His 3-Person Company Makes Millions With a 'Free' Service

The fastest way to win more deals as a consultant is to stop trying to win every deal. Now, I know that sounds counterintuitive, but my guest today, Cliff, has built a multimillion-dollar firm with just three people by mastering this exact principle of radical honesty. And right up front, you’re going to get the single most powerful, self-fulfilling prophecy for any consultant, and that is the mindset of working like you don’t need the money. I know it might sound easier said than done, but you need to check out this episode for a look inside.

Throughout our conversation, we’re going to break down Cliff’s entire business model, how he provides a free service, yet generates millions in revenue. We’re going to get specific about his playbook for client acquisition, including his number one channel for finding high-quality leads. And we’re going to go deep on the psychology of high-stakes deals, how to diagnose and dismantle a buyer’s fear, and why the real obstacle is almost never what they say it is. This is a masterclass in building a lean, profitable, and powerfully authentic consulting practice. Enjoy.

In this episode you will learn:

• How to build a multimillion-dollar firm with a lean, 3-person team.

• The “work like you don’t need the money” mindset that closes more deals.

• A “free service” business model that generates millions in revenue.

• The #1 channel for high-quality lead generation in a niche market.

• How to diagnose and dismantle a buyer’s true fears to move deals forward.

• Why radical honesty and being willing to lose a deal is a superpower.

• The power of visualization and discipline in achieving business success.

Welcome to the Consulting Success podcast. I’m your host Michael Zipursky, and in this podcast, we’re going to dive deep into the world of elite consultants where you’re going to learn the strategies, tactics and mindset to grow a highly profitable and successful consulting business.

Before we dive into today’s episode. Are you ready to grow and take your consulting business to the next level? Many of the clients that we work with started as podcast listeners just like you, and a consistent theme they have shared with us is that they wished they had reached out sooner about our Clarity Coaching Program rather than waiting for that perfect time. If you’re interested in learning more about how we help consultants just like you, we’re offering a free, no pressure growth session call. On this call, we’re going to dive deep into your goals, challenges and situation and outline a plan that is tailor made just for you. We will also help you identify where you may be making costly and time consuming mistakes to ensure you’re benefiting from the proven methods and strategies to grow your consulting business.

So don’t wait years to find clarity. If you’re committed and serious about reaching a new level of success in your consulting business, go ahead and schedule your free growth session. Get in touch today. Just visit Consulting Success – Grow to book your free call today.

Cliff Nonnenmacher is a veteran franchise expert who seems to spend more time talking people out of franchising than into it. With decades of experience as an owner, operator, and franchisor, coupled with a highly successful background on Wall Street, he provides direct, honest guidance as part of his mission to help executives build generational wealth and diversify portfolios through the right franchise opportunities. Cliff has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and CBS MoneyWatch.

Connect with Cliff Nonnenmacher

Discover more about Franocity

Hey, Cliff, welcome.

Hey man. Thanks, Michael. I appreciate it.

Yeah. Excited for our conversation today.

Just to start off, I mean, you are a franchise consultant, and I think it’d be great if you could hit the rewind button for a minute and share with everyone, how did you end up in the world of franchising?

Thank you for having me as well. So, long, I’ll give you a kind of a long story short. I was a- I’m a serial entrepreneur, so I’ve been entrepreneurial my whole life going back to age eight, raking golf balls, cleaning them in bleach, putting them in egg crates, selling them at country clubs, doing all random jobs. I did literally everything you could do as a, you know, a young person, and then going into your teenage years.

I ultimately moved from New York to a place called Marco Island and instantly found opportunities where I believe that I started Uber before Uber Eats. Right? So in 1990, 1991, I’m living on an island that’s three miles by six miles, and I’m delivering food for 16 restaurants, a pharmacy, and auto parts, and just banging out deliveries with a team of guys, all all my age. We’re all young guys, graduated high school, and grinding it out trying to make our way in the world. So, I ended up becoming the first subcontractor for McDonald’s in the United States. I had a dedicated cash register just for me doing a hundred deliveries a day, and it was only possible because the island was three miles by six miles. So it was really tight. I didn’t have to carve out or delineate a territory. Like, if you lived in Marco Island, I was delivering food to you, period.

I did that for years, ultimately got involved in parasailing, jet ski rentals, sailboats, a lot of water sport activities on the New Jersey shore, which was Long Beach Island. I had contracts with the Hilton, Hilton Grand Vacation, started making money, bought a satellite trading system, very early in the trading days. My handle was Blue Chip, that’s how early I was, and not Blue Chip with a number after it, Blue Chip. Started trading, fell in love with it, took my portfolio to Wall Street, got some offers, took a job with Salomon Smith Barney, joined a group within the firm, managed around 250 million with them, and then my moment, right? My corporate bullshit moment where I asked my boss for a printer on our side of the building. He said ‘no’, forced me to, he said, “No, if you want one, you buy it.” I bought the printer for our side of the building, ended up realizing how much toner cartridges were back then, $250 by the way, to refill the cartridge. I learned how to refill it with a soldering iron and a copper pipe, just soldered a perfect hole in there, put toner in it, and it worked. It printed for another few thousand pages. Found a company in Australia that reverse-engineered printer consumables, anticoagulation agents, anti-corrosive agents, secret handshake, chip resetting, bought the rights to that for the entire state of New York and Connecticut, and there is my entrance into franchising.

