How To Find Millions of Dollars in Even The Smallest Niches

Welcome everybody to the Magnetic Marketing Podcast. Today we're going to be talking about that inkling feeling that you have when you look at somebody and wonder, how in the world are they making that much money in that market? Today we're talking about how to extract millions of dollars in even the smallest niches. Dan's going to be interviewing Marty Forte. Marty Forte has a brick and mortar and he also has an information business and both have a common thread. Small ponds. How do you make millions inside of small ponds and make this work? What should your pricing strategy be? What should your marketing strategy be? How do you not only gain customers but retain them and ascend them for life? How do you make sure that this all works in a way that you can start to grow your business without the concerns that are usually attributed to smaller niches. This is going to be an episode you're really going to enjoy whether or not you're in a small niche, because the lessons that come from this small niche strategy can be used in any size niche to massively explode your reach and your growth. Let's jump in.

I don't think there's anybody that has had a bigger impact in the field of direct response than Dan Kennedy. The legend of Dan Kennedy should be ignored at your own peril. They're not really lessons. They're kind of laws. Laws that you live by. Dan opened my eyes to what small business marketing looks like. Dan teaches strategic direct response that is timeless.

His ripple effect touches people who don't even know his name.

The world as we know it was changed because Dan Kennedy became obsessed with marketing.

Welcome to the Magnetic Marketing Podcast with your host, Dan Kennedy.

Welcome to the Diamond Call, everybody, and my guest, who we'll get to just in a moment is Marty Ford, who I think delusionally believes his team is returning to the Super Bowl this year.

Oh, come on now.

But I have no axe to grind. We wish you well. Anyway, so Marty is with us and we are going to spend some time with Marty really talking about both of his businesses with the common The chief common thread is how to find a whole lot of money where most people don't think there is much, and you might not think there is much, at which he is really, really good and has done a terrific job with both of his businesses. So Marty, welcome to the call.

Thanks for having me.

I'm going to start by letting you, for those of you who don't know you, just do your own quickie introduction. Referencing both brick-and-mortar business and info business, if you will.

Sure. So I've been in GKIC since 2009, so 7 years now. Maybe it's longer than that. 2008, started working with you in 2009 privately, but 2008 was my entry to GKIC, so 8 years now. And at that time, Dan, if you looked at my Social Security statement, I was pulling in a whopping $19,000 a year, which is McDonald's assistant manager money, as a guitar teacher. You know, I've been a musician and you may not know this, but I used to have hair down to my waist and opened up for hair metal bands like Skid Row and Ratt and all that kind of stuff from the '80s. You listened to the Rat Pack, not the band Ratt, but still, as do I. And parlayed that into using your teachings and GKIC's teachings to grow the core business, which is a brick-and-mortar music school called Columbia Arts Academy. We now have two locations. We have one in Columbia, one in Lexington. Between the two of them, Dan, it's 1,250 students thereabouts. And just for the music schools, just for private music lessons, which as you would imagine Most people think even during the holidays that I'm still broke. The funniest thing to me and Valerie is people that work with my wife at her school, and they look at us like, you know, we must be a pauper, and like I'm still a teacher, right? But what they don't know, and what you know, and what we're going to talk about on today's call is those two brick and mortars, Dan, are pulling in $1.5 million a year, which for any small business is no small chunk of change. I've parlayed that into an info biz. Which is called Music Academy Success, which is what we work on in Titanium as a Titanium member. And I am the largest private coaching program internationally for just music schools. And we have an annual event which I'm very excited you're our guest speaker in April. And we're also doing a mastermind with you in April that I'm proud to say, Dan, I sold out in 3 hours. So InfoBiz is doing quite well. We got members all over the world and the 2 newest things which have been also the majority of titanium work has been our licensing. So we're now doing done-for-you services. It's a system called the Musical Ladder System. I've got a lot of great press to show you, Dan, in Cleveland in October at the titanium meeting of articles and TV shows, TV features about me and the businesses which have not only helped— what's cool about it is they've helped the info biz and the brick and mortar simultaneously. That's the really cool part about it since I know how to leverage it, right? So licensees, Dan, we've only been 8 months in, it's still patent pending, finishing touches of software, we're up to 80 licensees in 8 months without even really an official launch. And I've been doing some part-time work coaching coaches. You know Connor Haney, obviously, and he just did a GoCall with AJ, and Connor's one of my clients, he's an optician in the UK, and I work with people like him at martyfortconsulting.com to coach coaches. So staying busy, as you know. Generating a lot of income and more and more having a good time.

