Seth Tillotson, CEO and Founder of Your Business Consultation, is driven by a mission to empower everyday professionals to become confident entrepreneurs and business owners.

We learn how Seth’s journey—from launching service businesses to helping others transition from 9–5 roles—inspired his purpose. He shares his framework, The 7 Profit Improvement Areas, which helps entrepreneurs uncover hidden revenue and boost profitability by focusing on: Lead Generation, Conversion Rates, Closing Rate, Client Retention, Increasing Average Sale, Increasing Sale Frequency, and Cost Reduction. He also explains how to use squeeze pages to accelerate conversions, outlines the Captivate–Fascinate–Educate–Close method, and discusses how entrepreneurs can avoid the trap of staying busy instead of being effective.

Good day, dear listeners, Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast. And my guest today is Seth Tillotson, the CEO and founder of Your Business Consultation, and an investor in multiple retail-oriented businesses. Seth, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me, Steve. I’m excited to be here.

All right. So you’re a very young entrepreneur to be on the show in general, but that’s great because you’re bringing a different perspective, you’re bringing a different energy, and you have certainly big ambitions and already a good track record. So, tell me a little bit about your personal ”Why,” what is driving you, and how are you manifesting it in your business?

Sure. So, my personal “Why,” it comes from a feeling that I got. I’ll tell you a specific story. The first time that I helped somebody transition from a nine to five employee to their own business owner. So, I, at one point, owned a booth rental hair salon and I encouraged everybody to have their own business as they rented the space from me. I came across a young lady who was timid and shy working a nine to five that wasn’t really being treated the best at that salon. And so I said, you know what, if you come over and rent a booth, then I’ll sit down with you for as long as it takes and we’ll set up the whole LLC, get your registration, EIN, taxes, all that fun stuff, insurance, all of it. It took about four hours, but by the end of it, I could tell that she was feeling confident in having her own business and excited to have her own brand and be able to choose her own hours. If there was a specific service that she didn’t want to offer, she didn’t have to.

I had no rules other than to keep the space clean and sanitary, pay the rent on time, that’s it. So, about a year later, I had an interview with her and I sat down and asked, how’s it going? And just the glow from her eyes and the body language, everything, it’s so different. It was confident, it was inspiring. And the feeling that I got from doing that, from being a part of that transformation, the only thing that I can think of it is akin to when I was flying helicopters. And so, like the feeling of that freedom and the responsibility, I guess, it lit a fire in my soul. I’ll put it that way. And I knew then that this was one of my sole purposes, something that not only am I good at helping people with that transition and answering all their questions, but it’s something that I feel like I’m here to do.

Love it. That’s a very inspiring story. And I mean, hey, entrepreneurship can be life changing for sure. It probably is life changing. Now, not all the time for the better, but it’s definitely if you embrace it, then it can make your life much more autonomous and rewarding. So, you started offering this service and, in fact, on your LinkedIn page and website you talk about a 60-minute conversation with an entrepreneur and you basically look at seven different areas in their business and you offer to identify at least six figures of profit improvement, which is quite a bold claim. So, tell me a little bit about how that works. What are those areas and how can you do that in 60 minutes? How can you even scan all those areas in the business?

Sure. So I’ll go over the seven key areas in business that increase your profits when you pay attention to them. The first one here is lead generation. So how much are you getting qualified leads for your business? And then that turns into how much of those are converting. So second one is conversion rates, and that’s getting an appointment or a proposal together or something like that. And from there, how much of those appointments are you closing? So, if there is closing rates, and that’s converting those into paying clients. Once you’ve converted them into paying clients, now you have those clients you want to keep them. So fourth one is client retention. Maximizing a lifetime value of a client or a customer, that’s really the only metric that you need to scale the business. So then you’re gonna be able to know how much you can spend on acquiring that client if you know the lifetime value. The fifth one is the average value of your sales.

Something as simple as increasing your prices by 5%. It’s instant and it gives you a lot more revenue to work with in most cases. Six would be increasing your sale frequency. So, if you do have a returning client or customer, maybe you can increase the amount of times that they purchase within a year. And last but not least, definitely, is cost reduction. Identify all the areas that you could automate or combine services into one that you’re paying for and reducing those costs is generally the first step, even though it’s the seventh on the list.

Yeah, I mean, cost cutting is easy, but it doesn’t grow revenues. So it’s kind of a defensive step. But nevertheless, some businesses, they have to start there because bleeding money is the worst thing that can happen to them. Okay, so what I’m curious about is really 60 minutes enough to cover all these areas and do you have some specific questions that allow you to be able to investigate all these areas in a short time?

Sure. So I claim the 60 minutes as the exploring these different areas. But before the 60 minutes, I usually do 30 minutes of actually getting to know the business owner and their business, where they’re at, and just digging deeper into their “Why” and their number one goal, where they’re trying to get with the business. So in total, it would be 90 minutes would be what it would take. As far as exploring all the key areas, I currently have 22 strategies in those different areas. And within 60 minutes, I usually get to around three or four of them. And by the time the three or four of them are projected and implemented, it’s above six figures.

