Get Different Featuring Mike Michalowicz | MSP Gold Rush 2025

I started investing in businesses about 20 years ago. And one of the things we found is a lot of businesses don't market themselves appropriately. That a lot of businesses are really good. You provide extraordinary services, but you're not standing out. So one of the things we do with these investments is we'll go in and conduct a marketing shift, a marketing change. My first experience with this was with a company that provides security services. And it became the most pervy moment in my life. That's a great cliffhanger, right? Yeah, it's a pervy moment. Work with me here. Most secure. This was back in about 2010. There was a decline in the market for occupancies in commercial buildings. And this security company was getting squeezed by the building itself, saying, we're losing our occupancy rate. We need to get rid of our security guards. This was in New York City. There is some legal requirements that you do have security at a minimum level. So they're going to these security companies and saying, we want less people, and we're going to pay you less. Bless you. And what we did is the security company calls up and says, we don't know what to do. And we just made a major investment them. So I said, don't worry, I'm coming to one of the buildings and I want to observe what's going on, so I'm gonna set the stage. The security guard that was working the station, his name was Frank. And let's pretend right where I'm standing here is the elevator. And Frank would just sit there in his nondescript uniform. Just sit there like this. Sometimes, like walking around sometimes. Sometimes just talking to a few people, whatever. And they would walk in. I was hiding. There was like this big vase. I guess if something's really big, it's called a vase. I just found out, but I was hiding behind a vase. You're already. This is getting perfect for you already. And I'm sitting there just watching in this building as people are coming in and whoops. And the first person, sorry, Maria, I tripped her, Almost had a heart attack. The first person that came in was like this. This really kind of loud guy. I called him Loudmouth Vinnie because he'd come in. He's one of those guys where the legs are preceding the torso. He'd walk in like this. He's like, hey, I had a great day yesterday. It was amazing. Just crushed it. And. And he'd walk into the elevator, and Frank, the security guard, would just be sitting there. I'm watching the next person that came in was, I called her grandma. She was somewhere between 80 and dead. And she just come in like this. And the elevator opened and closed a thousand times. And she'd be just kind of going in. It would close on her walker and he would close on her. And she'd come in and other people would lumber in. No one noticed Frank. Now, the lesson we're gonna explore today is that different is better. Better companies are not noticeable. Everyone here is probably better than your competitor in some capacity, in some unique way. But the customer can't see that. So. So I go to my spot. I said, here's what we're going to do. We're going to change the uniform on Frank. We changed him from that nondescript uniform into a suit like an Armani, an Armini. It was a Chinese knockoff, an Armini. We gave him a leather briefcase, sunglasses, and like one of those little plastic ear do higgy things. You can get it at 5 and below. And I told Frank, he one instruction, and every time someone comes in, just put your finger to your ear and whisper into your lapels, go, okay, so Frank's there. I go back to my station back there and the first person is coming in and Frank just sits there and does his normal stuff. Like he's not an actor, he's not a thespian. He doesn't know what to do. So I said, okay, we gotta fix this. There was an app, I don't know if you remember this, back in 2000, 10ish, whatever. I think it was called Shake or Nudge. But basically it was like one of the first iPhone apps that if you shook your app, your phone, it could shake another phone. So we put a phone in his back pocket and I had my phone in my hand. When someone would come in, I would start shaking it to tell him someone's coming. So he'd touch his ear. So just imagine this. I'm behind the vase, sitting here watching people come in. Loudmouth Vinny, grandma and her friend. And. And I'm sitting here and Frank isn't doing anything. I'm like shaking the thing and he doesn't respond. So I'm sitting there and his loudmouth Vinny's walking in, talking on the phone. I start shaking the phone and Frank's still not moving. I'm shaking. I'm like, touch yourself, touch yourself. That's the pervy moment. I hope it's okay. We navigated that together and finally Frank did it. He touches his ear. And you should have seen how Vinnie responded. Loudmouth Vinny's on his phone. Like, oh, last night was awesome. All of a sudden, just freezes. And he says, I got to go. Hangs up his phone and walks right into the elevator. The next person that comes in is a bunch of men and women just talking. And all of a sudden, they see Frank sitting there, and he. This time, he touches his ear and does it. And everyone just freezes and quickly goes into the elevator. My favorite. My favorite was Grandma. She's coming in, you know, at the same speed like this. She looks at Frank. All of a sudden, that Walker became a pummel horse. She jumps over, and she goes running in. And we all know what was happening upstairs. The conversation at the water cooler. Like, it's the CIA protecting this building. Is the next president setting up office in here when he retires? Like, what's going on? We got a call from the building management just after a couple weeks of running this stunt. And they said, hey, we know what you're doing downstairs. The CIA gig with Frank. We got it. We said, we told you we couldn't pay 15 bucks an hour. We're getting squeezed. We got to tell you something. We can't afford not to have you anymore. Our building has become the conversation of New York. Kevin, that one's on you. They say our building is now the of the city. Like, everyone's talking about us. We can't afford not to have you. We can't afford you as our security company. You are now our best marketing piece. What do we have to pay you to keep doing this? That's the key of being different. That's the key of being different. And our company went from 15 bucks an hour to a project fee of bringing in our CIA agents. And. And that building's occupancy skyrocketed. That's what I want to anchor in our mind today. So I got a question. I asked for full participation. Just do it. By a show of hands here. I want everyone to participate. And just be truthful. Are you better in some capacity than your competitors? If that's true, raise your hand. Okay. Awesome. Every single hand. And one did not go up. So I'm going to pinpoint you. Yeah. Okay, now he's alligator clawing, too. Okay, everyone. And listen. I know you're 100% right. In some capacity, in some way, you are better than the competition. And if that is the truth and the reality, you have a responsibility to be known. You have a responsibility to serve lots more customers. You have a responsibility to be way bigger. Because if you're not. You are compromising your clients. So why aren't people hiring us? They won't find something they can't see. That's just how humanity is wired. I used to be. I used to have an MSP. Actually, we used to call ourselves VARs back in the day, which my client, we called Vastly Accelerated Rates. That's what he called me. But standing for value, what was the Value add? Reseller. Right, that's what we called. So listen, I go way back. I was network 2.2. If anyone. Does anyone remember network 2.2? Okay. Okay. That was way back in the day. Token ring, mouse, all that stuff. Nix. And I would mission. I would. If I was. If we were competing with each other, we would go toe to toe. I was. This is when they had. They were called CNAs, which was the netware certifications. I had CNES now they had the, the Microsoft certifications. We had all the proof of certifications. We had the testimonials of all these clients we served. We could do anything. And you, if we were competitors, you would say, we have all the certifications, we can do anything. And we're going head to head proving we're better. And then there's one company that came in and took all of the brain space of every prospect in the world. Geek Squad. Remember Geek Squad? What? They sucked. Their services literally sucked. And I came home one night to my wife, I said, she goes, how we're fighting with this one competitor. She goes, oh, was it Geek Squad? Like, you know about them? And she's like, yeah, they're so funny. Like there is. She's like, they're so funny. They're so noticeable. And I would go to some of my best clients and they'd say, oh, we were checking out what Geek Squad is doing. Geek Squad was focused on home systems, not corporate stuff. And they were leeching into my space. Remember, different is better. Robert Stevens, he's the founder of Geek Squad. Billion dollar valuation was their most recent valuation. I read after being acquired a billion with a B, he was asked, they said, how do you. How do you win a market? He goes, the more ordinary the industry, the more extraordinary the opportunity to be remarkable. I am surprised. I'm surprised how few MSPs are just doing their version of Geek Squad. Maybe you guys know there's one company I heard of called like the Purple Guys or something. There's some company, all they do is dress in purple like Barney. And they're lapping up business. They're lapping up business. So why don't we do it? Well, the reason I think we don't do