How To Use The Lighthouse Method To Scale Any Business with George Bryant

Welcome back to another sizzle and hot episizzle. Other podcasts have episodes here at Bacon Wrap Business we have episizzles. And this is Brad. I'm back again today with a very special guest named George Bryant, who I'll explain who he is and why he's here in just a moment. But if you are a longtime listener and subscriber, thank you very much. If you are not, please hit the subscribe button so you don't miss a single episode or as a fuck this, I'm going to do it again.

I'm out of. I'm out of practice on this.

All right, we're back with another episode of Bacon Wrapped Business. This is Brad Costanzo and I am very grateful for all my listeners and everybody who emailed me after last week's episizzle about why Led Zeppelin is wrong and how their mistake can help you make better offers. If you haven't listened to that, go back and listen to just the previous one to this, and I think you'll get a lot out of it. As I said, I love hearing and reading some of the emails that I've been receiving, which, by the way, if you haven't emailed me, you can always do that@bradbaconwrappedbusiness.com today I have got a very special guest with me. His name is George Bryant and George is a New York Times best selling author. But he's also one of the most highly sought after digital marketing consultants in the world. And his brand, his motto, his philosophy is that relationships beat algorithms. We're going to talk a lot about that, but George has helped literally hundreds of the largest companies in the world and thousands of smaller entrepreneurs as well, ethically scale their business. By whom, really deepening their relationships with their customers and creating a transformational breakthrough that helped them accomplish their goals faster and easier. George is a close friend of mine. We have.

Had many, many offline conversations and a lot of fun. And I've recently invited him on the show today to talk about some of the really cool things that he does, is doing and will do potentially the two of us together going forward. Because I like George. I think you'll like George and George. Hope you like my listeners. Welcome to Bacon Wrap Business.

Thanks for having me. I like myself too. It's awesome. And I like everybody and you. And so now we just have to wrap bacon around everything which I the synergy here, since I ran a bacon business for eight years before we got to this point is hilarious.

Now when you say you ran a Bacon business. You had the Paleo stuff, right? Or did you actually. Is this a new surprise? You actually.

Oh, no, no, no, no. I think you know all of it now. I think we've had. We should record all of our offline conversations because they're just riddled with gold. But, yeah, no, I had a. I got started in all this Internet marketing stuff and business and entrepreneurship as a food blogger in the paleo space. And so, yeah, I wrote. I mean, I was pretty dumb when I started, right? I have no problem being really honest. I named my business the best thing ever, Civilized Caveman Cooking Creations. And I bought that URL really easy.

Wait, hold on. Civilized Caveman Cooking creations dot com.

Civilized Caveman Cooking creations dot com. Right? So I came out of the gate hot, ready to succeed, to where I couldn't even spell my own domain name. And literally, I struggled for years. And it's funny, because over the course of eight years, it went from Civilized Caveman Cooking Creations to Civilized Caveman Cooking. And then I finally got just Civilized Caveman. And so, like, about every two years, the URL changed, and I finally got to where, like, I ended up, and then I just gave the company away.

That's fantastic. When were you running that? When did you start that?

I started it in 2000 and the end of 2009, so early 2010. I started it right when I got back from Afghanistan, but it didn't start as a website. It started as a Facebook page. And so I basically wanted to beat my bulimia, right? So, I mean, you know, but we don't have to go deep into it, but I struggle with, like, eating disorders and, you know, a whole lot of body image issues. And after I lost my dad to cancer, I was in Afghanistan, and I'd witnessed more death than anybody should really want to witness anymore. And I was like, I want to be here. Like, I want to live, but, like, this isn't living. And I was like, I'm repeating patterns, like a miserable. And so I started crossfitting and found Paleo. And I was like, yeah, but I can't hold myself accountable, like, when I'm left to myself, like, there's no way. And I was like, but if I teach myself how to cook and I just post about it on Facebook every day, nobody will know I'm using. You know, at the time, my seven Facebook friends with my fake college email so I could get an account in 2009 to hold me accountable. But it helped create consistency. So in the beginning, all I did was found other people's recipes. And I would just cook them and post a photo of it on a Facebook page. And I would just post every single day. Every single day. And then after, like, I want to say it was like six months, because it was like the middle of April of 2000 or middle of 2010, like, June. And someone's like, God, like, I love this. And remember when we used to use the notes section on Facebook pages like that? Long ago, 10 years ago. They're like, hey, this is great, but it's so hard to see the notes. You know, where do you think about starting a blog? And I was like, what's a blog? And they're like, have you heard of Blogger? I'm like, no, what's blogger? And I literally went to blogger.com that day and I started an account. I made a website by myself, and that's how I started all this. Like, literally 2010, blogger.com. that was it.

Wow, that's. That's fantastic. Now, the. That business you ended up. Did you say you ended up selling?

I ended up giving it away as a Christmas present to a mastermind student.

That's awesome.

It was good. I mean, it was good. I mean, in. The business was massively, massively successful. I mean, I did everything. Like, I tell everybody, I joke about this when I keynote. I said I was successful because I was dumb, but I really, really mean that because I didn't have any background in business, marketing, entrepreneurship. I knew nothing. And so all I literally did was met people. I talked to people all day, every day, responded to every comment, every email, and then whatever they asked for, I made. And that was, like, literally how I ran that business. And so I had no construct of, like, oh, this. This is what it should look like. This is how to write a headline. This is how to create a product. I was like, oh, that's what they want. I'll give it to them.

Right? That's it. It's one of those things that you hear that story not that much, but occasionally it either works out tremendously well or terrible. Right? Like just doing it on instinct, which is what you did. It worked out really well. You fortunately, have good instincts. And there's some people who. They would try to do that, and then they just get wrecked. Although at the same time, I think that what they. The people who try it on instinct without really getting educated on it, where they fail is they're probably not actually using their instinct. They're probably just throwing crap at the wall. I mean, your instinct was just simply, like, very human like, what do people want? Let me talk to them and let me give it to them. So you didn't overcomplicate it. And I think a lot of people kind of over complicate it. And then I think this plays really well into this idea, this brand that you have of relationships over algorithms. I mean, what's more complicated than an algorithm?

Nothing, nothing.

What is less complicated than a relationship? I mean, that's, we are, that is the very first thing we do when we are born, as we bond and we build relationships with our parents and everything else. And it, you know, it's the thing through life. And I know that whenever I talk to you and whenever we first met and every time I hear your stories, it's constantly like, wait, you worked with who? You, you did what? Like, some of your clients are really, really big, well known companies and individuals and people that household names. And then you've also, but you also work with a lot of smaller businesses and help them scale and become that household name, et cetera. Tell me a little bit more about this whole philosophy of relationships, beating algorithms and how that ties in to the way that you scale. And also, what do you mean by ethically scale? Because you say that I help businesses ethically scale. So I wrapped a lot into that question, but.

Yeah, you did. That's a whole episode. But we'll got it. We got it. We got it. Yeah. So, you know, the thing for me is like at the end of the day, on the other side of every transaction, purchase conversion is a human being, a mother, a daughter, a sister, a brother, a husband, a wife, whatever that case is. And I just had this belief system that if somebody doesn't have a good experience, they're probably not going to tell their friends and they're probably not going to achieve the desired promised results, which basically creates an anti marketing machine for your business. And so, you know, because of the way I started my first company, I just had a rule in the company that no matter what, we would respond to every comment. And that means when I had, you know, 180,000 Instagram followers, I had about a million Facebook followers. I mean, we literally responded to every one of them. But the momentum from that, like the connection, the clarity, the results that people got, was mind blowing. Because people don't buy the best products, they buy the best relationship, no matter what. At the end of the day, they buy it either because of the relationship with the company or the relationship they'll have with other people because of what it means about them or how it Helps them be educated or social status or something along those lines. And so I just kind of learned that way in the beginning. And so once I started helping other companies, so what had happened was I was basically burnt out of that business and it wasn't really doing it anymore. And someone's like, God, will you help me do what you did? And I was like, what do you mean? They're like, we just teach us what you were doing, like, how you did this, how you did this, this, and how you did this. And so I luckily, like, my first client was Men's Health, because I gave a keynote on relationships. And they were in the audience and they were like, come help us.

Where did you give a keynote at?

That was at a consumer health summit with Michael Fishman. And it was my first ever keynote. And I just kind of wong it and talked about, you can't build a business that's help, not helping people or they're failing or, you know, it's not working, or they don't achieve the desired results. And I was like, stop handing people off to your creepy uncle in the candy van with your affiliate offer, right? Like, I said these things and like, yeah, we could totally use this. And so I just started taking that philosophy of, like, those are human beings, right? Like, we have to respond to comments, we have to respond to DMs. If they're taking the time to reach out to us and we don't respond, we train them that we don't care and how can they convert? And so we basically. I just took that and over time, I basically utilized that. And I would go into companies and I would help them and it would, like, have a massive impact. It would double their conversions, it would double their open rates, their social would grow. People would recommend it. So after about like 10 or 15 clients, I was like, yeah, this is something like, this is. This is something like, I can't believe I'm getting paid to teach people how to be a human. But at the end of the day, right, I'm all for this and it helps people. And so I just continued to do it. But then it started. A lot of it was, like, on social and kind of like social media primarily. And then I started applying it to email. And then I started looking at it from, like a holistic customer journey standpoint, like congruency from the moment they find you to when they're a customer, you know, two years from now. And then as I progressed down and I got deeper and deeper into companies, it was like, oh, now this is Directly influencing AOV and LTV and retention and reducing churn. And so we just started to apply it everywhere. And really the foundation of it is that at the end of the day, like the success of your marketing is predicated on you delivering what you promised. And a lot of people don't. And not, I don't think it's out of like malice, I think it's just not, it's out of not understanding human psychology. Right. I see this all the time. It's like, oh, download, you know, my PDF or do the seven day challenge. And you're like, you just promised somebody you're gonna give them a seven day challenge. You email them once and expect them to achieve the results. And then three days later you slide in with an offer or an upsell or another newsletter and they don't achieve the result. And then we're offering them something else which just pushes them further away.

They know it's a bait and switch, they know that it's up. And you know, that's one of the things you said there. I give this advice to clients, friends, colleagues and especially in the service oriented business, it applies to everybody. But if you're in the service based business, the only thing you really need to do in order to be in the top, what I think 5 or 10% of your field is just deliver on expectations. You don't even need to exceed them. Because I believe that so many service providers.

