Ep. 203 INTERVIEW – Daryl Dixon

6 Steps Every Entrepreneur Should Embrace to Ensure Business Success  INTERVIEW with Daryl Dixon founder and CEO of VALiNTRY Services. Daryl provides an overview of 6 key steps for entrepreneurs on setting up or reigniting a business for maximum growth and profitability. 


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Get ready for an unfair advantage over your competition. This is The Sales Edge podcast. Where globally recognized sales expert and trainer Joe Pici helps you sharpen your skills for booking more appointments and closing more deals. And now here’s your host Joe Pici.

Joe Pici (JP):

Hey welcome. This is Joe Pici. The Sales Edge podcast number 203. What if you could sit down with an expert prior to starting a business, starting to Career? But today we’re going to be talking about some of the keys of starting a business. How many mistakes would you cut out? How many pitfalls would you alleviate, how much more money would you make? I know for Joe and Dawn Pici we needed someone to tell us what was the roadmap to becoming successful in being a business Owner.

And so as we’re going to work through some things today, we’re putting together for you a series of you know how-to-its and what we’ve done is we’re bringing experts in the field of business ownership, Career Development later in a month. We’re going to have some Career Development keys, but I know when I look back, some of the mistakes we’ve made if I would have had an opportunity to sit with an expert to sit with somebody that had been there done that had the scars, how much faster we would have gone. Now first. I want to thank our sponsors Pici and Pici Inc. A full-service speaking, coaching, training, consulting company right now focusing on helping their clients recapture lost revenue and also SellMoreVirtually.com. This is a membership based platform, every Thursday night I’m out there and I’m doing a live Coaching or training. Also downloads, interviews, e-courses. And so we want to thank them. Once again, this is podcast number 203. Thank you so much. Oh, by the way, before we move forward into our interview, Global gurus has just announced 2021 as you know, 2019 I was number three. 2020 I was number one and 2021 I am number two in the world as sales trainer and speaker. Now our sales training program was number one in 2020, we’ll let you know when the votes are all counted. But thank you we’re humbled and it’s so exciting to be in that top Echelon and it’s only it a testament to you helping us get there. So now is we’re moving forward. We are getting ready to interview Daryl Dixon, you know along the line when you’re working With people some people are just clients, but then every once in a while of client becomes a great friend and a mentor.

And I’m going to give some information on Daryl Dixon. He spent over 20 years of his career in Corporate America and the last 20 years as an independent entrepreneur. Darryl founded Valintry Services in 2013, his second bootstrapped startup. As the CEO of Valintry, He has led the organization That has received multiple awards for growth, Innovation, and workplace Excellence. Daryl have a question written down that I’d really like you to address. I think this is right in your wheelhouse.

When it comes to nurturing your new startup business in conjunction with sales and marketing, what would you share with our audience today?

Daryl Dixon (DD):

As I thought about this, There’s probably, I can boil it down to kind of six things to focus on. And a lot of times a business is thinking about growing maybe you’ve got enough traction that you know that there’s a business there. You want to nurture it you want to grow it. Sometimes they’ve started by Accident, sometimes People have fallen into an opportunity, you know, sometimes that is an opportunity outside an organization that they be they used to work with or or a friend invited them to come join an organization that could be a start-up. And so one of the things I would encourage everybody to do would be to stop. The meaning that when this business is small and you’re at you want to build something big, you really need to stop and confirm, and make sure that the name of the business is worth the investment. And that the investment that you’re about to make to grow this Enterprise is a name that you’re going to be able to keep.

So a lot of times people don’t take the time to really determine whether the name is a registered name or not and a name could be registered in a state, could be registered nationally, but I would encourage everybody to make sure that that name is is not taken. Especially if it’s in the the same service that you’re going to deliver because, you’re Potentially work for two or three years and it’s going to be taken from you and you’re going to almost start all over in terms of your brand. So the other thing a couple other things that I would encourage people to avoid is using common words and normal Spelling’s because, common words and normal spellings are very difficult to trademark. There’s a high probability They’ve been trademark before. In addition to that, is if your plan to sell the business in the future, even though you’re very important and maybe you’re a high ego person and no offense to you Joe, but don’t name it after yourself.

(JP):

I should have had you in my life years ago because we have violated a lot of the things you’re talking about.

(DD):

You really haven’t Joe, just depends on your goal. But if your goal ultimately is to sell the business it’s going to be harder to sell if it’s centered around you, your relationships, and your name. And so you want to build the organization thinking about a broad range of talent, talent beyond yourself. Of course, the what you provide really you and Dawn have the talent and make your business very very successful. But if you’re in a some sort of a service business or something like that, a buyer doesn’t want to come in and think that all the relationships belong to the owner that they’re buying out. So it sounds you know, it’s difficult to stop and slow down and kind of think backwards for a minute. But if you know you’re about to build something big, you want To make sure that it’s on a strong Foundation. I always like to think of even if I have a small business that I’ve built it on the foundation of a skyscraper because, at that point the sky’s the limit.

