Steve Sipress On Direct Response Marketing Strategies - I Love Marketing With Joe Polish And Dean Jackson - Episode #166

Hey everybody, it's Dean Jackson and Joe Polish.

And welcome to I Love Marketing. How's everyone doing? I guess they can't respond back, can they, Dean?

I'll respond for them. Everybody is doing fantastic.

That's wonderful. Okay, we've got a good friend and a special guest today who's going to talk about some awesome stuff. His name is Steve Cypress and I'll give you the quick bio on Steve. He's a successful serial entrepreneur. He's created and built over a dozen successful companies of his own while helping thousands of other ambitious and aggressive business owners, entrepreneurs, executives and sales professionals all over the world do the same. Over the past 35 plus years, he's assembled a team of the world's best business building experts. As the publisher of Money making magazine, the rhinodaily.com blog and the Rhino Daily podcast. He's written numerous newsletters and articles on sales and marketing for a wide range of publications. He's appeared on radio, television and in international media and is the best selling author of several books. He's won many awards for both marketing and sales and he is the creator of the wow. Strategy, the key to helping small business owners solve all of their marketing problems. And he's also in the Genius network. And he did such an awesome 10 minute talk at the last one, I was like, you know, we really got to do an episode on all the stuff that you know. So Steve, how are you?

I am doing absolutely fantastic. Thank you. And thanks for that great introduction, Joe.

You are welcome. And where are you at right now? What part of the country?

I am at home just outside of Chicago, Illinois.

Wonderful, wonderful. Okay, Dean, you're going to say something. Go for it.

I was, I'm excited. This is going to be a good. I watched the, you sent me over the video, the 10 minute talk and I'm excited to get to talk to Steve today.

Yeah, absolutely. So, Steve, obviously I shared your bio, but for those that don't know you, what else did I leave out? What do people need to know about you? Since you've been teaching direct response and business building for a long time, what do people need to know before we get into some questions?

Well, I appreciate that and I don't want to take people's time with too much about me, but I'll tell you, you can kind of deduce a little bit about where I come from by knowing that my mom was a schoolteacher for 45 years or so. My dad was in sales and then later owned his own business. So I'm kind Of the. It's real natural for me to be the combination of those two. I love to teach and I love sales. And actually the first time I discovered direct response marketing was simply to help me do more sales in my sales career. And I kind of ignored all of the marketing stuff, thinking I'm not in marketing, I'm in sales, and kind of was a little dense to it and didn't pick it up very quickly. So I. I really own my own businesses and really saw myself as a salesperson for years. But when I started implementing this direct response marketing, then it really took off. And instead of just doing it, I love to teach and I love to coach people. And so I offer my clients get a combination of help with their sales, their marketing, and with accountability, which I think is a big piece of the puzzle that's missing from a lot of people that claim to be teachers and coaches out there. So put all three together and I look to help people get great response and open. I love to see light bulbs go off and open their eyes to a whole new world of business where ideal clients are kind of chasing them and the world is their oyster. You guys both know that happened to you when you both found direct response marketing, using it. So that's what I love to do, is help people get that big change happening in their life.

Yeah, absolutely.

What was your first experience? What was your first experience with direct response? Where did the light bulb come on? Joe and I both told those stories. What was the first thing that you did that you said, wow, there might be something to this direct response?

Well, yeah, the. I was actually, it was long before I knew what direct response was because while I was in my last year of law school back in 1984, which is amazing in itself that it's been 30 years, but I had a hobby which is now well known as a fantasy sports. Fantasy football. This is like well known stuff, but back then it was for just ultimate sports fan geeks like me and my friends. And I thought that. And we all thought I kind of invented the game. I mean, there was a whole bunch of early versions back then because there was no computer. This was an unknown thing. And I just put a bunch of friends together and we got in a room and we. We drafted players onto our teams and we traded them. And I was the one who took the responsibility of being what they call the commissioner of the league, which just is a thankless job of keeping all the statistics by hand and sending out weekly newsletters and updating everyone in the standings and keeping Track of everything. And I turned that into a business. When I graduated law school, one of my buddies who was in the league was like, he found some obscure little 1 inch classified ad in the back of the Sporting News, an obscure sports magazine for fanatical sports fans saying, hey, get to be your own, your own team in your own league. It was just an unheard of thing. And he was like, this just sounds like exactly what you do with us and this guy's making money with. And so I placed my own ad and I as it ends up later on, I found out probably 15 years later that that was a direct response ad. I put a headline, I put an offer, I had a money back guarantee, I had a toll free number, I did all this stuff and man, the response was crazy. So flash ahead to almost 20 years later. I mean I built into a multi billion dollar success and so forth, but I still didn't get it. About 20 years later I was a yellow page rep. I was doing sales for yellow page company which was miserable. What I found out after two months training where we were told the yellow pages is the greatest thing on earth and whatever. And this is 2004 or so. So the Internet was already around and business owners were starting to kind of lose faith in the elevators a little bit and rightly so with the ads they placed. But anyway, I was told how great the yellow pages and how much it helps people, whatever. I went out on the job and the first call I made to what was a current advertiser, these are supposed to be, I would think, you know, happy to hear from me, I'm your new rep and let's talk or whatever. And it was worse than a cold call, at least a cold call. They don't know you in this case, they hated me and they didn't even know, which I hope that they didn't know me if they hated me. But anyway, so I was miserable and I was like, this is really bad. This is worse than cold calling. And I was looking for help and I just remember typing into the Internet or whatever I was doing, I was looking around, reading books on, on sales, on market, on how to attract leads, how to do better cold calling. And I came across again, I didn't know what it was called, but I came across people that were using and teaching direct response marketing, basically coming from kind of Dan Kennedy's magnetic marketing school of, you know, before you're going to start cold calling, warm them up with some marketing. And so that's the first. And that really turned the world on its ear for me, Dean. I mean, I. I went from hating every second of that job to hardly working at all. I mean, I was working on my marketing all the time, working the other rep. I wasn't sitting there pounding phones and getting hung up on and walking in the door and having to take the first hour of every meeting just to build rapport and get any semblance of respect for them. I was able, through direct response marketing, to have amazing referrals and amazing leads contacting me and then walking in the door and then saying, you know, hey, come on in and help us out and what do you got? And please help us with all your knowledge and your skill and whatever. And I was like, I set every record at that thing and won every award and promotion and trip and whatever they can give out at these corporate sales job things. And, you know, after a few years of that, I realized, what am I doing? Why don't I just go get my own leads for myself and ramp back up my failed consulting business, which had failed not because I wasn't giving people good advice, because I wasn't getting any good clients. And so I started using that marketing for myself and took off from there.

