Billy Broas | The Five Light Bulbs That Clarify Your Message

When we take people through our programs and with the 5 light bulbs and we're asking these questions like, what are your light bulbs? And it doesn't add up. It's all confusing. There's contradictions in there and everything. So it's like, okay, hold the phone. Why are we spending time posting on LinkedIn where we're not even clear in our marketing message, let alone the people scrolling like crazy down their feed on LinkedIn? What are the chances that they're going to A, get our message and B, sign up with us? So to me, simplicity is doing the minimum force for the maximum impact. And for me, that starts with figuring out what this argument is that you're making.

Marketing can feel overwhelming, especially when you're a small business owner wearing all the hats. In this episode, I chat with Billy Broz about his 5 Light Bulbs Framework, a simple, practical way to clarify your message, connect with your customers, and make marketing feel less like guesswork and more like strategy. Whether you're a solopreneur or scaling to 7 figures, this conversation is all about doing less with more impact and making your marketing Actually work. My name is Dr. Fleet Maull, your co-host for this session. And I'm really happy to be here today with Billy Broz. Welcome.

Hey Fleet, thanks for having me.

Oh, we're thrilled to have you. And you know, we've really been employing your wisdom and your marketing strategies in our company. I'm excited to explore this further and learn more in conversation with you today. Marketing can often feel overwhelming, as was mentioned in your bio there, especially for small business owners. And you know, Small business owners, we're often very focused on building our product or our service, which we're very proud of. We just need to get it out in the world. And the whole world of marketing, it just seems so complex and expensive and difficult and difficult to juggle along with all the other roles we have as an entrepreneur. And so how does your 5 Light Bulbs framework simplify all this for the small business owner, the solopreneur, or even an entrepreneur that maybe has a 6-figure business going to 7 or even wants to take a 7-figure business to 8 figures?

Yeah. And your viewer, or if you're listening to this, will, I'm sure, agree that marketing is overwhelming. I think it's very overwhelming and I'm deep in the trenches of this profession. And so there's this role that I don't think is often enough appreciated. There's this role of the business owner who wears a marketing hat as well. Sales hat, marketing hat. Yeah. Myself as well. Yay. Yeah. Right back at you. And it's just, it's not appreciated. And some people try to avoid it as well. And you know, look, I'm guilty as that. That as well. Can I just delegate this? If I build my product and it's just good enough, people will talk about it. I don't have to put on that marketing hat. People will just arrive at my door and knocking to get in. I have accepted that you have to wear that hat. So it's like, okay, if you accept that, that we need to do marketing to reach whatever our full potential looks like for us and to hit our goals, then you have to wear that marketing hat. And then if you're going to wear that marketing hat, I ask, well, how can we make that as easy, pain-free, and as successful as possible? And that's really where the 5 Lightbulbs came from.

Mm-hmm. Let's just walk through this framework. So can you just start us off, start off with the first one and walk us through?

Sure. So the 5 Lightbulbs is a core messaging framework. And so you create your core message and then you distribute it across your different marketing assets, like your website, Facebook ads, emails, et cetera. Lightbulb 1 in this framework is your customer status quo. So this is where your customer is right now. This is where they're having a problem. It's a place they want to get away from. And so what you want to do in your marketing message is give voice to your light bulb 1. You want to use the word you instead of we. You want to have empathy for your prospect. This light bulb 1 is the language of empathy.

So this is disconnecting with their pain, with their challenges, with their problems. And this could— I wonder if there's a difference on how we focus on let's say problem-unaware folks versus problem-aware folks and then solution-aware folks. You know, really that first light bulb of addressing their pain in an empathic way so they do feel like this message is meant for them.

Exactly. Yeah, it's that great saying, and it's something I learned from copywriting, that if you can acknowledge and describe your prospect's problem even better than they can, they're going to naturally assume that you have the solution.

And so how do you encourage people to go about that, to get in touch? Let's say I have a product, I think it's great for people, I know it's gonna change people's lives, but how do I learn about, really so I can speak to their problem, to their challenge that my problem's gonna design to solve, my service or product is designed to solve that, how do I learn to speak their language about that problem?

Yeah, yeah, it's two answers. The first one is, What I find in working with these business owners wearing a marketing hat is that problem is not they don't know their customers' problems, is that the words just aren't on the page. So I would encourage the person listening to this to go through and do a mental audit and ask yourself, do I know these 5 light bulbs for one? And two, are the words on the page? And I found that most business owners know the problems of their prospects or their customers, but they're just not giving voice to it on their website, emails, et cetera. So that's the first answer. If you do that and what you know is reflected in your marketing material so that you are turning on that light bulb one, then you might ask, okay, how can I, more to your question, how can I get a better idea of these problems and learn the, the words that they use? And really the answer is listening. And that can take all forms through social media comments, through sales calls, through product delivery calls, coach calls, through directly reaching out and to a, you know, a prized client or customer and saying, hey, can I just talk to you? I just wanna learn about you and just walk me through when you use product like ours. And then you just listen and hear the Where is it they use and where do they get caught up? And then all that is input then that you can then plug back into your 5 light bulbs so that the next time you go to create marketing material, it's improved. It's so much richer because of these new insights.

