Getting The Fundamentals of Marketing: An Insightful Marketing Q&A with Clay Hebert & Joe Polish

The goal of any headline is not to close the sale. The goal of the headline is to get them to read the sub headline or get them to scroll down or get them to click play on the video. The goal of any headline is to earn permission for them to go a little bit deeper.

I've known Clay for almost, I don't know, a decade, I don't know, a long time. He first spoke here at Genius network in late 2015 and has worked with a number of you here today. Many of you know Clay.

How many of you know Clay?

Okay, only a couple of you.

All right.

For those of you that don't, here's a quick bio on him. Clay Hebert is a marketing and branding strategist, speaker, and storyteller. He loves words and he believes we make marketing harder than it needs to be. For a decade, Clay led teams at Accenture, the world's largest consulting firm, solving complex problems for global Fortune 500 companies. He escaped corporate America to attend the most selective MBA program in the country. He he was one of only nine people to learn directly from a marketing expert, Seth Godin. For six months, Clay's work has been profiled in the books Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss, Entrepreneurial youl by Dori Clark, and Deep Work by Cal Newport, of whom I've interviewed all three of them for my podcast. He's helped over 2000 projects raise over 100 million total on crowdfunding platforms Kickstarter and Indiegogo. Forbes called him one of the next generation of business and media influencers. And he was recently named one of Entrepreneur magazine's 50 Most Daring Entrepreneurs, along with Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. Clay's here today to help us understand the two kinds of marketing. The two most powerful words in marketing and the simple three word formula can help any of you improve your marketing immediately. So please help me welcome my friend and yours, Clay Hebert. Thank you, brother.

Thanks, brother.

Yeah, so wherever you want to sit. Except this seat. So I don't know, for some reason, I'm just drawn to this one today. All right, well, there's a million things that we could talk about. I would prefer getting some questions from the audience. Anything before we start that you'd like to say that I didn't share? That would give some people some context about your stupid human tricks.

I love words and I love stories. And Joe said, I think we make marketing harder than it needs to be. One thing I want to talk about is the two different kinds of marketing. And I think no matter what Questions come. We're going to get into that. But this room is full of expert direct marketers. Joe's an expert direct marketer, but that's sort of half of marketing. And I think what gets lost often in our world is the power of brand marketing. So I want to touch on that as well.

Awesome.

Awesome.

So why don't we turn the lights on, Gina, and let's start with Tucker in the back.

So just before I ask a question, I'll tell you guys, he's very good. I've known him for a long time. I got a question for you, though, that I think will help kickstart everything. So imagine that I'm like, I own a business doing well, but I know I don't have my marketing, especially my branding and positioning. I see a lot of people, a lot of authors we work with who have good businesses, and their branding and positioning is bad. And through the book process, we have to actually unpack that a little bit, which is not what our process was designed to do. It just kind of happens. But if I'm in that position, successful business, my positioning marketing is not what I want it to be. My brand and my message. Where do I even start thinking about that? Because a lot of them I see, they're almost overwhelmed thinking about anything about messaging or branding. So what do I do? Walk me through the thought process.

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And Tucker's being modest because he's legit. One of the best in the world I've ever seen at this. So love Jim. I'm going to Tucker on this. He said three things. Marketing, branding, and positioning. And actually another one, messaging. So start with positioning. And this is where Tucker starts with all of his authors. A lot of you have worked with Scribe. If any of you haven't, before he starts with any author, he says, what's the positioning? And the simplest way to start positioning is opposite adjectives and an XY graph. So you all have paper in front of you. Draw a vertical line and a horizontal line. Positioning is the beginning of all marketing. And for positioning, you want to own opposite adjectives. So I'll give you a simple example. If I say, what are the two competitors to. Let's say the post office, who would you say? FedEx and UPS. Exactly. FedEx and UPS. So draw a vertical line and then draw a horizontal line. You want to choose opposite adjectives for your business, and we're going to do it for FedEx, UPS and the Postal service. Opposite adjectives are adjectives like fast and slow, expensive and cheap, exclusive. And open TED. The TED conference is very exclusive. Toastmasters or even TEDx is fairly open. These aren't right or wrong. The idea is not to choose the right one. The idea is to choose two opposite adjectives so that you're in a quadrant completely by yourself. So FedEx owns fast and expensive. There's an arrow in the FedEx logo to remind you that they're fast and they're happy to own expensive. If I need to mail a Rolex to Tucker and it's got to be in Austin by tomorrow, I'm not using the Postal Service. They own fast and expensive and they're happy to. Now the Postal Service is happy to own slow and cheap, the exact opposite of fast and expensive. If I'm going to mail a birthday card to my grandma and I'm a week early, which I never am, I could just buy a stamp and take it to the Postal Service. So, yes, they're competitors, but they're really not competitors at all because FedEx is over here and the Postal Service is down here. Now, when you do this, most entrepreneurs, they get all excited about doing this exercise and then they choose opposite adjectives. We're amazing and they suck. We're awesome and they're terrible. No, the positioning graph has to. You basically should be able to hand it to your competitor and have them go, yeah, the Postal Service knows they're cheaper and slower than FedEx and FedEx knows they're faster. So that's positioning. And there's a whole book. Jackery's and Al Trout. It's kind of fascinating, the book. It's one of the best marketing books of all time. If you want to go down the rabbit hole. But that's the summary of the book, is that XY axis and opposite adjectives. Plot yourself and all of your direct competitors on that and then say, how are you different? And what two words do you want to own? And with a personal brand, and we can go into personal branding. If you want personal brand, you want to own one word, right? So, like, if I say, who is the vulnerability woman, who would that be? Brene Brown. Exactly. If I was like, who's the hustle guy?

Gary.

Gary and the Four Hour guy, Tim Ferriss. Right. You all know their name with just their word. So with a personal brand, you want to own one word. With positioning your business, you want to own opposite adjectives. So two words. Does that make sense? Awesome. Positioning. Positioning by the Battle for your Mind by Al Rees and Jack Trout.

Very good book.

