Effective Visual Communication To Increase Conversions - I Love Marketing Episode #255

Welcome to I Love Marketing where Joe Polish and Dean Jackson talk about new marketing ideas, direct mail ideas, lead generation, lead conversion, getting referrals, stick strategies, email marketing, psychology, books, people, and even productivity. This episode is a special segment from an industry leader who is a friend of Joe Polish and Dean Jackson that we felt would be great benefit for you here on I Love Marketing. Also, Joe and Dean have put together a free report called Breakthrough DNA 8 Profit Activators you can trigger in your business right now. Visit ilobmarketing.com DNA to get instant access to that report and put the eight profit activators to place in your business today. Now let's get to this week's episode. Enjoy.

I'm Dean Jackson, he's Joe Polish, and.

This is the I Love Marketing podcast. This is an interview between the powerful Joe Polish and the extraordinary Eric Kerr on April 8, 2016. Eric owns a company that uses a powerful marketing tool called the draw shop. Visit thedrawshop.com and check that out. About 45 minutes in or 47 minutes in. Eric has a hard time recollecting the name of an app that he was working on. The app is called Curbo K U R B O. It's an awesome app that helps children with health and nutrition. Go take a look at that. It's really cool. Go visit thedrawshop.com and enjoy the interview. Hello, this is Joe Polish and this is going to be a special Genius Network interview with my good friend and longtime genius network member, Mr. Eric Kerr, who's one of the co founders of the Draw Shop, which does all these awesome animated videos that people see online on this thing called the Internet and other places. So, Eric, how are you?

I'm doing great. Joe, how are you?

I'm doing great. And we're actually. There's a video camera in front of us right now, so I feel like we're in a radio studio with like this camera on us while we got headphones on and sitting right next to each other and all that sort of stuff.

Yeah, it feels very official.

Yeah, it is.

And epic.

It does. Okay, so you have this cool company called the Draw Shop. We've been working together for a long time. Many Genius Network members have utilized your really awesome capabilities to more effectively communicate visually through video, through animation, through words, telling their story, what it is they do, how they do it. So for people that don't have a background on you or the Draw Shop, the website is thedrawshop.com who are you? What do you do?

So my name is Eric Kerr. And I've really been. My entire career has been in marketing and sales, particularly with direct response marketing and driving leads to large sales floors for the purposes of selling. Right. Whatever product we're driving at the time. So the reason the draw shop came up is because the big challenge in marketing is always making your message impossible to misunderstand and driving action. And one day we saw a TED talk by Daniel Pink and it was about a 20 minute whiteboard. And my co founder and I, Summer Felix, looked at it and thought, man, this would be really powerful for marketing, for the point of conversion sale or to make sure that your most important message is communicated with being impossible to misunderstand to your most important audience so that they can take the action that you're hoping. And hopefully you know who that is. Right. Because a lot of people don't even know who they're trying to market to very specifically. And so she, Summer actually went out and sold three of these before we even had a company organized. And so we had cash in the bank and we had no idea how to even produce these things.

Well, you know, that in and of itself is a really good lesson in entrepreneurship because my buddy Dan Sullivan, our friend, I mean, you know Dan very well from being in Genius Network, he says the number one job of the entrepreneur is to go out and get a check.

Yeah. And she did that very well.

Yeah, yeah.

You know Summer, of course. I mean, how do you say no to Summer?

Right?

Well, there's ways, but, you know, that's.

Between you and Summer.

So you went out and sold this ability to communicate, you know, what it is you do and how you do it, in the format of video and in the format of animation. Now, I've always loved the thing that I learned from Gary Halbert, which is there's three things you need in order to sell something. You need a product or service, you need a sales pitch or a marketing message. And the third thing you need is a delivery system. How do you deliver that to people? The analogy I've used for many, many years is let's say you're a carpet cleaner and you've got carpet cleaning services. You're a lawyer or a doctor or a graphic designer, and you've got your thing, whatever your thing is, and let's just call it glop. And you got your glop. And then there's all these different delivery systems that will take money from you in order to tell the world about your glop. It could be back before the Internet existed. It was Direct mail, tv, radio, yellow pages, coupons, advertising in magazines. And then with the Internet, there's every form of social media that's out there right now. Snapchat to Facebook to Twitter to LinkedIn to YouTube, you name it, websites, et cetera. There are all these delivery systems. But if you have a really lousy sales pitch or marketing message, you're just going to be using all these delivery systems to not share something that's very compelling. And if you don't know who your audience is, that's even worse. Another thing I always talk about is marketing consists of two things. What you say and who you say it to. The message, the message and the list. And knowing the list in many cases is more important than even having the best sales pitch, because the best message in the world is useless if you shout it at deaf ears. So let's talk about both of those things and let's talk about it from this context. When I tell Genius network members and many followed my advice, I'll say go and have the Draw Shop actually create an animated video for you for a couple reasons. One, you'll have something that obviously conveys what it is that your product or service or company does, or if things like different people. We've worked with Natalie Imbruglia, the singer you created a video on, Fistula for the United Nations. Yeah. It's a horrible condition that many millions of women suffer from in other countries, predominantly. How do you convey that?

And it's a hard topic to talk about because it's not pleasant.

Exactly.

Yeah.

And you were able to convey it in a very strong, powerful, understandable way. And you do that with a lot of the stuff that you do. And I tell people, yeah, if you go through the process of having the Draw Shop do a video for you, for one, you're going to actually have something that you can use. That's one important thing. The second thing though is it forces you to actually think through what is it you're actually trying to communicate. So I look at people using a Draw Shop video is partnering with a company that has these great capabilities that's going to allow you to become more capable in deepening your understanding of your own stuff, of what is the product, what is the service, what is the cause, what is the mission, what is the story, what is the message and being able to think it through. Because what you guys do is you not only help people with the visual representation and demonstration of it, but you actually help people write the copy. And non marketers don't realize the power of words. I mean, the right words weave together to tell the story is what makes the biggest difference in the world.

