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Episode #72

Episode 072: The Impromptu I Love Marketing Meetup Group [Part 1]

  • Dean and Joe do a Q&A session
  • In 30 seconds something that’s been done that’s worth 250k
  • How to package and present your business
  • How to build your credibility by giving people confidence
  • Investing in getting results for your prospects
  • Lessons from Cyrus Mccormick
  • Getting people engaged in a bigger future

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Transcript

Dean: Hey, everybody. I’m Dean Jackson.

Joe: I’m Joe Polish. Basically, we’re here at Piranha Marketing headquarters, and this is an impromptu – I guess – I Love Marketing Meetup group. We did not have one scheduled this week, because Kevin didn’t schedule one. And we just did, earlier in the week, a Platinum 2.0 meeting. So, it was a busy week. Lots of stuff going on.

Dean: We had a busy week.

Joe: And so, but I said, Dean Jackson’s in town, and we have Meetup groups all over the world, and we’ve got literally tens of thousands of listeners to I Love Marketing – and you’re here…

Dean: And here we are.

Joe: …so why not just do a Q&A session? So like literally, this was only sent out to, I guess, people that were already members. There’s no formal invitation thing. I did a post on Facebook around noon or something today.

Dean: Now, is this the crew that comes every Thursday night, right here?

Joe: Some.

Member: Mostly. I’m the substitute for Jerry Levinson.

Dean: So, is this anybody’s first meeting here? Your first meeting here? Okay.

Joe: And you, too. So, 2 of you? And you gals, you need to kind of zip it, alright?

Dean: Troublemakers.

Joe: And Amber, you’ve been to an I Love Marketing?

Member: No, I’m so excited.

Joe: Okay, good, good, good. So basically, lay down some ground rules for everyone.

Dean: Alright. So we got the timer going, we’re going to do 2 episodes tonight, of I Love Marketing. And so I’d thought we’d do in the first episode is just do Q&A; whatever you guys want to talk about. We could talk the 8 profit activators; we could talk about focus, we could talk about anything you guys want to talk about. So, we’re going to let you guys lead us where you want to go.

Joe: Yeah. How many in the room were at Platinum? Okay, cool. Yeah, what did you think?

Member: Great.

Joe: What were your takeaways? Let’s start with that. Because you spent 2 days with us, it was a pretty good meeting. What did you get out of it?

Member: Where do I start? It was a lot. I think the immediate thing I think of is referrals, and what Dean did with the whole outline of referrals. It was huge for me.

Joe: Orchestrative versus passive.

Member: Yeah. Orchestrative. Because I’ve not been orchestrative enough, especially with my type of business. It’s mostly referrals. But I haven’t been participative; I’ve been passive.

Dean: They come to you. You get referrals.

Member: Yeah, I get them. And I’m cool with that. I think with orchestrated referrals, though, you get the kind of clients you want.

Dean: That’s it, exactly.

Member: And there are some clients I just don’t want. I just don’t want them. And they call me up all the time. And with the orchestrative thing, I can get the clients I want, and that’s huge for me. A really huge takeaway.

Joe: What did you get out of it, Renee?

Member: Well, from just observing the event, and for people, I guess, who are interested in facilitating a seminar or event, I think that it’s really smart to crowd-source, and to create your content from the audience sharing. I think it makes things more engaging, because the people are participating, and kind of created that contest model of who shared the most value and do things very smart.

Joe: Yeah, if anyone here wants to give like a 5-minute speech on an idea that worth a fortune, we might be able to pull one of those off.

Dean: That would be great.

Joe: I just started playing around with this and I actually think I’m on to something. TED does a really great job. How many of you watch TED videos? And I’m hoping I can speak at TED sometime. Peter Diamandis sent an email. I’ve had a couple emails back and forth with Chris Anderson, about speaking at the next TED, on the topic of is selling evil. And even Ignite Phoenix, which if any of you have ever been to the Ignite things that were started by Tim O’Reilly, they have Ignite Phoenix in different parts of the country, and they do these 5-minute presentations, and they’re pretty cool. And the tagline for TED is “Ideas worth spreading.” I actually want ideas worth using – so, you can actually use them in your business.

Dean: Right.

Joe: Because it’s interesting to think of really cool stuff. And there’s like a lot of amazing things that are like “Wow, I never thought of things that way.” But I actually want best practices that you can put into use in a business. So, at the last 25K meeting, I started 10-minute talks, where every person talks about a best practice that they’re using in their business, that’s worth at least $250,000 to them, so that every minute is worth $250,000. Then we tried this for $10,000 ideas at the last Platinum meeting. And we just started it. So, right now, it’s kind of like I want to see how it plays out. I think it worked really well. In the New York 25K meeting that I’m doing, I’m going to have a handful of people give 10-minute talks. And I got a confirmation, yesterday, Steve Forbes is coming, and Ray Kurzweil, all these crazy people.

So, I think the 10-minute talks, if we can develop them. So, anyway, the reason I bring that up is in future Meetup groups, we’re actually going to do some of those. We’re going to take all of you, if you ever want to think about what’s the best thing that you’re currently doing, have done in your business? If you’re a copywriter, if you’ve got some techniques, something that has been worth at least, we’ll define a dollar figure, and get up and share it in a way that everyone could use it, I think these meeting will become incredibly valuable.

Dean: Good. I hope so.

