January 8, 2026 – 130 Coaching Clients Gary Harper and Smarter Marketing Gee Ranasinha

0:04 Intro 1: Broadcasting from AM and FM stations around the country. Welcome to the Small Business Administration award-winning School for Startups Radio, where we talk all things small business and entrepreneurship. Now, here is your host, the guy that believes anyone can be a successful entrepreneur, because entrepreneurship is not about creativity, risk, or passion: Jim Beach.

0:26 Jim Beach: Hello, everyone. Welcome to another exciting edition of School for Startups Radio. I hope you’re having a great day out there, working hard, getting started on the year. You know, we also do the Minutes. I don’t know if you know that, but we have the School for Startups Minutes every day. Guess how long they are. You’re wrong. Ninety seconds. But the Minutes, and there’s a link, of course, on the website, the Minutes are about a theme every week. This week, the theme is what January is really about. January is not about resolutions and all of that silliness. It’s about execution. This month is the month you need to double down on your systems, your execution, and making sure that the management is making, you know, all the systems have to be functioning, right. That’s what your goal for January should be, and to listen to the Minutes every day. Check them out. I’m sure that a lot of the stations that carry the show also carry the Minute, so maybe you’re already hearing them. But we have a fantastic show for you today. We have Gary Harper. He is a coach. A lot of you, our listeners, are coaches. He has 150 clients across nine countries, and we ask all the questions you want to hear, like how, and so that answer will be out there for you. We also have Gee Ranasinha with us today, a marketing expert, but not necessarily digital. He likes to find out your channel and your particulars, and he will actually do old-fashioned direct mail, which I love. You know, the mail we get now is such junk. If I were to get a nice piece of mailing, I would open it, because I don’t get that anymore, you know, and I don’t remember the last time a piece of mail was something I wanted, ever. And so Gee is going to talk to us about that. It’s an absolutely fascinating conversation, and I’m sure you will enjoy it. Remember, our goals here every day, we have two. One is to motivate you and to give you a little bit of joy and to think that, “I can go do this.” I want you to get off the sofa and go out there and work hard. Figure out a new business, if that’s what you need to do, if that’s what your stage is. Go out there and get something started. And then, number two, we want to give you the tips, the tricks, and the techniques to be successful at just that. And so our guests are designed to be a mosaic, where you have to listen to 10 that are going to be interesting to you. That’s why our index is so strong. We will be right back to get started.

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3:49 Jim Beach: We are back, and again, thank you so very much for being with us. I’m very excited to welcome an incredible guest. Please welcome Gary Harper to the show. He is the CEO of Sharper Business Solutions and co-creator of the RISE Business Framework. For about 11 years, he had executive experience at a Fortune 500 company, and had some health issues of his own, and decided to go out and become a coach, a difference-maker, as he is known. He’s now working with, this is damn impressive, 130 different businesses in nine countries. That’s pretty sharp, Gary. Welcome. How you doing, good man?

4:28 Gary Harper: Thanks for having me on the show today, and coming right out of the holidays and running into the new year with the right mindset.

4:34 Jim Beach: What is our New Year’s mindset? What do we need to be thinking at this time of year?

4:39 Gary Harper: I mean, everybody, obviously, is setting goals and trying to get rid of the old and bring in the new. And this is probably one of the best years to do that. Astrology talks about the year of the snake being 2025, and it’s kind of like, you know, shedding away the bad. And 2026 is the fire horse, and it’s kind of like the year to take off and really gain traction and hit your goal. So I don’t think there’s ever been a year, and I’m not 100% in astrology, but I know a lot of people are, but I think it’s kind of interesting this year for those two things to kind of line up that way, of getting rid of the old, what didn’t work, shedding that stuff away. And so, really, right now we’re evaluating what worked, what didn’t work. And I’m always working with teams to help them identify what they need to start doing, what they need to stop doing, and what they need to keep doing. What did work? What do we need to carry into the new year? And then evaluating our strengths or weaknesses, opportunities we have in front of us, threats, trends that are happening in our niche of our business. And one of those trends is AI, and we’ve got a lot of opportunity to really streamline and drive productivity in 2026. So this is a time of year to do that, and evaluate your goals, evaluate areas of your life that need to be, you know, retooled and refocused on. And like I like to put it, there’s really not a thing called balance when you become an entrepreneur. There is a thing called harmony, and figuring out a way to get all that to work together is really, truly where success lies.

6:09 Jim Beach: All right, very interesting. Let’s go back in time, Gary, and give us sort of your bio. Work through whatever you want. If you want to share your personal health issue that you had, tell how that relates to the story. Just sort of get us caught up with today before we dive into RISE and things like that.