Well. And when you weave the right words with a whiteboard video, where you're supporting those words with the images that you want the viewer to see, that supports your message, that drives them to the ultimate action is even exponentially more powerful because we think in terms of. So if we're sitting in a room with a bunch of couches, we're looking outside with a bunch of trees and blue sky. But if I told you to close your eyes and draw this room, what's the first thing you would draw?

Myself.

Well, that's always the answer with Joe.

Right.

Well, what would you draw yourself?

If I close my eyes, the first thing that I would draw.

Yeah. If you started drawing this room.

Boy, that's an interesting question. Right now, I would probably start drawing this mic that's right in front of my face.

Yeah. And what is that mic?

That mic is.

It's a circle.

Yeah, right. It is a circle.

So the point is, the brain thinks.

I'm looking at it right now. Yeah.

It's not a mic, it's a circle. But your brain thinks of it as a mic, but represents it as a circle. So that's how the brain thinks. The brain thinks in very, very simplistic terms because the brain is lazy. Right, Gotcha. And so it takes away all the color, all the beautiful scenery that we're looking out at. And if we were to open our eyes, we would only see. But your brain is only taking in the most basic images. So when somebody watches a whiteboard video, it's very simplistic drawing. But the movement and the simplicity of the drawing, it's drawn in such a way that it's speaking the brain's language, so the brain doesn't have to overthink. And this is all proven and scientific. Carla Clark, who is our neuroscience PhD advisor, she has brain blogger dot com, and she did all this research for us, and we thought that we were going to have to go out and do a whole bunch of research around why whiteboard videos work so well. Because for the first three years of the company, we knew they did, but we didn't know why. They just did. And there's all this data and research proving that it does work because it speaks the brain language in very simplistic terms, the movement of the hand keeps the eye engaged. And so when you're marketing, you're competing for attention. Right, right. Which is why videos work so well anyways. But a Whiteboard video compared to a talking head video in terms of retention, somebody will retain 70% of what a talking head video does and communicates, but they will retain 90 to 95% of what a whiteboard video will communicate. Right, and that's a huge difference, right?

No, it is a huge difference. So for people that don't even know what we're talking about, which I'm just saying that because there's like maybe one person out there that doesn't get this, go to thedrawshop.com and just see some samples of it. Or what I always like referring people to is one of my most viewed and liked videos that you guys have done and you've done a lot of them for me, is is selling evil. If you just go to Google and type in is is selling evil, you'll actually see the video. And the other thing I'd recommend people to do is look at the actual video that is not animated. Because what that video was created out of was I was being videotaped for a documentary and they were asking me questions as part of the B roll. And this footage never actually made it into the documentary. But what happened though is a person that works for me by the name of JR actually watched about 30 minutes of B roll, saw this question where the guy asked me, is selling evil? And I just went on this three minute and 50 second response, and you guys just took that three minute, 50 second video that had already been uploaded to YouTube and you just animated it and you made it more valuable because of the way that you demonstrated it. So people can actually see that and they can watch it. So that would be a good example of seeing some of your work and the difference between just a talking head versus an animated video. Now, the question I want to ask you is a lot of people are like, well, everyone's doing this now, which of course is not true. But a lot of people think, well, this is out there. Everyone's seen it. This doesn't work anymore. How would you respond to that?

Yeah, so we say animated video. Specifically, it's a whiteboard video. So just the nuts and bolts of it is we have an actual whiteboard with an artist who's actually using a whiteboard marker and drawing whatever script or voiceover you have. And drawing to that script or voiceover.

Yeah. And by the way, you're welcome to slap me if you want since I'm saying animated video, because I'm not really representing this properly.

Yeah, that'll come later.

Yeah.

So what was your question?

So people Will say, well, I've seen these already. Do they work?

Yeah, I mean, for us. They've been saying that to us since day one.

They always do. But I always want to bring that up because it's kind of like with direct response. Well, people are using it, so it's not going to work anyway. It's like, oh, my God, are you kidding?

Well, it's kind of like saying, you know, people have been using wheels for centuries. Like, isn't there a more productive way? But there might be, but, you know, an octagon. Yeah, an octagon. Right. It's. It's so simple that it continues to work for our clients. And until it doesn't, I guess somebody will tell us, Right? But we haven't met a control video that we haven't beat. And getting back to your point, what we see ourselves really is a storytelling company and not necessarily a video company, because out of what people I think have a challenge with Joe and you know, this is getting conversion is all about know, like and trust, which you've always said. But it's also about not making them swallow the whole whale all at the same time.

Right.

Because communication and sales process is broken up in segments. Right. And it's like a domino. So for a whiteboard video, in many times it's the first domino because that's the most important point of communication. So if somebody goes to your website and your website isn't built correctly, or there's no form of engagement on the website, you've got about three seconds to get them engaged. And when they have a video that they can play, they're going to play that anyways. But if it's a talking head, then they're probably going to leave. But if they have a very concise whiteboard video, they're going to watch it longer, they're going to remember more, and they're going to take the action that we ask them to take at the end of it. So in our process, we help you think through that. Out of everything that you could say, what should you say to get the action that you want at this point of communication to drive them to the next action that you want in your sales process?

Right. Well, you said a few things that I'm taking notes of that I want to ask you about. So you made this comment, never met a control you weren't able to beat. Is that what you said?

Yeah.

