Ep. 91- Angel Anderson: Master Your Marketing With A 20 Year Air Force Veteran

This is the You Winning Life Podcast, your number one source for mastering a positive existence. Each episode, we'll be interviewing exceptional people, giving you empowering insights and guiding you to extraordinary outcomes. Learn from specialists in the worlds of integrative and natural wellness, spirituality, psychology, and entrepreneurship so you too can be winning life. Now here's your host, licensed marriage and family therapist, certified neuro-emotional technique practitioner, trainer and certified entrepreneur coach Jason Wasser. Hey everybody, welcome back. Today's guest is Angel Anderson, who born in Puerto Rico but has spent over 20 years in the United States Air Force serving our country honorably. And then upon retiring in 2017, made his way into the marketing and public relations and social media world. And today we're going to pick his brain on everything that he has learned, all the hacks, all the ways to make your brand and your marketing way more successful. And I've gotten to know him over the last couple of weeks. We've been brainstorming. I— he and I had a really awesome conversation probably about a month ago, and I'm really looking forward to this conversation. So Angel, thanks so much for hanging out with us today.

Thank you for making the time to speak with me. It's a pleasure to be here. But if I may, I didn't start it in 2017. That's when I retired from there.

Oh, so you were double dipping?

Yes, I started marketing in 2003.

Okay.

And that's when my journey started in the marketing world.

Cool, so I wanna first start there, right? 'Cause you were in the military and as a therapist, I've been seeing military families since I started practicing. And I always love seeing the skill set that if those who eventually leave the military after their, their career in service, how they take those skills and they transition it into the outside world. And some of the major things that one learns from their time there. So I'm curious, like off the top of your head, what would you say? Like, these are the top things that I learned by my military service that has now helped me as a business professional. As an entrepreneur and as a marketer?

The first one I will say, I've talked about this in the past, is time management. Being effective. It's not about getting more, more done, but mainly the philosophy of Lean Six Sigma about eliminating non-value-added steps, minimizing human error or decision-making, making the process more efficient. And I transitioned that to the marketing. The other one I will say is continuous improvement. If we don't, like for example, you're in the medical field and I'm assuming that you have to take continuous education. But there are people that if they're not forced, and you might take it because you love what you do, but you and I know there are people that if they're not forced to take continuous education. They will not read a book or they will not take the training to learn. Imagine if your doctor hasn't picked up a book in the last 20 years and is prescribing you medicine from 20 years ago, that when new cases have emerged that this medicine is bad. The same thing happens with business. Unfortunately, little to no businesses have a, proper training program in place. And most of them is just an on-the-job training. Follow somebody that follows somebody, and then you will learn how to do it. But then, throughout the time when you're following that person and assuming that you're going to learn it the right way, you know that everybody picks up bad habits.

Right, exactly.

And it's a problem when you don't have checks and balances. OJT, on-the-job training, is great. However, there has to be some type of formal training in business at all. And if you're not going to do the job because we get better through repetition, then outsource it. And I get that marketing is one of those things that we typically don't outsource at first. And I'm a firm believer that as a business owner, you should try to do everything that you can first. But it will get to a point that you will have to outsource it because your time is more valuable than the mundane repetitive task of collecting reports and posting on social media. Right.

Yeah. And I see that commonly, right? When you have these businesses that have been around for a while and the training that they have, one is just, we're just going to show up today and do what we did yesterday and hope it works. And we're— our success is dependent on if we're lucky enough to get a customer. The other side of the coin is how do you get known? How do you make yourself the expert How do you make yourself the person that you're constantly being seen by other people? I remember about 7 months ago, a friend of mine came back to me and like, it's so crazy. I was at an event and this person standing next to us mentioned your name and your podcast. And I'm like, oh, I'm friends with that guy, which is what my friends— oh, really? Like, yeah, like I listened to his podcast, whatever. He's like, well, did you know he lived in this neighborhood? And they're like, No. And I'm like, well, I'm doing something. So now back to me, right? I'm like, what am I doing wrong in my marketing that someone here locally around the corner for me didn't know that I live in the neighborhood, but yet saw my advertising but didn't realize I was that close. So there was a disconnect between them hearing me and then hopefully seeing enough value for them to make a call for them to want to come and use my services, right? That's already a deeper level of thinking that you and I are trying to get our people to think about. How can this average business that maybe right now we're in the middle of the pandemic, money could be tighter, maybe the way that they've been doing marketing has been just stuck, right? They're doing print advertising. They're doing the stuff with the same vendors that they've been using for a while. How do we get them to start changing their mindset about that?

About the marketing activities? I will say before even we get into tasks or things that people should be doing, is to know that, you know, you made a good point. Like my neighbor didn't know I existed. I recently had a conversation with a real estate agent in Las Vegas that I'm helping. It's similar, you know, did you went and knock everybody's door? I literally told him, go and knock people's door and, you know, tell them that you're here to answer any question. Don't sell them anything because the worst thing One of the worst habits that we can have is assuming that because we're posting, people know who we are, and even our neighbors. And, you know, whether you are— there are a few things that we have to communicate constantly: why we're doing things, what we care about, what is our purpose, what is the mission. Because it's our responsibility to remind people we exist and why we're doing things. It's not their responsibility to remember we exist. That would say that is the number one, like stop assuming, let's assume that if you're going to assume something, is that nobody knows you. But I start, I like to ask questions like, what do you want to be known for? And are you communicating that? And that is one, you know, lately is going back to knowing what marketing is supposed to do for you. Because if you don't have clarity, you will be doing a lot of tasks that are uncoordinated. They are not helping each other. So clarifying what you want to be known for, what is the purpose, what is my purpose with what I'm doing, and communicating that. How I'm going to do it, which is the mission. You know, the purpose is what you do. The mission is how you're going to do it. And the vision is how you see the world. After your purpose is done. But how are you communicating that? And if you're not communicating that, you are just doing exactly what other people are doing, which is buy my stuff, watch my video. And that is one thing that I will say that is a good start for most people and most companies if they want to reset their marketing.