it is because we want to be noticed without being noticeable. We want to stand out without standing out. We want everyone to see us without being seen. It is the weirdest devil on one shoulder, angel on the other situation in the world. This side saying, if you dress like a geek, people will laugh at you and make fun of you. Your contemporary, your friends here will say you're idiots behind your back. This side says, but that's how you get noticed. The angel. This is how you do it. I subsequently went on and worked with, well, actually all of our investments. Now I'll share a story a little later on, I think about one of the companies that we. We just deployed a strategy. Starting in yesterday, I was flying back here from another event and on the right before the flight, we're talking about a new strategy. So I want to share these things with you. But one of the first things we're going to do is kind of understand how the mind works. One case I just want to show, there was a woman we worked with. Her name was Ernestina Perez. She had a therapy business that focused on the Latinx community. And the same thing we said, your business is struggling. You've provided superior services. All we need to do is do something different. And we said, if. If no one mattered, no one cared, what would you do? She goes, well, there she goes, I would, if I could, I would publish some of the therapy sessions we do. But there's client confidentiality. You can't do that. So how she was creating business was she was paying to this directory. It's called Zocdoc. $2,000 per client she was awarded. Now she charges $100 an hour. So you have to work for 20 hours just to pay off the cost. And I don't know if anyone here has ever gone to therapy. There's a lot of turn in that. You get what you need and some people leave, some people stay. But there's a lot of turn. It's hard to earn that back. So she said, I'm not gonna. I can't. There's no other way to do it. Finally, the angel on one shoulder spoke loud enough, said, just try it. Just a little dip of the toe in the water. There was a show called 90 Day Fiance. Has anyone heard of that show? Okay, does anyone want to admit to watching this? Okay. The biggest guy. Yeah, I love that show. Yeah, I love it. I'm a huge fan. Yes. 90 Day Fiance. So what she. If you haven't seen 90 Day Fiance. It's about the most atrocious part of relationships and conflict and it's just horrible. And then there's this one, the female is with the male and they're talking about their upcoming wedding and he doesn't like the idea she proposed for where they're going to have it. And so her response is to splash water in his face. That's classy stuff. So what does Ernestina do? She does a therapy session for 90 Day Fiance. She. And listen, she is the most reserved, most professional person I've ever seen. And in this monotone voice she's like, splashing water in someone's face is not a smart move. You just sit this. And she's trying to be serious. She's like. An alternative would have been simply to push the water away and. And say, I have alternative ideas to your suggestion. You know, like that. And it is the weirdest and funniest video. But there's this sincerity because she's just totally herself in that video. She posts one video, her heart is racing that she's doing this. And within a month she gets about five or six new clients who say, I've been looking for someone like you, who understands they were as a Latin couple, who understands the Latinx community, who even in the most absurd thing scenario still maintains professionalism. I would love to see if you would be my therapist. She lapped up opportunity. We can do the same thing. The caveman mind, though, is what the customer has. If you remember from school, discussion about the caveman and the cave woman, the hunters and the gatherers. Do you know how they behaved? We'll first talk about the hunters, which was the males of the tribe. They would go out and they'd be hunting in the woods and they were going after target. So they have this kind of narrow focus. They're going to get the woolly mammoth or whatever, cyber tooth tiger, whatever lived back then, and they're going for it. But the Maya was always looking for three things. One was the goal they're looking to achieve. But if a threat presented itself, they had to protect themselves. So perhaps saber tooth tiger was pretty dangerous. So if you heard a roar of a tiger, they take defensive action. But there was something else interesting. The crunching leaves under their feet as they were hunting. All those different sounds of the rushing river and stuff, all that stuff was ignored. In fact, the majority of things were ignored because they weren't relevant. There was one other thing they did notice. It's something unexpected. So all of a sudden they heard a screech or something from a pterodactyl. Is that. Is that right? I failed science class, so I don't know. Did pterodactyls and humans live the same. Okay, thank you. No, I knew that. I knew that. You're so disappointed. You're like, this guy's an idiot. This guy is an idiot. They'd hear a pterodactyl, they hear some kind of screech, and all of a sudden they would freak, freeze, and say, what is that? Because anytime something different presented itself, it had to be evaluated as a new opportunity, something they could consume or a new threat, something they had to protect themselves. So different ways. One, the females of the tribe, the exact same thing. They were often the gatherers and they'd get berries and so forth. If they were pursuing a type of berry they've consumed before, they would try it out and I mean, they would collect it and consume it. If they was known to be poisonous, the threat, they would avoid it. If it was a barrier they never saw before. It wasn't like they took it and they gobbled it up. They would test it very carefully. They licked it, put it on their tongue to see if it was a numbness indicating poison. They'd rub it on their skin and they'd consume in small amounts. They'd often give it to one of the ladies they didn't like that much, and I'm not picking on you, I'm just looking at you. They gave it to one of the ladies they didn't like so much and said, hey, why don't you try this out? Well, the human mind hasn't change that much. So I want to show you how the mind operates. And then we're going to go into strategy after strategy after strategy. Whoops. Oh, there you go. So that was fun. Let me, Maria. I blame you. I blame you. Oh, thanks, bro. I'm going to grab a marker while you do that. Thank you. Thank you so much. Okay, so we're going to do a little science class together. So we understand marketing. Then we're going to kill kick some marketing butt together. Oh, also, before I do that, I did hand out worksheets. So they're on your desk. Yeah. Thank you. So I'm going to give you some of the answers. We already answered some of these. We answered number one. If you're better than the rest, better than the rest, you must market the best. It is your responsibility. That's how we opened up. If you are better and everyone in this room's better. We got to amplify our marketing, not more of it. Different. The second thing is the human brain is designed to ignore almost everything. That's the second thing we talked about. The caveman, cave woman's walking around and the background noise and stuff is ignored. Well, fast forward to modern times. Our brains haven't changed that much. In fact, over the last thousand years, there's been slow and mild evolution in the brain. But the technology you guys know around us has been changing rapidly. So knowing that the brain isn't going to change, we have to change our marketing to work with how the brain already operates. So here's how the brain works. So this is the brain. You have the little squigglies, whatever those are. Does anyone know what those are called? The squigglies. Okay, I don't know either. So that's the brain. This is the spinal column, the brain stem. How the brain works is we have sensory inputs. So sight and touch and smell and feel, all the senses feed into the brain. Now, the first part of the brain that we have to be concerned about, the most important part, isn't even up here. It's in the brain stem. It's called the reticuling, Reticular formation. You perhaps have heard of the term the reticular activating system. That's when you see something that you possess and you see something, you buy a car and you see it everywhere. That's called the reticular activating system. But the reticular formation is the bigger part of it. It's a neural network. It's a neural net that sits at our brainstem. Its primary function is to reject input. In fact, about 99.9% of inputs coming into our brain that are happening right now. Our brain is designed to ignore, totally ignore, and we use a technique called habituation. Now, I live outside New York City, and anyone here lived near a major city or in a major city. Okay, okay. A lot of folks. Great, Great. You may have noticed in your city, too, that sirens on ambulances, rescue vehicles have changed. They used to be about 20, 30 years ago, commonly a high, low pitch wee oo, wee oo. Now they're bam, bam, bam. And some guy's like, hey, move your car. They did all these different sounds. Do you know why they did that? They did that because people were dying when these rescue vehicles were going to save someone, because the rescue vehicle were hitting people. And who was it hitting? Jaywalkers. And why were people jaywalking in front of an ambulance or a police car? Cause they couldn't hear it because our brains had become attuned to it. What habituation is, is when I've seen something in the past, my mind, and