Joe: And so starting with that, in less than 30 seconds, what’s something you’ve done that’s been worth $250,000?

Dean: Putting my own money on other people. Putting my money on the line to help other people, because I know that I can…

Joe: Oh, so producing results in advance.

Dean: Yeah, producing results in advance.

Joe: Okay. So we’ve talked about that on episodes. People like Pat never listen to them. Could you actually share what that means? Because, actually, I think that’s a really great way to think about how to package and present your business.

Dean: Sure. One of the questions that we had today, when we were recording the other episode, was how do you build credibility? If it was for a new business, somebody was saying, “How do you build social proof? How do you get credibility?” And the answer that we both gave was that you use your own confidence and a really strong guarantee. And any time that you turn whatever it is you do into something, especially if it’s a results-getting thing, if you can turn it into where you’re the one taking the risk on somebody else getting the result that you can provide for them, that’s like a turbo-booster for your business. So, what we’ve done for almost 2 years now, for years we’ve had a company called Moneymaking Websites, where we do websites for real estate agents and mortgage brokers. And the way now that we do the website model, is that we give people the website.

We take them through a whole training program, a 90-day training program on exactly how to use it. They don’t pay anything to go through the program. And only after the 90 days is up do they decide whether it’s something they want to continue with. They’ll either have done their first transaction, or they’ve got a pipeline of people that they’re working with, or things are already happening, and they’re encouraged by what’s happening. And if they are, they can choose to continue and pay $99 a month. And then we charge $1,500 when they do their first transaction. But, it’s literally paying for itself. That’s the whole model that we use. And it’s been, now, effortless to get people to start to take the first step, because anytime you’re selling anything like that, that’s a multi-step process, people who are going to put money upfront, they want to know how everything works ahead of time. You have to take them on a tour of the site, show them how everything works, and they want to maybe talk to some people who are already using the site, building all that credibility.

People have to have confidence that it’s going to work. So, why not take that confidence and use your own confidence and say “Listen, I’m going to give it to you.” I pay money, literally, to give people the site. You have to pay to have to site built; we pay for the domain name. I set up their autoresponder accounts, pay a virtual assistance to preload all of their Gmail accounts and their AdWords account, get the whole thing going. We have someone on staff who runs the whole training program. So, it’s a significant investment in taking people through this, but I know that it works and I know that people get results, and people stay with us for years and years and years.

Joe: How often does it go bad?

Dean: About 30% of the people who start don’t ever get going. It’s not that the website doesn’t work, it’s that in any group of people, you’re going to find people how just don’t do anything.

Joe: Well, see the marketing always works.

Dean: Exactly.

Joe: It’s just they don’t work the marketing.

Dean: That’s exactly right. So, it was very cool. A few months ago, we had our very first class that had been graduated for a full year, and went back and interviewed them, got all of their numbers for the first year, and they averaged between, I think, on the low end it was 7 times ROI. On the high end was 34 times ROI for every dollar that they spent on bringing traffic to the website. It showed exactly how everything worked. So, it was really kind of a cool process.

Joe: So, if someone has a business that they can’t see an application of that, where wouldn’t this sort of model work?

Dean: Well, I think that if you can think about reallocating money that you would use as a cost of acquiring a new costumer, take that money and invest that money in just getting them the result. Do you know what I mean? Let’s say that you’ve got a product that cost $1,500, and you would cheerfully spend $500 to acquire a new costumer for that $1,500 product. Why not take that $500 and invest that in getting the result for somebody? And it’s just such a clean way. It feels good, too, because we have so many people that are just so thankful that somebody would do this for them. The inspiration for it, we call it Project Cyrus, and the inspiration for it was Cyrus McCormick, who’s the guy who invented the reaper in the 1800’s. And it was the tool that mechanized farming.

Joe: Blue Oyster Cult even used it in a song.

Dean: Did they really? Perfect.

Joe: And those of you who were not born, just look up the Will Ferrell…

Dean: Needs more cowbell.

Joe: Yeah, with cowbells.

Dean: And so what Cyrus figured out and realizes that the machine was great for the farmers, but none of them could afford it because it was expensive. And the catch 22 was that having the machine would help them make more money. But they needed the money to get the machine. And his whole thing was “It’s better that I should wait for the money, than you should wait for the machine that you need.” So, he gave the reaper to the farmers, let them use it for the harvest, and pay him after the harvest for the machine. And that’s what set it on fire.

Joe: So it’s like the reaper man. He had to repossess it.

Dean: The reaper man. That’s exactly right.

Joe: Okay. So, does anyone see that as an application to their business, on how they can use it? Any ideas on that? Or any questions you would have related to that, where you’re like “Well, I still don’t know how I would make it work?”

Member: Well, what if your business doesn’t have a definitive result? I mean, for real estate or whatnot, there’s a number amount you know that worked. But what if, with what I do, I’m a life coach, and it’s not really, I’m not guaranteeing you’ll get a job, or guaranteeing something. So how could I use it?

Dean: What are you helping people do?

Member: I’m helping people figure out, a lot of times, what it is that they want to do, building their confidence to go after it, creating a game plan to go after it, defining their personal brand, marketing themselves in the world.

Dean: How long do you typically work with someone?

Member: Usually 2 to 3 months.

Dean: So, it’s just a 2- to 3-month period? And how often do you talk to them?