Incredible book. Yeah. But the funny thing about that book is it's written in the early 80s and he talks all about how many marketing messages we're being bombarded with and how busy the world is and how distracted we all are. And it came out in like 82, right? What else? Who's got another question on market? Oh, so that's positioning branding. I mean, we could spend a whole week here on branding. But branding, in a word, is the collective feeling of what people feel and know about your brand. So a brand is not a logo, it's not a color palette, it's everything all rolled into one. But this, again is a room full of expert direct marketers with branding. Tesla sold 21. Tesla's revenue was over $21 billion last year. And they do not buy ads. Tesla has never bought an ad and they did 21 billion. That's because they built a brand. Yeti Coolors built a billion dollar company selling a product that nobody needed. If you think about a cooler, everybody know Yeti coolers, the white 10 years ago, yeti, yeah, they saw a problem, etc. Etc. But nobody had sandwiches that were spoiling, nobody's beer was getting warm. Yeti came around and they solved a problem that we didn't even know we had, which is we weren't proud to brag about our cooler. Nobody had a cooler problem. Everybody had a story about their cooler problem. Because if you're the toughest fishing and hunting guide and your group of 10 people, you're not going to brag about your $33 Coleman five day cooler that, guess what works fine. We worry too much about the product and the features and the benefits and not enough about the story and what I call a portable story. So Yeti created a cooler. Sure, it's three times better. So it should cost $100 compared to the Coleman, that works fine. But it costs $300. That additional $200 in the price is the story. It's because a Yeti cooler is worth bragging about. And then they have brand extensions and can buy, can sell $30 mugs for people who can't afford the $300 cooler, but they can get the mug that's worth bragging about. Does that make sense? So if you don't know what store, if you don't know how your customers are talking about your product, if you don't know how your story about your business is spreading, it's not. So what I love to do is think about and we can do a hot seat. We can pick out anyone and say when people talk about Your business, What are they saying? And you can't use our fancy copywriting marketing terms. You have to say, like what they would say in human language at the bar. Right. So take Tucker. Inscribe a business. I know pretty well they turn ideas into books. So the way people talk about them is, I've had this idea for a book for a long time. I just can't get it out of my head. And then I worked with Scribe, and it's cool. I didn't have to write. They just interviewed me and pulled it out of me. That kind of language. Know your customer's words and how your customer talks about your business.

I went and grabbed all these books because it's so funny.

Oh, yeah.

Here's the different versions of positioning. This is the 20th anniversary edition, which was years ago still. And then, you know, they've got.

Yeah.

The origin of brand, same author, and then the 22 immutable laws marketing.

These are all absolute brands.

Yeah, these are. Yeah. All out. What's funny about these guys? This is one of their books that didn't do as well as the other one. It's called Horse Sense. How to Pull Ahead of the Business Track. And one of the promises behind this is they say, in spite of what many people will say about success, a lot of success is just simply riding the right horse, you know, is latching on to someone who's like, making shit happen.

Yeah, yeah.

And it's, you know.

Yeah, for sure. And those opposite adjectives. So we'll take Joe and Genius Network.

We're all here.

The opposite adjectives for that. We never talked about it. We don't know what they are. But one of them could be. Because there's a lot of masterminds you can join. Right. One of them could be, it's super fun and it's super generous. I've been parts of masterminds that are, you know, there's the okay content, but everyone's kind of eyes on their own paper and they're trying to get the most value so they can take it away. And they see it as competitors. This is super generous, super sharing. You guys are all helping each other work with each other, and it's fun. Joe is a fun person. This entire everything around us is fun. Right. So those may not be the exact ones, but if someone said to Kathy, if someone said, I'm thinking about joining Genius Network versus a different mastermind, what makes Genius Network different? Fun. Generous. There's 100 other adjectives you could use. Yeah. Fun. Yeah. So think about your Anyone that want to talk about their XY graph or their opposite adjectives, you know, I'd like to do.

Howard gets in because Howard is a tough case.

Sure.

And, and he's, you know, he's, he's in this AI world. Very hard for him to, I think, to explain a lot of times sometimes. And I'll have other people that will go to Howard's facility and be like, oh my God, when you go there, you really see what this dude actually does.

Sure.

But yeah.

So 46 trades a second.

Wait, wait, hold on. Yeah, 46 trades a second. Wow.

Yeah, that's not right.

But.

Yeah, he said that's not right.

But it sounds 46 when we were talking before.

No, no, that, that's.

Yeah.

So tell me. Sorry, I don't know the background. Tell me what you do and then tell me what the biggest, like, help or question would be.

So I've, I've got a unique technology called the Capital Logics Insight Engineering. And it gives businesses a way to use AI and real time contextual information to make better decisions. We are our own first customer and we used it to generate a hedge fund.

Okay.

And unlike most people that are using AI to predict the market.

Hold that closer to you. Also, I want to make sure people downstairs can hear. Yeah.

We're using AI to predict the performance of all the little constituent algorithms and bots to figure out what's working in real time. So we're not actually, actually predicting what's going to work in the market. We're measuring all the things that are working and then trying to use AI to figure out what does that mean or what should we really be doing more of.

Yeah.

And then ultimately I want to sell that Insight engine the way people buy cloud computing, so that it's the people, the process, the automation, the execution capability and make sure you get the right answer.

Yeah.

Not just that you're doing the math right. But that you actually get an answer that's helpful and right.

Sure.

And we figure we can use that because AI is about to terraform every industry and there's an old way and a new way and we can help people take the best of what they already know, but create the next level business that's going to infuse AI and better decision making to create new products or new delivery messages or delivery methods to compete in the world that's coming rather than the world that they used to live in.

Sure, absolutely. So I think I understand your business pretty well. Do you want me to do the X, Y or Talk about.

But we can do that your way for a second, but then realize the second thing is. So we've got this hedge fund and there's like an automatic advantage by eliminating the fear, the greed, the discretionary mistake. But while people are enticed by that, they're also afraid of Skynet. So it's a really weird thing where I'm ultimately selling safety. I'm ultimately helping people realize this is something that's going to impact your portfolio and your business regardless of whether you want to believe it or not. But you're now taking steps to take advantage of it rather than be trampled by it.

Right, Right.

And when he says Skynet, he's referring to the Terminator software that killed everybody.