it wasn't relevant in the past, my mind says it's not relevant now. So if you live in the city and you hear these sirens going off and so forth, not for me, I feel fine. Not for me. And very quickly your mind says, siren, not for me, it ignores it. And literally blaring sirens. And people are like, we're late for work, getting killed. And thanks for the one person who laughed at someone dying. Okay, so what we have to know is the reticular formation is blocking out as much input as possible. And it's necessary. Could you imagine every single thing you heard, smelled, touched, everything? There's a person walking by out there, there's a fan going. Well, if we're paying attention to everything, it would overload our minds and we'd proverbially explain explode. So first thing is block things out. That's how the brain works. The second thing the brain does is says we have to prioritize three inputs. Input. One is threats. Put the word up here. Threats. And how a threat works is if something is a known threat and puts us at risk, we have to hit the amygdala and the hippocampus. Has to hit this part of our brain, which is the fast responding brain. It's the fastest part of our entire brain. It works faster than conscious thought. Right. Now, if you, if, if you want, you can just do this with me. If you try blinking as fast, you're the fastest blink in the world you've ever done. That is way too slow. This works about 10 times faster than a blink. That's how quick it happens. And you've experienced this. You've been in a yard or something, you're sitting, you're talking to your friend, and all of a sudden something squiggles in the yard and you're like, ha ha. Like you move so fast and you move so quickly and you don't even think about it. Like you just move. And then you look, it's like, oh, someone just turned the hose on. My bad, my bad. The brain says when there's a potential threat, squiggling could be a snake. Get the hell out of the way now and then we'll worry about that later. So when it comes to marketing, there's a effective. But I suggest, don't use a way of marketing. It's called called threat based marketing. We'll talk about that in a second. And you've experienced it. The second thing that gets through to the brain are opportunities. I'm just gonna put op opp. Yeah, you know me, anyone who laughed was over 50 years old. Opportunities hit the prefrontal cortex of our brain. It's a slower processing, but it's much more intellectual. That's what's actually happening right now is we're having this little conversation. Your brain is either processing what I'm talking about or it's wondering as you are doing something else in your mind. But if you see an opportunity, something of value that I'm presenting, you're going to. It's going to illuminate the prefrontal cortex. The beautiful thing about opportunities are known. Opportunities are something that we grasp and want to take hold of. We want to possess. So a second way into the brain is through opportunity marketing. We'll talk about that in a second. And the last way is through different. I'm just going to put diff. And when something unexpected unknown presents itself, it hits both the amygdala, prefrontal cortex, and there's entire brain illumination. You've experienced this. You ever walking down the street and you're like, all of a sudden your head does that double yank, like, what the hell was that kind of look? You don't even know what you're looking at. Your brain just makes you look twice. That means your brain saw at this level, the reticular activ formation says, I see something I've never seen before or I don't know what it is. You have to look at it, because if it's different, it could be a new threat or new opportunity. We have to evaluate. The entire brain illuminates and you go this way. And that's why I'm arguing that different marketing is the best marketing in the world. And that's what we're going to achieve together. This morning, let's talk about the three types of marketing that do exist. One is threat based marketing. You've experienced it. We'll just talk about it. Let's talk about it in mail right now. Next time you go to your mailbox, watch how efficient you are at sorting through the junk mail. I mean, are you guys like super quick at that? Like, you get a little bit of mail in there. You're like, not for me, not for me, not for me. Recycle, recycle, recycle. Have you noticed how quick you are at that? That's the habituation engine in our brain. It's like, oh, I Don't need that. Postcard, postcard, postcard. But there are three pieces of mail that will catch our attention sometimes. First, we always prioritize threats. Now, how some marketers try to do it is they will put in the mail, it says, like, you know, $100,000 fine if. If not opened by intended recipient, you will go to jail. Like, you ever see that mail where it has penalties on it? Warning, must open. What do we do with that? The very first time you receive it, you're probably like, what is going on here? And you may actually open it. But our mind very quickly becomes habituated and says, oh, this is not a real threat. This is a scam. And so now we start wanting to retaliate. And that's the problem with threat marketing. We want to get revenge. It's happening in. It's gonna happen today. It's gonna come into your cell phone. I text, oh, the dmv. You got a ticket. I don't know. And you didn't pay for it. You didn't pay that ticket, and you better pay today. Has anyone got that text? Okay, that's Chris sending it. He's desperate to make money. So that's all from Chris. Yeah. So you. Some people here receive that. You receive it for the first. The first time you received, you're probably like, what? And your mind spent a little extra time evaluating because it's a threat, and it's called threat marketing. And then you're like, oh, my gosh, this is just a scam. And what do you want to do? Oh, I want to call the FBI or I want to call. Listen, I'm in this industry. I'm going to take these people down. I'm going to figure out what their IP address is. I'm going to do a denial service for their entire life. That's like the funniest tech joke in the world. Denial service for life. Okay? So that's called threat marketing. Don't do it. Ineffective. It works once, doesn't work twice. Opportunity marketing. Opportunity marketing is where. And we'll go back to the mail is where someone's put something in front of you that has perceived value. But when we see an opportunity, we do want to grasp it. But we are also highly suspicious. You ever get a piece of mail, it says your return addresses are inside. You're like, oh, that's cool. And you open it up, and sure enough, there's. There's a sheet of return addresses and says, hey, we'd like you to donate a million dollars to this fund. We Hope you enjoy your little addresses. Have you made donations? Have you said, oh, this is so kind to them? Probably not. But do you keep the stickers? Probably. Do you probably use them? Opportunities will grab the opportunity, but we are highly suspicious of the consequence. It causes avoidance. Listen, if you haven't experienced that one in the mail, experience in person. I was at a coffee shop. Have you done this one? I'm in the coffee shop. I'm sitting there drinking my coffee and I look down. Now the corner of my eye, I see a dollar bill. I think it's like a five dollar bill sitting there. So what did I do? I don't just grab it first. I look around. Does anyone else notice it? Then all of a sudden, my foot happened to get very long and just happened to cover it. Then dropped my utensils. Oh, isn't that a shame? Had to bend down, pick it up in the pocket, back to the coffee. No one saw it. We're good. I walked out with my five bucks. Have you done the same thing? You haven't. You're like, whose is this? Did anyone drop $5? Is that what you do? Bullshit. Really? There's always 1 goody 2 shoes in the audience. I returned the money. Actually, I returned the stickers too, with the address. And just give it back. I'm like, I don't deserve this. Here's a million dollars. Okay. I don't know. I don't know why I did that to you. I think you hate me, right? Yeah. Okay. No, okay. You're going to kill me later. So. Okay. And I think in Texas you can carry guns into a space like this. So. Okay, okay, okay. So now I feel threat. So now we know threat. We know opportunity. But there's a third form of marketing that's the best. What's different? Ever receive a piece of mail that you didn't expect? Lumpy mail? A box. Ever get a box? You're like, did I order something from Amazon? What is it? Boxes and unexpected things in mail typically get prioritized. They still do because it's inconsistent, unexpected. When we don't know what it is, we have to find out. Now, maybe this is just me. I. Sometimes I get a box, I'm like, it has my name on it. I didn't order it. I'm gonna open this and what do I do? I put on the counter and I. With a. With a razor, I open it. You ever do that? I open it like this. Just in case it's a threat. Like a snake's gonna jump out or Something's gonna go off, but I got to see what's inside. I cannot resist it. Our goal is to do different. I'll give you three examples of ways that we can get into the brain, but we have. Oh. We have to understand one more model I want to show you before we start digging into lots of examples. I call it the dad model. And if you use this model in any considerations of marketing, it will transform your marketing forever. And I'll explain what those are in just a second because I remembered I gotta make sure we go over our notes and I fill in the blanks for you here. We answered number two, right? The brain is designed to ignore things. Now