One Step Vs. Lead Generation Marketing

When it comes time to finally advertise your business, there are two different paths that are offered. And in this episode, we're going to talk about the pros and cons of each. Welcome to the Magnetic Marketing Podcast. In this episode, we get to listen to Charlie Martin as he's interviewed by Bill Glazer. Now, Charlie, at the time of this recording, was working on Dan Kennedy with a very specific campaign. And this campaign not only follows one of these two methods, but it doubles down on something that you're going to learn at the very end. And I want to give you this idea of what to look for throughout the episode. At the very end of the episode, they're going to talk about the importance of having unusual success means you have to be willing to be unusual. Now, as you tune into this episode, make sure that you listen to all the different ways that they are setting themselves apart and being unusual and how it plays into their success. Let's listen in to One Step Versus Lead Generation Marketing with Bill Glazer and Charlie Martin.

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

Well, hello, Glazer Kennedy members. This is Bill Glazer bringing you another one of your monthly gold CDs. And this month I have with me a member that was in my InfoMastermind group in 2007. You'll be receiving this actually in 2008, but his name is Dr. Charlie Martin. Many of you who have been members for a while certainly know Charlie. He's a dentist in Richmond, Virginia. His specialty is cosmetic dentistry, and he works predominantly— is very well known for working predominantly with larger cases. I believe, well, he can tell us in a second, but his cases are typically much, much higher priced than other dentists that are in the same genre of dentistry, and we'll probably talk a little bit about that today as well. He also has, if you hang around Glazer Kennedy long enough, you become an information marketer, and he's been an information marketer now for a couple of years. He has a very elite and exclusive coaching group that he works with dentists and helps them to pretty much use the same strategies that he's using in his own dental practice to also significantly increase their case sizes and also ways to attract new patients. And just recently, he and Dan Kennedy together, they launched a new information marketing business which is called Dentistry for Diabetics. And that's an area exclusive program. For those of you who never heard the term area exclusive, that's where you only work with one person in one area. And they now have, oh, I think it's approaching about 50 dentists around the country that, I'm probably getting some of my numbers a little bit wrong, but Charlie will correct me in a second. But where there's— they work with the dentist, they teach the dentist how to attract patients that have diabetes, and they have their own— diabetic patients have their own set of rules, and there are also opportunities for dentists. So they've recently launched a very, very successful program with that. So with that, let me welcome Dr. Charlie Martin. How are you, Charlie?

Hi, Bill. I'm great. Thank you for having me.

My pleasure. How much of my statistics did I screw up?

You didn't do any screwing up. You did very well. You should give yourself a pat on the back. You did very well with those statistics.

Thanks for that nurturing statement, Charlie. Just out of curiosity, what average case size in your practice is what?

Well, you know, every patient's different. Of course, in dentistry, like every other health profession, everything is custom, but I work to attract what I call the big problem patient, and probably the average size is about $32,000.

Very good. And just for everybody, for point of reference, let's take the same case that you're charging $32,000 for and in geographic areas that are similar to Richmond, including Richmond, what would a typical dentist charge for that case?

Well, most typical dentists won't do these cases, but someone who's doing this kind of work, See, this is, this is a difficult question to answer, so I'm gonna have to couch it a little bit differently. The average new patient in a dental practice is about $1,500 worth of work. That's according to the American Dental Association. Typically, the dentist I work with will end up getting 2 to 3 times that amount. And Bill, the important thing here is that it's not so much that We are creating work that didn't exist. We're just more fully diagnosing what's going on and actually creating results that have longer-lasting positive effects for patients because frankly, many dentists are fearful, frankly fearful of telling a patient all they need. In the process of that, they do the patient no good. They've actually worked against them because of their inability to get them to say yes to the care. That they really should have. So we've got the one number which is, you know, what's the average patient, but my patient comes in and they're what I would call a dental disaster. They call themselves a train wreck. You've probably never seen a case as bad as mine. All kinds of phrases like this. And so constantly we're rebuilding them. We're using dental implants and cosmetics and putting them back together again. So that's the reason the case size is so large. Not every patient I see is that. Some, frankly, are 2 or 3 times that. And, you know, there's quite a slew of them that aren't quite that big, but on average, that's what it turns out to be because of who I market to.

