The Referral Shortcut with Frank Klesitz and Brad Costanzo

How do you make business problems disappear? Wrap em in bacon for business owners, marketing execs, and anyone trying to grow your business. Pump your profits and make more while doing less. Welcome to Bacon Wrapped Business with Brad Costanzo. Sizzling hot business advice guaranteed to make you fat profits. Every week, our chefs will serve you proven recipes for ramping up your revenue. Now here's your host, Brad Costanzo. All right, welcome back to the show. This is Brad. Really excited to have you with me. Big high five to every single person out there who's coming back for more. I couldn't do this without you guys and I'm really excited to let you know that you talking about it, you sharing it, reviewing it and letting me know is, I believe, contributing to the growth of the show. You know, I created bacon wrap business as a I outlet for me to share my insights with others and also tap into the minds of some of my guests. Some of them are friends of mine and colleagues. Some of them are people I've met before and a lot of them are people I've never met before. But this podcast has been an amazing way to reach out and tap the minds of people who've got a lot to offer who you may not know about and you may not stumble across. Today we're going to bring on Frank Klesitz and we're going to talk about how to build your business using, well, for lack of a better word, referrals. Now, referrals are. It's a pretty hot topic. It's a pretty general topic, however, and it is also something that a lot of folks I've seen are doing wrong. Now, I've built my, you know, my career was primarily built on in sales. And I did sales for a long time until I started to build a business around marketing, e commerce, consulting and everything else. Although I still do sales every single day, whether it's selling individual clients or helping my clients sell, sell to their people. And in a lot of ways, sales is sales no matter how you do it. One of the things we all know is that the hottest lead source, the hottest type of prospect is an endorsed referral is somebody who's coming in. They've heard about you, either from a friend, trusted expert, or they've read about you because you've got authority out in the marketplace and they come to you because they already trust you. However, I've seen a lot of folks do that wrong. And I know I tripped up and, and made a lot of mistakes in my career going in and just asking for business and asking for referrals, of course you have to ask, but there's always a right way to do it. And today I'm bringing on an expert named Frank who has really changed the way a lot of professionals are getting referrals. And he's got an entire system that utilizes your database, utilizes content, utilizes a lot of things that your competition, I guarantee they aren't, because they either don't know or they're too lazy to put into effect. I was fortunate enough to meet Frank through a referral by another mutual friend several months back. We hit it off and I really loved what he had to share and what he and his company are doing and the approach they take. So I thought you guys would really benefit from this because no matter what business you're in, you can, you're going to get a lot out of the process that Frank goes to help himself and his clients generate referrals. Let me see if Frank's on the line. On mute. Frank, are you there, buddy?

I am here.

Cool. Thanks for joining me, man. I really appreciate you taking the time out of your day to help the bacon wrap business listeners understand how to generate more business as long as it.

Makes some fat profits.

That's right, that's right. Got to get fat. Fat and juicy profits. So, that being said, let's start off and I want to talk a little bit about, you know, a little bit about your background and how you became kind of an expert in this referral process. And I know you've got a book coming out regarding this entire thing. You've got a service that does this, but I rarely come across somebody who systematize this process as good as you. So let's talk about the referral process. What, what makes you such an expert?

Yeah, well, it goes back to my story and the story is very brief. I, out of college, I had a, I was into fitness and I had a little in home fitness training service and I found that I was much more talented and I enjoyed the process of acquiring the customer more than necessarily doing the workout. So in short, what I would do is I would go out and sell training to people in their homes for 80 a session, then pay a trainer 40 and I'd make the spread. So I got very good at finding out how to generate leads and customers. So what did I do? You know, I'm what, 21, 20 years old at the time? I'm like, well, I gotta get clients. So I would, you know, sell a package of training sessions from via 3,600 at the time, which Was that's a whole other thing of freeing your mind to be able to even charge that. And I was fortunate to be around the right people to pitch that kind of a price when I was 20 years old.

Right.

But I would basically make half that as profit, which is a lot of money when you're 20. And you know, I only needed like a thousand dollars a month to live on. So I would take.

Oh, the days of your.

Kidding, right. Well, so I would take that extra money, like I would sell maybe one or two packages, three packages, whatever, and I would have like two, three, $4,000 of like money I could spend to get more business. I'm like, this is great. So I had this money and the first thing, what do you do? Well, you go, I don't know, maybe I'll buy some radio ads or maybe I'll go, you know, pay one of the trainers to do free training for a radio personality to get them to endorse us on their show. Or maybe, which I did. Or I'll buy a bunch of direct mail and go mail a fluent zip codes. Or I'll go door knock on all these doors, which we did. And we would door knock and tell people about our training. Dude, I did everything. I had a. I would drive. I was driving to college and I bought like $2,000 a month on a billboard on a major street in our city that said, you know, if you're out of shape, call us. And the billboard was right above McDonald's. But I thought it was kind of funny. I was like, I want that billboard right there.

Were you ever able to track, like, do you know if that billboard brought in any business?

I didn't know anything about direct response.

Right, exactly.

It was like, you know, hey, literally it was like in home personal fitness training, call this number. And the number was my cell number. I mean, knowing better, at least you put a number you can track in. You wouldn't use the same number on all your different media. You have different, like, medias different. But basically it was a learning experience for me. So I would be spending all this money, all this money trying to find customers. Okay, now what happened? I was spending all of my money trying to acquire new business. And I felt myself kind of on this transaction treadmill. Like, we would get a client, I would throw them off to a trainer, then I would ignore them. I would get a client, spend a bunch of money to acquire them, throw it off to a trainer and ignore them. And I was basically spending maybe A$10, let's say, to Make a dollar. It took me a while to figure this out. But you can't make that up in volume. No.

You'll go broke real quick.

Right?

And the more you try to make that up in volume, the quicker you go broke.

Yeah, exactly. So anyways, this was back in 2006, 2007. People are having money. It's before the crash and the Great Recession. So 2008 hits, and, you know, we're training all the executives in the town, and next thing you know, you know, it's not really kosher to have a. I had some vehicles, too, so having a fitness training vehicle in front of your house. So here's my private trainer pulling up, and I'm from Omaha, Nebraska, and this is where this was from.