6:27 Gary Harper: Okay, sure, sure. So, I mean, I started off in the late 1990s. Ninety-seven, actually. Started working my way up in corporate America and became an executive by the time I was 21 years old, national manager of business initiatives and development for a small to medium-sized company, and then worked my way into Canon. I worked for Canon for many years, and other companies that were bought out by Canon. But I was able to really cut my teeth in entrepreneurship. In 2006, 2008, I started my own real estate company and started buying and selling real estate to kind of offset the taxes, though, you know, that high income of being an executive. And by 2010, 2011, you know, the market crash in real estate, and so did my health. I actually got bit that year by a tick. I came down with Lyme disease. So, sorry. Yeah, I mean, Lyme is not a disease I would wish on my worst enemy. There’s a lot of people that struggle with that today, and it can be very late stage, and actually cause you a lot of health problems long-term, and actually continue through the rest of your life. And I found myself on the other side of that disease and battling for my life, and spent 12 months really trying to regain my health back. Well, upon getting it back, I had the choice to make. I could either go back to corporate America, where that steady, secure paycheck was, or that perceived steady, secure paycheck, or I could really take my chances at being an entrepreneur and go full-time there. And my brother-in-law at the time, he said, “Gary, I don’t think God took you out of that world just to put you right back in it.” And he wasn’t wrong. I went full-time into real estate, even though it had, you know, bit me a little bit in 2008, 2010, and I built a business doing up to 300 real estate deals a year with him. And by 2016, I had lots of people calling me, saying, “Hey, how did you do that? How did you build this real estate company?” And the two worlds kind of merged together. I brought in all the training that I had in corporate America along with being an entrepreneur, and I found myself helping hundreds of entrepreneurs scale properly. And 2021 to 2022, I decided to start writing the RISE Business Framework, which is a framework I’ve used to help thousands of businesses now, almost 5,000 businesses here in the last 10 years. Next year is our 10-year anniversary here at Sharper, and we’ve been able to utilize the RISE Business Framework to help people scale properly, because it really helps them identify every stage of business that an entrepreneur goes through, and helps them navigate each one of those stages to success.

9:21 Jim Beach: Very impressive. Gary, quite a story, quite a run. And glad that the Lyme is behind you. Is it a medical solution? An exercise solution? Food? How do you get rid of the Lyme once you’ve gotten it?

9:41 Gary Harper: You’re breaking up. I’m sorry. Say it again. How?

9:43 Jim Beach: How do you get rid of Lyme? Or does it stick with you?

9:49 Gary Harper: You know, not being a medical doctor myself, but the way I’ve managed it is through wellness and health and working out. I do a treatment called E, which is oxygen therapy. And then I bought an infrared sauna to detox my body. I also got red light therapy. And then I also ended up buying a hyperbaric oxygen chamber. So once it gets late stage, like it did in me, it’s really hard to get rid of. Most people just take 30 days worth of antibiotics and it cures them just fine. But in the rare cases that are out there, like mine, where it actually bit me in my neck and got into my spine and, you know, ended up rupturing two discs, for me it was a little bit more aggressive, and it got into a lot of parts of my body that other people don’t tend to have to deal with. So I have to do a little bit different of a protocol to keep it at bay and to be able to sustain long-term health.

10:50 Jim Beach: Well, I’m so sorry about that, but with you having the hyperbaric chamber and the air things and stuff, it definitely sounds like you’re a superhero.

10:58 Gary Harper: Man, I wish. I always tell people, you know, so many Marvel movies out there, people get bit by ticks and all kinds of stuff, and spiders, and I never got really a superpower. But, you know, I have a superpower probably unlocked, my ability to help an entrepreneur today.

11:14 Jim Beach: Excellent. I love it. And how did you get, before we go RISE-ing, how did you get your first client that you didn’t know already, someone out of the network?

11:26 Gary Harper: Well, I mean, it was all word of mouth. I belong to a mastermind, and it’s an elite group of business entrepreneurs and, you know, people.

11:36 Jim Beach: Name masterminds. Oh no. I mean.

11:39 Gary Harper: I don’t know. I mean, in the world of real estate, it sure is. Collective Genius is the name of it. And so, you know, the top 10% real estate investors, single-family real estate investors in the country. And people just, word of mouth, started hearing about my success and started calling and saying, “Hey, you know, with what you did, could you help me?” And so I didn’t really set out to be a business consultant or coach or start a business consulting type business. Just really wanted to give back and help other people. And I think that’s kind of where the best businesses are born, is when you’re helping people fulfill their purpose. And we did just that, and we went out and helped somebody, and they grew up 400%. And they went to another group and spoke, and people were like, “How’d you do it?” He’s like, “Well, I hired this guy, Gary Harper, who had success.” And the compound effect of that kept growing, and before I know it, 98% of all our clients come by referral now.

12:34 Jim Beach: Wow. Very impressive. And what are the basket of services that you normally provide for them? Is it installation of a foosball table? What do you do?

