Shareholder Update – October 9, 2024
Digital Brand Media & Marketing Group, Inc. (“The Company” and “DBMM”), along with its flagship operating company and brand, , Digital Clarity (“DC”), a fully integrated management consultancy specializing in the optimal marketing of B2B tech companies, recently provided a brief update on its representation model rolling out in multiple cities in the United States as an aspect of the full growth blueprint.
In May 2024, the Company established a presence in a West Coast tech center in the US with the appointment of a digital marketing expert in Irvine, California, known to DC in earlier days. The Company then indicated that there would be a series of podcast releases to inform and educate shareholders and stakeholders on its execution of multiple footprints in the US, support business development in the expanded geography, and most importantly, the step-by-step execution of DBMM’s growth blueprint.
Following a podcast with David Meltzer, Co-founder of Sports 1 Marketing and formerly CEO of the renowned Leigh Steinberg Sports & Entertainment agency, Reggie James, Chief Operating Officer and Director of DBMM, and Founder and Managing Director of Digital Clarity, was a guest on another podcast with Blaine Bartlett, which was shared in an Update on July 12,2024. Bartlett is a respected broadcaster and entrepreneur based in Seattle—another tech center prime for DC’s expansion.
Key to US expansion efforts, well-known professionals in certain designated tech centers, who already have excellent professional reputations and access, are building on previous successes and are foundational building blocks. Sustainability will result following a strategy of drilling down from known staff, to access, to results , collectively for client (and DBMM) competitive advantage. These efforts are not haphazard but rather take place after careful analytics and beta testing. The Company is following its blueprint. Management consulting in the technical area is not for the feint of heart, is labor intensive, but results in a seat at the table of a Company’s decision makers, like attorneys and investment bankers. DC has earned trust for its product when the industry was simpler, now the environment is far more sophisticated and complex.
Fast forward to today. The Company is announcing a new episode of the Management Blueprint Podcast, series hosted by Steve Preda, a veteran tech leader with an impressive track record in building and exiting successful tech startups based out of Hanover County, Virginia. Another tech center. His experience in the US is wide and deep and is real-time. Each podcast is a learning and perspective that we will share.
Stakeholders are encouraged to listen to the full conversation which provides valuable insights into how strategic frameworks can drive sustainable growth and touches on areas like:
- Gain actionable strategies for scaling tech businesses.
- Learn how leadership impacts growth e encourage and exit readiness.
- Understand how to craft a growth-focused strategy that differentiates your business
- Taking the time to do right and drilling it down
This episode is packed with valuable insights for anyone involved in leading or scaling a B2B tech company and requiring expertise to make it happen. We highly recommend tuning in to benefit from both Steve Preda’s business growth frameworks and Reggie James’ hands-on experience. The academic and operating experience must be balanced to achieve optimum effect and positive tangible, quantifiable results. posting
In October 2023, the company released a PR with a helicopter view of our evolution to a full management consultancy following the Final Order of Dismissal by the SEC, closing our delayed filings OIP. Once the case was positively closed, the DBMM Management made shareholders aware that the next step of the evolution of its growth blueprint was to shape an AI offering to add to its strategic offering. The industry has changed considerably since early digital marketing successes. It is a highly complex subject for sure, and only sharing broad brushes on how AI was transforming the marketing and tech landscape would be carefully integrated into DC’s offering to new and existing clients. The process and progress is being diligently analyzed, tested and applications measured. The effort and time invested has shaped a forward-facing model and is sharing with prospective and current clients. The Company is excited about this proprietary offering which provides a 21st century competitive advantage that will positively impact its ROI for both clients and DBMM. The issue of sustainability takes care of itself.
Listen to the podcast as another step in the growth blueprint. Hopefully, it will provide a better understanding of the 21st century digital marketing sector. We intend the series to provide additional insight.
The links to the podcast and transcript are below.
Linda Perry and Reggie James
DBMM Management
SAFE HARBOR PROVISIONS:
The foregoing contains certain predictive statements that relate to future events or future business and financial performance. Such statements can only be predictions, and the actual events or results may differ from those discussed due to, among other things, those risks described in DBMM’s reports filed with the SEC. Opinions expressed herein are subject to change without notice. This document is published solely for information purposes and is not to be construed as an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any securities in any state. Past performance does not guarantee future performance. Additional information is available upon request.