So I want to frame this for people about sizes of ponds. So let's take the brick-and-mortar businesses first, that you have 2 locations and combined they're topping $1 million a year in revenue and 1,200 students. What is the Columbia market And what does the Lexington market look like?

The metro area combined is 800,000, and if you had to break it into Columbia versus Lexington, I would say you're looking at 400,000 for Columbia and 300,000 for Lexington.

And that's total population, so— or is that households?

Um, population.

Population. So give or take households with eligible kids, do you know the number?

Well, in a 5-mile radius from Rosewood, there's about 8,000, and 5-mile radius from Lexington, there's, uh, 10,000.

So now we're down to a relatively small number. Competition?

It is horrendous because all my success is done. But here's the positive spin and the reality. All my success is done has made every Tom, Dick, and Harry, including family members, Dan. I mean, my nieces and nephews are already salivating to take these things from me. There's a ton, more than ever, but what it's made me do is step up my game with stuff like the licensing, the musical ladder, and then I leverage that. For example, you're speaking in Cleveland in April for me, right? The theme of that event, Dan, is Beating the Competition 2.0. It's the entire story and all the examples of everything I've been through this year. Info marketing for me has been fantastic because when I go through stuff like this, like competition, I can then help others with their competition.

But this is not like you're sitting there in Columbia all by yourself.

Hell no. We have major big box retailers, Guitar Center, the university, enormous intense competition, very thick.

Well, and you also deal— I'm right, I think— you also deal with school teacher doing this after hours. Whose entire fixed investment is the back seat of her car, and, and they chip away, right?

Well, they try.

You got them from, from, from, from both ends. So, so that's size of pond for brick and mortar. Now let's talk about size of pond for info business for a couple minutes. So your core niche is other brick-and-mortar music schools across the country. What's that number you're dealing with?

U.S. is 8,500 and Canada is around 15.

So at 8,500, you're in one of the smallest info business niches that I know of. I think you're in the smallest one of anybody who's with us in Titanium.

Absolutely. We—

I typically count small at like $15,000, so you're at half of what I would call a small niche, and that raises its own challenges. And a lot of people would look at that and think way too small, but your info business is in 7-figures now too, isn't it? Yeah, so conceptually first, um, tell me a little bit about what you've learned, what you know about doing big numbers in, in small ponds.

I, I mean, I think it goes down to something Zig Ziglar said, which Zig Ziglar said, you can have everything in life you want if you will just help other people get what they want. And so if you look at kids, I mean, children's services, which really, Dan, 80— so let's start with the brick and mortar, then transition that question to FOBISS, okay? If you look at the brick and mortar, Dan, 85% of our enrollment is children and 15% are adults, and that's for a variety of factors. So one of the ways that I've learned to get money out of it is to be, selective, right? We don't have pictures of adults on the website. We don't have really adult-based marketing because they're busy, they miss all the time, and they're demanding, right? But the ideal avatar for us is if the Kennedys got a minivan with 4 kids, then that's who we want. You know what I mean? So what I've learned is you have to be really clear about who you're serving. And then, as you know, you're a father. I mean, you know, people will spend anything on their kids. So, you know, obviously, like, you've heard the term grandpa pay, right? Or grandma pay. We get a lot of that, you know what I mean? Even if they can't afford, which right now we are the most expensive in the market, they'll pay it. So the first thing I've learned is if you're really helping them and you're putting their kids on stage twice a year and you're giving them wristbands and trophies with the musical ladder system, and you're really taking care of them on the customer service end, and you're really giving them something that they want, which is they want their kids to be successful. So some copy I took away, I went to your— and very sorry to hear about Fred Katona's passing, but I saw him speak at Mailbox Millions, and that was really cool because he showed us exercises to draft our own copy for radio. So one of the pieces of copy, Dan, that came out that helped me in a small niche was, "Do you want your child to get better grades?" That's how the commercial starts. "Do you want your child to get better grades? How about improved confidence and self-esteem? Well, studies show that one of the best ways to get your child better grades in school and have fun at the same time with better confidence," I'm paraphrasing, "is music lessons, yada, yada, yada." So that kind of thing. Really what are the the parents thinking, the 8,000 of them, and at $1.5 million, Dan, what else can I say, right?