Sure. Yeah. So two of the most powerful words in marketing are you and your. So every single one of you look at your website headlines, look at your social media bios, and see if it says you and your. If you grab Tucker's book, the book in a box, or the scribe method, and you open the inside flap, the word you or your or you've is like eight of the or is like six of the first 20 words. Because he's really good at this. The framework for explaining what you do. A great place to start, sort of like the atomic element or like the sourdough starter of positioning and messaging for your business, is a framework I came up with called verb, your noun. So what is the noun that your customers want? Verbed. This little magic phrase does a few different things by using you and your. You're automatically framing it and talking about your customers, not ourselves. Remember old school marketing, direct marketing. We used to be so proud of the plaque that said established 1926. The customer doesn't care. They care about themselves.

Enhance your decision.

Yeah. Or see your future. Or decode your future. Right. That's what they really want. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot we could play with. Enhance your decisions. Could be. And what's great about verb, you noun is it can be your main headline and then it can be six or seven different sub headlines. So if you're digging deep on the decision part, it could be enhance your decisions. And then you can flip it into questions. What would you pay for a functioning crystal ball? Or what would you pay for the world's best crystal ball? Now you've got them to attach kind of a price to it.

But this is actually pretty good. You could just take what he's saying here and just start using it.

Yeah, yeah. Verb, your noun is great. I used to do like Joe said in the bio. I used to do a ton with crowdfunding. Kickstarter Indiegogo, the positioning around that. An average marketer would have said, I'm the world's leading crowdfunding strategist, or worse, gone with a platform name and been like, I'm the world's leading kickstarter strategist. That's the wrong thing because it's about me. Nobody cares about you. Nobody cares about you. Until they know that what you do can help them, then they care about you. So by starting with you and your and by using verb, your noun, you automatically make it about them and not about you. So everyone in here look at your website. Chances are it says something about your business or your offering or your framework or whatever. That's all great. That comes later. Challenge yourself to come up with a verb, your noun. So for crowdfunding, mine was fund your dream. I did the work to figure out it doesn't matter if they're doing a leather wallet or a new kind of drone or whatever, that entrepreneur or that creative had a dream that they want funded. The fund part of crowdfunding is really what they wanted. Crowdfunding, again, is just one tool to get there. They had a dream they want funded. So I said, fund your dream. And another little tidbit or tip. The goal of any headline is not to close the sale. The goal of the headline is to get them to read the sub headline or get them to scroll down or get them to click play on the video. The goal of any headline is to earn permission for them to go a little bit deeper. So think about a headline like an opening line. If you're at the bar and you walk up to somebody, the headline, the opening line might get you the chance to ask them if you can buy them a drink. And then down the road you get the phone number. And then down the road it can progress. Everyone tries to make their headline so complete, they try to jam it. Full of industry buzzwords and things like that. Think of the most primal. I call this the alarm clock test. So go get any issue of Men's Health magazine and on the COVID it will say some version of six pack abs or rock hard abs and some version of more sex and some version it plays around every cover every month. Because when guys wake up in the morning, that's what I mean by the alarm clock test. Before the dreams fade away, the alarm goes off. What do guys want? Six pack abs and more sexual. So that's why Men's Health puts that on every single cover because it sells magazines. So your challenge for you guys is that's not the business you're in, but challenge yourself to think of what's your verb, your noun? What's your. Predict your future, see your future? What is the verb that your customer. What is the noun that your customer wants? Verbed. And then what's that verb? This is what I mean by we make it too complicated. If you start with verb, your noun, as the atomic element of your marketing and messaging language, everything can flow from there. You might end up with seven verb, your nouns.

Cool.

Now you just wrote half your website.

Yeah, that was okay. Howard, does that help?

How do you think about the opposite adjectives?

Use the mic, please, please.

How do you think about the opposite adjectives for people? Yeah, so because it sounds like better or cheaper or faster, but what do you really think through? Yeah, it needs to be, how are you different than your competitors? So I usually ask people, who are your competitors? And then how do you want to be known about Known as being different than them? And then how do you want people to talk about that? So Yeti coolers, you know, one of theirs, if you're just looking at the facts, is more expensive, but Yeti is not trying to own more expensive. Yeti being more expensive is a result of the fact that they have this brand. You know what Yeti's portable story is? We can talk about portable stories Yeti spread because out of 10, let's say, fishing and hunting guides in Austin, that was their initial core customer. They weren't trying to reach the housewife in Iowa when they started, but now housewives in Iowa by yeti. They were in the middle of their bullseye. That was fishing and hunting guides and fishermen and hardcore outdoor enthusiasts. They had a problem. It was not that their sandwich was getting warm. It was that their cooler was not cool enough to brag about. So they built a cooler worth bragging about.

You know what?

One thing Yeti did, and it wasn't the viral video. The point of this story is not that it was a viral video on YouTube, but they seeded a video where it was a little bit like the yeti version of the Pepsi Challenge. They put a bunch of blood and meat and whatever in the yeti cooler, and they put a bunch of blood and meat in the baby blue Coleman cooler that nobody wants to brag about. Anyway, they put them both in the woods, and of course, the grizzly bear attacked both and could get into the Coleman and ate well and then tried to get into the Yeti and it couldn't. So they created this story. And that a yeti is grizzly proof. That is the portable story so that the guys brag about the cooler to their other friends. My cooler's grizzly proof. Yo, Tucker. My cooler's grizzly proof is yours. That's what they get to brag about. That's worth $200 per cooler to brag about. The funny thing is there's not a grizzly bear within 1,000 miles of Austin, Texas, where they're based. That's how much. It's a story. They planted a story and a seed. They basically said, I mean, they did build a better cooler, but this is a brand, like I said, Tesla. Nobody buys a Tesla because their Mercedes didn't get them to the meeting on time. They buy a Tesla so that they can talk about Elon and Mars and electricity and saving the world. So when you're buying a Tesla, you're buying the story. Almost none of you only sell the product that you sell. And your opportunity is not to make your product better. Your opportunity is to make your story better.

