Episode 327 | The Profit Answer Man I Malcolm Reid Sr.
You approved the invoice. You watched the posts go up. You gave it six months, then nine, then twelve. And the calls from the kind of customer you actually want to work with are still not coming.
You have heard the advice: post more, run ads, try a new platform, get your SEO right. You have tried most of it. And the number that lands in your bank account at the end of the month tells you that none of it is working the way it was supposed to.
That is not a marketing problem. That is a messaging problem. And until you fix what you are saying, it does not matter where you say it.
The Real Thing Draining Your Marketing Budget
Malcolm Reid Sr. has spent more than 11 years inside the world of coaches who serve small business owners. He built ProGlobal Business Advisors from a background that started in the slums of Baltimore, included a stint in prison, and produced a business instinct that no classroom produces. What he has observed across hundreds of businesses is consistent: the marketing spend is rarely the problem. The message underneath it is.
Here is what that costs in practical terms. Right now, 97 to 99 percent of the buyers who would be a perfect fit for your business are in research mode. They are reading, comparing, and deciding who understands their specific problem well enough to trust. They are not ready to buy today. But they will be. And the business that speaks directly to their problem during that research phase is the one that ends up on the shortlist.
If your first two sentences talk about your years in business, your customer service, or your team, you are not on the shortlist. You are invisible in the phase that matters most.
A $6M roofing company running ads that say reliable, local, family-owned is not losing a marketing battle. It is losing a positioning battle. The owner thinks visibility is the problem. The real problem is that no buyer searching for a roofing solution sees those words and thinks: that is exactly the situation I am in. The message talks about the company. The buyer only cares about their problem.
Why Every Advisor Told You the Wrong Thing
The standard advice has been consistent for two decades: build your brand, get your logo right, post consistently, run ads to drive traffic. Most of that advice was designed for companies with eight-figure budgets reinforcing something the market already knows. Nike is not introducing itself. It is reminding you to buy today. You are still introducing yourself.
Introduction and reinforcement are completely different strategies. And every marketing consultant, every guru webinar, and every agency pitch has been selling you a reinforcement strategy when what you needed was a relevance strategy.
Visibility gets you seen. Relevance gets you chosen. They are not the same thing, and you cannot buy your way from one to the other by spending more on a message that does not connect.
Rocky made this point directly: when he sits down with a business owner and their marketing company together, they look at what it would cost to rank for the keywords the owner wants. And the number is never competitive. A small business cannot outbid a national player for category-level keywords. But it can own the specific problem its best buyers are already describing in their own words. That ownership costs almost nothing. It just requires knowing what those words are.
What Buyers Actually Do Before They Call You
The Decision Is Made in the Research Phase
Rocky raised something that most business owners have not fully absorbed: the buyer’s journey has changed. Five years ago, a business owner looking for a fractional CFO would call three people, learn about the category in those conversations, and then decide. Today, they already know the category. They have watched the videos, read the articles, and formed a shortlist before they dial anyone.
By the time they call you, they are deciding between two or three providers. If you have not been building trust during the research phase, you are not one of the two or three. The call never comes.
This is the core of what Malcolm calls the conversion formula. It is not about closing. It is about being the source buyers find credible during the months before they are ready to move. You captivate them by naming their exact problem at the top of your message. You fascinate them by showing you understand the emotional weight of that problem, not just the technical description. You educate them with proof that your approach produces a different result than what they have already tried. And then you make an offer so clearly connected to their specific situation that saying yes is the logical next step, not a high-pressure decision.
The business that does this in the research phase does not need closers. By the time the buyer calls, the work is already done.
Your Buyers Have Already Told You What to Say
Before you spend another dollar on copy, ads, or content, Malcolm recommends a step that costs nothing: go read the negative Amazon reviews for the top-selling books in your category. Not the positive ones. The negative ones.
The negative reviews tell you in the buyer’s own words exactly what they wanted, exactly what they did not get, and exactly how they describe the problem they are still trying to solve. That language is your message. Your buyers wrote it for you. You do not need a focus group or a brand strategist. You need 90 minutes and an Amazon account.
Then open the Google search bar and start typing your category keywords. Watch what the autocomplete suggests. Those are the most common searches. Those are the phrases buyers type when they are in pain and looking for relief. If those phrases are not in the first two sentences of your website or your ads, you are invisible in the moment that matters most.
