• 44:41
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Manufacturers, go-to-market, international business, market expansion, small manufacturers, export strategy, customer relationships, AI in business, strategic revenue growth, market research, business advice, sales execution, market entry, business growth, export readiness.
SPEAKERS
Paola Santana, Speaker 1, Curt Anderson, David Solomon
Curt Anderson 00:00
Know. So alright guys, Happy Friday to you. Welcome. To stop being the best kept secret. I’ve got my dear friend Paula Santana in the house is playing co hostess with the most of this. Paula, how are you today?
Paola Santana 00:12
Good last week. I was you this week, I’m Damon. Very weird.
David Solomon 00:16
Got it set the wire look weird. You look way better than these guys. Don’t worry.
Curt Anderson 00:20
Yeah, nobody wants to be this, you know, much, much better than mine. So, facial hair, thankfully. Paulo, thank you for joining us. We appreciate you more than you can imagine. So, alright, this is an honor, privilege. I’m super excited to dive in this conversation. We’re going to go fast and furious. We’ve got David Solomon in the house here today. And David, you have a vast experience with manufacturers and from an international perspective, people are dying to know, like, how can I take my business to the next level? But before we go there, I have a little question for you, my friend, are you ready? Are you
David Solomon 00:54
sitting down? I’m I’m not going anywhere, that’s for sure.
Curt Anderson 00:58
David, my first question for you, my friend, when you were a little guy growing up, okay, a little guy growing up, who was your hero, who you look up to, who just showered you with unconditional love, who was your hero
David Solomon 01:11
when you’re a little guy growing up, I gotta tell you. So when I was a little guy, wow, when I was a little guy growing up, you know, it’s really funny. There was when I was a little boy. I remember there was a and this is how I’m dating myself. Back in the 70s, there was a barber shop around the corner from our house where I think I was like, five years old. I used to walk around friends of mine who were like, seven and eight years old, and we go to this barbershop, and there’s this old gentleman, and you gotta, Palo, you gotta, you gotta picture this guy with the big stogie old fellow. I thought he was old. They told me he was, like, in his 60s, so like, for me at five years old, that’s ancient. And that guy would talk to me about life, and I’m thinking, I don’t understand any of this, but he’s so nice to me. I looked up to this man, and when we moved away from that like, I was devastated, because I was never gonna see the late Mr. Schaefer like that. Kurt, you’ve just brought me back 50 years. Man, that was so cool, awesome.
Curt Anderson 02:08
Well, hey, shout out to Mr. Schaefer for, you know, wonderful when you get that, that one gem, that angel that just, you know, treats you like you’re, you know, a peer treat you like you’re, you know, you’re, you’re already a man, and just here 50 years later. So has that, that imprint?
David Solomon 02:23
So, oh, yeah, and I gotta tell you something. If I were to tell people the stories, what I saw in those barber shops, it’s, it’s for another it’s for another type of body,
Curt Anderson 02:30
yes, yeah, at five years old, you know, right? Not a lot of growing up very fast.
Paola Santana 02:37
Let’s move on.
Curt Anderson 02:39
Move on. So, all right, so, David, let’s fast forward out of college. You start an international business career. Tell us a little bit about like, was that on your radar growing up? Was this something that you wanted to do? How did you kind of get your journey started? I gotta
David Solomon 02:52
tell you, I wanted to go to business school, and I just could not. I just, I tell everybody I had ADD I just didn’t care. And I was like, trying to coast through school, didn’t work out. Ended up with a political science and history major, and you want you when you leave school. You know, there are only two things you could do with that, teach and go into politics. I wanted none of that. And of course, when I graduated, it was the worst recession since the Great Depression. Yeah, here I was living here in Canada. It was terrible. Was terrible. It was like 1991 when I got to school, I remember Kurt Paula. They told us, oh, when you get here, two thirds of the people get the job of their first choice. When I graduated, one in three had a job. So, like we it was terrible. And so my entry into sales was purely by accident. I wanted to get into the advertising business, and I got a job working with a local with a local newspaper to learn how to sell ads, and here I am going knocking on doors so I’d even get into the international game I was selling to my neighbors. It was fortunate that a few years later that I was moved, I moved to Toronto with the toy company. They hired me to take care of local sales. And then we just grew, grew grew, and then probably back to Montreal and said, You did so well in Canada. Let’s give you the rest of the world, minus the US and the UK. Let’s see what you can do. Whoa, baby, 40 countries like that. We exploded our sales. I never had a better time in my life than those years in terms of, you know, going internationally with with toys, okay, I tell you,
Curt Anderson 04:23
Well, absolutely love it. Paula, what do you what are your thoughts so far?
Paola Santana 04:28
That’s, I mean, I think it’s basically, I think, like the best careers, I feel like, in just my short experience, in comparison and talking to people always happen on accident, and I feel like maybe I should have had a few more accidents.
David Solomon 04:42
Yep, is the old expression, right? You know, man plans, God laughs. Yes, I was God had was joking around with me, for sure, there was no doubt about it. Great sense of humor
Paola Santana 04:52
that’s amazing, though. What a great opportunity. And, yeah, and toys like, it’s like next to ice cream, right? What’s the next?