we answer number three. We give immediate attention to three things. Number one is threats, Two is opportunities, and three is different or unexpected. So we always. Our brain cannot stop doing that. We will always, always consider those things. So your marketing has to be one of the three. And I'm telling you, unexpected is always the best. We also answer number four. Known threats trigger attention, but also resistance and potentially retaliation. Answer number five. Opportunities triggers attention, but also consumption with suspicion. Right. So we'll take it. I'll put my foot over that $5 bill. But is there a trick going on? Or the address book or the address stickers? Are they trying to send me something that. And manipulate me? And the last one, number six is the unexpected triggers attention and curiosity. So I know I raced through that. I'm just going to say again real quick. Number four was resistance and retaliation. Number five was known opportunities trigger tension, but also consumption and suspicion. Number six is the unexpected triggers attention and curiosity. You may have noticed we're doing. This is our little marketing promo. There's a wallet sized picture of me here. We're running a contest. Anyone who cuts out that picture and keeps in their wallet for one year wins weirdo of the year award. There you go. That's like, where's the money? Yeah. Is that threat marketing? So we need to know the DAD model and are you cutting that out for your wallet? The first element in marketing is we must lead with different and that captures opportunity for about one tenth of a second. You have to lead with something that's unexpected. I'll give you an example how to do this right now or after this you can write down a list of what does your competition do to market? My one runs Facebook ads. Okay. What else does your competition do? Some people do postcard mailer still. Okay. What else they do, you know, referral based marketing. Okay. Whatever your competition is doing that is the stuff we know has become habituated. That's the junk mail that's coming into people's minds. That's the exact stuff they'll ignore. So how do we twist it or change it? We invested in a gym, a fitness studio series of them. And I met with the owner and I said, let's go out and look at our competition and. And how they're attracting people. One common way to do this is before and after pictures is very common in the fitness space. And so if you're walking down some street and there's a studio there, fitness studio, you'll have a picture of, like, schlubby person becomes ripped person and how much they've transformed their body. And you'll always see these transformations. We did this for our clients. Now we can do it for you. But the most important thing is to watch. How do people respond to that? And most people, almost everyone just ignores it. People just walk down the street like, oh, before and after. I've seen that before. And people ignore it. Television programs, it's before and after. It's always before and after. Okay, that's the thing we're not going to do because that's become habituated. One strategy you can use is you R and D ideas from other industries. And when I say R and D, I mean rip off and duplicate. Just rip off and duplicate ideas from other industries. I was out. This is. My children were a lot younger at the time. We went to one of these parks and they had, like a fun house. You know those crazy mirrors, like, they make you look like E.T. or something. Yeah. I noticed when we went there, like, everyone's sitting there with their phone, like, taking pictures. Oh, my God, it looks so funny. Look at me. I'm like, wow, we're really into ourselves, you know? So I said, oh, we like. We like to look at ourselves. It's human nature. So I said, why don't we get rid of the before and afters at our gyms? There is a supplier of mirrors like this for fun houses. It's called Amazon. And we ordered one that made you look, like, super squat and just, like, totally, horribly out of shape. And this other one that gave you kind of this V shape. Most people were walking down the street this way. So the first one was this one that made you kind of like, look just horrible. And above it, we wrote in big text on a sign, it said before. In the next mirror, the one that made you look amazing, it said after. What happened? Within minutes of us installing this, people were walking down the street. And all of a sudden I see the mirror. I go, and the phone comes down. It's like, look at me. I look horrible. And then they jump over and go, I look amazing. Horrible, amazing. And then there was a sign right next to it that said, we just transformed you in mirrors. Let's do it in real life. Come inside, we'd like to talk with you. And foot traffic nearly quite quadrupled. It is in Salt Lake City. Different. Different always catches people attention. What is that one thing that'll make people turn their head twice? That's the thing we have to do. And it's real easy. Just do something that no one else does. Be the purple guys, be the geek squad, put up mirrors. But the second element is it needs to be attractive. Meaning the customer. And sometimes the person influencing or the individual influencing the customer must be attracted to this. And attraction also is determined in 1/10 of a second increments. Our mind moves that fast. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Is this something I didn't see before? Oh, now is this something I want to say, engage with? Is it attractive to me? And we keep on evaluating that. Actually, as a speaker, one of the big challenges is, you know, going for 45 minutes or something. I got to keep on giving you stuff that's of value. Otherwise the mind will say, this guy sucks. And then we just start going right on our phone. You want to go on your phone, goody two shoes, don't you? You want to do a payback to me right now and go on your phone? Thank you. That hurts. That hurts. So in attractive factor, there was a bank based in the northeast called Commerce bank way back in the day. Anyone ever hear that bank? It was one of the first banks to go 24 hours. You remember that bank? Okay, Commerce bank, the founder, the guy's name was Vernon Hill. Starts off one bank, he goes to another industry. Remember, this is a good strategy. Rip off and duplicate. He notices there's something interesting about McDonald's the drive thru. They have Happy Meals. And the biggest influencer determining if mom or dad goes to to McDonald's is the kid who wants the Happy Meal. And us parents like, no, not another hamburger. Well, okay, but I'm keeping the fries for myself. So what does Vernon Hill do? He says, we're going to do Happy Meals at our bank. Well, he noticed all the minivans coming in. It was usually mom, sometimes dad, but the kid wasn't in the car that often. It was usually the family dog. So they said, huh, What's a Happy Meal for a dog. Well, a dog biscuit, a dog bone. When you would go to Commerce bank, if you had a dog in the car, you would get your deposit receipt back and a dog biscuit with it. They started to train dogs. It was a Pavlonian response. Literally, minivans are driving by Commerce bank, and dogs start salivating and barking. Oh, my God. Oh, I guess I have to go back to the bank again for our biscuits. It what are you doing that keeps attracting people? We're interested in ourselves, the mirrors. We want our dogs to be happy. What can we do to keep attracting the customer over and over through our marketing efforts? Last phase. Oh, and I made an investment in a cleaning company, but they did office cleaning after hours. And what we noticed is they're pretty invisible. Maybe you had an office cleaner back in the day. I don't know if you do that anymore. But this is was back in the day, and you wouldn't know if someone was there. Your waste basket is empty. That's about it. We started leaving creme de menthe. You know, those little chocolates, like, with a sign. It said, we had the privilege of cleaning your office today. If anything's out of place, out of spot, please tell receptionist is when receptionist still exists, please tell your receptionist and they'll report it. Enjoy this chocolate on us. We had employees asking the boss, saying, this is the best cleaning company ever. Can we make sure that we keep working with them? What can you do that attracts the customer in your marketing piece? And the last part is you have to then have direction. What is the result? The action you want people to take, you have to direct them. Whatchamacallit wanted. Commerce bank wanted the customer coming back in the gym. We want people to walk into the gym, so we put the direct message there. But here's the key about directing people. It needs to be small. It needs to be safe. Imagine you're out to buy a new car, and you go to the lot, and the car dealer is like, oh, why don't you do this? Give me a $50,000 deposit, and they'll lock in our inventory and we'll find something for you. You'd be like, no, you create 50. Who are you? So what car dealers will do is say, hey, I'd love to know more about the car you're looking for. If you're willing to give me your cell or email, what I'll do is I'll take pictures of our inventory. I can text it to you. They gave you a small direct. Now they have A way to engage with you. So what are the. What's the next reasonable step you want people to take? That's the direct has to be small. It has to be safe. Okay. What I wanted to do is just give you a cascade of ideas that we can go through. But let's make sure we answered some of these. Fill in the blanks. Number seven is the dad or dad marketing framework is differentiate, free, attract, and