The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Gee Ranasinha, CEO of Kexino.com

Episode Date: July 7, 2021

Kexino.com

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain now here's your host chris voss hi folks this is voss here from the chris voss show.com the chris voss show.com hey we're coming here in the integrate podcast we certainly appreciate you tuning in be sure to refer the show to your friends neighbors relatives, relatives, family, friends.

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know so go to goodreads.com fortune s chris voss hit that bell notification we don't love you for your bad person so be a good person that's all i'm saying go to youtube.com fortune s chris voss sign up over there bell notification hit the subscribe button you're gonna see all these wonderful videos they're gonna make your life so much better You can go to Goodreads. I did that one. Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram. We have groups all over the place, all over there. You're going to want to check them all out. Just search for Chris Voss or The Chris Voss Show. Today, we have another amazing gentleman. He's going to be telling us about all the cool things he does. His name is G. Ranaschina, and he is the CEO of Kexino, an award-winning startup and small business marketing agency. For seven years, he was the worldwide director of marketing for a

German software company, working with clients such as Ikea, Marvel, Nestle, Airbus, and Time Magazine. For the last 14 years, he has been the CEO of Kexino, an award-winning marketing agency specializing in helping startups and small businesses around the world deploy next-generation marketing within and across their organizations. He's a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing. He is also a visiting professor of the well-known European Business School, lecturing to final year MBA students on marketing and behavioral economics. Originally from London, today, G lives in with his family in Strasbourg, France, which sounds lovely. How are you doing, G? Welcome to the show. Thanks very much, Chris. Thanks for inviting me. I'm very happy to be here. Very happy to be part of the Chris Voss family.

Chris Voss family. There you go. I want to know how Strasbourg, France is, by the way. Is that beautiful right now? Absolutely wonderful. You have to come over. I'll give you the 10 cent tour. Not a problem. It's very picturesque. It's just on the French-German border. It's home to a number of European institutions. I've been here for, dare I say it, 20 years now. And yeah, I love it. It's got everything. We got a tour. What is it? Community building where they try and get people to move to the city. We got a whole plugin for Strasbourg, France now. So give us your plugs

where people can find you on the interweb and what you do. Well, you can find us, Kexino, at wouldyoubelievekexino.com. Duh. If you need to get hold of me, G, you can find me. You can email me at G at kexino.com. That's K-E-X-I-N-O. Otherwise, you can find me on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, you know, Google me if you're looking for me.

As long as you're not stalking me, I don't mind. I have a lot of stalkers and haters too, a lot of trolls. They make me feel loved because they constantly… You're a stalking type, Chris. You know, you do look like a stalking type. What can I say? There you go. Tell us, give us a little bit

of background on you. What got you in this business? What was your upbringing and what motivated you to want to get into this sort of thing? I've been doing marketing for about 25 years now, which obviously is impossible because I must've started when I was five, clearly. Sure, yeah. You and I. Right. It goes without saying, right? A couple of years ago. Yeah, just a couple, right? So I was in the corporate realm. I was marketing director, as you quite nicely said in the intro. I was a marketing director for a software company,

European software company, selling software solutions into print and publishing industries. And I was there for seven years and hit a bit of a ceiling, really. It's a small company and we couldn't really do much more. We just got to this stage and just grow, really. At the same time, I was looking around and this thing called the internet, maybe you've heard of it, I don't know. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

This internet thing came around and it started getting popular. The price of broadband became affordable to like normal people. Well, like me, not like you, but certainly like me. And the big brands, the big companies, the Fortune 500 were taking over commerce and interaction with customers and stuff using the internet because obviously they've got the deepest pockets. So I saw an opportunity because I thought, hang on, there must be a ton of startups and small businesses out there who need to play the game as well. They need to help from the marketing perspective, from a business perspective, to design a digital centric plan to exploit some of the opportunities that the internet presents to them, but obviously for a sustainable budget. So I jacked in the marketing director, me and a couple of my business network got together and the three of us, we started Kexino. That was back in 2008, which as you