Isn't it kind of interesting how it becomes like a savior for so many people that really, it's that one area of how do you attract and position yourself so that people come to you and you don't have to do the drudgery of cold calling and.

And whatnot. And what were you going to say, Dean? I was going to say you have this moment where you flip the switch and you know what that's like now. You know, you're never going to have to make another cold call or you're never going to have to look for business again. You know, you've got the formula to get as much as you want.

Well, yeah.

So, Steve, how would you actually define direct response for people that you know? I mean, most people that listen, I love marketing that follow you, of course. I mean, they get it, they know it, they understand it. That's why they listen to all of us. But for people that don't really quite understand it, what's the best way that you define it? I have ways that I do it and stuff, but I'd love to hear your definition.

Well, I was going to say, thanks for putting me on the spot with two geniuses of direct response marketing, but I'll give my feeble attempt is I try to keep it real simple. And this called just the name of it, direct response. I Look at as cutting out the middleman. We are going directly to a prospect for a response. So we're getting an immediate response, yes or no. Whether they're buying something or getting some free information or clicking on a link or whatever they're doing, we're getting an immediate response. And also very important, it's something that we can track. Those are the two key hallmarks that I use to differentiate direct response marketing from what people would think is general awareness or branding marketing. Right, right.

Yeah. I've always loved to just think of direct response as image advertising, institutional advertising. Most of what you see in that world is get your name out there brand building. And direct response is get your name out there and get a response back. Something that's trackable, something that's specific. And when you did the 10 minute talk at the recent 25k meeting, you started off with you're about to have solutions to a whole variety of stuff that you laid out. And then you're saying you're not paying to get warm and fuzzy feelings. We got to sell something. And that's what direct response really does. And I'd love to have you speak to that because so many people are enamored with the whole concept of build a brand because it sounds like the right thing to do. There's a lot of people that, you know, refer to it that are very successful. There's a lot of big companies that are always being talked about and admired in the media that certainly have a very successful, very admired brand. And small business owners think that they can somehow just easily replicate that, and they can't.

Well, nor should they really want to. And I will explain what I mean by that. But I will say that building a brand is something fantastic and enviable and awesome and it's something you've done with multiple brands. And I mean anyone in my circle, any top marketers walk around and say the 25k group, the genius network, everyone knows what that means, what it stands for, what you've built there, what you've put together, that's a brand. The good news is you didn't pay a single dime to make people aware, as far as I know. I don't think you have a 25k blimp.

Yes.

And I don't think I got a 25k NASCAR and I haven't seen the 25k stadium yet. And so you're not paying for all this awareness. You're actually getting paid every time somebody hears about you because you're doing direct response. So I brought up at the $25k talk. One example is the Shamwow. So you know, people listening to this way in the future might be dating itself, but still it's been a couple of years or so since that was nonstop infomercials with the shamwow, you know, they cut a piece of Shammy into a few pieces and make millions of dollars. It isn't because the piece of cloth is the greatest thing on earth, it's because of direct response marketing. And so I asked for a show of hands in your group. Joe, how many people have heard of shamwow? Every hand in the room went up. To me, that's proof of the power of branding through direct response marketing. Because shamwow never paid a dime for anyone to be aware of it. Every time you became aware of it, they were making money. It was from an infomercial, it was from an ad, it was from some way of selling. So the beauty is we get to build a brand, but we don't pay some agency or some millions of dollars to companies and worry about our logo and get focus groups as to what color and shape our logo should be and all that nonsense. We just keep selling so much so to bring it down to earth to a local business in a local community. By providing good service and sending out a newsletter, being a part of the community, doing direct response things, you get well known in your community without having to just get your name out there. It's a great alternative.

Yeah, exactly. And I got a funny story about the Shamwell, the guy who's the pitch man, who's got obviously very checkered past. You can do a Google search on him. I met him at a. He was at this Rock the Kasbah charity event for Richard Bradson. Because I'm Richard Bradson's largest fundraiser. God know how many years ago this was, maybe like four years ago. The guy was a complete freak show. It was a total trip. I mean a complete character, but that's a whole other story.

But yeah, I would love that. See, I would get a picture, Vince, I would get a picture with him, of course.

But you're absolutely right though. I mean, you take something like a towel, I mean an absorbent towel and you turn it into this theatrical pitch that brought in millions of dollars. There's no one that's going to take an absorbent towel and they're going to build a brand around it that's going to be the biggest one on the planet. Unless it was the Oprah towel or something like that.