12:43 Gary Harper: Well, we typically assess the business with a business audit, figuring out what part of the business is struggling the most, and then we prescribe a solution to come in and work with that team to overcome those obstacles. Typically starts with a two-day Power Days, is what we call it, where we come on-site and work with a team to implement the RISE Business Framework into their company. And then we spend the next 13 weeks helping them implement that RISE Business Framework. So, two days of teaching, and then 13 weeks of implementation, where we have an in-the-business coach helping them install the tools. We have a meeting moderator that helps them run their weekly leadership meeting. And then we have a BPM expert, business process management expert, that helps them document their core processes in their company. And then at the end of the 13 weeks, we have an on-the-business strategic coach go out and spend eight hours with them, strategically creating solutions, setting the vision, and inspiring the company for the next 90 days. And then the cycle starts all over again with the weekly meetings, the in-the-business coaching, the business process documentation, and we do that for a full year, for 12 months. And then at the end of that 12 months, we re-evaluate: did the strategy work, and did we hit our goals? And if not, we re-address them and readjust for the next year.

14:01 Jim Beach: All right, RISE. Give us the formula.

14:05 Gary Harper: RISE stands for Resources, Inspiration, Systems, and Engagement. So there’s five stages of business, as Harper Business Review likes to put it, and I found that there wasn’t a business operating system out there that really helped you navigate each stage properly. And RISE is the Resources, Inspiration, Systems, and Engagement bridge from stage to stage. So when an entrepreneur starts a business, you know, they typically start because they have a product or a passion, and they can make profits. Those three Ps is usually what kicks off a business entrepreneur’s mind. And then they get into stage one, that existence stage, where their product’s making them some money, but it’s really not a business yet, and they want to start that growth, and they want to start letting go. And so the first thing we tell them to focus on, to go from stage one to stage two, is resources. How do we get our time back? How do we get more money and keep the money we’re making? And how do we get the right people around us to grow the business? And so that’s what the resources quadrant is all about, is time, money, and people. Where do we spend our time? What people do we need? And what money do we need to make, and what money do we need to keep? And that’s where we do, like, a business audit with our clients, and an evaluation of seats in the company, and building out the company structure. And then once we have the right resources in place, time, money, and people, and we understand what that looks like, then we do inspiration, which all resources have to be inspired. So we have to have values, vision, goals, purpose, that helps us drive those resources to our goals. And then from there, we go from stage two to stage three, which is sustainability. And in order to get there, you have to have the right systems. So we help them document their processes or procedures or policy, meaning structure, helping them identify the right KPIs so they know how to let go without losing control. And once they do that, and they feel secure and they’re stable and they have a good running business, we then take them to engagement. Engagement is the final stage. Engagement is the expansion stage, where we look to 10x the business. And so we do that with sales, marketing, and media, and help them understand what that needs to be in order to get to the next level. And that’s what Resources, Inspiration, Systems, and Engagement is all about. We also like to refer to it as “RISE to your 100%,” so rise to your purpose. And that’s ultimately where we want to get the business to, is achieving its purpose, or why it was created in the first place.

16:27 Jim Beach: I love it. Very impressive. And does that work? How many of those clients that you put through that are real estate clients?

16:38 Gary Harper: I don’t know. Probably when it first started off, it probably 75, 80%. Seventy-five, 80% of them. Right now, it’s probably less than 50%. We have a lot of med spas and doctors and dentists and fitness coaches and, you know, smoothie companies. And, I mean, honestly, at this point, we’re in so many different types of niches, law firms, that it, you know, it’s a business-agnostic tool. It doesn’t really get confined to a niche. It’s really just about, you know, how do I scale and run a business?

17:10 Jim Beach: And where does the tool live, on a whiteboard or online? Where does it live? Well, I mean, the accountability.

17:19 Gary Harper: The accountability of the tool set is in a software that we use when we’re running the weekly meetings and documenting the processes. So the operating system actually is housed in a project-management type software that we use to help correlate and coordinate with the companies that we’re implementing it with.

17:40 Jim Beach: All right, what is your real estate model, personally? Are you a flipper, or a buy, renovate, and rent? What? How did you find the most success in real estate?

17:53 Gary Harper: A little of both. I started off with buy and hold. I got in to create that cash flow. Robert Kiyosaki, met him years ago. Have a lot of joint venture friends, and Russ Gray is a good friend. I actually coach his business. And he was with the Real Estate Radio Guys in the early 2000s, and got to know him. And so getting to know them and understanding the model of, you know, Rich Dad Poor Dad, I started to buy and hold to create cash flow, and then owning those assets helped me depreciate and offset my taxes. But 2011 to 2016, I got reactive in real estate, where I was wholesaling, where I was actually going out and finally finding depreciated assets, or assets that were just under distress, and I was able to get them at a discount. And then I would buy them, do some work to them, and then wholesale them off to a real estate investor, somebody that wanted to either hold them or fix them, flip them. And then from there, I got into fixing and flipping a lot myself. So, just finished some houses this year where I bought them, rehabbed them, and then put them back on the retail market.

