Born and raised in Enid, Oklahoma, Caleb brings a personalized approach to each and every client of his. With a degree from the University of Central Oklahoma in Marketing and a M.B.A from West Texas A&M University, he finds innovative ways to reach new target customers and expand your business no matter where you start.

Combining strategy with implementation, he focuses on building long-term customers through data-driven decision-making. With experience working with both small and large companies, he has the experience to help businesses create strategic marketing plans that focus specifically on each business’s strengths, not just a one size fits all/template-based strategy.

Key Topics

[00:03:03] Careful speech, marketing degree, consumer behavior research, product development, hidden aspects of marketing.

[00:04:51] Started as profitable freelancer, realized undercharging, discovered market niche for marketing consulting, transitioned to full-time with spouse’s support.

[00:08:10] Flexibility and freedom to prioritize family, avoiding the grind and financial challenges of starting a business.

[00:13:02] Success is not overnight, but the result of years of hard work and adjustments.

Find Caleb Online

https://www.linkedin.com/in/caleb-roche/

https://goclubcreative.com/

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Transcript (Provided by CastMagic.io)

Seth [00:00:00]:

Entrepreneurs Enigma is a podcast for the ups and downs of entrepreneurship. With the wins and the fails that we all face be entrepreneurs. How we learn from adversity. Every week I talk to a different entrepreneur with a story to tell. I’m Seth Goldstein. Come with me on the journey. This is Entrepreneurs Enigma. Let’s get started.

Caleb [00:00:24]:

You.

Seth [00:00:30]:

Hey, everyone. Welcome to another edition of the Entrepreneurs Enigma podcast. I am your host. As always, the host is with the most. I guess some people might not call me that, but whatever. I am Seth. I am here today with Caleb Roche of C Roche Consulting. It will eventually be rebranded to Club Creative. Hey, how’s it going, Caleb?

Caleb [00:00:52]:

Good, Seth. How are you? Thanks for having me on.

Seth [00:00:54]:

This is fun. And we actually met through Pod Match, which was kind of cool.

Caleb [00:00:59]:

I got to give a huge shout out to Podmatch because that is the coolest platform.

Seth [00:01:03]:

It’s pretty wild. I usually don’t have a problem with getting guests when I get to meet interesting people like Caleb. It makes it all worth it.

Caleb [00:01:10]:

Let’s wait till the end of the recording to say that it was a good conversation, so we’ll see, I’m sure.

Seth [00:01:14]:

Well, we chat prior, so it’s kind of cool. So Caleb is an entrepreneur because he’s on entrepreneurs and thing, but podcast, it’s kind of a given. But he also has worked for Inspire Brands, which owns science drive ins. So he’s done the corporate grind, the corporate hustle, all that good stuff. So we’ll talk a little bit about that. But Caleb, how did you get started? How did you get started in general in marketing, getting interested in marketing and all this fun stuff?

Caleb [00:01:44]:

So it started out, I actually thought I wanted to be an attorney for a little bit. So I thought I wanted to be the typical in front of the judge, talking.

Seth [00:01:52]:

Oh, boy.

Caleb [00:01:53]:

I rest your case. A litigator having the best arguments because I’ve always enjoyed public speaking, that type of thing. And I want to deliver that. And so I started this path off of I’m going to become an attorney, I’m going to be the top attorney. And so I started interning and I got some wise advice that, hey, if you do this, you need to make sure that you get a degree that is not political science or around law because if you don’t go into law or end up failing out of law school, you want at least an alternative. And so I said, okay, let’s do that. So I’ve always enjoyed marketing and so I started my first year in college with a marketing degree, thinking I’m going to be a lawyer. And I had gotten about three years of experience on the law side, interning for some places. And I realized very quickly that law is not sitting in front of a judge about how delivering the best argument, unfortunately, which I realized it was a lot of paperwork, a lot of writing, a lot of detailed, and I like to be as detailed as possible, but I’m not very good at sitting down and all that. So I learned weird language, too.

Seth [00:02:59]:

It’s like old English. You’re like vowel VAS.

