#75: How To Pivot During the Pandemic with Phillip Stutts

Come on this journey with me each week when you join me, we are going to chase down our goals, overcome adversity, and set you up for a better tomorrow.

I'm ready for my close up.

Hi, and welcome back. I'm so grateful that you are here with me today. Oh, this has been just a crazy, intense week where everything that was supposed to happen didn't. What was not gonna happen happened. You know? You know one of those highs and lows where they tell you to remember to enjoy the ride. Oh, yeehaw. So I was on this call this week with one of my clients and she said something funny that I had to share with you because I believe this happens to a lot of people. And I think that this is a pretty good lesson. And it's really rooted in my experience in sales. And this is why I know that I'm right on the direction I give. She was explaining to me that she had not heard back from a potential client that she had had an amazing first meeting with.

Right.

I call that crickets when you hear nothing. But you totally thought you were going to get the deal and that it was happening and momentum would happen and nothing. I hate crickets, by the way. It's like the worst thing in my life. Okay. So she said, I guess that he's not moving forward with a deal. It must have fallen apart. I said, what are you talking about? What do you mean? And she said, well, I just haven't heard from. I sent him an email, okay, I hear this from so many people and here's what I want you to know. So what? You sent an email. Are you sure that it was delivered? Do you even know if it was open? Do you know if that person didn't jump on an airplane two seconds later and had zero ability to follow up on it? For me, it's unbelievable how many people try to reach out to me to hire me for a speaking engagement or coaching or whatever it is. They'll reach out on my website. I'll then follow up with them via email and they don't respond. I don't leave it there. I reach out to them on LinkedIn. I connect to them a variety of different ways to follow up and ensure that if I'm going to hear crickets, I need to find out is it a no or is it a yes? You know, either way is fine, but I just need to know. So I said to this woman, okay, hang on. It's not our spot to make a decision for someone else. Right? Allow them to make the decision, make we can't fly in and say, oh, no one responded to my email, so the deal's dead. Moving on. No, we don't get to choose for others. It's our job to communicate and connect with others so we can hear what their response is, hear what their situation is. We have no idea and we cannot determine that for someone else. So I explained that to her and I said to her, listen, first thing, send an email in the morning, or send an email when we hang up to this guy and say, hey, just wanted to bring this to the top of your email box again. I had reached out and hadn't heard back. I know you're busy, but wanted to figure out when can we get back on a call and, you know, start there. But I would not stop there. And it reminded me of this story. I actually told the story in my book, Confidence Creator. I had met the CEO of Perry Ellis a couple of times in a workout class. We certainly were not close. We were not friends. However, I knew that he knew my name. You know, there was a commonality. We had friends in common. And so I was thinking, this is right after I got fired. So this is three years ago. And I was thinking to myself, oh, I would be so good on tb, selling a product. I don't have a product to sell, right? Where could I sell a product on tv? And I thought about Home Shopping Network. It's in Florida. It's so convenient to where I live. I'll crush it. Okay, I need a clothing brand. And as I was sitting there thinking about this, it popped in my mind, oh, my gosh. I know the CEO of a billion dollar clothing brand who happens to be headquartered in Miami. His business is certainly not innovative. You know, it's an older business, been there a long time. And companies like that need to start innovating. Brick and mortar. You can't just stay, you know, focused on that. They're publicly traded. So he's got to keep his shareholders happy. I thought, wow, why wouldn't he want me to roll on up and give him an idea to diversify revenue streams, create digital revenue streams and increase revenue. Bottom line, right? Of course he needs this idea. It's brilliant. Well, this is what I thought. So I send an email and nothing. I hear nothing back. So I send another email. Because I figure, oh, he must not have gotten it. Must have gone to junk mail. Nothing. Nothing. I sent so many emails in a one month period, I thought I was probably going to get a restraining order put on me, right? But I would put jokes I would add anything and everything. Finally I said, this is just crazy. He can't not be answering my email. So I called his office, I googled his office, I googled the headquarters, I got the main line and I asked for his assistance. And I got her. And I spent time speaking to her and explaining to her how I had met him and how we had so many friends in common, how we had worked out together. You know, I just went through the whole thing with her and then I told her, I have this amazing idea and I'm so passionate about it. I'm going to make you millions, but I can't do it if I can't get on the phone with him. And she said, hang on one minute, put me on hold. He picks up and doesn't know it's me. And I was so excited, I said, oh my gosh, I can't believe you haven't responded to my emails. Listen to my idea. I'm gonna make you millions. This is amazing. It's gonna innovate the company, the industry. I'm giving him all these ideas and so he sets a meeting for me to come in a couple days later to sit down with him. I go in, I do the whole pitch immediately. He calls legal, they come up, I sign an NDA. We're going to work together and we create this partnership. So listen, in the end, we end up failing. And HSN didn't like the product line and said it was too similar to things they already had on air. They wanted us to go back and create something new and more innovative. And a billion dollar company doesn't pivot that quickly, so they couldn't do it fast enough. And I needed products to sell. So I had to move on from that partnership. Even though I was so loved the idea, I loved the partnership, but they couldn't move fast enough and I didn't have the time or patience to wait. So that really broke our partnership apart. So things did not work out in the end. However, I loved working with them. And the bottom line is this. He didn't respond to probably 100 emails that I sent, but I never allowed that to determine if we would have a partnership or not. I won't allow silence to tell me that it's a no. I will only allow a person to tell me it's a no. But you have to re engage. It's on you, right? We live in a super busy world where there's media everywhere and podcasts everywhere and social media everywhere and billboards and ads and news and this and that to break through that clutter, you have to be different. And yeah, everyone's getting hundreds of emails to their email box every day. I inadvertently miss so many emails. It's tragic. I inadvertently miss so many DMs on LinkedIn and Instagram. When you're getting so many messages, as most of us are, it's impossible not to miss them. So I always try to see a missed email or crickets or no response through that lens that, wait a minute, this is on me. I've gotta figure out a way to break through this and get on a line, get on a phone call, get on a zoom call, get in their office, whatever it is. But I need to hear it's a yes or a no. I'm not taking crickets for a no. And I don't want you to either. Okay. One other quick story I wanted to share with you is I was speaking with another client and she was trying to position herself on her LinkedIn profile. And keywords are really important on LinkedIn because that's how people find you. Right? So you need to think to yourself, if someone was going to look for me, what words would they type in for me? That would be keynote speaker. That would be consultant, business coach. That would be author, podcast host. Right? Those words are showcased all over my profile. The more the better. And I want that same for you. So think to yourself, what are the words people would search for if they were gonna hire me or do business with me? And then pepper those all through your profile, especially right in your highlight. And so she had chosen one that didn't really make sense to me. I'd never heard it before around a speaker. And I said, no, I've never heard of anyone search for that. I hear people search for keynote speaker or public speaker, but not the word you're using. She agreed. But she said, I don't think I'm qualified to put keynote speaker. And I fell over. I couldn't believe she said that. However, so many people say that, right? And I probably would have said that back in corporate America too. But now that I'm out in this space and I see how many people say that they're experts in A, B, C, D, E and everything else. I mean, it's crazy. I see so many 20 year olds calling themselves business coaches. What? So I see all these people who aren't qualified, but have the confidence or conviction that they are, and they move forward and do it anyways. And the other analogy I give is, and this is not political, but Trump was able to become a president without political experience, without political background.