Okay, and actually, that's a great segue into the real purpose of today's call, which is sort of the acquisition of new customers, new clients, new patients. For any business at all, not certainly not just the dental profession. And the reason why I asked you to be our guest expert on this month's Gold Call is because you made a real scientific approach to looking at new customer, patient, client acquisition Specifically, what I wanted to talk about with you today is sort of the two different types of thinking that people have in order to attract new customers. So let's use, for the rest of this call, for the purpose of me not continuing to say customers, clients, patients, let's just call them customers if we can. And typically, The two kinds, there's what we call one-step marketing, which is to market to somebody in order to get them to respond, and the other one is the kind that people like yourself and I and most of the other people that I work with do, which is called lead generation marketing. I thought that we would take some time out today and talk about the two different types and what are the strengths and weaknesses of both. Let me first start off by asking you this question. Let's deal first with this notion of one-step marketing. And I'm going to ask you to identify it and talk about perhaps some of the qualities of it. Okay?

Sure. So one-step marketing is the kind of marketing where an ad is placed that has a singular response mechanism that requires the customer to make a call, to do something immediately, to go buy something, go to a practitioner's office, to make an act right now. The characteristic of one-step is that, you know, here's the ad, the communication, and here's what you want to do next. So that's a one-stepper. The problem with the one-stepper is what you're missing with using one-step. By the way, if anywhere you want to interject here, Bill, go ahead, because you know I'll continue. So the problem with the one-step is that you're missing out on a lot of folks. Who do you get? You get the person who is hot for what you've got. And if they're not hot for what you've got, then you're gonna miss them, particularly if you're not around all the time for them to find you. Whereas lead generation captures the interest of all these people and then educates, nurtures, and matures the lead to the point where they're now ready to receive what you have and actually want it.

So, so just to make sure that everybody follows this regardless of the kind of media that we're using. So let's say, I think you mentioned newspaper ad, direct mail, radio, television, your website. It's basically, and website's an area that I see most often this greatly abused and misused, but it's the thinking that I'm gonna, I put up a website, I'm going to run a radio ad, I'm going to send out a direct mail piece. Somebody's going to look at my website or whatever media I use and immediately say, "Okay, let me respond." Then they do so, but at the same time, if they don't respond— Let's say, again, using your terminology, Charlie, they're hot. If they're hot, they're going to respond. But if they're lukewarm, they're going to not necessarily respond, or they probably will never respond, and then there's no opportunity to actually continue to encourage them to respond at some other date, which now we move into the notion where we're going to talk about the most, which is lead generation. So why don't you, again, for everybody, define, you know, define what we define as lead generation marketing.

Lead generation marketing is marketing that grabs the attention of potential prospects all the way from hot for what you got to only lukewarm. And one way to think about this, and I think you have a graphic which I'm gonna give people a chance to get a hold of later, a graphic that shows how wide your funnel is at the top of your public relations marketing and sales funnel. But if you do one-shot, one-step marketing, the top of your funnel is pretty narrow. And those people who are not hot for what you've got are going to fall outside your funnel. The thing with lead generation is you get them, as Dan has always said, get them to raise their hand and say, "I'm interested." So the width of your funnel increases all the way from hot to what you've got to lukewarm. And now you capture all the leads. What we find is that any one time, only 20% of your potential prospects are hot for what you got. So that means 80% are being left behind. That 80% is where a lot of the profit is, a lot of the growth is, and it is also the place where you get to define which you do for your clients, customers, etc., on your terms by educating them, nurturing them as a lead, and maturing them because they mature at different rates.

So lead generation is basically marketing to those who are interested after they raise their hand and say, 'I am interested.' Let me, let me interject two points here, and then I'm going to shift it back to you, Charlie, is Number one is, you know, your comment that only 20% are hot for what you got. I would comment that that even may be very optimistic.

That may be optimistic, too. Absolutely true.

Yeah, so like, for example, if you were to place an ad in the newspaper, let's say the newspaper has a 300,000 circulation, you know, something like that, you might be less than 1%.

Oh.