So the idea of creating value, which is a common term that's being thrown around, people on one side, I've noticed, are afraid of pushing. They're afraid of, oh, I don't want to come across as too salesy or too pushy, or that I'm not, uh, or that I'm being disingenuous. And the other side of the coin is that they do that. They become too pushy, they become too disingenuous, they only care about the sale, and they only care— they don't care about the follow-up. And I just heard a story recently from somebody about, uh, a coaching program and a buddy of mine reached out and, um, was very interested in doing something with them. And the timing of that program specifically didn't work out for their schedule because they were pre-booked, but said to them, I'm interested in the next time you're doing that, please keep me in mind. And will you let me know the dates that you already have for that? There wasn't even a response. In other words, the second that person said they weren't interested in the most immediate buy, the team disappeared. And that's one of those things that like, I hear left and right from so many different things with the cultivation of the relationship, right? As a therapist, it's— I'm selling a resolution to a problem. But I'm also selling the relationship. And if the relationship isn't good, if they don't feel that I get them, if they don't feel that I'm asking the right questions, if they don't feel like they have the ability to say, you know what, Jason, like, I don't think— no, no, what you said this, but I don't know if you heard us correctly. Why are you taking us down that rabbit hole? And I give my clients and I tell my clients that permission because I'm like, I don't want you to go home and be like, Jason's not getting us, and then never show back up. I want you to— and that's just a pattern of why aren't you discussing that stuff in other topics with your partner or with your family or with whoever else you need to discuss those issues with? You're going to do that same pattern with me. So what I want to help guide people to, like when it comes to marketing, when it comes to branding, is that you have to be really clear with putting out there exactly what you want others to hear. And in a way to find already the objections to what they might come up with, right? So is that one of the projects that you would work with someone? Because I know I do this with my clients, where I say, I want you to list the reasons why what you're trying to offer, whether it's in a relationship, why your partner won't buy into this, why your child won't buy into this, why your parent won't buy into this, why your colleague or whatever, right? Give me some of the objections that they'll give back to you. About why they wouldn't want to?

Well, the first one is, "I haven't thought about that." So you're marketing your product and you haven't taken the second to find out why people are going to tell you no and how you are going to solve that. But to answer, you know, answering in the same line, along with those lines, answering your previous statement, or adding, which is people go straight to the sale. I get it. People need to pay bills and they need to pay their staff and pay themselves and maybe a little bit of profit. But it's a big, big here. If you lose sight of what you're doing and how your product helps people, right now you're just another person trying to capture people's attention, which if they feel— if they're going to put the guard up from the beginning because you have a sale, you're only gonna penetrate so many people, maybe the shiny object syndrome people, like the people that chase the next shiny object, but not people that really can transform, you know, you can transform their lives. So, and I think it's very important to, you know, what is the actual benefit there? Whether it's time, whether it's something simple, you don't have to get fancy with the word. You don't have to have a PhD or go to the dictionary to find some Latin word to use. I'm a, You know, leaning your strategizing, oh, you're simplifying, what is the actual benefit? But the objections, the main one that I hear is, I haven't thought about that. And then we start asking, and you know, do you, when was the last no that people, that people told you that they can't? Oh, it's time. Okay, so what about time? And we start asking, but mainly, Jason Wasser is, They haven't taken the time to think or develop a set of questions that their team or themselves can have in the website. And even though, you know, this is not new what I'm about to tell you, but how about creating content based on those objections? Making it public, whether it's in your website or a YouTube video, and it doesn't have to be 10 objections that I get from my client, but it could be, you know, one small video, you know, But if you think that this is going to take time, you're right, it's going to take time. But this is why it's worth it and this is why you should do it. But if you don't have time, then outsource it.

Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. So this morning I had a call from a potential new client and I asked— it was for couples counseling— and I asked the person who was calling, said, how invested is your partner in this process? Before I—

right?

Because they went into, do you have— like, the first question they asked off the bat was, 'When can I schedule an appointment?' And I said, 'Well, before we do, I want to make sure that we're the right team for each other, that you're the right client for me and I'm the right therapist for you. Let me ask you what's going on.' 'Well, how much do you cost?' 'Well, it's irrelevant right now what I cost, because if I'm not the right therapist for you and you're not the right client for me, whether I'm $12 or I'm $1,000 an hour, it doesn't make a difference. Would you mind sharing with me 2 minutes about what's going on?' And they share what's going on. And then I said, right, like I just said to you a minute ago, how invested is your husband in this process? Oh, he's invested. Like, oh, like, so he's ready to show up and go all in and really do this work and do this process for whatever time it takes to get things better for both of you?