There is a hierarchy of franchising, Michael, and the top would be the franchisor, and then there’s the master. I was a master, so I was right beneath the franchisor. What a master gives you the ability to do is to not only own as many locations as you want to own, but I could also sell you a location within the state of New York and Connecticut. So it’s called sub-franchising, and then I would collect royalty and I would keep the franchise fee, et cetera. Scaled out 36 units, sold it, moved to Florida, and just kept doing it again and again, and I never left franchising. And that’s 2003. So I’ve been, I’m on my 12th brand, but nothing has been more enjoyable than consulting. And that’s why I’m happy to be on this show, because I do believe it is the, I do believe it is the greatest lifestyle. I do. I think it is the greatest life, the greatest benefit. You are changing people’s lives as well. Love it.

[05:07] – The Power of Talking Clients Out of a Deal

All right, so you’ve built franchises, multiple brands and companies. You’re known for, in fact, trying to talk people out of getting into franchising at times, that you’re not just trying to bring in, you know, to say, “Hey, this can work for everybody.” Can you just talk a little bit, you know, kind of about that, that process? How you engage with people, who is franchising right for, who is it not right for? Let’s just kind of go through that a little bit.

That’s great. It’s funny you say that, because I did a search on ChatGPT about my industry, and it provided answers from experts in the field. One of them was me, and I asked it, I go, “Did you, did you provide that answer because I’m your client?” And it said, “No, I, no, you asked me a specific question, and I provided my own.” I- then it gives you all what it does. “I scour the internet and then I parse this information and I give it to you.” I’m like, “Wow.” So it’s interesting that you said that.

One of the things that I am known for is I’ve talked more people out of this business than I put in it, and that is very, very true. And I’ll be candid with you. That behavior, like, let’s let’s be candid, right? That behavior only happens when you yourself are successful, because when you’re grinding it out making a living, you just jam people in deals because you have to provide and make a living for your family. So you may not, you may not talk someone out of something. You may stay neutral, you may act a certain way when you know that you have to feed your family. When you get to a place in your career where it’s like, “I’m not doing this for the money. I’m doing this because I absolutely love it. I’m passionate about it. I want to change people’s lives. I don’t want anyone calling me six months from a year from now to say this was a huge mistake.” It’s quite liberating, I’ll be honest with you, to tell someone, “You are not a fit for this. You should not do this. You should probably keep your career, and if you really don’t like that career, you should probably go start interviewing for another job because business ownership is not right for you.”

So yes, I mean, I could drill down in a granular way on tells, but there are tells with people who just, they’re not motivated. I mean, let’s be, let’s be frank. They don’t even have their voicemail setting properly. Like a professional voicemail setting requires zero skill. Can we agree on that? Like, there are things, there are things that you could do to change your life that require zero skill. One of them is showing up on time, one of them is maybe reading books and trying to seek self-improvement. One of them is having a professional, you know, voicemail recording. One of them could be the way you care about your appearance. These are zero skillset requirements to just start, to start changing your life one degree at a time. Well, when I see those things not happening with someone, it’s like, “Look, you, this just isn’t for you. Don’t do it. You’re going to regret it. You’re going to lose three, 400 grand, and at your age, you’re never going to recover.” So yes, I am known for that. I’m actually proud of that. Obviously, a lot of people, remember, there’s a lot of conflicted people in this, in this party. One of them being the franchisor. Like, “Why’d you do? This guy was ready to buy a brand and you said ‘no’.” It’s, “Look, he’s not a fit. You should be thanking me, not, not angry.”

[08:14] – How Radical Honesty Wins You More Deals

Cliff, let me ask you, knowing what you know now, right, I mean, your position is, as you said, which I agree with, you know, the mindset of being able to show up confidently and essentially talk very direct to a prospective buyer, especially when that buyer may be in a position to make the investment, right? You can seal the deal, close that deal. Do you think you being direct, in fact, helps you to win more deals?

All right. So, I mean, you need a longer episode because now you’re getting into what I refer to as confirmation bias, right? So, and you could, you do what you want to do. It’s your episode, you edit it and whatnot, but there’s a long answer to that. And unfortunately, people suffer from confirmation bias. I’ll give you an example.