They, they don't meet expectations there and they don't do what's just generally expected, that if you just do that, you're ahead of the game, right? That, that alone. So it's a, it's a great advantage for anybody, like just actually give a crap about your customers.

Well and like when you think about it, right, the way that I think about it, it's no different than like, and I always use this example, like if somebody comes to you and you're like, I want to lose a hundred pounds. And you're like, okay, cool, I can help you in the next 12 months. And you're like, hey, here's your meal plans, here's your food, here's your workouts. I'll see you in 12 year. They're not going to succeed, right? But the moment you're like, hey, don't worry about any of that, don't worry about the diet, don't worry about the gym. Just meet at 7am tomorrow and drink some water and you start creating momentum. They literally keep going and going and going and going and we have to deliver these Micro wins and micro commitments. Because the customer journey, unless you're literally out, like, I just want one transaction and I'm good, which no business does. Because you want that word of mouth marketing machine. You need to make sure that you're designing journeys that set people up to win and take them on this journey. And like you said, it's not like you're out here like surprising, delighting, like, you know, designing the Ritz Carlton and rolling out the red carpet. You're just simply taking what you promised and offered and you're creating a journey or a container that basically ensures the only option is success. And if they don't succeed, you've done everything in your power, which means instead of blaming you, they call you for help. And so it's a really, really simple process. But like, I mean, like, it's like my son, like when I was learning how to walk, right? Like, hey, figure it out, right? And then he falls down like, oh, you're done. No, I'm like, okay, let's stand up again. Like, let's go. And you basically design it to help people solve for like the challenges and the objections and actually achieve the results. And listen, somebody who achieves a result in the beginning is worth 25 times more than somebody who gets promised it and doesn't get it. And so, you know, the way that I look at it, with customer journeys, you have two options. You can play checkers or you can play chess. And if you play checkers, you run out of company, you run out of customers, you have to do crazy front end acquisition, you have to find new audiences, new niches and new offers and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, but if you do it the chess way, you actually have to figure out how to maintain all the traffic that comes because everybody's results are speaking for themselves, right?

Well, and what I like about the focus on the relationships, as I said, it's very fundamental and everybody should be able to do it because there's no, there is no super high tech. I mean, there's high tech ways to improve the relationships, but in general you just go through and at every step of the journey. But these days there are more and more marketing channels opening up all the time. They are getting more complicated, sometimes more expensive. Just trying to keep up with all of the marketing tactics du jour is overwhelming and exhausting. But what I like about your approach is it just goes back to the most fundamental thing, that even if we get all the technology wrong, even if we don't have the prettiest website. Even if we don't do, if we, if they know that we care and we're available and we've thought about their process more, we'll probably, you know, come out ahead. And it's a great equalizer.

Right.

What have been some of the your favorite, I guess I hate to use the word case study, but maybe a before and after wins where you were like, look, whether it was your own business because you have multiple or whether it was, you know, one of your clients to go. All right, when I came in starting off, this is what was going on and this is the approach I took. Walk like kind of walk me through the way that looks.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I have two that popped off right in my head and I can't share the company names, but it'll make sense to you regardless. So one of them, my favorite one because I've never seen results like this in my entire life. And so one of them had a supplement and they were selling subscriptions on the front, right? And so cold traffic, two subscriptions with a supplement that works good, priced best on the market. And they were getting conversions. But their churn around like month three was basically gone, right? It was just basically 80% of them were dropping at month three. And I just started looking at it a little bit differently and I'm like, God, it's really hard to commit to a subscription like something every 30 days for somebody that might not have an established habit that might not be completely ingrained, right? And so I was like, I wonder what will happen if we take the subscription off the front. We only sell one and we email them every day for 30 days to establish a habit. And then at the end of the habit we make an offer for the subscription. And so we removed the subscription from the front. We didn't discount it, we gave it full price. And then they got a daily email for 30 days teaching them like how to use it, when to take it, reminders to lay it out before bed, when to put it in their smoothies, like literally just value based content. And then we made an offer for a subscription like a subscribe and save like 10% and. And then they committed and then the churn or the average retention went from 3 months to 14 months off that offer. And so it basically like 10x the company and ad cost was actually cheaper because it was a smaller commitment, right? It wasn't like, oh, I'm committing to every month and I know you can use discounts, you can use percentages off on the front, but you're still getting somebody to commit to a period of time where they don't have the, the indoc into the product or the habit around it or the results that it promises to get that in. And so they're like, oh, I'll play with it. But they don't really fully commit. So we said, well, let's take all those objections off the table and let's make it harder to leave than it is to stay, right? And so you get somebody to take X supplement and they feel better and they're feeling better and then the thought of them running out scares them. And that's a good thing, right, because you've helped them achieve their goal. And, and so then we offer this subscription. And so it went from three months to about 14 months with that. And the only thing we did was email. That was it. It was just remove the subscription on the front, add the one product and then introduce the subscription anywhere between three to four weeks in and, and then offer the subscription. And then we emailed them every day for 30 days. And it was literally like, I can't even explain how baby stepped it was. It was like, congrats, you did the best step. Well, we're shipping it in the mail. Make sure you get these ingredients from the store. Maybe get this pill organizer, right? We're gonna be walking you through this every day. And we basically embedded like a habit challenge into the emails without calling it a challenge. It was just the fulfillment sequence for the product.

Did the. I love that, I love the simplicity of it. And I'm just kind of thinking into the emails, like, was it challenging to come up with new original content every single day to kind of help?

No. It took me 20 minutes to map out 365 emails.

Oh, Lord.

Yeah. So I just, I just grabbed a bunch of sticky notes and team members and I went straight to customer service and I said, what are all the biggest complaints customer service issues and problems people have with these products? And then I went to the social media team and I said, what are all the ways you get tagged and using this product? How do people post about it? Boom, boom, boom. And so I took and gathered all of that. We had about 340 to 350 ideas. And so then I summarized it down and then I knew that I had about five to six days before they received the product at the back end because of shipping zones. And so everything that would get in the way of them using the product went in the first five emails. Hey, the biggest mistake people make is they open the package and put it in their pantry. I want you to put it on your kitchen counter and I want you to take three out and put them next to your bed, right? And then it was like. And the other mistake people make is they don't prep the night before. So before you go to bed tonight, make the smoothie, make the whatever. And it was like literally, like basically managing every which way to be like a personal trainer in your pocket to help them go through. And so in the beginning it was like, what gets in the way? And I was like, what are all the big challenges and problems? And so we solved those and then we moved into habit formation. And so every day I would remind them of the same things, like, hey, you're gonna crush today. Here's that smoothie I told you about. And don't forget when you get home, right? Or remember when you get home to leave this out. And then even on shipping day or on delivery day, we would have it triggered. And we took a photo of what the box looked like at a front door. And then we took a photo of a UPS guy holding a box. And so we'd send him an email and we're like, hey, your box is at your front door. Remember I talked to you the other day? Grab it, put it on your counter, scoop it out. And so we just, it's taking the.

Call to action to the next level, right?

Like, oh, man. And then I had this program too. And I did it for a little while, but I had this program where the shipping label, I could just change their name and have it on the shipping label with the UPS guy holding it. It was just a plugin for an email. And so every time that UPS image would come, it would be a smiling UPS driver and they could see their name on the box. But it wasn't like a shipping label. It was in big letters, right? Just because I wasn't pretending it was their real shipping label. And so then all I thought about then was like, what are all the best ways people use the product with the least amount of commitment, right? And I was like, up, add it to your coffee, add it to your smoothie, put it in your lunch, add it to your soup. And I basically figured out all the user generated content that was posted, all the best ways people used it. And then I put them in the emails and because I was using all that UGC and I said, oh, and when you use it, make sure you tag us on Instagram and use this hashtag. Because we pick one person a week to give a Year supply to. And so I just embedded it in and it wasn't like hard CTAs because it was just value and it was just content. And really it was accountability. Right. It's no different than like, you know, all of us that support each other. It's like, hey, drink your water today. Or hey, did you work out today? Or like, hey, make sure you eat good, right? Like, it's just that accountability piece that people want and that's what they're paying for. So that was that hands down. That was when I fell in love with email and it became so important for everything I do. And it is the base of every customer journey I do. Email is my favorite thing in the world. So that was one of them.

I love every, I love every piece of that and I love how it kind of integrates almost like a coaching aspect with it and people, you know, people aren't used to getting that, especially if it's an E commerce based product. Right. If you're signing up to be like for a coach, that's a different story. But you know, you've worked a lot with like e commerce based products and things that don't naturally work for that, but you've proven that by taking that angle. It absolutely works.

You made me think of something here.

I'm sure I'll come back to what I just thought about, but did you? You said you had another.

I have another one.

Yeah, hit me.

Yeah, this is my favorite. This is my favorite one from a paid media traffic perspective. Yeah. And so I have a belief that you should never put coupons on the front. And if you're going to put a coupon on the front, you might as well just discount your damn product.

Right?

Like you're just screaming, I don't think I'm valuable. I don't think I'm valuable. And I'm really desperate to convince you and you can get mad at me all day and I will help you fix it anyways. And so I was like, okay, listen, so this, this offer stack, like this paid media funnel with retargeting was basically like, hey, take your discount on the front, right? And then if they didn't take it, they were retargeted with a kind of like a bundle of it, but at less of a discount. Right? So they were basically incentivizing people to take the discount and then punishing them if they didn't. Right. And so it went discount and then just a bundle and then full price was the last offer. And I was like, yeah, I just this isn't going to work. And I said, we got to stop discounting it. So I flipped the entire thing, and what it used to be was discount. And then, you know, like, retarget product. Retarget product. Hey, here's an offer again. Retarget product. Retarget product. Here's an offer again. I said, you guys are costing yourself way too much money and you're not utilizing content. I said, what are the big three benefits of this supplement? This happened to me, another supplement company, and they were like energy, mood, and Sleep. I'm like, great, go write me a pillar page on each one, right? An energy page, a sleep page, and a mood page. And I said, let's give people full price on the front, right? Let's just offer it. And by the way, right off the bat, that saved them or made them like an extra hundred grand a month because so many people were actually taking the full price offer, right? So they were actually costing themselves money by running a discount in the front. It was converting better at full price.