Transcript:
Reggie James (00:01.803)
you
Good day, dear listeners. Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint podcast. And my guest today is Reggie James, the founder of Digital Clarity, a B2B marketing strategy agency helping technology leaders achieve sustainable business growth. Reggie, welcome to the show. Steve, it’s an absolute pleasure to be here. Well, I’m excited because we are all about growth. My company, Steve Preda Business Growth is actually, this is…
the name of our company, because this is what you focus on. So I’m very curious about how you help your clients achieve sustainable business growth. But let’s start with the question is, what is your personal why, your personal mission, and how are you manifesting this in your business? My why is really to, and it may sound quite sort of glib, if you like, but really it’s all about
sharing my experiences, the good, the bad, and everything else I’ve had. Everyone that we speak to, and everyone that I’ve spoken to over the years, has a facade of success in front of them. But when you drill down, you can see that many of them have had lots of interesting journeys to get to where they’ve got to today, as have I. And really one of the things that I live for is to get to the
fundamental point of where the person I’m looking to help and share my experience with can actually benefit and take what I learn and use it with something practical as opposed to some theory that just sits in the top of a drawer. It’s a little bit like so many books that people buy, but they never get the opportunity to read them all. know, letters are written but never sent.
Reggie James (02:01.486)
as somebody once wrote in a great song, which I’m not doing justice to. But the reality of it is, Steve, that we all have experience. And if we can share that experience to the benefit of someone, that’s something that I relive for. And that therefore is sharing and expending my energy and to show value is really something that I try and live and practice by every day.
so that the people that I talk to can get something from that. And that how I manifest that on a day to day level and try and do that to get better and better. Hopefully that makes sense. That’s interesting. mean, my parents always used to say, learn from other people’s mistakes, not from your own. Right. And what you’re doing is you’re helping people learn from your mistakes. I mean, I do the same thing. I made so many mistakes in my career and
Now they becoming the biggest liability. I’m turning them in the biggest asset because people can relate to situations and then they say, wow, I can avoid that land mine and that’s valuable to me. 100 % Steve. I think more recently I saw Gary Vaynerchuk, Gary Vee talking about embracing failure, embracing the challenges.
And he talked about a video that he’d seen of Mike Tyson talking about being very rock bottom. He said, when you’re winning, you learn nothing. When you are going through the struggle and you embrace it, that’s where you have the real learning. That’s where you find your inner energy and your inner strength. And really all the great, you you show me a successful individual. It could be a brain surgeon. It could be a doctor. It could be a businessman, an entrepreneur.
And I will show you someone who has actually failed more times than anyone else, but they just keep fighting through. I think it was Winston Churchill who said, success is going from one failure to another without losing faith. And I think that’s really what I try and do. I think it’s losing enthusiasm. actually this is fine. Without losing enthusiasm, that’s the one.
Reggie James (04:18.094)
That’s the one. I had a call this morning with my team and the icebreaker was, what is your favorite quote? And this was my favorite quote. how interesting. That’s great. Well, I should have got it right. Had I known that, I would have rehearsed it. it is a very, very powerful quote. he was a very, very interesting character. There’s a lovely place called Blenheim Palace here in England.
which is when you see it, think, my goodness, and he was born there. So he was destined for greatness just by his very, people talk about nurture and nature. I think he had the benefit of both. So he through struggles. I he was very successful after the Boer war when he came and he escaped and he wrote a book and became a member of parliament in his early twenties. And he was kind of a darling of the
conservative party, the Tory party, and then he went into the dungeons of failure. After Gallipoli, was completely pushed out of public life and he was still an MP, but he made some mistakes. And up until the mid-60s when he became prime minister, basically had three or four decades, he got hit by a cab in New York, he almost died.