Well, yeah, I Mean, I bought one at a county fair or something where the guy's doing the whole shebang and whatever. And I, I bought the thing, I brought it home, and I was like, look what I. What did we get here? What am I doing? This is awesome. I just have all. See now. And I have the ultra respect for the marketer that did that. Other people would go, oh, you know, this, this is a scam. That's a scam. Like, I call it marketing. Like, they convinced me to buy a piece of chamois, just cut into a few pieces, because I thought, gee, one for the boat, one for the car, one for this. We can't do this all day. It's the greatest thing on ear. And there goes my 20 bucks times how many millions of people.

It's awesome, right?

Exactly, exactly. And see, the thing that people need to get is they'll see where the resistance, I think, comes up for direct response. I'll say this. Over the years of doing this, I have a friend named Jer who has this line that we say all the time, which is, for those that get it, no explanation is needed. For those that don't, no explanation will do. And the people that really grasp and understand this see the application of this psychology, this applied psychology to pretty much everything that you're selling. Some people that don't get it or want to fight it, or want to defend nonsense that flat out doesn't work will say, well, I would never respond to an infomercial, or I don't buy that sort of stuff. Or they make comparisons like that which are just nonsense and have nothing. And it's someone that's fixated on themselves versus what a direct response person is fixated on is the marketplace. One of the things you broke down in that 10 minute talk are the three basics of direct response. Who it is, who is your target market. Just kind of like what we talk about in the eight profit activators. The first one is select a single target market at a time. So who are they? What's the offer and ways that you get that offer to the who. When you really can identify and think from the standpoint of the prospect, the client, the patient, the person, the customer, then you will construct messaging to reach them and to sell that person, not just try to look good.

Well, I want to talk about some of the things that Steve's applied this to. So bringing it up to the current thing, a lot of times people say, well, yeah, I mean, direct response. You guys are talking about print ads and classifieds and things that was, that was in the 80s. Like, that was like, might as well be saying the 1800s. Sometimes people are saying, well, that's, you know, now everything's online. Nobody does print or nobody does, you know, traditional stuff. But, you know, meanwhile, back at the ranch, here we are, all three of us, still doing print ads and traditional direct response things that are still crushing it.

You know, that's my last W in the wow strategy is the way of getting your offer to your target market. The ways. There's ways that haven't been invented yet that we're going to be using in a few years or, I don't know, invented. So the way doesn't change. So sure, back in the old days, all they had was newspapers and magazines or whatever. Now we have those. And I mean, it's tough to turn on the TV late at night and not see infomercials. That's direct response. So I think when people start to understand, oh, yeah, that is true. I've seen an infomercial where they put a message with an irresistible. Is that not irresistible? But wait, there's more. You get 72 Ginsmoo nights and 400 of the eggs here. And then you get hit. But wait, there's more. You get two for the price of one. Just pay the shipping, blah, blah, blah. In the end, up pops a phone number and call. And in fact, there's entire channels dedicated to this now. There's home shopping networks. It's 24 hours a day, seven days a week of direct response marketing. I mean, the timer is ticking down in the corner. There's testimonials of. Mabel is calling in from Oklahom going, I got the whole set. And I have. My whole house is full of these and I have to buy 10 more. It's the greatest. And they're telling you what the price is in the store, but what the incredible price they have is. And they demonstrate it for you. And then they say, call now. And they even flash up when it's apparel or something. Some sizes are gone. Hey, we're out of extra large or we're out of the green. Like, the urgency is building. Like, call now. You know, I even look through the guide on my cable TV that has seven bazillion channels now. And when I look through the guide, like late at night. Have you seen these? The infomercials have names now. They've got the most interesting title, paid something or, you know, off the air or just hours now. They all have headlines. I'm like, they all have titles like hey, grow your hair in 20 days with that. See, now you can see what gets my attention or whatever. They have headline, they have names of infomercials, for crying out loud. If you can't see that, there's direct response marketing everywhere. And while you're sleeping, while everyone is sleeping, if you sleep during the day, then while you're sleeping at night, companies, which are people who own companies, are making multiple, multiple, multiple millions of dollars every day all over the country with direct response market. And the thing is, nobody knows what time these shows are on or what channel. I mean, it's not even like you can. Well, now I guess they do have titles, but it's kind of just people. Just what? Nobody is in the mood at 3 in the morning to send away 1299 for a hose that's going to burst the second you turn it on. And yet they do. And so direct response marketing is the only way to do that. You couldn't put an ad on an image ad. Hey, these hoses are pretty good. Go to a store near you at three in the morning and think you're making any money. But you can flash a phone number up and suddenly pour it in if people don't. Yeah. Okay, so it has a bad connotation of a snake oil salesman or the pitch man at the county fair who's kind of a. Or Vince himself. You brought up Joe, who I haven't met, and so I won't say anything about in person, but I've heard some things. He's a seedy character. Whatever. So, you know, your local lawyer, dentist, doctor. I can see them saying, I don't want to use that stuff. It seems dirty.

