From Business Systems to Personal Resilience: Strategies for Success

In this episode, we sit down with Dino, a business strategist renowned for his expertise in Fortune 500 marketing strategies and small business growth. Dino shares actionable insights on how small and medium-sized businesses can implement systems and processes to drive more sales and increase profitability. We dive into the importance of working on your business rather than in it, how to harness the power of the 80/20 rule, and ways to optimize lead generation and KPIs to achieve long-term success.

But it’s not all business—this episode also touches on deeper personal themes, including how to navigate life’s changes, from job loss to grief, and how resilience plays a key role in both personal and professional growth. Whether you’re a business owner looking for practical strategies or someone facing change, this episode offers valuable takeaways to help you thrive in both areas.

[00:00:00] Hello, everyone. My name is Dino like the Flintstones, and I am a business strategist that is considered highly regarded for my expertise in Fortune 500 marketing strategies. And what I do is I help small and medium businesses, size businesses. I help them to attract more customers, to make more sales, and to make more profit.

And so I work with brick and mortar and service based businesses here in my local community, and I am a part of several different chambers. I'm a part of the Eastville Chamber of Commerce. I'm on their board. I'm on the board of Chino Valley Chamber of Commerce, the foundation for that. I'm also on the board of Asian business association of empire.

So I worked very closely within my community, working with the small local business owners to help [00:01:00] them, attract more customers. And. make more sales and increase their profits. Do you work with people, not in your community as well? I do. I do have a few customers that has found me online that is not in my local community.

And yes, I do work with them also.

Today, I am going to talk a little bit about, Implementing systems and strategies in your business in order to grow your business. What I found, I've been in the internet marketing and consulting space since 2008. So just a couple of weeks. Okay. And what I found is that, businesses have this propensity to work in the business and not work on the business.

And so I try to help them change their focus to some time aside to begin to [00:02:00] work on their business because the growth of the business, the growth of the revenue and the profits. Okay. It comes from the working on the business, not constantly working in the business as small business owners would jump on that treadmill and we're running and running and we're doing everything that we think we need to do to grow.

But we don't grow because we're not focused on the right things. And so this is what I found is that it's the parental rule. If you've heard of the parental rule, the 80 20 rule, the 80 20 rule as it applies to businesses is simply this. There is, there's only 20 percent of things that we're doing in our business that affects 80 percent of our profit where we get it wrong as small business owners.

We're doing the 80 percent of things every day that only affect the 20 percent of the profit. And we wonder what's going on. And so the 20 [00:03:00] percent that we should be doing are what I like to call. The known performance indicators that we should be working on every day is the small things that we should be doing every day that actually drives the needle to more cells and more profits.

 We do that in a couple of ways is we sit down and we do an evaluation. Which is complimentary. So if there's any of your, clients or customers that want a complimentary, strategy session is basically we sit down and we start and we begin to, look at what you're doing.

We look at where you want to be six months, 12 months down the road. We look at what has been working for you. And we look at what has not been working. Okay. And then we come up with a strategic plan that you can work on every day to meet those six and 12 month goals. [00:04:00] So, in a nutshell, that's what we do.

And we always see that our clients get results when they begin working on the right things, working the right strategies, working on the known performance indicators, the KPIs. that actually drives the needle. They actually get the results. What are some of the basic things, that you've come across in almost every business that, starts to get them closer to where they want to go?

Some of the basic things are, I love how you say that because they are pretty basic, but they're oftentimes overlooked. One is having clear, concise goals. Okay. You know, where do you want to be in six months? Even three months, where do you want to be in nine months, in 12 months, what are your revenue goals?

What are your income [00:05:00] goals? That's very, very basic. another basic thing is what are you doing for lead generation right now? Most people perceive lead generation as. Only for, networking for referrals and recommendations. But there's so much more that you can be doing, because if you're only looking for referrals, then that's nothing you can control.