Right.

So he wasn't wondering, oh, I wonder if I'm qualified for this. He just said, I'm the right person for it, I'm going for it. And that's really how I want you to think that you don't need someone's permission, you don't need someone else's approval for you to put keynote speaker. It's your approval and if you can speak and hold a microphone, you can be a keynote speaker. Let's go. So really try to see things through that perspective that you don't need somebody else's permission. It's not like becoming a doctor. You have to actually go through X amount of years of school, you have to pass, you have to get a certain diploma. Those are qualifications that are needed. But when you look outside of that, I mean, you just need to have confidence in yourself that you can do it and be willing to put yourself out there and go for it. So I want you to go for it. She's going for it. She put keynote speaker down. I loved it, loved it, loved it. As she should, because that's the keyword that people are searching for. Okay, so super excited today because you're getting behind the scenes yet again into one of my team calls with a friend of mine who I think is such a fantastic person, they call him the Michael Jordan of data. He understands and analyzes so much that essentially is helping you and me market ourselves, utilize the right verbiage, position ourselves correctly. As we live in this ever changing world, it's super important that we keep looking at data and analyzing data to say, okay, what are people responding well to? And he's got some major knowledge he's dropping on us today. It's Philip Stutz, he's back with me again. And I can't wait to hear how he's helping you and your business. Hold tight.