Well, now, did you also, when you said create a pillar page. So did you Were they before just sending to like a. Just a general product page, like, here, come get this and here's the discount?

Yeah.

You had them create like a page all about, like you said, it's like sleep or Mood, and it just sold that better, right?

Well, no. So basically, no, it was just the top of the funnel ad. It was an ad that was running at a discount or an ad that was running at full price. And the ad that was running at full price to that audience converted better than the discount.

Really?

Yeah, it was really, really interesting. I didn't expect that. It was like a bonus gift. Right. And so then when they looked at the full price and they took it, great. They're handled. When they didn't take it, instead of retargeting them to a discount, I was like, what's the big one? And they're like, sleep. I'm like, cool. Take three pieces of Sleep content and then run it for engagement, right? Like, give them the value in the ad. Don't send them back to the product. Send them a video, send them that sleep guide. Send them that piece of content. And if they hit that blog post, they might give us their email or click on the product, right? And then we don't have to pay for retargeting. And so then after they got three touch points, then we were like, okay, let's make an offer. And then we would offer, you know, like the Sleep bundle, right? And it was like, okay, hey, I know you're interested in sleep, right? Cause you, you know, blank, blank, blank. So you can get this and our sleep guide, here's our PDF sleep guide, right? And then that would work for some. And when it didn't, I was like, great, what's the next one? And they're like mood. I'm like, great, hit them with the Mood content. And then it would be the same thing, same offer with a Mood bundle. Right. Which was just a piece of digital content with the same product. And then if that didn't go, then we went to the energy one. And then finally, and I mean finally, if that didn't go, then we're like, okay, listen, we believe in it so much, we will give you a discount just so you can try it.

But it's not until way after you've.

Just delivered value like nine touch points down the road. And, and that basically took. It was around, I want to say it was around $750,000 a month on ad spend and they were getting like a 1.67, 1.8 ROAS, which we needed about 2. And then when we flipped it, it was the same ad spend but it was getting like a 5.7 roas. And we were saving so much money because we were allowing people to self select into what they were interested in. Right. And so they would hit that sleep article, they click on related posts and end up converting. Right, that hit that Mood article, same thing. And so we utilize the power of what we can own and control for that customer. But we were literally solving problems while saving ourselves money on the acquisition side.

I love that. So let me, let me try to recap what you said, just for my own benefit.

You started off with ads about, let's just say energy would be the first one.

Right.

How to get more energy. And it was how to get more energy. This is a great way. We have a cool pill here, go get it. And it was just straight to a full priced offer, no discount. Correct. Cool. If people bought it, awesome. They enter the buyer sequence. If not, then, but if they like clicked on it, they didn't buy it, you would send them content based ads, is that correct? All about. Let's, let's say for instance, three content based ads all about energy, how to get more energy, et cetera. And it would it be how to get more energy regardless of whether or not you take our pill?

Yep. Right.

It's about the solution, not the product.

Yep, it was the solution every single time.

That's where I think A lot of people mess up is that they think the solution and the product is the same thing. And it's not. There's many solutions. There's one product, right? Like, and people, you know, they go through the stages of awareness from problem aware, solution aware. That is not product aware. That means, like, even when they're product aware, it's not even brand aware. There's that extra step, like, I might know that I need a vitamin B12 supplement. And that's the product that, like, the solution is, you know, vitamin B product is vitamin B12 brand is like Brad Costanzo's B12.

Yep.

You know, Right, Cool. So, and it was all of the educational content in the ad, or did it take them to, like, native articles?

So I did this all the same. So basically I would write a pillar page with like three big takeaways and then add one was takeaway one. And then if you wanted the PDF and the rest of it, like, because it was too long to put into an ad, then you would click through the blog. Add two was tip two. And then if you wanted tips one and three, you went to the blog and ad three was tip three. And so even if you missed like the first two and you saw three, it basically harped on whichever one resonated with you. Because one of them was about, like, naturally boosting energy with food. One of them was like the five best recipes you can make at home to boost that energy. Right? And then one was like the hidden. I think I actually wrote one. I think I said like the hidden toxins hiding in your bedroom. And it was like your cell phone, right? And it went, it went back. And then really what had happened is that, you know, when we think about it, it's like, I want more energy. Well, what are you, what are you going to choose? 2 and a half hours of cooking, grocery shopping, you know, blank, blank, blank, or this one pill that you can just take and replicate all of that stuff. And so it allowed people to gather their own dissonance, but also set them up to be better customers because then once they took the product, we would then use that same content in the nurture sequences to be like, hey, remember when we told you about this? Like, this is how you boost your energy. Now it'll be. The supplement will be three times as effective because now you're taking it and doing these other things. And so it was dual purpose, triple purposed all over the place.

I love that. You know, that actually reminds me of another. I'll share this with you. This is A strategy that's not, it's actually pretty complementary to this and it's a really good way for list building.

So my friend Peter Spaipin told me about this a few years ago and I loved it. But the idea is, you know, whenever you're advertising, especially if you're advertising for an email lead, right. What a lot of people do is they'll tease and then they'll give you the content after you give them the email, right? But so what he would do, especially on Facebook is he would take long like 1000 word Facebook post and this could be organic or even an ad and it would be chock full of really.

Useful content. Actionable content I should say, right? You want it to kind of be actionable. Something that they're reading this and they're like, wow, this is like really good. Almost like I can't believe somebody giving me these steps for free. Now at the end of it, the call to action was simply like, listen, I know this was a lot to read in a Facebook post. If you'd like like a download or printable PDF of this, just shoot me an email or click here or do something. So what people are opting in for, they're opting in for the same thing, but they're opting in for a more convenient modality to consume it. Because we all know like we can. I've saved so many things on Facebook, like so many posts, like, oh my man, I want to refer back to that. But if somebody said, by the way, if you want to, you want a PDF of this, like I'll give it to you, it's like shit, that's cool. Plus you can bonus the PDF up with something else. So I did this when I owned a. I owned a. I purchased a website called Homebrew Academy a few years ago with my partners Joe and Matt. We've since sold the business. But one of the things when I, this is the first time I tried it was and I know nothing about home brewing but we found one of the most popular blog articles and I don't even remember what it was, but it was like a thousand page thing and it just again if you want, just you know, leave a, leave a message, tell me you want the PDF and I'll send it to you. And we had many chat fired up right where it was just like, oh cool, yeah, here, I'll give it to you. But we had the cheapest most opt ins I've ever gotten simply by offering somebody the same content but in a different modality and I don't know, it's not exactly what you're talking about, but it's similar and it's, but it's also like leading with just value. Like, let me just teach you, I don't need anything else.

Yep.

And those people who said that was so good, I want it in another form. Those are going to be your best prospective customers because you've also already given them great results every time.

More information.

Anyway, I thought I would share that, you know, with you. The.

There's a lot to do when it comes to scaling a business, especially in e commerce. And you've got everything from, I mean you've got everything from the front end marketing and maximizing all the channels and doing the most from the customer journey to the right kind of advertising to the back end stuff like managing cash flow management and all that other stuff.

With the stuff that you've done to work with these. Like how much of it, like if you were to put a percentage of it, how much is the customer journey based?

90%.

90%. See that, that brings me a lot of like relief to hear that as well. Going, man, it does. If you just focus deep on that, the rest of the stuff doesn't get as complicated, does it?

Well, because when you, when you focus deep on it, what you do is you handle most of your marketing for yourself, right? But like the analogy I use is you can't adopt any more children so you can feed the ones that you have.

And like that's, that's the mistake with most of it and the mistake most people made with amplification, whether it's earned or paid, that you're basically amplifying a broken home and you're expecting people to pay you full price for it. Right? And I was like, but if you just simply take some time on the back end instead of trying to acquire a hundred new customers, if you help 100 more on the back end achieve the goal that you promised, not only will they invite all their friends, but then they're going to escalate up your value ladder as well. They're going to increase their subscriptions, their LTVs, you know, they'll come to your events, your masterminds, you pick it up. There is zero way, and I mean zero way to lose if you just continually go deep on a customer journey. And so when I look at amplification, your customer journey is the fire. And amplification paid media is the lighter fluid. But if you pour lighter fluid on the ground, you won't get a fire. And I watch Marketers all day, like sitting there with lighter fluid, like pouring it on the ground, like, God, I just, I'm still freezing. I'm still freezing. I'm like, yeah, I know. Yep.

No, exactly. Now I love that.

When it comes to the customer journey, you talk about containers and I know there's a lot of different points so there. But I want you to kind of elaborate a little bit more because I know that there's a lot more than most people think on average. But what are all the various points of the customer journey that you really have to think about? Because I know there's the, you know, before they buy, the prospect. But I'm guessing that there that you've even kind of segmented it out into more granular. Like it's not just before they buy. There's probably a few different aspects there. Can you kind of go through at a high level, just some of those, those, the various journeys that the customer goes on.

Thousand percent, right? Like we all use that, like people have used the same terms, right? Awareness, consideration, you know, blah, blah, blah. I go straight to relationships, right? So I'm like, literally you're, you're speed dating and the first time you sit in front of somebody, right? Like that. And this is what I think. Brad and I just want to make this point. Everybody focuses so much on the conversion. They miss the fact that they set themselves up to win or fail based on the first touch point. That first touch point sets the paradigm, the entire context for how somebody views your relationship. Like, remember the first time you went into a car dealership and you had a sleazy experience, right? Remember the first time you went into a store and you had a positive experience or a restaurant and a negative experience, right? It dictates everything that you do whether you come back or not, how you talk about it or not. And so a lot of people neglect that, which means you have to have the whole journey designed to ensure that what you're posting out into the world is congruent and matches, right? So the first phase, it's no different than dating. And I always use dating analogies and.

You get these, I always use dating analogies for marketing because picking up chicks and picking up checks, not much difference.