Okay, so in the first light bulb, we're connecting with our prospect, our prospective client or customer's real problem, what the, what our product is designed to solve for them or the need our product's designed to meet for them. So then what's the second step? What's the second light bulb?

Second light bulb is light bulb 2, which represents the other options that your prospect has tried before or is currently using or considering.

So is this where we're, you know, we're kind of getting into the solution-aware space, but we're trying to distinguish our solution from others to stand out or make the argument? I know you kind of talk about there's almost a process of kind of having to make an argument over time to give our Prospect the belief that our solution is the solution for them.

Yes, exactly. The 5 Light Bulbs is an argumentation-based framework. So it takes the structure of an argument and not like a, you know, throw your phone across the room kind of an argument, but a rhetorical argument where you're making claims and backing them up with proof. And that really starts to tie in that light bulb too, because what you're doing is you're identifying those other options your customer has and you're not throwing rocks at them or just saying, oh, well, they stink. But you're making an argument. You're saying, look, for what you're looking for, here's what those other options provide. Here's why they're insufficient. And then that naturally sets you up, that naturally leaves your option, which we can get into, your light bulb 3, as the only logical conclusion for them after they have bought into that argument that you put forth.

I wonder if you could give us an example of maybe light bulb 2, the me— what the messaging might sound like there, where we're trying to connect with the fact that, have you tried other solutions? And begin that argument of why ours will stand out.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

And in one of our programs, we were reviewing old other copywriters, old sales letters and things. And there's, it's a modern day business by a copywriter, one of the best, I'm sure you know of Gary Bencivenga. And, is an olive oil business, direct-to-consumer olive oil. And the argument there is really a light bulb 2 focused argument where What they are arguing for, Gary and his company, is for fresh pressed virgin olive oil. And what they're arguing against is store-bought olive oil. And the marketing material is brilliant. If you go through, it's the Fresh Pressed Olive Oil Club, and you see he has a piece on the marketing material, 8 Reasons Why Fresh Pressed Olive Oil Is Superior to Store-Bought. And it's things like it's rushed directly from the vineyard. We get wheels up clearance from customs and things like this. So that's a good example. Then he's to sell his specific brand of fresh pressed olive oil. So he's making the argument at a bit of a higher level here, but that's a good way of looking at light bulb 2 versus light bulb 3.

Yeah. So first he's making the case for fresh pressed, and then he's going to make the case for his particular brand in light bulb 3. And so in doing so, he's making a clear distinction. He's making some claims, but he's got to back up those claims, right? So what would be some example of ways that we make a claim which could be, you know, pretty audacious, clear, but real claim that really distinguishes something. And then how would we back that up? What would be some ways? Is it testimonials? Is it facts? Is it research? Is it—

Yeah, all the above. All the above. And these claims are often more nuanced than people think. It's not necessarily the claim that my product is the best and it's better than all the others. It's claims you make along the way of making your argument. So, so you named a handful of them. So data, yes. Testimonials, social proof. Authority. The framework I like to use for this goes all the way back a couple thousand years to Aristotle and ethos, pathos, logos. So the authority of the person, the character of the person making the claim, the logic behind it, the more rational brain, and then the emotional appeal as well. And if you weave all those in, those forms of proof, you know, in this model of classical persuasion, then you are much more likely to get buy-in when it comes time to present your offer because the person, as you mentioned earlier, has those beliefs required to buy. It's also, I'll just say for the person watching too, it's a more, it's a classier approach that really respects the intelligence of your reader by making an argument. You're assuming that they could understand an argument and critically think and make an informed decision for themselves, which is not the way that everyone, if you haven't noticed, that's not the way everyone does marketing these days, which is very much not treating your reader like they're smart. And using a lot of tools of manipulation, which I'm very much against.

It sounds like you're really talking about getting in a very authentic conversation with your prospect, your prospective customer or client, a rational conversation that is going to include the emotional aspect, but you're really, it's almost kind of makes me think of, you know, marketing and sales are highly related, but if you think of sales and more in-person belly-to-belly sales or something, And it's needs-based selling, it's values-based selling, and it's consultative-based selling. So you're really getting a relationship with your customer and trying to understand what they're needing. And you're, first of all, just helping them move from no answer to having a, a greater clarity about what they're needing, whether they choose your product or somebody else. So you're really acting as a well-intentioned consultant, and then you're gonna gradually further take them along. So it sounds like this is a way to do this. Through marketing messaging, same way that we might do it in person with a consultative approach or a needs-based approach to selling.