Well, what's really important I think about what you just said that people really ought not miss is when you have a relatively small pool of potential customers, clients or patients to pull from. First of all, being at the top of the price range is obviously helpful because less equals more. Fewer customers even than a competitor down the street but at significantly higher prices and values and off we go. So really the more valuable the customer is, the less of them we need, which can get us to the same percentage of a market somebody might get in a much bigger market that might be industry par or industry norm and yet still provide the actual financial result that we want. The second thing that may be more important is redefining what it is that you are selling in the first place so that it is intrinsically more valuable. It's more meaningful and it has less competition by positioning. And so you did that with much the same— in much the same way that martial arts schools, they— some use exactly the same pitch that you just gave, safer, smarter kids with better grades, rather than it being about can the kid play White Christmas or can the kid defend himself against somebody in an alley. The idea here is it gets to this question always of what business are we really in? You know, are we running a music school or in fact are we really doing something very differently? And usually the very differently is more price elastic than is the deliverable itself. And so people ought not to miss that because they need to find a way, especially if they are small market confined, they need to find a way to do exactly the same thing in their business and you've done it brilliantly. So—

Thank you.

Now segue over to the info business where the problem in many respects is even more acute. I mean at 85, 8,500 eligible in a niche, you're playing in a real small park.

So what I've learned about working in a small pond is back to the Zig thing, okay? That for those listening to the call today and they're saying, you know, Marty, I'm in a smaller market, or even if they're in a big market, they can use this, Stan, in their info biz.. It's really about how are they helping them. I think most info marketers come in with the following trajectory. They start talking about marketing and you were there, Bill Glazer said to me at Winners Weekend at Disney, it was 2011, he said, "You know, Marty, if you only talk to them about marketing, you're not going to keep them very long." I came in with that kind of thinking, Dan. I'm going to help them with marketing, help them with retention, and you were there in Titanium when I had a serious situation going going on in my school with cops and death threats with a contractor and AK-47s. I don't still know which was more scary for me was what was going on 1,000 miles away at the music school or having to tell you that I needed to put my phone on vibrate during a titanium meeting. I don't know which was more anxiety for me, but I appreciate you being cool about it. But the point is I took that experience— this is the perfect answer to your question, Dan. I took that which would have been a really traumatic experience for me years earlier on in my development, right? I put it into a newsletter for Music Academy Success and they're still talking about it because it helps them. This is the key to answer what I've learned about work. If you're going to work in a small pond, you've got to be really helpful to know what they're going through and what's on their mind. I see a lot of info marketers, Dan, would just think, "Well, no, the newsletter this month is going to be about marketing. It will be about this social media thing." It'll be about this direct mail piece, but there's tons of that, right? The way I'm able to navigate and successfully, you know, captain a small pond for almost 10 years now is I know what their problems are and I'm good at helping them and taking stuff that I go through and recycle it to them. Does that make sense?