A little background. I'll make it short and sweet, but my marketing agencies, we have a partnership with the largest data collection, analytics and AI company in America. We've had it for years. And we have a partnership to work with our clients through this data partnership that we have. And we're looking at, well, in the database that we have, we have 200 million plus American consumers, 550 million connected devices, 10 billion online tracking decisions every day, and we're analyzing 1 trillion search words per day. But what we're able to do for businesses is we've overlaid their ideal client base, customer base, or their current client, customer base, or we could put a pixel on a website and track the people that come to that website. And then we can kind of tell you how these people think, what they feel, why they make purchasing decisions, what's going to motivate them to make decision, a purchasing decision, all that. And so when the pandemic broke out, we were going to reach out to all our clients and show them what we were seeing through this data project, but more on a macro sense, like what's going on in the larger economy, so that they could pivot and make adjustments. And then we just decided we probably need to charge clients. We're going to give it away to clients. And then I did this thing called Thinking Times, this great practice. This guy by the name of Keith Cunningham is a mentor of mine. Keith is a probably worth about a half a billion dollars guy out of Texas. He's probably about 70 years old now. He was worth $100 million by the time he was 40, completely bankrupt and divorced by the time he was 41 and built it all back up. And his whole premise in the sort of influencer community is not to tell you how to grow, it's to tell you how not to lose everything. And one of his practices that I'm religious about is called Thinking Time, which is you put all your phones down, you go to a quiet place, you go to a corner, you pull out a notebook, and you literally just write a question down and write an answer for 45 minutes. You're not allowed to look up, you're not allowed to take a break, you can't go to the bathroom. You just have to write. You have to force yourself to do this. It's insane. The greatest answers have ever come from me finding them through this period, because the first 15 minutes, it's all the things on the top of your head. The next 15 minutes, you hit a wall because you're just like, I don't know. That was just on the top of my head. And then the last 15 minutes, it's just pure gold. Like, you find ideas you never found before. In fact, one idea brought into my company over $2 million from one thinking time that I did back in 2016. So I'm a religious practicer of this. And so when the pandemic broke out, I wrote a question down was, how do I want to be remembered in this moment back in March? And the answer was, I needed to give this data away to everybody that could benefit from it. And so that's what we've done. We're working through our eighth survey right now, but publicly we have seven surveys. You probably looked at the seventh. Not only that, I've taken the data and then written an analysis for every single one of them. So if you don't want to look through the data and you want the crib notes, I got that for you. We did two studies on Black Lives Matter and the Riot so businesses could understand if they needed to pivot or not and how they needed to message and what the environment looked like. So it's been nine total studies. We've invested over $100,000 at this point into it. We've given it all away and sort of that's what brought me here before with Heather, and then this is bringing me here now. So we'll look at the seventh. So in the past few months, when I talked to the group before and when I've been on shows and podcasts to discuss, we've seen these overriding messages that have worked and how you communicate to your customers or clients. I don't care if it's B2B, B2C, e. Com, you can incorporate messages that we're finding into whatever you do. And by the way, it doesn't have to be your marketing. It could be your social, like we're just talking about just a second ago. It could be in your sales teams or the way you pitch, or it could be into your marketing. And so we found early in the pandemic that the three messages that worked like crazy, I'd never seen anything like it. It was just such a high conversion rate where about talking about how your product, service, or whatever you're doing provides safety to the customer or client, how it helps others. And one of the key metrics we found in our data was people were more concerned about their family's health than their own health. So that was when we're reading between the lines in the data, that's how we kind of ascertain things like that. And then ultimately it was about trust. In this moment of the pandemic, people didn't want to buy things. They didn't want to trust anymore. They wanted to be all in and invest in products, services, whatever it is, brands, anything that brought trust to the marketplace. Well, every month, things have changed. We saw trust in helping others kind of die down in June and July, and safety stayed really high as the sort of the second spike came about. Now we've seen safety kind of die down a little bit. And what we really found is less in the exact messages that you need to carry and more into here are the fundamentals you need to understand. So as you develop a sales message, a social post, a pitch or a marketing message that you can understand what's really in the back of consumers minds right now. Right now the safety aspect is not in people's health. What we're finding in the data right now is that people have finally come to this decision. Oh my God. The coronavirus isn't a one size fits all strategy. There are certain people that are more susceptible than others. Older populations, people with preexisting conditions and a few other factors. Young people not affected, like with deaths or hospitalizations, like older people, like there are nuances with the disease. So people are now saying, you know what, I take responsibility for myself and I'm gonna go back out into the community, I'm gonna go to restaurants. We're seeing people go to restaurants. At average rate, an average American is going to a restaurant in a physical location one time a week right now, that's massive change. That is an acceptance that they take responsibility for whatever happens, that they're probably going to get it, that it may be bad, it be bad, but they're not going to die and they're not going to the hospital and they're just, they can't live their life in their apartments or their houses anymore. And so we're seeing this and this is a good thing. Restaurants have had a little bit of a comeback and physical grocery stores have had a huge boom. People have ordered less online groceries than they have going back to physical grocery stores. That's good for business, that's good for the economy, but that's about it. That's all we've seen. That's good. The bad is that people are very, very, very nervous about what's going on in and so let me give you a breakdown of where I'm coming from and then I'm going to lay out sort of how you need to think about it with the work that you're doing right now. So I don't know if you read the data or you read my post, but I'll just go through the top highlights, right. 69.9% of American consumers think the current quality of the economy is poor or very poor. And another 20% of the Americans think it's just fair. So you've got 10.1% of the American public that thinks the economy is good or excellent. 73% of Americans believe our economy will not return to normal until spring of 2021. And this is the one that I've highlighted the most regarding personal finances American consumers 71.6% of American consumers are either struggling to pay for necessities or just getting by. So the remaining 28.3% of Americans feel like they're living comfortably. And that makes sense because if you look at the stock market, it's roared back. Well, that's because a third of the economy is making a lot of money right now. They're doing really well in their businesses, they're investing money. But the vast majority of Americans, almost three fourths of Americans, are either struggling to pay for necessities or just getting by. And I think that's a very worrisome data point because here's what happens. If the stock market tanks at some point, if it just completely bottoms out, then that remaining 28.3 is going to be in that situation. The 71.6 is going to be in an even dire situation. And it worries me seeing those types of numbers. It feels very Fragile. Right now, 82.4% of Americans are worried about their family's financial situation and 41.9% of Americans have increased their focus on monitoring and budgeting family expenses. That's not 41 total, that's almost 42% have increased their focus.

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What does this all mean? And the bottom line is I've written a lot about this one thing, but I'll tell you how to break it out a little bit more Everything right now is about need, not want. I've talked about this for a long time. People are buying because it satisfies their needs, not their wants. A year ago, trust me on this, people bought because they wanted things all the time. They didn't care. You know, the average American had $400 in savings. That's because they were going out and spending money on anything and everything. Needed a new car? Sure. Need a new refrigerator? Sure. Old one worked. Okay. Doesn't matter. I can get a new one. Need some jewelry? Yeah, I'll do that. Want to go on a trip? Absolutely. People wanted all these things. That's not happening right now. It's all about need. And if you aren't positioning how you put your stuff out there, whether again, marketing, sales pitch, brand, social, that, you know what, in these moments, this is why you need certain things. Right. It's been a challenge for us because we represent a lot of e commerce brands and some of them struggle to try to figure out what need is.