direct. Now we're gonna start going into some ideas. The Chimney Cleaning association was a client. We didn't invest in them, but they were a client of ours. And shockingly, the Chimney Cleaning association struggles to get customers. I shouldn't say shockingly. How often do you get your chimney cleaned yourself? I mean, you don't even know if you have a dirty chimney. It's like you stick your head up the fluent. Like, oh, I guess the chimney. Chimney needs a cleaning. You can't see it needs to be done. So the problem with chimney cleaning is no customer knows they need it when the work is done. You don't know if it was done because you can't see it. And their mascot is Mary Poppins. It's a woman who takes your children away from you out the window. And they're like, we can't get any business. Well, we decided. What was everyone else doing? They're all doing postcards. They're all doing the standard marketing. Well, what we did is we started a campaign. We called it Fireside Stories. We said, well, we do have some customers. Let's go to those customers and ask them about their fireside experience. Cause no one's buying a clean fireplace. You don't buy a clean chimney. You buy a roaring, safe fire. So we brought these people in to tell their stories. And some people shared, oh, yeah, you know, celebrate the big football game, have the fire roaring parties, celebrations. One story just tore my heart. It was a young girl. She may have been 12 years old. Her father passed away in front of the fire. And he asked to. He was. He had a terminal disease, asked to be there. Family had gathered. But he wanted to be there because it was his favorite place. He would watch the big game with the fire going. He said. I remember looking at him, and he took his final breath, and I was so scared. I just looked at the fire, and the fire sparked up in this big way, and colors came out. She's like, that's the day I knew God does exist. Well, these stories came in what we did on the website for the Chimney Cleaning Association. We didn't put testimonials that's what everyone does. We said Fireside moments. It became like a newsletter. And people shared that story in all these countless stories. And what's attractive to people who share stories, their own stories. It's the mirror effect. We love to look at ourselves. So that's what we did. We put these stories up, and guess who came to the website. We put a hundred stories up to start this off. The next morning, guess how many visitors we had to our site. 100 visitors. Everyone who wrote their own story. And guess what happened the next day? We had about 200 visitors, because those people now want to tell their friends and family, oh, my story's online. You got to see this. And sure enough, we started to get business that way. Everyone's doing testimonials. We did stories. The most common form of marketing right now is email marketing. I'm not saying don't do email marketing. I'm saying just don't do it the way everyone else is doing it. There was a time. Do you remember the hey, friend email that came out? That was probably 15, 20 years ago. Do you remember the very first hey, friend, hey, friend email you got? Starts off, hey, friend. I remember the first one I got. I was like, oh, my God, who's this friend of mine? I don't even remember who. They're so friendly. They call me their friend, not even by my name. And I read a few minutes into it, and because it was different, it got into prefrontal cortex, amygdala. My mind's now evaluating, is it a threat or opportunity identifies? It's a threat. It's people trying to market. To me, it's spam. And what do I do? The next hey, friend that comes in, like, ignore, ignore, delete, delete. Sometimes a nasty email in response. So we said, okay, email marketing, how do we change it up? Has anyone ever here received an invisible inc Email ever? All right, try this one out. We did this with one of the companies we invested in. We sent an email. So simple to do. And in the email, we changed the font to a white font against a white background so it's invisible. In the subject line said, this is an invisible ink email. Now, if you receive that in your subject line and you read that, that may be just enough for 1/10 of a second to say, what the hell? And if I can get you saying that, you may just say, I'll open. And there was one line in text that said, there's a message hidden in here. Just click your mouse and hold the button down. And scroll down so it highlights in blue and it will reveal the message. Curiosity attract in there. The message said, well, it was a campaign for the cleaning company and it said, we make offices so spotless. We actually can make ink from an email. Go invisible. Please call us. Skyrocketed. How could you not respond to that? Make sense idea for you. Okay, that actually answers one of our things in here. Number eight is create ideas, do the opposite of the competition. So part, the first part of an 8 is do the opposite of the competition and use ideas from other industries. Take ideas out of other industries. I worked with the Photographers Association. It was so fascinating. It was a big conference. They let me survey the people. They had 5,000 people at the conference. So I surveyed the people. I say, what are the best marketing strategies that are out there? And I want everyone to respond. And we had about 20% response. So the thousand people responded. And I'm like, we're going to have 100 ideas. I knew we wouldn't. I was hoping we'd have four. We had three. You know what, if you're a photographer, how do you market and you've received this marketing? I'll send you a postcard of my best shots, my best portraits, and I'll mail it out during graduation time saying, graduation season's upon us. Or, you know, time to get that family portrait at the beach. Here's our best picture. That was the number one idea. Number two was ask for a referral. And number three was if the referral didn't work, send out more postcards. That was her marketing. So he said, okay, what does no one do? Could you imagine a photographer in your neighborhood sends you a piece of mail with no photographs? I mean, that sounds so different. That's exactly what we did. We got a frame, nice frame. One of those old farmhouse looking frames. Packed it up. There was no photo in it at all. There was just some text. It says, almost every single picture goes into the cloud. But the ones you cherish go into frames. We create the ones you will cherish. You get this mailer, it arrives and what if you got that? How would you respond? It's remarkable. Of the 5,000 photographers in the room, that was one of the strategies we came up with. All these two photographers tried it out. Two photographers tried it. Both their businesses doubled that year instantly. And everyone else. Yeah, but no one does it. It's that classic angel devil. And that's my fears. I'm sharing this with you. I started with Maria. I'm like, you know, we could, we could workshop and stuff. I'm like, you know what? Let me just give idea after idea. But I also know what's going on right now. He's like, oh, this guy's kind of crazy. It's kind of weird. And you can't do that in our industry. That's the devil talking. But then there's this guy, Robert Stevens, who put on a geek squad. Geek. You know, slug pants, narrow tie. And his company's worth a billion dollars after being bought by Best Buy collectively. Like, how badly do you want it? How badly do you want it? So, empty frame. I'll give you a strategy that was used by Zappos. Zappos is another. I think they grew to 5,600 million before it was acquired by Amazon. I know Tony Hsieh sadly passed away. Tony Hsieh, famous for delivering happiness. You know, marketing can be in the experience itself. It doesn't have to be that marketing piece that goes. It doesn't have to be that great email letter. It doesn't have to be that crazy Facebook ad. It could just be in the marketing experience. I'm sorry, the customer experience. So that's what they did. Has anyone ever bought from Zappos back in the day? Any Zappos customers? Customers? You did. Okay. You did, too. I'm just curious if you can just nod your head if this is true back then. Do you remember when you ordered those shoes you likely purchased back in the day, that they said, thank you for ordering shoes. They'll arrive at your home within about five days, but they actually arrive the next day? Did you experience that? Did you even get a card? You've been upgraded to VIP treatment. Okay, so we're saying, yes, I'm going to tell you something about Zappos. They intentionally did that. Now, a lot of people don't know the backstory of Zappos. When Zappos started, Tony Hsieh invested into it very early on. They were working out of a garage. The number one competitor was a company called Foot Locker. Perhaps you've heard of them. They were in every major mall throughout the United States. They were backed by venture capital. They had hundreds of million dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars in their marketing budget. There's this little Zappos with this couple guys working out of a garage, and they say, we got take on Footlocker. But now this is when we were moving to the Internet. Footlocker says, we're going to go online. We're going to sell our products online. We're going to have this amazing website and all these wonderful things. Zappos says, we're only going to be online and we're competing against Footlocker. Footlocker. When you would order shoes from the Footlocker website, it would say, thank you for your order. We are FedExing your shoes. They'll arrive tomorrow. And 95% of the time, 99% of time, the shoes arrive tomorrow. But sometimes FedEx or