David Solomon 05:00
Best job. And you know what I and when I tell people, oh, we were in arts and crafts, they’re going arts and crafts. That sounds boring. We hit it on the hottest time ever. It was like, that was like, super high demand. And so, loved it, loved it, loved it.
Curt Anderson 05:17
So, David, let’s go. So I’m gonna go back there. Then what I want to do is we’re going to take a deep dive where you’re at today. You’re our market expansion specialist, if you will. And we’re super excited to hear some tactics, strategies that you that folks can take away, some golden nuggets that they can apply to their business. But those 40 countries, what was, you know, young guy, I’m assuming you’re probably in your 20s, and you’re hitting all this, this. I mean, what was it like? Anything stand out in particular? Of, like, that one aha moment. Of like, Man, this is just awesome. Like, do you remember anything?
David Solomon 05:50
I think the first time that I went to, what was it that I went to? I went to Mexico the first time on a business side, right? It wasn’t the, you know, let’s not, let’s not, let’s not go to Puerto Vallarta or Cancun. This was Mexico City. And I’m really, I’m sitting here with Walmart, Walmart Mexico, and I’m thinking, I hit it, baby. I did Walmart in Canada. I’m here. I’m with Walmart in Mexico. And what you discover is the spike culture, the spite language. Everybody talks the same thing, business growth, expansion and what can you do for me? And because I had experience with Walmart Canada and my distributor, God bless her, Miriam, she was wonderful, but she wasn’t sure how to work with Walmart. And here I am. I knew their language. I knew what they were looking for. I they, they, they really taught me in Canada their strategy. So when I was talking to the buyer, she was like, Oh, this is exactly what we want. And we doubled our business with WalMart. We were supposed to be thrown out. Instead, we’re doubling the business. And the aha moment was really, truly understood. It doesn’t matter where you do business, if you understand the main point that your client has and how you can help them. You’re a superhero. You’re a superhero. And that is the key, just, and it doesn’t matter where you want and the language of the culture becomes secondary,
Curt Anderson 07:10
right? Wow, okay, golden nugget, like Paula, that was a drop the mic moment, right there, right? Just like, you know, helping. But David, what for folks out there? You know, we’re targeting, you know, our target audience here are small manufacturers and say, you know, they’ve got a, you know, hey, I’m raising my hand. I want to get into big box store. I want to get into a Walmart Home Depot, like that type of thing was there. And so I’m going a little bit off script from what I have is there, is there anything in particular that helped you open a door to those big fortune 500 those major companies. Anything that comes to mind for our small manufacturers? Any tips
David Solomon 07:46
here? Well, first of all, if you’re a small manufacturer, and believe me, we started as a small manufacturer, don’t get me wrong, we didn’t we were able to Walmart. Canada was 130 stores compared to the 2000 in the United States. Just to give you an idea of perspective, right? So it’s not the same thing. But the thing is, I would build it up to going to a Home Depot or a Walmart. Don’t jump to Walmart because you think there’s a great opportunity. The scariest part curtain Paula, is that we think we understand what they need. We don’t. There’s systems. There’s infrastructure that you got to invest in. There could be set up. There could be a lot of things that you’re not ready for, plus their demands could really be a stray on your cash flow, especially if you’re a small company, and you got to build up a lot of inventory there. A lot of them believe in just in time, which means you got to sit on inventory. You got to sit on all that stuff, waiting for them to pluck it off your shelves. That could be costly. So if you’re a it’s better if you’re a manufacturer than if you’re an importer. But it scares me to death that a small one, small company says, Yeah, let’s go after Walmart. Learn in the US you guys have like retailers that can lead you to Walmart, lead you to Home Depot and Lowe’s. I would not go after them until I’ve cut my teeth with medium sized retailers, bigger retailers, learn their language, learn their game, learn the ad game, learn the shelf game, when you’re ready, then you go to Walmart, not before.
Paola Santana 09:11
I feel like that’s such dumb advice too, because it feels like it allows you to make mistakes, but the mistakes aren’t going to be so detrimental or so catastrophic to your business that it allows you to make them and grow from what you’re learning from those mistakes.
David Solomon 09:27
Absolutely, what you just said is key is we’re going to make a mistake. And I’ll tell you, we did make mistakes, and i Oh, my God, oh, we thought we’re supposed to ship it like this. We’re supposed to put on a pallet like that. It was supposed to be positioned like this and like, you don’t realize the micro detail that these guys want. And then it’s like, oh. And the worst story was returns, and this is something that a lot of manufacturers aren’t planning on. We did a deal with Walmart and Canada said, Listen, if the goods are listed 50 bucks or less, throw in the garbage. We’ll give you the credit. Just send us the. Out it doesn’t pay for us to go and take it in do this. Well, guess what? They were shipping US goods anyways, and we have to deal with things. And so there’s so many little details that until you’re ready for it, don’t go too big, until you mastered Small and Medium. Yeah, yeah, that’s great.