So in running your business, as it comes to lead generation, as it comes to systems and strategies, you want to be able to work on what you can control so that you can get the results that you want. Most small businesses are working on things that they can't control. They're relying on referrals, which is great if you have a large referral network and you got people referring people to you every day, then that works.

But, a lot of people don't even have a system by which they [00:06:00] can work their referral partners. So that way they're just sitting around waiting for customers that someone would refer to them, and that's no way to really grow a business. Another basic strategy is understanding your numbers. Bill Gates says that numbers is the foundation for business.

And basically, what that means is, do you know your profit? Do you understand your profit and loss statement, your cash flow statement, your balance sheets? Most small businesses, they have none of that. They don't know your numbers. So if you don't know your numbers, how many, how do you know what numbers affect, the growth, the revenue, the profit in your company?

So I encourage small business owners to understand the story behind the numbers. To understand, those profit and loss statements, the cashflow sheets, understanding [00:07:00] the balance sheets, understanding the correlations between, what those numbers mean. And then begin to work on, like I said, your known performance indicators, your KPIs, the numbers that actually move those needles, how many more sales do you need or how many leads do you need to make .

In order to reach the goals that you want to make. So those are foundation. Those are basic. Some of the other strategies is, you know, what are you doing? Either organically, to reach more people, that could be your social media outlets. Like you focus a lot on.

And I also try to encourage business owners, find out what's going to work, find out what's working. Organically before you start throwing money at it in advertising because a lot of people don't even have their messaging, right? And what I like to [00:08:00] say is Messaging is the key to your marketing, if you don't have the right message and you're targeting the right ideal clients then you can't expect that message to resonate with them and is that messaging congruent with what you do in your business.

 A lot of people just, and you know this more than anybody, Nicky, is you, is they just throw things out there on social media and many of them don't even have a call to action. And so I talked to a lot of my, a lot of my clients, When I see one of their, their posts on, the various social media that I follow them at, I always catch them, where's your call to action?

What's your call to action? What do you want that reader to do? You know, it's like you got to tell them what you want them to do. What's the next step? And so I constantly harp on them about that. I'm real big on, implementing systems and [00:09:00] strategies in business. I love to say the key to the growth of your business is not marketing alone.

The key to Fortune 500 growth is systems and processes. You gotta have systems and processes in order to grow, whether that's for lead generation, whether that's maintaining your database in a CRM, and, whether that's reputation management, whether that's constantly keeping in touch and being top of mind, sharing your offers, with your clients, Encompasses all of those things.

So systems and processes are key to growth of revenue and profits. So those are some of the things that I helped implement in small businesses. Like I said, I started in the internet marketing and consulting company in 2001, but I learned a lot of these, strategies over, well, I started my first [00:10:00] business in, when I was 21 years old, so automotive business, brick and mortar company, have you seen fast and furious?

Have you seen any of those fast and furious shows? I think I saw the original one. The original one. They were doing what I like to say, a lot of the aftermarket turbo charging nitrous systems. I was doing that in the 80s. That was my first business. And then that that part laid in real estate investment company.

So I did that. And then I. I had my epiphany. I lost a bunch of money and I don't know how many business owners watching this podcast that have lost money. But if you haven't lost money, you're probably not telling the truth. So I lost a bunch of money in a short period of time. It literally brought me on my knees.

I threw up my hands and I said, okay, God, I know I won't have anything outside of you. I'll do whatever you want me to do. I'll go wherever [00:11:00] you want me to go. And ended up finding myself moving from California to Arkansas. You probably know what that's like, Mickey. I moved from California to Arkansas and went to Bible school, mission school there, and then went to the Philippines and lived in the Philippines as a missionary for.

For 10 years, married my wife there, had two daughters there and I still had this entrepreneurial spirit. So I ended up starting a nonprofit organization there and we built the Bible school from the ground up. So we have 150 alumni all over the world in different aspects of leadership. Came back to the U.

