WHY NOT Wednesday! with Jerry Fletcher

These last few years have made us question everything.

Our relationships.

Our jobs.

What constitutes an office.

And who we are.

In a.

World filled with chaos, confusion, and uncertainty. It's time for some clarity. It's time to start understanding one another.

It's time to start understanding ourselves.

We envision a world where everyone knows their why. But even more, we envision a world where everyone knows their why. O s, their why, their how, and their what. The operating system that drives you, that lets the world know where you stand.

What your unique gift is, and most importantly, who you are.

Yos.

Are you ready?

Foreign.

So normally I come on by myself and I introduce our guest, but today I'm introducing Jerry right away because I want to make sure he can hear me. And I can hear him.

I can hear you. Can you hear me?

Wow. We did it. You know, up until about a minute before we went on the air, people, Jerry and I could not. I could, he couldn't hear me. We could only hear each other through the phone. And Bruce, Captain Kirk, I'm so glad you're here. You're always here. And, and that you're thrilled to hear from Jerry. And I'm thrilled to hear from Jerry. So, Jerry, we're going to do it a little backwards. You're already on. I'm going to introduce you, though. Our guest today is the man who has long made it his business to understand how trust impacts success. Corporations he's worked with that you might be familiar with are Intel, Tektronic, Sequent Freightliner, and Pentax. I don't know if you knew, but I spent some time with Pentax, Jerry, before I went into the dialysis interest industry with Baxter, I spent some time selling endoscopes with Pentex out of Orange, New York. So Jerry is the CEO of his own marketing consulting firm now in its 31st year. He's a professional speaker with international credentials. He's an author of four different books, as well as seven audio programs and video programs. If you follow Jerry, you are sure to get a lot of wisdom from his third 31 years with his own company. Before that, he was the CEO of one of the largest B2B marketing companies in Portland. So, Jerry, we're so glad to have you. Thank you for joining us today.

It's good to be here. I, I'm really happy considering how, how long it were, how late it was that we finally got a connection going.

You know, it was, it was interesting and, and, and, you know, I'm sitting, sitting, sitting. You watching you sit there with your arms, relax. That's exactly how you were when. When we were going through the issues. You know, there's not probably a lot that phases you, right, Jerry? I mean.

Well, no, and quite truthfully, I've been speaking virtually for, you know, since the pandemic started. And I was following the same rules that I always follow. I always have two machines ready to go, both of them primed, and we were working on one machine and nothing was coming through, so we just switched and here we are on one. That's. It's probably not as good a picture, but it isn't bad.

You know what? You look great. We got good color. I love the red, you know, from, you know, in New Mexico. We're Lobos fans and it's the cherry and silver. So you're wearing the red. I think there's a foot basketball game tonight. So, you know, those of you listening in New Mexico or watching in New Mexico, probably appreciating Jerry's colors. So, Jerry, you're the CEO of Z Axis Marketing. Tell us a little bit about this journey. Because one of the things that I read in your bio that was great is you, you know, you were. You were a CEO of a pretty, pretty successful company, but then you had a difference of opinion. Let's talk about that. The difference of opinion that you had, or as you said, you know, basically, I was. I was told to go. Go do something different. Right.

Well, I mean, the nasty way to say it is I got fired.

Right.

The nice way to say it is my board and I agreed to disagree. And the truth is it's kind of somewhere in between the two, but we came to loggerheads and totally disagreed on what the future of the business should be. And I said, fine. That's the way it goes. And I went off. And what I did was I tried to decide what to do. And I thought, well, you know, I've been consulting a while, I could maybe do that. So I wrote a letter to just 60 of my closest friends in the Advertising Golf association and told them what I was going to do and got six responses. Two said, good luck with that. Two said, here's a couple of folks you might want to talk to. And two actually engaged me. Yeah, that was in 1990. I've never looked back. Yeah.

And so 1990, that, you know, for. For a lot of our list. I know I have a 34 year old daughter that she was born in 1989. That's a lifetime for a lot of people. So you've been doing this for a significant amount of time. And, you know, when I looked at your bio and all the things that you've done, you know, what I really liked is a lot of your quotes. But one of the things that really stuck out to me and I talked about it this morning, is how simple you make things. You. You say, hey, go where the money is. Sell what they want to buy, and be sure you can do it again. So I interpret that a little bit right. Go where the money is, is. You know, I believe that no amount of marketing or sales prowess is going to help you sell anything to anyone who doesn't have the financial capacity to invest in your product. Did I get that right?