Fitness capital of the world.

Well, it's a very conservative part of the world, so, like. Well, you know, that's where it stopped. So basically, people stopped paying for training. I got four, four or five, I can't remember, maybe six trainers working for me, relying on business, and they're like, frank, what are we going to do to bring in clients? Right? I'm like, oh, my God. I don't know. I mean, the only. The only way that I knew to bring in clients was to go out and spend money, because I had it, and it was easy, and that's what everyone did. That was the only thing that I knew. So I couldn't. I didn't have an answer for them. I was like, we got to shut the company down. I think I was like, 30 grand the whole of, like, trying to find out how to. How to fix the problem. So anyways, during this time, we were working with, you know, our clients in our fitness training company, and one of them happened to be in real estate. He was a real estate recruiter for a real estate company. And he said, hey, I think you'd do really well at selling real estate. Maybe not. Now might not be the best time to do it, but at least you should come to one of my trainings. So I went to his training, and there was a concept they taught there that that. That changed my life. I mean, literally, it's gonna sound so simple, but it really changed my life. And I think a lot of people can relate to this story of spending money to acquire customers, and that's.

Think happy thoughts and you'll manifest all the attraction you've ever wanted. Right?

You shared the secret. Well, couldn't be farther from that. This was like. This was, you know, this was a defining moment, and I want people to kind of Think about how I went about getting business and how what I'm going to say here is a change in mindset or a thought of the way you go about doing it. And he said, look, there's two people in the world. You have the people you've met, the people you know, the people you've met, and then you have the people that you haven't met. And the name of the game is to go out to the world and meet people you know, here's all the haven't Mets and bring them in and make them met. And then once they're met, you have to have some way to educate them and to stay in touch with them in some way that's not like, you know, spamming them or being of a nuisance, you know, extremely regularly. And they said statistics found that you need to touch your database, you know, at least 33 times a year. I go 33 times. That's almost every week and a half. Oh, my goodness. I was thinking, what, maybe four times, you know, and then he was showing examples of some businesses that touch it every week. Like, at least for your podcast, whatever it is, hits every week. That's 50 touches a year. You know, there's some people I've spoken to that says I mail my database every day with an email or something.

Yeah, I've got a close friend of mine and, you know, he's in the information marketing business, so he's not a professional service. So if you're a professional, this probably doesn't apply to you. But he hits his list in the morning with a content email and in the evening with a promotional email. And he was really nervous about doing that because he felt like, I am just going to blow my list up and they're going to hate me. He realized he made more money than ever, that, look, if it's good content, the more you mail, the more you make.

Yeah, that was a big mind shift for me. And I'm like, you know what? I was looking at my business. I was like, all of my time and my resources were spent on the habit met side. I mean, I was just basically buying all my business. I was writing checks because I had it, man. I mean, I didn't have any living expenses. I could live on a thousand dollars a month, and I got a couple extra grand from the margins coming in. Go blow it on ads. You know, a lot of it was probably ego and being young and all those things, but I was like, you know what? People would go to my website if they weren't interested in hiring a trainer, I would throw the name away, throw it away. I wouldn't do anything with it. Or once I actually got customers, let's say I actually signed up a client and put them with the trainer. I would never talk to them. I was treated like a referral service. I would just, you know, all the customers of the company, I wouldn't even communicate with, you know, I figured the trainer that would just do that. And I'm like, man, look at all these opportunities of, like, here's all these people coming in for my advertising that I'm not, you know, getting the contact information from everybody and having some plan to stay in touch because not everyone's ready to buy now. You know, they're ready to buy later. But I didn't think that strategically, I just wanted the now business. And, you know, I didn't have any way to stay in touch with the customers. And then I'm like, wait a minute. I know a lot more people than my unconverted leads. I know a lot more people than my customers. You know, I'd pull up my. There was a. Like, a BlackBerry at the time. Now it's iPhones. Right. I pull my BlackBerry and I'm like, I got a lot of people in here. I know from networking events and people I've met. I know a lot of people. And then I would go into my outlook. This is before Google Apps. I think we have, like, a server and. Oh, yeah, it's funny thinking back, you know, before all this cloud stuff.

But, you know, a couple years ago.

A couple years ago, I would go back into my outlook. You know, who uses that really much anymore? And, like, right. I would look at, like, all the email addresses that would come up in the cache. You know, like, you type in email address, and email address will come up. Yep. I'm like, oh, my gosh. So I'm like, I need to be educating these people, actually. Hold on. I need to be staying in touch with these people to let them know that I'm not about a secret trainer. The real estate agent, the trainer was saying is that, you know, don't be a secret agent. I mean, no one knows that you're selling houses. I'm like, oh, my God. I was a secret trainer.

Yeah.

I didn't ever talk to anybody. So the question came down to now is like, okay, I know that I need to now ask for an email address whenever a prospect comes in or whenever I talk to someone, because my goal is to meet people, get their contact information, and then bring them into My database as a met. And you can do that in person, or you could do it levered like an opt in form on your website or through marketing. But the point is, you're driving interest. And people say, yes, I want to stay in touch, get their contact information. I gotta be doing that for everybody. So now what I gotta do is now I got all these emails. So let's say I start by exporting my outlook and getting all those emails together. And let's say now I'm getting the contact information of every lead that comes in. And let's say I'm getting the contact information from every customer or past customer. I bring in my database and I have them all, just for simplicity's sake, this big spreadsheet of all these names and email addresses, just all in one big list, which is what I had just exported, all in one big spreadsheet. Like, wow, that's a lot of people. How do I stay in touch with these people? This was kind of before, you know, like podcasting and social media was big, I think, you know, Facebook was only two years old at the time. Okay. And I'm like, well, you gotta mail them. I can mail them. That would work. You know, I can.

What do I say? What do I send them?

Right? That was the question.

Let's spam them a bunch of offers that they don't want or need.