S. And started that Internet marketing and consulting company, which we still do today. And then my wife is a chef. So we started a catering company for her and restaurant for her. So it's just this been this progression of working with [00:12:00] small business owners. I love the small business community. I love being able to teach, coach, share, instruct, and help small businesses.

Nowadays everybody and their brother has an opinion when it comes to social media. And I can't complain too much because I'm one of those people who has an opinion about how you should share things And why and all that good nonsense, right? Yeah, but you have great opinions, so So, when you start talking to someone who's listening to You know 80 to 100 different people and their opinions on social media.

How do you kind of Encourage them to cut down. Do you I do I do What I do is I, sit down with them and I say, what is it that you're doing? And how has that been working [00:13:00] for you? ? And generally, that's an important question, . And generally it's not working for them because that's how they got on my radar in the first place, you know?

So, Mm-Hmm, . So it's a fact finding mission that I'm on. To help them realize that maybe what they're doing is not as good as it could be doing. And let's find out why it's not working. You know, like I said, it could be, They're not targeting their ideal client. It could be, they don't have the right message.

 It could be, they don't know what their compelling offer is, or they have no compelling offer. And then we create a structure of what would work organically. And once we start seeing the organic, social media posting working, then we can start putting, but investing in some [00:14:00] ads. Because we're going to build the ads upon what's working already and not just trying.

So most of my clients, many of my clients, they've already been spending, a thousand to 5, 000 a month, even 10, 000 a month on advertising. And it's just, they're not getting the rate of returns that they expected, you know? And so Many times I just say, well, let's stop it. Let's pause it, and let's begin to work on what should be working.

And then we go that route. So I have found that organic social media steers the ads. Is that what you found or not? Yes, yes. Even when we go from organic to paid ads, the organic gives us a foundation. It gives us a great foundation. You know, because if people are [00:15:00] already responding to your organic ads and now you start investing money in the same type of ads, with a clear and concise message and a clear compelling offer, now you're going to get better results.

And, some of the gurus and some of your experts, they say the reason why people are spending money, these corporations are spending money on ads is to fail faster. They want to find out, but many of your smaller business owners, they're not split testing. They're not testing what's working or what's not working.

They got a social media company that, was nothing about their business, no, nothing about them personally that they can personalize and add specifically to their ideal client. They just say, hey, this is going to cost you 1, 2, 000 a month, and we need to run it for at least 3 to 6 months to get you [00:16:00] some results.

And then we see what happens. And you can't, you'll go out of business that way because now cashflow becomes a problem.

What has been your favorite, outcome from working with one of your small businesses? My favorite outcome is to see the business owners light up when more leads and more customers and more sales come in. That's the greatest thing because now they're saying, wow, this is working.

You know, this is working. I did some tweaks for a client from, just working on their Google. I want to say Google my business, but Google has done away with that name. Google. My business is now Google business profile, but just working on their Google business. Profile. They went from, in just, four weeks, they went to 5,000 new [00:17:00] views on their Google Business profile, just from optimizing that profile.

 And most people don't even do that. And that's free. Let's optimize your business profile. Let's optimize your LinkedIn, let's optimize your Facebook. let's optimize the things. So where you're saying the same thing, and people are saying the same thing no matter where they find you, no matter where they hear about you.

It's consistent. It's congruent. Then you start building, you know, your organic, social media posts whenever all of your platforms are congruent. So you mentioned that you are a part of how many, 10 different, chamber of commerce? Not, not that many. So, so I'm a part of the chamber of commerce that is in my city, which is Eastville, California.

It's a smaller city. It's about 70 to [00:18:00] 80, 000 people. Very new community about 15 years old. So I'm on the board of the Eastville Chamber of Commerce. Last year I was the ambassador of the year for the Eastville Chamber of Commerce. We also have the next town over, which is Chino Hills.

I am an ambassador for the Chino Hills Chamber of Commerce and also on the board. We have another community called the, Asian, Business Association of Inland Empire. Inland Empire incorporates, some of the biggest counties in the U. S. San Bernardino County is like the largest county in the United States.