You got it right. It's. That's actually my definition of marketing. I mean, most people have all these wonderful terms and all that sort of thing, and that's my definition of marketing. I mean, literally, you're right. If they don't have any money, they can. They can't invest in your service or product or whatever it may be. Okay. And, you know, the second piece of that is sell what they want to buy. One of the problems a lot of people have is they're trying to sell you things that you don't really want.

Right.

So knowing what the customer wants, needs, desires, feels best about it. Whatever. All those kinds of things will give you a way to make sure that you make a sale. And then. And usually I shorthand that last part of it and say, just do it again. Okay. But making sure you can do it again. The point you made this morning in your. In your. Your blog, whatever you want to call it.

Yeah.

Was that's the way you build relationships. Gee. 1o concept.

You know, Mark Hunter taught me that. And it's a beautiful concept. You know, it's not closing a sale. It's starting a relationship. And if you start a relationship, that's where you get that repeat business. That's where people come back. That's where people recommend you. As you said, all you needed was two people to say, hey, two people recommended you. Two people engaged you. So you had two clients and two recommendations.

Absolutely. I have one of my. I have one client that I no longer charge. I mean, he's been with me for 30 years.

Wow.

And mostly what I do these days is we have lunch twice a month and I. And I edit his newsletter.

That's it.

It's all I really do anymore. But I'm also the sounding board for all of his automated activities that he's doing. And he's a certified financial Planner. So it gives me a real insight into that whole business, that whole arena. So. But he's been with me all that time. I tend to have clients that become friends. Yeah, it's just the way it is.

What's about relationships, right? And trust is part of your yos. We, you know, in our worries about getting, Getting you, getting the video and the audio working, even get into your yos. So your yos is better way, make sense, trust. So that tells us what that tells the audience is. And look, we've got our regulars, they know the yos. But I'm going to say it for anybody who's listening for the first time. Your yos is to find a better. Your why is to find a better way and share it with others. So you're constantly innovating, looking for better ways. And how you do that is by making sense of the complex and challenging. You can take in information, lots of information, lots of data, and make sense of it, and, and then help others with it. And then ultimately will you deliver solutions you can trust. And Corinne says, go trust. Tell me about that yos and how it's. How it feels for you now and how it's played out in your life. Jerry.

Well, I never really knew that that was what my, you know, yos was right until obviously taking into discovery. But it fits because all my life, every. Everything I've done my entire career has been trying to find better ways to do things right. Okay. And that just fascinates the heck out of me. Okay. But then that, that second piece, the ability to make sense to. To refine things, get. Get all the garbage out of the way and get into the real nature of things. That really helps in terms of, you know, the consulting job that I do. Right. I do a lot of coaching, but that's within my consulting activities. So. And then trust, I never realized how important trust was to me, but literally I have walked away from organizations and walked away from associations and so on where there's no trust. I literally will not work with somebody if we can't trust each other. And I think that's the most important thing, literally in any relationship.

Yeah, well, you talk a lot about trust, so you consider a master of the art of networking and trust based marketing. So tell me about trust based marketing.

Well, a perfect question, because last night I was online with the local chapter of the national Speakers association, who asked me to come in and help them rebuild the organization. Okay. And what it comes down to is how can I help them? How can I help anyone if we can't figure out what is the most important thing to them, but more importantly to the people that they're working with or they want to work with.

Right.

And in order to get to the point of working with someone to build that relationship, you have to get to trust before they can say yes. And that's what trust based marketing is all about. Finding a way to explain what you do, how you do it and why.

Interesting thought there. And why in such a way that it engenders trust in the prospect. And what I tell clients that I work with on an ongoing basis is never sell anything. Just put things in front of them that they may or may not need, but so they can understand what it is you can do for them and with them. And when they say, how do I get that? Sign them up. Yeah, you don't sell, you don't close. Okay.