Bingo. Yeah, you nailed it.

Yeah. Great. So then we get on the light bulb 3 where we want our brand to stand out and we're going to make the argument of why among, for example, among the various brands of fresh pressed olive oil available, why choose our brand?

Yes, exactly. Yeah. So, so light bulb 3 represents your approach or your unique approach. And it's so interesting because you see light bulb 3, all the light bulbs, but especially light bulb 3 across all these different product categories. So this might be the technology in a piece of software. It might be the technology in a piece of clothing. Think about like Under Armour and moisture wick technology. In the consulting space, this might be the steps in your methodology. If you go to the business book section of the bookstore, you see this on all the book covers. You know, frameworks like Atomic Habits, that's a light bulb 3. My own, to get meta for a second, The 5 Light Bulbs is a light bulb 3. It's my unique approach to creating marketing messaging. And so yes, if you do a good job of selling your light bulb 3, you'll more easily sell your light bulb 4, which is your product.

And I assume all the way along we're gonna follow this process of making a claim of some kind, like here I have this framework and it's, you know, really great. It simplifies things. And then backing that up with some kind of, some kind of proof. Is that the process as we go through?

Absolutely. Each light bulb is a high-level claim that you're making. Mm-hmm.

And again, some of the ways that we establish that proof again are gonna be testimonials from customers or clients, research, maybe media, you know, that kind of social credibility and all these kind of different things.

Demonstration is a great one too. If you think about as seen on TV, all those products, they heavily utilize demonstration, but demonstration's certainly not limited to those types of products. So yeah, this is where marketing can get creative. You're getting your point across via all different means and methods.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

So we've worked on distinguishing our product and made some claims about why it could be their best choice, and we backed that up. Now, what is light bulb 4 all about? Right.

So light bulb 4, this is the action step. So this represents your product, yes, but we actually call it your offer, which includes your product, but it's more than that. It's not limited to your product. Many transactions take place in the global economy every year, and the sale is made because of other components of the offer. For example, a discount is given, a bonus is given, the way the product is delivered, special pricing terms. So this is where if the prospect, so far you've acknowledged their problem and you've talked about the other solutions and why those have been insufficient so far. You sold them on your solution. Now, this is what Peter Drucker, I believe, meant when he said that the goal of marketing is to make selling unnecessary, or I would say at least a heck of a lot easier. If you've done your job until this point, now when you present your offer, your Lifeboat 4, it's like a no-brainer. I'd be silly not to take this versus going to someone cold, immediately leading with your Lifeboat 4, like a lot of people do. And you can get sales that way, but it's a lot more arm twisting involved.

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Sure. So, like, 5 is the other side of the bridge. So we have like a 1, but as the bad side, like 5 being the good side where the birds are chirping, sun is shining, and you want to give voice to that, to light bulb 5 as well. It answers the question that the prospect has, which is, what's in this for me?

So you're really speaking to the transformation and the possibility. This isn't post-sale. This is still part of the sales or marketing process, correct?

Yes. Yeah. So The two places where we use the five light bulbs are upstream and downstream. So we use it first to create a core message where we fill out all these light bulbs, then we deploy it downstream. And when it's deployed downstream, the way it shows up, whether it's in an email or a Facebook ad or whatever, you can use all different combinations and patterns of the light bulbs, but it helps to think about the two as distinct upstream downstream.

Could you explain that a little bit more what you mean by upstream and downstream?

Sure. So the first thing, so for example, in our programs, we have people come through and they'll create what we call a messaging map.. And that's a document that has 5 columns, 1 for each light bulb. And we take them through and we ask them these questions. What's your light bulb 1, 2, 3, 4, 5? It's important to dial that in first and to think about that more like a brand manual. So everyone knows what a brand manual is. You usually invest a lot of money up front in a company to help you develop this thing. And you spend time going through different logos. Okay, that, that's the right logo. Same thing we're doing. What's our light bulb 1? What are the fonts? What's our light bulb 5? You dial that in, you get that in place first, so you're happy with your brand manual, or in our case, your 5 Levels Messaging Map, then you deploy it downstream. So you wouldn't start out creating a Facebook page and figuring out your logo at the same time, nor do we start by figuring out our argument when we're creating a persuasive email. So we figure out our argument up front, and then we deploy it across all these different channels like email, Facebook, LinkedIn, wherever.

Got it. So downstream is the application and the implementation, and it wouldn't necessarily follow that. It could be applied in different order in different ways.

Different sequences, different mediums. We have people using the 5 light bulbs and text, audio, and video.

