Having “Haters” and Critics Creates Your Best Business Opportunities | Connor Boyack

It's lucrative because as I said with those ads, this moves people to action. It turns them from fence sitters into brand loyalists. They'll go leave you 5 star reviews just because they get an email. Because they want to defend you, because they feel that they are connected with you and united with you.

In May of this year, bestselling author and highly acclaimed thought leader Robert Cialdini did a fireside chat with us here at Genius Network. You may remember that in that presentation he told you how he revisited his best selling influence book and added a seventh principle that he called unity. Robert shared how people who are in your same group are more likely to do what you ask of them. But what about those who are in an opposing group and even attack your group? What should we do about these objectors or detractors or even enemies, at least as it relates to our marketing efforts? In a world where people can use social media to so easily express their opinions and even opposition, how might negative feedback be used to leverage this unity principle and help your business to grow? This is the question that Conor Boyak has explored in order to grow his brand. And what he's learned will help you grow yours. Connor is the founder of Libertas Institute, a political think tank that changes hearts, minds and laws in favor of a freer society. He's the author of 30 books, including the popular Tuttle Twins children's book series that has sold over 3 million copies worldwide. Connor's team has invested over $10 million in marketing efforts that have helped them identify three unique and important discoveries that will help you in your own marketing efforts. Here they are. Number one, how to cultivate unity among a dedicated tribe of supporters. Number two, how to turn fence sitters into active and eager customers. And most important to you, how to use your your opposition to boost your bottom line. His title is turn your enemies into evangelists. Please help me in welcoming Conor Boyak.

Let me begin with a question. When someone attacks your business, how does it make you feel? So this could be like a negative online review, Yelp or Google. Maybe it's something a competitor said that's nasty about you. Maybe it's customer service department relaying feedback that they got. When someone says something not nice about your baby that you've tried to create, how does it make you feel? What if those criticisms could be turned from weaknesses into strengths? Today I'm going to share how you can turn your enemies into evangelists and how monetizing your haters is elf it's easy, it's lucrative, and it's fun. And why should this matter to you? Well, it should matter because the hero's journey that we are all on in building and growing our businesses, every adversity, every great thing we try and do requires opposition to overcome. That's how we achieve greater heights. And that opposition, that adversity, is central to our story in growing our business. We need to lean into and use it. We need enemies in order to thrive. And you can turn them from enemies into evangelists. What Dr. Cialdini talked about in his book is critical, this new unity principle. But we are united with people by also being disunited with others. When you stand for something, you're also inherently standing against its opposite. And we need not shy away from identifying and pointing that out to our tribe, to our community. We're talking today about connection. Connection implies disconnection, right? We are disconnected with some people so that we can be connected with others. And that message can be leveraged in our marketing. So let me begin with a story. September 29th of last year I got a Google alert. And this is for our Tuttle Twins children's books that were mentioned in the intro. These books are extremely unique, they're highly impactful and I'm used to getting a lot of praise for these books. I expected this particular Google alert to be more praise. It wasn't. It was a link to an article written in a magazine called Current affairs, which is written by Socialists for socialists. And they didn't like our book very much, our book series. They had a lot of mean things to say about what it was that we were doing. I'm going to share with you how that article ended. The Tuttle Twins is the most wretchedly contrived, grotesquely unethically indoctrinating, cliche ridden heaps of steaming garbage I've ever had the misfortune to read. Who knows, for a well written, you know, like, like that's good writing if nothing else, right? So put yourself in my shoes. This guy is attacking your baby, right? How do you feel? How do you feel? Explore that emotion a bit. Most people would feel angry or sad. I was smiling. I had a big smile on my face. So much so that I took a picture of myself holding this quote alongside one of our books. And I wanted to share this with the world. So I did. I sent over half a million people on our email list. I sent them the link to the article attacking us along with a coupon code titled Current affairs, which was the name of that magazine saying, hey guys, big discount if you Use the coupon code, Current affairs. We sold 10,000 books in 24 hours. A lot of authors in this room would kill to sell 10,000 books, period. We did it in a day. We spread the article and the coupon code and everything else across social media media. We share this as far and wide as we could. Fun story. That magazine, Current affairs, they created a Tuttle Twins coupon code to try and sell their magazine. I don't think it did very well, number one, because I don't think socialists know how to sell things very well. But number two, number two, right, we were the victim, right? They were the aggressor. It didn't really work in the reverse, but it worked extremely well for us. I actually bought a copy of this magazine which felt awkward supporting financially a socialist enterprise. But I bought a copy because I wanted to mount it in my office as kind of this prize of like, I've succeeded, this is great, they're attacking me. But it wasn't enough to just hang that in my office. I had to turn it into a Facebook ad because I knew that my enemy could be evangelized, right. To help further my brand. I don't know if you see the metrics down there, but this ad continues to perform extremely well. And why does this work? Right? Why did we know to do this? Why was I smiling? It's because a couple of months prior, our team actually gone to Amazon and culled all of the one star reviews our books and we wanted to compile those into a short little video. This is just the beginning part of it. Maybe the sound won't work, but it's not necessary in this case. There's a setting you can do that will fix the audio, we'll ignore the audio. It's not needed. Ok, so that was a little example of the book or of the video.