remember, is not probably the best year ever to start a new business. I do remember that. It wiped out my whole empire. Okay. Not my best business decision, I have to say. Anyway, we got through that recession, and today we're 19 people in nine countries. In the U.S., we've got people from San Francisco to Boston, from Minneapolis to New Orleans. The rest of us are based in Europe, South Africa, and I have two people in Australia as well. It sounds more awesome than it is, to be honest. Logistically, it's an absolute nightmare. It's a real, yeah. I mean, we're a 100% remote working environment and we

have been since day one. I like to say we've been working from home since before it was trendy, before it was fashionable. Yeah. And I've got a group of people now who are exceptionally talented at what they do. I trust them with my life, professional life and physical life. They've got my back. They do some awesome work. And obviously, I take the credit because that's what it's about. And we work primarily with, like I said, small business and startups. Even though we're based in Europe, headquarters is in Europe, 80% of our business comes out of North America. Who'd have thunk, right? That's pretty crazy. This internet stuff really works, apparently. Evidently so.

Yeah. Yeah. I should get on these because i heard it's big tubes in the sky and stuff big tubes it is there's lots of unicorns and rainbows and that's oh unicorns and rainbows i'm yeah that's what powers the whole thing don't tell anybody but that's how it works yes that means that meme cat i saw 20 years ago the meme so what are some of the ranges of business marketing services that you help companies with? Yeah, business marketing services. Yeah, you know, doesn't really float my boat, to be honest, Chris.

Yeah, we do as much or as little as everybody else, right? We do branding and strategy and logo design and website development and print design and SEO and copywriting and PR and social media and ads and lead gen and language adaptation, video production. marketing plan for the particular client based upon their own circumstances, their own financial situation, the timeline, the business results that they're trying to achieve. And then focusing on that, the way I see it, it's a three-legged stool, right? So you have the business result that you're looking to achieve. You have the timeline that you want to achieve it. And then obviously you have, you know, the budget. And usually one of those things doesn't quite measure up. Usually, you know, we're all optimistic on these sorts of things. Usually.

So part of my job is trying to fit a court into a pint pot. If you get my meaning, right? I never thought of it that way, but that's an interesting way to put it. Something usually has to give. I'd love to say we get clients who have actually too much budget for what they want, still waiting for that client, really. That hasn't shown up yet. So it's usually a question of fitting two of those within the third. If your budget is lower than optimal for the business result that you're looking at, then it means either re-evaluating the business result or re-evaluating the timeline and just

trying to make that fit. And I think that's an important thing because if we really believe in the client, what they're doing, their narrative, their story, we try to make it work because I think there's lots of agencies out there who will just say, I don't get out of bed for X thousand dollars a gig, which doesn't really help the client. And it puts them in that danger area of finding agencies who will say yes, and then not deliver. And then they've lost money and they've got a sour taste in their mouth about what marketing is. And that doesn't do anybody any good. So the idea is to make it work and we try our best to make it work. We've done pro bono work in the past because we've really believed in what that client has done, but it's trying to find that workable area, that middle

ground that works for everyone. Simple as that. Yeah. So what makes you guys really unique and special like how do you guys stand out from the crowd of competition and stuff that really makes a difference for you we have a patent on unicorns and rainbows that helped i'll be honest with you chris there is no secret source, right? There is no secret source. We're as good or as bad as anybody else. The only thing, if there's a difference, we like to have a bit of fun as we work, as you may

have gathered from the course of the last few minutes. But the secret source, if there is one, is I've got 18 unbelievable individuals working with me. And that's what separates us. You know, in terms of capabilities, every agency has got the same software. Every agency has got the same hardware.

Every agency can do pretty much anything. All right. When it comes down to why choose one agency over another, a big part of it, honestly, is chemistry. It's not very rational and pragmatic, but the relationship between a marketing director or a business owner and their agency is a very personal. And it's sharing a lot about the internal workings of the business or the internal non-workings of the business quite often. And they're looking for a confidant. They're looking for an advisor, a soundboard. And there has to be that chemistry

between us and that client. And it's testament to the fact that even today, I've got clients who haven't worked with us for years who call up just to shoot the breeze. Hey, G, how are you doing? What's new? And that, I think, is the best and most productive relationship. What I like to say is we don't have clients. We have friends that we do business with. That's good. As long as those friends pay, that's usually. One way or another, they pay. My friends are always like, I'm friends with you.