UPS, a storm happens, crazy things happen, and the shoes wouldn't arrive. And what happens if you don't get your shoes when promised the next day? Yeah, Foot Locker sucks. They're idiots. Can't deliver on their promise. You know, Zappos would say, thank you for ordering shoes. It's going to arrive within five days. Now, I call this the tinge moment. The tinge, because my competitor's saying tomorrow, I'm saying five days. And so the tinge is like, the customer goes, mm. If they're aware of both. So you have to justify it. And you say, listen, we're. We're pulling the perfect shoes for you. And that's what Zappos would do. We're gonna package them and wrap them up. It typically takes five days. And then you know what Zappos would do? They'd FedEx it to you overnight. What would happen and maybe happen to you two? What would happen when your shoes arrive? It says they're going to arrive on Friday and they arrive, in fact, the next morning. Yeah, you're dancing. It's like, oh, my God, it's my birthday. It's my birthday. It was an amazing experience. Like, they love me. They love me at Zappo. And they upgraded me to vip. My God. Now, here's the funny thing. Zappos had the exact same problem that Footlocker had. Sometimes the shoes would get delayed and UPS or FedEx couldn't deliver on time. It would take two or three days to get there. And what would it feel like from Zappos? Still amazing, because they said it's gonna arrive on a Friday, but it came on Wednesday. They still love me. They love me. Most businesses, the easiest opportunity to transform your marketing is to set a promise that you can beat every single time, manage the expectations and blow them away. It's the number one marketing trick in the world. My second business, I was telling someone, I sold it in New York City to Robert Half International. It was a computer forensics business. I was a var. I sold it private equity. Then I started computer forensic, computer investigation business. I sell it to Robert Half International. My company grew so explosively because we had a reputation for response times when it came to computer crime. When stuff went down, you had to be there right away, just like any other crime. And we did actually some horrible crimes that we managed. But we were a small company and there was these major competitors. The biggest one was called krull and they had, like, people everywhere. We had seven people and they had 7,000 people. So we said, how are we going to beat them on time? Because that's what matters to the customer. We said, oh, we're going to under promise and we're going to over deliver. And that's exactly what we did. So when a customer would call us, they'd say, hey, we have something that went down. We said, okay, we're gonna dispatch our team. It's gonna take them 48 hours to be on location. And now I gotta manage the tinge. The customer's like, the crime just went down. We need someone right away. We said, we understand. But I'll tell you, even if someone could be there within an hour, what happens in the next 30 minutes is crucial to this case. We're gonna remotely support you on what to do do, and we will get there within 48 hours. And then we tell them how to. It was called bag and tag. That was the lingo and disconnect and all these things so that the evidence was preserved so we can go through the mirroring or ghosting process and start our analysis. We'd hang up the phone and then we'd just sit there because we knew we could get out there faster than 48 hours. So it was my company. So I just talked to myself. I'd be okay. Hold on. Can we send out someone earlier? Yeah, I think so. How about you? Okay, I'm the only guy right here today, so yeah, let's do it. Okay. I call the customer back and say, hey, we called together the dispatch team, myself, myself, and we have a technician who can be on site. In fact, I'm gonna be overseeing this case. It's that important. We'll have someone on site within about 12 hours. And the customer was blown away expecting 48 and then getting a call in 12. Now, here's what Carl would do. Carl would say, average response time is eight hours. And they'd get there within eight hours on average, about 50% of time. 50% of the time they were there within 12 hours. They were always there within 12 hours. And they sucked because crawl took so long. We were there typically in 12 to 24 hours. And we were rock stars. How fast we Responded, my business exploded. Robert half acquires us in one strategy under promise maker, manage expectation over deliver inherent to marketing. All right, let's keep. Is this helping? We rolling through some good ideas here? Okay, I think we answered some more questions in our worksheet here. Use ideas. Okay, so answer number 8, opposite. Use ideas from another industry. Lean into your own uniqueness. Like what was. What's unique about you? And we'll talk about that a little bit further. But no matter what, don't smart, don't mark it in the same way. Your prospect already experiences marketing. It's the biggest mistake. We look at our competition and say we just got to do what they do better. And I'm saying you got to not do what they do. We also answer number nine, to keep your prospect engaged in your marketing, you must speak to their interest. That's the attractor factor. Okay, let's just go into some more ideas. I told you I would. I invested in this company that makes a cleaning product and we're actually looking to invest in more businesses. And these are companies usually doing like a couple million dollars in revenue or more, but just are struggling to break through. Owners overworked, they're not profitable. So we had a call yesterday and we have an opportunity to sell this. It's an industrial cleaning product, cleans floors and stuff, but it's particularly for, for industrial use in military applications. Like a, an aircraft carrier needs to have like a super clean friction floor for the planes to take off. That's the stuff it cleans. So I was talking with the owner and his wife also works in the business and she's on the phone call and like, tell me about the cleaning product and how it works. And we're just talking. I'm like, did you ever use it for non industrial stuff? And Kelly, the co owner, his wife starts laughing. She says, yeah, yeah. Whenever we have bacon, we spray this stuff on the bacon pan because it's covered with grease and stuff. She goes, it's just so funny to watch because it literally just dissolves away. It's so effective. And it's biodegradable. It's remarkable because it's food grade quality. You can spray it and you can lick it if you want to and eat it and it just melts it away. So we said, oh, we're going to do the making the bacon campaign. What's kicking off and you can, you're welcome to do this too is don't do it on Monday because we're kicking off Monday. There's 150 purchasers in the government that are receiving a letter from Todd and Kelly with a piece of bacon in it, wrapped and stuff. And it says, I know it's bizarre to be sending bacon, but who doesn't love bacon? Hope you enjoy this. I like to send you another pound of this so you can have the best bacon meal ever. And no, I'm not a bacon guy. I make a cleaning product for industrial floors. But the reason I want to send you a pound of bacon is because after bacon, you have to do cleanup, and it's the worst thing. You got to see our product at home. I'll send you a sample of our product, too. Who wants it? We don't know if it's going to work. We haven't done it yet. It starts Monday. But we did survey purchasers. You can do this too, with clients. How do you get marketed to? There's these contract schedules that people respond to online. They can receive mailers, but they rarely do. Sometimes there's a little bit of wine and dining. So we're like, oh, no one's done the bacon campaign. We're sending out 100 of these little mailers just to do a little sample test. If we get five responses, my God, we're off to the races. And we're gonna amplify this 5% return. If we get no responses, maybe. Maybe it's a dud, but that little test is going to cost us under $500, maybe $1,000 if we get the best bacon bits in the world. So what is your competition doing? You have to do something they've never done before, and now you can do your own making. The bacon campaign. There's another technique, and this is my favorite technique of all time because it saved my life, probably saved my marriage. It's called. Called buyer's defense. Has anyone familiar with the term buyer's remorse? Just show your hands Buyer's remorse. Okay? A lot of folks do. You know, 30 years ago, that became an irrelevant term. We moved to a new level called buyer's defense. So let's just make sure we're on the same page. Buyer's remorse was where a purchaser makes a purchase of what you have to offer and then regrets their decision in some capacity and tries to unwind it. They call you and say, you know, I want my money back, or something like that. That's the experience of buyer's remorse. Buyer's defense. About 30 years ago, Advent of the Internet becomes popular in the public domain. Now all knowledge is ubiquitous, and we can get any Piece of information anywhere. So now when someone buys something from you, their uncle, their best friend, everyone has a better alternative. You hired that msp. Oh, my God. Uncle George could do this and he wouldn't even charge you. Oh, just go on YouTube. All the answers are there. Like, there's a better answer everywhere. The buyer. The person buys you is assaulted by all these people around them saying, you made the worst decision of your life. They're ripping you off. It's an attack. I experienced this personally. There's a marketing technique