So you don’t even have to go through all of them?

Right, exactly. And it’s more of a focus on one at a time. So if I’m working with our clients, obviously, we’re not going to overwhelm anybody here because business ownership is already overwhelming. We’ll focus on one strategy at a time and maybe get through four of them in a year, but that’s also because we take time to look at what’s working and what’s not working and we quickly pivot the strategy if it’s not working.

So let’s start with lead generation. So what are the like the top most obvious or most popular ways or what you have found works the best, lead generation for small business?

Sure, so lead generation, it kind of closely correlates to the other key areas around there. Lead generation into conversion rate. The quickest or the easiest way to get lead generation is to offer something of value up front for free. For instance, on my website, I have my Revenue Revolution. It’s a free ebook, you can download it, but you got to put your email in at least. So that’s the quickest, easiest way to set up any sort of gathering information on getting emails, phone numbers for lead generation.

You find this works for any type of business? This information like an e-book?

So far, yes. And I won’t say it always works. You might have to explore other ways to do it. Some creative ways, or I’ll give you an example of a creative way that I’ve done it recently, just going on to a social media, like I’ve been on threads, and instead of trying to post a bunch of content, I just follow other people’s posts and comment on those. And again, you have to offer something of value. So I definitely believe in giving without the expectation to receive. So if I go on business threads and somebody’s asking a question, well, how do I start an LLC, then I’ll just tell them right there, step by step.

Yeah, and there’s more where this comes from kind of thing. Yeah, I like it. What about conversion rate? What’s the obvious way to improve that?

What you’re going to want with conversion is, first of all, you need to captivate. So you’ll need a headliner, something that touches on a pain point or sparks an emotion. And then the second step is fascinate. So your subheader then would be explaining the solution of that pain point and then educate them on it. So that could be a video sales letter or something of that sort. The best method that I would say is when you’re driving traffic to your website, instead of landing them on the homepage or on a product page, develop a squeeze page, something in between that has all of those elements that captivates them so they click on it, fascinates them with a simple, quick solution to their problem, and then educates them on how your unique proposition can be valuable to them. And then obviously at the end, you got to close them and book an appointment or call, something like that, download our ebook, anything really. That’s the best method that I’ve found for conversions.

So does it actually work against someone if they have a full-fledged website?

No, it actually works better than the website.

Yeah, so a website is kind of counterproductive because people stop meandering in different direction.

Yeah. Let me put it this way. A website is like having a brochure and a squeeze page is like having like an advertisement, an educational advertisement. The point of it too is to differentiate yourself from the rest of your competition in the market to what makes you unique. Everybody’s got a website. And most of the time when I go on a website, if I can’t immediately see what the offer is in the first few seconds, that’s a problem. People need to be able to know, can you solve their problem? Well, first of all, you know what their problem is and then you know how to solve it quickly or affordably or in a unique way that a system that you’ve developed or something nobody’s done before. And then obviously they’re going to need to know about you and what you do to build that trust and credibility too. So you got to educate them on that.

So the squeeze page forces them through a certain sequence of reading or watching?

No, it would be like if you had an advertisement or if you were just posting content on your social media and you have a link, instead of sending them to your website homepage, then it sends them to a page that’s only available through that link. So like you wouldn’t be able to get to the squeeze page from your website. Your website still exists, so if they want to go educate further and look at the website, then they sure can. But the squeeze page takes the information that’s on that website and brings it to the closing or converting sequence that captivating them, fascinating them, educating, and then closing. It’s not for somebody who’s already trying to research your business.

That would be what the website’s for, but usually websites don’t offer enough information for somebody to decide right then and there to schedule an appointment. It might have a list of services, but it doesn’t specify a particular pain point or get them to have the emotion that they need to take the next step. We’re emotional beings and we don’t usually make decisions like purchasing or setting an appointment based on logic. It’s more on how we feel. So that’s the whole point of the squeeze page.

Yeah. Okay. That’s very good. It’s great that you explained it because I’ve been aware of squeeze pages, I’ve even used them, but no one explained it to me in such a clear terms of how it’s different from a website and how does it work. And it’s almost like having a conversation with another person through that squeeze page and letting them influence you basically.

Yeah. And that’s the whole point of what the video sales letter would be. So in the whole page, it would be nothing but you have your footer at the bottom, your copyright for the business, but it’s just a video and then maybe a button to schedule on your calendar, just links to your Calendly or other scheduler. There’s nothing else on there to distract them from it. It’s just going to say, is this your problem? Do you need this solution? Listen to this five minutes and I’ll give you 10% off the service if you decide to take this path. Something like that.

What’s the right way to collect emails? Is it before they watch the video? So is it the first thing that when they come on to request their email? Or you basically give them the spiel and then if they want to sign up, then they click on the email? How does it work?