Oh, look at you wrap it in bacon and it sizzles, right? And so when you think about it, it's like, hey, like you go through these phases through like this, hey, like identify phase, right? Like I break it down into a five part customer journey, right? I go identify, discover, court, enroll and nurture. And so Identify, right? Like somebody has to be aware that you exist, right? So we're talking here, people talking about you, right? Another neglected area. Brands don't control what influencers say because they just say like, oh, go say this. Or they don't know their brand messaging or what they offer their customers. So you get affiliates and customers not knowing what to say about you, right? Can you imagine if Nike was like, just do it, maybe do it, I'll do it later, right? Like that doesn't work so well, right? So you have the identify phase. And that's like anywhere somebody could find you could be a billboard, a radio ad, a podcast, a shout out, your organic social, right? Once they've identified you, your job in that situation is to get their attention for them to self identify that you are the right fit for them or the right fit for whatever their problem is that they're seeking or content, they're looking to consume. And then they move into the discover phase. And the discover phase is kind of like the I'm dating around, right? Like, I'm dating like three different people, right? Like, you have to be consistent with me. And what you have to do is you have to earn my trust, right? So they might go from there to like, oh, I'm gonna check out their social. They might click around and be like, God, I saw that ad. Oh, their social really adds value. Wow, they really talk about this all the time. Look at all these other people tagging them, right? But you're also competing against two, three, four other people, right? And so then what they're looking for is that depth and congruency. They might even leave a comment. And if you don't respond, game over. But if you respond first, you probably win the moment. They're in that where they're like, God, I've narrowed it down. Then they get into the courting phase, right? And that courting phase is like, yep, I'm in. Right? Like I'm going to consume it, I'm going to be around you. And then as soon as they have enough evidence, right? And what we're looking for from a customer journey is what they're looking for is enough evidence to feel safe to make a commitment. Whether it's a follow you on Instagram or a join your Facebook group or give you their email, they're collecting evidence that it's going to be the right decision, right? If they follow you on Instagram, it means something about them. Are they willing to be associated with your brand name and their friends to see are they willing to be in the comments and expose when they engage with your content. And so I love.

Real quick, I just want to jump in. I love how you said that they're looking for evidence, like, to be safe. And I think that's one of the things that is a perfect analogy of dating. Especially, like, it's a very male centric analogy for, like, women who are the biggest consumers anyway. But, like, safety is that. That is the bottom of the, like, basic Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

And it's one of those things that.

So many people, we just assume that the customer knows that they're safe. And no, they are looking for danger subconsciously.

All day, all day. Like, that's. That's what it is. We have no idea. I don't know. You. You can have the best content in the world, but are you real? Are you posting it? Does it match your offer? Are you gonna show up once I pay you? Like, all of those things are going. And the thing is, is you're not competing against that moment. You're competing against every other experience they've had with every other brand, every other product, every other social platform. And you have to compete against that. Like, you're not starting neutral, you're starting that negative. And your consistency and congruency is what allows them to get to that neutral. Right? And then once they feel that, like, really the courting phase is them collecting enough evidence that the decision I'm about to make aligns with my morals, my values, and my goals, and that I believe that this person or this brand or this product has something to do or something to have for me to help me get me there. And so the moment they collect that evidence, then they enroll. And then as soon as they enroll, it could be a, hey, I followed you on Instagram. And then it moves to nurture. And what that would look like for them is like, okay, now they've gone from I have to seek you out to an asynchronous relationship, right? They've automated their ability to be in a relationship with you. And then your job is to deliver what you promised. Well, your profile might say, like, we help you live a better life through blank, blank, blank. And so they follow you. And then you're in the. You're in the nurture phase. And they expect for you to post content for them to learn that. And guess what? Then that customer journey starts over again. And now they're like, okay, I'm in this relationship. Now they're identifying, can I go deeper? And then they go through the same process Again, to get your email, to get your product. And it happens. It can happen in a video or could happen over six months. But three years ago, it was like 2017. I was working with a company that gave me a pretty big budget to figure out how long a customer journey took. And we spent almost $4 million figuring all this out. And this was three years ago. It's more now, but three years ago, to find somebody who had already expressed interest in this brand, it took 26 touch points for them to go from I'm interested to converting to a $57 product. This was three years ago. Three. Now we're up in the 50 to 150 range because of the state of the world and the way that marketing has shifted, but yet everybody's on the front end, like, hey, nice to meet you. Marry me. Come join me. Boom, right? Like, in the matter of one meal or one dinner, right? And so everybody tries to go so deep so fast, but you have to allow people to take their journey. And so those phases, you can apply them anywhere. And it's just looking at, like, okay, and it's the definition of a funnel, right? Like, the further away they are, the wider the funnel is, right? You're catching them with pieces of your content, your brand, how people talk about you as they move closer and closer and closer. They go through these different stages, and you're just making sure that you have the net to catch them, right? That when they come to your Instagram, it matches the ad, or when they come to your Facebook, it matches what that video said. Or if they heard you on a podcast and you referenced your Instagram, that it matches what you said on that podcast. And then they're collecting all of this to make sure, like, oh, yeah, this is it. I can trust this. I can do this. Because people have confirmation bias. They have an existing set of beliefs, and they have existing habits. You are not a gift to them. They are a gift to you. And your job is to be consistent and congruent so they can close that distance, right? So they can come closer, so they can be like, yeah, this is it. And so that's how I break it down. I go, identify, discover, court, enroll, nurture. And that's what I call the conscious customer journey. What's underneath it, Brad? I call the subconscious customer journey. So under, identify and discover, you have permission. And what is happening now, this is subconscious for most people, but it's just basic psychology, is there's two types of marketing you see, right? And we see this in the fitness industry. All the time. You're fat, you're overweight, you're unhealthy, you're gonna die, blah, blah, blah. But it creates reactance and makes people feel wrong. And then we wonder why they don't commit and don't achieve the results. Right. Versus, like, storytelling. I remember when I weighed this, and this is how I felt. And somebody self identifies, and then they move forward. So identify and discover is they're seeking a permission slip. Because when somebody commits to you, and a lot of people don't think about this, like, let's say you sell a weight loss supplement for somebody to follow you, they are publicly acknowledging that they are unhappy with their weight. When somebody comments on that piece of content, they are publicly declaring, this resonated with me, and this is something I'm working through or I'm struggling with. That's a big deal. And so underneath that safety, right, that's we're talking about under the courting phase is safety, Right? So under courting is safety. And so when they're in that courting phase, that's where I'm talking about. They're collecting that evidence to feel safe. Right? This is congruent. This is what I'm talking about. Right? And then once they have enough evidence and they make a commitment and they go to that enroll and nurture phase, they're looking for accountability.

And so I draw it in a circle, right? And so. Or you draw it in a line. And so it's identify, discover, core, enroll, nurture. And then permission goes under identify and discover, safety goes under courting and accountability, goes under enroll and nurturing. And that is an entire conscious and subconscious customer journey that I designed and built.

That's fantastic.

That's the first time I've. I've explained it verbally and not, like, visually, but it makes sense. Yeah. I mean, because I do it in a circle too. Because what's important to remember about a customer journey is your competitors might have done the identify and discover phase for you, but failed for them to feel safe. And they jump over just ready to commit. In the courting phase, they might have gone all the way through the courting phase, and at the end be like, God, I just. I don't like this one. That other one looks better. And they might just come and roll. But it's important to understand it's a circle because they can come in at any phase. And then they keep going around the wheel and keep going around the wheel. And so that's why I draw it in a circle, because everybody all of our avatars, all of our customers and potential customers are different. And so people are going to come in. I have no idea what I want. I don't know if I want to lose weight. I don't know if this is bad enough, if it's worth it for me. And they're in that identify phase, right? But then you have somebody else comes in, like, God, I need to lose weight. This is going to kill me. I got to reduce my inflammation. And they come right in the courting phase. But you have to have the entire thing in your ecosystem in congruent with your brand messaging and what you offer and your content so that no matter where they come in, you can catch them.

Yeah, that's fantastic. Who's.

On the first step of the process? If you. Because there's a lot of things to look at. But if you're working with a client or you're doing this on your own, what is the very first thing you do? Because I know. So, for instance, if you're looking at. If I'm working with a client or looking on my own, and I'm looking at conversion, right? If I'm trying to increase conversion, I'm starting at the very bottom of the funnel. Like what? Let's look at my shopping cart, for instance. And then I'm going to work backwards because I want to work closest to the money. When you're starting to look at the customer journey for a business, where do you tell them to focus?

Do you.

Do you tell them to focus with the people who just bought versus the people who are the prospects that, et cetera, like, where is the.

It's all. It goes right back to the adoption analogy. I go right to where I have hungry kids, right? And so I'm like, if we've been selling a product, right, and you have 10 new customers a day and they only get one email where the supplement promises to deliver a result in 30 days. Well, guess what? We're right in 30 emails or 18 emails over 30 days. Because those people are literally the hottest people we have. And we have an opportunity to come in and feed those hungry bellies and create a amazing, amazing machine, right? And so if you have a list of customers that you haven't emailed in seven months, I prioritize those second, right? So what I do is I go after the ones that are like, hey, we just adopted these children. They're hungry, right? These other ones are fending for themselves right now. We're going to love them. But let's make sure these Little babies are good. We write that content, we write those emails because those people are coming in actively as we speak. Once that is designed and automated, which isn't long, right? It could be an hour, right? When you do it, right, once it's done and designed, then I'm like, okay, cool, they're handled. So now anybody who comes in today, tomorrow, and next week is handled. So now let's dive in and figure out what we can create for all these existing customers that we left out in the cold that are just shivering out there waiting to come home. And we'll send a re. Engagement email. We'll nurture them, we'll ask questions, we'll get on calls with them and. And then we'll design what I call our buyer nurture sequence, which is our ongoing, you know, soap opera sequence, whatever our value emails to help keep them on the path and introduce them to other parts of the company. And once that's done, then I go on the front end and I'm like, well, people that are coming to the PDP or the detail page or the checkout page are already checking out, so they're handled. Let me go after the people that came and didn't check out. But we have their email to take them on a journey so they can achieve a goal, then convert, and then once that's in place, then I work on conversion. Because then if I increase conversion on my PDP but somebody doesn't buy, they still drop into my sequence of like my lead magnet to get in, right? If they do buy, I know that they're handled, and then I can play with that. And then once we get that conversion dialed or acceptable or where we want, then we focus on adding more people into that funnel or into that offer, and then that way nothing leaks out. My bucket.

I love that. Are there any companies out there right now, whether you've worked with them and want to name them, your companies, or just somebody else that you really admire, who you think is just doing it, right? Like, are there some people that you know if I want to.

Yeah, like. Well, remember you and I were talking about, said that company ClickUp, that SaaS company that.

Oh, yeah, they're killing it.

I can't. I've. I've never seen something so good in my entire life.