Yeah, and you know, I had a call earlier today with Jay Abraham's son. Who is a new and developing copywriter. He's actually at Agora right now. And he asked what the difference is between really top-tier and super effective copywriters and all the rest. Because like anything else, it's pyramidal. There's 1%, 4%. And so forth. And I said the majority think, first of all, because it says copywriter, the job is write copy. And so they're in a real big hurry to get their fingers on a keyboard and write something. But beyond that, they are both superficial and lazy. About deeply understanding whoever it is that they are writing to. And so you've described— so we can take copywriting out and we can put information marketing in. And in reality, we can take information marketing out and we can put any core business you want in. So marketing a music school, marketing a dental practice that does Invisalign for kids, which would be somewhat an analogy to your business, marketing hearing aids to old people, marketing automobile— luxury cars to rich people, or whatever. The thing that most marketers miss is they're quick to the marketing. And they're not particularly deep in the understanding of the person at the other end of the marketing. If you're going to, you know, in a really big market, so for info marketing, if you take a niche, say, of dentists or lawyers or restaurant owners, you're talking about hundreds of thousands. Of eligible buyers. You can sort of cast mediocre bread onto that water and a bunch of fish are going to nibble at it and you may be able to do okay. When you're in a situation like yours, when you're down below 15,000 eligible buyers, then everyone matters.. And every miss matters. And now it becomes much more about what's really going on in that person's head, what's really going on with that person emotionally, what's their day-to-day experience like, how do they feel about the business they're in, and not just does this person, the infomarketer, stuff that can be helpful to me or have information that can be helpful to me, but does this person really, really deeply understand me, care about me, and want to be helpful to me on all levels, just not handing me a hammer and pointing me toward a nail? And I think most miss this. Now, you're right, it's advantage even in a bigger— I mean, if you have both the blessing and the curse of, of 85,000 to choose from instead of 8,500, it's still helpful. But where you are, it's like critical. And, uh, and, and, and most people are too quick to be engaged in the advertising, marketing, and selling and not really spending enough time. They don't really know their customer inside and out and midnight kitchen table conversation and what they worry about with their kids and so forth.

So to that end, if I could throw in something to say amen to what you're saying, one of the things I enjoy as a titanium member, but diamond members get it also, is your weekly Diamond Fax. So I've never really talked to you about this, but you know, you're always, you know, weekly keeping in touch with us via that fax, talking about current events. And it's a weekly, like, check-in, you know, to give us— I get energized from it, you know. So I started doing something that everybody on the call today can do, Dan, called the Ride Along Email. And the Ride Along Email I'm gonna confess, so if any of my members hear this, it shouldn't be too much of a surprise to them, but it's not news to me since I've been writing newsletters, Dan, for a long time and that are archived, that they're not always reading them. You know what I mean? They're getting the package, but like the AK-47 story, I clipped them because I was curious, you know, who's that, you know. And it takes them a while, but my point is this: I will recycle, you know, stuff from those and put them in that email. The feedback we get from them is enormous because it's going right to the pain they're going through. Here's the lesson for the call of how to make money in a small pond. This is why it relates to Dance Moms. Dance Moms and I have crazy parents. Well, you go through crazy parent story. Teacher issues. I imagine we don't have any teacher issues. You can imagine I've got 70 musicians working under me, Dan, 70. So all kinds of issues that when— and really the big thing is telling a story. Not a lecture, not boring, but just honestly with conviction telling a story. Also, 3 words I'd write down that really have helped Dan to monetize a small pond that I know are essential for monetizing a small pond are fraternity, recognition, and and experience. So if we have time permitting, you know, award ceremonies are big for us, cocktail dinners are big for us, speed networking is big for us, you know, closed Facebook is big for us. I'm not sure where you want to go with any of those, but there are a variety of tools we're doing to facilitate that.