Right.

And so what we're trying to do is find those little nuances in what they deliver to the customer that make them feel like a need. For instance, my team is in another room right now pitching an organic. We did this data for them. They want to go into the e comm world and now we're delivering a strategy plan for them. And so they're in the room right now. But here's the thing. They're an organic coffee company. Doesn't feel like a need, does it? But our messaging is going to be all about coffees have toxins, coffees have molds. In these day and age of high immunity, don't go with the big brands. Right. We want to kind of position ourselves as the upstart. You got to go with something that's clean and has great flavor and it's sustainability. And by the way, this company donates like 10% of their profits to charity. This is a big one. Actually, we're proposing this, but we've seen this with a couple clients right now. Oh, man, this is such a good tactical idea. I didn't even think I was going to tell this, but I'll give it to you. Okay. Consumers are so worried about their budgets right now that they're not contributing to charities and charities are really suffering. So if you are a business and you want to come up with a really cool concept, tell your pitch, your client, your customer, your marketing, that you give a percentage of your profits to charity. Great. A lot of people do that. I like doing that. But that's not it. Say you're going to give it to the charity of the customer's choice, not your choice. And that customer who doesn't feel like they can afford to give to charity right now is more likely to buy your product or service or whatever you're selling and knowing that you're gonna give a percent of that. So, you know, you could say, you know, at the end of the year, we're gonna take all the 10% of charity, and then we're gonna distribute it to all the charities of our customers. It could be $10. Who cares, right? At my company, we actually do this. We've done this for about five years now. So everybody that works in my company, we have 27 to 30, 30 employees at any time. But at the end of the year, we say we're gonna take a percentage of our profits and we're gonna give them the charity. Everybody write down the charity their choice. Then we distribute checks to all of those charities in the name of our employee, not on our name, in the name of our employees. So our employee gets the credit for donating to a charity of their choice, not our choice. Right. A lot of business owners go, oh, we give to charity. We give to this great cancer institute. And I'm like, that's awesome. I'm good for you for that. But that doesn't really resonate with the customer. Right. So try to find ways that the customer feels like what you're putting out there is a need, not a want. That's one way that we've done it internally, and we actually work with some companies on it as well. We help them put together sort of a charitable fund, and then they can distribute the money through there. So that's the way we've. We've done that. We're proposing that right now for an organic coffee company, that you would think, like, that doesn't feel like a need right now. That feels like an extra expense. A more expensive coffee, that's really not what we buy. Well, we're gonna make it a need for the customer and the consumer. So that's how we're looking at that. The other two things that we're seeing more than anything else, and this plays into need versus want is price. I have been a massive advocate for a lot of our clients based on what we're seeing with the data that before COVID that people were buying for quality, not price. And so we had a lot of clients that couldn't understand why they weren't growing. Because in 2017, 2018, 2019, they were marketing on discounts, right? And when we looked at the data, we found out that the economy was going so great, their customer base thought discounts were cheap and we needed to market them to a higher standard. And so what we ended up finding over the last few months is the complete reverse is in place now that people actually are looking for deals, they're looking for better prices. And so if you can match price with quality and say 15% discount, but here's why we're a great quality, you know, 3,000 five star reviews, whatever it is that you have, that is a very unique point in the marketplace right now that I would take advantage of. And the last. And this doesn't apply to everybody, right? We really see this in the e commerce world. But I promise you, whether you're brand a product or service, you can think about this in the way it affects you. It's about friction to transaction right now. And we are seeing this everywhere. In fact, when we look at Heather's data report of her audience, we actually rank what the customer base feels between price quality and friction to transaction. We call it convenience, but that's what it is. Friction to transaction. Here's the deal. We've all been trained for eight months now to do everything online. Everything has to be made easy. Everything. If you're selling a product or service and you can't figure out a way to make it easier on the purchaser, you're going to lose out. Compuware has a new statistic out that says 88% of consumers right now, if they have one bad experience on a website, they will never come back to that website again. Why is Amazon the biggest company in the world right now? Right. Why Convenience. How easy is it to buy? They ship it to you. And price right, you can sit there and shop the lowest prices on there and they're gonna deliver it to you in two days. And if you pay 70 bucks a year, it doesn't charge you anything. And it's all about price and convenience. All about price and convenience. And so the reason the Amazons of the world have exploded is because they got the formula right way before the economy caught up to it. That's where we are right now. That's what we found in this latest data report.

Guys, let's open it up for questions, whoever wants to start. And I want to say thank you to Philip because going back a few months ago, I remember you talked to me about the importance of people feeling safe. Safe and trusting you. And for me, launching a new business you share with me it's important to do 100% money back guarantee. And I've had such great success with that. It definitely. It resonated with people. It overcomes the objections. And when you know you're going to do a great job for somebody, you have no problem offering that. So that. That made a lot of sense to me and worked really well. Thank you.