Yeah.

Okay. Then I asked a few more questions, and I explained my rate. And they're like, oh, no, that's not what we're looking for. And I remembered that as— here's the kicker, because I'm going to go back to add what I said before. Are you calling around to find the person who's the best expert to solve your problem, or are you looking for the most affordable therapist? And their response was both. And I already knew that they were not going to be a client for me.

Right?

So now going back into that story, because I wanted to leave that out for a second and then retell the story. A few minutes later, I'm saying, "Well, let me give you an appropriate referral based on that." And she then tells me something about her partner's approach or philosophy. I'm like, "Oh, so he's not really invested in the process." And she goes, "Well, he would come for like 2 sessions." I'm like, "That's not an investment. That's let me debrief, drop it on you, and it's all your problem. So you better fix it and then tell me when your therapy is done, wife." And then I'll be happy because, you know, you'll no longer be bothersome to me. Right? So these are the type of prequalifications, right? If you want to get the right type of clients, you have to put that out there. So I already knew within the first minute that I'm not going to be seeing them. And then I needed to say, hey, here's where you need to go. And here's what I love hearing. And I'm sure you hear this all the time, especially when, you know, in the marketing field, but so-and-so charges blank. So why are you calling me?

The one that I've been helping a lot of people is similar to what you say. In marketing is seeing marketing as a necessary evil. That is the— not when I know that they're not invested, but they know they need marketing. A doctor told me, Angel, Burger King sells the most hamburgers, but not necessarily sells the best hamburgers in town. That's why I'm going to hire you, you know, because I'm a better doctor. And that's a long story short, but then I started, you know, so why? And we shifted his mind to, I need marketing to like this, I'm actually reaching more people so they can live healthier lives. And that's his purpose, to make sure that people live longer healthier. But if you approach therapy or marketing with the wrong attitude, you're going to get the wrong results, no matter how much you pay or how little you pay.

Yeah, right. And I had this conversation. My family has a third-generation furniture business here in South Florida. And my— this was about a year ago, even before the pandemic, we were talking about the competition, and they have a great reputation in the field. And It is a third-generation furniture, family furniture business. And we wanted to highlight that. And we also wanted to highlight the fact that we're not just some click, you know, you go online, you click, and that's it, it's drop shipped to you. You actually get from beginning to end. We make sure it's going to fit. We make sure it's the right design. We make sure it's the right, is it left-facing or right-facing? So when it shows up at your door, you don't have any complaints. And, you know, and our delivery service is, you know, white glove and everything like that, no matter where you are in the country. So we focused on highlighting the benefits of working with a family-owned brick-and-mortar business. And that's the extra value. So if you want to make sure there's no mistakes, if you want to make sure that everything will be handled by someone that you know will call you back. And I think that's what kind of is like the personal touch is still missing. And I know that people when they call my office, or when I call them back, they're shocked that it's me. I'm like, well, you know, I could have an office manager and I have a VA doing a lot of stuff, but there's a lot of times where it's that 15-minute call, 20-minute call, 30-minute call that most people won't do. If you're going to be spending thousands and thousands of dollars and trust me with your most challenging issues, I can take 30 minutes of my time to make sure that we're the right fit for each other. That's once they call. Let's talk about like, how do the average— I mean, I know it's tough depending on your niche, but what are some people absolutely needing to do that they can do simplicity-wise that they're probably not doing already right now for their marketing?

There is always something that makes you different. Always, always. That is not price, that is not that you are open 24/7. There is always something, but really rarely you hear people explaining, for example, in your case, you are a third generation, we have a white glove service. You can also appeal to those that support or local small businesses, or, you know, family-owned businesses, you can appeal to that, and that makes you different. But there is always something that makes you different that you are not communicating, and that is something that is simple, that you can do a simple exercise and like start like, what is why I'm different? And it's not a degree, it's not a— in my case, it might not be that I spent 20 years in the service because it really— The main thing that I can drive from that is that they pounded me the core values that I already adopted those core values as a way of life, which is integrity first, service, excellence, service before self, and excellence in all we do. And I started communicating those things recently, which I failed to communicate that in the past. And I, with a caveat that I will do the right thing when nobody's looking.. And that's how I can tie my military experience to what I'm doing in marketing or running a business. But it's always something, Jason, that you can differentiate, a way that you can differentiate yourself. And he said a good exercise to do over coffee, tea, or a scotch, and you start writing down and see, start communicating those things that you believe next week. So if you do an exercise today or this weekend, start Monday communicating one sprinkle here, something on Monday, something on Tuesday, something on Thursday, until you find what clicks with your ideal audience. Because all those things might be true, but you don't need to communicate everything. You just need to communicate what your audience cares about.

Yeah. And I had this conversation with a client of mine the other day because they were serving a bunch of different populations. And I wanted to help them streamline the process because they were spending probably a lot of time serving clients that are over needy for a lower price point value. And the question I asked this person was, who is your favorite and most enjoyable type of client to see that also brings you in the most amount of income? And they said, this population. I said, "Okay. Is that the population you really enjoy seeing the most?" I asked the same question 30 seconds ago. "Well, actually, it's really this population that I love seeing the most, and I'm getting a lot of them." "Okay. Is that the population that you enjoy seeing the most and you're getting the most income and value off of for the least amount of time?" And she had to pause again. So it's interesting, right? You can ask the same question over and over again. And if you push, you're going to finally get the most true answer because we have a story that we're telling. We don't want to insult anybody. We don't want to offend anybody. We don't want to kick anybody out of our practice. What it would mean if we, you know, the most difficult thing for most business owners is to niche and then niche again.