That was the challenge. I mean, that was the challenge. Like, okay, I get that. I could probably email them, I could probably mail them. And you know, that's not really that big of a deal. I mean, the media is the media. I mean, you want to use Twitter, Facebook, it's going to change all the time. You know, you got letters, you got, you know, the point is, what do you send them? And this was really hard for me. I'm like, what do I send these people that actually want to receive, let's say every other. Every week and a half? What am I to send these people, right? And I'm like, well, I want to. You know, I did a lot of research with this and what really the other big change in my life was, okay, understanding I have to build a database and stay in touch. And I'm a fool for not doing that and truly understanding that your database is your number one asset that you have in your business. I mean, if I was to go into, you know, one of your businesses, Brad, or I was to go into a business, I would put a valuation on it, like a PE ratio. I'd say, like, I'll pay five times Earning six times earnings or seven times earnings or, or whatever the hope, the biggest multiple you can get. So what would determine that multiple? Well, it would be, okay, your systems and how proven and duplicatable they are and how easy they are to execute.

Yep.

I would look at your people, I would look at your talent. Who are the people here? Are they able to execute these systems that are proven and repeatable to produce a result that's consistent? But you know, the other thing, the third thing I would look for is I would look at your customer list. I would say how loyal and how retainable and how big is the database that you have that will provide business going into the future? I mean those are really, when you simplify it down, the only three elements of value of the business, the people, the systems and the database. And that's. The jump you have to make from a Rainmaker is like, okay, I gotta hire the right people, I gotta create the systems to duplicate what I do. And I have to have the database. And usually that database should be built sooner than later or not neglected along the way. So anyways, back to the story. What do I send these people? Right? So I went out to the marketplace and I typed in, you know, and this was kind of in between. And maybe should I go into real estate or should I be in fitness? And I'm kind of in between, like what should I do? Have no money. I'm in the whole, like, what am I doing with my life?

Those damn billboards.

Yeah, yeah, I know. Do I still get a job? And here's the deal, man. All the sales people, they didn't know anything. I talked to all the sales people, all the different media companies and like they didn't know anything about anything. They just could just, they just tell me here's the rates and run the ad. And maybe we got some art guy in our offices that doesn't know anything about your business that will create an ad for you. Right?

Yeah.

You know what I mean? So you know, it's like what do I send them? So I go online and I type in like you know, fitness content. Or maybe if I was going into real estate, real estate content, I would find like all these people making pre written letters and pre written emails and all these things. I'm like, this stuff sucks. Like it's not that you totally tell it's canned, it's written in a way where like it appeals to like lots of markets and lots of people. So it's not really useful. It's like recycling common knowledge. Like I don't want to send my list a bunch of common knowledge. I want to send them something useful. And I want the content to come from me. I want to create the content so it shows I'm the expert, not just a broker of the information. I want to be the creator of the information that's going to position me as an expert in authority and someone who maybe is smart at what they do. Right.

And, you know, just to. I want to segue there. One of the things that, and you may have been doing this before, but this has been a strategy for me in the past with my list as well, is that the, there's a. There's the aggregator of information, there's the creator right on both sides, and then in the middle is the curator. And a lot of folks mistake curating great information with. With aggregating. And aggregating is simply saying, hey, I found this article. I wanted to share it. A good curator says, hey, I found this article. Let me add my own insight and my own spin and my own thoughts to this, whether it's contradictory or. Or it just adds onto it. And that's also extremely valuable to be able to do. And I've found that a lot of people mistake those and they kind of, you know, miss them up. But I want to get back to where you said the creations thing, because that is actually where I know a lot of folks stumble up, they go, oh, I don't really have anything to say. What do I do?

I really thought about this and I'm like, I had to find out a way to consistently, you know, pub. I had to think of marketing. I had to become thinking that I'm a publisher. I had to realize that if I'm going to market, marketing is really going to be turning into publishing. I mean, he or she who publishes the best stuff that's for their audience is going to. Is going to attract the attention, is going to attract the audience. And then that gives you permission to make offers to it asking for appointments, referrals, and so on and so forth. I'm like, okay, you know, I got to go to my database and I got to educate them. You know, I got to stand on. Before I go into educating, I have to stay in touch with them. I'm still trying to find out what to actually send them. So I'm looking around, I'm like, I don't like this canned stuff. A lot of it's salesy, A lot of it's like, you know, offers. I'm like, I can't send My database, this. And then I ran into a presentation from Chet Holmes, who is a speaker or consultant he worked for. Oh God. Who do you work for With Warren Buffett's partner, Charlie Munger.

Charlie Munger, I didn't know he worked with Charlie Munger.

Yeah, I think he ran like the magazine advertising division for Charlie Munger. Anyways, this guy is brilliant. He expands businesses and he's like, look, education based marketing, you have to educate in your marketing. Your marketing has to be worth paying for. If someone's not going to pay for your marketing, if they're not going to give you a couple dollars or whatever it is to receive the marketing you send them, don't send it. And there's obviously a lot more thought that went into that epidemic really struck home with me is like, I have to create marketing so good worth paying for. And it was like, oh my God. Billboards knocking on a door, mailing people ads that were purely offer driven, not advice or value driven. No one would pay for that. No one wanted it. Maybe that's really the problem is that the marketing I'm sending out no one really wanted. They wouldn't be worth paying for, you know, and it's not touching my database. So I got to build a database and I gotta send them something worth paying for. And to send them something worth paying for is called education based marketing. Okay, so I'm like, okay, I need to stay in touch with my list now and educate them. How do I do that? How do I come up with topics? And I did some research and honestly, this is, this is the golden, this is the golden answer to that question. What do you send them is doing nothing but answering the questions you receive from your customers. That's it. Answering questions from customers. Yep. And I want to go a little deeper into that because it sounds so simple. But where the mistake is made in creating educational content is, you know, the worst thing you can do is come up with your own topic. Because if you come up with a topic, you're thinking about some idea that the market may want, you send it out, but you don't really know if the market wants it. Or you maybe operate, you're so in your business or so in the forest that you're almost thinking of things that people need that they really don't. So you're publishing content there really isn't any demand for. So basically you're supplying stuff that you don't know if there's existing demand. Whereas if you go to the market and you ask them what questions they have, you're guaranteed to know there's demand there for the content and you know, that's for your. And if you get the questions from ideal customers, you know, those are the questions that attract ideal customers. Right. So what I did is I sent an email to everybody. I used a something like a Google form or something. I said, hey, this is Frank and I'm thinking about going into real estate. You may know me as a fitness guy and lots of questions about what's happening here with the complete fallout of the real estate market. And I'm very fortunate to be connected with a lot of. I really wasn't, but I'm fortunate to be connected with a lot of people that know the inside scoop of what's going on here in the real estate market in Omaha, Nebraska. And if you want to click here, I'm going to start publishing videos on questions that are commonly asked by our community about real estate or what you have. So if you let me know the questions, I'll answer them for you. I emailed that out and I got a whole bunch of responses of questions I can answer and some topics.