19:04 Jim Beach: What are you finding in the market, like right now? Is it a buyer market or seller’s market? Is it national, nationwide? Is it got pockets that are one and pockets that are the other?

19:17 Gary Harper: Honestly, real estate is a very regional thing, so it really depends on what part of the country you’re in. I would say, as a whole, it’s neither a buyer nor a seller’s market. There’s just not enough inventory, and so we’re really struggling with inventory in the real estate communities right now. You know, the prices are still pretty high up there, so it doesn’t really make it a buyer’s market. And because we don’t have a ton of inventory, it’s hard to be a seller’s market as well. So, you know, I think there’s going to be a lot of incentives in 2026 to build brand new because the industry needs it. And I think our world needs more housing to make it more competitive. Once that happens, I think it’ll bring the pricing down. I think along with that, and the interest rates coming down, and the interest rates are obviously affected in real estate also because of the supply and demand, and not having a lot of supply and an increased demand. And so interest rates are staying a little high. I think they’ll come down with new builds and more inventory that’s coming available. And I think then it’ll be more of a buyer’s market.

20:19 Jim Beach: All right. It’s gonna be hard to build in a lot of places. Yeah, here in Atlanta, everything I hear that gets proposed is getting turned down at the moment.

20:27 Gary Harper: Yeah, yeah. Well, and that’s why it’s hard from a regional perspective, you know, because one state could be offering creating a lot of opportunity zones and really incentivizing rebuilds and new houses and rehabs, where other cities are really pushing against it still. So it really comes down to what part of the country you’re in. And then, you know, last couple years, we saw a lot of the southern states really, really popping off and becoming hot markets, and now they’ve really cooled down.

21:02 Jim Beach: So, zone right now, nothing will sell there.

21:06 Gary Harper: I mean, the right buyers are still buying there, but yeah, you’re definitely in a different market than anything you were in a few years ago.

21:14 Jim Beach: Well, you know, once you tell me that my house is worth a million dollars, it’s always worth a million dollars, Gary, no matter what else happens to the market, you know? And they’re not willing to accept that. That was a false million during the COVID time, and now it’s really worth 650.

21:32 Gary Harper: Yeah. I think what most people realize is that property values are probably very similar to 2018 right now. Once that happens, and perspective sets in, and perception 

shifts, it becomes a reality.

21:46 Jim Beach: Again, what would be really cool is if we could go back to the government in 2018, that budget, and get rid of all the extra spending in the last six years. It got.

21:54 Gary Harper: Well, I mean, it definitely drove up inflation with all the extra spending. So yeah, I mean, I would love to go back to 2018. It was a good market. I think real estate investors really were doing well. They really lived in an inflated market in 2020 to 2022 with all the additional money parked in the economy. So we definitely have some lessons learned from that, and then some realization that has to come into fruition for a lot of these investors, too.

22:22 Jim Beach: Yes. Are you a resolution type of guy?

22:26 Gary Harper: I am. I like resolutions. I like all goals. I like things that are pushing us to get better and drive at, you know, improving ourselves. I don’t think we ever reach a place of satisfaction. I think we always should be striving to get better or bigger, and I think when we get better, we get bigger.

22:45 Jim Beach: So do you write resolutions down? Do you share them with somebody?

22:50 Gary Harper: Yeah. You know, for me as a business coach, I obviously am pushing every day for people to do that. I have a vision board. I like to see visually where my goals and resolutions need to be.

22:59 Jim Beach: Pictures of Leonardo DiCaprio in the middle?

23:03 Gary Harper: No, not at all, actually. But AI is a very interesting thing these days. So if you’re trying to lose weight, you can take a picture of yourself, put it in AI, and be like, “I want to lose some weight. Show me dinner.” Or if you have a special car that you want to see a certain color, you can put it in AI and have it customize the colors for you. So using AI for a visual vision board is a great way to have a resolution board.

23:31 Jim Beach: I love the new AI fakes of really, really big people getting into rooftop swimming pools and having the entire pool collapse and having all the people fall to the ground. It’s bad of me, but every time I see one of those, I just have to laugh. I’m sorry, I’m a bad person. Yeah, there’s.

23:49 Gary Harper: There’s a lot of good platforms out there that’ll actually create some pretty funny videos for you. I saw one just yesterday where somebody used it. Sora, Sora, I think, today. Yeah, with this whole trend with Stranger Things, people are starring in the Stranger Things episodes with AI right now, so people are really taking advantage of it.