I have to pay you? I thought we were friends. Oh, man. Anyway, I just be funny. Yes. And it works. And it's been working for 14 years. And I'm very grateful that it does. To be honest, 14 years ago, I didn't think we'd be as big as we are. We're still a small agency in the big scheme of things. But we're very selective about who we work with. We probably turn down 70% of the clients or inquiries that we get. Holy crap.

Yeah. Yeah, and that's not because we're like prima donnas or something. It's every single one of us need to believe in what that client is doing. There has to be buy-in because otherwise you can't do your best creative work if it's just a job. Otherwise, we might as well work in a bank or something, right? No disrespect to the bankers out there, obviously. You're creative at a bank. You just stuff some of that money in your attaché case every day.

Yeah, they call that something, Chris. I don't think that – Yeah, it might get you in prison. Yeah, quite right. But that is being creative. This is true. It's showing initiative as well. Yeah, you'll end up in prison

sharing a cell with bubba yeah there you go you can give some of that money so that he doesn't anyway the so is there a certain size of client that you take on is there a certain size of client you're looking for no it has to be a real business okay Okay. By that, I don't, no disrespect to the side hustlers out there, of which there are many, but if you've got a day job, we're probably not going to be the right fit for what you're looking for. You've really got to be into the marketing. Generally, if it's a startup, there needs to be some funding at some point in time. It's not, bootstrapping doesn't really work because it doesn't really scale.

And that's usually how businesses run out of cash for good reasons as well as bad reasons. Maybe you just can't keep up with sales, but you just don't have the infrastructure, the business infrastructure in place to do that. So we try to keep away from those type of businesses. And like I said, the drop shippers and the selling stuff that you found in China and stuff like that, that's not a startup. That's a hobby. That's not a business. No disrespect to those guys, because I'm sure they're doing really well, but that just doesn't really fit with what we're trying to do. Yeah. So if someone wants to work with you, what's the best way to get in touch with you,

reach out, see if you guys have a way to work together and stuff? Go to the website, go to kexino.com slash contact. You can find us there. As I said, there's various social media channels that we're on. You can obviously the best way by far, the absolute very best way is to listen to the chris voss show podcast i love it which is obviously the very best way to find out the late all of this sort of stuff no but seriously you yeah go to kexino k-e-x-i-n-o.com and very soon you'll fall over yourself for finding ways to get in contact with us. And we love a chat and talk is free.

All right. So we love it. We'll see if we can make something work for you. And if we can, great. If we can't, we shake hands and we part as soon to be friends. But we try our best to make it work. By the time our clients come to us, they've got a problem. And the easiest thing is to dismiss and say, we've got no budget.

Move on. Next, please. Even if it's just a question of pointing them in the right direction of where they need to go next. If we can't help them, maybe there's somebody else we know who can help them. And it's not doing it for investment that they'll come back to us down the road because we treated them nicely. It's just, I just want to help, Chris. I just want to help people. Yeah.

Because we're all small businesses, right? So we've got to stick together. We've got to look after each other, have each other's back. So if I can help, I will. There you go. There you go. Now, do you guys take on global clients? Is there any countries or areas that you stay out of? Pretty much everywhere. Like I said, we try to specialize in smaller businesses and startups or preferably funded startups of some sort. It doesn't have to be VC or that sort of thing. It can be bank loans and that sort of thing.

We do have one very large client based in Boston who is part of a $3.8 billion company. But that's not who we are. That's not the type of business we go after. Because there's 19 of us, right? So an account like that can saturate us very quickly. And it doesn't give us space to do the other stuff. The majority are Priority are either owner CEOs or small businesses up to about 20, 30, 40 employees, that sort of size. Or startups who have funding or maybe they have funding or are pre-revenue generation, post-Kickstarter type companies, that sort of thing. And then we have a network of referral agents who work with us in specific verticals, fintech, healthcare, manufacturing, engineering, these sorts of things where we work closely with certain industry bodies to, again, to help people out.