One last piece on that name in my belief is if you cannot obtain the URL, okay for the for that name, okay, a .com URL specifically, I would find a different name. I think it’s that important that if you try to use a. net, or a .tv, or all the other silly that you know, suffix is that they use now for URLs. It’s just not it’s just going to set you behind, it’s going to slow you down, It’s going to cause confusion. Because most customers are automatically going to put in a.com. So like I said, if that URL is not available, I would encourage you to buy it, even if you have to pay a lot of money for it or I would encourage you to change the name and build off that new name again, that’s unique and that you can trademark And register.

The second thing Joe is you know, just make sure your corporate organization process is the right organization process. Many entrepreneurs are llc’s those are great. They can be set up and run as a partnership. I’m not that talented and the reason that’s very important for me as I’ve started companies that I’ve had to have talent work alongside me because I certainly don’t possess the talent that they have. And so What that does is it allows you to have Partners, it allows you to select those Partners carefully, you know next to getting married in my opinion selecting a business partner is the second most important decision that you can make.

I mean there’s huge legal ramifications if it actually is a partnership. If you split or disagree on things, in the future. But, along those same lines is an operating agreement, which is standar in most corporations. That operatiing agreement, again using an analogy of marriage, is sort is like a prenuptual agreement. It basicially defines everything that is gonig to happen with anything that you can possibly think of that could happen.

What happens when a partner dies, what happens if a partner leaves, what happens if a partner goes bankrupt? Believe it or not, Even what happens if a partner gets a divorce? Because it affects the ownership of that company. So selecting Founders and partners Are very very very very important. And I would encourage entrepreneurs to balance risk and reward. Meaning that in my first company, I was the primary, I was the financier of the company. I bootstrapped the company. I took my life savings, i bet it that it that I picked some wonderful wonderful Partners who have the privilege of still working with today on my second company, but in that in that process they had a very very tiny ownership stake in the company. But when they joined the company they were paid competitive salaries and wages. What that means is they really didn’t take as big a risk as I did. And so consequently they were able to maintain their Market salary. Not that they didn’t take huge risk betting on me and betting on our company, but it wasn’t like they invested their life savings. And so there was a proportional ownership stake in terms of who takes the risk and who has the ownership.

The last piece I would say on that Is, don’t be a glutton. And what I mean by that is a lot of times, I mean what owner doesn’t want to keep a hundred percent ownership in the company, of course you do. And especially when you go to sell the company if you’ve shared that Equity with other partners, you may look at it and say wow if I had only kept it all. If I only kept a hundred percent of it I wouldn’t have to be sharing, you know, potentially millions of dollars with other people. But what I tell myself over and over is look these people have talent I don’t have, there’s no way I could ever do this without them. And to make sure that they can participate fairly and equitably I think is good business. Just carefully pick those Partners. The other piece is in terms of nurturing this business is learn quickly and nurture your best marketing channels. if that’s LinkedIn, if that’s Facebook, if that’s Google AdWords, if it’s search engine optimization organic or pay-per-click.

The longer it takes you to identify that channel the higher risk of your company failing. Most companies don’t fail because they’re bad ideas are bad businesses, they fail because they run out of capital, they run out of cash. And so really thinking through those marketing channels, preferably more than one, and not being dependent just on one source of business is really Paramount. The other the other left to I would just mention is, you know, I’ve said this before but This is straight out of the book of Pici and Pici, and that is develop a Cadence for your sales process.

Identify the pain points, connect tactically and then strategically, with those clients. And you better have a process that you can I call it rinse, lather, and repeat. Rinse, lather, and repeat over and over and over again. You can tweak it to the right, you can tweak it to the left but, you need that routine process to be able to generate and grow the business. The last piece is protect the company reputation at all cost. I don’t care if it costs you money. I don’t care if you’re going to lose money, but really for the most part if you’re in your beginning stages of the company, you cannot afford one miss. And so make the client happy if you can afford it by all means do whatever it takes to maintain that reputation. But in a nutshell Joe, those are the six key things that I would focus on in terms of nurturing a business if I had it to do over. I wish I had known these things many years ago.

(JP):

Yeah, the only thing we knew how to do was sell and deliver. And that’s where we entered the marketplace. And but here’s a question for you, because Valintry is just not a name You see anywhere and you schooled us on when picking a name, yours is unique. Can you give us some background on what is where did it come from And what does it mean?