And you might be a percentage, you know, even a percentage of 1%. That are hot for what you got. And then the other thing that I will comment about is that you also, when you run a one-step mailing or one-step approach type of marketing, you're also very much limited by the space that you have of that media to deliver your message. So if you have a 60-second radio spot, you're limited to what you can deliver in 60 seconds, which is typically— and this certainly depends on how quickly people speak— but about 120 words. If you're running in a newspaper, you're limited to the size of your ad. So what we're talking about here is the fact that with lead generation, by being able to grab their contact information, we can continue, we can move them to other media where we're not as limited, and we're going to talk a little bit about other media. We're not as limited in space, and also we have the ability to continue to market to them over and over and over again, which we don't have with one-step type of approach. So let me go back to you now, Charlie. So let's talk a little bit more about Now the advantages of lead generation marketing.

Okay, uh, yeah, a point I do want to make, and you please cleared it up, is, is that, um, when I say hot for what you've got, I'm talking about the, the, the, uh, the universe, so to speak, of prospects that would want what you have anyway. So of the total prospects, I'm saying 20% may be responsive, but that's neither here nor there. Once you have a lead, now you have different ways to communicate. And of course there's direct mail, but there's also other ways to do things. There's email, there is, you know, video. There's video on a website, there's video you can send out on a DVD or even a CD, special CD that you can do. There is different media that can be used. And one of the, one of the key elements of lead generation is since you know these people are prospects You can spend more money marketing to them because you already know that at least they're lukewarm at least. The second thing is that by using different media, you're able to touch, if you will, and communicate in a way they like to be communicated to. Some people like to listen to things. Other people like to read it. Other people like to watch it. When you combine all of those together, it's even that much more powerful. And of course, when a person says I'm interested and you can email them, the cost is negligible. It's just a matter of getting it out there. So different ways, different methodologies, and even including— we haven't even talked about outbound telephone calls, which is another conversation.

So just out of— just to put the pieces of this together. Why don't we use as an example maybe some strategies that you're teaching people in the dental profession. So some of the people that you work with that are looking for new patients, what are you teaching them? I mean, what does that funnel look like? What's their lead generation look like? And then after they get a lead, what are they doing there?

Right. Of course, there is lead generation techniques, and then there's lead nurturing or lead management techniques. So, but they start with lead generation. You get a lead, and now what are you going to offer them? Because really, you're giving them some type of offer to get them to respond, and so you get a lead. And generally, the thing that we use is a free report, even a white paper. And what many of our listeners may or may not know is that lead generation is actually creeping into corporate America in a very big way. I happen to be one of those folks that reads the Harvard Business Review. Well, in the Harvard Business Review, guess who has a lead generation ad? Perot Systems, one of the largest computer services companies in America. And they actually have a place— here's a white paper you can go get go to their website and go get a white paper. Well, I teach to use free reports and then follow-up pieces from there. Portions of that free report reproduced again before, and for us, we're certainly showing results with before and after type of reports, postcards, newsletters, mail, All of which have some sort of offer on them as an inducement to come on in. And you know, the thing about the offer is that everybody can understand why you give an offer. It's that much further inducement to act now versus not. So the number of steps that you use too, I want to point out, is dependent upon what your customer value is. The higher the value, the more steps you can put in and have it make sense. Or the lower you can keep the cost, the longer you continue to market and have it make sense. Right.

And, you know, the— and our members that are listening to this, I mean, what this type of marketing thinking that we're talking about is pretty much very widely accepted in the information marketing world. And so if you were to come to the InfoSummit and you'd be listening to the hundreds and hundreds of members that we have there, they get this pretty well. And those that are new to information marketing get it pretty fast. But outside of the information marketing world, most people are still using the one-step approach and not doing the lead nurturing approach. You don't see it as often. However, when you do see it, I'm glad that you used the example that you did, Charlie, but when you do see it outside of information marketing, it works just as well as it does inside information marketing. Yesterday, I was on the phone with a Gold Plus member down in Daytona Beach who owns a jewelry store. Her name is Cindy Ritzy. And in her jewelry store, she's now using the lead generation marketing approach and people that are coming into the store, she's getting their contact information. She's sending them out, same as you're doing, free reports to explain to them how to make good buying decisions in their jewelry. She's putting them on newsletters where she's continuing to market to them every month with a newsletter. And, you know, her business is up over 35% this year. Whereas if you speak to most retailers, and specifically jewelers, their business is not. And it's just because of the fact that, you know, is that they're still using the same kind of one-step approach. And they're not getting the people that are most interested in their products or services to raise their hands. And now by shrinking the universe to just having people that have said to us that we're interested in what you have, we now can put more of our resources into a much deeper funnel to those fewer people Being able to actually spend more money on fewer people, but being able to market to them over and over and over again. Charlie, what do you want to add to this? Let's move on, okay?