Member: Once a week, sometimes twice a week, depending on the client. But it’s kind of like a lot of times my clients are usually finishing college, and so they don’t have a lot of money to support that long-term. So, it’s like I get them in the right mindset, get them in a new pattern, get them in a daily practice of things that they need to do, and then kind of send them on their way. For me, it’s kind of a hard thing.

Dean: Is the first call that you do, or the first couple of calls you do with people, are you kind of exploring kind of setting the stage of what they actually want to accomplish, and the rest of the time, you’re helping them get what they want?

Member: Yeah. Absolutely. The first time I meet with somebody, it’s a complementary meeting. I call it a coffee date kind of a thing. So, we kind of make sure we want to work together. And then from there, the very first time that we meet, we kind of do these exercises that give us a bird’s-eye view of their life, and where their deficiencies are, and where we need to zero in and focus, and see what’s going on, and kind of break it down into bite-size pieces.

Dean: So, you’re already starting with it’s free to have the first conversation.

Member: Yes.

Dean: That’s all part of it. The whole thing about doing this is to make it effortless for people to start. If they don’t know what coaching is, or they don’t know what it’s about, but they’ve got to write a check before they even ever talk to you, they’re going to want to maybe talk to other people. They’ve got to kind of get everything straight in their mind that this is going to work. But if they can talk to you, and have an experience of it before they actually pay, they’re going to get a good sense of what it’s about. So, you are doing it, in a lot of ways. Right?

Member: I got that from you guys. It’s my mafia offer, by the way.

Dean: Right. That’s the thing. That’s good for you, because it does make it effortless. It’s just about getting people engaged in a bigger future.

Member: Is there a way to take a step further, though, kind of in the way you do it?

Joe: Well, if you could somehow create a utility or a tool, or something that you can charge them for. If you think about companies that do this, in good and bad ways, McDonald’s, if you can get the kids coming to the playground so you can serve them toxic, poisonous food, but they like the playground, and they start that early on, then by the time it infiltrates their system they’re going to be in that shit for the rest of their lives. Hopefully, according to McDonald’s. So, there are all kinds of models of what you can offer as whatever would be your value. One of the things that’s been an interesting conversation me and Dean have had, mostly not recorded, but you’re like thinking what am I going to say.

Dean: You said that was just between you and me.

Joe: I taught so many carpet cleaners, as an example, how to better do direct mail, how to advertise in the newspapers, Valpak-type coupons, Yellow Pages. God knows how many millions of dollars the Yellow Pages, back probably from 1997 it probably started, is about the year that every major city with a phone book had one or multiple versions of one of my ads running in it, with free recorded messages, in multiple different industries. So, I would teach these cleaners how to go out and advertise. And it’s funny too, because I never got a penny from the Yellow Pages. As a matter of fact, not only did I not get a thing, they were like kind of hostile because they hated any ads that looked different than everyone else, because they didn’t like an ad that said, “Free recorded message.” They wanted everything to look identical, because it’s easy to sell a logo and white space than it is to construct effective ads.

But we would teach people how to do direct mail. The postal service would make all that. So, the conversation we’ve had, Dean was like “Well, we’ve taught them how to go out with coaching.” The challenge is, like for years, we would teach people marketing strategies. We would sell them, in some cases, for a few hundred dollars. And sometimes they’d buy a $50 product or a $29 interview. Once you got it, they got it. It’s kind of like you know the magic trick. And you could have sold somebody something that made them hundreds of thousands of dollars, saved their business, and they would still drop out of your coaching program, and they would still opt out of your advice-giving thing because they kind of got it. But they would still pay their cable bill, which isn’t anywhere near as useful as like signing up for a coaching program or something.

Dean: That was the whole thing about the electric. That was the aha. Nobody ever calls up the electric company and says, “You know what? I got it. I really appreciate everything. I’m going to be okay now. I think I can take what I’ve got and kind of go.”

Joe: They’ll pay for abuse, and they won’t drop out. But we can literally change people’s lives in this business. They’re like “Oh, you know, 2 months? Go fuck yourself.” It’s like, what the hell? Sorry. I’m going to say that a lot, “What the hell.” I won’t. By the way, speaking of just politically incorrect things, there’s this company. What’s the name of the company?

Dean: Someecards.

Joe: Someecards. I actually bought this thing. And it says, “When work feels overwhelming, remember that you’re going to die.” I love that. It just really warms my heart. Basically, if you’re in a business where you can actually plug them into something that they’re going to continue to use, like Dean has, he has the websites; he has a database system that does all the follow-up for his realtors. You use his system?

Member: Yeah.

Joe: Okay. What does it cost?

Dean: It’s about $99 a month, and $1,500.

Joe: Okay. So, do they pay the $1,500…

Dean: Weren’t you here just a few minutes ago, while I was explaining how that works? They pay the $1,500 when they do their first transaction. So it’s only after they get the result.

Joe: See, the thing to think about, I think, one of the ways I created the free room of carpet cleaning for carpet cleaners is, first off, I had started really studying direct response marketing, starting with Gary Halbert, and I was learning the whole can and- clone yourself, and how to position yourself with powerful language, and making powerful offers. And I kind of had it in my mind that I didn’t want to do something the same as like every other carpet cleaner with free estimates. Quit talking to her, will you? You need to behave. I can see you through my ears, by the way. So, I was listening to a Jay Abraham boot camp from Australia, that Jay Abraham sent to me, like I opted in. He used to do some really clever stuff.