Caleb [00:03:03]:

And you have to be so careful about everything that you say. Every sentence that you say has to be so careful and crafted. And so obviously I could be careful and crafted, but maybe not that level. And so I learned very quickly maybe law was not for me. So that’s where I graduated with a marketing degree, had some experience with marketing, and ended up working for that company, Inspired Brands, and did a lot of market research for them on the product side. And so what I learned very quickly was a lot of companies are investing in consumer behavior. They’re calling it Consumer Insights or around consumer behavior. And what’s fascinating is I learned from this experience is these companies are investing millions of dollars and understanding what products do consumers want and how do we package that together, how do we craft food that fits what people are looking for, in addition to how does it match with trends that are currently going on? So it was very fascinating, my role, because I got to see this. You think about McDonald’s, you think about fast food restaurants, and you think there’s no way that there is a chef behind this half the time. But it’s amazing. You look at the beef patties that companies are rolling out, they’re looking at five different formulations and how they can make it better based on those formulations with a little bit more salt or a little bit more patty. And it’s fascinating to see. And that’s where all the trends come into play as well. So that’s where my eyes got open. Very big on marketing is not just running ads and running TV ads and creating social media posts. There is a lot more behind the scenes that goes on, which was pretty neat. That’s what really got me into this.

Seth [00:04:36]:

We’re going to take a quick break here from our sponsors and get right back to the show. And so then you have been doing as a side hustle, right? Kind of, I can do this a little bit for some other people. Why do this and whatever.

Caleb [00:04:51]:

I was pretty profitable back in the day. I started out and I said, man, I can help run social media, I can run ads, I can do websites. And let’s not talk about the first websites that I developed, so we’ll avoid talking about those. But I was charging $250 a month to do all of those for people, and I was making a lot of money. And so I realized very quickly that A, I was undercharging significantly, but I was getting some good experiences, and B, there’s a big market potential for this where people that have experience on the corporate level coming to consult with other companies. There’s a lot as you probably see a lot of individuals that decide to give that they watch a course on YouTube or they take a Facebook course and they think that they can charge a couple of run ads and it might work for some people. But it deceives a lot of consumers into thinking that they’re great deal and they’re not. So we learned very quickly that there was a big market niche for providing marketing consulting services. So I moonlighted for about two years and decided the 80 hours weeks were not worth it for me, like we talked about. I talked to the big boss, my wife, and I said, hey, we’ve made a little bit more than we have with my salary job for a couple of months, and how do you feel comfortable doing this? And so she was willing to take the lunge and we full time, so haven’t looked back since.

Seth [00:06:11]:

She’s the brave one because she’s in charge of three year old and eight.

Caleb [00:06:16]:

Month old and the 24 year old that acts like a three year old most of the time she has a bigger job than I do, I’ll tell you that.

Seth [00:06:22]:

You’re a baby. You’re a baby. I’m old, I’m 42. So go figure.

Caleb [00:06:27]:

So you’re still young.

Seth [00:06:28]:

Yeah, I have my moments. My wife definitely calls me a kid sometimes.

Caleb [00:06:33]:

Yeah, I think my wife just call me one for a while. And that’s where it played into on the entrepreneur journey. It was kind of a fascinating thing because we have this thought of you always get the feeling that you’re not going to deliver on what you can or why would companies hire me at such a young age? And that’s where it’s been a really good experience for me of seeing that no matter what phase of life you’re in, how old you are, how much experience you have, you always typically have something to bring to the table. And that’s where if you continue to develop and grow yourself, it can lead to some good opportunities. And so that’s where we took the educational piece of I got my bachelor’s degree. I was one of the youngest graduated students at my college, and then I ended up getting my master’s degree by age 22. And so I was one of the youngest MBA graduates from that school as well. So we started stacking the educational requirements plus the experience, and we’ve got a couple more years. So we’re trying to drive that you’re.

Seth [00:07:26]:

Closer to 30 with experience exactly. In age on the planet. Exactly.

Caleb [00:07:33]:

Just a lot to learn still. That’s the big thing.

Seth [00:07:35]:

We’re not 30 yet. 30 yet. 30 be like, wait, I’ll have four kids and I’ll be a multimillionaire. There you go.

Caleb [00:07:44]:

Hopefully one of those is the case, and I’m going to let you guess on which one it is. And it’s going to be the money side.