Yeah. Well, I think that the concept of lead maturing and nurturing is one that gets overlooked overlooked from this aspect, and that is this: when you lead them, when you nurture the lead, you are doing a number of things. You're educating them, you're motivating them, you are answering the question that everyone asks, every buyer asks: why choose you? And the fact that you've taken the time to educate them, to understand value of what you bring. Now they appreciate what you do also. But now this can take time, and this is the thing that as marketers that we overlook, is that it takes time sometimes to get those people that are lukewarm up to hot for what you got. The time frame will vary person to person, so Dan Kennedy calls this maturing the lead, and maturing the lead basically means that you are continuing to provide them information, and as you continue to provide the information, they like you more, which is another part of selling. People like to buy from people they like. They are— you're also positioning yourself as, if you will, an expert or guru in your field or in your service, in your industry. And from that, now what happens in the mind of your prospect is they are now slowly but inexorably buying from you. So when they arrive at your doorstep, they arrive at your website, wherever they're arriving to actually say, yeah, I want to buy, I'm looking to buy something, I'm looking to visit with you and retain you, whatever they're doing, they're more sold now than they were before. The concept here is you're taking someone with a low interest, say a 1 or a 2 on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being high, and converting them to a 7, 8, 9, or 10. Well, that changes everything because now, through what you've done with your lead generation and nurturing and maturing, you're able to let them know what your rules of engagement are. This is how we do things around here, and this is why you should like it. You've changed them from someone who is, you know, pushing you away to someone that is trying to get you to sell to them. That changes the dynamics of your entire business, including your pricing. This is really— comes under a strategy, and there's multiple components of this, but, you know, the first part of your strategy is, is what do you want to be known as? Is in your marketplace. In other words, what position do you want to hold? And positioning has many components to it, but is how do you want your prospect, your customer, to be thinking of you? And an easy example is Domino's Pizza was we get pizza to you fast. So that was their positioning. So it was fast pizza. Ritz-Carlton Hotels is luxury hotel. Disney is, "We help make a memory that you're going to enjoy for the rest of your life." These positionings can be stated or implied, but there is a position you want to have with your particular public. Inherent in that is who's your who. Who's your ideal prospect that should want what you've got? Based upon that who, that's going to tell you a lot about what you should do. To market to them. What kind of publicity should you have? Should you write a book? Should you be doing press releases? And by the way, as an aside here, it's not just a press release so much anymore as a news release, because with the internet, the game has changed significantly. A news release can be picked up by blogs and then picked up by the press. So there's another route to go with that. What are you going to be doing to generate referrals? What are you going to be saying deliberately to create word of mouth in the public about you? How are you going to use email? Are you going to use email campaigns and with whom are you going to use them? So there's a number of decisions here. I mean, this list goes on. How are you going to use print media? And then what print media is going to be most effective with your who. So as an example of that, would you be using a penny saver to attract the luxury buyer? Well, probably not as your primary media. Would it work? Yeah, probably, but it's probably not the right, best place to go. You know, are you going to use radio? Are you going to use television? What form of television are you going to use? Of course, long-form television, what people know of infomercials, are still effective, and there's a number of ways to use those these days. How are you going to be used? What are you going to do related to search engine optimization? What are you going to do on your website? What is going to be unique about your website that people are going to want to come back? Are you going to blog? You know, that's a thing that has become increasingly more important is to have a blog. And I know, Bill, you have blogs. And Dan has a blog now up on some of your sites. What are you going to do related to outbound phone calls? So all of this— what events are you going to do? Are you going to do a newsletter? How many personal touches are you going to get? So thinking about this marketing strategy is what are the things that we are going to do and then do them well? You know, I've mentioned here probably 15 or 20 things. And all of which in an ideal situation would be part of your strategy. But don't try to do too much and not do any of it well. Start with something. But once all this is designed to get inquiries, and these inquiries lead to obviously a lead, and then these are nurtured. Well, once they're nurtured enough that you get into sales, and from sales you now go into a whole number of pieces and parts. Tiered pricing, what I call premium versioning, continuity programs and membership, the concept of price elasticity, offering a variety of different possibilities. What experiences you're going to provide. You know, one of the things that we haven't really talked about a whole lot, Bill, is that I'm one of the few, what I call, experience economy experts in the country. I teach small business people and professional professionals how to stage experiences for their clients. And then ultimately, you know, what kind of transformations can you create? But part of this is, in this funnel, is that when your sales succeed or even don't succeed, they still go back into the same funnel, meaning that you market to them something new Or you continue to market to them until they're ready to say yes. So the idea is that once you have acquired someone based upon your ideal who, that you continue to market to them until they're no longer in your sphere. Of course, there's another part to this, and that is you track it, you measure it, and you figure out what's working the best. And you've got certainly things working the best you want to do more of. So then, and so you can, now you have something that makes management sense and you can measure the return on your invested dollars. So PR and marketing naturally lead to sales, and sales will actually lead back to PR and marketing.