We do this so with our strategy. So after you work with us on data, we look at your customer market, we can design a strategic marketing plan for you, marrying your outcomes with your strategy. We get on that strategy plan, we give 100% money back. If you don't like the plan when you're done that way, we say, what do you have to lose? And it's true, right? We've never had anybody, not one time has anybody ever asked for money. But it's out there, right? But because I want people to feel like, you know what? They're putting my needs first, which is the intent of what we try to do with everything and everything we put out there. But that's how I would, if I were you out there listening right now, like, that's how you should look at it.

Hey, Philip, I have a quick question, which is about there's needs that people know, right? It's staring them right in the face. They're feeling it. And then there's the need that you have to communicate to them. And they say, oh, yeah, I've got that need. So can you talk a little about telling them they have a need versus they already fill it? And then when you market it, is it explicit, like you need this product, or is it implied through how you do marketing? Like, how kind of right in your face do you need to be?

It's a great question. I think it just depends. So, like, this example I think I gave you guys last time. We work with a national pest control company, and when people are cutting their budgets, they're looking at stuff that they spend every month, and pest control could be one of them, right? And so we pivoted this company, even though we had ads that were crushing right before COVID In fact, my team was very upset with me at the end of March when I was like, we're pulling all these ads down and we're going after this one message. And they're like, why would we change the things that are working, like, extraordinarily well? And I'm like, because everything's changing. And I'm seeing this in the data. And so we went in and our ads became During COVID you're in lockdown. You're in your house. You're cooking every meal in your house. You have more trash in your house. You have more people in your house. It's getting warm outside. Bugs are coming into your house. So we're painting the picture, right? You have to keep your family safe, your animals safe. Our technicians will wear masks. We'll wear gloves. We'll wear your face guards. We'll do whatever it takes to make sure you feel safe. You cannot let rodents and bugs in your house. We painted the picture so that they would come to the conclusion. I think we ended up having a 2.3x higher rate of return on those ads than we did the ads that were working before COVID We made it a need. We knew they couldn't cut this in their moment. It was really important. We've done this for other clients as well, across the board, but that's how we've looked at it for that specific one. Hopefully that example kind of gives you an idea.

I have a question, Philip. I'm in loss prevention online loss prevention. So I'm an expert in working with top Fortune 500 companies, mostly 200 companies, on credit card fraud, et cetera. And we've definitely seen a lot of changes in the last several months, especially because when economy goes down, fraud goes up. And we saw that quite a bit in 2008 as well. But what I'm really seeing is this huge acceptance, almost, of regular consumers hiring people who are using stolen credit cards because they're advertising this buy for you service, or we can guarantee you a refund from this company for up to $5,000 worth of items. And some people are using that just to feed their family. There's so much fraud with doordash and Instacart, et cetera, blah, blah, blah. So I guess what I'm wondering is if you've seen anything in the data of customer acceptance, of kind of breaking the rules either out of need or want. Because I'm seeing a lot also of like, well, I can't afford to put this on my own card, but I still really have to have the new PlayStation console or the new laptop, whatever.

What we're seeing is there's not a full acceptance that they're not going back to living on credit and having a job and making everybody for a long time was robbing Peter to pay Paul for the last few years in certain segments of the marketplace. Now they're not able to do that anymore. So now they're just going to go.

Rob, I want to write that down. Like, that's exactly what I'm seeing.

I've actually written not specifically about that, but about the broader economy. I'm sorry to be Debbie Downer here. So let me.

I'm usually Debbie Downer, so it's fun.

We should get together sometime. But listen, I've written about this a couple weeks ago, and then James altogether just had me on for two hours this week. If you ever want to go listen to the podcast, because we broke this down, but I believe we are heading to a civil war, and I believe we are heading to a secession of states, and you can say, oh, come on, no way. But there are a lot of indicators out there that tell me that that is a real option on the table.

Have you been hanging out with Rick Wilson lately? Is that what you're saying?

No, Rick's a buddy of mine.

I believe that.

Yep, Rick's a buddy of mine. But no, when you see the political divisions, it is only about what my truth is and not actually the truth on either side. And I was speaking to another group this morning. I said, we've never had a bigger voice yet. No one feels heard. Everybody is screaming at each other because they don't feel heard. And when you've got all these things going on, I really believe it's 25% as crazy on one side, 25% is crazy on another. And there's 50% of us that are just going about our lives, trying to make our lives work, trying to raise our kids, trying to grow and do good things, and not really worried about everything else, but we're worried about everything else. And these other people are not feeling heard or seen. And they're gonna make sure you see and hear them. And ultimately, I'm coming down to this. I think the one thing I keep seeing on social right now, across the board, is I'm on the right side of history. You know, Black Lives Matter. And then Trumpism is, I'm Trump, and we're on the right side of history, and everybody is talking about the right side of history, and they're so wrong. All of them are wrong. It isn't that at all. The right side of the history is to stop being manipulated by the media, because they're the ones that created a lot of this. They are the ones that have manipulated all of us. And I haven't seen this documentary. I'm dying to see it. But it's gotta resonate that what I just said, because every time I say this, people go, have you seen the documentary. And I'm like, no, I haven't seen it yet. So you're not the only one, Heather. I literally had 30 people tell me this, so. But the fact is, is that I come from right of center politics, right? If somebody on here is very liberal and we sat down, I guarantee you we agree on 75% of things. I guarantee it. But you would never know that in the way society works right now. And so I used to go on msnbc. I went on MSNBC for years, and it would always be this way. It'd be three people against me on there because I was center, right? It'd be the host and two liberal guests, and they would just be doubling up on me. And I kind of liked it because debate's fun for me, so I liked it. But MSNBC will not have me on as a guest anymore. CNN told me two years ago, do you want to be considered for a paid position to come on and be a pundit? I had a trial. I was on with Anderson Cooper, and they said, hey, we're interested in putting a contract in front of you and all this stuff. And they said, you have to be 100% for Trump. And I go, I'm a little more nuanced than that. Like, I think some of his policies are good. I think his tweets suck. I think there's divisions he creates. I think, you know, all these things, right? And they go, no, no, you have to defend everything he says. This is CNN that told me this. So MSNBC won't have me on anymore. CNN tells me I have to be 100% for Trump. Fox News is like, come on, anytime. Come on, come on. You know? So, like, what does that say? The news networks are manipulating. If you look at, I guess, the social networks and what I'll find out from this documentary, but a year and a half ago, I wrote the next big market crash was social media. And I don't mean like, they're going away. I just think they're causing so much negativity that I believe that people will finally rise up against it. It may end up being a civil war. So my point is this. If Trump wins, you could see a state like California over the next two or three years, say, we're going to secede from the union.