Right?

So the people who I believe are the most successful are so tapered. And, you know, I see, you know, and people need to discriminate between the tools that they use to solve the problem and the theme or the message of the problem that they're trying to solve. So I know you probably hear this all the time when you're working with people. I had this with a client the other day. She's like, I have a great business idea. And she shared this business idea with me. And I'm like, that sounds like an amazing hobby.

I'm tracking, I'm tracking. And when it comes to marketing, you know, pricing strategy is something that a lot of people forget to apply until they've been in business for a while. And so, there is a product, you got to have something for sale, you know, you're selling, you're promoting something. There is the price, there is the place where you're going to sell it. And there is the promotion, but you and I know that the majority of the attention goes into promotion and they forget about maybe I'm not promoting in the right place. I recently had a conversation with Carlos Gil, the author of The End of Marketing.

Yeah.

And he said, Angel, if people look at my Twitter account, They will think that I'm a fly-by-night company. They look at my TikTok and I have tens of millions of views and a lot of followers. And I've been on marketing for a long time, he said, and in my lifetime throughout YouTube, I probably had 4 million views. In the first month in TikTok, I had 10 million views and the orders are key. He pivoted. He was doing a lot of speaking engagements and he pivoted to selling masks. He created Outlaw Masks. And he said, so the place is very important. If you just keep pounding on Facebook and Facebook is not working, why you keep at it? You try a new channel. But the pricing is something that people forget. And you gave a good example. I don't think I shared this with you, but when I When I joined the military in '96, I immediately didn't like it. I wasn't the big rule follower back then. And I wanted to do my own thing, so I started looking at ways to start a business because one thing that I learned early on in my military career is that whether you get out at 20 years, whether you get out at 4-year mark, which is your first enlistment, 10 years, 20 years, or 30 years, which is the max, you have to get out. So you have a timeframe you can create a plan. And I always told that to my troops and say, you eventually gonna have to get out. So whether you want to go back to corporate world or, you know, get your education, you got time to do things. So in '98, I started a computer store in Alaska. I worked for CompUSA for a while in the business sales and I started doing repairing computers on my own. So because the plan was that when I was going to get out, I was going to open a computer store in Puerto Rico, which I did. But long story short, 6 months later I end up back in the military. I went to Las Vegas and I started doing— I realized then, I jumped a lot. So, let me backtrack. When I was doing the computers, people came, "Hey, you work on the computers, so can you design me a website?" That's how I started designing websites. I've been designing websites since '98, strictly to 2002 when I got out of the military and I went to Puerto Rico and I opened a computer store with a friend over there. 6 months later I got recalled back in, I lost all my money, so I went back to what I knew, which was designing websites in Las Vegas. But in Las Vegas I was introduced to some marketing seminars and that's when I realized that people didn't want a website, they wanted the result from the website. But I kept doing it and I still, until this day, I still own the hosting company that I started in 1998 in Alaska, in Anchorage, Alaska. And one of the pricing points that we started, because back then people were charging $5 a month for an account, but I realized exactly what you mentioned, which is the $5 people were bugging me, were sending me emails, were calling for customer support. And then we started raising the price to $20. We tested a few price points, $0.20 for the same account, even to $100 for the same account. And what we realized is that the higher the price point, the less customer support tickets those people, those clients send. But sometimes it's a fear of, I am going to lose. Raise the price and doesn't work, just lower it again. But we kept raising it until right now it's been $27 for many years, and we probably have to relook that again. But it's been $27 for many years, and that's the sweet spot for us that we probably hear from a customer once a year, if it's been customer that been with me for 10 years. Oh yeah, when they have to renew the domain name again for 10 years. I keep sending, okay, the backups, the website is being secured, it's being backed up. But pricing, the point of all this story is that pricing is something that every business, it's basic business operation. You have to see how much elasticity you have there. Maybe you're undercharging, maybe you're attracting the wrong client. It's something that I learned when I went to, I did get a bachelor in public relations and marketing. One of the things that we learned, it was called the bottom of the pyramid. And when I was exposed to that, it kind of moved me to start thinking about pricing a little bit different because you hear that advice. But, and I don't want to, you know, it might sound negative, but for example, Walmart, that's what the marketing world in college, they call the bottom of the pyramid. They attract the lowest, the cheapest price, the people that are willing to pay the cheapest price versus somebody else, like maybe Publix, the price is higher, maybe they market the fresh food. So who are the people you want to attract? And when they pick up the phone and they call you, are you going to be cringing like, "I don't want to talk to them." If that is, if you're attracting the wrong people, you can look two things, how you're communicating your message and so your message attracts the right person, but also push away the wrong people, but also maybe price. Maybe you are too low on the price and you need to start raising the price.