So I want to come back to that, but I want to do something in between. And so the smaller the market to me, the more critical is retention and the more critical is ascension. And again, if you have— if you're fooling around in a big pond and you have a fairly high churn rate of customers, clients, or patients, there's sort of, you know, there's always another bus coming. If your business is 20-mile radius instead of 5-mile radius or if your business is in a suburb, a big suburb of Atlanta rather than a suburb of Columbia, hell, the new movers every 90 days exceed the number of people you could drive away even if you tried in the bigger market, but that's definitely not the case in the smaller market. So I've always thought, and I operated in two small niche ponds as an info marketer very early. I mean, I operated within only the National Speakers Association, which was about half of yours. It was about 4,000 people, 3,500 maybe. And Cairo's at the time I was there, when you threw out the really old ones and you threw out the really young ones, you were dealing with about 15,000 eligible clients. And so you really— you can't afford to miss one, and you losing one is really serious because there's not big numbers of replacements to choose from. In a brick-and-mortar niche versus, say, like a service business niche, there's less new replacement churn in the business to deal with. So if I wake up in the morning and want to be a real estate agent, I can pretty much be a real estate agent. If I want to be a music school owner, I've got to find space, I've got to negotiate a lease, I've got to— I don't guess there's much equipment, but I probably need a decent sound system. I might need a piano. I mean, so I'm— you know, there's a heavier barrier to entry. There's a heavier investment. So for all those reasons, it seems to me like the best strategies for keeping them so they don't leave in both businesses and the best strategies for ascending them from one level to the other are pretty important. I think that's going to get us into where you started to go, but I would like to hear your specific thoughts about both retention within that continuity and about ascension.

Sure. So retention first in both businesses. See, I view these businesses as very similar, Dan. I tell, you know, my Music Academy Success members— and this is part of it, going back to the fraternity thing, there has to be fraternal language, you know? And so they named themselves Masters. You know, Music Academy Success, short MAS, Masters, like, you know, in Augusta. And so what I tell the Masters is, is that, you know, for them to retain their clients, they're really in the subscription business. They are— their students, Dan, are subscribing to music lessons. They're either going to subscribe for 3 months, 12 months, 18 months. First they've got to start tracking that if you're going to improve retention. What have you always preached, Danny? You've got to know your numbers. So first step to improve retention is what are the numbers? How long are they staying for lessons? How long are they staying and continuing? So tracking, but the big thing is, and this answer may or may not surprise you, is office staff. I mean personal touch. So we automate a lot of things, but I'm a big believer in the brick-and-mortar school for retention and in the info biz for retention in personal touch. So for example, Dan joins Music Academy Success. Well, the first thing that's happening— let's go back up to the free report. Dan's accordion barn in Independence is dying. And you want to get it fixed, okay? So you request a free report, right? The first thing we do to help not only get you as a member but eventually retain you and ascend you is we're not just going to send out an automated email. You know what you're getting, Dan? You're getting a phone call. And you're getting a phone call from Stephanie, who's full-time, and she's going to chat you up and find out what's going on with the accordions and all the dust collecting on them., and that alone starts down the path of retention and ascension. Does that make sense? The personal reach out—

I'm sorry? Yeah, and I think it should be made absolutely clear that's not a sales call. No. You're not trying to accelerate or jump the buying process.

It's more an empathy call. Completely, because the key for making money in a small pond is when I coach, I am very big into repeating myself. So Dan gets on a call with me from the accordion shop and says, "Nobody is buying accordions and Weird Al Yankovic is not who he used to be and it just ain't happening." So I go back to you or Stephanie would or whoever, "Make sure I understand this, Dan, that you're having trouble because you're not getting accordion students and you want to get more," blah, blah, blah. So it is empathy, and it's saying, "Okay, well great, tell me about your school. All right, sounds like a great fit, so we're going to send this out to you, and I'm going to follow up." So number 2, for retention, she follows up with them. See, now they got somebody on the phone they can call in an info biz, which as you said, if you're servicing hundreds of thousands of real estate agents, hundreds of thousands of lawyers, they can live that life of automation, you know what I mean? But when you're dealing in a tiny pond that I am, right, there has to be that personal reach out to where they feel like they can pick up the phone, call somebody, and there is a source like a refrigerator magnet, right, for the lifeline.