around this. I bought a pair of shoes called the Vibram Five Finger Shoe. Quite a few years, but anyone ever hear the Vibram? Okay, all the wackos in this room raise your hand if you don't know what the Vibram Five Finger Shoe is. You're a normal human being. These shoes are a glove for your foot. Like, literally each toe is exposed. You become like Spider Man. You can climb walls with this thing. And if you haven't figured out, I'm a little bit. So I'm like, I'm buying these shoes right when they came out, the first version of these shoes. I buy them from Zappos, and I'm like, okay, I have a grand plan. I'm going to order them. I ordered them, like, on a. A Sunday. I remember it was a Sunday night. I order them, and Zappos says they'll be there in five days, which is Friday. So I'm like, okay, Friday. I'm going to pretend I'm going to work. So I'm going to say bye to my wife. I'm going to drive, not to work. I'm going to take a turn over to my neighbors. I had them prepared. I'm going to leave my car in the garage, and I'm going to work as best I can from his house. And I now I'm gonna keep my eye out for the FedEx guy, because when or whoever. The ups. Whoever's delivering. Because when it comes, I'm gonna grab that box. Because if my wife catches these clown shoes I buy, she's gonna kick my ass. So I go to work. I forgot Zappos under promise over deliver strategy. I didn't even know they did that. So my first purchase from Zappos was five finger shoes. And I go to work. On Monday, I return home. I'll never forget it. I pull in the driveway. I open the door to our house into the foyer, and there's like this. This heat. Just like this burning heat. I can feel it. And there's no one's cooking or anything. It's just like, oh, it's so hot inside. And all of a sudden, out of the kitchen comes Godzilla. She's like, and that's not her nickname. And if. If you tell her I called her Godzilla, I swear to God this is over. She comes out. She goes, what did you do, Michael? When I hear Michael, I'm in deep shit. And I'm like, oh, what I do? I don't know what I did. She goes, what are these clown shoes? And I look to the side, and on the table in the kitchen is my clown shoes opened up, and there they sit. And I'm like, I. By the way, I don't know if you know this. Who here is married? Okay, a lot of married folks. So for all the men in the room, I am going to share what the best man tells us. For the women in the room, this will be new for you, but every best man knows to do this. I've been the best man in a wedding, and my best man did it for me. Right before you go up there for your vows, the best man says, your wife's going to be pissed at you one day. I mean, she's going to be pissed. And there is a strategy to navigate this. It's called the I, I, I strategy. I'm like, what is that? He goes, when. When she's yelling at you, just go, I, I, I, I, I, I, I. It's never. It's never worked. Like, in the. In the entirety of human existence, it's never worked. We are committed. We will continue to use it so that. So my wife is like, what did you do? And like, I, I, I, I. She goes, we're going to be excommunicated from our church because of you, you idiot. We can't even live in this town anymore. You're going to wear these outside. I'm like, this strategy, this marketing strategy, buyer's defense saved my marriage, and it may turn up your business. As she. It's like. It's like Godzilla's breath and, oh, my God, the Matrix going back, like. And in this position. So I'm. I see this letter that Zappos had left in the box. It was a buyer's defense letter. What it said, it said, I'll never forget. It said, dear Mike, welcome to the Free Footers Club of America. Now, I don't know who those whack jobs are, but if I'm getting divorced, I got my bodies. Now, the next three lines were buyer's defense. First line said, when you wear the Vibram Five Finger shoe. You can experience barefoot walking in any environment. You could literally walk on shards of glass without injury. So my wife is yelling at me. I'm like, well, I can feel like I'm barefoot anywhere. I will never injure my foot. She's like, that's stupid, you idiot. I'm like, kind of right? It's kind of stupid. Okay. The next line said, it will improve your posture. You will stand straighter because it's a natural stance. So I'm like, I'll. I'll. I'll stand straighter. I'm a hunter. I'll stand straighter. And my wife looks at me, she goes, why don't you stand straight like a man? The next line saved my life. Said, if you wear the five finger. The five finger. Shoot. There's been scientific evidence it reduces the consequences of plantar fasciitis. I don't know what plantar fasciitis is. This like an STD or something? I don't know. I'm like, I said, I won't get plantar fasciitis. She goes, hold on. You won't? I said, apparently so. Plantar fasciitis is effectively a foot cramping problem. My wife has it. She now owns Vibram Five Finger Shoes. That's buyer's defense. Here is the lesson. In your business, any customer you gain is being assaulted by all the people around them. That was stupid. There's a cheaper alternative elsewhere. Are you giving them the sale after the sale, the marketing piece to market their own defense and perhaps even persuade others? Are you sending them a congratulatory letter saying, congratulations, bullet point it for them. Congratulations for hiring our firm. You know, you chose one of the elite firms in this category as. As a result, your company will be this and receive that and receive this. Good job. Great job. We're proud to be serving you and we're proud you chose us. You made one of the best decisions. Give them the list and let them make it so pretty they want it stapled above their desk so that when they get to the attack, they can just go through the list. Oh, let's do a couple more. I flew United. Everyone fly United in. Coming in here is it. I thought I was the worst airline ever. I don't know how you're experiencing it. Pretty marginal, right? I thought I was the worst airline ever until I found the true one. It's called Spirit Airlines. So true story. I'm doing this work in marketing. Spirit Airlines is and was struggling. They Run a campaign. They said, we're looking for a new tagline. We're taking it from the public. So I gave them a potential tagline. I submitted it anonymously. I didn't win. I didn't win. But tell me what you think, because I thought this was a winner. Spirit Airlines, the spirit for life. Ripped out of your soul. Yeah, they didn't. They didn't like that. Well, United Airlines, what I found was interesting. I'm flying in. I came from Mexico yesterday. You can move humanity en masse in a couple ways. If there's like a fire, we're all moving very quickly. There's a second way to move people very quickly is you simply say, we'll be boarding the airline or the airplane in the next 20 minutes. All of a sudden, people grab their bags, they go running to the gate. Everyone's blocking it up. The only way to get through this mass of humanity was when United made their next announcement. They said, we'd like to pre board with our elite member status. Anyone whose platinum status is welcome to board in this small crevasse of humanity opens up. And I don't know if you notice the platinum people. They always have their cards. They find like, I didn't realize I was platinum and excuse me. And their ass just wiggles real big. And they come walking through. Have you noticed that? Then the crevasse closes down and they make the next announcement. We'd like to invite on any of our gold passengers. And the gold people are a little more humble. They're not, you know, they don't wave their tags like, yeah, I'm gold. But they still got the ass waggle coming. And they wiggle it around. And then they say, you know, gold. We'd like to invite on any silver members. Semi precious metal of any type, plastic, you know, just coming in. I was the last guy on board and I was like, oh God, I want to be platinum so badly. Now here's the interesting thing. It is. It's a behavioral wiring exclusive. When we belong to something exclusive, something limited, we want it more. Do you have some exclusive offer? Great marketing technique. For what? What's that burger place that's popular in California. In N Out. Do you know what that thing, the off the menu stuff. Did anyone know the off the menu? The monster. Yeah, what's it called? Animal style. They have an off the menu and everyone knows, oh, you gotta get the animal style. They have an exclusive club at In N Out Burger. You have to be in the know and you can get it. And the flying Dutchman, that sounds like you're the pervert now. So. So I don't know why I said that. But the airline. Think about the airlines. Here's the absurdity of this marketing. United and all the airlines that do this say, hey, if you are willing to spend a lot of money with us, fly exclusively with us, we will give you platinum status, which allows you to board the airplane earlier, which means you can sit on that tin can longer. That's the primary benefit, is you get to sit longer inside that bath of sardines. Oh, but my bag's right next to me. But we love it. My forensics business and our marketing technique, we use. And you can use, too. We had the underground conference. We did big deals. You spend over a million dollars a client per year with us, and we invite you to the underground conference where we demonstrate the latest technologies and forensic investigations. And we worked with law firms. They would call us and say, hey, we know we only spent 800,000 with you this year. And it's December. Is there any way we can put a retainer down for 200 grand? And I'm like, that's where my beard started to