Okay, so let's break this down because that's really important, actually. That's so important if it's true. And I Want to see if it actually is? Since you said it, yeah. Is Eric lying here? Is this actually true? So a control for people that are not familiar with the term in marketing is what is the current thing that you're using to say generate business? Now, that term came from, as far as I know, from the direct mail business or the advertising business, where someone would run an ad that brought in more response or a sales letter that brought in more response than any other letter, and that became the control. And my good friend Brian Kurtz at Boardroom Inc. Back in the day, they had a sign up on the wall, I believe, that said, the control is enemy, meaning the very best bait that we have on the hook is the enemy. Because we're trying to come up with a better bait so we can have a hook, a premise, an offer, an ad, a sales letter that actually does better than the current one that we have. So it's always trying to beat your very best conversion method. You always want to look at whatever's generating business for you in your company. That would be considered your control. And in the case of a video, if you have a video that you're using to pitch, sell, communicate, engage, enroll people into your company, your thing, your movement, your cause, how do you create a different one that is better? So everyone would be really well served to identify if they do have a control, and if they don't, you need one. Right? Because many companies exist because of control. I mean, you take like beachbody.com, you know, for many, many years, they made billions of dollars, literally billions with a B that company generated starting first. Now they sell a bunch of things from supplements and all kinds of things. But they started with, you know, videos. And the founders of that company, I interviewed one of them, and I've interviewed Tony Horton from their P90X videos. And they really kept working that infomercial and working that infomercial. And he told me that in the beginning it didn't work, but they just had such a belief that they could make really hard workouts, which were the opposite of most infomercial selling exercise equipment that people didn't even use to actually selling workout videos that were really hard and weren't sit on a couch and lose weight sort of things. But they kept tweaking it until they had their control, and then they would keep editing. So their control was really about really concise editing and getting it down and getting it down. And so whenever you have that in a company, that is huge. Now, if you said we never had a control, we were not Able to beat a lot of people listening to this. If they could come to you and you could do that for them. Some people that would change their life.

Yeah, I mean, it would change their life. And we've had a couple of case studies that are on the website, but one very proven information product that had been around for years, and he says everybody's tried to beat this and they haven't been able to. And we, I think he tested this thing for like six months.

Right.

And it beat it by 8%.

Okay.

And when you're making two and a half million dollars a year and you know your video is your online conversion tool, 8% in 2.5 million is huge. Right, right, right. But if you look just Google is selling evo video, the whiteboard video versus your talking head video. I just looked it up on your channel and your talking head video has 20,000 views and the whiteboard video has 60,000 views.

There you go.

And the same is consistent for Peter Diamandis. Peter said our whiteboard videos are his most viewed videos. And I remember when we did your video, your team came up and said, you know, we've heard Joe say this a thousand times, but now we see it more clearly. Right, right. Eric Schmidt came back to us after we did the new digital age video for him, the chairman of Google, and he came back to us to do how Google works. And we did a three minute video for him and it just blew up any other video that he had on the topic. So again, this comes back to storytelling and engagement. When you talk about storytelling engagement, your audience is really not the person, but the person's brain, because that's what we're trying to engage. When a brain is engaged, it will stay engaged as long as you're using the right tools. Because as soon as it sees a shinier object and goes, this isn't worth my time, but I want to look at that camera that's in my face right now. Then you've lost the game.

Totally.

So the point is about winning that communication game. And we found that the optimal length is anywhere between two and three minutes. Anything longer you can still do and it's really powerful. But if you've got a homepage video or just a next action video or an opt in video, then it's two to three minutes. Like Eric Schmidt's was three minutes.

Well, the first one from the new Digital age, because I started working with Jared Cohen, who's the director of ideas.

That was six and a half minutes.

Yeah. I mean, you were trying to explain It a very complex book, but doing it to and I'll tell you like, if people wanted to really understand what was their message all about watching your Because I helped a little bit with the marketing of that book and watching your video was the clearest concises, quickest way to get a grasp of what they were trying to convey.

Yeah. And whenever we have somebody that we're talking about a potential client, the biggest thing that we hear consistently throughout is I want people to understand what makes me different. Because there are very few companies who don't have competition. If we didn't have competition, we would not have to optimize anything other than to beat ourselves. And sometimes that's the case. And you're blessed if that's the case. And when you want to differentiate yourself from the competition, it's going to be what are the features and the benefits of that feature that make you unique. And you have to tell story around that in a way that the viewer will say that's me. And I get it. Yes. Not come away and go, I have no idea what that was.

Well, and that's the sweet spot. I mean the ability to convey that in a way to where people and what I'm going to ask you about Strategic Coach and just tell me because you've done a lot of videos, which is awesome. And as we're sitting here recording this, I've decided I want to put this actually as an episode on the podcast I do with dan Sullivan called 10xtalk.com so you can, you know, it'll be there.

Awesome.

And the thing about conveying a really powerful message with clarity, I would like you to from everything that you've learned and everything you've done and looking at all of these different videos, how does one think about telling a story? How does one think about communication?

Well, you have to think about it really just. And you and I talked about this this morning. It all goes back to the basics of marketing. It's feature benefit. And then tying it into in a way that your targeted viewer understands and sees them being played out in the story. So that just goes back to. You have to understand, Crystal, clearly who your audience is. Is it male, female? How old are they? What are their concerns about your product? Why does your product overcome their anxieties about why they should or shouldn't do it? And when you know that, you can just join the conversation. As we've heard multiple times, that's already going on in their head.

Yeah, the whole Robert, yeah. Robert Collier had this line is you want to enter a conversation that's already existing in the prospect's mind.

Right. And so that's all we're trying to do. And that's when you tell the story, because the story is already happening in your target audience's head. You just have to make sure that they feel like you understand that story too.