Mm-hmm. So when you get into the offer, light bulb 4, maybe even a little bit light bulb 5, in a lot of marketing, we hear about the necessity of communicating both scarcity and urgency in order to get someone to make a buying decision. Now, those, if they could be manipulative, if they're real, then they're not necessarily manipulative. And if we are, you know, if we're selling a product we really believe in, it's tough to get people's decision and it's tough to get people over the line of making a buying decision. If we really have this focus, I want my product to be purchased by people that are gonna benefit from it. I'm not trying to sell something to someone they don't need or is not gonna work for them, right? So we have that mindset, right? And really value, it's a strong value. And we still gotta get people to make that buying decision, which is not easy. And I mean, the better we do with this argument, as you were saying, maybe it comes a no-brainer if we've done a really good job with our argument. But is there still a place in your model for creating a sense of urgency or scarcity or special offers or early bird discounts or all the other tools that we use to get the person to buy now rather than thinking about it? And then maybe they get distracted and they go to somebody else's offer and they don't come back.

I have nothing against those things. Yeah. I would put 'em in the category of tactics and they can certainly amplify what you're doing. The mistake I see is relying on those. It's like, that's the reason reason someone's gonna buy or not. But if you really dial in your 5 light bulbs, then you'll be successful without using those. However, that, that's not a bad time to then start building in some of that urgency and you'll only amplify your results.

I see. So that kind of a distinguisher between strategy and tactics. So in some ways, the 5 light bulbs is an overall messaging strategy, and then you might employ various tactics along the way. So I wonder if you could do a little bit more. Maybe we're here at light bulb 2. I mean, we dealt with light bulb 1, marketing's overwhelming, right? And, you know, here I am a solopreneur, or maybe I have a team, but I can't like go out and hire, you know, a 6-figure marketing director, you know, or hire on a marketing agency. And yet I got to do marketing. And so I got to learn enough about it myself to do it. And it is overwhelming. But then maybe we're at light bulb 2 here. How you explain something about why a lot of these approaches aren't gonna be right for the small business owner, the entrepreneur, but a more simplified approach would work. So can you further make that distinction about this simplified approach that, that could allow people who are not necessarily marketing professionals to succeed in marketing?

Yes.

Yes.

And because that's so important because you're wearing so many hats and that's what I saw with my clients I was working with is they were spending so much time on marketing but on the wrong thing. So, Way I look at simplicity is that it's the needle mover. It's the biggest bang for your buck. It's less, it's not more. It's cutting things away. And what I found through getting into marketing and growing that beer brewing website that you mentioned was that messaging was the needle mover. It was the 80/20 and not, and far not enough attention was being given to it. So that's where the Five Light Bulbs came about. And so none of these other, these tactics and these marketing channels everyone's telling you, you gotta be on. TikTok or Instagram or whatever it is, and these tactics like the countdown timers and the viral share buttons and all that. My clients, I would see 'em spending so much time on these things. I'm like screaming from the mountaintops. When I would get to talk to 'em, I would tell 'em directly like, hey, this is not a needle mover because you don't even have your argument in place. And we see that when we take people through our programs and with the 5 light bulbs and they're clarifying, we're asking these questions like, what are your light bulbs? And they can't, and, and it doesn't add up. It's all confusing. There's contradictions in there and everything. So it's like, okay, hold the phone. Why are we spending time posting on LinkedIn where we're not even clear on our marketing message, let alone the people scrolling like crazy down their feed on LinkedIn? What are the chances that they're going to A, get our message and B, sign up with us? So to me, simplicity is doing the minimum force for the maximum impact. And for me, that starts with figuring out what this argument is that you're making.

Well, I think you made a great point there that as sort of untrained marketers, you know, I haven't, we haven't been deeply trained, deeply experienced, but we're entrepreneurs. We're likely to get attracted to all the shiny balls and the tactics, right? We're liable to focus on, oh, I heard this works, I heard that works, and maybe that works. And we really can get focused on tactics and think if we can just find that magic tactic, that's what's gonna work. And we don't take the time to get into really the heart of marketing, which is messaging and copy. And I've heard this again and again from master marketers. It's all about the messaging, it's all about the copy. And so it sounds like you're inviting us to focus there on the messaging and then giving a simple framework to craft a, you know, even if we're not a master copywriter or a great novelist kind of writer, if we follow this simple framework, we can probably write some decent copy.

Oh yeah, the good copy will emerge. Yeah. And that's what the way that I recommend people get into copywriting now is not like how I got into it was starting with copywriting. I would get into it thinking about messaging and thinking about what is this argument that you're making? What are the primary claims that you're making in your business? That's again, upstream of the copywriting. And the copywriting appears downstream.