So you. It's funny you say that Scott Schilling leads a mastermind that I'm a part of and he talks all the time. I don't like to sell things to people, he said, but I like it when people buy things from me.

Bingo.

Right.

The whole thing is to get them to the point where they're comfortable enough with you and your understanding of what their problem is and how you might be able to help them resolve it, that they just say, hey, could you help me with this?

And that's, that's not selling. That's letting them buy.

Well, you posted today about what you posting on social media. Everybody, anybody can post on social media, but there's a purpose to it. You have to have a purpose and a plan. And so tell us, tell us what the. Some of this.

There's one secret that. It's not a secret. It's. It's obvious if you think, think about it for a moment.

Yeah.

Consistency. You have to be consistent. In other words, almost anything that you see from me says basically that I help consultants and, or coaches and. Or independent professionals.

Become more memorable and become more profitable. Just about anything you see from me and that's consistent across everything I do. And the fact is that at the moment my VA and I schedule things. So we're posting on five different social medias mediums daily. And now that we've got a couple things going on, we're actually posting anywhere from three to five times on each one of those social medias daily.

Wow.

Okay. But it's all consistent. If you look at any of the things that I post on, on like LinkedIn is a for instance.

Right.

The colors are Consistent.

Right.

She makes sure that. That all that is going on, the words are consistent, the where to find this, everything is consistent. Consistency is a major factor in doing well across all the social media.

Yeah. You agree with Watson. He says consistency helps people know who you are.

You bet. And I think I may have suggested that to Watson on occasion. No, the reality is, if you're not consistent, then how do I get a picture of you? That's always the same.

Right.

So being consistent really helps. Now, one of the problems people have is they're trying to sell multiple things or trying to coach in different areas.

Right.

And so they become inconsistent because they put the messages in the same place. So refining your message and going direct to that target is a better way to go.

Right. So would you say that's about knowing your niche, knowing your market? I mean, we. So we talked about it with that original post. Right. Find where the money is, sell people what they want, and then do it again. It's really about knowing what people are looking for.

Well, yeah, this is part of the reason. Well, for the last 19. Yeah, 19 years.

Yeah.

I've done a survey of marketing for consultants. Okay. And that really includes consultants and coaches and independent professionals. And what I found is that there. There's real consistency in what comes out of every one of those surveys. In essence, there are three different levels of companies out there. There's the startups, there's the ones that are in growth, and there are the ones that are established. Okay.

Each kind of firm has a different sort of way to reach out and find their right customers. But the consistent thing across the board is in our kinds of businesses and consulting, coaching and so on is referrals. That's the number one across the board for the last 19 years. Okay. So knowing that that's where you're going to get your business changes how you approach things. I mean, for instance.

Let'S say you have a website, okay?

Right.

And your website, on the first page, when you hit that home page, the first panel, you have a total of three seconds to brand yourself. Three, count them. Okay. You have 15 seconds to get to the point where they know who you are and they have a brand for you and they have the ability to refer you. Everything after that is just golden. I mean, it's. It's ways to help describe. The reality is that most people don't understand that. It's. It's just bizarre.

Yeah. And so three seconds. Three seconds to brand yourself.

Right.

And then 15 seconds for them to.

Get to know you well enough Enough to refer you. And then let's give them the words that they need to. To do. I have a thing I call 30 second marketing, which I've been teaching for too many years. But it's a way to introduce yourself.

Right?

And basically, it's a very simple procedure. Hook them, hold them, pitch them, and close them. Rough words. My ex used to say, those are the toughest, nastiest words. Why do you're doing that? Right? And I said, because people remember it.

Right?

Okay, so hook them, hold them, pitch them, close, and close them. Okay. Now, I use closing because it's the vernacular. Everybody kind of knows what that means. But the way I close and the way we've been talking about is you don't sell them anything. You just let them buy. Okay. But the hook, you have to have a way to explain what it is that you do.

Okay.

Back when I was just starting out as a. As a consultant, I used to go to my local chamber of commerce meetings. Right? And you have the circle where you introduce yourself. You know what I'm talking about?

Right, Right.

And so what I would say in the circle is, hi, I'm Jerry Fletcher. I build marketing websites that make rain. That's all I'd say. I will guarantee you every time I did that, there were at least four or five people that would come up to me afterwards and say, could you tell me some more about that? Right.