So, the squeeze page would be separate from any email marketing. The point of the squeeze page is to two for one. So you capture the lead, but you’re already qualified that lead and turned it into a booking or an appointment or a proposal by that time. So instead of having like a qualifications caller or somebody reaching out, it would skip all of that. So by the time that they already booked an appointment, you’ve educated them on the service, you’ve qualified that they have this problem, otherwise they wouldn’t be booking.

Do you recommend people to regularly create multiple screen pages for different approaches?

Yes, and you should have a customer or client profile, like super specific, like your ideal client, what are they wearing? What do they eat? What do their daily habits look like? What are they listening to? What movies do they watch? All that stuff like you should know your customer. And then, say you have four different particular pain points and solution to those, you could have four different squeeze pages for that four different advertisements running. Another reason for that is also the touch points. It takes on average 20 to 100 touch points of somebody seeing your logo or your service or hearing about you somewhere in order for them to be interested enough to take a step into booking appointments or purchasing a product. Using the Captivate, Fascinate, Educate and Close method brings that down to between 4 to 20 touch points because now you’re taking them wherever they are on their buyer’s journey, and you’re moving them along. So maybe they didn’t know that this service existed before. Now they know that it exists, and they know that you offer a solution to their particular problem.

So captivate, fascinate, educate, and impose? That’s the sequence? Okay.

It’s a conversion formula.

In the past, I knew what AIDA, Attention, Interest, Desire and Action. That kind of sounds a little bit similar.

Yep. That’s pretty much the same thing.

Same thing just with a different acronym. Yeah. Okay. So let’s talk about something else. Let’s talk about your entrepreneurial ventures and your story as a business owner. What was the hardest decision yet you’ve ever had to make in your business or your businesses?

Probably just sell, to sell early. When I purchased Cut and Style, the hair salon, I’d purchased it with my ex-wife and then getting divorced, having to take care of that brick-and-mortar business. Plus, I was also managing as a managing member for nine other real estate companies as well. It became quite a bit at that time, it was Tillotson Construction Company as well. I was trying to show, from real world experience, from nothing to actual business operating, my cousin how to do it. He was a roofer and a sider, good at things like that. So I said, okay, well, I’ll help you walk through doing that as well. And all of it together, I was working 16 hours a day, at least. I mean, few hours of sleep every night. It was unsustainable. You can’t do it. And because of that, the businesses started to suffer. I couldn’t focus enough on areas that I needed to, that my laundry list of items to do was way too long.

Even if I hired somebody to help me with it, I don’t even think we could have gotten it done. So deciding to sell it early instead of the 15-year exit plan, it became a little over two years, but it did end up selling to one of the renters there. I didn’t make a profit off of the actual valuation of the business, but what I did make during owning it, I would consider that a profitable sale, but yeah, it was difficult because to want to run a good business where the people who you service are happy and you’ve helped them solve a problem and to do it with integrity and honesty, accountability and respect to everybody. Watching it suffer, I think was the hardest part of that.

Yeah, it’s a big responsibility to be a business owner. It’s not just an opportunity, it’s a responsibility as well. And if someone doesn’t take that seriously, then it can cause a lot of damage to people. And yeah, not everyone feels conscientious about this, but I’m glad you do. Okay, so as an entrepreneur, what would be your advice for other entrepreneurs? What’s the most important question you have to ask yourself every now and then?

The one question you have to ask yourself, am I working on the right thing? That would be it. So oftentimes, you get caught up in busy work, you don’t move the needle. It’ll get you stuck at a revenue cap or you’re not generating any more leads or clients, customers. So you should focus on high impact activities. It’s the Pareto Principle. The 20% of what you do results in 80% of your total revenue. So, focus on those key areas and keep the business moving forward.

Yeah, love it. Well, that’s a very good answer. It’s very easy to get busy and not to be effective. Don’t confuse busyness with business.

Yeah, work on the business, not in the business.

That’s right. As Michael Gerber would say. All right, well, Seth, so you are the founder of Your Business Consultation. You have the seven area audit for businesses to add six figures within 60 minutes to their business. So if people would like to take advantage of this offer and get your views and your insights on their business so that they can improve it, where should they go and how can they find you?

Yeah, so I’m active on most social media, LinkedIn and Instagram. You can follow me there @SethTillotson. You can Google me, it’ll show up on there. And if you would like to look at the 22 strategies, free ebook is at yourbusinessconsultation.com. So just head over there and like I said, I’ll capture your email. So that’s my lead gen, but for sure, these strategies, they’re free in the ebook. I don’t believe in gatekeeping. And if you are engaging with me on social media or shoot me a message anywhere that I have an account, I will answer questions and do my best to help out.

Well, that’s awesome. I mean, who wouldn’t want six figures to their profit within 60 minutes? It’s a pretty good ROI on time invested. So go to yourbusinessconsultation.com and check out Seth Tillotson’s profile and reach out to him. So Seth, thanks for coming and bringing your perspectives. And if you are out there listening and enjoying this episode, please like us and follow us on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, wherever you’re getting your podcasts. Give us a review and keep coming back because every Monday we have an exciting entrepreneur or other thought leader come and share their business frameworks with us. Thank you for coming, Seth, and thanks for listening.