24:10 Jim Beach: You know, I’m not a big fan of Stranger Things. I know the house that that was filmed in. We all know that neighborhood, and when it came out in the media, you know, we all went to go look at it. And now it’s kind of like having the Poltergeist house or the Amityville Horror house on your neighborhood, you know? Because it implies that right next to that house is where all this stuff is going, and that’s where I live, right next. You know? Oh my.

24:37 Gary Harper: Gosh, yeah. No, I knew that was in Atlanta, or the Georgia area.

24:41 Jim Beach: But suburb houses. Yeah.

24:44 Gary Harper: I knew that was stationed there, but it’s supposed to be out of Indiana, which is where I live. But the actual filming of it was right there in Atlanta. So that’s pretty interesting. I know some friends that drove down there to see it as well. I guess you guys are getting a lot of tourism this time of year, especially with the whole hype around it right now.

25:01 Jim Beach: Our movie industry has exploded here. We’re having a ton of industry, and they say that our World Cup visitation should pump a billion dollars into the economy this summer for the World Cup soccer.

25:17 Jim Beach: Well, that’s exciting.

25:20 Gary Harper: We’ll definitely need to get the housing market. Are.

25:24 Jim Beach: Yeah, pretty excited about that. Gary, I am real darn impressed. Amazing results. 130 businesses in nine countries. How do we find out more? Get involved with Sharper.

25:37 Gary Harper: You can follow us on all our social platforms. We’re on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Facebook. But to go to a website, go straight to sharperbusiness.com. And then if your audience there wants to do a free business assessment, they can take our survey there. It’s about 20 questions, and it’ll give them a snapshot view of what areas of the business they need to focus on going into 2026. And then we actually have somebody that can jump on and walk through that business assessment with them and give them some perspective of what they need to do in order to improve their areas of business. So tell them, take advantage of that, and we’d love to help anybody that needs it.

26:13 Jim Beach: Thanks so much, Gary. Happy New Year to you and your family, and hopefully we’ll talk again soon. Take care. Appreciate you. Have a great day, and you too. And we will be right back.

26:38 Intro 2: That’s a wonderful question. Oh my gosh, I love the opportunity to do this. Thank you, Jim. Wow, that’s, that’s, that’s a great one. You know, that is a phenomenal question. That’s a great question. And, and I don’t have a great answer. That’s a great question. Oh, that is such a loaded question. And that’s actually a really good question.

26:57 Jim Beach: School for Startups Radio, we are back, and again, thank you so very much for being with us. Very excited to introduce another great guest to the show, calling in from France, believe it or not. We haven’t had that in quite a while. Please welcome Gee Ranasinha. He is a marketing expert, but he doesn’t like to say that he’s a digital marketing expert. We will ask. He says that there’s a huge distinction there. He is the founder of Kaspian, which is a startup to small to medium-size agency. It helps with marketing and all sorts of other things as well. He is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing and an adjunct marketing professor at two universities that I’ve discovered. Gee, welcome to the show. How are you doing?

27:48 Gee Ranasinha: I’m doing very well, Jim. Thanks very much for having me on. I’m delighted to be invited.

27:53 Jim Beach: So am I right that you run an agency, but you don’t like to call it digital?

27:58 Gee Ranasinha: That’s pretty much it, yes. Aha. Good. I’m glad you asked. I push back on the idea that we’re a digital marketing agency for a number of reasons. Number one, I think the word digital is superfluous, because today everything is digital, right? TV is digital, billboards are digital, print is digital. So it’s gilding the lily a little bit. But more than that, I think by categorizing an agency as being digital gives the impression that all marketing is digital, but all marketing is not digital. There are plenty of things that we can do which are not digital in terms of online, but they may be digital in terms of the way that they’re created. So by categorizing an agency as being digital does a disservice to its work and its outlook. I think it’s nonsensical, because I don’t think we should be talking about digital marketing or analog marketing or, you know, outdoor marketing or TV marketing. We should be talking, it’s not digital marketing, we should be talking about marketing in a digital world. And I think those two positions are very different, and I don’t think they’re interchangeable. And I think the phrase digital marketing agency is not only an outdated term, but it puts a focus on the wrong thing, because the word digital isn’t being used, in this case, as an attributive noun, and it’s certainly not as an adjective. It’s a channel. We’re a marketing agency that uses the most appropriate channels of communication for a client, to address their target audience group, and that’s it. Okay. It doesn’t matter any more than that, because the most appropriate channel depends on your customer. And so by assuming or forcing a particular channel down the throat of your target customers is not only myopic, but I think it’s insulting.

30:28 Jim Beach: So a big billboard on the side of the road might be the best purchase.