Dean: Well, he does it. Did you go to any of his events?

Joe: Never went to an event.

Dean: Okay, so I want to a $5,000 event, which was a lot of money, like in 1992. That was a lot of money for something. It wasn’t common to have a $5,000 seminar. But when you called, when you enrolled, he would send you this huge gift. It was overwhelming.

Joe: In the same way, if you can actually afford to blow people away, in the beginning, cough up some good money to actually make a theatrical impression.

Dean: I remember the first thing he sent was like the Abraham method. It was a booklet, 11×17, folded with white embossed “The Abraham Method” on there. It was nice. You felt like it was something. It made an impression. I still have those. Like 20 years later, you still have this Abraham Method.

Joe: So, my point is he sends this thing, and I listen, I’m listening to it. And he tells this story about there are 2 carpet cleaners, partners, that actually were struggling, and they were trying to figure out how to make their business work. And they wanted to hire him, and he was $3,000 an hour. So they basically couldn’t afford to hire him for an hour. So, they scraped up $2,000, and they hired him for 45 minutes. And in 45 minutes, he basically taught them the concept of lifetime value of a client. How much can you afford to spend to acquire someone, until you know what they’re worth? So, he asked them questions, “What’s your average client worth? Blah, blah, blah.” So, what he recommended to them was to do a free house, an entire house of carpet cleaning, and go and offer free houses of carpet cleaning in order to impress somebody, so that they would…

Dean: Set them up for next time.

Joe: Yeah, so that they would do it again next time, and also referrals. So what these 2 guys did was they went out for a month, and they went to church fairs, tradeshows, country fairs, and they would knock on doors. And they would actually ask people if they could just clean their whole house, no cost, no risk, “We’ll clean it; if you like it, just hire us when you have to clean your carpets again.” And the way they actually made money that month was off tips. People would give them tips, and they would recommend them to their neighbors and stuff. And they built a $100,000-a-year carpet cleaning company using this. Now, I didn’t know if any of this was true, but it sounded pretty good. Right? So, I was sitting there thinking to myself, “I own a carpet cleaning business. I know how freaking hard it is to clean carpets,” and I was simultaneously reading Robert Cialdini’s book, Influence, which is a great book, if you’ve never read it. We’re both friends with Robert. He lives here in Tempe.

Dean: He’s been getting our guest list for us. I don’t know why we haven’t had Jay on I Love Marketing yet.

Joe: He’s agreed to do it. Okay, we’ll get Jay on. We’ll get Jay; we’ll do an I Love Marketing. So, basically, I was reading Influence. How many of you have read Influence, by Robert Cialdini? Great book. And one of his new books, the book Yes: The 50 Scientific Ways To Get People To Say Yes, it was really good. But, basically, he tells the story of reciprocity and the Hari Krishnas. You remember the Hari Kirshna story in the airport? Has everyone heard that?

Member: Yes.

Joe: You have? So, has anyone not heard it? Okay. Well, I’ll tell it real quickly, because you’ve heard it before. They would study, in Influence, he would study con artists and salespeople, and preachers, and all kinds of different groups of people that were in the compliance field, that would get people to comply and get them to do stuff. A long time ago, before 9/11, people were allowed to ask for donations in airports and things like that. And Hari Kirshnas first started off wearing their gear, like gear, like it’s uniform gear. Their fancy little bling. Basically, they started wearing just regular clothes, because people would spot them and their donations were going down. So, what they would use is they would typically have a female Hari Krishna who would have little plastic flowers, and they would basically when people were coming through the airport, they would go up to them, and they go to the collar of the person, and say “I’d like to give you this flower.” And what he found, they would observe them from a distance, is people would typically not say “No.”

They would let them put the flower on the collar. And then they would step back; the lady would say “Would you please give a donation?” And it was more uncomfortable for people to give a flower, a gift that they didn’t even want back to the person, than just reach in their pocket and pull out a dollar. So, this is how they would get all these donations. Then, the people would walk away. What was funny about it is how the people were so concerned of how socially they were perceived as. So, they would walk away. And as soon as they would out of view of the Hari Krishna, they would throw the flower in the trash. They’d get rid of it, and they’re done. They would go off to their flight. And then about every hour, the Hari Krishna’s would go to the trashcan, get out all the flowers, and do it all over again. So, this went on and on. And what he found is when you give somebody a gift that they don’t even want, they still want to reciprocate.

So, what do you do if you actually can give somebody something that they actually want, in an environment where it makes sense for them to buy more from you if they actually like the gift. So, I took a combination of Jay Abraham’s whole house, and the whole reciprocity thing, and I was like, “Let me offer people a free room of carpet cleaning, not a sample. Because there was one company that sold equipment, and it was like a dry cleaning method. There’s no such thing as dry cleaning, by the way. It’s all marketing nonsense. But you would tape off like a little square in the carpet, with tape, then you’d clean this square, then you pull it up, and there would be this nice clean square. But I thought, “That’s kind of lame, because you’re forcing the person. It’s like tattooing somebody and saying “Would you like me to fill in the rest?”

Dean: Finish the rest.