That's great. And you know, a lot of folks would probably lead off with, I'm just going to create something I think they want to know about. And you did the right thing. You asked first. Number one, you're asking for permission. You're asking them to raise their hands, who's interested, who's not, because you're not going to burn any bridges by simply offering to make advice. And you didn't send out, hey, guys, I, you know, I'm thinking about going into real estate. Here is my thoughts on the real estate market. Oh yeah, let's start off with that.

You can dissect. There's so much strategy that went in that simple email. And you know, and I have to keep that first email very humble because it kind of is a spam message. I mean, you're rounding up all these email addresses that you had that are questionably are not your Mets and you email them and you got to keep it simple and plain and very humble. So not everyone clicks, you know, report spam. You know, I recommend the first email to your list is just a very simple, plain text email that says, hey, this is what I'm doing. Unsubscribe if you want. You know, I like, it's like you're entering their home without the permission, I think about it, you know, of their home with their email inbox.

On these days, it's more important than ever to really Realize that because we all get so much email, some wanted, some unwanted. And it gets just. There's only so much things you can.

Pay attention to, you know. So you sent a very simple email saying, hey, I just want to answer questions that you commonly have. I have knowledge, I'm connected and I want to be of valuable to you and let me know what I can, what I can answer. If you don't want anything from me ever again, just click here. You'll never see me ever again.

Bye. Yep.

You know, something, something to that level. I mean, the worst, what most people do for. If you're, if you're still on that, like, I gotta get all this now business, you'll go to your asset, you'll go to your database and you'll just like mail it a direct offer saying, hey, sign up, buy this. Now certainly you'll probably get sales. But you just killed. You just basically took a giant ax to the asset. It's like instead of milking your cow, you just cut off one legs, eat the meat full of your milk's gonna run out.

That's true.

So anyway, so the question was like, okay, I want to answer questions and you know, I'm gonna. And what I loved about the question is there's usually a story behind it. So it gave me a reason to come up with the content so I could start my content off always like this. Hey, friends, I was talking with a client the other day about this problem and they asked me this question that I thought would be a value to answer for you in this email or in this video today. I wanted to give you the answer that I gave them because I think it might add value to your life. That's it. I can use the lead for every video and every piece of content with that. I was. That's great.

Let's go ahead and repeat that because I think that's really important for people.

To get well, because the question is, what's the lead? What do you open your content with? Whether it's a video or an email or a letter, and you want to open up with a story of why the heck are you sending this to me? Right? That's the first question you have to answer. So I just can't send a message out, well, here's a question, here's an answer. There has to be a lead. And the lead is this. Again, it's friends or list or whatever it is. You know, I was visiting the other day. So it starts right with a story. I was visiting, I was out with somebody. I was at the bar, whatever. And I got asked this question, and it was a great question, and I answered it for them. And I want to share this answer with you because I feel it's very important for you to know this information so you could, you know this benefit and this benefit and achieve all these benefits in your life. So here's the answer. Click here to find out if it's back on your blog. That's your. That's your teaser copy right there.

That's great. It's perfect. Short, simple, does the job. It's not intrusive and it's.

And it lessens the burden of you having to come up with these ideas and coming up with a reason to mail your list, that's hard. But if you just decide that you're going to be answering customer questions, whether you get them out and about meeting people, or you have a Q and a box on your website where people can submit questions, or you just go online to a form and find questions there and say you found this question on the form. If you think about your content as question and answer instead of coming up with a topic, it makes things much easier. It also instantly gives you a lead or a reason to interrupt someone, quote, unquote in their email or whatever it is, or on Facebook saying, hey, here's this story, here's how this question came about. Let me share with you the answer. And that's repeatable forever and ever and ever. And I think that is, hands down the best tip I can give anyone on this podcast today is that's how you create content.

I love that. And, you know, there's another strategy that I've kind of used, which. And I've used this in the case where I don't have a specific question that I want to answer, but I'm thinking of content to send out. And I try to think about what is, you know, with my target market, whatever. You know, whether it's a client that I'm working with and helping them do this, or it's my own stuff, I try not to think, oh, what would be, oh, you know, seven tips to avoid this, that, or the other. You know, sometimes there's just information that's like, okay, you think that's going to be interesting? Maybe it is, maybe it's not. But I try to put myself in the shoes of the, the target market to go, what is the most logical or important question they are probably asking themselves directly before they, before they take action. Excuse me. On something. And I'll use an example you use Real estate, for example. So I've seen real estate agents try to generate leads by, you know, putting out a report. The seven mistakes people make when hiring a Realtor, or the seven mistakes. People do this, that, or the other, and they think, oh, I'm going to get them, because people don't want to make mistakes. But truthfully, what is somebody. If you're thinking about hiring a realtor to, let's just say, sell your house, the number one most logical question in your mind is probably, I wonder what I can get for my house. And I've seen a real estate agent do this in the past where they put together a piece that says, how to know what your home is worth before you sell it or before you hire a real estate agent. That's probably the number one question that they are asking themselves. It's not always even just the questions they're asking other people, but what are they most likely to ask? Or what's the biggest question they're asking themselves right before they make a purchasing or buying decision? And that's a tremendously powerful shift in your brain when you go, okay, I'm not just going to create stuff because I think it's. Because I think it's interesting. What does my client want? And I love the way that you went about that as well. And I think it's. It makes life so much easier when you're not just trying to reinvent the wheel, just put yourself in their shoes. What are they asking?