Right, right. And the reason they come to that conclusion is because they are influenced or their attention is captured by things that typically would not capture their attention. Like in the case of a hose or a towel or you see all these things because it's just so out there and it's compelling and it's making an offer and it's grabbing your attention. And they somehow fail to translate that any in any business is doing sales and marketing. It's either you're doing it very effectively, mediocrely or poorly or not at all. And so of course, the worst offer anyone can make is no offer at all. And that's what a lot of brand building really does. They don't make any specific offers. They're not doing anything. And so people that are afraid to sell, afraid to position themselves, afraid to boast about what it is that they do, they get no results. And when they don't get any results, they then tend to hate or dislike or be disparaging towards people, products, methodologies that actually do accomplish that. Not realizing that you could be the highest level, most ethical, great person on the planet and incorporate direct response and dramatically, not only in some cases save your business and get very wealthy, but certainly become infinitely more effective and multiply everything that you're doing. And that's where I think the big disconnect happens with people, is they look at one area and they're like, oh, yeah, I'm not going to do that stuff. As if that's. I mean, if you drink too much water, you can kill yourself. But you don't see people walking around saying, oh, water's really just awful. I mean, you're going to drown from water. I mean, you got to drink water, but you got to eat food. But you can take any area and it can be, you know, it could be dangerous or it could be bad. So I don't know why marketing gets such a bad rap. I just think people that are ignorant of it are scared of it. I was going to ask you, what's.

Some of the coolest things that you're doing right now, applying all these direct response. What's kind of the thing that you're applying it to that's working really well right now?

Oh, my goodness, there's so many. The coolest. Great question. I tend to never think about what's the number one. I think of how many. I'm doing this with a couple of clients that I've had for a couple of years where they have just like you just described Joe or Dean or most unfortunately. I mean, I love small business owners, so I always say, unfortunately, that 95% of them go out of business in the first five years or whatever. I hate that. I mean, don't you hate driving by a business? A restaurant had a business sign on it that, you know, had great food and used to love going there. I mean, I just hate all that. But anyway, usually business owners come to me, like you say, Joe, as a last resort. Okay, finally I'm ready to do something that I didn't think I'd ever do or whatever. And, you know, can you help me? Well, of course I can. It's just, you know, are you going to. Let's get going. What are we going to do? Which one of the, you know, dozens and dozens and endless number of ideas that we have, we're going to put in place. So I have a couple of clients recently that I've helped build their business from the brink of going out of business to seven figure success. And they're taking days off and they're loving their life. I have now taken them and I'm helping them become. I'm putting together what I call the look over my shoulder program with both of them, where they are now being a leader of marketing in their industry. Kind of like you did, Joe, with the carpet cleaners, where they are saying now one's an auto repair shop and the other is a sewing shop. I mean, if you think of a sewing shop, you don't usually think of a million dollar business. That's what Mary Forte's sewing shop is here in a little suburb outside of Chicago. So now Mary is becoming the guru to other sewing and quilt shop owners around the country who all want to look over her shoulder and see the marketing that she's doing. And they get the materials that she does to build what is the largest sewing club in all of Chicagoland and close to all of the country. And so I'm having a lot of fun doing this, taking people and putting together a look over my shoulder program.

Right. And you know, it's a great model too. And one of the primary reasons for people to actually learn direct response, and this will sound kind of like a tangent, although I'm really serious about this, because you just identified it, Steve, is if you can learn how to solve your problems of generating business and getting clients and you can transform your own business or other people's businesses. But I always think it's great to transform your own. Like the lady with the sewing shop. You can then go out and solve that problem for all the other people in the country and the world that happen to have that same problem. And so in the process of all of us needing to figure out our own communications and marketing problems, we ended up becoming advisors to other people and teaching other people how to solve theirs and then doing it in a niche. I mean, I transformed the entire carpet cleaning industry. I never thought when I first needed to learn how to generate business, which is what brought me to being open and aware of learning direct response, that I would ever take a small cleaning company with one van and that would become eventually a multimillion dollar, largest training organization in the world for cleaners all over the world, which is now over 7,000 cleaning companies throughout the world that have become members of Piranha Marketing for the stuff there, you just nailed it right there. There's a double whammy. Not only do you learn how to most effectively market and build and grow your business. But there's also a whole other training. It could be coaching, publishing, information, publishing business associated with learning these skills. So I'd love to have you go a little bit deeper on that, Steve, because I think a lot of the people that are listening to this don't realize that huge opportunity is available for.

People once you learn it well.

And that goes back to if people weren't listening to the beginning of the interview or I couldn't expect them to remember it all by then. But my mom being a schoolteacher basically my whole life, in other words, I mean, I grew up loving teaching. Not everyone does though.

Joe.

So you talk about, you know, how great it is to then help others solve the same problem. But lots of people, like, I'm a big sports fan and I see a lot of the best players in sports don't make for the best coaches. Like if you had to say, you know, Vince Lombardi, how many, what position did he even play? I mean, you know, coach K in college basketball. How great a basketball player was he? I don't know. So it is a certain breed, a certain type of person who says I'm not only going to get good at this, but I really want to help other people solve the problem. Which to me, well, the beauty is that we get paid for that too. Because it's like that. And I often do it. I don't know if this probably wasn't the question, but I often am working on my clients marketing and brainstorming and working on things for them. And my brain is thinking about how to help them more than it is. I know I need to put something new together that I'm working on my own market. And so that is the three of us on the call here, Joe. But it's not everybody. So even if you don't want to solve the problem for everyone in your industry or whatever, by all means find someone to solve it for, you know, a business owner a lot of times. And I have, you know, met thousands and thousands over the years. I've run over 200 events for entrepreneurs with, you know, from, from a dozen people in the room to 300 people in the room. And you've run big events. So we've met a lot of business owners. It's a, it's kind of a, it takes a lot of self sacrificing attitude, especially in today's world of overregulation and taxes and this and that and whatever. I mean, it's a, everyone knows in the beginning Even people haven't started a business. That's one reason they don't start. One is how much sacrifice is needed, at least in the beginning. And again, for 95% of businesses that go out of business, that sacrifice never ended. So I understand if you're out there thinking like, yeah, you don't really. You're not in the mindset of doing things for yourself. Find someone to do it for then. Your kids, your wife, your community, your employees, somebody. But get the hang of. The biggest mistake I see people, business owners make is they focus on being a doer. What I call the doing the deliverable of the business. Like in your world, it would have been carpet cleaners who are always reading up on the new. They think they just got to get the newest equipment and reading on how to more quickly get the. Now I'm going to show I don't know anything about carpet. You know, have them more quickly get the soap to go into the carpet and suck it out and this and that. And yet they're going to transform a lot more lives for themselves and the people they love around them and help a lot more people in their community if they would work on their marketing and get their marketing straight. And so, you know, it's what Jay Abraham calls your moral obligation. If you believe that you have a product or service that helps other people, then you have a moral obligation as a member of society to get that solution into as many people as possible who have that problem. And that's what marketing does.

