[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to Big Ticket Pros, the podcast for agencies, coaches and high end service providers who know what it takes to thrive in competitive markets. I'm your host Ana Gonzalez and you can find me on social media nabotprime. Our guests share insider tips, strategies and sometimes cautionary tales to help you close bigger deals and scale your business faster.
Big Ticket Pros is sponsored by FastTrack Funnels, the new way to bring in consistent daily sales for your business in 2025 without cold outreach or burning cash on ads.
We use this method with a brand new business to generate more than 100,000 cash collected in less than 30 days.
Download the free step by step blueprint that shows exactly how we did it at exactly how we did
[email protected] that's getconversions.net Today's guest is Chris Troca. Did I say it right?
[00:00:53] Speaker B: That's perfect.
[00:00:55] Speaker A: Thank you. So Chris helps solopreneurs and small businesses save time, nurture leads and scale through smart marketing and efficient automation. With a background in building an award winning wedding DJ business, Chris specializes in leveraging automation and the buyer's journey to drive growth.
So Chris, welcome to Big Ticket Pros.
What is the best piece of advice you would give to someone just starting out in your industry?
[00:01:23] Speaker B: Anna, thanks so much for having me. Really excited to be here. For business owners and entrepreneurs who are just starting out, it can be a lot. It can feel overwhelming. Not really sure where to start. You have a thousand different directions you can go.
Cool thing is is coming from a marketer here, you don't even need a website or even a brand name to even get started. Simply just reach out to your network and ask them, hey, would you be interested in buying this product? That is a perfect way to confirm product validation within your market before you even build something. I see a lot of people spending time doing this. So my adv for entrepreneurs is get out there, take action, do something. Don't feel like you need to create this big expensive brand in order to put a great offer or idea out there.
[00:02:05] Speaker A: I love that because it's, it's.
I'm going to say it's simple but not a lot of people think about it. I like that you said you don't even need a website.
Just go out there and look for product validation.
And I will say while you're looking for that product validation, test your offer. Test how you explain your offer to people and once you find it, the most simple way to explain what you're doing in I don't know, 10 seconds, keep trying, and then do the reps.
[00:02:39] Speaker B: That is exactly right. And that's where a lot of people fail, is they spend so much time building out what they think the perfect product would be instead of actually bringing that product to market or asking their ideal client, would this be a good fit for you? What would you like to see out of this piece? And that's something that's very important, is getting an actual feedback from your client or potential ideal client, because they're going to tell you exactly what. What keywords, what. What things are important to them, what motivators they have.
That's your cheat code. Ask your market what they're looking for, and then you can build it for them and kind of bypass that. That big, big heartbreak moment in beginning a business where you spend and invest so much time only to have it not work out. It's unfortunate.
[00:03:23] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. You know, you mentioned two very important things. I think one of. One of them is that people start trying to perfect their thing and they're just spinning their wheels and they're just. I know. You know, this one little pixel here, this was needed. And in reality, it was not like it. Imperfect action is better than perfect inaction. That was one thing that I got from what you said. And then the other one is asking the market what they want.
Because I think, or I remember that years ago, I was like, no, I really like this. I'm sure that someone else would like it. And I mean, yes, but no.
[00:04:09] Speaker B: So true.
[00:04:11] Speaker A: Yeah. And, you know, I think that when you figure out what your target audience, what your market wants is when you start bringing success to what you're doing.
[00:04:26] Speaker B: Right? Absolutely. And most entrepreneurs are kind of lost when it comes to deciding who is their audience, their offer and their messaging. And sometimes they'll even go back and forth between. Maybe this offer might be a better fit for this audience, or maybe this audience really doesn't want this offer. So you can go back and forth with playing, you know, who is this going to be a best fit for?