I had someone that came to me and they bounced an idea off of me, and I told them, “Do not buy that brand.” Just like knee-jerk reacted, “Do not buy that brand.” “Why?” Gave him a few reasons why, personal, you know, let’s call it inside, industry inside information. I told him, “Do not buy that brand.” They then wanted to argue with me. They got visibly pissed off with me. And, there’s only one reason for that. People invest a degree, an amount of time into doing due diligence. Let’s call it three months, which is pretty typical of due diligence. What they don’t want to hear at the end of the process is anything that counters the beliefs that they’ve built to that point. And that’s confirmation bias. And I think it’s one of the most dangerous, most damaging things because it goes way beyond business. It goes into relationships with people. Like, don’t marry her, right? Don’t marry him. Don’t date him, her, right? This goes on and on where people have experiences trying to warn people, but people make emotional, illogical decisions.

I believe that it has helped me over my career. Yes, I got to deal with the shit and people yell at me and they get angry. And then I look at them and go, “I, I, I can’t even believe you’re upset with me. I’m actually trying to help you. I benefit zero from this, zero. Like, I just guaranteed I’m not making a dime on this deal, and you’re upset with me.” I’ve had people call me one, two, three years later. That, and that’s a man, right? “You don’t remember me. You told me not to do it, and boy, were you right. I just lost three-” It’s like, I, and of course I don’t say, “I told you that,” I’m home, but in my head, I’m like, “Man, I warned you. I warned you.” So, I do get referrals that way.

But but do you think it’s actually helped your business to be very direct and to go against, like, not just to try and win the deal just because you can, but rather doing what ultimately is, is, is you believe, you know, in the best interest of the person that you’re speaking to?

I’m going to close the loop on the question and tell you how I believe it has benefited me. I’m going to, I’m going to tell you right now. So, let’s say, as you know in consulting, we’re going up against other consultants. With my straight talk and candor and really having my heart in the right place and advising the client prudently, I could, I could get rid of like four players instantly. Like literally instantly. I could take several people off the table like that, just with one word: truth. That’s it. Just telling people the truth and saying, “Okay, this is an interesting case. Let me tell you what I’ve learned. Let me leverage my experience. Let me tell you how this plays out. Let me tell you that I’ve seen this movie before. This is what I would do if I were you.” And it’s like, “Man, you are going against three, four people.” “Well, I’ll tell you why. The three, four people are going to get a 10x commission, and I’m taking a major haircut for a paycheck by telling you not to do what you just proposed to me.” So-

You’re you’re supporting the, like, really the point that I’m trying to get at here, but I want to, I don’t want to put words into your mouth, but you’re, you’re essentially saying what I completely agree with, which is in the early stages for people in business, it is very hard to do things that, that may not be in the best interest for you, for you short term, right? Losing a deal, nobody wants to lose a deal, especially when you don’t have as much money coming in. But I think the, the real interesting dynamic behind this is that if you can look past that for a moment, it’s kind of counterintuitive, but in fact, by trying to not win more deals, you end up winning more deals because you’re separating yourself from the majority of the marketplace that comes across as being more salesy, promotional, just doing anything they can to win the deal instead of actually acting as the expert, which is what the buyer wants.

Michael, you just, you, you, you nailed it with that statement. You reminded me of something that we say often. Many years ago, a mentor at Smith Barney shared this with me. He told me three things, very successful guy. His name was Andy. Sold his jewelry store to Zales, multi-multi-multimillionaire. Told me three things, “Work like you don’t need the money, love like you’ve never been hurt, and dance like nobody’s watching.” Right? And it’s, and if you go with that first one, if you work like you don’t need the money, you will be insanely wealthy. You will be insanely- It is a self-fulfilling prophecy to behave that way, and the average person just can’t do it.

It’s hard. I mean, I empathize with everyone who is hearing this right now or watching this right now, going like, “Yeah, it’s easy for you guys to say, you know, quote unquote, “made it.” And so I get, it doesn’t feel like it’s easy in the early days, but it’s one of these things, and I’ve seen it with multiple clients that we’ve worked with as consultants when they were, you know, brand new, getting started, leaving the corporate world, coming into consulting, and those that embrace and have this longer-term mindset from the beginning and really show up more with service than sales, they tend to do much, much better, even faster than those who are are coming in from the other approach.

[13:51] – The “Free Service” Model That Generates Millions

So let’s, let’s come back to, to your business, Cliff. What does your business model look like today? Just walk us through how do you operate, how do you make money, you know, what do you offer? Just kind of break that down for everyone.