Curt Anderson 10:20
Good, all right. Good, excellent advice. So, so Paula, though you’re not a baseball fan, David, I’m thinking like, you know, you start with the minor leagues and then get to the major leagues, is that
David Solomon 10:29
you’ve gotta, you’ve gotta learn the game, because the pitch is, let’s use that analogy. They’re coming fast and furious. When you’re dealing with Walmart, when you’re playing with a smaller guy, they’ll give you a slower pitch for you to hit it out
Curt Anderson 10:42
of the park. Perfect. Okay, so let’s dive in. We have a lot of golden nuggets on the horizon here coming up ahead. So David, so fast forward. You decide to you have this wonderful sales career, business career, corporate career. You decide to hang up your own shingle. Tell us what you’re doing today. How are you making the world a better place? My friend, how am
David Solomon 11:05
I working on broom a better place? Oh, my Lord, that’s a dangerous question. Oh, so what I, what I’m what I gotta tell you is, what, what, what? I discovered there are some fantastic sales executives out there. Fractional sales executives will come and help you build your foundation for your sales team. You know, find you sales people write your playbook, help you find the right customer, and so on and so forth. These are fabulous people. What happens is that they reach a certain point and then they go, Wow, if we want to scale to another market, that’s not our strength, that’s not our superpower. So I discovered that manufacturers are 25% but one in four manufacturers in America export, and the majority of them are meat. Are like the big, big, big, mid to large, very few, small to mid are doing any export. They need help. And that’s where I decided, you know, let me bring my experience to them and help them to discover first of all, there are over 190 markets that want us goods, and let’s go find them. Let’s go find them the right way, not the wrong way, where it’s going to cost you your business. And so that’s really right. Now, what I’m doing is helping small to mid manufacturing size manufacturers really see, first of all, do they have the right product? Do they have the right team? And now let’s go see where’s the right market fit for them. That’s it in a nutshell.
Curt Anderson 12:27
What do you what do you find is one of the most? Is there a number one factor? Maybe there’s multiple. What’s stopping those small manufacturers? Is there one particular hurdle that you see consistently?
David Solomon 12:37
Yeah, fear number one thing. So, so I did a workshop last weekend, shameless plug. I’m doing another one next Thursday. But basically we said there are two types of business owners, the tortoise and the hare. The tortoise is the one who’s slow, waiting, scared, wanting to dot every I cross, every T, hoping the sky will be bluer, waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting, paralysis by analysis. I’ll give you the whole bank, and then you have the exact opposite, the hair, the rush, oh my god, I found a guy. We’re gonna do this. Let’s go and doesn’t plan out and realize, Oh my God, I didn’t think those are the two extremes. And so what I find now, more and more is the tortoise. We have a lot with what’s going on today, with the uncertainty that’s going on. I don’t care about your political inclination. There’s a lot of uncertainty, and we can blame whoever. Interest rates, recession, tariffs, I don’t care. That’s scaring people, but it shouldn’t. And those are the tortoises that I want to talk to, that there is an opportunity to export, but we kind of get over your fear, and once you get over that fear, you realize the world’s waiting for you.
Paola Santana 13:54
I think that there’s also, like, in retrospect, of the like, the the hair, there’s probably also plays a little bit of fear, because they are trying to capitalize quickly, right? Trying to capture the market, or capture, like revenue profits quickly. And so I would even say that fear even plays in there, that area as well.
David Solomon 14:13
You would think that, but a lot of times, and I think that you’re 100 you’re right in your analysis, what I find with the hair is that they’re just trying to grab the shiny Penny. And there’s an opportunity there without doing the homework and realizing so what will how will this impact my business if I decide to work with this person in that market, who owns the property, who owns the responsibility, who owns the liability, who owns the marketing? What do I have a distributor agreement? I got a lot of things I got to do before I go. And, you know, sorry, situation, jump at the bed with this person. But fear should stop them, but, but this, the shiny Penny syndrome, gets more, I think, is catching them more than anything else.
Curt Anderson 14:54
Well, all right, great question. And so I love that now you teach. You mentioned your workshop. You had one you. Last weekend. You’ve got shamelessly and where’s this workshop coming up? Where can people catch this workshop?
David Solomon 15:04
Well, if you come check me out on LinkedIn, I’ll I’d like the other event is all over the place. It’s actually Thursday, September the 11th, at 9am Eastern shameless plug, and there’s a link on our on our LinkedIn, a LinkedIn event there. Please register. It’s free, and I’ll go through a lot of the details with my colleague, Michael Stewart. We go through a lot of the details and how to overcome. Paolo, what you just said is, like we talked about the tortoise and the hare, but we come up with with a whole new type of animal that you should be when it comes to manufacturing and exporting,
Curt Anderson 15:36
just by default. Paulo, for the record, I’m not the hare. I’m a tortoise, but I couldn’t help myself, but David, you fierce educator. For the past 10 years, you’ve been teaching a course at Miguel. Talk to us a little bit about this course, and what are you teaching? Wonderful entrepreneur students, what are you teaching
David Solomon 15:56
here? Thank you. It’s actually a funny story, and forgive me, and there’s a reason why I tell the story. So I stopped at Palo. After 20 years of working, I stopped my career and I went back to school to get an MBA. And it’s, it’s the scariest thing I have ADD. I had three young teenagers at home. I gave up my career to go back to school, and I went, what the heck am I doing? But it was probably the best piece of advice my brother in law gave me, because I discovered that all the stuff that I was doing in my career had framework structure that I was never going to learn anywhere else. But when the program was over, the dean, I was 44, years old. The dean approaches me, says, so how can we make the program better? And I said, Listen, I don’t understand how you teach MBA students everything to do with business, except sales, how to generate a dime. I don’t get it. So she says to me, why don’t you teach it? Well, I’m not a teacher.