Just a funny example came to me, like when we're trying to convince our spouse of something or our kids, or when our kids are trying to convince us of something, right? All those stages to the argument that are made, right? We're really talking about a kind of that, that kind of approach of making that argument and making an argument that ultimately is gonna be compelling to people.

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Yeah. I wonder if you could talk about this, you know, in the world of small business. I mean, we're all very familiar with big business marketing. It's on television, it's in the social media, it's everywhere. We're inundated with it. And some of it is incredibly sophisticated, right? And obviously they have big teams and a lot of resources and they create some very sophisticated approaches to marketing. But the world of being a small business person is really a different world. It's a whole different— and trying to mimic big business probably isn't gonna work very well. It's like understanding who we are as a small business person You know, and that's where, you know, anything I read somewhere where they, well, mid-cap businesses are all the way up to less than a billion, but $10 million up. But if we're under 8 figures, we're a small business person, right? And so anywhere from 6 figures to 8 figures, that's this territory. And it's really a different world and we need different approaches. And I'm just wondering if you can kind of help further delineate that. 'Cause our, I believe most of our audience listening to us right now in this summit are going to be bootstrapping entrepreneurs who are trying to either aspire to start a business or they're getting from that 6-figure to 7-figure level and beyond and trying to understand, you know, how do you approach this not as some kind of corporate marketing expert, but as a small business person?

Yeah, no, it's a great observation. Yeah, I observe the same thing that I think a lot of business owners accidentally follow the wrong playbook and they follow that big business, that big brand. Playbook. There might be multiple reasons why for that. I think one is that that, that tends to be what we see. We see, we don't, you're not behind the scenes in the mom and pop store so much, but you do see the Super Bowl commercial and you see that and you say, okay, that's business. And then you go into business for yourself and you ask yourself, well, what do I know about business? Oh yeah, the Super Bowl commercials. Coke, we need t-shirts. And you see that a lot. It's kinda like the symbol of an entrepreneur starting a business and it's probably not gonna be that successful is the first thing they do is create t-shirts for the brand, right? And so I think there's an underappreciation for how much selling small business owners need to do because that really is the lifeblood of the business. And I think you say selling and all sorts of emotions pop up, different ones for different people, an aversion to it, maybe some of that resentment, oh, the product should sell itself. Kind of goes back to what we were saying earlier. But I agree, it, it's a whole different playbook when you're at that level where you, where you're a publicly traded company and you have these shareholders. You don't make every decision. I think this is the key. You don't make every decision based on profit. They make a lot of decisions based on reputation, right? These big companies, these big brands, see that all the time. They'll sacrifice money for their reputation. But when you're a small business owner, the brand is in the background. People, you know, when you're small, they want to know, will this thing help me? That's a sales conversation. So I wouldn't worry about branding in the early days.

So you brought up the issue of resources. And so, you know, as entrepreneurs, we're bootstrapping entrepreneurs, we're very focused on budget. And, you know, even if someone has a good fortune to get some funding money for their company, they still gotta optimize how they're gonna use that to succeed. But for most of us as bootstrapping entrepreneurs, we're very focused on budget. And so if we're gonna spend some marketing dollars, right, other than our own efforts, and I think we agree that at least in the early stages as founders, CEOs, entrepreneurs, we need to embrace marketing at some level. I mean, eventually maybe we can develop under us a team that can embrace the approach we've developed that works, but initially we're gonna have to learn something about it. And, but apart from our own time and energy, our own sweat, equity. Where else does it make sense to, to spend your scarce marketing dollars in the, as you're growing a business and trying to scale a business?

Yeah, good question. I mean, you want to get something working, you want to get a flywheel going. So, and I think the best way to do that is to have, you gotta understand the front end of the business versus the back end of the business. So you gotta have a way to acquire new customers and then ideally do that in a way where it's even just break even and you're just buying customers because all the profit is made on the back end. That's a big mistake that I see made is that far too many hours per week are spent acquiring new customers as opposed to using those same hours for developing existing customers into additional customers, repeat buyers. I believe that a big percentage of your revenue, I think we should always try to increase the percentage of revenue that comes from existing customers. I think it's just a good place to keep our focus.

Well, you mentioned that flywheel concept, and I think that is a, a really important one that you're building into your company sustainable revenue that you can then build on. So whether that's a membership program or subscription rules or whether it's just you're really good at getting repeat customers, but somehow that you're working with that customer base that you're developing and you're optimizing that rather than just a constant search for new customers, which means you're gonna have to be spending a lot more money on marketing and advertising. If you're, if your whole business is completely dependent on new customers all the time, that's gonna be a more expensive approach to sales and marketing.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

I was thinking about this for my own business just recently. You know, this idea of, I think about it as like punching through the board where you want to think about how do you acquire a customer, but then what happens to that person? It's a person, right? And they go through your product and then what's next? What's next in their life? What's next in their business? Can you serve them at that level? What comes after that? What's step 3? I think like this idea of optimizing for the second sale, I've been rolling that around in my head recently and I, I really like that concept.