Okay, the other funnel— don't you think even that as by and large there becomes less and less of this, that for at least some customers or clients. Just the fact that you're sort of a last man standing delivering human touch and human access, you gain an advantage just by doing it alone.

Amen. And look, let's switch back to the schools for a second. So we mystery shop our competitors intensely.. And you know, I have weekly meetings, get daily reports from them, and the staff sometimes will try to put things to their advantage. So Dan, they said to me, well, we want to automate these reminders for this class. We want to just email these things out because it's taking too much time. And I said, hell no, you're not emailing just these reminders. You're going to pick up the phone, You're going to call Dan, you're going to remind him his class is this Thursday, not your private appointment but for a group thing or whatever, or whatever the reminder is, right? And you're going to use it as a chance, and everybody should jot this down, Dan, to upsell him, bond with him, ask him how the horses are, and the answer to your question is yes. It doesn't have to be a matter of my opinion. Since we're the last man standing, there is no other school, Dan, in the state of South Carolina doing $1.5 mil. With music lessons for kids? Barely any in the country, right? If we go back to the info biz, and I'll try to go quick because I know we've got to watch the clock. Other retention tools we use are, so Dan joins, right? Well, the first thing you get is a fast-track call, excuse me, orientation. So orientation is held with Stephanie, not with me, and you know why we do that? To make sure that you take your handout, and you wouldn't do this because you don't use the internet, but let's say you did. Get you in the website, get you in the books, Ask what your most pressing needs are, show you where they are, Dan, because we want to break the seal and we want to get you moving, okay? Then I do fast tracks every 2 weeks. They're in group format. They have to fill out a questionnaire before the fast track, and this is key. You know why? Because they want to get it out. So back to the NPC thing, if you don't let them get it out in advance via questionnaire, you know, they're going to run up the whole call telling you their life story. So go ahead and read it twice. Let them get it out. Then when I come on the call, here's the big thing as a coach, Dan. I've read your get acquainted questionnaire, right? I purposely make specific references to the email so that you know not only did I read it, but I understood it and here's the prescription.

Well, I think there's a third thing that happens too any time you do that. Actually, there's two other things that happen. So I do this for small, uh, masterminds and meetings, um, kind of like the one day I'm doing for you. I have one coming up for, uh, Dr. Burleson, and we've questionnaire'd every, uh, participant and all of the reasons you enumerated, right? But The very fact that they have to— that they do it, it forces them to stop and think a little bit about their business and themselves. And they sort of clarify and crystallize thinking that otherwise they wouldn't. And they're now better prepared to be a good student, a good participant a good coaching client. And the minute you demonstrate that you actually read them, because most people think you don't, uh, you gain stature, status, and influence. Um, I had a call— you know, it's my call day, all I'm doing is on the phone all day. And I had a client earlier, um, who's a regular private client group member, and, um, he had sent in, I don't know, 7 pages, 8 pages, it doesn't matter what it was, but I'd read it. And, um, and so when he started to like take me back through it, I said, we don't have to spend your time on— I read it. Um, you actually read the whole thing? Now on one level You think to yourself, well, why the hell would you go to all the trouble to send me 7 pages if you didn't think I was going to read it? And yet the person is still surprised that you read it. And then if you're telling the truth and you're able to demonstrate you read it, uh, you, you've gained a lot. Um, this whole automate everything, standardize everything efficiency at the expense of effectiveness, as Drucker used to say. People are living with it, but that does not mean they're happy with it. It does not mean they're motivated by it. And again, small market where every advantage matters. This is a way to have a big advantage.

Okay, go ahead now with process.

Well, you want to talk about ascension, right? Yeah, retention, ascension, continuity.