It’s a very unique consulting practice relative to a lot of the guests that are on your show. I’ll break it down. The first statement which separates me from most of the guests is the services are free. Right? So they’re free to the buyer, which is a huge differentiator. So I have nothing, let’s say, to sell. I tell people this is not a sales call. What we provide is a free service to the buyer, the prospective buyer of the brand. How am I paid? I’m compensated similarly to a realtor or a head hunter. I’m paid by the opposing party. We’ll call it the seller, right? So the franchisor is paying me at the franchisor’s expense. And of course, everyone immediately reacts and says, “No way. I’m sure I’m paying for it directly or indirectly. I’m sure there’s a fee change, a contract change.” And the answer is “No, that is not true.” There is no difference if Michael, if you went to the UPS store, which is a client of ours, and you bought a franchise, it’ll be the identical contract language fees as if you let me introduce you to the UPS store. And I tell people every time, “Ask the brand if you’re paying for this. Just ask him,” because people are so skeptical today with free. And you know what’s crazy is that my business provides a free service, but do you know that I can’t actually say that in an email when I meet a client because it is the most spammed, abused word in the human language that my emails won’t get to you if I say to you, “Michael, thank you for your inquiry. I provide a free service.” Spam. Can you imagine? It’s really a tragedy because it is one of the two words that are the greatest words: ‘free’ and ‘guaranteed’. And they’re both, and they’re both blocked by spam blockers, which is just insane. At any event, that’s what.

So you’re helping people to buy franchises.

We advise people that are saying, “I’m,”- I mean, right now, you’re dealing with, there’s a lot of movement because of AI, you got quantum computing, there’s a lot of people losing their jobs. There’s a lot of people that know they’re going to lose their jobs. I could have gone a year, a year of lead flow – my lead flow is to my left here – I could have gone a year and never seen this word, District of Columbia, and I am riddled with District of Columbia leads right now. And you know why? DOGE is coming in and eliminating tens of thousands. I mean, it’s crazy what’s happening. So these people are displaced, no different from someone at a technology company that’s about to be displaced by AI, or a graphic designer, or a copywriter, or a wordsmith, or whoever, right?

So I advise those people on their next move, which is not getting a job. It’s going out on their own, evaluating franchise opportunities that align with their investment objectives, their income needs, their investment amount, their risk tolerance, their appetite for some debt, right? Their income needs. Everyone looks at the brand like, “I want to own a Subway.” I’m like, “Why would you want to own a Subway? It makes 35 grand a year. You’re not going to make any money.” That’s what, so once, once we get a hold of the client, it’s like, “Okay, we’re going to be disciplined now, and we’re going to advise you through the entire process from even gathering, you know, debt and so on, site selection, guidance, everything.”

And what percentage are individuals compared to, you know, businesses or larger funds? What does that look like in terms of the client base you work with?

All individuals. All individuals. Yep, if we’re ever dealing with a corporation, it’s because they’re displacing people and they wanted us to help get them to land on their feet, like an executive outplacement. That’s the only time we would ever interact with a company.

Got it. And can you give everyone a sense of, you know, how many deals do you do on a typical year? What kind of revenue are you at, or how many people do you have? Just so they can have a bit of a kind of size and scope of the current operation.

Yeah, I mean, multimillion. I’ll leave it at that. So we’re a multimillion-dollar consulting firm.

And how many team members?

Right, three. There’s three of us. Small firm, boutique, me, my business partner, and our director of marketing, right? That’s it.

So you don’t, so you don’t need a bigger team to generate multimillions per year.

I could- no. And that’s the beauty and that’s why I led in with, I think this is the single greatest lifestyle ever is to be a consultant and to be able to leverage your time, to scale the way we scale.

And is that because the deal size for you, each deal is typically significant?

That’s right.

Can you give a- what does it look like? What’s an average deal size for you when you help somebody to select a franchise that they want to buy, what does that kind of mean for your company on average?

Yeah, I’d probably rather not do that just out of, yeah, just out of clients understanding, you know, I think, multimillion-dollar consulting firm with two people should extrapolate that the-

Oh yeah, yeah, I think people know you’re doing well. I’m just trying to get a sense of like, you know, is that, is, is the range 10,000, 100,000, half a million? But if you can’t say that, that’s fine. I just want to-

Yeah, I wouldn’t do- I wouldn’t work for less than, you know, 30, 40,000 a deal. I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t even, I wouldn’t even try. I don’t even want anything to do with it. I value my time, and it takes the same amount of time to work on a $5,000 deal that it does on a $100,000 deal.

What you just said right there is a very important lesson for everyone, regardless of, you don’t have to be working, you don’t have to be touching anything related to franchising. In the world of consulting, generally, the amount of time that you spend, right, with a client, and what you put into that is going to be very similar regardless of whether it’s a $10,000 deal or a $100,000 deal. I mean, there might be a few more buttons you have to push or a few more things here and there, but generally, moving upmarket or thinking about larger sized deals is a really great benefit to, to people.