Even if it doesn't result in a client engagement, if it's making people aware of what they're getting into by marketing their small business or their buy beware, right? So the more information you can have upfront, hopefully it can save you making too many mistakes down the road. That's always key. Now you guys do marketing, SEO, design, advertising, translation, and public relations. Is that correct? Amongst other things. Yeah. Lots of other stuff. Yeah. design advertising translation and public relations is that correct amongst other things yeah lots of other stuff yeah we're just going through your

website right here we craft engagements according to the client requirements right client comes and says okay this is a situation for instance we're post Kickstarter we've had a successful Kickstarter launch and now we need to bring the product to market in this particular geographic area. And then we'll do a four-point deep dive with that client. We call it discovery. Different agencies call it different things, but it's basically looking at what the company is doing today, what marketing lead generation, what they're doing, what visual, what creative assets they have, if they have images, video,

if they have any branding work done, any messaging, any customer research segmentation, just to get an idea, 360 degree audit, if you like, of where they are. And then we can put a needs analysis together and say, okay, you've got this, but you need this, this, subtract this, leaves us with that. So we need to work on this list of work. And then we need to take a look at competitive analyses of what the other guys are doing, SEO profiles, advertising profiles, that sort of thing. And then from that, we can build a marketing strategy, which is obviously going to be based upon the business strategy. What is the marketing plan designed to achieve sales-wise, marketing-wise, business development-wise as part of the growth plan of the business. And then finally, we get to the fun part, which is what most people jump to straight at the beginning, which is the tactical stuff. So that's defining what channels

you're going to use, defining the creative execution, defining the range of media that you might be able to use seeing what we can measure and that tactical plan is obviously like i said it's based on that on those um three legs of the stool and then we just make it work so that's primarily how it comes together it's not rocket science i'd love to say there's some secret sauce there's no 11 herbs and spices here no 11 herbs and spices on your website you have a thing where people can figure out how much a marketing agency charges and how much people should be spending you have a little work project on your guys's website that seems to work pretty good and gives people an

idea where they can help calculate a marketing budget you want to talk a little bit about that you've been doing your homework haven't you ch? I'm going through your website as we speak right here in front of me. I'm just going through it, pulling my questions. Usually, you know, one of the biggest mistakes that business owners, CEOs make is they underestimate the cost of marketing. So what happens is they go off half-cocked and then they get a tangible result and then they run out of cash, simply run out of cash. So it's important not to underestimate the cost of marketing. When you're putting together your business plan, you need to have that line item.

And maybe that line item changes. Maybe your business is seasonal. It varies according to the time of the year, but it's important to put that down and account for that and amortize that correctly over the course of your financial year. Every business is different, right? Every business goal is different. You may be looking to exit within three years. You may be looking to grow an IPO in five, or maybe you just want to have a lifestyle company, which is absolutely fine. You just want the company, the business to generate a sustainable

revenue for you, your employees, your families, and you don't want to change the world. And that's all you want to do, which is absolutely fine. It's a business reason. Whatever that is, the percentage of revenue for apportioning to marketing will change. We say that it's roughly between 15 and 18%. We have to put a stick in the ground somewhere. That number is probably higher than you're thinking when you're putting that business plan together. But especially if you're reliant anywhere on an online lead generation side of the business, which pretty much everybody is today, you know, correctly crafted and architected online presence, a lead generation vehicle should be generating self-qualified leads for you 24-7. So if you had a salesperson on salary and commission doing that 50 weeks of the year,

that would cost you a certain amount of money, not just salary but commissions, all the rest of the stuff that goes with hiring personnel. So you need to think of what you're doing for marketing the same way, especially for the digital, because if you do it, it should pay for itself. I like to say that a marketing agency shouldn't cost you a penny. If a marketing agency is doing their job, they should be making you money. They shouldn't be costing you a thing. That's the point, otherwise.

Why do people spend money on really expensive accountants? Because they find stuff where they can save you money. And it's the same thing for marketing agencies. Now, do you guys do custom sort of packages, or do you guys have pre-built marketing packages? Neither. Neither? Okay. Neither? Okay. Neither.