Yeah. And I do find that, but a lot of people undersell themselves as well, especially in the healing arts community. This is a big thing where therapists, OT, PT, speech tutors, right? I would include an educational tutor in the healing arts just for the sake of this conversation, because they're like, "Well, I'm doing something good." for the world. But if you're running a business, then you're not a nonprofit. And that's where I think this philosophy starts coming in that you do have to invest in your training. If you invested $50,000, $60,000, $70,000 in a graduate degree for most of the people in these fields, and you're not willing to charge equivalently, and you're like, "Well, I'm going to get more clients because I'm going to undersell everybody else," that just devalues the field. And it devalues the quality. And it goes back to, you know, what I said before, when that— when that client called, they're like, well, there was someone I called up in, you know, wherever, a little bit north of me, and they were charging $100 an hour. I'm like, well, that sounds great. But sometimes you're getting a $100-an-hour therapist who, you know, why aren't they charging $105 an hour?

Um, I am— I, I I don't knock people down when they want to charge less, but my question comes down to, if you're going to charge less, then don't complain that you're not making what you think you're worth or what your value. Don't put it on the market. Don't say, because the market don't want to pay more, or because you haven't tried. But also, if you don't like the people you're attracting, it's probably also, you should look at pricing, not just the message, but you should look at pricing as well. And if you are happy with what— by charging $5 or $100 an hour instead of $200, then continue doing it.

Right. But I would also say on the other side of the coin, if your life outside of work is not being able to take care of because you're only charging $100 and not $200, then that's the real bigger question that I would want to bring, especially from this marketing and branding and putting yourself out to the world. I love this expression where I think it's from Esther Hicks from the law of attraction world, where she said, you can't make yourself sick enough to help someone else who is sick feel better. You can't make yourself poor enough to help a person who can't afford something afford you. You can't make yourself angry enough to help someone who's angry get less angry. So this idea of like, yes, I want to help people. Yes. Everybody's in business at some level. And hopefully from the authentic perspective. And I know there's people out there who are just selling a product because they want to make the money. And it's, and it's just an exchange of product for money. And that's it, right? But I'm not— but we're not catering, you and I are not talking about those people. And the people listening to this podcast are hopefully not, you know, that's what we're not looking to attract. But if you're out there doing something that is of value to you, and what you're doing of value is by you doing it is also causing more hardship in your personal life, There are some questions that you and I need to probably talk and walk through to figure out what's going on for you to be able to offer your most authentic version of your service without it being a detriment to your own livelihood.

So now, now I want to ask you, yeah, when you ask people those questions, why, you know, what's the revelation? What have you learned from asking those deep questions?

There's so many belief systems, right? Really stuck strong belief systems. I had a therapist that was working, uh, with me as an associate for a little bit while they were getting licensed, and they were so talented and they were so nice and they were so like— they were— I was so confident in their clinical skills that I wanted them to be an associate while they were registered intern under me as a, you know, as an intern, and they couldn't get a client for the life of them. So I walked them through this protocol that I do called NeuroEmotional Technique, which is a mind-body stress reduction protocol. And it helps find hidden beliefs and hidden stories that are holding you back. We will call that self-sabotage, right? Self-limiting beliefs, self-sabotaging experiences. And we found out, because we started testing about this person making a certain amount of money, and we started at a low number with them being congruent, with them being okay, with making, I don't know, $30,000 a year.

Nope.

$20,000 a year. No. $15,000 a year. No. $10,000 a year. I think we got it down to they finally were okay in a nervous system fight or flight response with only $5,000 a year. So that means you have 4 clients a year, maybe if you're lucky, over the course of how many sessions? And we found out in that story, in their nervous system, in their emotional reality, A while ago, before they started graduate school, a sibling said to them, "I don't know why you're not going to medical school to be a real doctor." Mm. So now that this person was on the path to getting a doctorate, and the message of real doctors make money, fake doctors, PhDs, don't, was rooted in that self Right? What you told me, we talked about like, what are you going to attract? That was there. What is that person projecting, putting out there in that energy that's going out into the world? And once we kind of cleaned that up and we got rid of that, like, then they started being able to, you know, to be more strong in their own conviction of that story no longer matters. It's not mine. And I find that commonly, whether it comes with relationships, whether it comes with personal health, whether it comes to spirituality, when it comes to their own emotional well-being, whatever dynamic, business stuff, there's some self-limiting and self-sabotaging story in there. That's— I tell my clients all the time, I really don't care, playfully. I really don't care why you're here. But the issue that you're saying is a problem, I want to know the belief about why that issue is a problem for you specifically, versus we fight. Okay, well, you fight. Okay, so what does it mean to you that you fight? Why is it so bad that you fight? What does it make you What does it say about you and your type of relationship when someone says, "Oh, that relationship must be what? My relationship must be what?" So I think when it comes to the branding and the marketing, we're all doing that. We're all branding and marketing ourselves to somebody. We're selling ourselves to somebody every day. Always, right? In a relationship, in business, with colleagues, with superiors, with people who work under us. So we have to be confident in what we are and what we're trying to put out there and figure out those self-limiting beliefs that we might have that are keeping us from having the most successful experience that we possibly can have.