Right, right. Well, I've had a lot of conversations with Dan Sullivan about people don't buy from you because they understand what you do. People buy from you because they feel understood. And then the other quote is, if you want to sell what John Smith buys, you got to see through John Smith's eyes. And when you start thinking like that and literally hearing those quotes and saying, okay, how do I present what it is that I'm presenting in a way to where it engages people? I mean, you use the term engagement, you're not going to sell anything to a disengaged person. I mean, you have to create that sort of engagement. So there's a lot of psychology that's going on here. I mean, I think of marketing as applied psychology. A lot of people think of marketing as, oh, let's put a logo out or let's it put. Put a brand together or let's have the right color combination or let's pick a certain method of, oh, marketing is putting an ad on Facebook and not realizing doing good marketing requires work. Yeah. Some real sophistication, some real deep understanding at a very deep level of understanding. Who is your avatar? Who is it you're trying to sell to? What's the mindset of these individuals? What are their fears? What are their concerns? Keeps them up at three in the morning with their bile coming up to their esophagus because they're sick to their stomach about some angst or some pain that they're having challenges within their life and you have a solution to it. And you're going to convey this to them in a way to where they're going to want to do business with you or they're going to want to jump on board with you. And that's not just something that you get some amateur to sit down and knock out. So a lot of times it's like, oh, you know, why do I want to pay several thousand dollars to have someone do a video for me? It's like, well, because what you're selling is like your business and that's your career. And if you don't have people buying stuff from you, then you don't have a company, you don't have money. And this Actually is the most important thing to actually get your product, your service, your cause out into the world. What other thing could you possibly be focusing on other than more conversions, more enrollment, more engagement, more acquisition than marketing? And you want to do everything you can to hone and improve that because that's how you win the game.

Yeah. People don't understand the power of. I get it when your target audience says that in their mind. Right. So as an example, we have a common friend, Richard Mayburn, who's got a company called Mimic Technologies, and they had a website where you went to the website and it was just a bunch of words and some pictures, which 10 years ago was pretty much the game right before video. And we just put, I think we did a four minute video for him and he just put it up in the corner. Like, didn't even like design. This was just like a turd on the front of the, on the homepage of the website. And just having that video there that people would watch, that made it impossible for them to misunderstand what he does. And the benefits of his service within 90 days increased his annual revenue $250,000. That's awesome. So that's the power of clarity and people saying, I get what you did. He said he had service partners who said, well, I finally get what you do now after doing business with them for 10 years.

Right, right. Not that it hasn't happened. Okay. Because I don't really know. But I've never had anyone come to me and I've referred lots of people. I mean, dozens and dozens and dozens of people. I've referred to the Draw Shop to have videos created.

You're a great friend and we appreciate that.

Yes, it's good. That's kind of a good deal, I think. Yeah. Thank you. I've never had someone come to me and say, oh, you know, dammit, I'm pissed that I did that video. I mean, what I hear is like, thank you. I mean, that so helped me understand what it is I'm trying to say. And what a lot of people don't realize is once you do that, if you sit down and write a sales letter, literally write it, type it, hand write it, that changes every other form of communication that you do.

Absolutely.

I mean, I say to people all the time, well, I need to sell more of what it is I'm selling, what I need to do. I say write a sales letter. Well, what do you mean? Like, okay, you can go build a website, you can hire a consultant until you actually get the copy and start Thinking about the thing that you're trying to sell and convey all the words and go through the process. It's not about having a letter, it's about doing the thinking. It's about getting into the minds of the prospect, the person that you're trying to compel, the person you're wanting to convince, the person you're wanting to engage and enroll, the person that you're wanting to share your story with so that they can understand that you are an option. You know, when you sit down and create that or have it created, what it does is it plants a seed and that seed grows into something that becomes more. And what I tell people, the strategic byproduct, which is a Dan Sullivan term, is like when you're, when you have a goal in mind, like I'm gonna, I want to lose weight as an example, is a simple one. And you say, okay, well I'm going to, you know, I'm going to lose weight and I want to do that in 90 days. Then what happens is a whole bunch of other things start happening as a result of you wanting to lose weight. Like oh, you quit drinking, maybe as much or entirely. You go to sleep earlier, you start exercising, you eat healthier foods, you maybe quit hanging out with certain friends. Like a whole series of things happen. Maybe you run a marathon or maybe you sign up for some class or you start doing more self care. There's all these things that happen and those things that happen off to the side because of the goal in many cases end up becoming greater than the goal that you were pursuing in the first place. And I say doing a draw shot video is going to create a strategic byproduct of you're going to think about your company and your products and your services and how you sell things by doing it. And many people, they rely on salespeople to go and sell their stuff. And if they actually have a sales letter or a video or a control, in a lot of cases it can eliminate having to have salespeople do it. Because as you've heard me say a million times, selling is what you do when you're on the phone or face to face with somebody. And marketing is what you do to get someone on the phone or face to face with you properly positioned. So by the time they talk to you, they're pre interested, pre motivated, pre qualified and predisposed to give you money. And if someone watches a really well done video that positions them. And if you do have salespeople, that video ends up becoming an enhancement tool to make it easier for that salesperson to actually represent what it is that they're trying to sell for you. So you're not only creating something for your company, you're actually creating something for every person that works within your organization that is there to tell the story. And I always say every person in every department is part of the marketing department. Everything that you do is about how your company is positioned. All of these wonderful things happen whenever people start creating ads. There's a guy, a famous marketing guy named Ted Nicholas, and I interviewed him many years ago, and one thing that I never forgot that he said is that people would come to him with ideas about things that should be sold at the company, things that they can improve to sell. And he said, don't bring me ideas, bring me ads. And anytime someone had an idea of something they wanted to promote or something that they thought the company should be doing, he had them write an ad for it. He said, because if we're going to actually sell this thing, we're going to need an advertisement for it. So you might as well just. If you can't convince me through your ability to write an ad that we should do this, then, like, we're going to need the ad anyway. And if the ad convinces me, then we've already done the work. We can take that ad, and we can build off of that. So I think it's just in the same way that Dan Sullivan teaches people at Strategic Coach to fill out a tool he has called the impact filter. He's like, don't come to me with ideas. Come to me with an impact filter. Like, and so, you know, if people are in Strategic Coaches an example, fill out an impact filter, they could take that impact filter and hand it to, like, the Draw shop. And the Draw Shop could turn their idea into animated a whiteboard video. And I even think if you're not trying to sell anything, if you just want to educate your clients about something that you teach, you've done that many times, too. I mean, one of the ways that we, for Genius Network members, we've used the draw shop to do introductions of people. We've used it to create postcards and stills and explanations of how to benefit and utilize different things. So what are all the different ways that people could use something like this in their company?