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And they're so heavily.

Actually, I, I would put Oregon and Washington with that, too, which I may.

Do their own thing. Well, my point is this. If Trump loses, you could see a Southern state doing it, right? Alabama, Texas, Mississippi, something like that. It only takes one. And then the train's off the tracks and every politician is going to see an advantage in it, and everybody's going to just jump all in and every state is going to come out with their own plan, and it is going to be mad chaos. It only takes one state that does it, and it's game on from that point forward. So when I talk about the economy, when I talk about criminality, when you talk about where we are as a society. Yeah, I'm worried right now. I'm worried if you subscribe that the economy is always looking ahead 3/4 or 9 months, wouldn't that give you the outlook that if most people think the economy will improve in 2021, that the.

Market and economic conditions are spot on?

When I say that most people believe the economy won't come back until spring of 2021, I mean, that's the earliest they think it would come back. Here's the thing. I think everything is driven right now in society by certainty. People are screaming and yelling because they feel uncertain, and everything's uncertain. I'll tell you a funny joke we have in politics. We always say this behind the scenes, like campaign workers like me. When we're working in political campaigns, there are things you can change and there are facts. A candidate's spouse is a fact. So like a candidate's spouse, man or woman, is always inserting themselves into the campaign. You're like, no, no, no, no, don't do that. And they're like, you can't change a spouse. Right. That's a fact. Like, you need to work with that spouse. You need to make sure that spouse is happy all the time. You need to make sure they feel heard and seen. All this stuff, Covid, is a fact. And people cannot handle the uncertainty of it. Like, it ain't going away. It's here, It's a fact. But people are going spastic right now because trust me on this, a large percentage of these protests are due to the fact of the lockdowns. They just are. They just put lighter fluid on an already frustrated environment. I'm not saying they didn't have real voices. They do. I'm saying it just put lighter fluid on their frustrations, on their uncertainty. And when you think about that as the broader market. Yeah, Maybe everybody on this call, we're doing okay right now. Maybe we're on the cusp of either okay or, man, we just need to break even. That's better than a lot more of the economy that we're seeing right now. And so my point is that if the stock market were to drop and big companies were to make massive layoffs and the fallout from that, that's what I would be really concerned about from the greater economy. And if people think right now, hey, maybe spring 2021, we come back and then we have a massive fallout in the stock market, I don't think they're going to think 2021 now. I think they're going to think, we don't know, indefinite. And then a lot more chaos ensues.

Hey, Philip, social media, is there a distinction in the consumer mind between media and then from a social media perspective? We're all trying to get out there and have our voice heard in all of this. No one's listening but everybody's screaming, how do we ethically doing the right thing? How do we share our messages that cut through the noise, that make sure that people know we are here to help. We're one of those good guys. We're that trust factor and do it in a way where obviously helps us drive business, but we cut through that noise and we do the right thing and we're not considered part of media or anything else.

That's a great question. As far as like the networks and the social platforms, well, they're all over the social platform. So most people just aren't sophisticated enough to know if there's a difference between Facebook and CNN posting a video. Right. How is that? In the latest study, 72% of Americans find the news on Facebook untrustworthy. 72%. That is hurtful to Facebook's brand. But that is about all the people out there screaming and shouting and telling you how to think right now.

Right.