and he embraced the wrong side, the wrong family. lots of things that he did. Lots of things. And to think after the war, he lost the election, having taken the country through whatever and this great leader. And I think there is a little bit of revisionist history sometimes about when we look with sort of rose-tinted glasses at great leaders. You’re obviously a Churchillian, I can tell, because of your
interest in in the subject but ultimately there have been some wonderful books written about about Winston Churchill all of them all of them but but it just shows the frailty that even of such a great leader that the his vulnerable side was sometimes the ones that carried him through rather than just his very strong leadership side but also the power of oration how he could actually talk with such pace and strength and
Reggie James (06:35.598)
sometimes lean in. They’re absolutely wonderful. So many lessons to learn from somebody so strong in history. So yeah, absolutely. Great way to start. Yeah. Here’s my favorite. But let’s, let’s go back to the subject because I think you’ve got some really cool stuff to share with, with us, with our audience here. particularly, you know, we are a podcast about frameworks, blueprints, and have developed a four-step blueprint
for revenue acceleration. Now, who doesn’t want to accelerate the revenues? So can you share with the audience what is that framework and maybe how it evolved recently as well, because you mentioned that they did. Absolutely. So just to go back a little bit, I’ve been involved in the early stages of the internet for quite some time. I’m really showing my age here, Steve, but I used to work for a business called AltaVista, a search engine.
And I’ve been involved in the marketing and advertising business for quite some time. So everything I’ve done is all about using communication as a means to drive revenue growth. And over the years, when we launched Digital Clarity over two decades ago, we saw that just before the pandemic, the digital marketing marketplace, if you like, was becoming very, very commoditized.
Suddenly people were doing a half day course on LinkedIn and saying that they were gurus and then somebody, know, an established B2B tech business or leader would take that person on board based on a very slick campaign, take that person on board and really we would be called in to undo the bad work that was done. And we realized very quickly and we were also working with some very, very big brands like Xerox and…
a whole variety of work from to now bought by Adobe, a whole variety of different big companies, showing them real value. So we were very surprised that there was so much commoditization out there that we decided to bring in some of our own consultants to look at who we were, what we did, what we really did, and why people over the best part of 20 years did business with us.
Reggie James (09:01.388)
And it wasn’t about managing campaigns. wasn’t about running, you know, being one of the first search agencies with Google and all of those different things. What people wanted was their hand holding and the confidence in terms of strategy and game plan that was in our head that we’d applied to all those different companies. And the burning, if I was to reverse engineer that, the question that they were really asking was what you did over there.
Can you do it for us? And so we then started shaping and developing our own framework. And we did it very much purely for the B2B market. And so this is the framework that we have developed. So the way it originally started, this acceleration program, we now call it the 90 day accelerator. What we really do is try and understand it’s in four parts. The first part is where we really look and understand where
our individual client is right now. So we try and meet them where they are. That’s That’s the diagnosis. So we have a diagnosis piece right at the front. This involves doing a questionnaire that we’ve developed ourselves, which we’re sort of automizing a little bit because everything is molded. within that questionnaire, it brings back and feeds into a number of different buckets. And from that, we then do a diagnosis workshop.
or a series of workshops and they’re normally centered around four core areas which are marketing, sales, product and internal communications because normally they are the four core areas that we do. we’ll, where possible every company is different and every company has a different sort of approach but these are the four core areas that we try and focus on. Everything is anonymized, we get people to talk within the questionnaire.
before we do the diagnosis, but then within the diagnosis, have a series of frameworks that we follow, where we share the findings of the questionnaire, and then quite cleverly lead them down to find where the gaps are, where the bottlenecks are, what problems they’re feeling, what the challenges are, how leadership is, et cetera, et Very openly, very candid, all in a safe environment, Chatham House rules.
Reggie James (11:29.292)
and we go in and normally this is done at board level, director level, stakeholder level. And then after that, we can then go in and actually go into a series of different individual meetings and sometimes talk to customers as well. And then after the, sorry, yeah. So the first step is diagnosis and.
The second one, when you visit customers, is it still part of diagnosis or that’s the step two? So initially we do the questionnaire as part of the diagnosis. And then we do the diagnosis workshop. We take all the information that we get to a series of, if we’re doing it over Zoom, we record all the information with all the people that we speak to. Then we take all of that. Then our team takes all of that information
disseminates that information, deconstructs all of that and makes sense of all the information that’s out there. We then create a report that we then share with post the diagnosis workshop, share with the teams that we are looking to work with. And then we take that information and within that, we also share how to fix those particular problems.