[19:46] – Why Market Uncertainty Is Good For Business

Can you talk, Cliff, a little bit more about, you know, what are you seeing right now? Obviously, the market that we’re all in, is a very interesting one. There’s a lot of uncertainty. There’s the tariffs, there’s, you know, wars, and just a lot going on in the world right now. What kind of impact has that had on, on your business, first of all?

Yeah, I know it’s crazy. So, and not that I, not that I wish for, you know, deteriorating situations, but I, but I always do better with uncertainty, high unemployment. I always do better. So, we probably made more money this, you know, first few months of the year, that we did more than half of last year just to put that in perspective.

And have you seen the sale cycle? Is it the same as usual? Is it slower? Is it, is it faster?

I was actually just going to get into that. Exactly. Great question. So, what I was going to say is that, you know, you, I don’t know if you heard of the VIX, right, the volatility index. So you- it’s a feeling. It’s actually a gauge on fear. It’s a fear gauge that something that a lot of people don’t understand. You look at the VIX, you look at the small business confidence, if you look at the consumer confidence, these are metrics that are provided every month to people to put their finger on the pulse of the conditions. When with greater confidence on small business and greater consumer confidence, my deal speed shrinks instantly, right? Because there’s nothing to think about. I feel good, everything looks good, the landscape looks safe and I look happy. I think crime is being addressed. I’m going to open up a brick-and-mortar brand in a retail strip mall. “Wait a minute, two years ago, you weren’t saying that.” “Right, because there was bricks flying through those same windows.” “Oh, so minus the bricks, you’re good.” Think about that.

These- all this shit has unintended consequences on an entire society, and it has everything to do with my business. If you think about small business, I’m really in an industry that is the tip of the spear of a nation. This is why Kevin O’Leary from the Shark Tank, you don’t hear him fighting for GE. He’s not asking for Amazon and Nvidia to do better. He keeps fighting for the small business because we are America. We are, we’re the country. If you look at every firm in America, call it 30, 40 million firms, 94, 96% of them do less than a million. Think about that. Everyone listening, all these consulting firms that are on these calls, a lot of these folks do under a million. They’re small business owners, they’re solopreneurs, right?

So, yeah, definitely. My deal speed shrinks, confidence is jacked up, people are not manifesting because fear, when you think about fear, and we we talk about fear a lot, and I’m writing a book right now with my business partner on what really stops people from doing this, whether it’s consulting or buying a business, fear is just not managed at all anywhere in our lives. People just don’t comprehend fear, they don’t understand fight or flight, they don’t understand their own nervous system, they don’t understand anything. They just say, “I’m out. I’m done. I’m uncomfortable. I’m not doing this.” And then they make things up. “My spouse doesn’t want me to do it. My accountant said it’s a bad idea.” And fear begins to manifest itself in all these lies instead of just saying, “I don’t believe in me to get this job done. I don’t believe I can take business from these other firms.” That’s what it really comes down to, confidence and fear.

[23:08] – How to Dismantle Your Buyer’s Real Fears

When you are talking to a buyer and you believe they have the ability to be a great client or great, great buyer, right, they have the financial ability, but they’re bringing up these roadblocks, clearly they have fear, there’s something that’s holding them back from moving forward and and completing the deal, how do you navigate that? How do you- kind of walk us through-

One, we don’t call people out enough. Like we live in a time, here’s an example, and I call it the Tommy Boy Effect. We live in a time where it’s like, “Does that suit make me look fat?” “No, your face does.” No one says that. Okay, I don’t know if you remember that scene, right, where Tommy Boy puts on, he goes, “Does this suit make me look fat?” And David Spade goes, “No, your face does.” No one talks like that. No one actually says the way it is. They would rather lie to your face than tell you the truth. So I have to get to a place with a client where it’s like, “Look, I know your accountant’s not killing the deal. I know the lawyer’s not killing the deal. Like, I know your spouse isn’t killing the deal. Like, let’s have a candid conversation about what’s really keeping you up at night.” What, and then you kind of help them along. It’s like, “Look, it’s, it’s natural. It’s natural to feel this fear. The difference is, are you going to feel it and you’re going to run, or are you going to feel the fear and start to hedge and mitigate some of these real risks?” I say ‘real’ with emphasis. Most fears that people have will never come to fruition, not, like none. You could dig all the things you want in the ground and you could store all the cans and all the, like, most of the things that people fear are not happening. Something else crazy happens, right? But not the things that they’re fearing.