Exactly? So I decided, okay, I'm going to answer customer questions. That is going to be. I'm going to tell the story behind the question. I'm going to answer it now. The question is, I just can't do this all for the year up front. I mean, can I just sit down and create all my content for the entire year up front? Well, you know, how would your listeners like it, Brad, if you just sat down and created all your podcasts for the year and just, you know, drip them out, you know, throughout the year, people would know that they're on, like, some type of drip thing. People, yeah, people can tell that they don't like being on a drip. They want to know that the content's timely. Yeah. So you have to prove to them in your content that, hey, I just created this for you. It's brand new, it's fresh, it's fresh bacon. It's sizzling hot.

Yeah, right.

You know, and then, you know, here's the reason I'm sending this to you, which is. Cause I'll answer this Customer question. And then here's my content. So you have to have in your content proof that it's timely. You have to have a great lead or reason for sending it to them, which is for our case is going to be Q and A. And to keep it timely, here's what I said. I'm going to Time blog 30 minutes a month to record two short videos into my webcam. So I can turn on my webcam. I'm going to say, hey, this is finot. And I was out with this person the other day, you know, solving this problem. Or I was talking on the phone the other day and solving this problem. And they asked me this question and here's the question and I read the question and I want to give you the answer here today. And I give the answer and maybe a minute to two minutes, I have a quick video that I sat down at my desk, looked into my webcam, you know, obviously making sure my sound's good and there's no light behind me. Simple, very simple, basic web things. And I record the video. Now, back then, webcams are horrible. They look terrible.

But yeah, they're way better now.

Now, you know, webcams are incredible. You can, for 70 bucks, you can get 1080p HD into a webcam. And instead of all the pomp and circumstance of necessarily having a video production crew and lights and all that stuff, you know, you can just literally a webcam. As long as you know what you're going to say with a, with, with, you know, a good lead and a Q and A, you can cut a really quick video. So like, man, this is really cool. I can just cut a quick video and I know I can put these online. I can put these on YouTube, which was just getting started then and there. I could put keywords in it to show up. I could put that on my website. So when someone comes to my website, they see who I am, which is great. That's gonna get people more likely to get to know who I am. So they, you know, they call me. And then I could take these videos and I can, you know, put them on Facebook, which I can be Facebook friends with everybody. I mean, the content's the fuel that, that fuels all of social media. I mean, you gotta have great content. Yep. And then I would. But the heavy hitter was I could take a screenshot of that video, put it into an email and send an email out to all those people saying, I made this great video for you with my smiling face as a screenshot, which is super cool. So literally I was like, this is what I want to do. I want to go out and do, you know, I want to focus on going out and meeting people and being a salesperson and getting email addresses. That's going to be my job. Then how I'm going to stay in touch with them. Let's just start with twice a month. I'm just going to do every two weeks, I want to send them an educational video out to my whole list. I don't care where they came from. I'll keep it simple. Don't worry about segmentation. If you're in my database, you get it. Two educational video tips. All right, so I'd sit down once a month to record two short answers to commonly asked customer questions by starting off the video with the story of how I got the question, which gives you the reason why you're sending in. That's called the lead in copywriting. So that's what I did. Go out, get email addresses, opt in from the website. Maybe do some ads where people opt in to give you their email address. Right. We all know that. At least the audience here probably does.

Yeah.

You know, but really my thing was like, I just gotta go out and talk to people. So I would go out and make a goal where, you know, I would go out and prospect and I would. I would meet at least. I mean, at a bare minimum, three people a day. You know, professional salespeople are Talking to probably 30 people a day, at least. But three people a day that said, yeah, man, I want to get your stuff. Here's my email address. Send me and stay in touch. So now I would have this database, and I'd be sending out my two videos a month. I'd be emailing them, posting them on Facebook, putting them on my blog, and just constantly publishing content, which is really easy. 30 minutes a month. Now the next step was, is I would get my reports of all the people who are watching those videos. Mean you can track this stuff? Yeah. When you send an email out, you can get a list of all the people who watch the videos. So I would print this list down. Like, this is incredible. These people are watching this. Oh, my gosh, those people. Yeah, they clicked on my call to action link, but no one was really like, you know, contacting. I mean, people were watching it, they were engaged with it. It was positioning me as an expert, trust, authority, staying in touch. I mean, all those great benefits. But the money wasn't coming in. Like, I need. I need appointments, I need some sales here, you know, so I'M like, instead of me doing cold prospecting, instead of me blowing all this money on ads, this is kind of what we're leading to here. Yeah. Instead of me doing all this cold calling, instead of me blowing all this money on ads, I would just go out and meet people or get email out. Emails take 30 minutes to publish my two videos. And the people who are interested or had the most affinity to me would be the small percentage of the people actually engage with the content.

So, Frank, let me ask you, you said you're able to track the opens and you were able to see who was actually in there responding to your content. Were you using any particular type of system? I think some people, if they're not familiar with some of the technology out.

There.

They send an email. They don't necessarily get read receipts, they don't know how to do this. So is there anything special you were using?