Yeah.

And so that was the hook. Okay. The hold was. I'll tell you what. I'll bet your problem is that since you're niece or enough or whoever built your site for you in the first place went away to college, you can't get anybody to work on it. And they go, yeah, yeah. I said, well, okay, what we do is we build you a website that you can change all the words and all the pictures on. Okay. But we'll fix it so you can't screw up the navigation. Would you be interested in that?

The natural. That's the whole. Right? Yeah. No, that's the pitch and the close is if you're interested in that, well, let's. Let's try to get together and talk about it. Right.

That kept me alive. That put my daughter through college.

Yeah.

And I. While you were talking about a lifetime. Right. My daughter's now 42.

Right.

And. And she's this week. I just got a wonderful picture of the opera house at Sydney. She's in Australia. She's the CIO of the Department of State, so she's traveling to Australia this week. So. But anyway, that kind of approach put my daughter through college. You got the book down there?

Yeah. So that was my next question I was going to ask. So you, you wrote a book called Speak youk Way to Business Riches.

I think, you know, first of all, thank you. You made it available to all the wise certified coaches for free. And it's. It's a book with advice about speaking that pretty much any professional can use to build their business. So what, what do you think? What do you get if you, if you buy or you get, speak your way to Business Riches. And he said, you know, you also said, tell us how you can get it.

Well, is the easiest way to get it. Just go to my website. Actually, you've got. Got it right there. That's a way to. That's where you can make the purchase. Now, I don't want any of the folks you know that are members of. Of, you know, certified coaches for why to be purchasing it. So just send me an email and we'll get you a copy. Not a problem.

The reason I did it was, you know, early on, when you're. When you're trying to build a business, you look for ways to get in front of more people and so on. And I discovered that speaking was a way to do that.

Okay.

You get in front of more people more quickly and get more chances to, you know, get them on board. And so I started speaking and I happened to stray into a meeting of a group of people who literally.

Knew about the National Speakers Association. And because of that, I was one of the founders of the local chapter of the National Speakers Association.

Okay.

So I've been speaking professionally since 1993, internationally as well as nationally. And what I found is that there's so much interesting information there that anyone who wants to speak to build their business can use. And you don't have to be a professional to getting paid to speak in order to use the information in the book. Yes, if you want to get paid, it'll help you do that. But the real key is being professional in the way you approach that part of your business. And every coach, every consultant, every independent professional, sooner or later is going to discover that speaking is the way to be a rainmaker in their business.

It's funny you say that, because we've. We've made it a point at Y Institute to get Gary on as many stages as possible. And I'm speaking as many as to as many people as possible, because it really does get the word out about what you do to the right people so that they either hire you or they recommend you to someone that needs to hire you. Right.

There you go.

So, Jerry, tell us. You know, you just also did something recently. The 19th annual consultant survey. Consultant Marketing Survey. Tell us what's in there and how can people get that?

Basically, just go to my website. All you have to do is click on it, and it's right on the homepage. You'll find it pretty easily, and no problem, we'll send it out to you. You'll immediately be signed up for my news log, which comes out every Saturday. And it has the same information in audio, video, and a written form. And this is because people ask me to do that, because some of them like it in one form, some of them like it in another. But one of the things that I heard quite often was, you know, I like to walk and I like to listen to your audios while I'm walking. Okay, fine. Good idea. But they also like to read. Okay. The video is there for the people that are just very much into video. And I'm sorry, but.

Right.

That's. That's the way of the world today. Okay. But in that survey, depends on where you are. If you're. You're in the growth mode, that's fine. If you're just starting up, that's fine. If you're established, that's fine. What we do is we look at all the marketing strategies and tactics that are currently looked at and used by folks like you.

Right.

And you get an idea of what works for them and what. What could possibly work for you. This year we included a new section, sort of in the back, which has. Is full of takeaways of. How do I say this?

I monitor a whole lot of things.

Right.

And some of those are literally, when I started doing the survey, I was, you know, one of maybe two or three in the country. Now they're all over the place. So the ones that are good that I know give good information, I monitor those on an ongoing basis. And this year, I think we included six or eight pages of information from those other sources. We named the sources and. And basically said what they. You know, what they're saying. The one thing that we didn't say enough about, I guess, is artificial intelligence.