Jason Wasser: I think you nailed it. You nailed that exactly with the root cause is the self-belief, whether it's the upbringing or the circle, the people that you surround yourself, or the information that because let's admit, let's be frank, TV, social media, and what we consume, 9 times out of 10 is not the right information for the brain. It's just way too much vomit and negativity. And having the need to be connected because if I'm not aware, I'm not a good citizen or a good human being. I need to be aware of everything that is going on, news, et cetera. But it's, you know, it's like, would you allow? I will not allow my kid to watch porn at 10. So why would I subject him to the news, which is they killed 10 people today, and then talking bad about politics, et cetera, et cetera. But that is something, you nailed it. It was exactly my case. My case when I joined the Air Force, it was, okay, it was, I have a good person, one good person that told me, You know, we got to make a change. And we just went to the military. My mom was completely against me joining the military. I'm the first male, only male. And so she was, you need to stay home. And I came home and I said, okay, I sign up. I mean, delayed enlistment. And when I joined the military and I started associating with different people, like I forced myself to remove, I forced myself to be out of the circle. My mind started growing. And then therefore start, okay, you need to continue improving. If you don't study, if you don't read, if you don't study, you will not go up in rank. And I realized that books, besides knowledge, is just feeding your information with, feeding your mind with different information that you otherwise will not consume. Just like my mom used to tell me, "Dime con quién andas y te diré quién eres." That means, "Tell me with who you hang out with and I will tell you who you are." And I never, I didn't want to listen. Because I didn't know, but guess what? The first time I hired a business coach, he said, "Who are the 5 people you spend the most time with?" And I picked up the phone after that call and I told mom. And I still call my mom quite often. And sometimes it's that, okay, wanting to be better. If you know that you can, if you don't know that you can be better, let's find out why and let's get better results. But wanting to be better, I think, is the key. Having a good life. Like right now, I have peace in my life and I don't want nothing to ruin peace. I don't want drama. I know I can go and work more hours and go and take some jobs in town, but I'm happy with the lifestyle. But it's knowing yourself. I think it's, you know, when people talk to people like you that can ask those whys and get to the root cause, I think that's the shift. The shift that most people will have.

And I think that's, at the end of the day, that is marketing and branding at its best. Because if you don't know truly who and what you are, what your purpose is, what your mission is, and you can't clarify that and put that out into the world out of, for whatever reason, fear, doubt, shame, you know, insecurity, lack of investment in yourself and training, whatever it may be. Then we'll never get to where we need to get. And I think that's one of the beautiful things about the marketing field in and of itself and how colleagues like you help draw that out of clients, right? We want to take the best of you and project that to the world so people can see that, and then they're going to want to come back to you and do some type of work with you.

Because you have to— it's not if you want to, you have to communicate it. But if you don't know If you're not clear with yourself, you don't have clarity, you cannot communicate that. Remember, if you don't, even if you want to say you are the best, if you don't communicate that you're the best, people don't know what they don't know. You have to communicate it. And if you don't know, if you don't have clarity, the only thing you're going to be communicating is buy my stuff, I have another training program. I just thought, you know, it's not—

Everybody's doing that, right? But what makes it really distinct, and this is what I want people to hear out there, and I have this conversation over and over and over over and over and over again with my coaching clients, my therapy clients, with, with branding, right? Whatever it is. And especially people, you know, in the, in the marketing world is how do you tell people what problem you are an expert or uniquely positioned to solve better than anybody else? And that's it, right? Like, why would one dentist be better than another dentist? There's so many things that are just so generic that the average person won't know. Why is one financial advisor better than another financial advisor? Well, again, it goes back to the relationship and it goes back to the non-salesy bait and switch of like, "Oh, I want to get a coffee with you." And all of a sudden they're pitching you. And I've had that happen. And I'm like, "Wow, you told me you wanted to get—" I thought we were going out because we met with a mutual friend. I wouldn't have consented it to being a pitch meeting. At 8 o'clock in the morning at Starbucks. So what makes you uniquely positioned? What makes you the actual expert on this specific thing that someone would actually care enough about that they're willing to spend more money with you than they are with someone else? Right, exactly. Domino's, like you were saying before about the branding when it comes to certain companies like Walmart versus Publix or whatever it may be. People are ordering Domino's, not because it's the world's greatest pizza, but because they guarantee to get it there in 30 minutes or less. So when you're drunk or you're starving and you can't wait for anything else, and that's the only place around and you don't want to move, I'll eat anything. We're going to get you. If you want to eat anything, we'll get it to you in 30 minutes or less. And that's their niche. So people need to be honest with what they are. And they can't advertise themselves being Prada when they are Walmart. And I see that a lot also. I see that in relationships a lot. I'm the best thing, right? I'm so great. I've done all this, right? No, you're really dollar store relationship. You're not Prada relationship. I love that one.

Dollar store. By the way, Jason Wasser, the last time we talked about— what was the question that you mentioned that it's— I know you've been talking a lot about marketing. What is it you haven't had the chance to talk about? Yeah. Or XYZ. I've been using it. And people, the last person that I asked, he went blank, like he wasn't expecting anybody to ask that question. So thank you.