Like, this is for people's reference, there's a project management system that I use called ClickUp Calm, and it competes with things like Asana and Basecamp and all that other stuff. But, yeah, you saw what they were doing, and it is genius. Like, if people go to ClickUp.com and just start to pay attention, was there anything like. I know there's one thing that really struck you because it struck me too, so much. Back in January, I made a Facebook post about it. I know, but what were some of the things that you really liked?

So what I loved is I love the way that they humanize the brand, and it made me feel like I was a part of it. Right. So the emails were both visual, but they were tactical and really approachable. Right. So it was like, hey, we're stoked to have you, and they made a joke in the email. But what I also loved is that they broke it up into a micro journey. Because one of the mistakes people make is when you give people more than one option. How many did they take? None. Right. And so, like, somebody will buy your product. Oh, I'm so glad you bought my product. Whitelist my email. Add me here. Subscribe here. Follow me on Instagram here, subscribe. I'm like, bro, you got their credit card. What do you need them to follow you on social for? No, Break this up. First email is always about them. Congratulations. Like, it's always about them. And that's it. That is it. And then the next email is like, what's the most important thing? And it's always one per. One per. And what I loved about them is, like, their onboarding process seems like they have it automated to where you can't leave, like, literally. And I was like, one and one, and every day I wake up and it's like a new email. And I was like, oh, I'm working on that today, and I'll watch their video real quick. And it just feels very personal and for me, like, somebody's hand delivering it to me because they took the time to break it up to what was there. So they're one. I love another one. Best self, Catherine Lavery's company. I love them to pieces. They have, like, habit journals and habit planners, and they're all about doing it, right? So they have a journal to create your goals, but all their content and everything is around establishing the habit. So where it's like, hey, you can go make your own journal or you can buy ours, right? And either way, you're good. And then even if you don't buy ours, you can still give us your email and we'll walk you through how to use yours. And so it's, you know, who did.

A great job with that when they launched originally. And I think throughout it is the.

Cards against humanity oh, yeah, yeah.

Do you remember, like, what I'm talking about? And I'm sure everybody's heard of this game, but when they launched, and they still might even do this, they're like, hey, listen, we're launching on Kickstarter or whatever. Here are some PDFs of all the questions. Go print them out and play with them if you want. Or buy ours. Like, they give it to you. And this kind of goes back to the same thing. Like, give people this stuff for free. Sell them a more convenient, more efficient modality to get it to, if you have the ability to do that. But it kind of. It just makes you go, huh, that's, like, really cool and interesting.

And you know what? One of the ways, Brad, that I think about, like, who's doing it, right? And this isn't to put blame on any company. I also look at all the things I pay for, right? Like my supplements that I pay full price for, right? There's not many, but there's a few. Right. And the things that I buy and I intentionally buy off of Amazon. Yeah. So I can see what the journey looks like. And I teach myself because I sit here and board and I rewrite their sequences for them. And I was like, what would I want? Right? Like, and because I always post, you.

Say you buy off Amazon.

For that reason, though, I don't buy on Amazon. Off Amazon. Right?

Yeah, because you want to see. Yeah, exactly.

I want to see their journey, right? And so, you know, the way that I look at it, like, there's a ton of them. I know. Like, ever bowl with Dan Fleischman? They're doing a whole lot of stuff remotely now. And I know they're amazing at it because they give you, like, 15 meals and they break it down, how to use it, how to make it right. And there's some supplement companies that I know of that do the same thing, you know? And some of the ones I wanted to use, they just got acquired. So they changed everything because they changed their goals. I'm not giving them as examples anymore.

Yeah.

But another thing, too is, like, everybody listening to this. Like, you can learn all the time by looking at what works and what also doesn't work, right? And so the way that I look, I use my inbox as my teacher every single day. And I'm very intentional about, like, the emails that I'm on, right? Like, my favorite one was during the lockdown. All of a sudden, I got a hundred emails I hadn't seen in a year. I'm like, wrong way to Re engage me, trying to get me to sell. I would have supported your business. But it's interesting, right? Or around like the holidays, you're like, I unsubscribe from you, I swear to God. And so I look at them and I always look at them from one of two aspects. I'm like, what did I love about this email? And I write it down. I'm like, what didn't I love? Like, what was missing for me.

That's so funny. I do that. I. Not with emails, but I do the same thing the minute I buy something. Especially if it caught me, like, huh, I'm going to buy this and matter if it's an info product or if it's a physical product or something like that. I'm like, what caused me to give the money? What was I, what am I feeling right now? How did they overcome my doubts? Like, I do the same thing because I, like, we're, both of us are obsessed with the customer psychology and this like, shit, if you got me to spend five grand or something or, you know, even more, what, what was the trigger?

Totally. And so, you know, like, and I think too, I talked a lot with entrepreneurs because, like, just so everybody knows, like, I love being the Robinhood of marketing, right? None of these big companies that pay me these fees give a crap that I tell everybody what we're doing, right? So I feel like the Robin Hood of marketing. Because then I come down and I'm like, here, let's do it. This is how you do it, right? But we're the best people. Like, when we're thinking about our own stuff, our own products, it's hard. But, like, if you go out and you, like, know who your three competitors are, buy their products, buy them and get their funnel and go through it and you look at it and you're like, God, they probably should have simplified that email. It should have been about this one thing that's not the best way to use that product. And you basically have a roadmap. I teach this in one of my courses. But you have a roadmap where you basically can do 99% of your work and research in about an hour by just paying attention to what works and what doesn't work, and then you design it. And Brad, my favorite thing, like, I'm tactile, right? I got Lean Six Sigma trained, so I've used more sticky notes than anybody I know. And so I literally, like, look at it and I'm like, okay, cool. Like, I just personally bought a collagen supplement what did I love about the emails? I was like, oh, the first email reminded me why I bought it. It, like, reinforced that I made a big decision or a good decision. Right. And then my favorite thing to do. And everybody. The two biggest wasted pieces of real estate on the Internet are thank you pages and transactional emails. Those are the two biggest wasted pieces of real estate on the Internet.

Couldn't.

I never understood why after somebody spends money knowing that every human has buyer's remorse, that the first thing we do is remind them how much money they spent. I just don't. I don't get that. I really, really don't. So my favorite thing to do is like, I buy a collagen, I get the congratulations reminder of literally what it's going to do for me, and then a gift in the email with the receipt at the bottom. Right. And so by the time they get to the gift, they forgot they spent money already, because I already added value.

And a gift could be just a digital download or something.

Digital download, right. Digital download. Like, hey, I know it's coming in a couple days, but you were working on inflammation. If you add these three things to your water tomorrow morning, it's going to help you achieve your results three times faster. Add Himalayan sea salt, a splash of lime juice, and drink 8 ounces of warm water, Right? And they're going to be like, mind blown. Right? And so I'm like, okay, right. So step one is like, you know, what was there? You have a minute? Their credit card just went through. So you give it to them, you remind them of what they did. Like, be excited for them. Like, they made a commitment and they said, everybody in the world, I'm gonna give you my money. Like, I'm giving you my money. And so make it about them. Because your customer's the hero, not you. Yep.

People really underestimate if you're not in the business, you underestimate how hard it is to get somebody sitting on a computer to pull out their wallet and purchase from you. Right. Like, it is a. That is a magic trick. It's a magic trick, right? Like, I used to sell magic tricks, I think I told you, online, like, my very first product. And I like. The real magic trick is, you know, me getting these strangers who've never met me to trust me feel safe enough to pull out their wallet and give money. So it should not be underestimated. The steps necessary to make somebody feel safe. It doesn't have to be high tech, but it's got to be high intention. Like, not High tech, high intent.

Yeah.

Then I look at it. Yeah, no, I love it. And so I look at, I'm like, well, we know what's happening. They just spent money, you know they're gonna check their email, right? Make sure they got the receipt or whatever. You have an opportunity right there. And you have two emails because you have an email you can send and then you have a transactional email. Use both of them, right? And so. And delight every time, every time. And so then it's like, oh, what's next? I'm like, oh, well, the supplement or the product or the service. And this is my favorite one. And for all you info, product people like lead magnets and everything else, remember that the moment somebody pays or opts in is not the moment they're gonna start. It is not the moment they're gonna start. And I watch this all the time, like download my seven day challenge, right? And then the email one's like, alright, let's get started. And it's like, yo, hey, foreplay, like just a little bit, please, like prep me, tell me you're gonna take me to dinner, right? And it's like, hey, congratulations, you did it. Reinforce what they did, Remind them why they're there, get it anchored in that they're gonna achieve the promised result and then tell them like what they need to do to prep and what email they're gonna get tomorrow so they can get started. Like our job is to be the authority, Our job is to lead people, right? And it's like you sell an info product, even a digital course, right? It's like great, it's great if somebody logs in, but then they're gonna log in, they're gonna click around, they're not gonna start anywhere, they're gonna log out and then you're gonna spend the rest of that journey trying to get them back in to achieve the results. And you're getting emails like, hey, where do I access the course? Or like, I didn't do it, it didn't work. I'm like, well, you didn't watch any videos. I can see it, right?

Like.

That'S great. You know one of the things you reminded me of when you talked about how thank you pages and transactional pages are some of the biggest wasted space. One of the things that I did, and this wasn't so much for nurturing them and surprising and delight them, but it was a way to use a thank you page for just really good customer insight, which this was a client of mine who was selling a software and the minute they bought the software which was like a fifteen hundred dollar software typically. And they would buy it. And this was in, this was in the real estate investor space. So he sir, he had a software that served real estate investors and helped them like find motivated sellers and whatnot. So what my idea was, was on the thank you page before like normally it says hey, thank you, like go log in. But it was a, it said thank you for your, you know, thank you. Two short questions before, you know, we're set, we're setting up your account. Here's two short questions. First question, where did you find out? Like where did you first hear about us? And that's a softener question because it's easy for them to go, ah, Facebook or a friend. Right. And it's. But it's also good intel just to see what people say.

Yeah.