Seth [00:07:50]:

Absolutely. You’re a young entrepreneur and we’re not going to hide that fact because 24 is a young entrepreneur. But you’ve also done the corporate grind. And so what is the best thing about being an entrepreneur in your mind?

Caleb [00:08:10]:

For me, I think it depends on a lot of people as well. But for me, it was the flexibility for my family as well. So a lot of people talk about the financial aspects of it, how you can make so much money and you have unlimited earning potential. And some people talk about building a business and I love all of those things, but I think people always forget to talk about how much of a grind it is in the first couple of years. And so the money that you’re supposedly making, the millions of dollars, does not happen. And so you’re constantly, especially in the beginning years, I have so many stories where it’s a client is past net 30, they’re close to net 45, they’re basically getting close to where I’m like, I’ve got to contact them to get my payment. They’re not answering their phones. And I’m like, how am I going to do this? And so for me, it was like the financial piece has grown, but it wasn’t a we walk into a million dollar thing. And so what motivated me was the fact that I can decide if my son has an appointment or with our new daughter. I can take some time off. And if I put the right team in place, I can avoid having to ask a boss, hey, can I take three weeks of paternity leave or a couple of days off so I can go to these appointments? The flexibility of being able to set my own schedule and say, hey, I want to take today and go take the kids to the zoo, or being able to spend a lot more time with other family, it was a great refreshment because at Inspire Brands, I was away from them pretty frequently with traveling. And so it was a nice little refreshing change of pace where like, oh, I don’t have to travel every day. This is really nice.

Seth [00:09:44]:

Yeah, it’s great. So on the flip side, what keeps you up at night besides the eight month old baby and the three year old?

Caleb [00:09:51]:

The three year old actually sleeps worse than the eight month old right now. So the tables have turned on that one. But what keeps me up at night is there’s two main things that really keep me up. One is how do we continually deliver a better product to our customers? And I’m sure you feel this way as well. Within the marketing space and that type of thing, there’s always new innovations that are coming out and there’s competitors that are coming out with better products than we are. And so how do we, a deliver an exceptional client experience continually and B how do we build better products and inform our clients about that product. And then b, the second piece that always keeps me moving is, how can I improve my team and grow the business? And so that’s where, on the marketing side, you always want to grow and hire more people or add on additional clients. But there’s this weird piece of we have to balance clients coming in and making sure you’re servicing them while also getting new clients, while also retaining talent. And that’s an extremely difficult piece.

Seth [00:10:51]:

Oh, that is and that keeps a lot of entrepreneurs up at night, even just the financial side of things like, oh, am I going to make payroll? Or oh, crap. God forbid you lost a client. That’s when you did. But it’s like, oh, crap, now we got to replace that client. And you always have to kind of have a client in the wings to replace the other one with. Always. It’s a fun time. It’s a fun time.

Caleb [00:11:12]:

It is. And it seems like I’m interested if you feel this way, too, but it seems like the further you grow, you go, okay, if we grow a little bit more, we hire some more, we bring on some more clients, hire another person. We will get to the point where payroll at $5,000 a month or $10,000 a month, it’ll come out easier. This $5,000 a month right now is just killing me. Well, then you realize that when you get to $20,000 a month in payroll, it’s the same thing. You’re like, I hope we can pay payroll. It’s amazing.

Seth [00:11:43]:

It’s crazy. Absolutely. And so what is the best thing about being I already asked you that question. What is the most important thing that area with you all the time?

Caleb [00:11:54]:

My phone.

Seth [00:11:56]:

Surprised many people say that because it’s so true. It’s everything on the phone.

Caleb [00:12:00]:

Yeah, well, and that’s one of the things that we’ve tried to put in place, is having access to, like, we have a team of people, but a lot of marketing companies, it’s hard to get a hold of someone. And so always having that real time access to someone is key to us. And so my phone, I feel like I’m always on it. And so it’s a good tool, but it’s also a terrible tool because I feel like I can never escape from it at the same time.

Seth [00:12:21]:

Yeah, it’s crazy. And then metaphorically, what do you carry with you all the time?

Caleb [00:12:28]:

That’s a really good question. I really haven’t thought about that. So I think the theoretical answer to this would be the client experiences that we’ve had, the different failure. I think for me, it’s the failures that we’ve had as a company and on the client side, because always in my mind, I’m carrying those in my head of, how can we improve this? Or how can we learn from this and make this better? And that’s where we make mistakes every day. And so we understand, how do we make this mistake less or not frequent at all? And how do we learn from that to make sure that we avoid this in the future?

