:19:44] We got to take a brief sponsor break, and when we come back, we're going to ask Andrew, what's a typical day look like for him and how he stays motivated? So, folks, about it's been about 22 years ago, it kind of turned the Internet marketing guru world on its head. And the guys at my level were charging 50 or 100 grand up front to teach you what they knew. And I knew a lot of these people. They'd be hiding out in Brazil if you gave them 50000 fucks up front, you never see them again. So I kind of turned it on its head in that I charge an entry fee and then tied my success to your success. So for me to get my 50000, you had to clear 200000. Wow, people really like this and they knew I wouldn't disappear on them. And seventeen hundred plus students later. It's the longest running, most successful, most unique mentor program in this field ever. And I triple dog dare people to put their program up against mine and nobody takes me up on it because I think they'd be pretty embarrassed if they compared it line for line. But if you are in my mentor program, you do get a scholarship to my school and I've had people join my mentor program gift the scholarship to their children or at least one of their children. And that child is making six thousand dollars a month and only four months. And she had he had spent 80000 bucks on her crappy four year education. And she's working a crappy job. And now she's she's doing really, really great with this Internet marketing stuff. And they said the skills are in super high demand because every business on Earth needs them. And that's what I concentrate on, skills that are in high demand because every company needs email marketing and chat boards and blogs and and everything else. You can imagine that we that we teach. So check that out at greatInternetmarketingtraining.com, and give me a call and we will know high pressure here. We'll talk about your and your possible your children or grandchildren's future online.

[00:21:56] Now, let's get back to the main event. Andrew Deutsch is here. He's the founder of Fangled Tech. It's not newfangled or old fangled. It's fangled. Yes, I love that. And so, Andrew, tell us what a typical day looks like for you and then we'll see how you stay motivated working for yourself.

[00:22:16] You got it. You know, I'm in that category of the early riser, though, and because I also work with clients overseas, I'm accustomed to getting started super early. Is what time zone you in? I'm in the Eastern Time in the same same as me.

[00:22:31] And so you get up what's early to you?

[00:22:34] My computer usually gets turned on at 4 a.m.

[00:22:38] Wow. And you're you're working out of your home now.

[00:22:41] I am. I have an office in my home. Yeah. OK, up. So I commute from the back of the house to the front of the house. Right. That's good.

[00:22:47] And get the first cup of coffee in hand. The computer goes out and I deal with all of the over overnight emails that came in. I go through my my to dos and my, my goals that are that are set for the week and begin putting my social media posts together for the day because I'm pretty prolific. And LinkedIn. That's usually when I'm putting up my podcast for the week, it's when I'm writing and doing all of those types of things as well as is going over my calendar, making sure everything's prepped for my meetings. And then throughout the day, every day is completely different than the day before, which is why I love what I do. You know, I plan things pretty carefully and I'm pretty methodical about making sure that all of my my goals and the actual tasks involved in reaching those goals are met on the right and the right time frame. One of one of my early, early jobs before that, before we had computers to to calculate our our daily schedules as we do now, we had these little books that that you turn the pages and you had your whole year in your hand. Yeah, I created a system called that I always called backdating where I knew where I wanted to be and worked my way back through the calendar, putting those points on the calendar. I still do that, but now electronically.

[00:24:03] So, yeah, I think I frustrated you a little bit booking this thing, because I still use a paper calendar. It's never, never crashed on me once in all these years.

[00:24:13] Yeah, it is the day that I switched over to an electronic thing. I can't remember the name of this stupid device that I had, but I had moved my whole calendar over and took my paper calendar and put it on a shelf in my house and went on a trip. And when I went to turn that device on the first time, none of my appointments were done. So for years I ran. I ran Deuel. Yeah. And now I don't anymore because it's there's just too many things happening in too many different time zones. So like for now, if I want to book a meeting with somebody, I send them a link and say, hey, pick a spot on my calendar because I never know what time zone they're in. And since I've started doing that, I've never gotten on an hour late for some guy and, you know, somewhere in darkest Africa because I didn't know what his time zone was.

[00:25:00] Well, you know what? You got to watch out for that, because kind of the reason I make fun of this, these online things, is because in you know, this is, what, podcast? Three hundred and eighty nine out of three hundred eighty nine podcasts that I've done and over a thousand interviews I've done with other people.

[00:25:17] The only two that ever got messed up were an electronic calendar that that when I signed up it was in my time zone.

[00:25:25] But the confirmation for some reason came in their time zone and then you got to start dealing with drunk's meant. Well, I'm saying that when I looked at the confirmation real quick a couple of weeks later. OK, OK, I got to do two o'clock Eastern today. OK, let me get on there and then boom, the thing was gone.

[00:25:44] Yes. So you got to watch that to make sure they're both in the same times.

[00:25:48] Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. You've got to be vigilant. But but when it comes to what I, I think I even use this term in an email with you. If you spend a day with calendar tag like like, like freeze tag, it's a ham available at two and three on Tuesday. Oh those two hours don't work for me. How about Wednesday one. No, Wednesday at one. By the time you're done with that it's time for bed.