Question two was open ended and it just said why did you decide to make this investment today? Keeping in mind that they are in a peak emotional state, they are feeling good because they just bought it. Why did you decide to make this investment today? And it just filled up a Google sheet or a type form. I don't remember where we did it. And the responses we got informed so much of our sales copy going forward because I remember the one that just completely crushed everything else was simply because I'm tired of killing myself trying to find motivated sellers. Now that just that became an email subject line. That became a headline on a sales page. That became everything. Tired of killing yourself trying to find motivated sellers. We know we get it because other people said other versions of that, but this one guy just said it so perfectly. And as I said, I use that on the thank you page where most people just go, okay, thanks for buying, go check your email. Yeah, and as I said, I mean that probably added a good million dollars just, just from the benefits of that. It probably added at least a million dollars of this client's bottom line for doing that.

One of my favorite things to do, Brad, and I'm gonna piggyback and agree with that. But one of the things that I love to do, like one of the biggest mistakes to see everyone's like whitelist me, whitelist me, whitelist me, whitelist me. Right. You have to remember everything you do should be making it about your client. That's an inconvenience to your client. They just gave you a credit card or gave you their email. And before you deliver what you promised, you're asking them to do something for you and you have to flip it. Right. So my favorite Thing to do is every four to five emails I ask open ended questions.

Right.

But yes, about exactly what's there. And so understanding commitment periods. Right. If somebody's never met me, they're not going to take the time to write me two sentences. So I will literally ask an impossible to ignore question about yes or no. Right. And so like, congratulations, you got the supplement. Are you excited to achieve blank, blank, blank? And literally hit reply to this with a yes, I will read and respond. Plus, I have a surprise for you. Boom. And like we literally have our team respond because people like, yes, I'm so excited because I've been struggling with blank, blank, blank. Yes, I'm so excited because this will be the first time or yes, I'm so excited. But this is the seventh one I've bought and I hope this one works. Right. Like you literally get gold. Plus the moment somebody responds, you are automatically added as a contact and whitelisted forever.

Yeah, you're training them to.

Well, you train their CRM. Like literally.

That's what I mean.

Yeah, it's.

It's training their email. Yeah, you're training their email service provider to say, hey, this person's replying to them. They're a real person.

Yep.

Keep them on there. When you talk about, like, I have a surprise gift. So there's a lot of ways, like, you know, the easiest gifts are digital downloads, etc. But I mean, there's obviously like, I don't know, let's just go back to the supplement thing. Like, here's an e book on how to get more energy or whatever. Are there any other types of kind of bonus gifts, etc. Especially digital.

I use together. I use them all the time. I want to tell everybody a favorite app right now. It's called Bonjoro.

Did I tell you about that or did you tell me?

No, I've been using it for years. Cool. I send love Bonjoro. Every single person who gives me their money or their email, a personalized video. And so when I come into companies, right, I was working with a CBD company and we set up triggers. So the moment somebody purchased, the founders got notified and they sent a video. The moment the order was boxed, the boxer got an image, a trigger, and they recorded a video saying, we're putting it in the box for you right now, Brad. Right. And then the moment it was delivered, we just had one that we had prerecorded because we put a gift in every single person's box. And so then it was like, hey, by the way, we had a dude dressed in a Santa suit and we're like, hey, you know, whatever month it is, it's always Christmas when you buy from us. Right. So the UPS guy just dropped it at your door and hopefully he didn't ace venture it. But do me a favor and go open it now because there's a surprise in there for you.

That's so good. Yeah. So Bonjoro for like. And I'll tell you one of the ways that actually I know who told me about it originally, just really not too long ago. And so he's a coach and the way he uses it and I'll explain for folks to just fully understand like the way it works. But yeah, when somebody takes a certain action that you can have it triggered via, let's say your CRM or whatever, it'll send you a notification in an app on your phone that'll basically say, hey, it's time to record a video for this person. So you just whip out your phone, record like a 30 second video and push a button and it gets sent to that person. So it's, it's not. You can't do this like for, you know, a million customers a day necessarily.

But you can, because now you can use pre recorded as well. And so literally what we tell people, though, the one thing I always tell people is just be open, like be honest. Right. And if it's pre. Records. Pre recorded. Still a personal touch. Yeah, it's still a personal touch.

You don't have to say their name. If you say their name, if the more personal you make it, the better. But you can still make it somewhat generic like you're saying, but it's so cool because it gets sent to them. They get, they open an email. There's a GIF inside the email. It looks like, you know, I'm about to. I'm waving at them or something. They open it up and they see a personalized message. So my friend Jason Goldberg is a, he's a fantastic coach and he, he mentions how he uses this. So when somebody, when somebody schedule watches his webinar and schedules a sales call with him and it's a discovery call, strategy call, et cetera. You know, most people think, oh, I'm signing up to talk to Jason. But Jason has a salesperson who talks to them and it's a sales customer enrollment specialist, et cetera. And a lot of people can get really put off, like, oh man, I signed up to talk to George and I'm talking to Brad. Right. But so anyway, what Jason will Do is he'll get that notification. He'll pull out his phone and go, hey, this is Jason. Hey George, it's Jason. I just saw you signed up. Listen, we're so excited to talk to you and see if there's, you know, some problems we can solve. I just saw your, you know, your schedule came in. First of all, please, if you need to cancel, just do us a favor and let us know like 24 hours in advance. That really help? Second of all, you're going to be talking to, I asked, like I've asked my right hand man, Steve, like the sales guy, whatever, to be the one who talks to you. Now, I've taught Steve everything he knows. He knows our system inside and out and he's the best there is. So he's edifying Steve and he's making them excited to talk to Steve. So he goes, two things happened. Number one, Steve's closing rate went way up because they already were pre framed that Steve is cool and you should expect him to. No show rates are zero drop. No show rates to nothing because they got a real video. And I said, hey, George, this is Jason.

Can I get to share two hacks with you? I don't talk about these publicly. These are probably two of the proudest moments of my time, by the way.

I have a knack for pulling this shit out. That's why it is sizzling hot business advice.

Well, we spent enough time together. Like we've probably spent like 18 hours in person again the last like two weeks. Like we, we're just dumping all. We're gonna get all of it out.

Felt like just a moment.

It was just a moment. It was, I'm gonna wrap you in bacon.

What are your hacks?

Yeah, so one of them, One of my favorite top of funnel hacks for paid media. And I'm shocked that nobody does this. I had. Okay, ready, so I had the.

Just like that. Now if you can go to baconrittbusiness.com special grade pay $100 to listen to the rest of this episode. Just kidding.

And that's the other 99% of the market besides Brad and I. Yeah. I'll give you the quote, unquote secrets, right? So I did this. I got here. So there were two levels to it. Level one is I had the CEO of a company record me a video ad that said happy birthday as a thank you for your birthday, we want to give you a complimentary gift. Right? And I didn't even say what it was, it just said gift. And then we would Take that video. And on Facebook, you can run ads to anybody within a week of their birthday, right? So we were like, it's Happy birthday week. Happy birthday week. And so we made that ad, and we went on YouTube.

You still do that?

You can use different ways to do it. Yeah, we made that ad, we went on Facebook, we targeted every one of our competitors and all of our prospects and all of our existing customers. Like, it was the widest net we could have casted. And we literally. I think we set it to maybe like, 50 bucks a day. Like, it was not anything crazy, but not that many people have birthdays. Right. But then we went on YouTube and we targeted it, and we had them record intros that said, you know, happy birthday from the CEO of Blank. I know you're watching this person's blank, but when was the last time they gave you a birthday gift? And we put it in front of every one of their videos. Right. And so that was one of the best things I've ever done that.

So wait a minute. So, like, in front of their competitors and crap.

Yeah. Every one of them? Yeah.

Oh, wow.

Every one of them. I had one. I had the CEO who was pretty aggressive, and I was like, this is actually legit. Like, if they're not gonna do it, we'll do it. And so I had no problem doing it. Right. And so the Facebook ad had the best roas of any ad I've ever seen. It was a 27x ROAS across the board. Yeah, it was 27x.

YouTube. Didn't work well just running it as a YouTube ad. But on YouTube, you can put an ad in front of any video you want. Right. And so once we got targeted and we put it in front of products that were like, our product or competitors, it worked like wildfire. Right. And so that was level one.

Well, and what's beautiful about that. So in case anybody lost one of the nuances, you don't have to have their birthday now. The. The platforms have their birthday.

Yeah, the ad platforms have their birthday.

Google and Facebook.

Right? Yeah. Yeah. So you.

Brilliant.

Yeah, you can get there. So then level.

Why you get paid $50,000 a day?

This is why I get paid $50,000 a Day. So level two is I had the team download the entire customer list, which was like 160,000 customers, and pull out the top 100 names. And then we recorded 100 intros and targeted people with the name George, Brad, Sarah, Michelle, Melissa, which you can still do to this day.

No, wait a minute. You can't do that on Facebook though. Yeah, you can, you can target people based on their name.

You can target people based on their name. And so you. If and. And what had happened. So we were able to do it then. And then you remember when they was like two and a half years ago, they made it. So they got rid of some and added some other ones. And so then it changed. There was another way to do it because my ad team did it and then we just started doing it. I think they're still doing it, but now because you couldn't, they're doing it like if they do JV partnerships with people. Right. Like, like, for example, when I work with companies and I help them with influencers, I help the influencer build a business, but it's always co reg, so it's one for one. And so then we would get all of those emails and all of those lists or we would ask them for theirs. And so every time I work with an influence, I'm like, listen, I'm never going to email them. But if you give me the email list, I will run traffic to them under your affiliate link. So I would take every one of my influencers email list, 1000-004000-00600,000 and then I would upload those and you would just make CSVs of the name and make them custom audiences. And so then we would run the John to John, Sarah to Sarah. And so there's a couple ways to do it. Ha.

I love that. So.

Yeah, dude, that's. That's awesome.

And so the one thing that I want to tell everybody about this is the. One of the biggest mistakes I see people make with paid media is they invest it all in the front and nothing on the back.

Invested on the front.