That's really funny, because when I see. I first bought a member of those Fisker Karmas. Oh, yeah, Yeah. I bought one of those, right? And then he had a Tesla. This is back in, like, 2015, 2014. No, no, it's funny. He kept, like, talking about his Tesla and how great it was, everything. And I bought this Fisker, which looked amazing, but it was a real piece of car. And it was so complicated. I even met the, you know, Henry Fisker. But ultimately, you know, Dave, like, kept beating on me about this. That guy. But he. But it really. He had bragging rights to the. I've now bought four Teslas. But go ahead.

So the real story is that we're at this party and Joe has this new Fisker, and he's got everyone outside, and he lifts up the hood and.

Shows this huge engine.

And of course, I got this boring Tesla I just got last week, first one in Arizona. And he's showing this huge engine. And of course I go, so, Joe, how many miles do you get on it? Oh, I don't know, like, 300. No, on electricity. And it gets something like five. And so I. So everyone now wants to see my car. So I said, hey, you want to see the engine? I opened the front. Oh, who took it? Yeah. Anyway, I'm just being an asshole. The only power I had over Joe at this party was that I had no engine in my car. And he had a big one.

Yeah.

Yeah, this is what I call story math. Part of what you paid for. Because you knew that parlor trick before you did it.

Right.

You knew where the engine was in your car. And so opening the hood to say, oh, where is it?

Who took it?

Being able to do that 100 times, a thousand times is part of what you pay for when you buy a Tesla. Right. So think about that. What is the story? How do your customers want to feel when they buy your product? A lot of us think about that. How do your customers want to feel when they recommend the product that they bought from you? That's the part that most of us don't think about because Yeti does not have enough advertising budget to reach each person individually, but they have plenty to reach the hardcore person in the middle of the bullseye. The middle of the bullseye will sell the outer rings of the bullseye better than you ever can. Meaning in A group of 10 fishing and hunting guides, there's always one like Joe, like you, who get the. Or Joe's early adopter. He's always got the cool new thing, the cool new toy, and then Joe sells a few of them to the next people and then they sell them the next people. And the last guy still has 12 blinking on his VCR and he's never buying anything. And so that's where focusing on your core customers is and then crafting the story of figuring out how people talk about your product.

And like to bring up the point of this because like Tesla does 0 advertise.

0.

It's all referability.

Right, Right. And a lot of news. Right.

Which is no, sure. But it's.

That's, that's what I'm saying.

Yeah.

That's when I say, how do people talk about you? That includes the media.

Yeah. And see, like the thing is, it's all positioned as this environmentally safe thing and fossil fuels are evil and everything, but they don't factor in. What does, what does it do environmentally to dispose of a lithium battery? I mean, there's nothing environmental about a freaking Tesla. I don't give a what they like.

Try to argue the story shouldn't be unethical, but they don't have to be a thousand percent true. Undeniably true. If you look at R Wine glasses is my, one of my favorite examples. R Wine glasses. I mean, Tucker's a wine expert and Tucker has much more fancy wine glasses than that. But Ridel built a billion dollar wine glass company selling the story that if you're going to buy a expensive bottle of wine, you should drink it out of the right glass. Right? Now, that story works at a family level. If you're, you know, most people have wine glasses, have big for red, smaller for white. Right. If I go to Eunice's house and we're at a party and Eunice is like, oh, we're serving Pinot Noir now. Okay, let's put away the Bordeaux glasses and get out the Pinot Noir glasses. That creates a conversation between me and Angie on the way home. And you can imagine that conversation. We don't have Bordeaux glasses. And now I just bought a case of Riedale Bordeaux glasses. Right? And the reality is it's funny because it's true and it's not true. It's true because Riedel spent a lot of money. And if you look at the regular taste test and everything else, they'll say, wine drank out of the appropriate shaped glass. Right. A big bowl for Bordeaux and taller for Pinot Noir, that it works. Well, if you look at the true, actual triple blind appropriate studies, it's not mathematically true, but then something magical called placebo comes into play. Or if you believe wine is going to taste better, it does taste better. So is it true? Is it not true scientifically? Are you going to care about the triple blind thing, or do you just want to care about the thing? And then part of what you get is part of what Eunice is paying for when she buys a Riedel wine glass is, oh, babe, are we switching to. Okay, let's put away our one red glasses and get out the other red glasses. Right? That's part of what you're buying. That's what I call story math. So don't be unethical. But also, don't worry so much about if the story is 1000% scientifically true.

Yeah. I mean, the fact is, people, they are enrolled into stories and bragging rights, and they, you know, I mean, you gotta engage them. And if it's, you know, it's like David Ogilvy's, you can't bore people into buying. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Stories is all we buy. It's all we pay for. Netflix is just full of stories. Game of Thrones is Stories. There is no Netflix of press releases at all. No kid ever said, mommy, please read me a press release ever.

Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video. And I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come out here, and if you'd like to get it absolutely free, there's a link below in the description or you can wait till the end of this video, or you can Simply go to joesfreebook.com and you can get a copy there.

So on our website, we kind of alternate between your and our clients. So are you suggesting to just change it all to, like, all the Our clients to you? No.

The next best way to do it and those are paired beautifully, is to tell your client's story, because speak in the head. That's perfect. It sounds like you have it done perfectly. Speak to them in their pain verb, your noun, whatever that is. And then if you can, reinforce it with stories of you helping the customer. I teach this framework called perfect intro. And the best way to explain what you do is to do it through the story of someone that you've helped some transformation. Best way for Joe to sell Genius Network is to tell his favorite story, of which he's got hundreds of. Of someone who was maybe struggling really hard with something before they found Genius Network and then came into this group of generous, helpful entrepreneurs. And two years later, whatever problems they had were solved. It's like a mini hero's journey of your customer. Yeah. The more you can do that, the better. That's another thing that, myself included, almost everyone could do better is video. It's 2020. I mean, it's time. And use video of your customers, interview them, and show that hero's journey. Because as soon as you say that headline and your customer's like, okay, I'm interested, they scroll down, they click play on the video. Now what they're wondering is, what's it going to be like? Is it for me? Is it for people like me? And if you can show a video of your customer that does that. Tucker's back. Scribe does this extremely well. One of the best consumer websites I've ever seen as far as their positioning and then how they tell the stories. None of Scribe's website is Tucker beating his chest about what a good positioning copywriter he is. It's all about their customers and why their customers that are prospective leads, why their ideas matter, and why they should have a book in the world. And then they completely demolish. Any objection about Scribe's ability to pull that book out of you Testimonials is what you're saying. Yeah, testimonial social proof. But here's the thing, and I'm on a little bit of a rampage. Do not use first name, last initial as your testimonial. Do not use Michael F. The last time I said Michael F. Was in the third grade and construction paper was involved like full name or not at all. And video is even better. There's nothing better than actual video of an actual customer. So, yes, testimonials, yes, social proof, but make them real. If it's an embedded tweet, if it's, you know, whatever, but make it real.