[00:26:10] So I like, I like to get my sleep. So.

[00:26:14] So I mean do you work out in do you do any workouts or I mean is there a morning routine. In other words, like this has been pretty big lately. People have things they do every day.

[00:26:27] I do usually around six, six thirty. I've got my, my or my first round. That's when I go back to the kitchen and I have breakfast and take care of the dog and feed the fish and occasionally right up to the to the treadmill or the elliptical and get that going.

[00:26:43] Yeah. Just don't feed the fish to the dog. If you know, if you're sleepy I feed the dog to the fish or big fish.

[00:26:51] But you know, it, it varies day to day what I do during that time. But I do take that break in the morning for breakfast activities and then I dig into my work and then I try very hard to be done by five and then get into one of my creative pursuits rather than than focusing on work. I need to do something with my hands to to take my mind off of all the things during the day. And I get like what?

[00:27:17] I build my own furniture. I have a glass studio.

[00:27:21] I also do do quite a bit of work in fiber, knitting and things like that. You have what kind of studio glass? What's that mean? You blow glass and stuff.

[00:27:31] I don't blow glass, I fuse and do other other work with glass. So it's too expensive to have the equipment to blow glass in your own house.

[00:27:40] So you, you sell this stuff sometimes.

[00:27:44] It's usually gifts and things that that I for example, a close friend of mine, his wife's brother passed away. So they said they're sending me some of his ashes and I'm going to cast it into a glass piece for them to have. Wow. And I do all sorts of interesting to me. Interesting glass work. I've sold pieces. I sometimes just donated to charity auctions. One of the one of the trays that I made sold at an auction about a year ago for about three grand.

[00:28:10] Wow. Right. Yeah. Nice.

[00:28:14] Yeah. You know, work is so cerebral if you don't for me, if I don't do something creative with my hands, that takes my mind off of it. I start to get a little buggy.

[00:28:23] No, I get it. Yeah. I mean I grew up with the blue collar and learn how to use tools. And so I like when my last dog passed away, I actually built his casket and then his funeral was seen 14000 times on Facebook. So. So, yeah, I really in fact, I channel my dad sometimes just when I'm in Home Depot. Just yeah, I really feel him. I feel him with me. So.

[00:28:51] So how do you stay motivated working, working for yourself. And are you the fraction like if somebody is there different fractions that work for fractions.

[00:29:02] I mean, that's what I am and we have others, it depends on the situation, my my strength has always been in that global space and in the industrial B2B market space. So people people who are making things are selling things into the industrial space. Typically, I'll be the fractional guy, but I have other people on the team who are really good at consumer services. I've got guys that are really good at consumer packaging and consumer products. So it depends on, you know, the idea is you want the guy who has the most experience in being successful in your segment.

[00:29:40] Yeah, that's again, going back to my my problem with agencies is they they find the the service to to shovel you into rather than go out and find the service that fits your model. Mm hmm. And I've seen agencies that do nothing but, you know, lawyers, accountants and those types of services. But if somebody knocked on the door and said, hey, we make high tech screws for the aviation industry, their response would be, oh, yeah, we specialize in that.

[00:30:07] Yeah. Oh yeah.

[00:30:09] So, yeah, I we build teams around a pool of about ninety five freelancers that we work with around the world to get the right team together for our client.

[00:30:20] Yeah. Like, like I said, if you get a bad one that's a fraction thing, you can do it.

[00:30:27] All right. So how do you stay motivated to run in this whole thing from your house?

[00:30:33] I, I love what I do. And I'm going to let you in on a little secret about those pick your brain sessions.

[00:30:39] People think that we do those out of charity given away our time for free. And we know that we every one of those sessions benefits someone in one way or another. I do it out of out of my own desire because I love what I do to flesh out an idea in a business that I've never thought of before. It hones my skills. It gets me excited. There's it's I'm a business junkie, a marketing junkie. If if somebody comes to me with a challenge and I can figure out a strategic way, a creative way of making it happen, I get as excited as some people would watching their favorite sports team do their thing.

[00:31:16] I totally get it, man. Same same here. So tell people how they get hold of you.

[00:31:21] Well, I'm available if you can find me on LinkedIn. My name is Andrew Deutsch and pretty easy to find companies fangled tech at fangled tech stock. Yeah, we have all this in the show notes for everybody, so that is quick. And we also have our podcast, the Fangled Cast, which which is a great place for four business folks to hear real experts talk about topics that matter much like your podcast fangled cast.

[00:31:45] There we go. Awesome. So thanks so much for coming on, man. This is something I had not heard of and that people could take advantage of to get some high level experience with with not being stuck with a major salary.

[00:32:00] And, hey, I have great gratitude coming from me for having me on this show. This was a lot of fun. And I'm glad to have met you. I think I think you do great things for people in your organization, really benefits a lot of folks who want to get their start in being entrepreneur.

[00:32:13] We've hit it. We hit it really hard. All right. Well, thanks so much for coming on. And we'll catch everybody on the next episode. See you later.

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