(DD):

Sure. Valintry is a derived word. I spent many weeks, I’d sit in a restaurant, I think of a term or a different examples of words or split words, but the root cause of Valintry is Valor. And Valor interestingly enough and you’ve heard me use this word in multiple interviews with you, Valor really represents courage in battle.

The other word that it is also made up of the first half of course is Valor. The second half is made up of the word gallantry. And believe it or not gallantry and Valor have the exact same meaning. It’s it’s courage in battle. And so after having gone through my first startup, I knew how much courage it took. And me and my business partners, There’s been a lot of days we’ve looked at each other and said whose idea was this? Why are we sitting here? But you know, we Don’t look back and we’re glad we’ve done it. But we spent a lot of time picking that name. It’s a derived word. It’s trademarked. Nobody can take it from us. It wasn’t registered anywhere. And really love the way that the meaning really is representative of our organization and the type of passion we have for taking care of our clients and also taking care of our own team and our employees.

(JP):

You know, I will tell you that. We just have thousands of clients and people we work with and I would tell you, I don’t know to too many companies out there that make the investment in human collateral that you make in the way of training and and really equipping your people to be successful. Every time I turn around you’re doing some type of training and coaching with your people and it’s I think that’s one of the reasons why you have been so successful.

(DD):

Well Joe, you’ve been a big part of that, you know, especially Over the last three years. Having spent 20 years in corporate life, the sales training that you’ve provided to me and my team has been unlike anything that I’ve ever had exposure to. And these were companies that were in excess of a billion dollars in Revenue. The sales training that you’ve provided and the coaching you provided to my sales team and to me personally, has really made a significant difference. And is really propelling us to the next level of growth and development here at Valintry.

(JP):

I appreciate that and if it’s been great, but please tell our audience How do they get to you? I mean, you know if I’m out there and I you know this whole digital space at everything you do. I’m thinking how do I get to Valintry? How can I have a conversation with someone there? How did they get to you?

(DD):

Sure. The easiest way Joe, is that they go to www.Valintry360.com.

And from there you can we can certainly help them with digital transformation, which is one of the core things we do. But we also work a lot with technology Talent, with award-winning software that we’ve developed to do that. And then we have this unique Niche with CPA firms and placing CPAs across the country. But if they just go to www.Valintry360.com that’ll get them to where they need to go.

(JP):

So now you know why Daryl is such a great friend, a great mentor. You know, Darryl and I work very hard to have lunch at least once a month or just drink some coffee. Both take out our pads. How would you like an opportunity to sit with a person like Daryl Dixon? You know peer development, having right mentors and coaches in your life, subscribing to the right books, the right personal and professional growth can keep us from those pitfalls. My recommendations is continue to listen to this podcast. If you like it, can you like it? Can you share it? Can you make a five star rating and a comment?

We’re excited about the growth that you’re helping us get. But more than anything Sales Edge wants to be an asset to you. As part of your journey and as Darrell, so well explained he gave us six valuable tips. And you know, it’s really funny because, we think back, Joe and Dawn Pici look back and the very first one he gave us we did just the opposite. We named our company Pici and Pici and so he was very polite. But for I wish I would have known that, I wish because that’s all part of scalability. And when he talked about protecting your entity, making sure it was legally protected. When he talked about having that marketing process and that sales process. You know, these are all things quite frankly, when I go in and sit down with companies, when I go in and really look at what they’re doing. I see some of the gaps.

He’s a wealth of information. He certainly has poured a great deal into our lives. Hopefully we’ve we’ve done the same for them individually and to the company. So as we wrap up this podcast number 203, we’re on our way to our next Milestone which will be 300. We’ve got tremendous amount of information for you. Go to the SellMoreVirtually.com platform run around on there. It’s a great membership platform. Tremendous amount of content. But also take out your phone and you’re going to text the word salesedge, one word, to 55678. That will make sure sales Edge is one word. That’s going to take you to a Pici and Pici link, which will take you to a splash page. There’s a 5 e-course video series, completely free. Recapture lost Revenue through virtual selling. There’s links to our membership platform, SellMoreVirtually.com. There’s free ebooks. There’s links to this podcast. More than anything else in 2021, We want to make sure we are complete asset to your growth, the growth of your business. So thanks for stopping in and thank you to Daryl Dixon and we’ll move forward to our next podcast

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Thanks for listening. New episodes will air each Tuesday and Thursday. So make sure to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts and give us a five star review. The Sales Edge is sponsored by Pici and Pici Incorporated. A firm which provides training, consulting, and keynote presentations. Empowering corporations and individuals to attract and retain quality clients, for higher revenues and growth. Make more money in sales, speak with Joe in person by calling 407 947 2590 or visit www.piciandpici.com