Yeah. As you talk, I think about use cases almost for every scenario that you brought up. So we do a lot of Financial Advisor videos because we as humans are terrible communicators. Right. So we have an emotion or something that we're trying to communicate, but we're horrible at it because maybe we are over caffeinated. Maybe we're tired. We don't have the energy for it. We know that what we should say and do, but we don't do and say it because, you know, we just suck.

We're.

We're not. We're bad communicators. And what a whiteboard video does is it communicates perfectly every time.

Right. Like if we're. If people were listening to a whiteboard video right now versus me and you, it would be so much more effective. Yeah.

I mean, they would be.

We're not editing this out either. I love this.

I'm still thinking about like five minutes ago when I actually burped into the mic and I'm wondering if that was going to come up on it. So you guys can go back like five minutes and see if you heard that while Joe was talking.

Yeah.

But.

Jordan's like, we're terrible communicating.

So we have financial advisors who use these videos to. And they have their clients watch a video before they make their presentation. Because that way the client comes in with a very clear understanding of who they are and the benefits that they offer and they can move on to the next level of conversation. Big company eharmony. Like, there's a lot of dating sites and eharmony is a client of ours. And when they first came to us, they said, we're having a hard time communicating why we're different from every other dating site. I mean, eharmony and these guys spend millions of dollars on advertising.

Right, Right.

But they're realizing that competition is increasing. Right. And everybody's starting to sound the same. So how do we differentiate ourselves? And so they're doing whiteboard videos to do that.

Yeah, yeah. So. So the application is. There's all kinds of different ways that you can convey it.

It's really where. And Michael Fishman came up with this term and we use it a lot, but making your most important messages impossible to misunderstand. Right.

I'm actually the one that taught him that.

Okay. So thank you.

No, I'm kidding, by the way. No, that's really good. Anything that you need to communicate to people and you're having a difficulty or trouble in a sales environment. And by the way, me and Dean Jackson on I Love Marketing, we talk about there's three units of a business. This is before unit, what you do to generate business. There's the during unit, once people are interacting with you, and then there's the after unit, everything that you do after someone has given you money to deliver world class service. So they're super stoked and really happy and it creates repeat business and orchestrates referrals. And if you look at every area of your business, the before, the during and the after stages, there's communication that is required to deepen it. And a lot of people, they think of, you know, selling just as generating new business, but they don't think about, well, okay, after someone's done business with you, you could send actually a thank you saying, okay, you just bought like I cannot tell you, you know, I drive a Tesla and Tesla thinks through a lot of stuff and I've had Land Rovers, I've had Mercedes, I've had Jaguars, I've had, you know, I mean I've given away so many different cars in my contests over the years and I can't believe how inept some of these companies are or these dealerships where they're selling very high end vehicles but they have no, like after someone buys it, how to use the navigation system. And Tesla has really great videos as an example and they're always updating them. But there's a lot of companies that sell stuff in, you know, so where do most people go to figure out how to make something work? They go to YouTube and some user has actually put together a video explaining how to use anything, be it a piece of electronic equipment or how to cook a recipe. Because the dumbass company that actually sells the thing hasn't thought through. Okay, after we've sold it, we should probably make it easy for people to use it. And anything that requires an instruction, someone could actually hire your company and you can explain it.

Well, we actually do that quite a bit. You know who we do it for are mortgage lenders and anybody who's got complicated process after the sale because that's where people get pissed.

Right, right, right.

Because you make the sale and everybody's happy, they're buying out of motion, they know you, they love you, they trust you, they gave you the money or whatever transaction you're looking for their email address, but if you make it complicated after that, they're going to be just really unhappy. And so mortgage companies are coming to us saying, can you put together videos for us to walk our new clients through the process of onboarding and how this lending process is going to go. If they're clear on that, they won't get frustrated and they won't be surprised. Setting expectation by communicating clearly like you're saying is very important because that's at the point in which they're deciding, do I continue to do business, do I continue to do repeat business? And most importantly, do I refer this business to somebody?

Yeah, exactly. See, that's the key is do I refer something? So I think of I'm in the midst of selling a house right now and I do a podcast with Dean Jackson, who's been teaching realtors how to sell homes and real estate for 20 plus years. And I know a lot about it, from talking about it and from an observational standpoint. But it wasn't until I've actually put together much of the marketing for my own home, knowing all the things that I know, that I realized just how inept most Realtors actually are. And what's really funny is I look at how much they spend on image advertising. They put their name and they put their picture and how many homes they've sold and this sort of stuff. And it's all this ego based sort of marketing.

It's all prepackaged for them.

Oh, it's. Yeah. And after they sell a home, do that. I mean, like the most important thing that they could ever do is have a really happy client who could then refer them, certainly to use them again if they ever want to buy or sell a home. But secondly, that's the sweet time to get a referral. And they have virtually nothing in 99% of the cases. Now granted, there's always a few superstars. I mean, I could look at any industry for many years. You know, 5% of people make the vast majority of the money and the other 95% scrape around for the crumbs. And if you look at what the 5% that are the top of any industry, they just do things differently. And things like this are little. You know, it's the whole saying little hinges swing big doors. I mean, these are the little hinges that you can do. Because what we're talking about here is in the context of what your company does, whiteboard videos. But what we're talking about though applies just is follow up, it applies to just little things that you do to improve communication. Because marketing is a communication game. And so you're in the communication game and you're in the improvement of the communication game. So let's talk about what you've learned out of doing all of this in building this company. Do you have any idea how many videos your company's actually created? Would you have to?