Let me ask you, since we're on, I love marketing. And this may seem like a ridiculous question, but an obvious one, but why do you love marketing? I mean, you're totally into marketing. We've interviewed a lot of people. Most people we interview really love marketing. You're just one of the these diehard guys.

Well, I think I kind of just gave it away. I mean, like, yeah, I mean, I guess it's because I've been in both places. I've been the frustrated doer. I mentioned when I left the yellow pages to restart up my consulting business. That's why I ended up at the yellow pages. I was having a quote consulting business. The problem was my clients were not paying me any money, so I was helping all the wrong clients. I was helping people looking to start up businesses because that's what I've done all through the years. And yet I found that they were not doing anything. And so no matter how much I helped them and how much I tried, told them, suggested what to do, they ended up Never doing anything, never paying me. And my beautiful wife Michelle, who lost her got downsized from her six figure income job and this and that, which was enabling me to be a flunking consultant who was giving out great advice. Being a great doer, however, not marketing my services well, that's when I said, well, somebody in this family has to be a real man and go get a real job. And that was me. So I opened the paper and of course the ad said, which was a yellow page company. It said, help small business owners with their advertising and marketing. I was like, really? That's like my dream job. This is awesome. Then I went in and found out it was the yellow pages and I was like, well, I guess that is the definition, so what the heck. That is true. Let's go out. And since I'm incapable, I realized at that point, since I wasn't using direct response marketing myself, I was incapable of getting my own clients. I was like, this is good. They will put me in front of business owners who need help and then I can be the doer. See? So what happens if you really insist on being a doer and a great deliverer of product or service? You ought not to be in your own business. You ought to have a job and work for somebody else. So if all I want to do is be a great carpet cleaner, then I should work for a carpet cleaning company. But if I want to run a successful carpet cleaning company, then I'm not saying not to be a great doer. Of course you got to keep up with the equipment and the techniques and the whatever, but you really, really got to get into the marketing. And if you're not will to do it yourself, you've got to get the right team around you. Joe, you have a great team of marketing people around you to market like crazy. This I love marketing podcast, the perfect example. If all you did was think about great questions to ask people, it would be the greatest marketing podcast in the world that nobody would listen to. Every time I'm around, when you talk about the I love marketing, all you talk about is how many downloads there are now and what's the goal of what you're getting it to and how you're going to get it there and where you're going to promote it and what you're going to do to promote it. And so clearly I'm not saying to therefore not be a good interviewer, which is the doing of the podcast. Sure, do that. But also put most of your effort and most of your focus and fall in Love with getting that word out there because how much better is it, Joe? What's the number now? I mean, am I wrong? I thought I heard you say a quarter of a million downloads or something. I mean, how does that feel to get out of bed in the morning and know that the advice and the help and the great information you're bringing people is actually getting to a lot of people? How cool is that?

Yeah, no, it's pretty awesome. It's actually much higher than that monthly now. It's like over 300,000 and it might even be more. Dean. As I hear this, I just realized.

You are how lucky I am.

Yeah. How lucky you are to even know me because you're best lady. I'm the hustler here. I'm the one out there really, really knocking it out. I appreciate Steve acknowledging me much greater than you. Just not even on purpose, but just.

Kind of making the point.

No, but you're totally right, Steve. I mean, it's really where your goals are and where your drive is and your ability to be obsessive. You can be obsessive in a very destructive way. You can be very obsessive in a very growth oriented, growing, building, making, massive impact sort of way. And so there's some huge lessons in what you just described.

I think even what you were talking about with the sewing company and the fact that coupling marketing, the one, two punch for me, just the magic combination that was really like the rocket fuel for me was discovering direct response, but then discovering this idea of the franchise prototype, like Michael Gerber talks about in the E myth that doing something, and that's really what marketing gives you the opportunity to do is match up with this idea of creating the franchise prototype. When Michael Gerber was talking about McDonald's and Ray Kroc and how Ray would work on the business and work on creating things that could be replicatable. That's really what direct response is. When you figure out how to find somebody who wants to get some sewing done or is a sewer and wants to join a sewing club. When you figure that out in Chicago, you've figured it out in Orlando and Phoenix and Poughkeepsie, everywhere that people sew, you figured out a way to syndicate the effort that you have. That's why it's really the ultimate leverage. Rather than trying to just apply it to one business, once you solve it, you've got the opportunity to package it up and to spread that to all the other, like businesses that are selling to local markets. That's what's been the biggest kind of, like, discovery for me, almost 25 years ago now.

Yeah, yeah, totally. So, Steve, how can someone listening to this differentiate and position themselves and their business?