So just to be a tiny bit more specific.

Sure, sure.

Sorry. Before testimonials, currently the headline is we always put our clients first. Would it be better to put we always put you first or just leave that as is and then show the testimonials.

I would. So I'm glad you asked this and I'm not picking on you. Maybe it's like a micro hot seat. We always put our clients first is generic. Is there anyone in this room who loves to put their clients last?

No.

So anytime you can. A little litmus test for positioning or website is remove your logo, remove your brand, remove everything and say, is that the voice of you? Is it unique to you? So I'm helping a friend of mine who's an author with his book, and it's about picking a fight, teaching organizations to align their people by coming up with a common enemy and picking a fight. That fight could be against climate change or whatever. Yeah, Berkus.

Yeah.

Right. So I'm talking to Berkus about his thing, and he wants to revert back to this generic, like, align your people. And like, there's a thousand people doing that. I was like, you can come up with secondary ones, but your first one has to be find your fight verb. Your noun, find your fight. Because that's what his whole book teaches. And it's almost like his entire book in three words. So we put our customers first. Erase it. What is the. What is the. What is the verb that. Or what is the noun that your customer wants? Verbed. If they work with you and they say, wow, I really. What my. What?

They didn't charge. They didn't charge me. Or they were on my side.

Tell me more about what you do. Just like 30 seconds.

Well, real quick, I have a lemon. Off firm. So we help people with defective vehicles get refunds, repurchases, or cash compensation. The way the law works, we charge manufacturers for the attorney's fees, so we generally don't charge our clients. But in my side of the fence, a lot of the attorneys are scumbags. They still find ways to charge their clients. They don't put their clients first, they put their clients last. All they care about is getting paid first.

Sure. So remember that the headline is not meant to close the sale. The headline just gets them to say, sounds like this guy understands my pain. I'm willing to scroll down. I'm willing to click play on the video. So is it return your lemon? We can help.

Yeah, well, we say banish your lemon.

Okay.

Stuff like that.

Yeah, whatever. They're. This takes a little bit of exploration, but whatever.

Turn your lemon into lemonade.

Yeah, that's actually very, like cliche in our industry. So I'm trying to be a little different.

Yeah, yeah, sure. What comes to mind, and this is not a verb, you're noun. But what comes to mind to me is the scene from one of my favorite movies, Good Will Hunting, where he's hugging him and he keeps saying, it's not your fault. It's not your fault. It's not your fault. One of the things, it's about putting them first. It's about the finances, but it's a lot about the shame of them making a mistake in buying a bad car in the first place. I should have known not to buy a car from that guy. Right. So some of your copy, probably not the headline, but maybe in the sub headline, it's not your fault. You know that kind of messaging language. Okay, thank you.

Let's go to Kathy.

And since there's so many people or customers now finding us on social media, is there a way to bring that type of copy and content over regularly into our social media feeds? Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I've worked with clients where we figured out, let's say they had three different offerings and we built a verb you noun for each offering. The power of verb you noun is it's simple. They're relatively easy to kind of brainstorm with your team. And then let's say on your Instagram bio, you could say fund your dream, or it could even bendyourdream and you link them to that particular page or whatever, whatever they want to do and then send them to that. Or if you're on ig, you could use linktree or whatever. But yeah, I love the. Once you nail the verb year now and you can use it all over, all over social media, it can even be an entire Instagram or Twitter graphical post just by itself. Right.

Let's go to Tim and then we'll come up here.

So we provide housing and coaching services to addicts in early recovery. And we have a testimonies page on our website and it's typically like first name, last initial, or even anonymous. They don't like. Sure, sure, yeah. If you're in the recovery That's a caveat. It's kind of like also with, like, therapy. Right. They're not like, I don't say I was a total trainer before I found so and so clay, but. Right. People definitely, like, in certain. Certain industries, in certain spaces, there's. There's need for anonymity. But yeah, I think then it's about branding and design and making it look really good and then making sure that the testimonials are. Another little trick or hack for testimonials is think about people's objections to buying your product. So why might someone not join Genius? Why might someone not hire Scribe? You should know that list because there is a list. Every company has customers that have not bought from them, and you should know why. Sometimes they're right, sometimes they're wrong. The best way to use testimonials and social proof is not, oh, my God, they're the best thing since sliced bread. It's to address specific objections. So you have a problem. Let's say I sell an online course and someone's objection is, I'm not gonna have time to finish it. Well, then you should have a testimonial that says, I didn't think I was gonna have time to finish it, but I just consumed one module each morning over breakfast and I got through it in a month. Like that kind of thing. You see, I'm matching the testimonials to the objection.

Yeah, that's really good.

That's really helpful, Chef.

This is super helpful. Thank you. My struggle in the business that we have is that we help people both on the relationship side and then the business side. So I know that if I can ask you for a little bit of feedback on this. So we have build a profitable empire and passionate relationship, but it's kind of like, well, one, it's not following your flow. So can you just give me any quick feedback on how to think about.

This from an external marketing perspective? They can be related, but I wouldn't put them in the same room because most people. Back to the alarm clock test, six pack abs, more sex, et cetera. They generally only have one thing in their mind or one burning problem. Nobody looks for a lawyer who can also teach them golf. And I totally get that the work spans both. And by being better here, you're better here. But that starts with you guys and your magic box of tricks. I saw you guys speak. You guys are incredible. I'm sure the content's amazing, but when you're explaining it, you're not being selfish, but you're trying to say, but we do both. And the reality is nobody's looking for both. But once you. This is a terrible analogy. Use the candy to get them in the van and then have the conversation. And I would create separate websites because the marketing around that people are looking for a problem. I would bet almost nobody's looking to solve both problems at the same time. Well, they know that. They know that they have problems.