grow. It's an evil thinking beard. I'm like, oh, yeah, I think we'll take that retainer. And welcome to the conference. And we just show them technology. But everyone wants to belong to something. What's your exclusive club? You better have one. What's that thing off the menu that no one knows? What's that secret card? Amex Black card. They deny the black card. Everyone knows about it. We all want it, actually. That points to the next strategy I want to share with you. We'll do a couple more secrets. Do you know the most viral marketing in the world is a secret? Everyone talks about secrets. We can't stop about it. It actually plays into the behavioral wiring. It's a position of strength. So if I know something you don't know, it's a secret. But the only way. And that means I have knowledge you don't have. So I have an advantage. But the only way to demonstrate my advantage to you is to tell you what the advantage is. So I'm like, I have a secret, and it's really gossipy. I'm gonna tell you. But here's the deal. You cannot tell anyone else, right? Because I'm giving you a piece of information. But I want to keep this advantage. So you're gonna learn it, but you cannot tell anyone else. You promise? I promise. Prompts. Great. Here's the secret. Now you have the advantage. And I still think I have the advantage. So I'm like, I gotta go someone else and tell them this. So I go to the next person, like, I got something. But now you have an advantage and you have the secret. So you got someone like you. You cannot tell anyone. I swear to God, you cannot tell anyone. And that swear to God, don't tell anyone spreads like wildfire. Wildfire. We invested in a jewelry shop. We invest in the diverse types of businesses. Inevitably, it's businesses where the owner's overworked and they're struggling to be profitable. And we just do one or two marketing things. We do a few efficiency things in the businesses. In most cases, take off. Went to the jewelry store and couples would buy diamond rings. You know, the engagement ring. They would come in and we would say, what we're going to do is we're going to upgrade someone's ring randomly. And so someone buys say a half carat diamond, we're going to upgrade it just one time to a full carat. And what happens is when this customer come in, they order the ring, they get the ring back, plus the appraisal. And it would say, diamond ring. And what happened is the one instance we did this, the customer says, this is, there's a little mistake. It says a full diamond. I ordered half diamond or half carat diamond. This is a full carat. There's a mistake. And then the owner, we told him, you come out and say, oh, that wasn't a mistake. We do something here that's a secret. We just, I'm gonna tell you what it is, but we just ask you don't tell anyone about this. Every so often. We want to celebrate your celebration with you. We upgrade people to a larger diamond. We hope that's okay, but it's very expensive for us, so please don't tell a single soul about this. The next day, we started seeing an increase in foot traffic. I mean, an increase the next morning. Within weeks, people are coming in faster and faster and faster because secrets spread like wildfire. What's the thing you can tell your customer and you say, just, you can't tell anyone about this. There's something we did for you, but don't tell anyone about this. They will tell everyone and their mother about it. I want to share one last strategy with you. So my primary work is, I love to research business. I'm an authority, actually. If we could throw the slide up, I'll show you. We aren't able to get to all these ideas and strategies. Plus we have A workbook for you. If you want to scan that QR code, you'll get all the notes from this presentation, plus a lot of stuff that we don't have time to cover today. I had a huge list of stuff, but you see all the books below that I've written. I have a love for entrepreneurship. My first book, which is way on the right, was called the Toilet Paper Entrepreneurs. It's like edgy, crazy book. And I self published it. I'm with Penguin books subsequent to that, but I self published it. And I remember I called Barnes and Nobles and said, hey, I'd like to get my book in your store. And the person on the other end of the line laughs. She says, we don't take self published authors. So I'm like, okay. So I have the phone. I'm like, what can I do that is different? Tracked and direct the dad model. What will get into their brain? I called my old buddies from town, a couple college buddies still live in the area. I have all these books in my house. And so I said, Here's 40 books. And they put them in their backpacks and said, I want you to go into every Barnes and Nobles in the New York area, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and sneak it into the stores and start stocking the street shelves with my buck. It's weird. It's like the reverse of theft. Like you can steal stuff. But I was actually stocking the store and sure it was going to happen and my God, it happened within a few weeks. I will never forget it. My phone rings, Car ID pops up. It says, Barnes and Nobles and my hand starts shaking. I'm like, oh, I'm going to jail. I'm going to jail, right? So I answered. I'm like, hello? I'm trying to fake my voice. It's the exact same woman I talked to. She was the buyer at Barnes and Nobles. She goes, we have a problem. Her first words, she goes, is this Mr. McCall? It's like, yes, I just have a higher voice. She goes, we have a problem. I'm like, oh, okay. How may I serve you? She goes, your book is selling at our stores, but we don't have your book. I'm like, I'm like, that sounds so bizarre. I. I never heard of such a thing. What happened? She goes, we don't know either. We have a customer's trying to buy this book, but when we ring it up, we have to call the manager over. She shares the whole thing. Customers come over. The line queues up. Everyone's sitting there and they're holding up. Who wants this book? Like, there's a whole confusion at Barnes and Noble stores over my book. So I'm like, how can I help you? She goes, well, who is distributing this? And I said, what's a distributor? She goes, huh, this is strange. She goes, here's the deal. We need 3,000 units. Tomorrow we're going to give you this distributor. It was called Atlas. They connect me with them. A18 Wheeler pulls into our little neighborhood, up to my house and takes a skid of books, two skids, 3,000 books, and ships it off. A guy named Gary Vaynerchuk had released a book called Crush it on the exact same time. And on Christmas, Christmas week, there was end caps, meaning at the end of an aisle, crush it and the toilet paper entrepreneur. My book went on to sell hundreds, over 100,000 copies as a result of it. Here's my final lesson for you. If you're an author, do that. You have. Listen, you share with me. You're better than the competition. I know you're better than the competition. There's no question about it. Shoot. You're the nicest person on this room, on this planet. The world has to discover you. It is our responsibility to get noticed. But there's one last key to this. Don't do it if it's weird to you, do it because it's a greater expression of you. Have you ever been on a zoom call where you see the person's picture and then they activate the person behind it and you look at the picture? I'm like, oh, that's that. That's a young. That's a young person. They look pretty amazing. And then they activate. He's like, oh, my God, their grandparents just showed up. Have you had that? Have you had that? And how do you feel about that person? Oh, they're a bullshitter. Oh, I'd love to see them on some dating app. You know, I'm six foot four and they walk in like, you know, like, no, just be the real you. But people lie. And when someone starts off with that subtle lie of, I used to look like this, but I'm really this. We're like, oh, what else are you gonna bullshit about? It's a subconscious response because they start off with the unexpected and it becomes a threat because it's manipulation. So I'm saying, don't do something that's not you, but do something that's a greater expression of you. If you're the super studious one, be super studious. If you're super Professional. Be super professional. If you're weird and odd, go weird and odd. But it's got to be true to you. I got one final thing I want to tell you, but let's make sure we fill in the blanks. Number nine is keep a prospect engaged in your marketing. You must speak to their interests. That was the attract factor. We answer number 10. For marketing to be effective, it must invite the prospect to take a reasonable and safe step. We talked about that with the car buyer. There's a saying from Oscar Wilde. It's one of my favorite sayings I have above my desk. He says, be yourself. Everyone else is already taken. That's the key to successful marketing. Oh, by the way, if you miss any of the answers, because I raced through it, all the answers are here at the bottom. Upside down. Yeah, you missed some people. Oh, I thought that was. I thought that was a disclaimer. No, you didn't need to be here. You could have been drinking in your room. All right, here's the last one. The world is, I promise you, is starving to discover you and to discover better options. And since you are the better option now, you have responsibility to be unignorable. Thanks for having me this morning. Appreciate you, guys. Appreciate you. Thank you, brother. Thanks. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right, we got. Hold on. We got filming. Stand up. Hold on one sec. Ah, my phone's turned off. We'll do later. Thank you. Thank you, guys. Thank you.