Well, that's a great question. I was just thinking of that as Dean was giving that response, is basically, we all. I like to. I didn't come up with this, I'm sure, but the phrase we own the media. Like, I like to believe that we own the media today. Like, if years ago, we all have known, or anyone my generation or our age has known that it's always good to. I think everyone knows it's good to be on tv. It's good if you're on the radio, if you're in the newspaper, if an article is published or you're on the news or whatever. Everyone knows that's good. Nowadays, though, if it was 30 years ago and I was running a business, if I wanted to have people see a video about my business, have you ever thought, I mean, it's amazing what would have had to happen. I would have had to somehow convince a local TV station to send out a crew and interview me and then put that on the news, where I might have gotten two minutes at the end of a newscast once, and that's it. And I hope people saw it and called me. Otherwise it's gone forever. Or I guess pay a lot of money to some professional camera crew to come out and film me and do whatever. Or if I wanted to publish an article, I'd have to convince a newspaper or a magazine and so on and so on. And so I think we. We really take for granted now that YouTube exists and other video channels that I can just take out. My iPhone now has a video camera on it that's decent quality. I can have somebody hold it in front of me or turn it around on myself. I can talk for one minute about. I can walk around my business with the camera and show people around and introduce them to my staff. And then I can put that up, and I can put up one of those every day. After a couple of months of that, I'll have 50 videos up there talking everything about all the frequently asked questions and success stories of my clients or my customers. And I can show them through my business, and I can write articles and put them on free article sites. I can have my own blog. My rhinodaily.com blog is basically my own newspaper where you guys have contributed articles. The top minds in the world are contributing articles, and that's free. So what I'm saying is YouTube is free, and video Cameras are really inexpensive. If you already have an iPhone or a smartphone, you have it on there. Posting articles online, free, posting audios, a podcast, even publishing your own book, you can do now. You don't even have to convince a publisher to publish a book. So that's how you position and differentiate yourself is the fact that whoever your competition is, they're likely not to be doing almost any of this stuff. So if people are seeing you as the trusted provider of information, then when they're ready to make a buying decision, you've at least got the first shot. You got a leg up. I mean, I know if I'm looking for a plumber and I see 20 different websites and 20 different yellow page ads and val pack things and everything looks the same about this much for a trip charge and who knows and whatever. And then one of them says, here's a free video on the three biggest mistakes people make when they hire a plumber. You know, watch this before you hire a plumber. I'm going to. And then they're also going to tell me this, and then they're going to tell me that, and they're going to say, come to my website for some more videos, some more information. Hey, when I'm ready to call a plumber, who do you think got the first shot to get that call? The person who trusted the site. So it behooves all of us as business owners to open our minds. I mean, inside every business owner is, is so much knowledge and so much skill and information that we take for granted. And we don't. Well, I do, but a lot of people don't realize how much knowledge they have that the general public is a moron about. I already earlier proved how little I know about carpet cleaning. I could prove how little I know about just about every product or service there is out there. I would love to, Joe, if I need a carpet cleaning, I would go get the consumer guide from you or one of your 7,000 students that happens to be in my area. That's how you do it. So we don't have to saving money, have to convince the media to run our stuff. We can do it ourselves. But how many people out there come to me and say, gee, I have no money for marketing. And I'm like, well, how much free stuff have you done? See, that's not a valid excuse anymore. There's so much free marketing you can do. The point is they just don't know where to start. They don't know what to do, or they're just not willing to do it. And they really ought to not be in business themselves and go get a job.

It's such a great point. I mean, when you say we own the media, that is such a true statement. I love that. And what you're talking about, for instance, with me creating a consumer guide to carpet cleaning by offering that education and by making that available to people before the Internet. I mean, I sit and think of all the things that all of us had to do in the beginning, which was nothing compared to what people had to do 20 years before we started doing it. I mean, I tell people that are whining about how difficult it is to put up a website or send out an email. It's like, do you realize in the 70s people were. Well, even before that people were using X acto knives and whiteout in order to lay out an ad that had to be typed up on a typewriter. And people are, they didn't even have spell check back then. I mean, they were using a manual typewriter and they're laying things out by hand. I mean, it could take someone like two days to lay out an ad that you can do in 10 minutes today. And I was sending out VHS tapes with videos about what it is that I did to people in cassette tapes and big direct mail packages. Think about the logistics that we had to do. But by doing that, we have such an understanding that I don't think if you just live in the Internet world, you quite grasp and comprehend. The more effort that you have to put into making something work, I think the more appreciation you have for when advancements are made like today. And it's so incredibly awesome because I see so many people that will just bitch and complain about stuff and they're like, you have no idea. You have no idea. The people before you that figured out all of this stuff too always came from the marketers. I mean, it was always the people that had to figure that stuff out. Then going back to the consumer awareness guide, by doing that, I ended up going on ABC's 2020 in 1999 in they put my consumer awareness guide on the ABC 2020 website. And that show was watched by 20 million people. It ended up launching ethicalservices.com where if anyone in the United States wants to hire a carpet cleaner, just go to ethicalservices.com and type in your zip code. And if there's one in your area that has signed a code of ethics and guarantees their work and does all kinds of great stuffies, it's just a fantastic way to find, you know, an ethical cleaner. But this all stems from direct response stuff. So, Dean, what were you going to say?

I was going to say, you think about back 25 years ago if you had said, because really the equivalent of what we have available today, you could own a radio station by doing a podcast, you own a television station with a YouTube channel, you own a printing press with all the PDFs that you could put out. Now you can put out a PDF magazine, you can print physical books one at a time for $2.15. I mean, it's literally you, you, you could be a media mogul. Things that were impossible 25 years ago and so few people actually take advantage of it. It's amazing.