I know currently at any time we've got 99 to 100 projects active at any given time right now.

And that's churning on a constant basis.

Our average turnaround time is four weeks.

Okay, okay.

So a lot.

So what have you learned? What have been the big surprises that you have in the process of doing this? Oh, let's create a company. We're going to solve this communication issue that a lot of people have and create videos and you've discovered stuff. What are some of the biggest aha's like wow, I never realized that would work or that if we do this, this makes the biggest difference. Things that you could share that would be really great, elegant ideas for people listening.

Making it super, super simple. Taking a video and just trying to make one point very strongly because we tend to make communication over complicated and we try to. We have clients who want to in a three minute video make 15 points and it's just not possible and it's going to complicate the message. So the user comes away going, well, I'm not really sure what that was all about or what was the most important thing. I think one of the most, the best salespeople are doctors. Because if my son is, if my baby, my 2 year old, and I've done this before, has the flu and I go in and they say, well, we need to take this piece of metal and stick it into your son's vein. Right. It's a very clear message that I've got. One thing that I'm concerned about my son's health, like getting him better.

Right.

That's all I'm worried about. And typically your viewer has one primary concern that they're most worried about. So you have to understand what that big concern is and drive to that concern.

Well, what about hooks? I mean Dean Jackson, he has this great line where he says a compelling offer is 10 times more powerful than a convincing argument. And so many people are trying to convince, but very few people are really compelling. So how do you create a hook? How do you think about presenting something in a way to where it's compelling, where people cannot not pay attention to it?

Again, it comes back to the story that you're telling. Yeah, it's all about story and at the end of it. Well, the other thing is so many people don't even have a hook at the end. There's no call to action. So many people just say if I just tell the story and I don't have an ask at the end, then it's good enough.

It's almost like they're afraid of asking for the sale. And see, what I see all the time is people that really are nice People that really care, they really have good stuff, but there's this point where they just don't know how to. And who knows, whatever psychological blocks there are to saying, give me money or buy my stuff, but they get to that. That so close to the win, and they don't know how to, you know, take the ball over the line.

Yeah. Our hooks with our videos, to be honest with you, are not. We're not asking for the $10,000 sale.

Right.

You know, we're setting the $10,000. We're setting it up so that you can have the conversation to get the 10,000.

Most of your videos are not closing. They're just setting the stage.

Well, they're closing, but for a much smaller action. The first two dominoes. Right, right. That lead to the bigger sale. Like with the financial advisors, what makes us unique and what makes us different? With eharmony, what makes us unique and what makes us different? So that you'll enter your email and get on our database so that we can send you more information and have more opportunities to have more conversations about what we do.

Right, right.

And so that's really the sweet spot for us. We don't, you know, having a compelling offer that takes more than a couple of minutes. Right. If it depends on. On how big your ask is. Right. If you're asking for a $10,000 sale, and that's. Sometimes I need to get them in the room, like financial advisors, I'm asking you to Trust me with $200,000 or more or $20,000. That's more of a conversation. If we're just asking for an email address, then it's a shorter conversation to find out. There has to be a good. And I know that you and Dean teach, and I love marketing. There's that friction point and you have to overcome. So if you explain that, you can probably explain it better than I can, but that's how we do it.

Well. And it is good to create tension in some cases, because most people are buying because they're either excited or they're desperate. And so how you evoke the emotions and create that emotion, and the thing is that a picture's worth a thousand words. A mental picture is worth 10,000 words. Now, whenever you get it to be a moving picture and you lead it into that, that becomes very powerful. There's one thing you said, though, and this is marketing 101 for people that get it. But I'm surprised at how many people really don't get this. And so it's always worth repeating, is Being in the lead generation business versus just trying to sell your stuff. Most advertising going back to before the Internet existed was name, rank, serial number, you know, here's who I am, here's what I do, here's my phone number. Now it's name what I do website or that sort of stuff. And I have a friend named Charles Poliquin. He's probably the most successful strength coach in the world. And I was with him last weekend. He had an event and he had me speak on the last day to a lot of these fitness professionals, personal trainers, people that are running gyms and just very focused on health, very in fit individuals. And there's this one guy who is probably one of the strongest power lifters in the world who has a gym stronger than you. This guy could crush me with his index finger, probably so, I mean this dude was huge. And he's, you know, cool guy.

And.

He sent me a message after the event because we exchanged contact info and he said, hey man, you know, if could you take a look at my website and give me any suggestions? And you know, my usual reply is listen to my podcast, you know, learn some stuff. I don't really critique things unless people are in my genius network group or something. Then even then I usually don't do it. But of course I was interested and I looked at his site just for a few seconds and I sent back a link to him of something to watch one of my podcast episodes. But what I said is that you don't even have an opt in. I mean one of the main things you want to do on your site is capture leads because most of the selling is not going to be done on your website. It's going to be done when you start having a conversation and a dialogue with people. And the first thing you need to do is offer them something of value and have them give you their.

Invite them into your home.

Exactly. And then get their permission to start educating them. And you don't have to sell them something right away, but you just start a dialogue. And I cannot tell you how many websites we look at. And of course Dean Jackson invented the squeeze page back in 1997.

He's brilliant.

Yeah. So there's all kinds of ways that you can just do simple little tweaks that make all the difference.