I want to say thank you for that. My pleasure. Yeah. So the question that like I love asking that, that he was just referencing was people have their ritual things that they automatically go to. So I've been asking a lot of people, like, you know, outside of the things that you're commonly— especially like in podcasts, or if you're in the business world, like, you have your go-to touch points— but what else would you love to talk— like, what's on the top of your head? What have you been reading? What have you been researching? What's the most interesting thing to you? What have you been spending some of your time on most recently that you wish you had more time to talk about but no one asks you about? Right? If you want to get You know, tailor that to your own individual business line when connecting with someone, and you're going to automatically, you know, get out. I remember I was at a, at a BNI networking meeting. I'm not in BNI, but I'm friends with some people who, who are involved in BNI. And I've spent some time with Dr. Ivan Misner. And across the table at this coffee shop, which is owned by a childhood friend of mine, This guy was cracking up to my comments to this group of women who run this BNI chapter. I just started talking to him. He was at a different table, totally different, not even in our conversation. Afterwards, when they left, I went over to sit next to him. To this day now, this was pre-pandemic, so we're talking about January. To this day now, we still text a nice back and forth. At least once or twice a week because he stepped in in some way, shape, or form, right? Made himself known at another table, made us laugh, and then got our attention. And then we started a connection over that. And then we started talking like, "Oh man." And then we started getting into spirituality and psychology and self-care, personal development stuff. I'm like, "Well, there's our— what's the last book you read? What's the last workshop you did?" And now we have a basis of an immediate connection of a relationship. And that's what I think people are missing out there when it comes to connection. And really what we're trying to do— marketing is about connection, therapy is about true connection. You and I are really in the same field from different doorways.

Look, we've been talking about branding and communicating. So how about if I share with you some of the questions that I ask people Because I think you're gonna find them similar to what you, you know, what you do with your patients. Yeah. Okay, go ahead. Okay, so let me, let me, basically before I start any asking any marketing questions, the first question that I ask is, what is in your mind? Because at the end of the day, I really want to help them. So it's not, I don't start a meeting with my agenda. Okay, I have a checklist that I wanna go. So what is in your mind and is there anything else? But once we go back past the basic of the challenges, time, etc., I ask them, so what are you selling today? That's the one question I ask because I want to get clear that, you know, if you want to, if you're marketing, you know, what are you selling? The second question I ask is, can you show me what can be done with your product or service? I ask, I say, show me.

Right, can you demo it?

Yes, because most people like to talk and talk and not listen, but if you show and not tell, your marketing will be more effective. And something that I keep telling people, if a video, if a picture is worth 1,000 words, a video is worth 1,000 pictures. So what, that's why I say show. What can you show? Can you show me what can be done with your product? The third question is, which group of people are you selling to and what's in it for them? And that's when we start talking about the, you know, I want to sell to everybody. Yeah. But yeah, do you have the budget and the resources to sell everybody? And we move past that.

And does everybody need that? Right.

And then I say, can you tell me a story? Tell me a story of how you are selling what you're selling right now. Yeah. And they go in the process and 9 times out of 10, I record these sessions so they can review them. And when I point out what they say, they know exactly where I'm coming from and why I'm giving them that advice. But in summary, give me a summary. What can I get when I buy your product? Yeah. What are the different uses of your product or service, whatever the case may be?

Is it a single use or multi-use? Can I share it with somebody else? Yeah, etc. And sometimes we fail to communicate those things.

And, you know, also, what, what do you include with the purchase of Deep's product? You know, even if it's something simple like, hey, I'm including a README file, it's gonna be a link where you can get a tutorial or where you're gonna ask questions. A lot of companies fail to communicate simple things like that. That's part of the marketing, part of your message. What are some of the most frequently asked questions people ask you? And here is the— this one is the biggest one I say that is affecting marketing right now. If you are able to answer the top 20 questions people ask you from your insights, you're already above and beyond most of your competition. And it's that differentiation, meaning everybody can make scrum— most people can make scrambled eggs. It's so many ways that you can make scrambled eggs, What can you do different? Well, I put milk in my scrambled eggs to make them a little bit more fluffy. Some people put cream, but I like milk, and I do it with this, and I cut ham, and that's my way. Maybe you like it, give it a shot, but that's my way. What is your way? How can you do that? I ask questions about statistics, but a lot of people don't— I found that statistics these days are not being so effective Mainly because most people believe that statistics are made up on the spot, but they're good to have numbers. If you have some stats from a well-researched study or stats from your clients, which leads me to the next question, which is, you know, case studies. When was the last, you know, the case stories, if you look at people that are actually gaining a lot of traction with their marketing message because they prove a case study, even if people, even if it's on their website and they're not selling anything, They can see the result other people got, not just from a video testimonial, but, you know, an actual case study.

And that's a good point, right? Even if you can't get a testimonial, but you know, it was a successful case or scenario or a transaction from your side, you can walk it through as a narrative. Client called about this. They were, you know, we asked them how many other places they called. We asked them how they had this product before. Did they return it, right? Whatever it is, or did they go to another doctor or they go to another therapist? What was their results with that person? Why are you coming here, right? Offered them the service, gave them the service, this was the outcome, right? So if you can write that up as a narrative or share that as your own version of a testimonial of an experience with a client, and right, because we can't always get those testimonials. In my field, it's very difficult because of confidentiality. For those reasons. So I can't, you know, like if someone like says, hey, like, you know, I get a really nice email from a client, I'll take a snippet of that and make it into like a quote card. Obviously, I'm not gonna say who it is, right? But I bet my clients like it's— there's no identifying information there. But I can't say, hey, will you give me a testimonial?