So it incorporates several cities within, three different counties. So I am on the board of the Asian Business Association of Inland Empire, although it's not just for Asians. It's how many was that? So that's just 3 and then, some of your social media platforms, like a line of a year [00:19:00] on the line of also, Yeah, I was business, one of their awards business owner of the year or something similar to that on a lineable.

I have it for my area as well. Yes, so I like a lineable. I don't work it as much as you do and I need to sit down with you and say hey What are you doing? Nikki, you know School me on this so I can be But yeah, it was a big surprise to me when doresa worked reached out from a to z She reached out to me it was like, okay I'm starting an alignable account.

What do I have to do? And I kind of went, huh?

I don't know how I found. I found Alignable like two years ago. Yeah, two, two and a half years, maybe even three years ago, right after the pandemic. And, I just don't work it like I should. You know, I show up in there and my friends show up, but I don't really [00:20:00] work it like I should. I know you're getting, you're actually getting, customers from there.

And that's, yeah, that's what I need. That's what I need to do. So, you are also in BNI as well, right? No, what I've done is for my particular business, B and I does B and I is a great company. You have B and I, you have team network, you have a couple of other networks that are similar where you pay amount of money, you show up every week and you're supposed to give referrals to one another.

I've been fortunate enough to meet enough people in the industry, in my cities and throughout my, Chamber of Commerce that they invite me to all their B& I meetings. . So I get to sit in their BNI meetings for free. . That helps. I get to sit in them [00:21:00] for free and introduce myself and then I meet people that way.

And then I have several people that ask me to stand in to their BNI meetings when they can't be present. Mm-Hmm. . So I haven't spent money on the B& I meetings, per se, but I do, attend because here in my city, they're like. Five, six different chapters. Oh, yeah. My roofers in and around Nashville are, usually each project manager goes to a different B& I and there are a lot of them.

Obviously, Nashville has its fair share of B& I chapters and, the first three slots to fill up in a B& I chapter are the insurance, the realtor, and the roofer. Oh, wow. How Once you have those three, either roofer or contractor, but usually it is just the roofer. [00:22:00] And once you have those three, you can start your own chapter of BNI.

Oh, how interesting. That's very, very interesting. Yeah. Yeah. I had to talk to a guy because all of the chapters around where my roofer moved to are full. Yeah. And so they were like, well, if you get an insurance agent and a realtor to combine with you, you can start your own chapter. And I went, we'll have to look into that and that lots out all the other roofers from yeah, because you only have one per group.

Now there is Team Network, which is similar to BNI. So that's another networking organization like BNI. I haven't heard of that one. Yeah, it's pretty big. It's not, I don't think it's international like BNI is international. It might just be local for the United States. And then there's a couple of more that I've come across.

My challenge is. I hold my own business and breakfast meetings [00:23:00] that I invite business owners from the local community to attend. I do an hour and a half presentation and I teach them what I do. And I give them some strategies that they can implement immediately the minute they leave. And I generate a lot of, I generated clientele from there too.

So . Yeah. Yeah. My meeting, my meetings have been free. I provide free breakfast. They're all, they're usually held your wife a holiday. Your wife cooked the breakfast? She did when I was, when I first started my meetings, I had a joint venture partnership with with an insurance broker, and he had in his building a boardroom.

So I said I would promote him as I'm promoting my meetings, I will promote him as a sponsor. So he let me use his board room for free. And so I did that for a year and my wife would cook for each of those breakfast [00:24:00] meetings. She did the full presentation and I would joke and say, I think people like my wife presentation.

More than they like my presentation, but yes, it was really, really good food. And then I went to, a new holiday and opened up in our area. And I partnered with them, or a lower price for the conference room. And I would rent the conference room. I started my meetings once a month and I did a once a month for a year.