So let me ask you a couple of questions that are coming to my mind as you're talking that I'm going to assume that others that are listening to this CD, it's going to come to their mind. First one is this: everything you just described, Charlie, sounds like a lot of work. It's a lot easier for me— and now I'm playing devil's advocate— it's a lot easier for me to run that ad in the newspaper if I have a local business and want them to just respond, come to my office, come to my retail store, come to whatever business I've got and do it that way. Why aren't more people doing it through the lead marketing strategy?

Well, why aren't more people doing it? It is more work. But it's more work to get some more results too. A lot of people look at it and say, I prefer not to. I don't want to work that hard. Well, the thing to remember is that successful are doing the things the unsuccessful often know to do but won't do. So Disney was the one that talked about, we're always innovating, creating, and people are going to copy us, blah, blah, blah. He said, don't worry. We're always going to be ahead of it. And so we're going to out-create them. Not worried about being copied. The point there is, is that, you know, to have any type of viable continuing succeeding business or enterprise of any sort, it always has to be continually be created. Here's another thing that people don't get. Just because it's— that it appears complex doesn't mean it is. In fact, the graphics help straighten that out. But it scares off the competition. I don't want to do that. That seems too hard for me to do. So by the fact that you embrace it immediately puts you in a position of— if you want to call it that way— a better position, a superior position, because you're willing to do what they aren't willing to do. So there's that. And then the last thing, of course, is that does it make sense money-wise? Well, we already know it makes sense money-wise because you accelerate your growth You get prospects. And by the way, people like to talk to people who want to be talked to, right? So when you have a lead and you're nurturing it, it's not like saying, oh gee, I wish you wouldn't, you know, I don't like what you're saying. They're going to like what you say. So you get to actually communicate to people who like what you've got, and in doing so, you improve your financial returns. And that's all. What's not mentioned here, I haven't used the word, but I will, into, to a large degree, your lead generating efforts and lead nurturing efforts set you up to be more successful in sales, but they also create a relationship with your potential prospective customer that no one else has done. And it's out of that relationship you're that much stronger. So I would, to kind of summarize that, the complexity gives you an advantage. Yes, it's hard work. You make more money and you grow faster.

All right, so now let me ask you my second sort of devil's advocate question to you, okay?

Only two?

Well, so far. So far. The call is still relatively early. But you mentioned, and I'm just going to read off a partial list here.

Here.

Publicity, book, press release, referrals, word of mouth, email, direct mail, print media, radio, television, internet search, websites, blogs, outbound calls, newsletters, personal touches. So a person listening to this says two things. One, I don't have time for all that. And two is, I don't know anything about most of that stuff, and how do I even learn about it? What's your answer to those?