Speaker 1 16:42
You called your bluff.
David Solomon 16:46
Now I’m caught. I said I’m not a teacher. Anyways, she twisted my arm. I give a lecture. She doesn’t tell me. She invites 70 of my former classmates. I give the lecture. It’s really well received, and I built out a course 10 years ago that’s called strategic revenue growth, essentially how to be a chief revenue officer. But 10 years ago, that title didn’t exist. So I built out this course teaching, you know, 20 and 30 something year olds. I have two groups of people, one are MBA students, and one are masters of Retail Management students. And they’re they’re learning about thinking how to grow your business through sales, but I align it with everything else that they learn, because I’ve done the program. So it’s finance, operations, HR, strategy, vision. I bring it all together, and I say, Okay, now you have to understand how you got to do work with your sales team. So it’s a lot So Kurt, it’s a lot of fun teaching students. I just started again last this week, another cohort, and it’s amazing when the students contact me, like, years later, going, Yeah, that now I remember what you said in class, and I just experienced that at work and and so, like, real new market. It’s all about what I do right now. It’s new market opportunity for them learning how to think growth. So that’s really what, what I’ve been doing for last nine years well. And I
Curt Anderson 18:01
love the name strategic revenue growth, because it’s not like, you know, in what I love about that my father always preached, I know he wasn’t great at it, but he said, Chase profits, don’t chase sales. Chase profits, don’t chase sales. So I love, you know, you’re saying revenue growth, but you’re tying it in with strategic, kind of bringing the whole thing together. And, you know, and I love how you kind of called out the professor a little bit about, like, man, you’re not like, you haven’t talked about how we make a dime here, and so, you know. And now you bring that together, what’s been one of the most rewarding things for you as a professor, and having that experience with, you know, I’m assuming, over the years, you know, hundreds of students, what’s been one of the most rewarding things for you as a professor,
David Solomon 18:40
you know Kurt, when they call you back years later and they go, thank you,
Curt Anderson 18:44
the light bulb went off, really, you know,
David Solomon 18:47
I’ve had to give students some pretty serious career advice, because they don’t get real career advice in university. And when I started teaching, my son started school, so when I started university, so I had university students at home. I just finished my program, so I knew what these guys were going through. And a lot of them were not hearing in school. They hear Twitch theory, and they too too much, you know, everything the world’s your oyster and all this kind of bullshit. And at the end, when they get out to the real world, they realize, no, life isn’t so simple. But at the same time, I what I loved is when I get the students to explore beyond what they thought that they were going to do. One of the things that I do in my class is I give them a real I give them a real world project. They need to find a real company and propose what I do for manufacturers, essentially propose a growth strategy for them. And they need to be real. They need financials. They need to go out and speak to the business owners. They need to come up with something real. Almost every year, at least one student of mine gets a job offer from that company, and so, like, really, what they’re realizing is, oh, my God, there’s value here. Now I tell my other students, look, if you’re not going to take the job, put that on your resume and HR, kind of like, no, no. You know the recruitment flow. Said at McGill, they said, No, you don’t have to do that. Students of mine who have done I’ve said it made such a difference in in the in the interview process like so tell me what you did. Yeah, I spoke to the business owner, and we talked about this, and we did this. Where are you going to get an experience like that? So the reward for me is when they succeed down the road after they graduate. To me, that’s, that’s gold.
Curt Anderson 20:22
Cool. Nice, awesome. Okay, Powell, anything that you want to add, any thoughts, comments for what we’re hearing
Paola Santana 20:28
so far, I guess. I mean, in any conversation these days, you can’t get away from it, right? Is like, how do you see AI playing in all of this
David Solomon 20:36
qualification? Well, I think AI, that’s a bigger
Paola Santana 20:39
topic, but
Speaker 1 20:40
that’s a great question,
David Solomon 20:42
phenomenal question. And I gotta tell you something, and I tell this to all the businesses I work with. I’m not gonna lie to you, I’m using AI to do homework and research. Because when I want to understand the market, when I understand the trends, when I understand what’s going on, AI has been a phenomenal, phenomenal tool. But AI is not going to build my build my growth plan. AI is not going to speak to the people on the ground on what’s the market like? What are the tendencies? And so, I mean, AI is not there yet. The machines haven’t taken over, but certainly we’re at a point where AI is an important tool. And by the way, I tell my students the same thing. I want them to use AI in my class, which is freaking out the other professors. But I tell business owners, if you haven’t thought of AI, and this is not my expertise, but if you haven’t thought of AI as you’re scaling, you’re going to be behind. So time to talk to your, you know, head of operations, your head, your CTO, or whatever. And you got to think of putting that into place sooner rather than later.