30:35 Gee Ranasinha: Could be. Absolutely. It could be walking downtown with a sandwich board like they used to do in the 30s. That may be the most effective marketing that you could do for your business, for whatever you’re selling to whatever particular customer base you’re selling to. It totally depends. But by thinking online, thinking digital, in inverted commas, we’re automatically removing all of those other possibilities from what we may consider. I’ll give you another example. We worked with a company in Atlanta, actually, and this was a couple of years ago, and they were pretty new. I’d still say they were startup. They were probably about three or four years old, and they were targeting, they were having some great successes with their online work targeting particular ideal customer profiles in terms of, you know, age group, demographic, social status, all that sort of stuff. And they were hitting a ceiling, because what they were trying to do was get in front of people outside of their traditional target demographics. They were selling a food-type item, and they were selling it primarily to single people and young families. So they were targeting people from the age of around about early 20s to late 30s, that sort of age group. And they had pretty good success, but, like I said, they were hitting a ceiling. They couldn’t really move to the next level. So they asked us to come in, and we asked them what type of people they were looking to attract in their next campaigns. And they were looking at an older demographic. They were looking at, for instance, newly divorced or bereaved individuals, or people who were maybe downsizing, right? Kids have flown the nest and they’ve moved to a smaller house. Maybe they’ve moved to a different geographical area, and so would have become the ideal target market for what our client was selling. So, quite strangely for the marketing director, I suggested, after doing some research, this is not just like clicking stuff out of the air, okay, after doing some research and speaking to people who were, you know, representative of the type of people that they were looking to attract, we came up with the idea of actually putting together a campaign that was direct mail. You know, printed mail. Yeah. USPS. Snail mail. Yeah, right. Well, you know, you’re maybe the same age as me, so you may remember the Postal Service, right? And you should have seen the look on the face of the marketing director of the client. I mean, basically it was like I was speaking gibberish, or I just sort of landed from Mars or something. I was not speaking her language at all. She could not fathom this could possibly work. But I persevered because, you know, that’s partly what we do, right? We’re not there just to say things that clients want to hear. If we have a strong argument as to why a client should do something, we fight our corner, because I think that’s what’s required. So eventually, after about three conversations, she relented, and I think it was more to shut me up more than anything else, to be honest. And she said, “Okay, look, let’s try in a small geographic area. We’ll select a zip code or two, and we’ll try it, and we’ll compare it to campaigns that we run in other zip codes where we don’t do this direct mail, and obviously compare it to other zip codes where we don’t do anything, just to see whether there’s any sort of uptick.” Can you guess what the result was, Jim?

35:21 Jim Beach: Well, you set it up damn well. Better than success.

35:27 Gee Ranasinha: Thirty-four percent increase in not only the expectations of that campaign, but it was a 34% uptick in sales for any campaign they’d ever run, ever. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that the answer to your small business startup problems is doing a bunch of mail shots. What I’m saying is thinking laterally, thinking outside the box, thinking not necessarily within an online digital environment may make sense. I’m not saying it will. Maybe it won’t. But by deliberately discounting the possibility of other forms of communication and messaging, we’re restricting our possible consideration space for no particular reason, right?

36:26 Jim Beach: Well, what would lead you to think that this campaign needed to have a mailer? Why would that have been the conclusion? What made you think that?

36:38 Gee Ranasinha: Well, it wasn’t us. It was the result, the insights that we came to from the data that we mined. So we did a bunch of research, online research, as well as some old-fashioned interviews, speaking to people of a certain age, and it was generally perceived that people from the ages of 40s to early 60s were more receptive to something landing in their mailbox, on their doormat. They would pay more attention to it than they would something on a social media channel or an email. And the thing is about direct mail, Jim, is that unlike an email, unlike any digital revenue capture vehicle, mail shots have a pretty much 100% open rate. If I send you an envelope with your name on it and it lands in your mailbox, your physical mailbox, you know, 10 will get you five, but you’re going to open the envelope. Now, you may throw it straight in the bin, because the message isn’t applicable to you, because the message isn’t relevant, because it hasn’t been well designed, it hasn’t been well thought out. It may be 101 other things, okay, in terms of the execution, the tactical execution, the choice of messaging, the tone of voice, the articulation of the value proposition, all of that good stuff, right? There may be 100 more other reasons why you choose to discard it. But if we get an open and you’re even passingly interested, you may hesitate putting it in the waste basket straight away. You might put it on a mantelpiece. You may put it on your desk, or you may put it on the kitchen counter and come back to it later. The direct mail has a stickiness, has a residual effect far longer than pretty much any digital piece of messaging for certain aspects, for certain customers, for certain products in certain industries. Okay, there’s, like I said, no hard and fast rules. I’m not saying we all go back and start, you know, sticking envelopes in the post office. That’s not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is there are other opportunities open to us that are not necessarily, in inverted commas, digital, not necessarily online. And especially the tools that USPS offer for people who use their service in terms of targeting, in terms of measuring engagement, they do some fantastic stuff. You know, when you get an envelope and you see all of these little dots and things that are printed on this envelope, this is all very, very technical data mining, capture information, capture stuff that USPS is doing to be able to feed metrics back to people who are doing mail shots and stuff to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of mail shots. It’s no longer sort of, you know, throw something down a black hole and wait for something to happen. It’s very scientific in its approach, and USPS do a fantastic job at keeping themselves relevant.