Joe: So, I was like, “How do I legitimately give somebody a gift?” So, when I first started doing a free room of carpet cleaning, it literally cost me money. I’d have to drive there, and I was doing this stuff myself. Then I’d put on my carpet audit performance, and do all that stuff. But if I gave them a free room of carpet cleaning, and totally instilled reciprocity, it cost me money. Some people would not get more additional cleaning, but most people did. And if I targeted it after homeowners, it actually worked. So, to this day, no one has ever been able to come up with a better offer of cleaning a carpet than the free room of carpet cleaning and a carpet audit, and it’s generated millions of dollars. Hundreds of millions of dollars for cleaners. And to this day, some of the top cleaning companies in the world, that’s how they generate business. That’s the offer they make.

But still, that’s a free offer. That’s my version of kind of like what you’re talking about. So, if you can, come up with any way that you can offer value first. As a matter of fact, our whole model of I Love Marketing is predicated on this. It costs us money to have a website; it costs us money to videotape this stuff; it takes our time; we put all this information out for people, for free. The vast majority of people are never going to buy anything from us, buy every once in a while someone will. And as we continue to build this following, we will acquire clients; we’ll do stuff like that. So, I think every business should have, if nothing else, at least be giving away really good education and really good, valuable stuff, because people will at least like you for that.

Dean: Does that help?

Member: Yeah, it does. I have one more question, kind of what you said about sending a really cool box out, or something like that. Do you think it would be as effective to give something away online? Or do you think the physical thing is still much more effective?

Joe: Both.

Dean: Yeah. Both. Exactly. But I think, you know, the thing is that there’s something so be said for having something in your hand. Nobody’s going to curl up with a good email. You know?

Joe: The virtual kitten that I sent you just didn’t go anywhere. One thing I learned is that when you offer bonuses to people, what a lot of information marketers do, if they sell a course on how to make money, I don’t know, pick a method of making money or how to save money on taxes, and you’re going to give them a bonus, and they’re going to give you a bonus interview with this tax expert. People send relevant things. If you look at Sports Illustrated, with the swimsuit edition, it’s a magazine, but it’s really not a sports magazine. It’s women. And you look at Time magazine, and they used to do the free clock radios, and that sort of stuff. It’s a non-relevant reason. So, I started thinking a lot about non-relevant gifts, and one of the ways that I got sales to stick, with a lot of different clients, if they were to sell something, you send like Fairytale Brownies. Elaine, who owns Fairytale Brownies here locally, I’ve sent out tons of brownies to people.

And we have these Piranha Marketing keepsake boxes that we used to use. I send less of them now, because I’ve interviewed so many fitness people, and it’s like, “I don’t eat gluten, I don’t eat brownies.” They’re great gifts, though. And the thing is, if someone buys your stuff, and you’re like a how-to person, and you want people to get value. If I can get them to consume food, it’s a lot harder for them to not appreciate what we’re selling. And it reduces refunds. Because if someone gobbles up, and consumes anything from you, really hard to take it back.

So, whatever business you’re in, if it’s going to take 6 months for them to get a result, get them to consume something – something they can pour down their throat, spray on their body, put on their hair, a gift certificate to go get a pedicure, go to the movies, anything that you can get your client or prospects to consume, figure out what that is, because that, in and of itself, may have nothing to do with what you sell, but it instills reciprocity. It allows them to get some sort of value, and then they appreciate you for it. There are lots of ways you can use that. Alright, so question. Who has a really awesome question for Dean, because he’s smarter than me?

Member: I do.

Joe: Yes?

Member: So I’ve got this JV that I can’t get off the ground. He’s invented this massive software program for dentists, because a typical dentist has a software program to control their office, and it has generally about 20, maybe 30 reports. Very basic general reports. Right? So he’s created this massive 250-report program, that they can zero down on anything they want in their business. So, his problem is retention. If he sells it to dentists, about 6 to 8 months down the road, they’re dropping off.

Dean: Because they’re feeling overwhelmed?

Member: They’re feeling overwhelmed.

Dean: Because they don’t use 250, they don’t even use 25 of the reports, and it’s a source of frustration every time they open it up and look at it.

Member: Right, yeah. And it’s kind of like going into a Vegas buffet. There’s just too much. You can’t eat it all. And it wasn’t meant to be for everybody. So, I know exactly what they need.

Dean: Tell me.

Member: Well, I mean the dentists. I know, exactly. Each dentist needs a different set of reports. So, I can zero down and just go “Okay, dentist A needs 17 reports. Dentist B needs 14 reports. Dentist C needs 38 reports.” I know how to do that. I just can’t figure out how to do that. So, you’re telling me that I should just get these guys on the phone?

Dean: Get which guys on the phone?

Member: All the dentists out there that have bought this, I’ll just do a 90-day…

Dean: Is it sold on a continuity basis? Is it sold on a monthly…?

Member: It’s sold on a monthly basis. Sometimes a yearly contract is cheaper.

Dean: Well, is it, can it be sold in modules? I might get this completely wrong, but say, for instance, there was 250 things this software can do, if it were say online – it’s an online thing – and they only needed 5 of them. Well, you could say, “Okay, well, you’re going to pay for x, and you can use these 5 reports or whatever.” But you would have like a lock, like a little padlock next to all the 250. So, every time they go to the site to log in, they go in, and they can see which ones are open for them, but all these other things are locked, so it’s always taunting them. “You can’t get in there, until you pay for that access.” See, here’s the thing. The businesses that are going to make the most money, and do make the most money today in the modern life, where everything’s overwhelming, there’s so much information, and people are mired in complexity, are the ones that bring simplicity to the complexity that exists in everyone’s life.