Yeah. So when we send these emails out, what we would do is we go to YouTube and we describe a screenshot of the video. We try to go through there and find like the most interesting frame. And then we just put that screenshot in the actual emails, like a jpeg. And then when you click it, it would just drive you back to the blog where the video was. So what was really cool about this is we'd send the emails out. Maybe a few people replied back and said, oh, this is really nice. But what's really interesting, like I said before, is you can find out who's watching them because every email that goes out through like a professional email service provider has a unique code to it. The point is we used a vertical respons. Vertical response is what we use for our firm here at Vyral. You can use constant contact, mailchimp, eye contact. There's a bunch of them. And there's even some more advanced marketing automation softwares like infusionsoft or Marketo or Par Dot or I don't know what's another one, like Salesforce might have their thing. The point is, like any email you send out through one of those services, you can track who clicks the link. So for example, I'm out every single day meeting new people. Hey, this is what I do for a living. This is the problem I solve. What's your email address? Let's stay in touch. I'm constantly adding 3, then 6, then 9, then 12, and next thing you know, in a month I got 60, then 120, then 180 and 200, 300, 400, 500 email addresses for people. I'm meeting, right. Because I'm out being a good salesperson. I'm trying to go talk to people to educate them. So the challenge is not everyone really wants to cares about what you do or is interested. And I only want to prioritize my phone call, follow up and talk business with the people who are. So I would go in and find that report of. Okay, here are the people that actually watch this video. So let's say you send it to 500 and say 35 or 50 watch it. Well, I'm calling them up and here's what I say. I'd say, hey, Brad, it's Frank. Hey, man, I see you subscribe to some of the videos I'm sending out on I don't know how to get your home sold. Or it could be how to lose weight by eating better in this way. I was wondering, is there anyone that you know of that should see that video? I'm looking to help more people. Is there anyone that you know who might be of benefit or could use potentially my services? Now, what I did there was a little unique. You're probably thinking, I'm calling you up and I would ask you, are you interested? I didn't do that. What I did is I went in indirectly and asked you for a referral. And usually what happened is when I asked, who do you know? They would come right back and say, you know what? I was actually interested in that. I said, oh, really? That's not the reason for my call. I wanted to see who you knew, but I just found out. You're interested. No.

So I got to tell you, I love this because you just revealed one of my biggest secrets in getting business as well. And yeah, I learned this from a mentor years ago calling it rejection proof networking, actually. And it's. It really is. You know, my formula is going and going out there saying, look, this is what I'm doing. And I like to say why I'm doing it and who do you know and where should I go? Like, who do you know? Who do you know that could use this? And especially if you're talking to somebody who's a perfect prospect for you, it immediately takes them off the defense. Actually, another friend of mine who is a professional, he's one of the top professional speakers in the world, and he was giving a speakers apprenticeship program. And he called me up, this is about a year and a half ago, and he just said, hey, Brad, here's what I'm doing. I've got. I'm only looking to take six apprentices. On to teach them how to do public speaking for a living, etc. It's going to be about, I can't remember, like four or $5,000 and held over these dates. And I know you know, a lot of people who do you think would be interested in this? And I started asking him questions, and I wasn't, because he wasn't pitching me. I was like, well, tell me about it. Tell me more. I was like, you know what? Honestly, I think I'd like to do it. And, you know, I sent him like five grand the next day, so. I love the fact that you said that. I can attest to everybody listening. It works like gangbusters. That technique alone is proof that you know exactly what you're doing. I love that. So I kind of had to interject there because I haven't heard too many people echo that. It's a strategy that they've used as well.

Yeah, it just positions you as just a total expert. I mean, look, I mean, this is so simple, Brad. You go out, you talk to people. I mean, that's the hardest. That's probably the hardest part is you gotta get yourself worked up and so excited that you have so much value to offer the world. They just want to go out and meet people. And there's lots of ways to meet people. The point is just go to try to find people that you want in your database and you just go talk to them, have a conversation. And then you say, you end every conversation with, hey, can I stay in touch? I make videos and I publish content. How do you how to solve this problem in your life? And I would love for you to be able to receive that. I think it could really help you. What's your best email address now?

Do you do that too? So I know, I know a lot of your, your clients, for instance, some of them have real estate backgrounds, whether they're agents or mortgage brokers, etc. You know, the nice part about real estate is it's pretty wide. Everybody, you know, everybody is involved in real estate in one way or another. Either you live in it.

It's a universal. It's very universal in scope. Like anyone can be like fitness and religion and, you know, dieting money. Those are things that you can ask anyone about. Now I have one client that or was going to be a client. He was like an FAA attorney to. To pilots. Okay. So obviously in that case, you'd only be asking pilots if they want to stay in touch. So you're talking to pilots.

Sure. So let's say You're a mortgage officer. You know, mortgage broker, loan officer, etc. And you are. I'm just going to come up with a. You know, you're at a cocktail party or you're at a coffee shop, or, you know, you're meeting somebody casually, whether it's a friend of a friend or you bump into them and strike up kind of a conversation, however it happens. Is there a point at which you tell people to. Because I. Is there a point at which you say, this is when you should go after the. You know, get the contact and actually send.

Very end of the conversation. Okay, the very end. At the very end. It starts by saying, oh, by the way, I'm making these videos on how to solve this problem. Not on what I do. It's not about. It's not about what you do. It's a. I make videos on how to solve this problem. And I really think they'd really benefit you. Can I send those to you? What's your best email address?

Okay, so if you're. If you're in the mortgage business, I make videos about.

I mean, I make. I make videos on staying current, on, like, home refinancing, as well as some pretty good financial tips to make sure that if you ever do want to buy a home someday you have the money for a down payment. I think you'll find them really valuable. I personally make the videos. I think you really enjoy them. What's your best email address?

Nice. And you keep it broad. You keep it, you know, if you can keep it applicable to everybody and.

Yeah, but here's the deal. Everyone's gonna give you an email. I mean, it's just so great. I mean, it's about attracting the business. So you're out talking to people, you're asking for emails, and you can also do it passively by putting these things up online and driving traffic to a squeeze page and all that. But I want to. I want to stay away from the whole Internet marketing aspect.

I like the personal approach.

Yeah. Talk to people and you get their email. Right.

The other thing you can easily do is just tell people, hey, listen, I'd love. I'd love to stay in touch with you. Can, you know, we exchange email addresses now they give you their email address, and now you simply say, by the way, I also create these videos that a lot of my friends and colleagues, et cetera, seem to love. It's about X, Y, and Z. I'd love to send those to you. Would you mind if I sent you one? The next one I Make. So you can always ask for the email first, just to keep in contact and then follow it up. So I think that's.