Well, my answer to those are, like everything else, it can be learned, and that's what Blazer Kennedy is all about, is helping them learn this material, finding sources for it. Of course, a lot of that education you provide for them for them through Glaser Kennedy and even the Information Marketing Association has a lot of this information available. Of course, the conferences are very, you know, it's hard to beat those as far as learning all of this and creating a network of people who can help you. So that would be the first thing. Just, the information is available and you will have to spend some time learning it, but it's worth the price that you pay in time. Fee to do it because it has such a great return. So comment that, you know, how do I learn this, the answer is, I guess, come to Glaser Kennedy.

I didn't ask that question to be self-serving, but—

I know, but the— I know you didn't. But the reality is that's true. So you didn't prompt me or anything, and I knew that. Of course there's books and there's websites and there's all kinds of other places to learn this information. As I mentioned, we're going to have this available later. They come and get on my website and come and order it. That'll be helpful to them, but from a macro point of view. But the other thing is that if you want to have unusual success, you have to be willing to be unusual. And, you know, this idea that it should always be easy, well, you know what? Anything worth having isn't all that easy to begin with. But there's a third part of this is that once you do it, know it, understand it, it does become automated to a large degree. You don't have to keep recreating the wheel. And it will take some time to assemble all the pieces and parts. Or then there's another choice, which is find a mentor who has already produced all these things for you and just go buy it. That's another way to get it.

Just to—

and of course I do that for folks myself. We all do in some variety or form. So that's another choice is to, you know, to avoid that is to buy some things already pre-done for you.

Yeah, and you know, You mentioned, you alluded to a word that's one of my favorite words in marketing, which is the term systems. As a matter of fact, at our last InfoMastermind meeting, myself and 14 of the InfoMastermind members, including yourself, Charlie, you hung around for an extra day and we created a brand new product which is called Think and Grow Rich. And one of the things that we discussed, we discussed 7 really important concepts in actually thinking to grow rich. And one of those is this whole notion of systems. We had a real big discussion about systems, which is a lot of, you know, you allude to the fact that once you sort of develop this and acquire this information, you put it into systems so that you almost take away the work. So if you go back to this whole strategy of coming up with one or hopefully several lead generation strategies, and then once the lead comes in and you acquire the lead, to put them into a funnel, which now once you develop the funnel, that the funnel happens automatically. That's a system. Yeah, it takes some work up front, but it also, once you develop the system, it just keeps going over and over and over again. My BGS Marketing product now, I shouldn't admit this, but I haven't touched the lead generation or the marketing funnel in 2 years. I just keep running it and running it and getting the leads and putting them in the funnel and Darlene in my office, she just wants you puts them in the funnel, it automatically happens automatically, and that thing keeps churning along and keeps generating over $1 million in sales every year, and it's just a system. Now the other thing you said, which I'd like you to talk about a little bit, is you said assemble some people to sort of help you with this. I know, Charlie, you're a real student. But beyond that, I know that you also have folks that, you know, you could never— I mean, how many hours a week on average are you still spending as a dentist?

I have a full-time dental practice, so— well, but, you know, my full-time is probably other people's part-time. But, no, I mean, it's because I take 10 weeks a year and still run, you know, 3 other businesses, so.

Right. And so you have a full-time dental practice. And you also run 3 other businesses. You just launched a brand new business which is already a million-dollar business just in the quick launch. So you obviously have assembled some resources, personnel to help you. Talk a little bit about that if you would. I mean, what do you—

what is—

you know, this— there's a big range in this. I mean, you could talk to Alexandria Brown. Everything is outsourced. If you talk to Glaser Kennedy, we outsource a fair amount, but we keep more in-house than we certainly outsource. What is— talk a little bit about the whole resources of people that you need in order to make this sort of click.