So what might be our thinking process in terms of optimizing for that second sale? And maybe is the 5 light bulbs approach still coming to play there? So maybe walk us through that a little bit, the thinking process.

Yeah, that's a great question. Yeah. So I think you have to ask then, what would you do differently if you're optimizing for the second sale versus the first sale? I think you get some immediate answers, kind of gut answers, and more so things you wouldn't do, right? You wouldn't do the quick wins. You wouldn't— false promises, fake urgency, anything like that for the quick buck where, you know, okay, I'll make some money on this because I pushed it hard enough or I deceived them enough, but there's no way they're going to buy from me again. So automatically a lot of those shady tactics go out the window. And I think you're just trimming the brown leaves from the tree when you do that. I think only good things happen when you do it that way.

Mm-hmm. Well, that kind of can come back to how we structure our products or services. You know, in many industries we talk about the value ladder. So you have an initial price product, you know, at one level, and then you have a higher price and a higher price. And obviously these are higher value products, but you've kind of designed a journey, a customer journey into your products or services to begin with.

Absolutely. Yeah. You're building it very intentionally. Yeah. Thinking about what— there's always going to be a next step. So what is that next step? And that can be you who serves them on that level. But once you have that trust, you know, think outside the box too. It might be a partner that you bring in, maybe a tool that they need. That doesn't mean you have no involvement in that step. Yeah.

Well, I think that's interesting, and I think a way to really serve our customers because, you know, they took a leap of faith with us and they bought our product or service, and hopefully they've had a very good experience. So they've developed a certain trust level. So rather than having to go out and go through that process again and again and the anxiety of purchasing from someone you don't trust, now we can, if we can help keep meeting needs of theirs, that makes sense, kind of within a certain framework of the industry we're in or the type of products and services we're in, we're actually, you know, really being supportive to them to help meet more of their needs and keep them from having to go through that anxiety-producing leap of faith with new companies.

Yeah, it's an interesting question to ask. What if we spend more of our time, what if we spend most of our time that we have budgeted for marketing on people who have purchased once already.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, it really is very interesting. What about, you know, today we're in this digital world, the information economy and the attention economy, which ties into marketing very much. Everybody's trying to get our attention and we're wanting to get eyes on our product or service. But the whole digital landscape really has changed things a lot. Social media. For most of us as small business owners, we're probably not gonna be advertising on TV much, or unless it's a very localized product and we're gonna use local radio TV. B, but for the most part, a lot of it's going to be happening digitally. So how has that changed things from even your journey over the time you've been in business? How have you seen things changed and has that changed your approach to marketing your own services?

Yeah, it's even changed over the past few years too, where I went from thinking you need to be on every platform. I still think about it like that in a way, but the more work we've been doing with the 5 light bulbs and creating this core message, it's more about spending more time upstream and thinking about what the core message is and refining that. And then testing it across these different platforms. And then once you find that winning message, well, people, your consumers, you probably will have one that they favor, right? So maybe you find that most of your customers favor Facebook, for example. I'm sure you have customers because these platforms are so big, aren't they? I mean, X is huge now, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, all the others. You have customers there. So I believe that once you find that core message, then what you should do is distribute it to the people who need it on their preferred platform in their preferred medium.

And coming back to the messaging. So again, I think this comes back to really getting to know who our ideal intended customer is and really getting to know them and have a message that, that, you know, they're gonna experience, you're speaking my language. And especially when we're trying to market through social media, because boy, we really have to break through the noise there. I mean, I don't know how anybody would market to me on Facebook 'cause I don't, the little bit of time I spend there, you know, I don't spend time scrolling. I mean, it would take quite a, it would, you know, it would almost have to pop out with, you know, something like, oh, that guy's inside my brain or something. It would have to be incredibly compelling. Fortunately, I'm probably a tough case and other people are more accessible on social media. But I think it points to the fact that we really investing in honing in on the message.

And you're right, it's tough to stand out. It is so noisy out there. And at the same time, there's a lot of low-quality content out there too. So the bar is not that high. And we see that too. Like once you start applying these principles, it's what you said, unless that person felt like they were in my head or a fly on the wall or something, you know, you're really talking to light bulb one there. A little light bulb one can go a long ways. Yeah.

You know, and I think that's important for ourselves as entrepreneurs. So, so that we don't kind of start to feel overwhelmed and hopeless that, Yes, there's a lot of noise out there. It's difficult to stand out, but the bar is not that high. A lot of it is kind of noise, but we actually have more access and less expensive access to the larger marketplace than we've ever had. I mean, can you imagine the difference between trying to advertise on social media versus advertising nationally, internationally on television or something, or even in print media, right? Vastly less expensive.