Right.

Unbelievable. I've got some things slated for later on today to look at what's really available out there in the field. And so I'll be able to make not educated, but real.

Direct kinds of statements about what works, what doesn't, and why, which is, again, better way. Hey, I'm looking for a Better way.

I was, I was going to say we want, we want to make sure we get to these next two questions because they're so important. What, what is your biggest why not moment? I know we, we hinted at it a little bit ago, but tell. Walk us through that biggest why not moment.

Well, the biggest why not moment was, of course, when I decided to become a consultant and carry on with that.

It wasn't easy. I mean, it's like, okay, you've been running a pretty heavy duty operation. I had like 35 people. We were working with major organizations and companies. And, and so it's like, okay, here I am alone, all alone again, and I'm going, no, what do I do? Right. Well, I was fortunate because a lot of the relationships that I'd built over time, one of them happened to be with, with a physicist who said, hey, I've got this thing I'm working on I'd like you to take a look at, because I, I want to do some advertising. I said, okay, fine. Looked at it and told him it wouldn't work. He didn't agree. We did it anyway. Later on we were having lunch and he said, you're right, it doesn't work. But I've got a little something going on in the garage. Could you take a look? That little something was something called digimarc, which. Okay. And it's a way of embedding information, digital information in anything so that you, you can, you can't lose it. I mean, it goes. You, you can take something and print it out, fold it, bend it. Yeah, it just stays there. That's. It stays all the time and, but you can't see it.

Right.

Okay. It's hidden. You have to have the way to access it. Well, I looked at that and I went home and I told my ex, I said, look, I've just seen the next Xerox, so I'm going to work with these people. And I went to work with them.

Basically, I named the company, did all of their initial branding and so on. But the big thing I did was I taught the entire organization how to network so we could raise the money we needed. We raised half a million dollars in 17 days. Wow.

What year was this?

Oh, God. This was before the bust of the 2008. Yeah, somewhere in there before that. And the thing that really was amazing was the party. When it went public, I was in a room with four or five of those big round tables seating eight or ten people, right? There was nobody in the room worth less than $4 million. Wow. That's what can happen when you find, you know, a really good idea and you work at it. But we. We did some fun work there. Yeah.

You know, I asked you about this question, and this is good. You know, first of all, thank you so much, Jerry. You shared so much already, and we could probably do an hour show, so we're just gonna have to have you back. But I really like your. Your answer to this question. I want the audience to hear it. How has discovering your yos impacted your personal life?

Oh, boy.

You know, it's. It's a funny thing. You don't know.

How do I say this? I was the person that was involved with a lot of the original testing of assessments, and I found all of them interesting and workable. And they do work, but they're so complex, I can't handle it. Right. And the thing with the yos that got me was that it's so simple. And I used. I presented this again last night. Same way. There's only nine possibilities I can remember that I can work with that. So I know that it will work for other people as well. It's the simplicity that drives it that makes it so wonderful.

Are you there, Dan?

Well, I'll just keep on with that thought because Dan doesn't seem to be there. He does not reacting. So.

In any case, it's made it possible for me to use.

This discovery in terms of helping people brand themselves, which is one of the significant things that I do all the time.

As I said, I. I'm using it to help people brand themselves and to find people that really want to work with them, which is one of the key factors in understanding what your why is.

What would I say to a coach who's considering becoming certified?

Do it. I know that's a slogan that's popular from where I live, from Nike, but just do.

Will be the primary thing that you use to get things started. You may use other assessments. You may work with folks in other ways, but the yos discovery allows you to build teams in ways that you have never found before. It increases the communications capability between all the individuals involved. And not only can it do that, it builds leaders as well as great team members. So, yes, do it. It can enhance your business, but more importantly, it can do the thing that you want to do. It can help change the world.

Looks like we're running out of time.

But if there's anything that anyone would like to talk to me about, feel free to contact me through the website. You can set an appointment easily there, and I'LL be more than happy to talk to you. And of course, the first hour is always free.

Let me know how I can help you.

It would be my pleasure.