40:38 Jim Beach: When you mix campaigns like this, you have a digital piece and perhaps a mail Piece. Do they. Does that switch or change anything about the way they respond if they’ve gotten a physical piece? Are they more likely to respond differently? Are they still going to go to the same click funnel? How does the transition between an online and an offline piece work? I mean, eventually they have to get online, perhaps to pay or to buy, right? How does that change?

41:12 Gee Ranasinha: Perhaps. So I don’t look at these things as being an online and offline world. And the reason why I say that, Jim, is because I don’t think customers see it as an online or offline world. I just think that they see them as channels, as touch points, and I don’t think that many of us make that distinction. I think people within the industry, if you’re working in sales, in marketing, in advertising, you are more self-conscious about where you see a brand’s position and what they’re doing and what channel they choose to use. But I don’t think people outside of the industry, Jim, I call them civilians, okay, I don’t see civilians as having or making that distinction. So just like you may think that the ultimate online marketing campaign may be a combination of maybe a bit of Facebook, a bit of Instagram, a bit of Google search, and maybe some ads that you’re putting on a programmatic advertising platform to appear on websites, and that’s your marketing mix, then I think something like direct mail would fit into that mix. Now, how people would get from that direct mail position into an electronic format to buy, obviously there are a number of different ways. One of them is a thing called personal URLs, right, in which case we create a virtually infinite number of subdomains on our website which is tailored to the customer. So, you know, there may be, you know, g.com/jim, right? And that takes you directly to your page, which echoes the information and the sales pitch that you’ve just read from your direct mail piece. And gives you a buy button. Another way could be to scan a QR code. Which, as we all know, are prevalent everywhere, and that gets you into a digital domain. So there are a number of ways of making that jump, or it may be a follow-up by email a day or two after you receive the direct mail, at which point you may be more receptive to opening that email because you’ve consumed the message in the direct mail, so the email that arrives is no longer perceived by you as being spam, because there’s already been a communication touch point with you as the prospect in advance of that email hitting your inbox. You see what I mean? Yes, interesting. So there are a number of different ways. Like I said, there’s no fast rules. This is why much, much of the success of these things depends on doing our homework upfront, actually understanding our customer, what makes them tick, why. What problem are we solving for our customer, not what we’re selling them. What’s the underlying problem that goes away as a result of them buying whatever it is we’re selling? Because that’s what we’re selling, right? We’re not selling a widget. We’re selling a way for them to get rid of a problem that they perceive as being so great that they would throw money at it.

45:13 Jim Beach: What percent of clients do you think should have an offline, a non-digital piece?

45:20 Gee Ranasinha: I don’t think there is such a thing, Jim. There is no one size fits all. It totally depends on who you are as a company, as a business, how big you are as a business, how much market percentage you enjoy within the category that you compete in. It depends on your customer expectations. It depends on the expectations set within a marketplace. If, you know, doing something offline isn’t the way we do things in these parts, in inverted commas, then it may be a harder sell. But there may be other ways of doing things. There may be other creative routes to market that are different, that help keep you distinctive and differentiated in the minds of your customers, so that you don’t look like everybody else, because that’s the problem, right? For 99% of categories, everybody playing within that category looks like everybody else, and they’re too scared to do anything different. So in such a sea of sameness, the customer can’t make any clear distinction based upon feature superiority or quality, or whatever particular dimension that they see as being valuable. So they default to the only thing that they can think of as having a difference between the various providers they’re considering, which is, unfortunately, price. So we get into a price war, which, as we know, is a war that nobody wants to win. Yep, price wars, because once you, yeah, yeah, once you go down that road, yeah, that’s, yeah, yeah, that’s one, one-way ticket to Palookaville, isn’t it?

47:19 Jim Beach: Yes, yes. I heard a rumor, G, that you wanted to play our game, the Quick 10.

47:26 Gee Ranasinha: Oh, you heard correctly, Jim. Yes, absolutely. I’m very interested in playing the game Quick 10, if I may.

47:31 Jim Beach: Excellent, excellent. Are you currently sober?

47:36 Gee Ranasinha: Unfortunately, yes, but I can do something about it if that’s what it takes to play the game.

47:41 Jim Beach: Well, if you would, it’s up to you. If you want to take a pause to, you know, change that status, it’s just up to you. We just, we’re required to know, because of the wager. Do you want to accept the standard wager?

47:53 Gee Ranasinha: I wasn’t aware there was a standard wager. What’s the standard wager?