Paola Santana 21:37
I think about the I think that’s really great, and kind of in a nutshell, as a creative you know, everyone thinks like, oh my gosh, AI is going to do your job for you. And the truth is, it’s like, it’s not there to do your job, and someone has to input the ideas, has to know how to talk to somebody in order for the output to be actually relevant and applicable and actually be able to produce a result. So regardless if the AI is doing the work, you still have to know what all of the terms are. You have to know exactly what your pain point you’re trying to solve, and who you’re solving it for. And so that’s really excellent and totally true across many industries.
David Solomon 22:13
I’ll add one more thing to that, and I have a friend of mine here. She’s she’s in just north here in Montreal. She goes into a lot of manufacturers, and she sees that their data is a mess, and she goes up, organizes it, cleans it, streamlines it, whatever. So then when they do put an AI, the right thing comes out. It’s not garbage in, garbage out. It’s real critical stuff business, and I’ve told a lot of companies like you, got to start thinking that your data has value. And as we scale, if you don’t start today, when you scale later on, it’s going to cost you a lot more, and it can be a lot more painful if you don’t think about it then. So that’s just part of, part of, part of the conversations I have with
Curt Anderson 22:55
business. Yeah, all right. Love it. So, David, let’s go here. So again, love course, love the title, strategic revenue growth. Now you are, you know, coming in with that strategy. Let’s talk to that manufacturer out there. First off, they need to, they need to connect with you on LinkedIn. So do us a favor. Connect with David on LinkedIn. You’ll, you’ll thank us later for it. Well, he puts out wonderful content. He’s got a great workshop coming up. Also, you know, you can just tell you, just a fierce educator on helping manufacturers. Now you have a thing where you help identify, plan and execute. So let’s talk to that manufacturer. They have 5075, employees, and they’re in that fear mode, right? And maybe they’ve hit a cap, or there’s a lot of uncertainty. Let’s talk to that manufacturer. What are some tips or strategies? They’ve hit a ceiling. They need a little David Sullivan come into their lives and take it to the next level. What’s kind of a 101? Like, give them a starting point. Let’s get through the fear. How can we get the game started?
David Solomon 23:52
So, and by the way, shameless plug. This is what we talked about in the workshop. So I’m happy to share this over here as well. The first thing is, we need to make sure that the products that you have make sense to export. So let’s start with the pain point. What pain point are you solving for your clients? So what I’m asking you to do, and I tell this to everybody, is, you can have me come in and I can, I’m happy to be there, but bring your whole team together, around the table, your leadership team, your head of sales, your head of ops, everybody around the table and say, let’s talk about we have two questions to answer. Actually, we have three questions to answer around the table, but the first two are, so what pain point do we solve for our clients, and what are we offering that’s so unique? And then I’m going to ask the question, who’s the ideal customer? Now, the reason I break it up into two is the first two are related to each other, pain point and the and the uniqueness of the solution, and it’s you. It’s going to be an argument. And I’ve seen business owners and Head of Sales argue because they see differently. But I want you to have that same conversation with your best clients. I want you to go to your best, top 2030, clients and have the same conversation. Now, if you say, I don’t have time, that’s then don’t export. You make the time. It’s. Is an investment in your business. So don’t leave this to your sales manager to go out you business owner, go speak to your best clients and say, so what do we do right for you? What are we solving and how is it unique and how is beneficial to your business? And be honest with them, saying, Listen, I’m looking to export. I want to learn from you. What is it that we do when those two are aligned? Now you have those two questions. Line now you got to define your your define your ideal customer. And the reason, and the reason is, is why I want everybody around the table is, sales might likely tell you one thing, and finance is going to tell you a different thing. Sales is going to say, this is our best customer because they’re easier. They we go out for coffee, any, golf, whatever. And finance is going to go, no, they buy more. They pay us faster. They’re, they’re, they’re, and operations go, no, these guys order more frequently, and we ship them better and easier to find your best customer. Yeah, once you have those three answered, now you can find the market that you’re looking for. That’s the foundation. This is what I tell everybody, you start here and you don’t need me. But, boy, I’ve done this many times, but if you can get this done with your team, you will find whether you’re really ready or not, what needs to be tweaked and fixed to become export ready. That’s the first thing I would do. That’s the foundation to this all. Don’t jump this step, please, because it’s gonna, it’s likely to hurt your business.
Curt Anderson 26:25
Okay, phenomenal, phenomenal advice. All right, great starting point. So really understanding and how, you know, if you’ve got three different parties that are saying, like, this is our ideal buyer persona, do you? How do you? How do you melt?
David Solomon 26:38
That’s, that’s the thing is, you got to sit down as you as the CEO. It’s comes to you and say, Who do you want to deal with? Right? And honestly, it’s a blend. It’ll be a blend of of all these things. There’s no one right answer, yeah, but it’s got to be a mix. Because the look, sales might say, we want to go after company Customer A, and finance is going to but we lose money with customer a. There’s your criteria. We don’t want to lose money. We want the most profitable clients possible, the ones that are going to order the most frequent. Those are the kinds of guys that I’m thrilled to have, and sales is going to go, oh yeah. That fits this kind of customer. Super now you just this is where you start. Now, when you go look for a new market, you may not find that identical person, but that’s your starting point. Yeah, this is where you want to be, and this is where you want to explore. Does this ideal customer still want what I have in that new market? If it’s not, then you could shift a little bit, but you need to start somewhere.