And there are so many simple little tweaks, but it's all formula based. It's not like we don't know what to do. If you researched it and googled it in today's world, you'll find the Same themes come up in a thousand different blogs so you can find out what you need to do. And what our role in that process is, is to have a mechanism that brings down the anxiety and heightens the positive reaction to your message and makes it super clear so that they will take that action.

Right. So what are some of your favorite success stories of what you've seen with people doing this?

Well, Richard's was really cool and we've got testimonials up and down. We have one that. Trying to remember. We have a. See, I'm trying to remember the name of the app. I think it's. No, it's not that. Anyways, it's a childhood app or it's teaching kids how to eat better by basically breaking it down into yellow, red, green, what's good for them and making it, basically gamifying it. We used a number of different videos to engage both the parents and the kids to make sure that they understood how to use the app. And it's just blowing up. They said the, the videos are a total game changer for us. And this is a company who was, I mean, they, they raised money, they had seed investors, Silicon Valley and very high profile clients. Yeah. And the videos made a huge difference. Awesome. And we like to communicate about. We've got passion projects like working with UN we're going to be doing more work with them and we do a lot of work around autism projects. So my favorite projects are really the ones that make the greatest kind of humanity impact because charities and good causes are terrible marketers.

Yes, they are.

They don't know how to communicate. The un, The UN fpa. And I was on a call with them last week and I said, no offense, but you guys are. They're doing some really cool, cutting edge stuff with gamification and everything right now, but they don't know how to communicate that. And the UN does not have the best profile.

Right, right.

People, you either love them or you hate them, but they're actually doing some very cool stuff. I said you need help communicating. And so we're doing a series of videos, you know, helping them communicate that well.

And yeah, and I mean, we're having a meeting here right now over Artists for Addicts, which is, you know, a project that I came up with. And we have a team of people that are putting together something that's going to be a whole platform to help people with addictions and help artists and get artists engaged. We got Joe, volunteer.com, which is, you know, like Uber for volunteers. So There's. And these sort of projects need this sort of communication. So Strategic Coach, I want to talk about that because you've done a few videos for Dan Sullivan and for Strategic Coach. And what I love about Strategic Coach members is they're some of the easiest people to work with, because what Dan Sullivan does in Strategic Coach is helps them get clear on what their unique abilities are, what it is that they're actually offering. He has tools that help them think through things. And so when they come into Genius Network, a lot of these people have really thought through about their business. But what Dan always says is that most Strategic Coach members are great salespeople, but they're not great marketers. And marketing is selling in advance. Marketing is all of the stuff you do so that if you do your marketing right, it makes selling easy and in many cases, ideally unnecessary. And so when you have the right sort of video. So talk about some of the things you've done for Strategic Coach and some of the people in that group, because I know you've done a lot of work for those folks.

Yeah, well, one of the initial videos that we did for Dan was 10x, his 10x program. And Dan said that he did that video with us because he wanted his team to understand what 10x was all about initially. So he produced the video to communicate it for his team. And the 10x program is going great. It's got big enrollment. Everybody understands what it is. But yeah, Dan did that and we've done it. There's a lot of Genius members that are Strategic Coach members as well.

Yes.

And it's just. It's hard to pick one because there's so many.

Right?

Yeah. I mean, the group has been great and very generous, but I think we've made some positive impact as well.

Yeah, totally. So let me. What have I not asked you that I should ask you? What's a question that is just. Would evoke some really great useful wisdom for the listeners?

Useful, great. You know, I think that the reason these whiteboard videos work so well is because when selling and the reason people give something to you is because they have anxiety and fear. Right. And what these videos do is they may. They're very friendly, they're fun, and they're engaging. And when you can get people to smile then and feel relaxed about your message, then they're more likely to know, like, and trust and take that next step. And that's proven that these videos do that very well. You know, it's. It's super, super simple. I mean, I'm Trying to come up with things to tell you. But it's, it's, it's just very. Communication is effective. Communication is super simple.

Right. And so I'll say this. The companies that will make the most money in the future are those that bring simplicity to the complexity that exists in everyone's lives and in everyone's minds. And the more that you can take things and convey them in ways that people, that allows people to understand their pain or their fears or their problems or their challenges in a better way than they can articulate it, they're going to have rapport and they're going to engage with, with you. So the job of the marketer is to establish trust and rapport. And you do that through effective communication. Because as a longtime genius network member and our friend Richard Rossi says that the number one question in all consumers minds is who can I trust? And so your job is to convey things in a way that people trust you. And that's why we do it. Here's the thing too, and I have to say this, many people wouldn't know this, but we've been at it all day. Yeah, we did yoga this morning. We've been having brainstorm sessions about it.

That was blown on your foot.

Yeah, that was kind of weird. And we've been going over Artists for addicts and creating this platform. And what both me and you have in common is we have these companies that we do things to make money. So it funds these other passion projects, if you want to call them that. It's really, there's these big game changing things that we're working on. Mine is in the area of addiction and wanting to reduce suffering. And here I am having learned all this stuff about promotions while trying to create a platform about attraction and helping people that have this condition. And so one of the things that me and you are working on is, and I'd love to have you. I know it's premature and your whole thing is. I don't want to really talk about it yet, but I'm going to try to force you to talk about it. Oh, you have to something to plant a seed. Because I'd like people to be aware of some of the stuff that we're actually doing. More so because every entrepreneur out there has a why as to what you're doing. And it's usually way beyond money and it's way beyond all of this stuff. There's something that is inside the entrepreneurial spirit where they actually want to make something happen in the world. And certainly there's self Serving reasons. You want to have nice stuff, you want to have profitability. However, most entrepreneurs that I know are really deep, caring humans, and they work really hard because there's things that just need to get done in the world. And so here we are trying to do some stuff, and I'd love to have you share one of the projects that you're working on.