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 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 joe'sfreebook.com and you can get a copy there.

So we had done this and we said, you know, there's something to this idea. This video blew up. We sold still sell so many books because it moves people to action. All those people scrolling by engage with this type of content and they love that we're poking back at people. And it's not just if an article attacks you or if you have negative one star reviews. You can use this with any form of communication where people are coming after you. You can take an email, you can take a text, you can transcribe something that someone said in person. Or you can take, as we did here, a Facebook message. Poor Joseph. My enemy is now my evangelist. We responded to his message where he called our book stupid and we scrubbed his name. And now this is a Facebook ad that performs extremely well. It engages people so heavily because people identify or want to identify with us. We're uniting people and connecting with people by showing who we are disunited and disconnected with. So then we put together a little video. Again, I guess the sound won't work here, but we put together a little video showing us attacking socialism. This kid says we must seize the means of production. And the mom says, stop it, Vlad. You know the rule, no communism allowed in our home. If you want to regulate something, go regulate the mess in your room. And so now the mom here goes on to explain how kids these days are being taught socialism and all kinds of garbage. So we have this long video. This went crazy viral. And when you're attacking socialism, who's not going to like that? Well, the socialists who proceed to create all kinds of video responses over YouTube. Conservative cringe passed off as absolute truth. Tuttle twins, want to indoctrinate your kids anti communist propaganda. Like yes, or anti communist communist propaganda. Gladly. So we even got coverage on the Young Turks which is a well known progressive and socialist platform. All of these people, by the way, organized on Reddit and Twitter to descend upon the Google reviews for our book and carpet bombed us with all kinds of negative, vulgar, horrible one star reviews. Now again, could be angry, I could be sad, I could decry, cancel culture, I could play the victim card. Or I could turn my enemy into an evangelist. And I sent the link to this Google review out to our whole audience and mobilized them to leave nearly 700 five star reviews. Yes, it restored balance to our rating. Big whoop. But it gave me nearly 700 pieces of marketing collateral of people saying nice things. And they were compelled to action by being connected and united with us. Because I planted that flag. I leveraged the human psychology of tribalism and moved everyone to act. Now you might say, say, connor, this is all well and good. You work in an industry that's inherently controversial. I'm a financial planner, I'm a plumber, I'm whatever, right, Fitness guru or whatever. It will work for you. It does work for your competitors who Use this. Certainly if you have critics, it works. If you have competitors, it works. It can even be something like a concept. Because the truth is that every brand needs a villain. You have to identify for your prospective customers what you stand. It doesn't mean they have to be negative, doesn't mean that you need to be a jerk. It just means that you need to clarify in their minds what you are trying to attack. And it can be a concept. And so if you're Poo Pourri, it can be stinky bathrooms, right? If you're Mucinex, it's the common cold. Be united with us. Because if you're against the common cold, you want our products and you want services and you want people to understand in their minds why they should stand with you. For Southwest, it's other airlines nickeling and diming you with all of those fees. That's what they stand. This is a concept. But that's the enemy. And that message can be leveraged with human psychology in your marketing efforts. For Vidangel, it's Hollywood filth. They scrub movies and TV shows of all the vulgarity and everything else. You have to give your tribe something to rally against. If you want them to be united with you, you have to point out what the enemy is. You won't have a tribe unless you take a position against something, right? So Batman isn't Batman without the Joker. Harry Potter isn't without Voldemort. You need to identify for your prospective customers all those fence sitters that are just scrolling past your social media posts and your emails. You need to help them understand how and why to take action. So I said, this is ELF at the beginning. And it is. This is easy because if any of you are doing disruptive things, if you're innovating, if you have a big problem you're trying to solve, you're gonna have all kinds of opportunities to go message that enemy to your audience. It becomes super easy to identify these things. It's lucrative because as I said, with those ads, this moves people to action. It turns them from fence sitters into brand loyalists. They'll go leave you 5 star reviews just because they get an email, because they want to defend you, because they feel that they are connected with you and united with you. And it's fun because if you're doing anything disruptive or innovative, right, it's fun to poke back at the people who've been saying mean things about you. It's, I could do this stuff all day long and I enjoy it. It is elf. So if you already have an enem. Awesome. Now you know how to turn them into an evangelist. If you don't have an enemy yet, go find one. Create one. It's not that hard, and it's a lot of fun. Because next time when, like me, you get a Google alert and someone says something mean about you that you don't like, you're not going to be sad, you're not going to be angry. You're going to smile all the way to the bank. So go get them.

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