Okay. Um, all of it. All right, so one quick comment on that, on the automation thing. So with Musical Ladder, the licensees are buying monthly wristbands and trophies, right? Now we had a beautiful online store set up and the staff was trying to get me to do order forms, but sales were not where I wanted them. So you know what I did via a phone call? For School of the Year, I fly out to a school. I'm in a black car service on a cell phone having a meeting on the airport, all the way to the airport. And I said, effective today, take the store down. You guys are going to run 888-M-Ladder, which is easy to remember. They can put it on the fridge. And they're to email or call in orders only because these guys are running lesson to lesson, Dan. You know, they don't want to fill out a form. They don't want to dig around the store. They want to call somebody and say, hey, I need blank. You know what's happened to sales?

They've doubled. They've doubled.

Yep. Does not surprise me in the least.

All right, so back to this. Yeah, and it, it sort of feels to a lot of people regressive, like going from a computer to a typewriter, um, but it's not that simple, you know. It is a It is— it's a strategic choice. It's a matter of math. What does it cost you now in human cost to be able to service that? But some things lend themselves real well to automation and some things don't lend themselves real well to automation.

All right, go ahead. So amen, and so to that end, we have full-time staff for the InfoBiz, right, and of course for the schools. And so that helps retention because they know they can pick up the phone, call somebody, get something done. So let's talk about numbers and metrics. From point of first purchase, Dan, our conversion rate for continuity is 95%, and our retention rate is not in months, it's in the multiples of years. So the things we do that affect ascension, and you would preach this for a long time, is especially at our events, one, the events cannot be evergreen. There's always got to be a new spin, new theme. Last year was the Million Dollar Musical Conference. We had green balloons with cash signs. Million-dollar bills on all the tables. This year we're doing Beating the Competition with You. And then for the 2018, I'm going to have to drum up something else to put a new spin on what's new. So that's big for retention and ascension. Once they're there, making it an event. So we kick off the first night of the conference with a 3-hour dinner cocktail awards ceremony. Business attire is required and also orchestrated in advance. We don't want them showing up in jeans and a t-shirt. They know I want to see suits and ties and dresses because it changes their whole mentality about the event. We do full buffet, open bar, and then we do speed networking, 3 rounds a pop, and then we go into what's called the faith belief action awards, which is faith in themselves that they can achieve success, belief that the MAS system works for them, and taking action on it. And I give out real Olympic medals. I showed you one in titanium. They're, you know, heavy. And they've got, you know, very nice ribbons they can see in the dark and gravitate towards the people that have won. And so that's big. School of the Year contest is big. People come back all the time to see what the others are doing. So if you want to get your retention and ascension up, showcase the winners via the award ceremonies, via the contest. We do School of the Year contest. We do office staff member contest. This year we did a Facebook campaign of the year contest. So it's showcasing, showcasing stories, stories. And now we've gone then from typical ballroom marketing content deliverable to they know they're going to get on a plane either as a newbie or old-timer, have a great experience, dinner with their friends, meet some new ones to be friends with, see what the others are doing hear stories.

I didn't say much about marketing, did I? And if you worked it backwards to the core business, you're doing the same thing in the school. Absolutely.

So here's the big battle I fight with that. The way the musical ladder is designed, Dan's Accordion Barn comes on. You've now got these wristbands and trophies in your lobby, but see, we still got to get you to think right. What you want to do is take them down to the Cleveland German Fest and have their accordions out doing polka music and give them all their wristbands there and make it all one fell swoop, one time a year because you're— not you, but the person would be lazy, right? That's not how that works. What Marty Ford wants to see and does see is every day in my schools, two different locations, there are tests with these wristbands going daily. So at the desk there's activity. Kennedy's come in for a tour. You see him getting a wristband. And that's how they ascend. They not only become customers but they ascend. And the way they ascend is through— here's something specific anybody can do. We have a closed Facebook group for the group which, as you know, I have mixed feelings about. It does become a headache but I think it's a necessity. They need to be able to communicate but it's got to be intensely moderated, right? And there are people that gotta just go, you know, that's the dark side of it. But a lot of them, Dan, will daily show their success, and that environment is contagious. So Stephanie started to keep a success file. We're up to now, Dan, almost 500 success stories. And here's what this means: when they see other higher-level members, Gold Plus, Diamond, succeeding and crushing it, on a systematic success report in the newsletters and the award ceremonies and daily on the Facebook. See, that's 3 streams, Dan, of social proof. And that social proof and fraternity is what helps our ascension in a small pot.