Yeah, thanks, Joe. And it's interesting because as entrepreneurs, we can become successful and we think that money is the solution to peace and happiness, and it can buy more stuff and it can make life easier. But there's this void still in the soul, I think, and a calling that we all typically get. And so as I've been hanging out with you and Peter Diamandis, you've been shouting from the rooftops. Addiction needs to be something that everybody is addressing and find a solution for this. And then. And Peter has always said, make a big impact, have a big goal, and what's your moonshot? And so just hanging out with you two and then having an experience with my dad kind of brought all that to clarity for me for a project called Silence the Scream, which is to eradicate addiction relapse in the near future permanently. And it's going to be quite a battle, but we're launching a $1 million Hero X prize. And for the team that comes up with the solution or the technology to identify addiction relapse as it is, the signals are going off in the brain and in the body way before anybody else can physically notice it, including the addict themselves. So the preemptive measures can be taken to keep them from getting to that screen point where they're killing themselves. They're running off to be alone so they can inject the needle or pacify whatever addiction scream they're trying to deal with at the time. And the idea really came from a point and experience with my dad, who died about six months ago. But a year before he died, my sister and I were playing cards with him. And my sister is a registered nurse. And while we were playing cards, she started asking my dad to hold the cards in his left hand and his right hand and hold his left hand up and his right hand up. And what she was doing was she noticed dad maybe having signals of a stroke while we were playing the game. And so she was asking him to do these things to validate whether or not he was ends up he was. And because she had the expertise and could see the warning signs, we had another year with my dad. Had I been there playing cards with my dad myself, he would have died that night.

Wow.

So that got me to thinking at the last genius event. It just kind of popped up into my mind as you were talking about addiction. That man, what if we could do this for addiction? Like how many hours of misery, suicides, accidental overdoses, just suffering in the world could we prevent from happening? Not necessarily taking the approach of we're going to cure addiction, because I think that's a much more complex problem with all the varieties of addiction. But if we could just identify the early, early, early point of relapse starting, then we can take preemptive measures to make sure that that doesn't happen. And so that's what the million dollar prize is for, is to identify that technology.

Great, great. And that'll be on the Herox platform, correct? HeroX.com and yeah, follow it because it's. First off, it's awesome that you're doing that. I'm really.

Well, you're the inspiration for it, really. I mean, it's a combination of life events and experiences and interactions that any idea comes from. But you're a good friend and it's a great cause. And right before we got on this podcast, I got a call saying that we were invited to go to the United Nations World assembly on drug trafficking and addiction with over 80 countries being there and we were asked to be a part of that. And this is so early in the process that we're already getting that kind of traction.

Yeah, this is going to be a big deal. Yeah, yeah, this is going to help a lot. Yeah, this is awesome. So thank you. And what's cool about it is you're going to take these communication skills that you've been talking about here and you're going to. Because this needs to be conveyed. I mean, people need to understand it. So it's a way to actually watch how you are a person who's really studied and learned marketing and you're in the business of communicating complex things in ways that people can understand it and gauge it. So if people want to, want to follow this, how do they do that?

So for now we're gonna have a very basic website up called silencethescreem.com and we will start posting different posts. As we start, it starts moving along. Any help that we can have, we're thinking about starting an incentive based sharing video, hopefully a cause and a movement. And this is just the concept right now. But the thing about addiction is, you and I know, and we talked about this earlier, is there's a number of causes, right? There's Sex trafficking. There's. I mean, just name it, right? Yeah.

There's trauma. I mean, addiction is response to trauma.

Yeah, but everybody has, like, we were in a room with probably 10 people today. Everybody has been touched by addiction. You know, we had people whose brothers had died from addiction. I have addiction within my family. And the trauma around that you do, you've got very personal experience with it, obviously. So this is one of the most traumatic human issues that is not talked about enough and is kind of swept under the rug. It's more impactful than cancer in terms of trauma and lives touched. It's one of the biggest crises that we have. And if you say, hey, I'm an addict, all of a sudden you're looked at as a bad person. So the conversation has to change. And having people share their addiction story is going to be a big part of this. So anybody who's listening, if you have personal experience, family experience, at some point in time, we would love for anybody to share that story so that other people can be brave enough to share their story. Because it's only by bringing your story to the forefront and everybody realizing that this is not an alley or a drug corner issue anymore. It's suburbia, you know, and it's affecting everybody. And there are just lives that go unfulfilled because of it. Then the more stories we can get, the better off we're gonna be. And I think the more attention we'll get from the decision makers.

Yeah.

Awesome.

Awesome. Thank you. So the point is, like, even if you don't resonate with addiction or which most people do have someone close to them that does. The point is we're all working on something. Everybody has something to sell, some mission. Maybe not everybody, but people that are want to make, quote, unquote, an impact or want to build and grow a company. It all requires effective, powerful, clear, simple communication in order to make something work and get something off the ground. If people want to work with you, what do they do? How do they do it?

Go to thedrawshop.com t h e d r a w shop.com and just fill out the powwow form. And my team will take great, great care of you.

Awesome. Any famous last words?

I don't know. I'm kind of looking at your face and I'm just falling deeply in love with you.

I mean, I don't think there's any better famous last words than that. Well, thank you, Eric. I really appreciate you. Thank you. And thedrawshop.com check it out. And if you've had a video made that and share it and put it out there and best of luck. Until next time. We'll talk to you on another episode. Thank you.

Thanks Joe.

We hope you enjoyed this episode from Joe Polish and Dean Jackson on I Love Marketing. Most of the episodes are based on Joe and Dean's eight Profit Activators to grow your business. Joe and Dean have put together a free report called Breakthrough 8 Profit Activators you can trigger in your business right now. Visit ilovemarketing.com GNA to get instant access to that report and put the eight profit activators in place for your business today. Again, that's www.ilovemarketing.com DNA.