The one way I would look at this ethically, that one way we found, I'll give you one. It's this tactical, but I like tactics because these are things you can take out of this call today is people are dying for third party validation. So one of the things we try to do with a lot of our companies based on what we see in data is we tell the story of people that have benefited from that product or service. Not us telling us we use 5 star reviews and testimonials. We want other people to brag on our product or service. We want real people. Not I have this thing and if anybody has a website like this out there, I apologize in advance because I'm gonna say something that's not kind. If you have a bunch of fake people on your website right now, I would take those off. You know, if it's you bought stock photos, take them off. Because people are only looking for authenticity right now, and they're either gonna believe you or not. And I think the entryway to authenticity is not you saying you're authentic, but it is students that say, oh my God, I've been a part of standoutx. It changed my life. You must do it too. We talked about this. So Jonah Berger, who wrote a book called Contagious, this is a book back in like 2015 or 16, at that point in the economy, 50% of all purchasing decisions were made by looking at a review or being validated before they did it. I would tell you that number is much higher now. Much. And if I was to break down between men and women, based on what I've seen in the data, it's higher amongst women. So if you have a consumer base that is more women than men, I'm going to say something that's going to shock a lot of people on here. Women are more thoughtful in their purchasing decisions than men. Men are more spontaneous. Shocking. I know. And so my point is, what we're seeing now is everybody is more thoughtful in their purchasing decisions. So if you want to gain trust and you want to gain authenticity and you want to be sort of that news voice, if you want to do that, one of the ways you should do it is by I mean like crazily putting out third party validation. More video of people doing it than just testimonials that come up. You know, read testimonials. But anything's good at this point, right? Our pest control Co. In one market in Atlanta, they have 35,000 five star reviews. Like if you knew, if you were looking for pest control company and you googled, I'm in Atlanta pest control company and you saw one had 35,000 five star reviews and the others didn't, which one would you hire? That's indicative of the marketplace right now.

We have time for one more question. Does anyone else have a final question?

Quick question. From a B2B perspective. So I've got a analytics AI company. So loving the stories about your deep dive, deep in the data from a B2B perspective. Because a lot of people, what we're dealing with from kind of getting new customers etc is, you know, everybody's on the budget's Been cut. Now what I'm seeing is now they're all some. I've had like three conversations the past two weeks. I've got to hurry up and spend my budget. I gotta hurry, spend this 3,000, $300,000. What can we do? And so it's hard to fast track that contract, but they're worried about not getting that budget in 2021 and beyond. So what are your quick thoughts on that? That seems like that's going to hurt the economy if companies are not able to keep their spend going forward.

This is the same concern I had in April and it didn't happen. Same concern I had in May, June, July. Like, oh my God, like this could be any moment now. I think we're in a month to month world. This is something I've been screaming about. This is not a new normal, it's just new. Every month is different. We've seen what converted customers in February didn't convert customers in April. What converted customers in April is not converting customers now the rate that they want to see them. Everything is changing. And what I would do from your standpoint, again, I'm not sure what your business is but. And this goes back to what John was asking earlier. I think the more you can show proof, the more people are going to be open and not cutting budgets.

Yeah, I like that, I like that approach and I've been real kind of authentic from the get go when we started. And the more I speak my mind and I build that trust and I think that's gonna start. You know, like you said, it's month to month. I mean, I don't know. I mean I've got people call me now that said they, they had zero budget for a year. So anyways, that's, that's good advice.

I mean in our corporate marketing business, June, August and September, the three most best months we've ever had in the history of the company. I can't explain that. I mean, other than people are taking less risk off the table and saying if I'm going to market, I better look at this in a way that says I'm going to reduce my risk. Well, this guy's the data guy. So I'm going to, if I go with him, I reduce my risk. Right, right. But I can't guarantee that that's going to keep going for my business. Like, I just don't know. We're trying our best to pivot as quickly as possible. I just don't know.

That's a good point. Yeah, it's the latest it's definitely pivoting a lot quicker. You have to be nimble, you know.

Thank you so much, Philip, for being here today. Thank you again, guys.

Thanks, everybody.

I asked you to try to find your passion. I hope you loved listening to Philip's guidance and advice and how we need to speak and address approach and market right now as it has changed and continues to change drastically now to need. So that was super helpful for me and for my business, and I hope it was helpful for you. Okay, so let's get to a couple of questions. I had someone reach out to me on Instagram, asking me, hey, how did you get such a big following on Instagram? I'm terrible on Instagram. It's so hard to grow. Are you able to leverage a following on one platform to drive the other? So here's what I would say. I started growing my Instagram following four years ago. It was a year before I got fired. Back then, it was much easier to grow Instagram. That has changed. Now Instagram and Facebook. Facebook are virtually impossible. I probably have grown a thousand followers in the last year. They just don't move. There's no organic reach any longer. However, LinkedIn has massive organic reach. So I really put the majority of my attention and efforts on LinkedIn. However, that's because I grow so much faster there. And you will too. However, I don't lose sight of you. Don't want to be 100% dependent on any one platform or on anyone's stream. You know, it's so important to diversify to protect yourself. If LinkedIn gets shut down tomorrow, if you get kicked off tomorrow, you have to have a viable solution for yourself and your business to continue to get your message out there. That's why I stay on Twitter. That's why I stay on Facebook. That's why I stay on Instagram. And that's why I'm constantly evaluating other ways to grow my email list. By going on podcasts, by promoting myself in different ways, how can I further my reach? Who else can I partner with? Can I bring on more affiliates to promote my business and tap into their audience? Can I go on Instagram lives with someone that has a completely different audience than me? You know, it's all about looking at how can I show up in different spaces to help me grow my reach? A book is another way to do that. Right? So there's so many different ways. And then as you text and try these different things, you want to evaluate where is your time best spent? Where are you getting the best return on your investment or return on your time. So if you're going on all these guest podcasting and you're not getting much of a following, maybe you have to start saying, maybe those shows aren't big enough for me to go on, for me to give up an hour of my day. Am I going to get any kind of return? And then there's those moments where you find out going on some small show paid a huge dividend because one person heard it and that person just hired you for a speaking engagement, which turned into huge opportunity. You also don't know, right? So showing up is always the answer. It will always be my answer. But when you begin to get busier and busier and your time is more of a commodity, you have to reevaluate where you are spending your time. So please make sure you're having those evaluations. And also you can promote. If you're on LinkedIn and you're getting a decent following, you can say, hey, if you want to check out my Insta story, head over, I'm eathermonahan on Instagram and you can check it out now, offering behind the scenes that you haven't seen, doing something to draw people from one platform to the other to follow you there as well. However, I'll tell you, I've done a few of those and a lot of followers on LinkedIn are just on LinkedIn. They're not on Instagram, which is kind of interesting. But you definitely can cross promote and you can definitely put in your email signature, find me on Instagram at blah, blah, blah, Right? So making it easy for people to find you there and promoting it. And then if you do podcasts, if you're cited in media, if you write articles for someone, always put find me at Heather Monahan on Instagram. Right? You're always pushing and marketing that angle. Okay, next question.