Use the mic, please.

Often what will happen is people will come to us and they'll be like, I have relationship issues or intimacy issues. And then it'll also be an exploration of, like, my business is a shit show.

Sure.

Or they come to us and they say, I'm having, like, major issues in the business. And then we track it out, and it's like, all kinds of issues in their relationship.

Right.

So you're saying to position it. Position those things separately. Yeah, to actually position the business separately entirely. Because that's how people are thinking about this. They're not thinking, my business breaking down and my relationship's breaking down just normally happen 100%.

And the van in this case might be a zoom call with you guys. And you say, oh, well, da, da, da, and you ask a few questions, and it turns out it sounds like you might be having problems with business as well. And here's what we do. You don't have to split your offerings. I was talking to somebody last week with a similar thing about relationships, and they're like, our content works great for couples, and it works great for singles looking for the one and couples on the rocks, and I didn't know them at all. I'm like, I'm sure your content is amazing, but imagine how hard it would be to write a sales page that tells a single how to find their perfect mate and also talks to couples in a way that makes them feel like you know their pain. You can't do it in the same thing. Now you can have marketing websites that lead to a contact form, that lead to a zoom call, and then once you're having that call, you can talk about your different offerings.

Right.

One of the problems with introducing ourselves, telling our stories, branding, telling a story about our businesses, we know we can do nine things, and we try to jam it all together. We try to be the lawyer who can also teach you golf.

Right.

You know what I thought was funny about your knowledge about the candy and the van is if you actually titled a book like that, you'd get a ton of negative pr, a ton of attention. You'd probably sell a Shit ton of books if you articulate. But you know, like the thing that I said, it's the same dilemma here. Like, I sell people what they want and do my best to give them what they need. Right, right. And I use the Flintstone vitamin analogy, make it taste like candy so the kids will eat it.

Right.

And many of you, when you're trying to give your dog medicine, what are you doing? You're putting it in a hot dog or something. Right? And so part of it is, you know, you do need to sell people what they want and give them what they need. And I think the tie in there with what you're doing is, you know, trying to sell money at a discount. I mean, selling how to make more money is easier than fix your head and get your life together and build your self esteem. Like, people aren't going to dole out $25,000 a year to join a. You're going to have higher self esteem if you join Genius network. And so if I don't tie in the making money and build it into this thing, you know, now once people are here, totally different scenario. Once they're here, they're like, I mean that, there's all this other stuff that's more important, but I still need to get them in the room.

And so.

That was for Kathy.

You know what? Yeah, yeah.

Getting more and more dark.

You know what's funny, though? You know what's interesting about this whole conversation? Like it wasn't, you know, if you think of with the MeToo movement and everything that's happened in the last two to three years, how things that you could just say so, like, we are so hypersensitive to everything right now, it's just totally fascinating. I mean, comedians, even comedians that could say whatever the hell, like now, you know, comedians are getting blasted. Although if you've not seen the latest, you watch a lot of comedy shows, there's some that are going back to really dark, which I think is funny. Michael.

Well, despite that horrific analogy, I just want to take a second to acknowledge Clay, because I know Clay. About 10 years, there was only a couple of us, myself and Kathy, that know Clay. Clay has one of the most exquisite hearts and one of the most exquisite minds of any person I've ever known.

I'd agree with one of those things.

You know, the way when you hear him speak, the way he synthesizes culture and marketing and business and like, and everything that's going on in the world. And his word choices are so exquisite, so beautiful.

Thank you.

To hear and even narcissists.

Right.

Even more importantly, one of the most stunningly generous human beings has really guided me through some tough spots with business, with positioning, and with life. And so it's just like one of the most amazing friends and just an exquisite person. So it's beautiful to see you up there doing your thing. It's been a while and you sound amazing. So congratulations.

Thank you, brother.

Appreciate you.

You're the best.

I was gonna see. What is he gonna pitch for you right now? Give Tony a mic. If we could, please. Thank you. Thank you, Marcel.

Thanks, Michael. So I'm trying to figure out verbing my noun when it comes to certified audits.

Yeah. As a cpa, I'd really love for you to help like Tony gets us.

Yeah, it is. It has been 45 years. We've been very successful. But marketing for a CPA now, and I, I don't want to actually lie to someone. Right. So, yes, I could say minimize your taxes.

And.

And we do, but everybody says they do that. Yeah. So how, how do you differentiate yourself? Yeah, 100%. I love this. Because more traditional or boring businesses, everyone's like, well, yeah, I'm not Tesla, so I can't talk about it that way. You have. We are not a boring business. We're very stimulating.

Yeah.

Yeah, for sure. No, 100%. 100%.

It's similar to watching bugs die, right?

Yeah.

Your customers have pains, they hire you, they call you and they inquire and they go to your website because they're struggling with something. The hard part is, and the best way to do this is to talk to them. The best copy comes from your customers. So a lot of us in this room especially, I know Fishman does, and Joe Ramit Sethi, one of the best online sort of digital marketers in the world, lives in New York, one of the best copywriters I know. I love copy and words. Ramit is off the charts. He's launching a fitness product for women. And so he surveyed a segment of a segment of his list to test it and see. And he asked one question, what's your number one fitness goal? And now Ramit is like a 36 year old Indian guy trying to get his biceps as big as he can. The number one response, about 30% of the responses were, I just want to fit into my high school genes or I just want to fit into my skinny jeans. Ramit never would have come up with that on his own, as great a copywriter as he is, because he's not thinking that way. So the trick with your business is what is the pain?

Where they.

What are they? What are they? So I'm going to use two different. The alarm clock test is in the morning. What do they wake up and sort of wish for? What's the six pack? Abs and more sex. And then one that my girlfriend Angie uses is the up at night test. Typically at night when we go to bed, it's not what we're excited about, it's what's keeping us up. Right. If we try to go to bed at 10:30, what keeps us up till 11? What are they worried about? That could be audits. That could be, I think, what are they thinking about decoding the numbers? So it could be decode your numbers, decode your financials. Decode is a word that I like for you because they feel like it's like. It's like the numbers are swirling, but they're not John Nash.