And what they did, they invested all in the front and nothing on the back. So when I'm learning like a, you know, a big budget, I take about 30% of it and use it on the back end for customers to help them achieve what we promised or to follow up with them because they've already been a buying customer. Yeah, Right. And so we separated out. So like when I'm selling like, like, and by the way, like with those supplements, right, When I know that we're getting near that time, like four months in or so when people are going to churn, we're running ads them like, hey, are you using it? Here's some new smoothie recipes like boom, boom, boom, boom. And we're not doing it to get the conversion, we're doing it to get the engagement with the existing customers, so they continue to use their product and then they'll stay on subscription. Right. So a lot of people don't think about that stuff. But a customer that's already a customer is way more valuable than any new one that you're going to get. And so you have to spend time thinking about that journey on the back. And so that was one. That was just one hack. So there was another one I did that you triggered when you said they introduced him to the sales guy. So there's a company I worked with, and their company had 22 employees, and 12 of them were customer service. 12 of them were customer service because they have one of those businesses like apparel, but it was jewelry, like the fit, and it was custom, Right. So everything was customer service. Customer service. And they did all of their customer service on Facebook messenger, right? Everything. Customer service because they used it. And that's where their audience was, that avatar. And so they were having 12 people run Facebook. And so what I did is I came in and we basically word clouded for two days of every single thing. We put a sticky note for every single message they'd gotten in like a year. Right? This, the size is wrong. I have an exchange. The color is wrong. It's not what I look like. And we built a bot in Manychat that solved for 80% of the customer service without a human interaction. But no matter what, every interaction ended with notify a human. Right? But except when a human used to have to get in the chat, they'd have to ask 65 questions. Now they literally were able to solve the problem. And that worked really, really well. But then I had an idea and I was like, I think one of the problems is everything's coming from the company. And so there were people dropping out of this many chat sequence. Like, they wouldn't get all the way through. So it's still a pain in the ass. And so I said, hey, who are employees in here? And they listed their names. I said, can I use your names? And they're like, no. And they. They're in Utah. You can figure the rest out. They didn't want their names public, right? And I was like, cool. So I was like, I looked at their avatar and their Avatar was like 40 to 65. And so I made up two names, Ron and Rita. And so all I did is at the beginning of every one of those sequences, the first message says, thank you for contacting us. We have two customer service agents available. Would you like to talk to Ron or Rita? And the moment they Picked the click through rate. Like, it was about 50% of people were going through. Like it was like 47 or 48. The moment they picked who they talked to, 95% of people made it all the way through.

Because that. That sounds like one of those little micro commitments, right? Like, okay.

And it's like, now I'm not talking to a company. I'm talking to Ron or I'm talking to Rita.

You should have done, like the androgynous version, like Chris or Pat.

Yeah, yeah. And so, and so that worked. Really? Really.

And then what we did is we went on the app, we took this Ron and Rita thing pretty far because it started as a manychat robot, right? And then it went to a exit pop with a gift. And it wasn't like literally the exact opposite of any exit pop that you want, right? And it's like, hey, we know we didn't solve your problem or this isn't the right time, but we know you're still interested in X. Would you like to jump on the phone with Ron or Rita to talk about why? And I forgot it was we gave him like, a gift. Like, just we. Oh, I use this. My favorite one. That's my favorite one. I do this all the time. The one thing that your customers can give you that you can never give back to them is time. Ever. It is the only thing that you cannot return is time. Right? And so I use it all the time because I actually really do respect people's time. And I know if somebody spent 45 seconds on my PDP and it wasn't right, like, that was a gift to me. Like, they trusted me for 45 seconds, right? So we basically wrote something like, they went to exit, and it's like, hey, I don't want to waste any more of your time because you've already given it so much. But I can't give that back to you. But instead, I would like to send you a gift if you're interested. Who do you want to call? You? And it's like, you know, which do you want? Customer service call. And they were like, yep. And then I was like, okay, these are the two that are available to Ron and Rita, right? And then it was boom. And then they'd call. And I told them, I said, and tell them, be like, hey, by the way, we just love having fun. We are Ron and Rita. It represents all of us because there's 12 of us here committed to your success. But what also happened is we got the customer service team to go from 12 to 4 on the same load because it was so efficient with the manychat thing. So we freed up and like, we didn't fire them, we moved them into other departments.

I was just gonna say. So so you sent eight people on unemployment?

Nope. No, we actually moved them into the content creation department and then we were able to create a whole lot more content on the back end. But yeah, those are some of the fun things.

That's so cool.

I'll share.

You made me think of one of the cool things that I did because I also love the you've gone way down the customer journey stuff, more so than I have. But I know whenever I've done this on client projects, it's been some of the most rewarding and fun. And so one of my clients was an agency that they, you know, they did tons of lead generation and marketing services for a particular type of client. And, you know, they too had a churn rate. And the churn rate was right about four months. Okay. And they, early on they had like a 90 day commitment. And then after that it was like, give or take, like so about, about three or four months. So what I did is I triggered an email to go out, I'm sorry, a piece of direct mail to go out after about.

I can't remember if I did this right after one month. Okay. It was, it was at about, it was at about week three or four. Because when you sign up for this company, what happens is they'll send direct mail campaigns and begin these marketing campaigns for you. And the leads start coming in to your account at about week three or four.

Right.

So that's about where it happens. So I think what happened, yeah, at about week four, we triggered the CRM to send out a piece of direct mail that was, you know, mail merged Dear George. And it's typed up, but with the kind of a really good looking signature. And this was a letter of encouragement sent to them, but it wasn't from the owner of the business. It was from their, their top, most successful student in the past year or two. And there was a guy named, I think his name was like Hector. And what it would say is like, dear George, my name is Hector. So. And so I'm also like, you know, I think it was a real estate investor.

Real estate investor.

But I'm here in Dallas, Texas. Listen.

I started my journey like this. And one of the things I said, one of the things we prefaced it with was.

I asked Gary, the owner of the company, if I could send a letter to all new Members, you know, clients of this. Because it's made such a big difference in my life, I want to send you a word of encouragement. I can. I can actually send you the letter if you want to see it. It was really good, and it said something to the nature of. I know by right now, you know, you are probably starting to receive leads in your mail, like, in your mailbox, and you're probably. If you're anything like me, you're starting to get overwhelmed with it, and it's starting to, like, kind of cause a little confusion, and you're wondering, okay, is this going to work? Well, let me tell you what I did to make sure that it worked and got over the hump, because I was here and now I'm there, and I just basically gave them those words of encouragement, not from the biased owner of the company, but from one of their customers where there's nothing in it for them. And by the way, I actually interviewed this guy, and I pulled out all the stuff. I wrote it for him, but I pulled it out, sent it to him, and I said, hey, can you stamp this approval? And he said, yes. So these people got it, and I think it cut their churn rate in half. Like, immediately, people started to love it. It was demonstrable. I don't know the exact numbers, but. And then people would email back and contact them, go, man, this was so cool. This was right when I needed it, because I was just thinking, like, what would I want to see? I don't want to see it from you. You're biased. You're trying to keep me on, but totally.

So.

So anyway, that was one of my original wins. I, like, I don't come up with original ideas often. Usually I steal them from my podcast guests. But that was an original one. That kind of worked out really well.

Yeah, I mean, there's so many things like, Brad, I love that, and I love the other thing, like, just the thought process, right. There are 8 million different ways that you can be in a relationship. Right? But think about how do you treat your kids? Like, do you put a sticky note in their lunch in the morning? Right. What do you bring them when you pick them up? Like, do you give your wife flowers and a note or your husband, like, you tap them on the back, you think about and text them. Your job is to do the same exact thing with your customers over and over and over and over again, making them the hero and do it. But, yeah, man, like, we use. I love. Like, I love using direct mail still, like, with physical supplements. Right. And not in the box. Like, of course, I put recipe cards and stuff like that. But then, like, you know, seven days later, it pops up and, like, some new surprise and delight, right? And then like a little Steve Sims trick, like, send him a Christmas. Christmas card in July. Right? Like, just being able. Because, like, really what you have to remember is that digital marketing and email is only one facet, right? Like, it's not a different world. You still get to use the rest of the world. And most companies only use the digital facet, which is why they lose. And so you can use that. You can use, you know, paid media, but you can use direct mail. You can send gifts in the mail, treats in the mail. Like, I remember another thing we did is we went in and we looked at all the last three years of our customer data, and we calculated the tiers of where customers fell into. We had some VIPs. That's been over 25 grand in three years on products, right? And then what we did is we broke them down, like, 10 tiers, and then we basically made a loyalty program without telling them that depending on the tier, every month or every quarter, a new gift would come in the mail that had nothing to do with. With the products, and then we would include, like, a product with it. We would also send them new releases before they came out, get testimonials earlier. Like, there's so many things on the back end. And I think the mistake I see most companies make is everybody thinks scale is on the front, but if you scale broken relationships, you're just going to break the back.

That's. That's definitely a quotable. I love that. George, you. You refer to your methodology as light Lighthouse method.

Mm.

Tell me about, you know, what is a. What do you mean by, like. I know. Yeah, you know what a lighthouse means. But why did you decide to call your methodology for doing this Lighthouse method?

Yeah, I think the reason it came is what was happening is I was. I'd been like, with 200 companies, and every single time I went in, it was always like, this was working. But then we crashed. This was working, then we crashed. And every single time, it was because they basically launched prematurely. They didn't have a solid foundation, Right. They were really good at acquiring customers or not keeping them. They were really good at delivering the value on the back end, but they couldn't acquire them, Right. There were foundational pieces missing. And so I was thinking about it, and I was like, what's the one thing that, when it's built, that never gets Knocked down. And I was like, a lighthouse. Like, there's more lighthouse landmarks all over the world and they have to withstand hurricanes and salt erosion and storms and graffiti. And their entire job is to do nothing more than keep their light on. And that light is everything that you see into the world. All the marketing, owned, earned and paid media. And then it's guiding people or guiding boats to shore. But what I love about it is that another thing I see a lot is everybody thinks your job is to go out and find customers. If you think your job is to go out and find customers, there's something in your offer or your content that's missing because they're not coming to you. And successful businesses are magnets and they attract people in. And that is what it's supposed to be doing. 86% of word marketing is word of mouth. Like virality is not a lockdown. It's science. Right. If you create content that nobody shares because it doesn't make them look more credible, humorous, create controversy, education, or elevate their social status, they're not going to share. But if you create content or a product or something valuable that like a woman takes and loses 10 pounds and she's a winner, Bob Stroller at the park on Saturday, every eight of her girlfriends is going to go buy that product.

Yeah.