And the biggest issue that I have learned over 25 years of doing this is the ego. It is the ego that stops people, because if you really got inside the head of a client or a small business prospective owner, these are the thoughts, Michael, “What if I fail? What is my brother-in-law going to think of me? What is my wife going to think of me? My kids are watching. How shitty am I going to look if I spend 2, 300 grand and I fail?” Like, they’re all back there going, “Dad, do it. Dad, do it.” And then all of a sudden it’s like, “I’m afraid to fail.” The reality is the ego is very intimidated by the future because it is an uncertain place for the ego, and the ego hates it. It hates the past, which is regret, okay, and it hates the future because it’s uncertainty, and the ego is what drives a lot of this. It’s not the accountant, it’s not the lawyer, right? Like, stop. It’s, it’s you, it’s me, and we get in our own way. And I, I go through these things when I’m doing a deal or I’m buying real estate or I’m investing in something, and yes, these stupid thoughts cross your head like, “What is someone going to say if I mess this up?” That’s just a reality of it.

In our book, we put a huge chapter on dealing with fear, addressing fear, really, like, acknowledging what you’re experiencing and realizing at this moment, like, right, Michael, you’re safe right now. Like, you’re safe. I’m safe. But as soon as you start thinking about an uncertain future, all of a sudden your heart rate jacks up, you’ve got beads of sweat on your forehead. You’re still in the safe place. You’re at your house, your office, whatever you’re doing. It’s the uncertainty. It’s a huge issue. People need to- we don’t teach this in school. We don’t teach this in life. Everything is left to chance. And that’s why 99% of this country, I don’t know if you see what’s behind my wall here, you get, you want to be the 1%, you got to do what the 99% don’t want to do. Get out of your comfort zone.

[26:36] – The Client Acquisition Playbook for High-Quality Leads

So, let me ask you on that, Cliff. I mean, it sounds like when buyers come into your world, you of course have very strong product knowledge, like you’re an expert in the franchising space. You’ve lived it, you’ve breathed it for many, many years, so that, that, that goes without question. You also from a sales perspective know how to engage with people in a powerful, direct way that instantly separates you from the competition because you’re not just talking information anymore, you know, you’re not just trying to sell or promote. You’re having those really deep, meaningful, kind of value-based conversations. One thing we haven’t talked about yet, but you kind of alluded to this a moment ago. You said, you know, “I have my leads or my, my screen or something over here with stuff coming in.” So what are you doing right now? What’s the most effective in terms of your client acquisition and kind of building your pipeline of prospects?

Getting ridiculously uncomfortable is the answer to that question. This is not what I do. Okay, this is not me, right? I am not the guy that wants to go out on podcasts and put myself out there and make bold statements that will remain on the internet forever. Right? I’m just not that guy. I host a podcast. It’s not me. I’m doing things. It’s evolve or die, right? So to, to, to keep evolving, I really do value my time, and I believe that time is the only commodity you cannot recycle. I don’t want to sift through crap every day. So if I could go on a show like yours, other high-quality shows, and I could share with people, “This is who I am. Are you connecting with me?” “No, I actually don’t like his tone. I don’t like the way he views life. I don’t like that guy at all.” Great. That’s helpful, right? Process of, I think deductive reasoning is just as powerful as reaching a conclusion. What don’t you like? Who wasn’t in the room? Right? It’s like, “Okay, you don’t want me.” Now you’re starting to understand what kind of personality you want to work with.

So I do value my time, and I think that doing social media things, making videos, creating content, I have news for everybody listening: You can’t avoid it. You cannot avoid it. If you are not putting yourself out there and standing true to your belief system, don’t straddle the fence and pretend to be red and blue, and “I don’t do-” No, you have to believe in a party, you have to believe in a position. You can’t play neutral because if you’re neutral, you’re nameless and faceless and you have no identity, and no one has any use for that person, because, right? They really don’t. So I take a position. It’s a risk-taking position. I’m putting myself in uncomfortable situations to make it rain.

So you mentioned, so podcasts, you said content, videos, when you look at the different channels that you’re using right now, if you could rank them, you know, number one channel in terms of where most of your leads come from, number two, number three, what are the kind of the top three or four channels that that you as a company are focusing on?

All right, so on the outside of buying, right, outside of buying it, I’m going to call it organic. I’m going to answer your question organically. I think LinkedIn by far is number one, like hands down, blows every-

And what are you doing on LinkedIn? Like just posting content about-

Posting content, outbound messaging. Yep. Whatever the threshold is. And of course, it’s outsourced by our marketing director. What, whatever- call it 200 in mails or outbound mails and all those things and connection requests.

Sorry, Cliff, to interrupt, but just to confirm. So you’re posting content on LinkedIn, but your team is also using LinkedIn to send, you know, messages to people every single day, create conversations. So there’s activity happening there in the background that does not require your day-to-day involvement.

[30:18] – How to Leverage AI in Your Consulting Business

No, it’s a lot of it with AI. A lot of it is automated, which is another reason why our org chart is flat. We’ve terminated people. We don’t need all these people. AI, AI is a game changer. And that’s another bit of advice for anyone listening. If you’re not using AI right now, you are going to get left behind. You just don’t know it yet. It’s just a fact. And a lot of firms are going to be replaced, a lot of employees are going to be displaced because AI is going to replace you. It is absolutely brilliant. And I leverage AI, I leverage AI daily. We leverage it on social media platforms, we leverage it on LinkedIn specifically, outbound, you name it. AI plays a huge role in keeping the firm insanely profitable and flat, right? Very few people.