And then the last quarter of last year, I did a meeting every week, a weekly meeting every week, and I ran Facebook ads to those meetings. And then beginning this year, I backed it down to two, two a month. And now I'm going back to once a month.

So you're just, you're networking all over the place, which is [00:25:00] absolutely terrifying to me, but you seem to do that a lot. When I am out and about, like I was at a networking event at one of our, they had a big networking event. It was, incorporated with Top Golf.

I don't know if you have a Top Golf there. There's golf here. There's apartments here that have like a mini, golf course in the front yard. Not like mini golf, but you get, the green, the whole thing. They put that like In the front yard, so people can practice their putting in the front yard of this apartment complex.

I think that is completely nuts. Well, here, I saw somebody playing golf in their front yard. I was like, what's happening? So at this networking event, we invited. And this wasn't cheap. This was like 100 per person. It included a panel. We had three different panels of four people that were in different sectors of business that had started locally in the [00:26:00] community.

And now they're multimillion dollar. Annual revenue businesses, and they sat on the panel and pretty much answered questions for the audience. So we had three sets of panels and then they were then we had dinner and then they. The people could go off and golf. And so, I was there, and some of the people said, I've seen you here, and I've seen you here, and I've seen you here, what do you do?

 I get that a lot. It's like, oh, wow, you're here too, so it's fun. A lot of people, they sit behind, they do what I do and they sit behind the computer and they have more than enough business that they can handle. And for me, I like sitting behind the computer, but I like being out and about meeting people.

Hey everyone, thanks for sticking with us. Before we dive into our next topic, I just want to take a quick moment to remind you to like this video, subscribe to our channel, and hit that notification bell. That way, you'll always be the [00:27:00] first to know when a new episode drops. And we want to hear from you.

What topics are you most excited about? Drop your thoughts in the comments below. Your feedback helps us create content that you love. We've got some exciting stuff coming your way, so don't miss out. Now, let's switch gears and jump into our next discussion.

 Due to some unforeseen circumstances, the second half of my recording with Dino, did not turn out quite as good as it needed to.

Okay, so what I was wanting to talk to you about today is change. There are all different kinds of change. There are little changes that We can make if we're up to it, you know, if you're religious, you could be reading your scriptures more or if you're not religious, you could be reading more. You could be, practicing mindfulness [00:28:00] or things like that small changes that we decide to implement.

Completely different than changes that are forced on us because of environment. life, or our jobs, or whatever kind of, bigger changes.

One type of change or transition. I know that I face a lot of problems when I am moving, which is a new thing for me because I have moved a grand total of about a bajillion times. I am a military brat who has lived in or been to every state in the U. S. except for Alaska and Hawaii, and,

Moved constantly throughout my life. But the last couple of times that I went to move, I found out that I have, problems with that. It causes me a lot of stress and anxiety. I have [00:29:00] problems, believing that the people who have never let me down are going to keep not letting me down, that kind of thing.

And it's not because those people have given me one iota of doubt. It is simply because my brain has decided that today is the day I get left in some really strange place and I have to figure out how to do life all over again. And it is really hard to do that. You've never had to do that. I congratulate you because it is not something that I recommend.

If you have dealt with that, I am very sorry for the stress that you had in your life during that time. Another type of change that is very hard for people is loss and grief. So, as of taping this, Hurricane Milton and Hurricane Helene went through, [00:30:00] different areas of the United States and they are causing rising death tolls.

Houses have been Like, completely destroyed, they're not there anymore. Those kind of changes, that kind of change is. The kind that can leave lasting damage and I implore you if you are dealing with that kind of grief and loss to please seek therapy or have friends and family who will support you in a way that is actually supportive.

If you have a family that cannot be supportive for whatever reasons, then I highly recommend getting a therapist. And. Sticking with that and finding a community of people outside of your family that can support you. There's a misquoted thing often that says everybody says that lettuce is thicker than water, [00:31:00] and that's actually misquoted and it's supposed to be. The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb, which means the people you decide to be with in life and to be friends with and associate with and be a better family for you sometimes than those you were born into, because you have chosen them, and they're there for you.