And I think what Apple did, compared to other computers, is that they made things simple. You take an iPhone; you’re talking there’s tons of complexity behind the glass. Millions of dollars in development went in. But there’s a button. There’s a button. And then it’s like it’s simple. And you look at Apple computers; everything about it appears simple. And the user phase appears simple. So, part of it is not that it doesn’t do all these wonderful things, but I hate remote controls that you just hold, and you’re like “What the hell?” If there’s only 6 buttons that I’m ever going to use, why do I want 24? It’s stupid. So, with the report things, it may be awesome that it does all this stuff, but I think, to a overwhelmed, busy dentist, it might have so much that it’s overkill. Not that that shouldn’t be available, but it should be a lot at certain times, not like, “Here’s this whole software thing that does this, this, this, and this.”

If you can, just get them to one thing consistently. It’s the thing we’re talking about profit activator number one: narrow your focus and select one target market at the time. That, I think, should apply also to what you’re selling people. You’re a life coach, and you could probably get them to help them with their fitness, with their relationships, with their spirituality, with their ability to handle criticism. You could do it. But there might be one or 2 things that, if you get those handled first, then they become open to other things. But if you went in, and said, “Oh, we’re going to do this, we’re going to do this.” We drove by a billboard on 44th Street, around Indian School, and it was red, what was it? Red Wok? Yeah, it was like a restaurant, I’ve never been there, but it said “Red Wok.” It says, “Mexican, American, Italian, and Chinese.” And I’m like, I go, “We should drive back.” I was so far past it, I wanted to take a picture to select and arrow. If you go in there and say, “Okay, what would you like? An enchilada? Some spaghetti?” It’s like, “Let me eat one first.” But, see, I think that’s one of the problems.

Dean: It is a problem.

Joe: That’s why it takes marketers to fix this shit, because people that are inventors understand “Oh, it does this,” and they have good intentions, and it probably is killer stuff. But it’s not killer to someone that looks at it and is like, “Ugh,” and then they drop out.

Dean: Is part of the obstacle that they never get the reports set up, initially? Is that what it is?

Member: Oh, no, they’re all set up. I just click and point, and it’ll show you the report. But they don’t know what to do with it. And that’s why they’re dropping off. I’m going, “If I could just talk to these guys…”

Member: Your free line is consulting with them, telling them which reports they need. You have this thing that has every report. Your free line, is “We’ll consult with you, we’ll tell you which reports you need to use.” That’s their perceived value that they got upfront, that they didn’t have to pay for. And then they stick and keep using the thing, because they know that they have the reports that they need.

Member: But there’s probably an 80/20 that, there’s probably 20% that all the dentists use already, that’s 80% that they all use. It’s probably an 80/20 already. So, if you find that. The rest of it’s just an upsell.

Member: It sounds like you offer them too much, almost, where they get totally confused. And then you come back and go, “Well, I’ll make it easy for you. Let me give you the easy button. I can separate this into 5 different components or something.” That’s what I’m hearing from you guys. Offer them everything, and then come back and offer them something to make it easier for them.

Member: I think the $64,000 dollar question is “What are they doing when they drop off,” because they’ve clearly got to have some software for running their business. If these guys are losing them to brand X, how’s brand X different? What are they doing differently, that they’re feeling more comfortable, presuming that when someone, they’re not just going back to pen and paper?

Member: They’re not going back to pen and paper, they’re going back to their old software, which has got about 20 reports, which aren’t very functional.

Member: Are they all going back to the same competitor?

Member: No, no. There are about 40 different software’s that a dentist can use. And all of them are very generic. And they all just kind of like “Oh, we’ll just throw in these reports.” And the reports aren’t that good.

Member: They’re just going back to something more simple.

Member: They’re going back to something more simple.

Dean: What are they doing with these reports? Like what’s the importance of it? Are they record-keeping reports? Are they marketing reports? Are they profitability reports?

Member: Everything, everything. All those things are possible. So, it’s like you really want to narrow down on a business, it shows you, like referrals, it shows you who referred, your top 5 referrals, and how much production you got from those top 5 referrals.

Dean: Gotcha.

Member: I mean, it’ll show you that. And it’ll show you all these kinds of things.

Dean: Could you break it down to before unit, and after unit types of reports that are going to help them? Do they do marketing reports, or do they do it anything like that?

Member: No, no. It’s not making sense. No, they don’t do that at all. The smart guys do.

Joe: Well, here’s the thing, if you can identify what is the big win.

Dean: Yeah, that’s what I was getting at.

Joe: Producing data that is so valuable to them, that once they experience it, they don’t want to be without it. See, with Dean’s stuff, once they actually get to that point where he’s investing money in them, the ones that do do something with it, all of a sudden they start receiving that value, they don’t want it to stop. Because then, if they cut it off, it’s like cutting a vein.

Dean: That’s why I was asking about whether these are like compliance reports or something that they functionally have to do, or are these reports that having this software is going to produce an ROI for them? Is this going to increase their revenue? Is it going to increase their profitability? What is it going to do for them? So, let me draw something. Can I do a flip board, or should draw in the…

Joe: We have the flip chart somewhere, but I don’t know where.