And the best, in this particular area is where we actually help create the building blocks that’s going to get them from where they are right now, not where they thought they were prior to us getting involved, but where they actually are. So you know, as more than anyone else, that where people perceive themselves to be right now, isn’t actually where they are right now. So this very clear, this visualizes for them,
exactly where they are based on the information that they’ve taken. We also look at their footprint. We look at where they are in their marketplace. We use some data and analysis. We do some diagnosis on there. We do a very brief snapshot on their website, their digital footprint, their social footprint, their content, all of that. we- So do the diagnosis, you figure out where they are and where they should be, I guess, right? Yes, yes.
Reggie James (13:44.354)
So is this your go-to-market strategy or that just- So once all of this is done, we then put this together in a framework, which I suppose the word that people use is go-to-market. I can ask 20 different people what a go-to-market strategy is, and it’s the one that’s being used a hell of a lot more. And there’s a lot of people who saying they don’t want to use that term either. It’s quite controversial. But in essence,
For a lot of the clients that we talk to, this is a go-to-market strategy. Historically, go-to-market was very much about product launch. Really, a lot of the companies that we talk to, there’s four specific types of customers that we talk to, but really the companies that we talk to are normally two to five years old. Most of them have gone round and round in circles. They’ve had a stop-start cycle of growth, not so growth, flat, bit of growth, backwards and forwards.
What we do is we use all of that information, put it together and then show them those building blocks. So this is part three, which is the execution piece, but we actually show them how to execute all the elements within the go-to market segment, but each segment within the go-to market elements. So all the areas like value propositions, brand positioning, et cetera, et cetera.
are broken down into digestible elements. So they’ve really, really broken down into baby steps that we then work with them, depending on whether they’ve got the resource, whether they have a team internally, whether equally we bring in our expertise and we bring in the right fit for the right company that we’re working with to help them execute the plan towards their goal and their objective. Normally that’s an annual recurring revenue target and
The elements, the four elements that I’ve just talked about now, the diagnosis, the workshop, the, what we call it, the opportunity assessment that will be shared with them, the findings, and then the execution piece. Those first three pieces ahead of the execution piece is people can buy into those individually depending on where they are. Sometimes people just need direction.
Reggie James (16:07.822)
And in certain cases, sometimes people just need a deeper dive into where they actually are. So we can break those down. you’ve got the execution piece. You essentially show them how to do it. You coach them. You connect them to partners. Absolutely right. Do it for them. You always just kind of a facilitator. And that’s a very, very good question. At the moment, we are very much advisory and in certain cases, but it’s not just purely advisory.
while we’re working through the program in the first 90 days, we’re actually putting building blocks together and actually making a difference. So we’re actually working on specific programs, showing them areas to fix. So as they’re working through that initial three months, we’re actually helping them do things, either showing the team what to do or bringing in other people to start doing this, to do those elements. At the end of those three months, we have a much clearer understanding of where they are and
prior to that three months ending and whilst we’re working with them, we showed them a longer game plan in terms of what is actually needed. And we do this because in many cases people sign up to programs that are, because they haven’t really understood the business, they’re trying to force a square peg into a round hole by not really understanding the fundamentals of what that business is.
And I think that’s the biggest challenge for a lot of companies. What we do is we chunk it down into quarterly segments so that they can see how that’s going and they can dial up and dial down in the areas that need the most focus as we go along. So Reggie, how is this market evolving? How are people buying tech services and how is the buyer cycle changing?
That Steve is a very, very good question. And it’s one of the reasons why we’ve just molded a lot of what we do and how we’ve come up with this framework. The fundamental thing that has changed since the pandemic is that the buyer is in control. No matter what you do or what you say in terms of trying to sell to that person, I’m not saying that outreach in a direct fashion is not going to work. Of course it works.
Reggie James (18:31.01)
but the buyer is very much in control. The way things have changed is that there are more buying committees involved, depending on the size of the software, and especially we deal with tech companies, but this can apply to any B2B service of a certain size. Buyers, there’s a great piece of research done by LinkedIn. It’s over two years old now, but it’s very, very relevant today.