Right.

They don't know what it means. It just seems really, really complex. I'm guessing. But I would talk to your customers and say, why did you find us? Why did you search for us? Another super ninja trick for anyone in the room. To tell you what your customers are searching to find you, there's a tool called answerthepublic.com, one of the best and most useful sites on the Internet right now. For all marketers, type in a keyword related to your business. So it could be taxes, it could be audits. When I was doing crowdfunding, I type in crowdfunding. It shows you. Give it a second to churn. It shows you all the questions that people are asking Google. And the green dots are darker and more dense because they're more queries. And then it fades out to the lighter dots. And it shows it by preposition, by alphabetical. It shows it in every different way. So one, I would talk to your customers. You know, next time you're sitting down with them, do a survey of your email list. Then also go to answer the public. And I think you can do three searches per day for free. So just figure out your 20 keywords for your business. It will give you not only what they're saying and positioning for your headline. This can fill up your social media content calendar for years. I have to talk to my clients. You don't have to. If you use answer the public, you don't have to. You just create content.

That's great.

Thank you.

So we'll go for another five more minutes and then. So you've helped a lot of people with Their books. You know a tremendous amount about not just book marketing and words and titles and headlines and everything, but even the reasoning behind why. So I mean, you go beyond why are you writing a book?

Right.

And a lot of people think if I write a book, that's going to answer my prayers. But that's just the start, Right?

Right.

And in many cases, people would be better served to figure out what the hell they want to do with the book before they even write the book. You know, so what advice could you give of what you've learned with helping people maximize.

What?

The creation of writing a book. Having a book written. What are the things that you have seen and have done for clients that have helped the most?

Yeah, a book is in 2020, other than a TED talk that happens to go viral. Like Simon Sinek, a well written book is one of the largest, strongest pillars in building your personal brand. And I know some of you don't want to build a personal brand because you think you don't like Instagram or you don't want to try TikTok. It's not about the platforms. It's about owning a word. And there's lots of ways to do that. We did the Gary Vee's Hustle, Simon Sinek's Y. Susan Cain is introvert. Brene Brown is vulnerability. What is the word that you want to own in your personal brand? Personal brand. And this is one of those things, like I said, this room is amazing. Direct marketers but brand, direct marketing is I put a dollar on the top and $2 comes out the bottom or even $1.10, that's fine. Brand, you don't know, like you don't get an immediate return. It's not measurable in a funnel when it comes to books. A book is one of what I call the bricks in the wall of your personal brand. So once you know your word and what word or phrase or even opposite adjectives, you want to own for your brand. And it's okay. Like if you're building a business around coaching, it's okay if your word is vulnerability and that Brene Brown already has that. Brene Brown doesn't have time to coach everyone in America. She doesn't even really do coaching. So it's okay if your word is taken, but from a positioning perspective, it's obviously better if it's unique and you sort of own it. A book I love. So what Tucker's built with scribe. There used to be gatekeepers in our world, and the gatekeepers have all left in the last 10 years. The gatekeepers are gone. Gatekeepers are huge. Traditional publishers, music agents, comedy agents, everything else. Look at the brands. Justin Bieber was discovered on YouTube. The gatekeepers have left the building. And nowadays the gatekeepers, there's some that are still left. Publishers have consolidated, right? Some of the big fancy buildings still exist in New York City. But the thing about gatekeepers is they don't want you until you don't need them. And that's why Scribe is an amazing company, because the gatekeepers of traditional publishing, they're only interested in you. It's funny because Tucker and I have seen this a thousand times. An author writes, a proposal, goes to traditional publisher. The author's wondering how the big publisher portfolio, or Penguin or whoever, Simon Schuster is going to market and sell the books. Guess what? The publisher is wondering how the author is going to market and sell the books, because they don't know how. So building your personal brand. And don't get hung up on Instagram or email lists or tactics or oh my God, gary vee's using community.com now I got to use Community, right? That's the hot new thing. It's not about a platform, it's about owning the words. And a book is the strongest, biggest pillar in your personal brand. Twenty years ago, Tom Peters said talked about personal branding. He said, our most important job is to be the CEO of ME Inc. And the importance of building your personal brand. He said this 20 years ago when Google was called Backrub. Literally, look it up. I have a slide of it. It's a black and white picture of a hand on somebody's back because Google tracked backlinks and before they came up with the name Google, it was called backrub. In 1997, Tom Peters, as usual, way ahead of his time, saying the importance of personal branding before Twitter or Instagram even existed. So I would challenge you guys, don't get hung up on, I don't need to build a personal brand because I'm not good at the platforms or the tools. Think about owning a word and then building your bricks in the wall. That can be social proof, testimonials, media articles, et cetera. And then another little rant on this. People get really excited nowadays if they get the chance to write for Inc. Or Fast Company or whatever. Do it once if you want to do it once so that when you put as seen in ink on your website, it's legitimate and true. And then never do it again. And then also repurpose that on your own site, on medium, on blog you are working for free for them. And positioning wise, you know what they're going to say. Oh, it's great to have a column in such a prestigious magazine as Inc Magazine. No ink. It was prestigious when they made it with paper and ink because it was scarce. Now they will take anybody. And anyone can write for Ink online. Right. Not in the print one. If you can get a cover magazine cover of fast company on the ink actually turns me.

Wait, hold on, hold on.

Yeah, yeah.

Talking to this. Say it again.

Ink turns me down. Or call them.

Yeah.

Truly.

Yeah.

That's how it is.

But I'm the only one, I'm the only person I know who's tried to get one that got turned down.

Yeah. Because only me. Yeah. 100%. Like they. You are just. You are powering. You are creating electricity for their engine to work. When you're in a clicks and page views business, they need content to run ads against and content against. There's no scarcity. It's the same as Amazon selling books. Like you can sell as many as you want. So any of you can publish a book on how to stand on your head and drink water at the same time. And there's no gatekeeper on Amazon. You can publish it so that it's good and bad.

Okay.