Dean: Can you see that, if I do that over there? Okay, let’s do this. So, one of the things that we did with the data that I got when I mentioned that we went back to all the people from the first graduating class of Project Cyrus, to see what actually happened, in any kind of situation where you have a continuity that is leading to – hopefully – a return on that investment. They’re spending money. So, the way that it looked for our moneymaking websites is that we take all the months of the year here. So, we start out January, February, March, April, May, June July, August, September, October, November, December. And what we’re showing people is the cost of running their moneymaking website is about spending money on Google AdWords, to bring visitors to the site. That’s the fuel that drives it.

So, people are typically spending $10 or $20 dollars a day on their AdWord budget. So, if they’re spending $300 a month on their AdWords, after month one, they’re going to have spent $300. Month 2, they’re going to have spent $600. Month 3, they’re going to have spent $900. So it’s going to go all the way like that, all the way across until the end of the year. And at the end of the year, if they’re spending $300 a month, they’ll have spent $3,600 on AdWords for the year. Now, what happens? When we did these numbers, what happens is that, typically, real estate commissions are in the $5,000 to $7,000 or more, range. So, what happens is that our training program is 12 weeks, 90 days. So, at the end of that period, right here, people have spent $300, $600, $900. And if they haven’t found a result yet, some of them start to panic. They start to think, “The only visible numbers that I see are that I’m spending $900. I see that I’m getting prospects. I see that people are building in my autoresponder account, but I haven’t done any transactions yet.”

And what we’ve found was that when I went back to this in 4 months, month 5 month, month 6, typically people will have done their first transaction by now. But what happens is, let’s say that it’s $5,000 transaction, immediately in that first transaction, they’re already in profit, because they’ve spent $300, $600, $900, $1,200, but they made $5,000 right here. And then the next month, if they do another one, now they’ve made $10,000. And the next month, they do another one and they’ve got $15,000. And the ROI on these, it goes like rocket fuel. And, by the end of the year, they have, as they said, a minimum of 7. Our high on that first graduating class of 30 people, was 34X ROI.

So, if you can look at anything that you’re doing, if there some sort of strategy attached to it, something that they can use these reports to show a definitive “I got this revenue because I’m using this software.” And you can go back to your clients that have been using this for a year, and show the ROI that they got on the investment of doing this, it’s a phenomenal way to illustrate it. I created this whole thing; it’s like an info graphic that’s a testimonial. You’re showing data that is incredible evidence of how things actually work. Does that make sense to you guys? Anybody who’s doing any kind of continuity thing, that’s the kind of thinking that you want to have with people. And then, show them that it literally pays for itself. Literally, they would be crazy to stop doing it.

Joe: Yeah, so if you can actually get this sort of business setup like that, it’ll change everything. That old saying “Little hinges swing big doors,” that’s the little hinge that swings a giant door.

Dean: Do you have a printer, is there something here I could email that could print that question?

Joe: Yeah. You actually, I have that printer back there, set up on my iPhone. So if you send it to my iPhone, I can.

Dean: Okay. I’ll do that.

Joe: Didn’t make it far enough. For people that are listening to this on audio…

Dean: We’ll put it up on I Love Marketing.

Member: If you don’t mind, I have a software that we use for our business too, and it was so overwhelming for me at the beginning. I’m still using maybe 20% of what’s available on it, right now, truthfully. And I pay, every so often, for an $800 seminar, for them to come in and do a training seminar to train my staff on how to use it. And that could be something that you can offer as an upgrade, too. Train them on how to use it.

Joe: Yeah, or even if it makes sense to actually send people there, just to get them up and running, once you can get them to stick.

Member: Well, that’s kind of what happened with me, is now that I’m getting used to it, I don’t want to give it up, because I like it.

Member: They train people how to use the software, but they just don’t know what the numbers mean. And the software company is a software company, and they are engineers.

Dean: That’s the problem. It’s almost like a stick strategy of having, when somebody gets the software, that they shouldn’t probably be allowed to maybe install the whole thing right away. If there are one or 2 things that, if you only got paid if they stick with it and get integrated into, what would be those things? What would be the things that would make it completely ridiculous, that they wouldn’t want to stop? How much it, by the way? How much is it on a monthly basis?

Member: It’s $495.

Dean: Okay, so it’s pretty significant. But somebody who’s looking at $6,000 over the course of the year, what are they going to do? What kind of ROI do you think somebody could get with this? If you had to just pick out one thing, is there anything in there that they could get $60,000 in return?

Member: Oh, easily.

Dean: Okay, what would you think would be, if you went back to your users who have been using it for a year or more, what do you think would be the average, if you did, like I did there, went back and looked? What would you say would be a pretty typical ROI?

Member: The average, I would say, probably somewhere between $80,000 and $100,000 a year.

Dean: Okay, so there, so you’re looking at an 18 or 20 times ROI for it.

Joe: So, the big takeaway here for this first session, because we’re almost at the hour, is if you start thinking about your business like what if the only way that you could ever get paid is if you created value first, it would really change the way you actually thought about what you were selling. If there was a law that was passed that said, “You no longer can sell something in advance, without…” Imagine that you go into a restaurant and you only pay for meals that you liked. Do you think the quality of food would improve? Alright, we have a special room for people whose phones go off, just so you know. I can see that you felt bad about that. So I just wanted to make you feel even worse. It’s okay. It’s okay. If you come again, though… It’s your first time. You get a free pass. It’s like a 12-step group.