Yes, you get the emails, and then what you do is you set aside time once a month to record two short educational tips. And the best videos are Q and A. So I might have said this before, but the worst thing you can do is come up with your own topic. Just never, ever, ever, ever again ever come up with your own topic. Just don't do it.

By the way, why do you think that I like the interview structure of a podcast better than just getting on there and talking into a microphone myself?

Yeah, you just drill the questions, man. I mean, people love. I mean, the key with creating the content is that you just take questions that people are commonly asking and you answer them. So, hey, it's Frank Klesitz, and this is what I do. And someone asked me this question the other day about this, and I wanted to share the answer that I gave. Gave. That I gave with them. And here's the answer today. And I'm recording my webpm. That's it. So that way, you know there's demand for your content. See, if you listen for questions from your ideal customers, you answer those questions, you know there's a message to Market Match, you know that there's demand for it. If you're coming up with your own content, you have no idea if anyone's gonna care because you're, guessing. You're, you know, playing blind archery. So I like just answering questions. One of the best, by the way, one of the best guys that does this is Matt Cutts. He's like the voice of Google. If you go to YouTube and type in Google Webmasters, this guy has hundreds of thousands of views, and all he does is just answer questions. He's like a total geek, and he just sits there and like, we have this question today from YouTube. Let me read it to you and let me answer it. That's exactly what you want to do. Copy that exactly for the content. Then you send it out, right? Then you figure out, okay, who actually watched this. And then you reach out to them, whether it's an email or you can send them a message on Facebook. I prefer just a phone call and say, hey, man, I see you subscribe. Not that I see you watch the videos, but I see you subscribe to some of the content I send out on this. Who do you know who should see it or do you know of anyone? I'm looking to help more people.

I love that.

See how you're coming from a place of giving. I just want to help more people. I love what I do. I'm really good at it. I'm gifted at this. I think I can help more people. And the best way to do it is being introduced. I mean, just is there one that you know that you should forward that to? Right?

And you're also asking, you're not just giving, you're offering to give, but you're also asking for help. And people really do like to help. You're not pitching them, you're, you're asking for their help. And if, you know, if you have any rapport with them, if they like you, if they think, you know, if they've watched your videos and that's a good sign, there's a good chance that they'll either be receptive or if they can't think of anybody, they'll keep you in mind the next time. And you know, if they open up that email and watch that video again, you know, they're paying attention.

Oh, it's great, man. You know, then, so here's the deal. So let's, let's take even a step further. Let's say for example, they introduce you to somebody, alright? So now this person introduces you to this brand new person you've never met, right? The beauty of these videos and up on your video blog. Now what I do is I'll say, okay, hey Bob, great to meet you, here's what I do and here's my videos. Here's what I do. Go to my blog and check out everything about me. So they go to your blog where you're putting all these videos that you've been publishing and then they look at all of them and now you're totally positioned as an expert, as some authority. So when you actually do speak with them on the phone, they give you the time of day and treat you with respect. You know, it's just this system is just so much easier. It is, it's just so much easier. I mean, it really is just so much more easier to be in a point. I mean, I just did an interview today with. This guy, helps people find talented salespeople for their sales teams. And his whole life, for years he would just prospect for business. I'm talking, just get on the phone, call up a cold company. Cold. Try to get the CEO on the phone and hire him for sales training or sales coaching. Right? Whole life hired us, got 70 new customers by not making one single outbound phone call. By following that Vyral marketing system.

What does this guy do again, it's.

The talent genius dot com. Yeah, he helps. He like does it like really in depth assessments with people that to find out they're a decent salesperson for your sales team. That's what he does. But the point is he has good clients and he used to be doing outbound prospecting, but now he followed that. That simple system I share with you, talking to people, getting emails, publishing videos. And you go to the thetalentgenius.com and you can see his videos. You can see the whole blog, everything that was built and it's just getting people to contact him. And he hasn't had to make one single outbound phone call to get that business.

That's fantastic. Now is this a website that you helped him build?

So here's what we do at Vyral, just to keep it really simple, is that we have a 30 day build process and then ongoing monthly. So a 30 day build process, we get your whole online presence built out. We build you a really nice video blog where all this stuff can go. It's like one home base for all your stuff. That's where you put the video blog and why hire me? Video and all your stuff. And then every month we set aside 20 or 30 minutes a month to interview you on a webcam to create the educational video content that then we distribute your database and put on your video blog. But what's cool is like think of the video blog as the container. So the video blog has all the sales messaging, right? So you send the email out. It's like a hook. Hey, here's this little piece of educational content in this email. Then they click it and it brings them back to the blog to actually consume the educational content. It's like the bait to bring them back to the trap. So the educational content is the bait that you send out that they click so you know who clicked it. Which brings them back to the trap, which is your blog where they see all your sales messaging, which is fantastic. And then after they watch your great educational content, they see who you are, they get to know you. It's very levered. When you follow up, you're like positioned as an expert.

Yeah, no, that's amazing. So you've given us an overview and it's really, it's amazingly simple and it's full of common sense and things that work about the ways to do it manually. And as we've mentioned, this is what you do now. You've turned around and you've created an actual business by helping other professionals do this for themselves, establish that authority.

It was just so, you know, so I'm doing this in my own business. I started off with kind of maybe playing around with this in the fitness business. I thought about doing it for myself as a real estate agent, but really what it turned in was like this process of the viral marketing plan. This marketing plan. Right. Going out and getting emails. People need to be coached on how to do that. Recording the two videos a month and coming up with the great topics and getting those line and getting those out and then prioritizing your phone call, follow up with the people who watch those videos. That plan is timeless. And that plan changed my life and it can change people's lives. So I want to go out and get that message out of that simple plan. There's an alternative to grinding it out, at least for client building. You know, there's an alternative to dropping gazillions of dollars on ads. And that's a very database marketing approach. Like I shared with you here, a very, you know, be the invited guest, not the annoying pest, you know.

Nice.

And you like that one? I do.

So say that again. Be the.

You want to be the invited guest, not the annoying pest.

That's hashtagable. It'd be a long hashtag.

But how about this? How about word of mouse?