Okay. We don't believe in packages unless it's Christmas, but that's a different type of package. That's a different type of package, yeah. Different type of package, no. Everything is custom built. Everything is bespoke because a package is insulting, I think, right? Because it assumes that what your business needs is exactly the same thing as what another business needs.

And so from an agency perspective, I think agencies are lazy by doing packages. They're just copying and pasting what they've done with somebody else and trying to fit it in with what they're trying to offer for you. And I think what makes much more sense is to spend the time, and it is a lot of time, digging deep into understanding the business, the value proposition, the articulation of that value, what those customers look like, what those customers are looking for,

understanding how to solve the problem, all of that sort of basic marketing work to then craft a project accordingly. It's not a question of digital. It's not a question of Facebook ads. It's not a question of podcasts. Though, of course, podcasts are fantastic and we all love them very much, especially the Chris Voss one. It's finding what makes sense for the customer. Just because you can doesn't mean you should. If it's a B2B type scenario, maybe LinkedIn may be more preferable than putting something in about your industrial widget in your prospects' Facebook timeline, which they probably don't want to see. They want to have a look. They want to look at cats, right? They want to look at kidneys. They want to look at people falling over. That's what they

want to look at, right? People's what they want to look at right people with their phones walking into ponds and stuff yeah yeah you've seen the same one haven't you yeah yeah about 500 times i've watched it laughing anything more we want to touch on about your agency what you guys do there don't think so i think a big part of what we offer is not services is actual consultancy even though we don't brand it as such. But it's having somebody in your corner, somebody quite often we use as a soundboard. A business owner will call us up and say, look, I'm thinking of doing X, what do you think?

And they want to have somebody who's close, but not too close to the business, who can give us a pragmatic, unemotional take on what they're thinking without that emotional investment that they have and the people around them have. And so I think that's a very important thing because as you're running a small business or even a startup, especially a startup, it can be a very lonely thing to do. You're always saying how great things are on the outside, and you can be tying yourself up in knots inside. That sort of advisor, we'll call it a mentorship, a soundboard, to have

the other person's view, another small business owner, because in fact, that's what we are. We're another small business, right? To be able to give that 10 cents worth of opinion, clients find that very valuable. That's awesome. Gee, it's been wonderful to have you and talk about all the aspects of your business. Give people the plugs where people can find you guys on the interwebs.

So you can find us on the internet at kexino.com, K-E-X-I-N-O.com, Twitter on Kexino, Facebook on Kexino, Facebook on Kexino. Instagram on WeAreKexino. Yeah, those are probably the main ones. And obviously the biggest one is going to be our position on the Chris Voss podcast. There you go.

Attracting hundreds of thousands of downloads as we speak. Trillions. I think trillions. I think it's in the trillions or something. I don't know. Quick, quick. Stop press. Quick. Hold the front speak. Trillions. I think trillions. I think it's in the trillions or something. I don't know. Stop press. Hold the front page. Trillions. That's last week's number. This week it'll probably... What comes after trillions?

I don't know. It's quadrillion, I think, isn't it? I don't know. I don't know. I just let the bankers handle the money. I'm like Britney Spears. They give me a stipend of $2,000 a a month or something okay i i missed your vegas show sorry i know i i missed it too from 2020 being in lockdown so there's that so yeah it's been wonderful to have you on thank you for spending time with us sir and getting us up department

i'm very happy to be here thank Thank you very much for inviting me. There you go. I've had a blast. It's been wonderful. It's very insightful. And people are in the business and you seem like a great guy to do business with. You're fairly good back.

And you're like, you have a good understanding. And you're like, we do the work. We kick ass. We take names and go home. I'm fantastic. And the best thing about me is my modesty. Yeah, there you go. That's what they say about me.

My humility and my honest and my humility, they say, is the greatest asset of the Chris Voss show. We're cut from the same cloth, Chris. That's the thing. Thank you very much, Steve, for being on the show with us. Thanks to my audience for tuning in. Be sure to go to youtube.com forward slash Chris Voss. Hit the bell notification. Go to goodreads.com forward slash Chris Voss.

Go to all the groups you have on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram. They're just everywhere. Just search for the Chris Voss, the Chris Voss Show. Thanks, Minus, for tuning in. Be good to each other, and we'll see you guys next time.