So the reality of actually either hiring marketers or people to help you or becoming good at this. If someone wanted to become more skilled at this and you had to, off the top of your head, recommend a plan and a path to do that, on things that everyone here could do that would be incredibly helpful. Things to read, things to watch. What would you recommend?

100%. So I was super fortunate in 2009 to leave a big boring corporate job and spend six months in a room like this with Seth Godin, who's one of the greatest marketers of all time. And I just absorbed everything he said, but nothing he told me was anything he hasn't said a thousand times in his books, in his blogs. If you want one book, I would start with Seth's most recent book called this is Marketing. It's an orange book and it's a greatest hits of Seth Godin, one of the greatest marketers of the last 30 years. And he tried to compile it all into one thing. If you want to go deeper. He's got an online course called the Marketing Seminar. If you want to learn it. I highly suggest that book and then that marketing seminar. I think it's somewhere in the neighborhood of $500. But this like the XY adjectives don't like. The thing I'll say is forget the fancy cutting edge tactics. Most people aren't doing the fundamentals. Most people don't know their positioning. And this book came out in the 80s. Most people don't know verb, your noun. And I would say get good at this. I mean only get good at this if you want to grow your business. Marketing is about understanding humans, not the product you sell and how many you know. Think about Apple. The Apple holiday ad. A kid goes home and he's like a floppy haired kid and he's home and it looks like he's ignoring his family and he's on his phone the whole time. And at the end of the commercial after it looks like he's ignoring his family for a whole minute, it turns out he was using his phone to create a mini documentary of his family Christmas. He hooks up his phone to the TV on Christmas morning, plays the whole thing, stitches it together with music, and of course the parents and grandparents are crying. That compared to Verizon, who's selling gigabytes and coverage maps. That's your opportunity is to figure out the story that your business is telling. Because we all have roofs over our head in this room. We all have food on our table. We're not buying flowers, we're not buying. Think of Super Mario, the little guy and then the flower and then Big Mario, who's invincible and throws fireballs. Stop selling the flower, start selling Super Mario. Lululemon sold the first million pairs of yoga pants to women who do yoga. And then they sold the next 10 million pairs of yoga pants to women who do brunch, who think they are a kind of women who maybe does yoga but they don't know where the nearest yoga studio is. That's fine, it's not unethical. But it's the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves.

Yeah, you know, it's funny, just. Where's my phone? Eunice, can you hand me that? So, thank you. So like, where's Akira at? Is Akira back there somewhere? Is he downstairs? Yeah. So me and Akira, we went up to Vancouver in November about a week and a half after the annual event. And I did about three hour interview with Chip Wilson, the founder of Lululemon.

Nice.

And so he sends me this at 10am today because Akira, I had him read his code for hold it Now. So what a lot of people don't know about Chip is that first off, the guy transformed the entire clothing industry. A lot of controversy about some things that he said online that they Totally sound by but I actually asked him about it to hear the context of it. And I mean I've watched all the things that were controversial, which is the media is so funny. And so he has this whole code of things that he wrote. And so today I sent him the 11 minute video that we made of his code and we'll send it out to everyone so you can watch it. It's actually really good. And he says as with everything you do, this is excellent. Thank you. Did you say I could put it on my website? Because I just sent him a private link. My son was taking a full day in class driving course this weekend and he brought over a new 16 year old friend. They were studying in my office and the boy saw the Average Joe's marketing book on my desk. He came to tell me he went to your genius course for teens in Arizona. The boy thought I was a genius for having your book. Very cool. I've read half the book. I really like the idea of recording on the telephone. So simple because one of the things that I, you know is in my book is using a free recorded message. And so one of the things I'll now do with Chip because he owns 10 different clothing store stores, clothing companies, most people don't know that. I mean he, he's worth about I guess 6 billion now and he has the most expensive home in Canada, $70 million house and all from building Lululemon and about 25% of his portfolios in real estate. And so the next day we went over and interviewed Brian Scudamore who spoke at the annual event. The founder of 1-800-got-JUNK who's many of you saw at the annual event. And it's funny because Brian's headquarters are in a building that Chip owns, you know, this whole thing. So what I'm going to tell him with free recorded messages is for all of the so so much of his clothing companies, I mean literally, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars of clothing are sent online is. I'm going to have him put a, I'm going to suggest to him to put a free recorded message on every shipping package that goes out so when they send it out. But see, at the end of the day so much of this is simply about engagement and it's about bonding. And one of the things I learned from Gary Halbert who said any problem in the world can be solved with the right sales letter is how you actually bond with your clients. And who was making a joke about the. Oh Shalev the cliche Gary Halbert Said you would hear from most marketing people never to use cliches. Gary loved cliches. He's like because it's implanted in people's minds and when you hear it all the time. So there's you know, different schools of thought of it. So that being said, you like Seth Godin. I know you guys are good friends. What other essential must you know? Positioning the book. Is there any other essential reading you would recommend to people here?

The feedback of your customers. Talk to your customers. The best copywriter in your business is your customer. It's not. I mean Gary Halbert and the Boron letters and we can study this stuff all the time and they'll teach you the theory and do that if you have time. But talk to your customers. Ask them questions. How did you find us? What did you search? What can we do for you? What's Ramit said? What's your number one fitness goal? And then one of the smartest copywriters I know a bunch of people said to fit into my skinny jeans. He never would have got there. So talk to your customers.

Awesome.

Are you going to be. I know you have to flight tonight. You have time to hang out for a little bit for dinner?

Do you guys got a little bit and then we got to drive back? Yeah, probably not dinner, but I can hang around for a little while.

Yeah, okay.

For sure.

We'll do one more and then we'll break.

Yeah, yeah.

Let's use the mic. Thank you so.

Thank you very much. Yes.

It's absolute gold.

I'm just missing one word. You started off or got to a point where you broke it down to marketing, branding, positioning. I'm missing a fourth one. Messaging. Thank you. Yeah, yeah. For sure. Yeah, yeah.

Okay. I hope you found that video awesome and useful. So if you want to get a free copy of my book, I want you to click here. And if you want to watch some more videos that will be useful and awesome, click here. Go ahead. You're over here. Do it now. Come on. Thank you.

Watch them.