Yeah, totally. That, you know, people don't appreciate. But when you bring up the word people appreciate, I think about the consumer. And as a consumer, I really appreciate when people do go through that expense and effort. When I get a package at my doorstep in a box with stuff in it, when I even get a post, it's so sad to say, when I even get a postcard, I'm like, look, this guy cared about me more than just sending an email. I mean, you know, here's the thing. And again, I'm not the. I didn't come up with this one either. But I mean, 15 years ago, there was a whole company that became a multi billion dollar company built on the catchphrase, you've got mail. AOL got mail. Like that was a positive thing. I cannot imagine a single human being that I know waking up in the morning, going over to his computer, turning it on and hearing you've got mail and being in a good mood about that. I mean, all they can think of is like, oh, crap, 100 emails to go through. Oh, this is spam, this is junk, this is whatever. And yet you open up your mailbox and there's a letter, a postcard, a VHS tape, a DVD or whatever's coming in the mail. The consumer, which is again, you talked about earlier, that's where our focus really needs to be. Think about the mindset of the consumer getting a physical something, a book, a DVD of something in the mail, going, wow, this dentist above all the other dentists in the area, really cared more than all the rest who were just bombarding me with emails that I don't want. So the world is really our oyster now. We will not only use all this online stuff, but do some offline stuff too. And so it just pains me how few business owners are doing this stuff.

Totally, totally.

Well, you know, let's talk about having a job.

Say that again.

Of course, it keeps me having a living.

We're all happy to some degree that everyone kind of sucks at. Not everyone, but most people suck at marketing because we're able to help them with it. But I say that jokingly because I always think of Dan Sullivan's line, other people's bad news. Bad news is your good news. I constantly remind business owners that most money that is made is transforming bad news into good news. And I like using analogies. If you're hungry, that's bad news. But if you're a restaurant owner, that's good news. If you break your leg, that is bad news. If you're a doctor, that's good news. If someone dies, that's bad news. If you have a mortuary, that's good news. And I mean, I even take it to that level because it's like, well, you know, why are you talking about that stuff? It's like, well, could you imagine if there were no doctors? Could you imagine if there were no mortuaries? Could you imagine if there were?

No.

If you're bored, that's bad news. But if you have a comedy club or a movie theater or a bowling alley, that's good news. So almost everything, someone's carpets are dirty and filthy and the cat peed in the corner, that's bad news. But if you can go and remove it, if you can clean it, that's good news. If someone sucks at marketing, that's bad news. But it's good news if there's a thing called I love marketing or Rhino Daily and people like us that are doing it. So the key is there's a lot of bad news in the world that needs to be transformed. And if you don't get the. The marketing right, like you were saying about Jay Abraham. I mean, I've talked to J. Abraham every day on the phone. I'm not kidding. Every single day. I've been on the phone with Jay for the last three weeks straight because he's just taken a super liking to Genius network and interviewing people. So I've spent at least 15 hours with Jay Abraham on the phone in the last three weeks. And it's like, if you don't learn this stuff, then there are tons of opportunities you have to transform other people's lives, get yourself wealthy, do all kinds of amazing stuff. But it all boils down to learning what it is we're talking about and putting it into action.

So, Steve, Well, a couple of things on that bill. One is Actually, just around the yellow pages, actually you hit the nail on the head with there's good news, bad news. Because at the yellow pages a storm is what we call yellow pages weather. So when a storm is hitting, well, you're going to need a fence guy and a tree guy and a new landscaping guy and a roofer and a siding guy and like whoa, storms are great yellow page app. But on the other hand, I just wanted to bring up a point that people. One reason people don't use direct response from you, we were talking about it earlier that it seems seedy or whatever. One example I use is everyone has seen their local car dealer on tv. And when I bring that up and I ask people what's the difference between a national car commercial and a local car commercial? Where the national car commercial is zoom zoom and the car goes through the skids, across the water, through the cones or crash dummies go into a wall and you couldn't even tell what brand it is or what car or whatever, but they got that awareness and the difference between the local car dealer. Now when I say this in an event and I've given this talk over 200 times and I say, now think about your local car dealer, everyone starts laughing and goes and thinks about the wacky, crazy, yelling, screaming, plaid suit wearing gold chain CD used car salesman. And that's where they go, I don't want to do this stuff. But if you really pay attention, I would think that everybody, everywhere, wherever you are right now, if you turn on the tv, you will see a local car dealership commercial where the owner of the car dealership is using his personality, which is not wacky and crazy. He is calmly saying, hi, my name is Bob Smith from Bob Smith Auto and I've been serving this community 40 years. Here are my two sons. We provide a warranty, we self finance, we have great deals. Come on down. He's very calm. And so that's direct response marketing. It doesn't have to be seedy or crazy or shamwow or whatever, but it is imperative that business owners use direct response marketing. We cannot survive. Like you said Joe earlier, we cannot survive thinking we have bazillions of dollars to invest in blimps and stadium naming and whatever nonsense goes into just building some awareness about what. Basically, here's another point. The name of your company is basically a nonsense word to everyone else on earth. Just about the name of just about every company is a nonsense word. It's a family name. If it's a law firm or even a Carpet cleaner or a store. It's Joe's Sub Shop. That doesn't mean anything. Neither does Google, neither does Amazon, neither does. These names don't mean anything without McDonald's. It doesn't mean anything without billions and billions of dollars behind it. Or since we as small business owners can't afford all that, we've got to put something out that gives somebody a reason to respond right now so we can make money and continue to get our name out there. We got to keep making money. Every time we do that, then we'll have a brand and we'll have money and we'll still be in business after five years, unlike 95% of all the companies.