All right, so let's talk just a little bit now about continuity and force, non-force, dropout, things you do now that you didn't do 3 years ago to extend life of continuity members.

Talk a little bit about that. Well, I mean, it's really the personal touch is big. I mean, so ours is forced, so what happens is for the box, 3 payments of $499, 30 days apart, and then you go into continuity. And so from day 1, we're getting them on the orientation call with Stephanie. That helps. We're getting them on the fast track with me. That helps a lot. As you said, they trust me, they know me, know we care about them, there's empathy, and we're really trying to help them. Back to the Zig Zig. Constant showcasing of the success stories, constant promotion of the awards coming up. And we do other events. So we've now launched— which a lot of your guys are doing— is we're doing training for their staff. So we now have an annual event which is the over-the-top office staff training that's coming up in November. So their staff flies to me. So that helps, you know, to keep them interested, keep them around. Always trying to come up with new call topics and new stuff that's important to them. Back to earlier, the constant— Showing the empathy of the horrible stuff I go through and they do as well, that's enormous. They're sticking around to hear not only what are their buddies going through, Dan, but what's Marty going through. So for example, when we do our newsletters at the schools, we send them to the mass members also. Every time we send an email from the schools, we send them to the members also. So they're really getting to ride along in the guts of the business. And how cool is that, that over the years— see, I didn't do all that stuff. It took me time to build this machine. But I mean, if you're running the accordion place and you can ride along with emails and direct mail and newsletters and all this other stuff and just ride along as a passive user, that's how we're keeping them 4 to 5 years because there's always new stuff. There's always a what next, but also focusing on core fundamentals. So not sugarcoating. The story I tell is, you know, Tom Brady, what does he do every day? He throws balls. He runs. You would think by now he got that, right? But no, they— the Browns don't have it, but Brady does.

Well, to be fair, we don't have anybody who can throw or run well, let alone doing it. But, um, but no, it's— see, the athlete comparison is one I often make to people because not only Is he throwing and running? But he's measuring his performance. He still has analysts and coaches and somebody saying, you know, since last week your wrist is moving in a different direction. Are you aware your wrist is moving? I mean, and yeah, you would think by now you would have all that, but the real pros are constantly focused on the core elements of what they do. But you are also right. If you keep people around you a long time, it's very hard to do that unless they are either using utilities that can be unplugged or they are vested in you in your ongoing adventures and soap opera and life, not just in the core elements that you teach. It's very hard to keep them. And people don't get that. They don't understand that we are— information marketing is a mix of fiction and nonfiction. It's not just a technical process manual on the shelf. Because you are a performer, we will close the call with some applause for you.

Bye, Marty. Bye, everybody. Thank you for listening to the Magnetic Marketing Podcast with Dan Kennedy. If you love hearing in on these lost Dan Kennedy talks, and speeches and calls, then please let someone else know about this podcast. That's how you can help it to grow. And the more it grows, the more free Dan Kennedy we can bring to you. Also, Dan would love to give you the most incredible free gift ever designed to help you make maximum money in minimum time. Now this free gift comes with almost $20,000 in pure money-making information for free. Just for saying maybe. You can get this gift from Dan right now at noBSletter.com. Not only do you get the $20,000 gift, you also get a subscription to 2 marketing newsletters that will be hand-delivered by the mailman to your mailbox each and every month. One from Dan Kennedy and one from me, Russell Brunson. To get this gift and your subscription, go to NoBSLetter.com right now.