You're right. You have access to so many people and you, you don't need that many people probably for your business to be very profitable. And also, yeah, the bar is low. The bar is pretty low and it doesn't need— don't get discouraged because it doesn't need to be difficult. And that's the beauty of simplicity. It's once you focus on the right things, you can do less with more. That's the whole idea. So it's the difficulty is in seeing what needs to be done. But once you find what needs to be done, and I'm trying to stress that what needs to be done is you dial in that message. You'll find that it's actually easier, less work, less hours, less frustration than all the time you were spending downstream on the marketing tactics and the channels and all that, and you get better results. So true simplicity is really a case of you can have your cake and eat it too.

So it sounds like this framework would apply across almost any industry, but I wonder where, you know, what your experience has been with your book and your clients and having an agency and so forth. Some of the examples of where have you seen people be successful with this framework and this model?

Yeah, great question. Yeah, well, and of course started with the people that I traditionally worked with 'cause that's who I presented it to at first. So online course creators, coaches, consultants, you know, more broadly these smart people who know their topic very well but aren't natural marketers. But beyond that, it's been used in many different industries from marketing professionals, marketing agencies, Pay traffic agencies love the 5 light bulbs. They use it as a testing framework to, to test their paid ads. So testing a light bulb 1 versus light bulb 5. E-commerce companies, mom and pop stores. We had one client use it who's at a company that's over 100 years old, an American company over 100 years old, and a physical product business. So we see it everywhere. I mean, I joke around that, you know, you were kind of hinting on this earlier about it being a communication framework. I could totally write the 5 light bulbs for couples, like that book. I mean, who would write itself?

Yeah, well, maybe you should do that.

I don't know. My wife would have to co-author it with me.

And I wonder what your experience has been with this of, as a, you know, a content expert of some kind, a thought leader and an entrepreneur, and whether we're putting a product, a service, whatever we're putting out there, how community comes into play. How can we leverage community and what might be the connection between the Buy Blood Bulbs message and creating a community that will really sustain our business? You know, we talked before about the repeat business and the flywheel approach and so forth. I wonder about the role of creating community around our product and services.

Yeah. So one, it'll come naturally if you take this approach of making your argument because you'll have people who rally around that argument. So if you think about someone like, oh, Wim Hof, the Iceman, I don't know if you've seen this guy who hikes Mount Everest in his bathing suit, but a big proponent, his argument is for cold therapy as a key to success when it comes to your health. He's got a couple other things too, but cold therapy is a big one, right? So that's his argument is that cold therapy is the key that you've been looking for to lowering your anxiety, increasing your wellbeing, et cetera. That's his argument. He's had a huge community rally around that argument. So, so that's one way to do it. And then that's kind of that, that happens naturally. And then on top of that, an additional layer on top of that, which also stems from that same core message is I really like this idea world building and creating a world for your people where you're speaking a common language. There's common terms that everyone knows. There's stories about the business and the founder that everyone knows.

Yeah, that's great. And, you know, people do, they become, you know, there's a lot of Wim Hof also teaches breathwork and there's a lot of models of breathwork out there. There's probably some other cold exposure stuff, but there's a lot of people that they're Wim Hof people. That's their identity, right? And then so he's built that community of people that distinguish themselves and, oh yeah, that other stuff, that's not quite Wim Hof. I do this, right? So how do we create that with our own brand and product?

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Yeah.

Great observation.

What are maybe some common myths that you see people get caught up in or struggle with or get distracted by with marketing that your simplified approach could debunk or help people avoid?

A huge one is this idea of outsourcing your marketing. So this belief that I can outsource my marketing. You can outsource marketing activities. So you can outsource, you can hire someone to post to your Facebook page, to run ads for you, to build your website, and you probably should. But you can never outsource marketing. I mean, it's part of the DNA of the business. I believe it drives product creation. So there you go. You can't have a business without products. So that's the big one that I see. And my advice is to put it in the proper perspective. Your main job with marketing is not now is now not updating the Facebook page. Your main job with marketing is now to create that message, to create that argument, and then hire the people downstream to do the implementation for you as you can and as budget allows.

Well, you brought up a really interesting distinction there because I think as entrepreneurs, we're often focused on our product or our service. And it's just, you know, it's our passion. It's something we got. It's an idea we had. It's our— whatever it is that we're offering, we're passionate about that. And so I know if I just do this, people are going to people are gonna like it, people are gonna buy it, and then later I'll figure out how to market it. But from what I just heard you say, it sounds like it might make more sense to begin with marketing. Like, what's the problem out there in the world that I'm passionate about helping people solve? Maybe it was a problem I had, you know, that I found a way to solve myself. Like, what am I— and then, you know, developing that 5 light bulb framework and then deciding products and services to fit into that framework. Like, you know, we, I think we start with a product and we think, oh no, now I gotta market it. It might make more sense to start with really honing in that message and then thinking about, okay, what are the products and services that would best fit into that message and best meet the needs of the customer?