A plumbing company in the Midwest ran generic service ads for three years. When they went through this exercise, they discovered their buyers were not searching for plumbing company. They were searching for why is my water bill so high and what causes low water pressure in a newer home. Two completely different messages. The moment they built content around those searches, the calls changed. The buyers who called were already halfway convinced before they hit send.
The Sales Team Problem That Nobody Names
Most commissioned sales structures are built on a misalignment that quietly destroys the trust you spent months building. The salesperson’s compensation is tied to the close. Their job is the transaction. So they close, sometimes to clients who are not the right fit, sometimes with promises that the delivery team cannot keep.
Then you hand the client to a delivery team that had no part in the sale, and that team spends the first 30 days managing expectations set by someone chasing a commission check.
Malcolm’s model removes this by aligning the person who delivers with the person who enrolls. When the compensation is tied to the client’s success rather than the transaction, the person introducing your service becomes the same person supporting the client through it. The dynamic shifts entirely. There is no handoff. There is no reset. The client works with the same person who understood their problem well enough to earn their trust in the first place.
Rocky made this point from his own early experience: a partnership that routed clients to him through a different message than the one he was delivering created pricing friction and expectation mismatches that had nothing to do with the quality of his work. The message created the wrong client. The wrong client created friction. The friction cost time and energy that came straight off the bottom line.
Rocky’s View From Across the Table
Here is what I see when I sit down with a $5M to $8M business owner who is frustrated with marketing: the spending is real, the intent is right, and the message is completely disconnected from what the buyer actually cares about. Not because the owner is not smart. Because every advisor they have worked with told them to talk about themselves instead of to the buyer’s specific problem.
The fix is not a new platform. It is not a bigger budget. It is one honest look at whether your current message names the problem your best buyer is already trying to solve, in the words they use when they describe it.
Build it and they will come is a cash trap. I have watched business owners build teams, infrastructure, and overhead ahead of revenue because they believed growth was coming. It is not coming. Revenue comes first, then you build behind it with cash in hand. That applies to your team, your office, your equipment, and your marketing spend. Spend on what is already working at a smaller scale. Never spend ahead of proof.
The referral partner line that belongs in every CPA and EOS implementer’s head: if a business owner is confused about why their marketing is not working, the answer is almost never more marketing. It is a message audit. Run the audit first. Spend after.
The One Thing to Do Before You Approve the Next Invoice
Do not renew the marketing contract, do not add a platform, and do not hire a content creator until you have done this one thing:
Read 20 negative Amazon reviews for the top three books in your category. Write down exactly how buyers describe their problem in their own words. Then open your website and read your first two sentences out loud.
If the words do not match, you have found the problem. Rewrite those two sentences so they name the specific frustration the reviews described. Do not change the platform. Do not increase the budget. Just fix the message. You will know within 30 days whether the message was the problem, because the quality of inbound will change.
That is a faster and cheaper diagnostic than another six months of invoices from an agency running the wrong message on the right channels.
You have been doing the work and spending the money. The only thing between you and the buyers already looking for exactly what you offer is a message that speaks to them instead of about you. That is fixable. It does not require more budget, more time, or a new strategy. It requires knowing what your best buyer is already searching for and making sure your first sentence answers that search.
That clarity is available right now, before your next invoice is due.
About Malcolm Reid Sr.
For more than 11 years, Malcolm Reid Sr. has helped over 1,000 coaches worldwide build profitable, values-driven practices through his company, ProGlobal Business Advisors, using a proven business-in-a-box model. His work emphasizes execution over theory, equipping coaches with positioning, systems, enrollment processes, delivery frameworks, software, and long-term operational support, all branded to the individual coach. Guided by a deep respect for small business owners, Malcolm is known for his stance against hype-driven coaching and fake gurus, advocating instead for integrity, measurable results, and lasting client impact. He and his team work exclusively with coaches who demonstrate strong values and a genuine desire to serve, helping them operate as true business owners and deliver real results for the businesses they support.
Links
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Music provided by Junan from Junan Podcast
Any financial advice is for educational purposes only and you should consult with an expert for your specific needs.