47:57 Jim Beach: It’s the wager that everyone else made. Okay, there you go. You’re a Number one. Looks like I’m all.

48:06 Jim Beach: In. Yeah. Favorite creativity hack.

48:10 Gee Ranasinha: My favorite creativity hack is having an idea session, an ideation session based upon constraints, where we deliberately limit resources or options in order to force ourselves to think in a new way.

48:27 Jim Beach: All right. Number two, favorite bootstrapping trick.

48:31 Gee Ranasinha: Favorite bootstrapping trick is bartering, to barter core competencies for services that we need but we can’t afford yet.

48:42 Jim Beach: Number three, name your top passions.

48:46 Gee Ranasinha: Number one is clearly helping business owners succeed, which I’ve been doing for 30-odd years. Number two is listening to music on an absurdly expensive hi-fi. It is my weakness. What can I tell you? Number three is trying to play jazz piano, which I do extremely badly, but enthusiastically. And number four is being with my family. I know that’s only for Jim, but that’s all I got, all right.

49:13 Jim Beach: Number four, name the first three steps in starting a business.

49:18 Gee Ranasinha: Number one, we need to validate that there is a genuine market problem. We then need to build a minimum viable solution that addresses that problem, using actual users, not friends or family or people who are going to agree with what we say. Number three, we need to establish unit economics that proves sustainability and the validity of the business model.

49:48 Jim Beach: Number five, the best way to get your first real customer is, I think.

49:53 Gee Ranasinha: I’ve said it in a roundabout way already. We need to solve a specific, painful problem for someone in our immediate network who’s prepared to pay for that pain to go away.

50:08 Jim Beach: Number seven, best entrepreneurial advice.

50:12 Gee Ranasinha: We need to focus relentlessly on creating measurable value before we start worrying about knowing how to capture it. If there’s no measurable value, it doesn’t matter what else we do.

50:29 Jim Beach: Number seven, best entrepreneurial advice.

50:34 Gee Ranasinha: I thought I just did that one.

50:36 Jim Beach: Oh, I’m sorry. Number eight, worst entrepreneurial mistake.

50:40 Gee Ranasinha: Worst entrepreneurial mistake that I see again and again is people building elaborate solutions before they confirm that anybody actually wants to pay for any of it. It’s all very well thinking that you found a gap in the market, but you need to make sure that there’s a market in the gap.

50:58 Jim Beach: I’ve skipped this one. Number six, dreamiest of your dreamiest technology.

51:04 Gee Ranasinha: That would be some kind of adaptive AI, powered probably by quantum computing, that personalizes learning pathways in real time based upon a person’s cognitive pattern and emotional states. Because anything we buy, whether it’s B to B or B to C, we buy emotionally.

51:28 Jim Beach: Number nine, favorite entrepreneur and why?

51:32 Gee Ranasinha: Favorite entrepreneur is a gentleman by the name of Yvon Chouinard, who’s the founder of Patagonia, who, after creating the company and building the company up to $3 billion in revenue, passed ownership over to a trust and nonprofit, rather than selling the company and taking it public. Number 10, favorite superhero, that would be Iron Man. And the reason is because resourcefulness and innovation, I think, beat any superpower any day of the week.

52:06 Jim Beach: I would agree with that. All right, fantastic answers. We are calculating your score right now. While we do that, G, how do we find out more about you? Get in touch. Buy some marketing.

52:17 Gee Ranasinha: Best way to get hold of me, Jim, is on LinkedIn. Would you believe there’s only one Gee Ranasinha on LinkedIn? How amazing is that? Me on LinkedIn. It’s a unique name. You can find me on LinkedIn. I post one-minute videos on there twice a week about the sorts of things that we’ve been talking about today. Get in touch. Let’s have a chat and see if I can help. If I can’t, I’ll tell you that too.

52:43 Jim Beach: All right, great. Well, I’m just kind of pausing until, oh, I’ve just been given your score. G, oh, I’m so sorry. You got a 94, which is an excellent score, but you have to have a 95 to win the wager. Prince Harry was one of our judges, and apparently he didn’t like that you left the UK to live in France, which is weird because he did the same thing. He just, yeah, a couple of points. Gee, I’m really sorry about that. So what do you want? You owe us a Tesla. We always play for a Tesla, so I’ll be excited to look for that soon in the mail.

53:15 Gee Ranasinha: Okay, no problem. We’ll come direct mail. That’s my favorite mail communication. Yeah, absolutely. Hello, truck, Jay.

53:25 Jim Beach: Thank you so much for being with us. Great information, and we’d love to have you back.

53:30 Gee Ranasinha: Thank you. I’d love to come back. Thanks very much for the opportunity, Jim. A great new year to you.

53:37 Jim Beach: We are out of time for today, but back tomorrow. Be safe, everyone. Take care. Bye. Now you.