It’s called a 95-5 rule. I don’t know if you’ve come across that. I’m sure you have. But for your listeners and viewers, this means that 95 % of people that are out there in the market, only 5 % are actually in play. I.e. 5 % know they have a problem and are actively in play looking for a solution. The 95 % of those people, a large chunk, almost 45 to 48%, don’t even know they have a problem yet.
So trying to sell to that group of individuals is there is no point. And then the remainder of that group, sort of 30 % around that, are people evaluating who they should be using. They understand that they have a problem, but they themselves internally are saying, we need to fix this problem. Who can we speak to? the people, this process can take a very, know, can take quite a lot of time. So that’s another.
that’s changed quite a lot in terms of how people buy is they’re taking a lot more time. There’s a lot more people involved in the decision making process. So it’s not just the 10th guy in the deal team or it’s the CEO or the CFO signs the check. There’s all these different people in between people going to use your product, people going to buy your services, people who are going to evaluate things that could be, you know, a whole variety of different people, but they’re all people who will make a decision.
or be influencing a decision in terms of whether who they use, why they use. So what drives that decision and what moves the dial for a lot of the companies that we work with is about education, nurturing and developing, not selling in the traditional sense, but making and producing content, creating these areas where we can actually genuinely help our prospective customers.
Reggie James (20:53.218)
providing we have actually identified, which is part of our initial session, exactly who those customers are first and what their burning needs are. And absolutely just to showing them and sharing with them everything from case studies to podcasts to everything else in terms of how we can help. that’s how a lot of buyers have changed. They don’t want to be sold to, in many cases, they don’t want us to talk to a sales rep at all. And a lot of people, know, we all buy that way as well. No one wants to be pushed.
down that thing. So if I inquire, one of the things that we tell our clients, if you get an inquiry, don’t send 10 emails in a week saying, hey, do you want a demo? You know, thinking that this person is genuinely interested, nurture, educate, inform, and everything else like that, and just work with that prospective client. Because in a year’s time, they might be potential customers. There’s some great data out by a company that saying that companies
And these are sort of fairly large companies, 250 million turnover businesses, $250 million turnover. It can take from initial contact to a sales situation, 408 days they’ve calculated. So that’s a much longer journey than the, that used to be a three to six month journey. It’s now extended. months with these people? That’s the challenge. do you stay couple of
So this is where we create these genuine strong content pieces looking at the touch points, looking at creating communities sometimes so that they can have a safe environment where we can get groups of say for example if we’re looking at talking to CIOs we want to make sure that we can create sometimes a safe forum where they can share ideas of the challenges they have.
creating content that specifically deals with some of the challenges, talking to other people who are CIOs, who bought other things, but never ever saying, and buy us, genuinely trying to help people to actually say, this is a scenario that happens, this is the challenge that we had, this is how we addressed it, and this is where we are today in our journey in trying to do that, and conveying that along a number of different channels.
Reggie James (23:19.438)
All right. So, Reggie, what I’m hearing is your blueprint, the revenue acceleration blueprint is diagnosis the questionnaire, then do a workshop to go deeper, then develop this strategy. You might call it the go-to-market strategy. And then execute and you’ve got this 90 day program. And then you see the longer term journey and how you’re going to help them along the way. So if people would like to learn more about digital clarity and what you do,
Where should they go and how can they find out more and connect with you? Thank you very much, Steve. It’s digital-clarity.com is the website. You can actually also just type my name into LinkedIn and you will find me there and you can also reach digital clarity on LinkedIn as well. There are two platforms that we live on. So please reach out to me over there and I’d love to have a chat with you. So yeah, thank you.
Okay, so Reggie James, the founder of Digital Clarity, B2B marketing strategy agency for technology companies. Thanks for coming on the show and sharing your process, your blueprint and your failures with some of the clients as well, which is a great thing because they can avoid them then, hopefully. And for those of you listening, stay tuned, follow us on YouTube, follow us on LinkedIn.
and give us a review on Apple Podcast if you can. That really helps us. So thanks for coming, Reggie, and thanks for listening. Thank you very much, Steve. It’s been an absolute pleasure.