Okay, so LinkedIn’s number one. What’s number two?

I think after that, now you’re probably getting into Spotify and Apple for lead gen because, yeah.

Podcasts.

Yes. Yes. And then after that, you’re getting down into the Instagrams and the Facebooks. The issue with the Facebook is the quality of the candidate, which we’re not talking about. You just asked on lead volume and lead flow. But if you wanted to talk about, if you said, “Okay, thanks for the ordering. Now talk quality.” Oh, like LinkedIn and and Apple and Spotify. A podcast listener is a, this person is dedicated to seeking self-improvement and constantly growing. This person is not binge watching on Netflix. They’re listening to Huberman, they’re listening to Michael, right? They’re listening to people that have something intelligent to say so that they can grow. These are your best leads. I think it’s an underrated platform, podcasting. I think it’s one of the most powerful mediums ever created to get your voice out there. And that’s part of the problem with society. Any idiot can also get on a podcast and say something really irresponsible and get play, right? So it’s a double-edge.

Definitely a lot of noise in the marketplace these days. For you, Cliff, I mean, so you’re running a multimillion-dollar consulting business. What’s one thing or, you know, it could be a concept, a belief, a mindset, something that you feel has been instrumental for you to get to that next level? Maybe it’s, you know, some kind of a breakthrough or again, a realization but that you can share for others that you think could also have an impact for them. Maybe it’s something that could often be overlooked, but once you really kind of took hold of it, it was incredibly powerful for you.

[32:42] – Mindset Hacks from a 7-Figure Consultant

Yeah. I’ll give you some of my most underrated advice. Number one, choose your spouse wisely. I think the most underrated business advice you could ever give another human being is choose your spouse wisely. Next, do not take advice from people that aren’t where you want to be. Your uncle who’s a plumber that’s telling you not to be a consultant really should not be in the decision-making matrix. But I’m being honest, like that, just start talking to people and surrounding yourself with people that are where you want to be and get advice from those people.

I’m a huge believer in visualization, and I don’t think enough people do visualization. I get as granular in my visualization, as granular as accepting the award for something that I want. I even role play my acceptance speech or getting down to the vehicle or the boat or the house that I want to own. Visualization is one of the most powerful techniques, I think, ever, ever known to man.

And is that a daily practice for you?

Oh god, yeah. Absolutely daily. Multiple, multiple times a day. Multiple times a day.

Do you schedule time to do that or you just kind of fit it in where you can?

Well, it’s a lock that the end of the evening, before I go to bed, I show my attitude of gratitude and I absolutely start visualizing what I want. And it’s always a life of abundance. It’s a life of health, wealth, and happiness for not just me, it’s for all the people that are in my life that I surround myself with. But I spend a lot of time on visualization. I believe that what you think about, you bring about. So if you’re going to think about failure, you will bring about failure. If you think about insane success, it’s going to become self-fulfilling. Dispenza talks about it, Huberman talks about it. There are so many people that you could go- the Secret. The entire book or movie, The Secret, talks about the law of attraction, right? And it’s the same thing. It’s a law. It’s not, it’s not a rule, it’s not an idea. This is a law like the law of gravity. If you think positively, if you show an attitude of gratitude, you will bring abundance into your life. You will be instantly happier.

I also believe, and I know this is a weird thing, but I use social media as a business tool, as a learning tool. Other people use it to doomscroll and literally mess with their head. I think that getting off of social media platforms and getting away from that noise, you will be instantly happier. And lastly, I would say I believe that people need to spend time on how exactly to overcome fear. I feel the fear, but I do it anyway. And I’m using fear as a motivator and to manage risk and to use my business acumen and my financial acumen to manage risks so that if it goes south, I didn’t affect my lifestyle and I didn’t mortgage my family’s future. So fear is, I think there’s a lot there to unpack. There’s, I believe there’s some golden nuggets in there and then these nuggets have absolutely changed my life.

[35:36] – Why You Need Discipline and KPIs

I want to ask a related question or kind of a similar approach to thinking through this. You talked about one of the lessons, right, you didn’t say it was a lesson, but you said something I thought was very insightful and very true earlier on, which is that it takes almost the same amount of work to, you know, to land a large client as it does a small client or a larger deal value as opposed to a smaller deal value. Are there any other business lessons, more specifically around how you’ve structured your business model or your pricing strategy or marketing or deal structures, anything, strategy that relates to the the insides of the business that for you have been very powerful that maybe you haven’t yet touched on today?