Because legally, technically, I can't do that. Um, I will. I'm I don't want to say I will argue with that one, but I will say this. In the doctors that I've been helping, one of the first tasks that we do is invite a bunch of clients that are willing to do testimonials and we record testimonials. And I ask very specific questions, but I use it for a double purpose. If I'm going to help you, I need to understand. This is an opportunity for me to interview and see really what your clients are saying about you. Because what you say, what you say, it might not be what is in their mind. So one good marketing habit is to copy word by word what your customers are saying about you. Right. Exactly. Don't change anything. Don't try to make sound more smart. Use exactly how they're— use the language that they're using. And that's another reason why it's So basically, you know, yeah, we're using the testimonial to promote the practice. However, as a marketing guy, I need to survey your— I should be surveying, and you know, you as a business owner, you should be surveying and knowing, getting to know your customer a little bit more. It's something that is a new message that I've been pushing also. If you don't learn something about Fred, Fred is going to be your ideal customer, your preferred customer. And if you don't learn about something new about Fred as often as possible, your competition will, and they will capture Fred.

Fred's attention. And all the Freds that are out there.

Right. 100%. So, you, that's a, if it's not the most important marketing task, it's one of the most important weekly marketing tasks that you should be doing. And if you delegate your social media marketing or any marketing at all, when you're having that monthly meeting, hopefully you're having a monthly meeting to find what worked, what didn't work, and what you're going to do next, you are holding that person that is helping you accountable to say, what did you learn about Fred today? How we're going to help Fred in the next 30 days. Because if you are not doing it, you're just talking and talking and talking and not listening. And somebody will listen to Fred and will put that message out there.

Agreed. Agreed. Yeah. And I think that's part of the conversation that therapists get to have that opportunity to dissect that with clients in session. And I always ask this, after my first session with a new client and we start our second session, I'll ask them the following. From our conversation last week, what are some of the things that you thought about what worked for you, that you liked, that you got benefit from? And which part of our conversation actually did nothing for you or didn't give you any value?

Love it. Love it.

Because that streamlines so much. Yes. That tells them that I'm not just like spouting stuff. I want to streamline it to them. I want to sift and sort through how I can best serve them. And so when I asked it to a new client this week, the fact that they paused to think about it made me really happy. When I said, "What didn't serve you?" They weren't just like— because a lot of people are like, "Oh, I don't want this guy to feel bad. No, we like him. He's really nice." But me being really nice doesn't help you solve your problems. It's part of my toolset, but that doesn't mean it's the tool that will solve your problem. Right? It's an attribute, but it's not. So that's why I really was glad that the clients that I really know that I want to work with are the ones that are gonna be like, you know what, Jason, when you went down that path, I really didn't know where you're going. So can you just explain what that was about? Oh, clarity, clarity, overcommunicate. And I think that's right. I think that's what we need to do more when it comes to marketing, when it comes to branding, when it comes to putting ourselves out there is overcommunicate. What are you known for and how do you do it and how you get it out there has to be part of that and overcommunicating that without it being salesy, and that's always the balance.

You know what most people don't communicate enough and they should overcommunicate? What we talked about, purpose, mission, vision. Also, what about the guarantee? That's one of the questions that I ask. How can you guarantee customer satisfaction? How can you guarantee results? And sometimes they're in fields, they're maybe in marketing. I cannot guarantee specific results from an ad. I can share what happened or what one thing that I will guarantee to people, and I started communicating that and it works, is that I will do the right thing when you're not looking. Yeah. Yeah. That's my guarantee. I will do the right thing for you when you're not looking. Whether it's early in the morning, late at night, or during the day, I'm going to make sure that that is done the best way possible and you get the information. But that is— I gave you about 15 questions there. I have a total of like 43 that I ask during— I have a 4-step process and the question I ask in the second meeting or the second step, and that's when people start getting the, oh, Oh, I didn't know that. And that is the psychology behind it because marketing is art, but also science. And the science is not just numbers and looking at analytics. It's also, you know, you're dealing with people, with human beings. You got to understand how to communicate to people.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's what the podcast is about, right? It's the theme of You Winning Life. It's psychology. Natural and alternative wellness, spirituality, and entrepreneurship. And it's all about how do you communicate your best version of yourself so you can really have a meaningful, authentic existence. So Angel, I really do— before we— if there's one, you know, one or two last thoughts before we jump off.

And I will say, if, if for people that are either listening or watching, if they can just answer those questions and just start communicating those things in their marketing, even if you think you're communicating that already, ready, if you just refine that answer a little bit more and then start communicating and posting that on social media. It doesn't have to be video, but again, if a picture is worth 1,000 words, a video is worth 1,000 pictures. So, do it as much as possible. Plus, if you pull your iPhone, it's faster and more efficient just to record yourself. But if you answer those questions and you start sprinkling that on social media, on your marketing, the upcoming days, I will guarantee you're going to start getting better results. But I also would love for you to come back and leave a comment on Jason's podcast, if you're audio or video, and let him know that you got some value out of it.

Yeah, thank you. That's, that's so important because, right, that's one of the things that you and I are trying to do is that even if we're not working with someone, we still want to provide as much value as possible. And that's one of the reasons why I'm doing this podcast. It's an outpouring of conversations I'm having with my therapy and coaching clients as well as with, with colleagues and friends that I want to bring and share to everybody else out there. So for everybody— excuse me— for everybody who's been listening, right, we've been talking to Angel Anderson. He is an expert marketer. He's in Florida but works with clients all over. Please check out his website. It's angelanderson.com. And Angel, again, thank you so much for spending this last hour with us.

Thank you for having me, Jason. Thanks for listening to the You Winning Life podcast.

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