Good morning.

I've been following you. I've had some changes in my life and some challenges, and really, the pandemic has changed everything. I'm finishing school. I've got a master's. This woman has so much going for her. She's a certified life coach, business coach, parental coach. I've been a wellness coach, personal trainer, but I need to step up my game. I have tools, but not sure how to start. Okay, so listen, the number one thing I will tell you, and this is what I did for myself in the pandemic, is I looked at my messages and I look for what are people asking me for? So what's the value that you're delivering? Yes, you may be certified in 20 different things and it looks like you are, but what are the things people actually ask you for? And you know, I can only speak to me. I have a background in sales. I have a background in leadership. I have a background as an equity partner. I now have a background as a speaker, an author, a podcast host. Many different things, right? And it's all about saying, okay, I'm skilled in all of these arenas. However, what are the things that people actually ask me for that they will pay me for? I get a lot of people asking, how do I start my own podcast? But would they really pay me to teach them how to start a podcast or how to have a good podcast? I get people asking me all the time, how did you land a book deal? But would people really pay me for that? But then I see, I get a lot of these questions, hey, do you ever offer executive one on one coaching? I'm looking to hire a coach and I think you'd be the exact right fit for me. Well, that person's saying, I will pay you, right? So look through your messages. What value do you bring to the table that people will actually pay you for? And once you identify that, you've got to say, okay, well, what does this look like? For me, it was putting a post on LinkedIn, Hey, I'm launching my coaching program. DM me. If you want to sign up, you have to take the step and put it out there. You can always pivot, you can always evolve, you can always change and modify and innovate, which you should do anyways. But you have to put the post up. You have to take the step, put the offering out there. If you don't have client testimonials, I would say do it for free for a couple of people to get the client testimonials. You need that social proof, right? You need to be able to say to people, this product is fantastic, and here's what people are saying, and let your end users, your clients, speak for you. And when you do that, it's going to give you credibility and people will trust you. I also offer 100% money back, guarantee. That takes the fear, right? What is the reason why somebody wouldn't purchase this? What would be the fear that they would have? And figure out the answer to that question so you can solve it in advance of the conversation, in advance of any potential exchange. So first of all, find out what people see value in or would pay you for. Package that up in some way. I understand you might not know exactly how to do it yet, but put something out there. Leverage and showcase your and highlight your testimonials to give you credibility and trust. Offer 100% money back guarantee because you believe in your work and figure out who your target audience is and go after them with a vengeance because you are there to help them and improve their life. And they, they can't do it if you're not reaching them with your message. So giddy up and get started. Okay. Oh, this was interesting. This came from a client. When I work with people, I ask them to give me a list of we all have strengths and weaknesses. What are your accomplishments you're most proud of? And this person really struggled to put together her highlight reel and she mentioned it to her sister and her sister said, oh my gosh, you have so many more than this. And it reminded me of something really interesting. It's so important to take a step back, look at our resumes, look at our timelines, look at all of our accomplishments. Because once we get rooted in our ability to move through tough times, bounce back, overcome and achieve, it gives us further confidence that we can project forward. I got through all of that. I'm going to get to the next level now. I'm gonna. If I was able to achieve that, then I can do this right. So taking a look at that is super helpful and it's a great practice. I would like you to do that. Take a look at all you've achieved. Give yourself a moment to recognize what that resume looks like, what that expertise is. Make sure you're showcasing it and highlighting it. It's going to inspire others to achieve more and go for more, and it's going to inspire you to go to that next level too. And when you're realizing, huh, I don't think I'm seeing as much as really is here, which happens sometimes. Tap somebody in your circle that you know believes in you, that you know is a champion for you and ask, ask them to showcase your testimonial or showcase your timeline and your achievements to you so that you can reconnect with what it actually is. Have them help you see that value because we don't always, in every moment, see it in ourselves. And it's a super important exercise to take a step back from and think about and reflect on because that's going to help root you in more confidence that you can go to that next level now. And that's where I want you to go. So I'm so grateful you were here today. Please leave a review like the show, give it five stars. Share it on social media. It means the world to me and helps so much. Until next week. I'll be here creating confidence right here with you. I decided to change that dynamic. I couldn't be more excited for what you're going to hear. Start learning and growing. Inevitably something will happen.

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