There are things that are- I believe that most people lack discipline, and I think you need to have a strict adherence to some discipline, especially if you’re in our business. You have to be driven, motivated, and you need to set a quota for yourself. How many outbound?

Can you, can you kind of dive into a bit more? Like when you say discipline, what do you really mean? Can you give an example of what that might look like for somebody or or even for you?

Yeah, I mean, like just get routine. I think routine’s very important. It’s very healthy for the brain too. Routine is necessary. We’re going to bed at the same time, waking up at the same time and having, going to the gym, eating clean, hitting the phones. In this business that we’re discussing, the phone is everything: outbound dials, overcoming objections, handling of objections, right, asking for the order. I call it tactful persistence in the face of rejection, just stay at it, stay at it, stay at it, right, and make it happen. I think a lot of people lack that. I look at people in my industry and they do not make the outbound dials that I make. They don’t even have a written list, checking off the number of dials that they make. They don’t talk about the number of consultations that they’ve had. They don’t talk about that- They don’t measure anything. So create a dashboard, create KPIs, and make sure that you’re nailing those KPIs. What gets measured gets done. If you don’t measure dials, you won’t make dials. If you don’t measure consultations, you won’t do consults. If you don’t measure new client acquisition, you won’t get new clients acquired.

I mean, it’s actually, there’s nothing more deceptive than the obvious, right? But people, I always tell people when I was managing teams, it’s like, look, people don’t need to be told, Michael, they need to be reminded. That’s really what goes on. You could go to seminar, seminar, seminar, webinar, webinar, webinar. “I’m flying to Vegas. I’m meeting with consultant gurus,” and all they do is remind you of everything you’ve already been told. But you’re looking for a silver bullet to to like get around the work. And I tell people this all the time, success only comes before work in the dictionary. It’s not going to happen. It’s not going to happen. You’ve got to put the time in.

So staying disciplined and making those dials in our business, playing in traffic, getting outside of your comfort zone. And that’s one of the reasons why- I thought you were going to ask me a different question. I thought you were going to ask me, “Why do you think people spend time on small deals versus large deals?” And the answer goes back to fear. I had someone in my team that liked to to minnow hunt instead of whale hunt. And the answer was very simple: “You lack confidence. You don’t think you could speak to a C-suite. You have, you’ve hit, you’ve, you banged your own head on a glass ceiling. No one put that glass ceiling there to bang your head on. You did that to yourself.” So what do you do? You hunt and kill little deals and you get scraps that you bring back to your house instead of whale hunting and having confidence and looking someone in the eye and saying, “I got this. I could save your company 30%.”

[39:09] – A Breakdown of Cliff’s Sales Calls

So before we wrap this up, Cliff, I want to ask you about the dials that you’re making. Are you calling companies mainly, or are these the individuals that are going to become the buyers? Who are you actually, like how, how are you kind of going about those calls?

I represent over 600 brands. We make outbound dials to connect with new brands that I have an interest in, that I’d like to learn more about, bring them into my inventory so that I can share them with my client. That’s a small percentage of dials. The next dials are going to be calling people who have requested information.

Is that, they’ve requested information from your website or from some other source?

From our website, from another area. We advertise brands. We have a lot of brands. So if I really like something, I’ll advertise that brand saying, “Hey, you should take a closer look at testosterone therapy.”

[39:58] – The Consulting Franchise World

Let’s talk about this world. People always like, you know, you did an episode actually on this where you need to find your modality, right, of consulting. Like, where do you fit in this massive world? And look at my world. Someone could come to me and say, “Hey, I don’t want to create a consulting practice. I’d like to buy one.” You could buy ActionCOACH, you could become a medical billing consultant, you could become a medical staffing consultant, you could become a fundraising consultant. There’s so many, do you know how many franchise, I bet you I have nearly two dozen franchises just in the consulting space that one of your listeners can say, “This has been my issue. What do I become a consultant on?” And then they end up meeting a guy like me and it’s like, “I’m going to become a corporate coach. I am going to become a turnaround expert. I am going to become an AI integrator consultant.” I mean, think about consulting, the world is your oyster. You literally can reinvent yourself like that.

[40:50] – Where to Find Cliff

Cliff, I know there’s so much more that we can dive into here today, but I really appreciate you coming on and sharing just a bit of your story. I think so many of the things that we talked about in terms of fear and success and the growth mindset, how you, you know, are so direct with clients because you truly care, really, really shines through powerfully. So I appreciate you bringing that. I want to make sure that people can learn more about you and everything that you have going on. Where’s the best place for them to go?

The website: Franocity.com. F-R-A-N-O-C-I-T-Y.com.

We will link that up as well on the show notes over at consultingsuccess.com. Cliff, again, thanks so much for coming on.

Thanks, Michael. Pleasure.

Important Links:

Cliff Nonnenmacher
Franocity
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