Curt Anderson 27:35
Okay, phenomenal advice there. How? And so I don’t if, I mean, if I’m, this might be the Dumb Question of the day, right? Well, dumb questions, how do you pick the market? You identify the ICP, because my ICP here might be something completely different internationally. How do I Okay, so now there’s a big world out there, right? I’m going to leave my comfort zone. I’m I’m getting out of my, you know, Continental 48 How do I am I throwing a dart on the wall? How do I pick that first great market?
David Solomon 28:06
Well, okay, so when I sit with the business owner, we have a conversation and say, Tell me your vision. Where do you want to go? Give me your 510, best company, countries you want to go to. And generally, it’s always the big names, the better names, the more common names, whatever. That’s great. But now we do the homework, and we look at global like, I want to go look at global reports, and I this is where real research comes into play. And you say, Okay, who are the leaders in this area? Who are the countries that have we have this most demand that, and that’s when we start matching their list than our list, and we start bringing those two together. Do we want to have a list of about 10 names, and from there, we want to narrow it down to three, size, ease of entry, because there are a lot of other things that come into play. Because I might want to go to country, a I want to, okay, I’m us. I want to go to Canada, super but there are testing laws that you don’t need, testing things that might say, you know, it’s not worth it, let’s go to the UK. So you need to look for these elimination factors on external things. There’s an acronym called PESTEL. Sorry, I’m using this term, but it’s, it’s politics, economics, social, technological, environmental, legal. What are these six things that could prevent you from going into a market or be any reason to go into that market. You might find a market where they’re throwing money at people like you because they need you. Well, let’s, let’s, let’s further explore that. So it’s, it’s internal factors, it’s customer factors, and then it’s those six other factors, the external factors, will help you to narrow down where you want to go or where you shouldn’t be going,
Curt Anderson 29:42
okay, all right. And I hope everybody’s taking notes. This is, like, this is a master class, and you’re just getting a sliver of what the actual what the workshop is. So without giving away any secret sauce, David, do you have, I guess we could go on one side or the other. Do you have, like, a incredibly rewarding story? That you could share of, like Man, we just kind of rolled the dice. We took a shot at this particular country. So either one of your clients, or maybe from your previous life, is there a particular situation where, like Man, we were loose, skeptical, we didn’t think it was going to go that great, but, boy, this turned into a wonderful relationship. Anything come to mind?
David Solomon 30:16
You know, it’s funny, because as I’m working with some clients, we’re discovering, you know, some of our recent clients are starting to discover that. But I that. But I got to tell you, we went into, I was working with a technology company for a while, and we, we were looking at Europe because it’s a technology is real estate. And you’re like, maybe we shouldn’t do Europe. And I like, I’m like, no, no, let’s Europe is growing, exploding, especially the southern part of Europe. And I said, let’s look at Greece and Italy and Spain and Portugal, etc, and the business. I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We could do the US. And I’m like, no, no, no, no, no, the US doesn’t want what we have right now. It’s too competitive. We argued, we argued, we argued. Anyways, I ended up finding a Greek developer. We sat and we talked for hours and said, you’d be stupid not to be doing Southern Europe. And he says, I’m going to help you, and we open. So we open up this client in Greece that then led to other countries in southern Europe starting to talk. Now, I left the company at that point for variety of reasons, but the business owner looked up to me, and he says, Damon, I didn’t think you could score this one. But man, and it turned out to be such a massive contract for the companies, it made such a difference. So, you know, it doesn’t we looked at a trend and said, Could we own that trend? But it took homework, it took research. It took right finding the right prices. It’s, you know, the relationship language was English. That was the cool part. Everybody spoke English. That company had people from all over the world. The only language they spoke is English, and it didn’t cultures didn’t matter, and everything didn’t matter. And I that’s where the business owner was like, Holy crap. I can’t believe we did that. That is so cool.
Curt Anderson 32:05
Well, what a phenomenal story. And you know, one common theme, you know, you shared earlier about the relationship at Mexico, Walmart, and as you’re describing these it really, it’s, it’s, it’s building a relationship, right? It just, it comes down to those relationships.
David Solomon 32:19
I’ll tell you one thing we’re really not great at in North America is recognizing the value of relationships that other countries have. You know, when I went to Mexico, and I won’t share who that person was, she was at Walmart and in Walmart, in Mexico, at Walmart, US and Canada, you can’t take a bar out for a drink. You can’t take them for lunch. You can’t do anything. It’s forboden. Well, in Mexico, we took her out for dinner. We had a real because you had to build relationships. And I was in Japan, and I gotta tell you, I drank a lot of sake with people. And this is what it’s all about. It’s not only food and drink. It’s about getting to know people, because people want to do business with people they like and trust, and if you are not ready for that, don’t go to those markets. But the majority of the world, and this is what I teach my students as well, the majority of the world works on relationships. North America has fallen behind on that. It’s too bad we’ve gotten to be too transactional. Yeah, and more KPI, OKR, driven, as opposed to, I want to do business with Paula and Kurt because I like,
Curt Anderson 33:24
right phenomenal point. Paula, what are your thoughts?