But if she buys a product and doesn't achieve the result, she's going to go there and be like, don't ever buy this product. This thing sucked. I can't believe I paid for it. Right. Like, we are all in charge of our destiny and our job is to be the light keeper. And what that means is that it's our customers job to drive their own boats, but we have to guide them to shore. And all too often we think we're the solution, but we're not. Our product is a solution, our service is a solution, our protocol is a solution. But they still got to run the journey. So I looked at it and I was like, how do I do this? And then I was like, I realized too, that light spins in 360 degrees outside of a lighthouse, but it all ends in the same spot. Right. And that talks about like congruency and congruent marketing across the board. And so businesses are supposed to be a lighthouse. We're supposed to have our light. We need to know what color it is, how far we send it, how often it spins and what we need to do to keep it on. And then we consistently and congruently shine that light forever. And it doesn't matter. Where our customers are in the journey, they could be six miles away and they'll see it and then they'll come closer. They'll see it and they'll come closer, and that might be a hundred touch points, but then there's gonna be people that are right off the jetty and they only need one to come in. But that's where branding and congruency and brand messaging and knowing your customer journey belongs is because we're supposed to be a lighthouse, and so that's how we have to do it. And then once you get somebody to shore, like, I've never seen a boat that was drowning or stuck in a storm, not being able to find their way home and be like, you know what? I'm not worried about our safety. Let's just stop right here and go find other people and everything else and stop what we're doing and tell other people about the lighthouse. It's like, no, I'm going to follow the light till I get to safety, but once I'm on shore, I'm going to tell everybody how that lighthouse saved me, how that lighthouse guided me home, right? So after they achieve, the result is when they do all their work for you. And so, you know, when I think about it, your job is to be that lighthouse, to help people achieve their results and goals. And all that brand congruency and consistency is what's giving them the ammunition to talk about you once they do. And then they tell other people about the light, they give them the GPS coordinates, they invite them onto shore. Like, they do your marketing for you. And so, you know, for me, it's. It's a couple fold. But the biggest one is that lighthouses are built on solid foundations and they're sturdy. Like, they get rocked with Category 5 hurricanes and don't knock over, they don't move. Right? And we're talking about building a business that incorporates all those aspects. Financial aspect, do you have enough cash flow on hand? Right. Downturns, do you have enough for your product to go out of stock, for Amazon to lose it, for your ad account to get shut down? Right. Do you have a predictable way to acquire customers without paid media? Right. Do you have a predictable way to keep them? Like, there's a lot of things that you have to think about for your building to stay solid. And it's a really, really good way to think about it. And so I like to take my lighthouse analogy and then apply Mike Michalowicz's fix this next from his book that his business Hierarchy of Needs Is that.

A really good book? Because I've got it in my Kindle. It's on deck to read.

And. And I love.

I've read several of other Mike's books, and he's been on the podcast twice, so that's cool.

I've been.

I've been meeting to jump in.

So he basically took Maslov's hierarchy of needs and put it into a business perspective, because there's things that you want in your business, but you can't have until you hit those base needs, right? And so it takes. It gives it something tangible to be like, oh, that's where I need to focus. Or that's where I need to focus. And so, yeah, I love it. But, you know, for everybody listening, and I said this earlier, and I allude to this all the time, everyone's like, brand messaging, doesn't matter. I'm like, cool. Well, when I think of. When I say Nike, what do you think of? And it's immediately, just do it. Right? And I'm like, you know, when I say, what's an Apple commercial look like? Not once do you really see the product is like, this is the future. No, it's people using it. It's the experience, right? Like when I say Lululemon yoga pants, right? And so that is done. Because they've trained consistently over and over and over that when you. When you wear Nike, you get to just do it when you wear these pants. This is what it means about you. And so now everybody does their marketing for them, and everybody helps bring people in. And I don't know, it's just. It's the best way that I could come up that, like, congruently, that fit for me. And the biggest thing, Brad, the one that the big tilt for me is that I lived and the mistakes I made in my businesses was I thought my job was to jump in the water and same somebody for drowning, right? But that also prevented me from helping every other boat because I had to turn the light off when I jumped in. In the water.

Love that metaphor.

And so what we have to remember is that it's not our job to save people. It's our job to guide people and lead people. And all too often, companies jump in the water to save one while sacrificing 100 because they've lost sight of their purpose. And so you have to make sure that you're doing it the right way so that you can empower everybody and bring them on that journey.

I love that. So, George, that brings me to. That brings us to we're going to wrap this up. We're gonna wrap this up.

Bake it, wrap it up.

You, you have a couple. Like your business model is really about threefold from what I know, which is you do, you've got your own businesses that you're scaling from high speed daddy to some other ones like that and spend a lot of time in there. You also spend a lot of time working with some really high profile clients and brands and people who are already either about to scale or having scaled and are trying to get, you know, billion dollars and more. And you work with some really big people. You charge, you know, for one day, you've charged $50,000 a day sometimes and very well worth it. But you've also got some programs that are available for people who $50,000 is out of reach. Tell us about some of the programs that you offer and how it can help people and what they should do to check it out if they want more of the mind of George.

Yeah, I love it. I love it. Look at that seed. That was so good.

Ain't my first rodeo.

Yeah. It's like you've done this for a while, right? Oh, man, I felt like a rookie. I mean, I felt like a veteran when I started. I went to boot camp today, 18 years ago.

I saw your post on that, I.

Was like, oh my God. Okay, I took the right path. I'm not retiring from that. Yeah. My passion, just so everybody knows, like my passion is helping entrepreneurs build, ethically build and scale their company. And Brad, I gotta close the Zeigarnik effect right now because you asked about ethically earlier. The reason I say ethically is because it's my daily reminder that, you know, my grandmother's on the other side of your funnel and she doesn't need to quadruple her results in half the time just to get another squeeze out of her credit card. And it's just a reminder for me that there's people there and you will always build the Coliseum or one of the wonders of the world if you play it with morals and values. And if you don't, you're just going to get some tourist attraction that shuts down. And you know, I've been term success only. Absolutely. I've been to Disneyland in Somalia and it's not there anymore. It's pretty gone. Right. I've actually been there and it did used to be there. Not a real one, but they called it Disneyland. But yeah. So that's why the word ethical is there. It's my reminder every day that these are humans and customers. And we have to deliver on the promises we make whether they give us their credit card or not. Because business doesn't say like, you know, I empower people to live healthier lives only when they give me their credit card. Right. Like, that's just not what that means. And so that's my reminder there. So I love helping businesses, entrepreneurs. And you know, for me, I looked at what I wanted 10 years ago and I wish I had and I didn't have to, you know, waste multiple seven figures and lose businesses and smack my face and call Brad crying and do all that stuff. But really, you know, I use the analogy all the time. You can't name me one Olympian that doesn't have a coach and you can't name me one of their coaches that has a gold medal. And so coaches jobs are not to run the race for you, they're to help you navigate your abilities. And in my opinion, anybody that chooses to be an entrepreneur is already an Olympian. Right? You're doing something that nobody else wants to do. You're committing to a life of ambiguity, which is one of the hardest things to do. And with a little bit of oversight and support and a team in your corner, you're guaranteed to succeed. Because success comes at the intersection of intentionality and discipline with the right information. Right? And that's really what it's about. And so what I did is I surveyed a thousand of my customers six months ago and I put them all on zoom calls with me and we interviewed every single one of them. And I said, if I could give you anything in the world, what would it be? Anything in the world, what would it be? And we literally wrote down like a 28 page outline and then we were able to basically distill it down into nine modules of everything that you could ever need in your business from a customer journey perspective to where nobody has ever seen you, all the way to them in your world 36 months later, creating a customer journey that is bulletproof, guaranteed to create raving fans and help anybody either build or scale their company. And it incorporates all the aspects that are needed. And that means no holes in the bucket and everything there. And so we put it together, we call it the Lighthouse method. It's the best place for anybody to start. And obviously Lighthouse, Lighthouse, Lighthouse. But it's a nine step model that's literally designed for you to look at, audit where you are or have the right path moving forward. And it's not about like you go through it all the time. No, it's like if you have things that are working, you figure out what's working, then you find what's not, and you plug that hole, you move on. You plug that hole and you move on. And so we put that together. My favorite one, I actually got another testimonial today. These are my favorite ones. I got one today. It said all I did. All I did was walk the video on designing my perfect day. And I tripled my business in 60 days because I was being efficient with my time. And I was like, yes, I love those. And so everything I do, I do. @mindofgeorge.com I have a podcast as well. Brad will be on it. You know when we'll call it some more debauchery down there. But yeah. Mindofgeorge.com and listen, I have everything there and I have this belief that I don't win until you do. And my job, for every one of you listening this is to win. And so@mindofgeorge.com there's actually a video on the homepage where I teach you the four types of customer journeys you have to solve for. And then you can pick which one you take. So we have it there. Everything's listed. Mindedgeorge.com you can come check out the lighthouse method course. You can watch me bump my gums about it, or you can take the free gift that's on the page and help put it into practice in your business so that you can be that light, build that lighthouse and keep that light on.

I love it. That's fantastic. Well, I've loved mining the mind of George today and I look forward to continuing to do so throughout our personal relationship, which beats the hell out of algorithms, but runs a second to, you know, bacon, because we love bacon.

We do love bacon.

We love bacon and milk. It turns out you're just gonna kill you.

Inside joke. If you know, you know. If you don't, you won't. George, thanks for joining me today on bacon wrapped business for everybody. If you have liked this, I mean, I think I don't need to tell you what you haven't already seen. George is not the kind of guy who holds back. He's not the kind of guy who, you know, forces you to pay thousands and thousands of dollars for some really incredibly powerful information. He's one of the good ones, one of the authentic guys out there, and you would be doing yourself a disservice to ignore him and go check out mindofgeorge.com mind, not the mind. Right?

Yeah. Mind. Yeah.

M n D mindgeorge O f perfect. And for everybody listening to this episizzle, if you have not hit the subscribe button on whatever app you're listening to or signed up for the email, if you're on the website, I encourage you to do it. I share some really cool stuff via email with my subscribers only and I look forward to sharing it with you. And if you are stuck.

If there's an issue in your business that is really causing you a headache and you may be plateaued or revenues disappeared or I mean, we're in a really crazy time right now. You know, Covid post.

Covid.

Whatever aspect of COVID we're in, a lot of people are having to make really big pivots and I love giving a second opinion when I can. So you can always shoot me an email to bradakenratbusiness.com as well, and I'm happy to listen. And if you've got any other stories or ideas or strategies that you think that my listeners would love, I welcome the I welcome the email as well and I look forward to sharing this stuff on the next epecizzle. Talk to you soon. Big George.

Thanks man.