Now, there is changes because of a job loss. There's shock and denial and anxiety and fear about finding another job and how soon you have to do that in order to pay your bills and what happens if it takes longer. And we really are living in a broken society where people who make.

I'm not going to say minimum wage, but those who have lower paying jobs are being forced to pay some pretty wild amounts for their rent. [00:32:00] And it's wild to me that somebody could have to pay as much as they have to pay to live nowadays. But. If you have lost your job and you are looking for something, look at your skill set.

 Are you an electrician? Everybody needs an electrician, but maybe you could go into business for yourself. It's not easy. I'm not going to say it's the easiest choice you could do, but sometimes going into business for yourself is the better solution than going to work for somebody else. It depends on your situation and what you can or cannot do with your skill set.

 Another common change that usually hits people differently is sudden illness or injury. So, like I said, with those hurricanes, people are obviously being injured. If you woke up tomorrow and you couldn't walk anymore, [00:33:00] that would be something that would probably devastate you. And then coming back from that devastation and learning to function again would probably be very difficult.

I myself have not had that problem. I can sympathize with those who have and wish nothing but better things ahead. And then, of course, you have your natural disasters because these happen. You have tornadoes. We had a tornado that come through my area a couple months ago. We've got hurricanes, there's fires happening.

It's a broken planet. Things are happening. And the best thing is to make sure you have, again, somebody you can talk to. I have a favorite person, and I go to her with all my problems, and I have [00:34:00] two therapists, because I am that weird. There's actually a good reason behind it, but I do have two of them, and so, that keeps me going, that keeps me coping, and that keeps me working, so that I'm not in my head all day, and that is what I need to do to keep moving forward.

When we are faced with change, no matter if it's a big 1 or a little 1, or if we want to do it, or we don't want to do it, or it's forced upon us because of all of the reasons above or many that I couldn't even think of because. The way people are treated is inhumane. A lot of the times. And, I won't go into those kinds of changes because there are changes that deal with those types of things.

And again, that's not something that you wanted to happen. It's not something that should have happened. And so getting through and coming out the other side and being you again is. [00:35:00] The best thing that can happen and maybe you're you, it takes a little bit more for you to trust and that is okay. So just keep looking for you through the change, dealing with everything that you have to deal with.

And, you know, when I deal with change, I go to my people and I vent because there are a lot of things that change in my life and I don't like change. And so I vent, and I get it off my chest, and then I come back, and I get to work, because There used to be, I don't know if everybody, I probably, a lot of people's parents did it.

Like, there was this thing when I was growing up and we were on long car drives. It was like, we're going, we're going on a bear hunt. I think it was never said this made sense. Nobody in my family actually hunted. This [00:36:00] is not, you know, no cruelty is happening, but, like, you have to, like, make sounds with your hands and and clicking and stuff like that and, you know, you have to go through the forest and under the or over the lake and all that kind of thing and, you know, sometimes, there's, you can't go under it, you can't go above it, there's no way to skirt around it, you have to go through it, and I wish you all the support possible when you are going through it, whether that is family, whether that is friends that you have chosen to be your family, or whether that is a professional.

There is no shame in reaching out for help, no matter if you're male or female, but there are consequences. If we react, sometimes, if we react badly to whatever has happened. Or if we take revenge because of whatever has happened. So [00:37:00] I was going to say, make sure we make the choices we can live with.

But I am quite sure that after some events, there are a lot of choices we can deal with, or that we think we can deal with. And I can tell you that the consequences of your actions, It will be worse than what you think. So try not to go the dark paths. Let the intrusive thoughts win, don't go down any dark paths, stay alive, and make, I was going to say good choices, but that's Bailey's thing.

So make choices that you can live with and that are legal. I think with those two we covered things. Bye for now.