Paola Santana 33:27
I think that’s great. And I almost kind of feel like, you know, there might be a little bit of culture and societal like, I guess what the market or what’s going on plays on that. Because I felt like that’s growing up in the 80s and 90s, I felt like you all you had to do in order to do anything, whether it was having fun or having business, was having those relationships. I think that’s a really key. It’s kind of sad, because it’s you do. I would, I would rather work people I like, know and trust as well. That’s what I try to do. My clients I work with. There’s some reason why, why why I want to work with you, because I like you for some reason where we’ve had discussions, or, you know, whatever that may be, and
David Solomon 34:08
trust is a big thing. And, and when you go and, and when you go and you and you look, and you talk to people in other markets, that is like, the number one thing that they want is trust. And if you can’t forge it, it’s not going to happen from a LinkedIn connection, and it’s not going to happen from, uh, you know, I’ll send you a cold email. You gotta get to know the people in that market, and then they are going to love you to pieces and work with you, right?
Curt Anderson 34:39
And you did a great job laying out, you know, strong encouraged. If you just came in, you know, hit the replay button or catch it later. You know you’re talking about that. You know, understanding, you know, people always use that like the pain point, but just understanding, what is their frustration. How can you help them? And you’re describing, you know, how do you make, you know, you make them a hero, right? And, you know, just like, and just like when you’re a little guy, miss. Schaefer, right? He made you feel like a hero. Just, just be like, Mr. Schaefer, that’s our takeaway. Today I’m going to grab a we’ve got some comments here. We got some people stopping by. So Frederick says, Good David, good commentary. We’ve got this friend here says, I love, love to join your live stream. We’ve got a comment here. Your streams are amazing. Frederick says, Great point. So guys, thank you for your comments. Thank you everybody out here, this person, they give you a thumbs up. So thank you, guys, thank you. Thank you for joining us. We always appreciate it. David, we’re going to start winding down question for you. Number one thing to be cautious of, or to be concerned about, going internationally, any points of advice, any guidance there, of like, how do I not go in with my blinders? How do I go eyes wide open, on on my side, as the exporter, as the manufacturer. What are your thoughts there?
David Solomon 35:50
Let’s go back to the beginning of this podcast. I told you, don’t go to Walmart until you’ve conquered small to mid size. Don’t try to eat. Don’t try to offer too big a market until you’ve learned how to export, and that’s why I tell some companies, maybe try the Caribbean Puerto Rico. Try something small, let your team learn adapt, because there are legals, there are all kinds of other nuances. Then go bigger. So yes, we tell people you can go 20, 25% grow revenue growth in a year, absolutely, but sometimes slower. Slow it down a little bit, so that the company can learn. And then, boy oh boy, hit the accelerator.
Curt Anderson 36:26
Absolutely love it. Hey, we’ve got a comment here from a friend saying, I think we all want to do business with those we know, like and trust. So important explanation point I agree. Frederick says relationship is one key culture in Africa to help build business. Thank couldn’t agree more with you guys.
David Solomon 36:42
So shout out to you, because I just spoke to somebody in Nigeria last week. We had a 20 minute conversation on that on, you know, and the folks in Nigeria are wanting to do business with people, and they want to have relationships with Americans. And Americans are like, whoa, whoa, whoa. And he’s like, man, you’re missing out a phenomenal market in Africa. So great comment for Awesome.
Curt Anderson 37:04
Alright, couple, we’re going to wind down couple last questions for I can keep you here all day. David, what I say? Paul, 3035, minutes, we’re going, alright. So, David, what are you super excited about? From your perspective, I know there’s a lot of uncertainty, but man, when there’s uncertainty, there is opportunity. If you can remove the emotion and just kind of like, see through the trees. What are you super excited about? International perspective, for your clients, manufacturers, the students that you’re teaching at McGill, what are you super excited about?
David Solomon 37:32
I’m super excited that there are more opportunities than we know. It’s like, it’s not what it used to be. It’s not like, okay, there are only five, six countries we could do business with. There are 190 countries out there. There’s so much opportunity out there. And they want American merch. They want grids from America. There’s so much opportunity. But there’s also, you know, if I’m, if I’m not in the United States, and I want, I’m going to ship to another country, us is, is gold. It’s great. But look at the other markets. There are so many emerging markets. Frederick from Africa, it’s an emerging market, you know, Brazil. Everybody’s beating up a little Brazil. Look at Argentina. Re emerge, and look at others. Man, the world is changing. It’s exciting. And I think that, you know, probably talk about AI. I think AI is going to change the market, and a lot of more things are going to emerge for people, and opportunities are going to opportunities are going to be out there. So eyes wide open, right? Eyes wide open. Check it out.
Curt Anderson 38:27
Big world out there. Paula, any last questions, thoughts, comments you want to add?