Member: Why is it my when my kids put this on a little pause, that I don’t hear the phone ring for 3 days? But if I did it, it doesn’t work.

Member: It’s called technology. My 11-year-old boy knows more about that stuff than I do.

Member: I was talking about my 6-year-old, buy hey.

Joe: You know what? When we went to the X Prize Foundation, me and Renee, there was this “laptop for every child,” the guy that started that in Africa, they actually are going in the villages and he was telling a story about how they dropped off the laptops in remote villages, in Africa. They didn’t even take them out of the box. They just left the box there, for these kids. The laptops were charged, in the box. They left them there with a tape, and they gave them to kids who’d never seen anything like this in their life. And literally, they have the thing open, and within 3 days, I think they were using, totally effectively, something like 30 different apps on the computers.

It’s like a child’s brain knows how to figure stuff out. We just actually think they’re much more stupid than they are. And if you don’t even give them instructions and you just let them play with it, they actually not only figure out how to turn it on, but actually how to use it. And these are kids that have never had any sort of exposure to television or anything. It’s a trip. You know what’s interesting about this generation, though? I mean, think about it. We’re going to be the only generation that actually went from like remembering to turn the television dial, to the fax system, pagers, to dial phones, to the Internet. It’s a trip. It’s a total trip.

Member: I had my son, he saw me typing on a typewriter, an old-school typewriter, and he said “Dad, what is that?” He started laughing.

Joe: That’s funny.

Member: We used to do that to our parents. But when we get it done, we’re this quick…

Joe: Were you in my typing class? Because me and Pal went to high school together. When I dropped a typewriter on my head, do you remember that? Do you remember that though? Check this out. So, I’m on this chair, in the typing class. It’s on wheels, and I’m learning back with the wheels, right? And I’m leaning back. And during that time in school I was always high, because I had a bong in my locker and everything. So, I had a bad drug problem in high school. Okay, so, and I talked about that publicly, so if this is the first time you’ve heard it, it’s not like this is the first time I’ve said that. So, I was in the front class, in the front of the class. Remember Stacy Stumpf? Whatever her last name is now, she got married. But nonetheless, I’m at the front of the class, so I’m leaning back, and the chair slips out from under me. And I grab this desk, and I’m in midair, basically, with a chair that’s now falling. And the whole desk is like “Rrrrr.” And there’s a heavy typewriter, and it hits the ground, as this typewriter, bam, it just bounces off my head.

Member: Oh, my word.

Joe: And now, I swear to God, if I’m making this up. And the teacher, the typing instructor, was a dwarf. Do you remember her? Do you remember her? I can’t remember her name.

Member: Mean.

Joe: She was super mean. What’s that? And she lived in a mushroom, though. So, I get up, I immediately put the chair up, and I’m trying to act cool. I’m so embarrassed, and my head is pounding. And Stacy’s like “Are you alright? Are you alright?” Because she was a really sweet girl. And I’m like, “Yeah.” And she’s looking at me. And she’s like “Oh.” I just see her mouth open, and her eyes widen. And I’m like “What’s wrong?” And all of a drip, drip. And all this blood just… That was bad. And the dwarf teacher screamed at me, like “You stupid kid. What are you…” I mean she lost it, because she didn’t know how to handle the fact that I was injured. So, she’s like freaking out. So anyway, typewriters. That’s where my brain goes. That’s what happens.

Dean: That’s how you reverse risk and make it easy for people to get started. Tying it all back together.

Joe: So we have to end this episode. I think Dave was going to say something. Was there something you were going to say, Dave?

Member: Oh, it was just to create a marketing audit. You can sit down with them, where you can create one online, that would ask them a certain number of questions, so you could find out what exactly is important to them, as far as those reports.

Member: I’m the outside guy. I’m trying to get a JV relationship. I don’t own a company. So, I’m dealing with a software engineer CEO. I’ve never dealt with that before, so it’s teaching me a lot of lessons.

Member: Scott asked me about it the other day, over a glass of wine, and I said, “We should create a better product and put them out of business.”

Joe: I would offer to not just help them with marketing, just take equity in the company. Because if you have equity in the company, maybe they’re going treat the whole thing different than what you have. Because they’re going to need someone to figure this out for them. You can have the greatest tool in the world, but if it’s not presented in way that’s not overcoming the complexity, and people aren’t seeing any value in it, that’s why marketers are more important that experts. Because you’ve got to sell it first. They’re both important. You want to have a good product. You want to have good messaging. You want to have good usage. There’s a whole series of stuff.

But what I would do, based on what Dean said, is look at at least presenting it to the dentist in the before unit, the during unit, and the after unit. Because at least for a dentist, that will make sense. That’s more consumable and understandable, because then you’re seeing, “Okay, we’ve got all these reports that can help you in your before unit, we’ve got all these to help you in the during, we’ve got these that can help you in the after.” And you say, “Okay. What area in your business do you need the most work? Oh, it’s client acquisition. Oh, it’s retention.” And then you can build everything around that. Well cool. That is episode one of…

Dean: Tune in next time.

Joe: Tune in next time and wait a week to hear what everybody’s going to hear in 3 minutes.

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