What am I really offering? How is that communicated to them? And then from there, just that trial and error. You can see what's worth scaling and taking to that next level. But. But for a lot of business owners out there, you know, they know their craft, they know what they do well, but they have to wear so many hats. And that's why they hire out and start building a team in order to empower, you know, the. The teammates and the experts in their field to do what they do best to handle Things like accounting, crunching numbers for you for marketing and bringing in more sales.
So many different pieces that you can leverage your money to now start working for you. Instead of, you know, you as maybe a dentist or a lawyer. I don't imagine you, you know, are going out there to rip out a toilet or replace a plumbing fixture. No, you're going to leave that up to the pros. So you make sure you hire out how? Hire out the help when you need it and invest your money when it's time.
[00:05:41] Speaker A: Yes, love that.
Other than what you mentioned about. All right, so who is it that fit for? How do I communicate it and then go to trial and error?
And I think that another thing that, that is so important is that entrepreneurs usually wear many hats and sometimes it's like, oh, I don't, I don't, I can't afford a foyer. I was making two words the same, I can't afford to hire.
So which they had a baby in the foyer, they think I can't afford to hire someone.
But it then turns into I cannot afford, afford to not afford this.
Because as you mentioned, if I have, I don't know, a toothache, I'm not gonna watch YouTube videos to be able to fix my own tooth.
So why would I not hire a marketing specialist or a VA to help me with my emails or some with something that is taking my time.
[00:06:56] Speaker B: To.
[00:06:56] Speaker A: For me to not be able to do business income generating tasks?
[00:07:03] Speaker B: Yes, absolutely. And I think over time you'll realize your time as a business owner becomes more valuable and it just doesn't make sense financially for you to take on a lot of those tasks anymore.
So for a lot of business owners, what worked well for me, and I recommend to others, is rather than hiring, is to automate first. You really need a well defined process and use tools and software that's available to you to help give you a more clear, bigger picture of your process and automate what you can and then find those really important moments for the human touch points.
Because we see this happen all the time is business owners get overwhelmed and they think I need to hire someone. And that's great that they recognize that. But why pay a human to do tasks that a computer or software can do for you? And it's just about maximizing efficiency and the value of time. Put your VA or your team on higher value tasks because they shouldn't have to send out emails, you know, every three, five, seven days on, on a time frame. Sure. They can do the human phone call, follow up and you know, there's talk out there whether AI voice might replace that completely or even, you know, fill some gaps in there, but it's something that business owners should be aware of is, you know, as you're trying to grow and scale to, to use software, leverage that to automate and then you can help, help hire as well.
[00:08:28] Speaker A: So agree, so I so agree with, with that.
Automating the lower value tasks.
Talking from my experience has been really great to, To maximize efficiency in our tasks and in our whole team tasks. There are things that it might seem like it doesn't take so long, like so much time to do, but it adds up.
So we, we have automated a lot of the things that we do or, I don't know, things that we needed to create and now the machine does that and now the team can focus on higher value tasks.
[00:09:25] Speaker B: Yes, absolutely. And, and it's now allowing you guys to scale much more quickly because now your, your day can be filled with having wonderful podcast guests and having interviews instead of trying to send emails or following up on, you know, some sort of process that again can, can just be done by the software and tools that are available to us. And now as, as tools advance like ChatGPT and now AI tools and coming soon will be AI operators.
These AI tools and operators now have access to their own tools. So now you have your own AI assistant or AI employee that can now, you know, schedule calendar appointments for you. They can identify which stage of the buyer's journey that you're in and continue to ask questions and provide value to nurture you along in your journey. They can even follow up in the typical, you know, five, seven, 10 business days that you want to follow up for your buyer's journey. And whether you're B2C so it's more of a shorter sales cycle or maybe you're B2B focus, where it's the, the higher ticket value.
There's, there's value to automating a lot of your processes. There's personalization you can add at scale, especially now with AI.