Paola Santana 38:31
Yeah, I think that kind of ties into kind of closing out. But you know, you hear about like, especially when you hear the news or you talk to people, you surfing online, you always feel like there’s a lot an uptick in everything, whether it’s crime or what’s your point. Like you can’t do business outside of the United States, whatever. And it’s like sometimes you just have to dig a little deeper. You can’t take what’s being out there face value, because that’s all that is being intentionally thrown into your face, right? It’s and so it feels like there’s an uptick in whatever, or it feels like a lot of that is happening when really it’s not, it’s just in your face more often, because we have cell phones that have, you know, news cycles on it. It has, you have your social media people are posting out things. So you really have to do your homework, and you really have to dig in and so, like, in connection with that, like, how do people connect with somebody like you who can actually help them maybe clear up some of the confusion or the misconceptions out there,
David Solomon 39:21
look, look rich. They’re, they’re, they’re, unfortunately, not a hell of a lot of people like me who’s doing what I’m doing. But right now, before you speak to me, sit down with your team. Are we ready to go? Can we grow and then let’s have a conversation, Ella, because if your internal team isn’t ready, yeah, it’s just not gonna happen. You know, gotta make sure your team it’s like you use baseball analogy. I’ll use a football analogy, right? Your team is only as good as the weakest player on the on 11 inside football if the. Lineman isn’t in right position, the quarterback’s going to get sacked. If you guys don’t have all 11 of your departments lined up, the team’s going to get sacked. You got to be ready, and that is above all. Do that before you call somebody like me.
Paola Santana 40:15
Well, that’s good. Speaking
Curt Anderson 40:16
of international we’ve got our friend here, Robina. She’s from Bangladesh. So again, guys, thank you for dropping the comments. Thank you for the notes. Strongly encourage you, invite you, welcome you, connect with our dear friend, David Solomon, if you guys have any international aspirations, David is the go to guy. He’s been doing it for two or three years now, right? David, it’s been a
David Solomon 40:36
couple years as an independent two years. But my career, it’s like 35 so 35 been
Curt Anderson 40:40
a few decades. You’re still a few decades. We get on a call, and I’m, he’s got me, like, good. 10 years younger than me. We’re about the same age. I’m like, Yeah, you look good. So last question, David, last question for you. You mentioned baseball when you and I got in a call, we talked about Montreal, yeah, the beloved Montreal Expos. So I have, I have a little baseball question for you. Ready? Go down. Okay, bottom of the ninth. Tied score. Bottom tonight, tight score. There’s a guy on second base. Okay, two outs. Like, they gotta Montrose, gotta hit him when you’re like, we gotta get this game over with. We got dinner reservations. Come on. Let’s get this game over with. Right? The manager looks down the bench and says, Hey, Solomon, grab your helmet, grab your bat, get up to the plate, hitting the winning run. For Goodness gracious, right? So you grab your helmet, you grab your bat, you’re welcome to the plate to hitting the winning run. What’s your walk up song on the way up to
David Solomon 41:37
oh my god, um, hmm, so I’m a huge Billy Joel fan. Me, it’s got to be one of those. It’s gonna be it’s still rock and roll. To me, that’s my that’s that’s it. It’s still rock and roll. To me,
Curt Anderson 41:55
dude, you just won. You just won my wife’s heart. Because there’s a brand new Billy Joel documentary that just came out. I gotta watch it. She’s seen Billy Joel multiple times, and she we watched this documentary and so Alright, so I will share that with my wife. Thank you. Frederick says he’s from Ghana. So again, connect with David here on on LinkedIn. David one, one last question. Best business advice that you’ve ever received that you would love to share with our friends out there. What’s the best business advice, especially you as a new, newer, long time career, 35 years, but a newer entrepreneur, entrepreneur, what’s your best business advice?
David Solomon 42:31
Always be learning. I think that one of the things that is crazy is, if you think about it, when we Kurt, when you and I started our careers, what was this internet thing? Like you think this internet thing was just new right now, follow with AI. What is this AI thing? Right? The careers that we have, I’ve good friends who have are in careers that didn’t exist 2025, years ago. To me, it’s what I tell my kids and I tell everybody, always, be learning. Be open, be vulnerable, be coachable. Learn because, man, the opportunities are out there.
Curt Anderson 43:07
Man, drop the mic on that one. So awesome. Alright, how about let’s you know what? If you’ve been hanging out with us for the past time I’ve seen 43 minutes and just getting golden nuggets from our friend here, David, it’s a great time to stand up and stretch and give David a huge standing ovation for just absolutely crushing it today. Man, this was a master class. I’m on this. This was a privilege for me, David, thank you. I know you’re super busy. Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to share this with us. Connect with David on LinkedIn. Paula, parting thoughts, words, something you want to share as we
Paola Santana 43:38
close out. No, I think that this was such a great conversation. I think you could take a lot of this to any experience that you have. And I really particularly like, like, the two things that really struck to me, and I’ve kind of shared with everyone too, in the past, and Kurt, you can attest to this. It’s like, talk to your team and talk to your clients, like, those are your that’s where you’re going to really get solid data from. Are those two people, and it’s okay to have those uncomfortable situations, because you can only grow when you know what your what your issues are, or what is working, what’s not working. So awesome, awesome information today. A lot of good nuggets. Well, thank
Curt Anderson 44:12
you, David, thank you, and I love your line earlier. God has a great sense of humor. So hey, God, bless you your family and your business as you continue helping manufacturers out there. So guys, we’re going to close out today, David, hang out with us for one second again. Thank you all in the chat box. Thank you all who caught us that didn’t drop a note or comment again. Please connect with David on LinkedIn, and guys, we will see you here next week. So hey, have a great weekend.
David Solomon 44:37
Thank you guys. We appreciate it. You.