Yeah, you hit on something funny that we find too when people go through the 5 light bulbs is that they think they come in for marketing and they leave realizing that they went through for product development and they emerge with almost an entirely different product. It's gonna be improved no matter what. So yeah, great observation. You know, you and I have a mutual friend, Ryan Dice, who has this story about the back of the napkin, right? How he built this multimillion-dollar business and it was just a, he drew it on a cocktail napkin. And I think you're absolutely right. I encourage everyone watching this interview to, you know, when you have that cocktail napkin in front of you, you have an idea, run that idea through the 5 light bulbs 'cause it absolutely can help you with product development.

Absolutely. And I definitely wanna give Ryan, I don't know if Ryan coined that term, the flywheel approach, but he definitely talks about the 7-figure flywheel in his work. So I wanna give him credit where credit's due on that, creating that self-perpetuating revenue energy within a company and a business, right? I think that that is a really important myth, this idea that I can solve my problems through outsourcing. And yet there is a place for outsourcing, as you mentioned. Any other common myths that you can think of that get people kind of on the wrong track with marketing?

Well, kind of beating the same drum here, but it's important, an important one to beat, but it's just really important not to get caught up in these channels and tactics. And you're gonna be very tempted to, 'cause there's always someone, you know, hawking a shiny object But I would encourage you to really set that aside and focus on what's really important, which is figuring out what the value is that you're providing and why you're providing it and making sure that your solution is the logical solution for them. That's what I would encourage your viewer to focus on.

And I think you're gonna provide us with an infographic of somehow that kind of, is it lay out the 5 light bulbs?

Actually, it's even better. It's a, you can find the 5 light bulbs one. So if you go to 5lightbulbs.com, you'll see the, we have some great visuals. I'm a very visual thinker, so I had a top illustrator create a whole, world for it. And those images I think will really help you guys too. But we're going to provide an infographic for you. I keep using this metaphor of upstream downstream to see it. So that same illustrator created an infographic of that. And man, print that thing and keep it right on your desk because as you know, it's easy to say now, Billy, yeah, okay, I'm going to listen. I'm not going to chase those shiny objects. Let's talk a month from now when you've forgotten, you're starting to forget this and you see that shiny object. I want you to look down at this graphic and say, nope, So got to focus back on what's important.

Absolutely. And so this is a framework. I mean, as you've laid it out, seems pretty simple. And I know you have online resources available and you're going to provide us with this infographic. So this is something that really any entrepreneur should be able to sit down and really kind of at least begin the process of clarifying the argument across those 5 light bulbs and go using that process, claim and improve, claim and improve, and walk your way through the 5. This is something just about anybody, any entrepreneur should be able to do, right?

Yeah, absolutely. And I have to recommend my book here because it really is the philosophy behind the 5 light bulbs. The book ends where the 5 light bulbs begins. Even if you don't touch the 5 light bulbs, the book goes into this idea of how to make an argument, how to make these claims and back them up with proof. And that alone will get you very far. So that book is Simple Marketing for Smart People, and we have a website for that, simplemarketingbook.com.

Great. And I definitely wanna encourage people to check that out. I've read the book twice already. My team has read the book twice, and I'm gonna be reading it again because we're really making use of that framework and how we try to get our message out to the world. So incredibly valuable. So Simple Marketing for Smart People, right? You got it. Okay, so anywhere else that people can learn more about your work? I mean, you mentioned you have that, the book's website is simplemarketingbook.com. simplemarketingbook.com. And then you have a Five Light Bulbs website?

Yes, so I have three. So simplemarketingbook.com, fivelightbulbs.com if you wanna see the framework, and then my personal website where I have articles written on a lot of these topics is billybross.com.

Billy Bross. Okay, wonderful. Well, really encourage people to check that out. And if people wanted to work with you, that's a possibility, I assume?

Absolutely, yeah, please reach out. I would recommend reading the book first, so just so you know our approach and that you're on board with it. And then if you ever wanna reach out, billybross.com is the place.

Great, wonderful. Well, Billy, thank you so much for all the value you've added to HeartMind and what we're trying to do in the world, but all the value you add to the world of entrepreneurship. And thank you so much. And I think there's just a tremendous amount of wisdom here and privileged to be able to share this with our audience.

Thanks, Fleet. Yeah, you're a great interviewer and I love what you're doing, so just keep it up. I'm rooting for you.

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