So we're having full on text and email conversations using AI and now it can reference past conversations of our clients. It can recognize you when you hop back onto the website and say, welcome back, Anna, thanks for, thanks for hopping on. How did everything go with that, you know, podcast yesterday? And it was like, oh wow, this, this really knows more about me as a person, them as a customer. It can understand you as a business. And it's, it's replacing a lot of the need for these outbound Call centers and just having like a really robust admin staff. It just allows you to answer each call as they come in instantly instead of waiting on hold and then after hours support as well. So when your business is closed, is there someone taking on the phone calls and capturing and nurturing the leads for you? If not, that is what we help with, with a lot of our clients from B2B to B2C. We help with, you know, dentists and hair salons and a little bit everything. Doesn't it feel like you always have an ideal client in mind? And then suddenly the floodgates open and new clients of different industries start coming and suddenly you have just this buffet of new clients. You're like, well, I guess I can't really be a specialist in this industry.
That's just for me. I don't know how it is for you.
[00:11:55] Speaker A: Like, oh, now I need to specialize in this other thing.
[00:11:57] Speaker B: Right?
What is the queen?
[00:12:02] Speaker A: Yes. I think we all have that, that in common. It's like, oh, a new thing to learn.
[00:12:07] Speaker B: Yep, yep. But as a part of the process and the journey, you know, for us, just having these conversations one on one, connecting with other people either via LinkedIn or Facebook groups, finding, finding your community, your network where you can share ideas. There was a moment maybe about four to five years ago where I, I found myself being the smartest person in the room. And, and if you know anything, you're like, that is not a good thing to happen because you want to surround yourself and constantly challenge yourself.
For a lot of people, I tell them, you need to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. If you're looking to step beyond anything you've ever done before, if you're looking to get results that you've never had before, you need to do things you're willing that you've never been willing to do before. And part of that is being uncomfortable, just kind of putting yourself out there. So for a lot of us business owners, we're just kind of taking things a day at a time. We're learning from each other, we're sharing our knowledge.
And this is, this is probably the best job I feel like I could ever, ever have. It definitely beats a 9 to 5, you know, commuting an hour each way and then hating, hating my life once I get home and cry about my job. I'm like, no, that's not for me. But for the entrepreneurs out there, man, this is, this is a great, great position to be in. Love the opportunity out there. It's hard, but I think it's worth. Worth a lot of the work.
[00:13:25] Speaker A: It's very hard, but I think it's very rewarding.
[00:13:28] Speaker B: Yeah, it is. It is.
[00:13:30] Speaker A: So, Chris, tell us about who you serve and how people can reach out to you.
[00:13:34] Speaker B: Absolutely. People can find me online at LinkedIn, Facebook, or they can find my website, Chris trocha.com or my marketing automation, focus-biz.com A lot of my clients right now tend to be in the B2C space. So if you're a local business owner with possibly a retail location, we've had a lot of client success within that realm. Our focus is getting you found and get.
Getting you in front of the right people. So we focus heavier on search engine optimization, rank you higher on keywords that people are looking for, solutions to their problems. From there, we use a lot of our tools and automation to help capture, nurture, and convert those leads into appointments for them. So a lot of the B2B, dentists, lawyers, any retail location out there can definitely benefit from our services. Would love to chat more and kind of take it from there.
[00:14:25] Speaker A: Awesome.
So we're going to wrap it up here. Thank you, Chris, for joining us and sharing some wisdom about thriving in a competitive industry.
You can learn more about what Chris does by visiting him on LinkedIn on Facebook. Chris Troca or Chris Troca.com or focus-biz.com Did I get it right?
[00:14:43] Speaker B: You nailed it.
[00:14:44] Speaker A: Yeah. Thank you.
All right, if you are an agency coach, professional services provider, or otherwise expensive stuff, we'd love to have you on a future episode. You can apply at bigticketpros. Com. And once again, if you want to learn about the new way, we're booking dozens of qualified calls per week with no ad spend, download our free blueprint at conversationalfunnels. Com. That's all for now. Go get that big ticket punched. See you later.