Wow, okay. The— and depending upon where you go, let me start with the most basic. Basic place. Let's say we have an individual practitioner of some sort. Individual, doesn't have a team of people. The first thing they would do would be get someone as a personal assistant that would help them to expand things that they do, to execute things that they want to have done so they don't have to do it all themselves. So that would be kind of the first place that one would go. In fact, I— one of the things I advise most of my clients is that they should be using some type of personal administrative assistant, even if only on a part-time basis, to relieve them of some of the paperwork and things that we all have to do but don't sometimes ever have time for. So that would be the first thing. The second thing is, is, okay, what kind of people am I going to need and what am I involved with? You would— you want to look for resources for yourself. A virtual assistant is a resource. And of course there's even a virtual assistant association. I'm not a virtual assistant person. Many people use them quite successfully. But the next place I'm looking is, okay, what kind of talent do I need and who is the person I need to help me get I'd like to have this done, this next thing done that I'm working on. For example, let's just take an example. I'd like to have a system that involves a white paper free report, emails, it goes up on my website and create a whole funnel. Well, the chance of one finding that person that already knows that, not very strong. You're going to have to teach them to them. But of course there's books and tapes and meetings and all sorts of things to teach them So you get a system and you begin that process. In fact, I brought one of my new folks with me to the recent InfoMastermind. And I'm like you, Bill. I tend to assemble a team physically more than virtually because that's just kind of my style. You can do it virtually also. The next thing though is find like-minded people who think think like you do, or you want to think like, that where you can learn what they're doing and how they're doing it. It has a multitude of advantages, but two of them are: one is it drives you to succeed in a way that maybe nothing else does, because you see what other people are doing and what you could accomplish when you're part of a mastermind group like that. The second thing it does is it gives you great ideas about what's presently working and what's not working because it's a dynamic market. It doesn't stay static. So you now know what's working in different areas and you can apply it to your own market.

Yeah, and you know, that's one of the reasons why— I'm glad you brought that up because that's one of the reasons why we developed the Independent Business Advisors group. And most of the Independent Business Advisors are running their own local mastermind. Groups. I've actually visited a few of those mastermind groups in my travels and the results that we're hearing from those are just astonishing. Of course, at Glaser Kennedy we also have the Peak Performers group that's available as a mastermind group as well. But you're right, it's not just assembling people together to help you to administer and deliver your marketing, but it's also to be around like-minded people that can also share ideas with you, understand what you are experiencing, and in many cases they've experienced it already and give you great insights from the fellow entrepreneur approach.

You know, we like to be around people that are like us, that think like we do, that have the same values that we do, that enjoy the same things. And success as a genre of people is pretty narrow, unfortunately. Um, and, and the, what I call average man doesn't have the same type of thinking. It's not what they want to do. It's just different. And, uh, you, and you were so Both you want to enjoy having all kinds of friends and folks that you can talk to, but we— and you've mentioned, Dan mentioned, and I certainly have experienced it— family members are the least likely to understand what you're doing and why you're doing it and your motivations. In fact, will tend to try to talk you out of doing things that you're doing. Why don't you get a real job? Or, you know, in my case, why don't you just be a dentist? And so why are you doing all this stuff? And because it's outside their way of thinking. So it is important to continue to stimulate your thinking. There's probably nothing better that you can do for that than to get some— to get a mentor and to have a mastermind. You know, all the different things that we talked about, Bill, are things that, they were the lessons that every entrepreneur should have, infomarketer or not.

Charlie, any last words of wisdom? Any last thoughts you'd like to share with our members before we end this call?

There would be one thing I think that I'd like to say.

I've never known you not to have at least one, Charlie.

Thank you. Well, thank you for having me on the call. But I guess the one thing I would say, decide what outcome you want to have happen for the year. You know, too many people go through their year thinking, well, it's another year and I'm halfway through the year and gosh, where'd the time go and what happened to it? So plan the outcome you want to have happen. Whether you call it a goal, an outcome, objective, decide what you want to have happen. And not only decide what you want to have happen, but now create some type of plan, be it simple or complex, to make sure it does happen. You'll be happier and you'll get better results.

I agree, and very, very few people actually do any planning at all, and those who plan tend to get accomplished. So great advice for the end. Charlie, I really want to thank you. I know that you probably have somebody's mouth that's wide open waiting for your very capable hands to enter it. Thank you very much for your time today. I'll look forward to seeing you and all of our members. We'll talk to you next month. Take care.

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