Ah, I like it. I like it now. That's fantastic. And so you mentioned, and I mentioned you work with everybody from real estate professionals to attorneys to a lot of professional services people.

Yeah. The name of the game is to be the marketing firm of choice for experts.

I love that.

For experts. You're an expert. We're your marketing firm.

Fantastic. Experts, professional services, consultants, any type of person like that. And, you know, the nice part is one of the things I really like, and I know that, you know, Kenya, who's my girlfriend, is in the mortgage business. And actually, you know, just private conversation between you and I, she's going to be at an independent company here very soon, leaving the big bank. She's going to have a lot more ability to do things. So I'm going to be sending her back your way because one of the things that that is going to be important to her is understanding how to generate leads on her own. So she's no longer out there sharing.

Yeah. That's all going to be about building your center of influence, building your past client list and getting your name out to the people you know. And then the other thing with that is going to be creating relationships with agents. And here's the thing, what agents need is they need content to send to their database.

Correct.

So how about you get with the agent, help them create some great content, and then they will mail your video out to everyone they know. Yep.

Yeah, because it's genius. And I told her we were having a conversation over breakfast this morning saying, listen, your job is not to talk to other people about your business. Your job is to talk to them about theirs and how to make their life easier. Because if you are seen as a resource for them and you can do that, whether it's with content marketing connections, etc. That's how you get more business. And what's great about your service is I know that if I told her to sit down either with her iPhone or the webcam and to create a video like most people, she would be totally tongue tied and sit there and not know what to say.

Yeah, you need some coaching. You have to make sure you're framed correctly, have good lighting, you have good sound.

Perfect. So I'm segueing into this. So tell my listeners how you, how you help people create these videos. Because that's one of the parts that I think is magic about your service, which is really useful.

So let's talk about that. So you want to get a webcam? We Recommend the Logitech C920. It's an amazing webcam. And then probably if you have a little more resources, get yourself a nice external microphone for your computer. Now what we're going to do is we're going to actually you're going to fire up the Logitech software where it basically records that HD video directly to your hard drive. That way it's not streaming through the Internet and it's super high res. Okay. The way that we see you is we actually do a join me session. So we actually do a join me session to see your computer screen so I can look at you recording your video to your hard drive. Did you catch me on that? I did. Okay. So that way it's not like actually recording through the Internet because then it has latency issues. It goes right to your hard drive and it's really nice. So we're actually looking at you. Okay. And then what we're gonna do is we're start asking you questions and you're just gonna look at the webcam and answer them like you would to any other human being. And obviously we give you the questions and the answers up front, but just answer them like, like a normal person. That's it. Yep.

So you may, you may ask a question in the, in the Loan officer industry, like, you know what, what are some things that people can do to ensure they've got good credit? And this is something that, you know, you should be able to answer if.

That'S your program works or, you know, tell me how you got, tell me a story about how you got someone qualified that someone else couldn't get qualified.

Bingo.

Stuff like that.

So now that video is recorded and you've teed it up for them, you've made it easy, you've made it like a conversation.

Right?

And now they send you the video.

And yeah, so the video's in the hard drive, they upload it to us, and now we put it through editing. Adobe Premiere put a graphics package on it, adjust the lighting and the sound, make it look as beautiful as possible with a webcam video. All right? Then we put up on your YouTube channel, keyword it up, put a description there. Then we go to your blog that we built for you and put it onto your blog, embed it there. Follow me. Then our writers listen to your whole video and write a custom article or transcript to go with your video that goes underneath on the blog post so people can read it too. Alright? Then we go into all your databases, your Outlook, your Gmail, your phone, your iCloud, your CRMs, dump them all into one big email marketing program that de dupes. And we send that video to all those people through an email. Then we go post on your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and we syndicate to itunes as a podcast.

Alright, so you do all that, we do all that.

You know, you don't do any of that. Then a couple days later, after it goes out, we give you the names of all the people that watched it so you could follow up.

Yeah, once more. You do all that?

We do all of it. Yeah, you don't do anything.

So you sit there and you have a conversation with your rep from Get Viral, which is your company.

Yep. Takes about 20 minutes a month.

Wow, that's, that's a lot of time though. I mean, how are people gonna find 20 minutes a month?

I don't know, man.

Very, very difficult.

Well, usually what I say is like, you know, all those voicemails that you're leaving in voicemail hell, trying to get lot a whole hold of someone, you know what that's like?

Oh yeah.

How many times are you trying to get ahold of someone's voicemail and voicemail or all those emails that you're writing, somebody you're not getting any replies to? How about we just stop that for 20 minutes? Right. Let's create a couple educational videos so we can send those out to find and who you should prioritize your follow up with to the people that perceive you as an expert. They'll be excited when you talk to them. Because really, Brad is simple. If you could choose between talking to people who don't want to talk to you or calling people who do want to talk to you, who would you choose? Brad?

Every day. The ones who do want to talk to me sometimes.

Just got to simplify it down.

Yeah, I love it. So this is a service, you offer it. You're here in San Diego. Your website is Getaviral.

Getviral. G, E, T, V, Y as in yellow.

Yeah.

R A L dot com. We're actually based out of Omaha, Nebraska. That's where most of our employees are.

Right, but you're smart. You said that San Diego place looks kind of nice. I'm of getting my butt out there.

Yeah. So I guess I got offices here in downtown San Diego and then the rest of our office is based out of Omaha, Nebraska, where I'm from. Right.

But it doesn't matter where you are. You could be in Florida, our clients.

All over the country. I think we only have two or three people here. Clients in San Diego.

Nice. Nice, man. This is fantastic. I love people who take. I love that you found something that worked for you. You kind of went back to the basics, but then you thought about what are the systems out there? What are the things that I can do to put myself out there and, and get business for myself. And then you identified a market opportunity. You saw a hole there. That if this is manual and challenging for me, but also highly effective.

Here's the best way to put this. I gotta say this. So probably with this audience, you probably have two different sides of the spectrum. Let's say on the far left side of the spectrum, you have a 100% professional salesperson that does nothing but phone prospect looking for business. Yep.