Seth [00:13:02]:

It’s so true, because you kind of have to take the failures because everyone thinks, oh, look at Caleb. He’s successful, he owns his own business, he’s 24, wife, two kids, house mortgage, all that good stuff. He’s been busting his butt for a while there, guys. He just happened to start college early and start MBA early. So everything you got to realize that you got to adjust things for that. And he’s still working on his overnight success. I mean, when you see him on the Nasdaq billboard outside in Times Square, that will be his overnight success of like, ten years. Everyone thinks that these people who are successful were successful overnight and that overnight is literally multiple nights, multiple years of nights.

Caleb [00:13:50]:

Well, I think you can see that at the same time as well. There’s a lot of even mental toll that it can take on you and your body that no one realizes. I mean, the amount of times you’re probably far past this phase, but the amount of times that I’ve woken up at 02:00 A.m. With what I would not consider as a panic attack, but a very sharp sense in my head of I need to work and I need to get these deliverables out. The amount of times that I’ve woken up at 02:00 A.m. With no alarm, with a panic in my head, go up to my office and start working. It’s absolutely insane.

Seth [00:14:25]:

That used to be that way. It still is from time to time. I mean, I’ve been at this for 15 years, but definitely more in the beginning. It’s been like, it’s 11:00 at night, I’m still working, or it’s like 05:00 in the morning, I’m starting to work at five. Now it’s more like seven to ten. It’s not much better.

Caleb [00:14:49]:

That’s fair. Do you feel like after 15 years of it being in this industry, do you feel like you’re continually looking up to someone above you and always comparing?

Seth [00:14:59]:

I look up to people below me too. I mean, there’s kids like you that are rocking it and I’m like, wow. At 24, I was a journalist, making no money and living the life. I loved it, but I was like, I didn’t have a wife, two kids, car, a mortgage, all that stuff. So I’m like it’s. Impressive. I was having fun, but, like, a different kind of fun. Yeah, that’s fair. It’s fun. So, Caleb, where could people find you online? Where’s your main watering hole?

Caleb [00:15:31]:

I love LinkedIn. It’s probably my favorite thing right now, so that shows the corporate side of me that’s never escaped me, so they can find my profile on LinkedIn. I love connecting with new people and chatting up with them. I’ve started doing these virtual coffees through LinkedIn, so it’s just a 30 minutes conversation with people. And a lot of people use LinkedIn for sales, and I just use it as a way to learn with new creators. And so I made some really fun connections with some creators across the US. We do a virtual coffee and I make a coffee, they make a coffee and we jump on a zoom call and just learn about each other. And it’s pretty awesome. So I love conversations like that because the more that I can learn from other people and see what their experiences are and their failures and what they’ve done right, I feel like I always take away something. So I love LinkedIn, and that’s where I like to be found.

Seth [00:16:23]:

So you’re a Caleb Roach?

Caleb [00:16:27]:

It’s C-A-L-E-B-R-O-C-H-E. Sounds like a bug, but not spelled.

Seth [00:16:32]:

Not spelled like roach, but sounds like roach.

Caleb [00:16:35]:

It sounds like roach. It sounds like the bug, but we’re not the bug.

Seth [00:16:39]:

But maybe you’re indestructible like the bug. Aren’t they the bugs that you could think of surviving atom bomb attack or something like that?

Caleb [00:16:45]:

I don’t know. Probably. They’re the most annoying creatures. That’s all I know. And I do know I’m pretty annoying, so it works out really.

Seth [00:16:55]:

Well. On that note, we will see everyone next time. Thanks, Caleb.

Caleb [00:17:01]:

Thanks having me on. Appreciate it.

Seth [00:17:04]:

That was a great show. If you’re enjoying Entrepreneurs Enigma, please view us in the podcast directory of your choice. Every review helps other podcast listeners find our show. If you’re looking for other podcasts in the marketing space, look no further than the Marketing Podcast Network@marketingpodcast.net. Goldstein hopes you have enjoyed this episode. This podcast is one of the many great shows on the MPN Mark Theme Podcast at Work.