Yeah, see that's the whole key right there is that this isn't just about doing what you think fits whatever perspective you have of what's right or wrong. This is about survival. Rarely does a company go out of business because they were making too many sales or because their marketing worked. There are situations where people have done so many sales, they happen to be in a supply and demand situation that's so on their side that they screw up because they can't deliver what it is that they're promising. So obviously you have to fulfill what it is that you're selling and you want to live up to your claims and preferably exceed expectations of people that are buying from you. I mean, that's obviously a given. It's kind of like what you said.

I'm going to be the jerk with Steve Martin. Right. So I'd rather have that problem than have the problem of going out of business because I had no sales. At least Steve Martin enjoyed himself for a little while because he made so many of business. It's a better problem to have. Right?

Right. And for people that have never seen that movie, that's many, many years ago, but it's completely ridiculous. But it's probably worth watching. The Jerk by Steve Martin. So, speaking of jerks, Dean, do you have anything you want to add? I'm kidding. I'm always trying to egg Dean to try to be insulting and stuff. And so I have to.

Human being on all of earth.

Well, that's what people think. That's what's really funny. He's got this whole passive aggressive thing going. So he never is opinionated and doesn't talk shit like I do. So people actually think he's like this sweet, gentle sort of person and I'm like the bad guy. But in reality it's almost like the.

Opposite branding at work.

So Steve, as We wrap up here. I want to give people an opportunity to learn more about you and your business and that sort of stuff. I want to ask you a couple more things. What are the biggest or the most common mistakes that business owners and entrepreneurs make or misconceptions that they believe? I mean, you've covered obviously a lot of them, but anything else that you could share here would be useful.

Well, I think we really did. I mean, my number one thought is they don't give enough respect to marketing and what it means in their life, so they concentrate on being the doer. I mean, that's what we're taught in school, right? We're taught get good grades and then you can get into a good school and then you can get a good job. And once you're in school, I have a law degree and there wasn't, I don't remember even one minute of any class where they taught us how to get clients. I mean, and that's a lot of money and a lot here in school to not learn how to then. I mean, so you have a lot of knowledge, I guess when you go work at McDonald's because you have no clients. So number one is concentrating too much on being a doer and having not only not enough respect, but kind of like we talked about, having a disrespect for marketing as if it's something bad. So I have a saying in my world which I walk around and say at all times for everything is results rule. I'm all about results. I'm not about what people think about. You know, I'll go out and I'm walking the dog at night and I will go throw on a ratty old sweatshirt or these big ugly boots in the winter here in Chicago or whatever. I don't care how I you think is the paparazzi going to snap a picture? I could care less. I got to take the dog out in the snow and I'm going to put boots on. Are they the dumbest looking boots which I used to wear around when I was selling yellow pages and everyone in the office would laugh at my dumb boots. I would wear around going, no, you don't do that. You wear nice shoes. And I'm like, there's a foot of snow on the ground. I don't give a crap how I look or what people laugh at me or anything. I'm coming in and I'm transforming small business owners lives. They will overlook the boots in one second. So they got to get into the good side of marketing and stop focusing on the downside. And the other thing we talked about is stop looking around and thinking you want to do the kind of marketing that big companies do. Big companies think. We mentioned like a car dealer. I mean, if I see zoom zoom on tv, everyone knows what you got to do now to buy that car. You got to find one of the, I don't know, 500, 1000, how many dealerships they have around the country full of highly trained, highly paid, highly motivated salespeople. Right. If you don't have a network of highly trained, highly paid, highly motivated salespeople in retail outlets all around the country, then you can't just get warm and fuzzy feelings and attract people to think and like and maybe somehow want to go test drive your thing. You got to sell it to them now. And so we got to stop thinking that you want even to do what big companies do. We got to realize we're a small company. There's great news that you're a small company. By the way, you can provide service and attention that big companies just cannot. So take advantage when you're a small company. I made this mistake early. I tried to act like a big company when I was little, and then I realized when I got big, my original customers were falling off and they went away. And I said, what's happening? I thought you loved the game and the service. And the game said, yeah, but now I don't get to talk to you anymore. And. And it isn't the same anymore. And I don't know who's answering the phone anymore and I don't want to play. And so I realized I missed out on an opportunity. When you're small, take advantage. Be that small business people love. There's enough people that love small business to support lots of small. Sure. I'm sure there's people out there that go, oh, no, I love Walmart or I love Home Depot over the local hardware store guy who knows me by name and knew my father and can help me with every tool and whatever. I'm sure there's people that say, I love an impersonal. Somehow I love. Is there someone out there that goes, I think McDonald's has better hamburgers than the little local hamburger joint. In fact, there was a recent survey. I don't know if you saw this. It surveyed all the fast food places. There were like 21 hamburger restaurants and McDonald's came in 21st. It was voted the worst hamburger fast food place. Kentucky Fried Chicken. The worst chicken. Taco Bell. The worst taco. I mean, really? So which would you rather be have the best food and go out of business or have the worst burger, the worst chicken, the worst taco and make billions and billions of dollars. So if you're all about results, find out what you're all about. McDonald's is not about quality of burger. They're about speed, cleanliness, consistency. You can be on the road anywhere and stop off and know you're getting a real quick burger that's healthy and safe and you're fine with that. If you went searching every local town at every exit on the highway to try and find a better burger, maybe you'd find one, but it would take you hours and maybe you wouldn't. What it does.

Yeah, you're totally right, Steve. And by the way, did you just say that a McDonald's burger is healthy? Did you actually use those words together?

If I said that, I'm out of my mind. But I mean compared to you have redress. If somehow you got sick at McDonald's, even if you spill coffee on yourself at McDonald's, you can sue them and get $10 million. Like if you get sick at a local place because you stopped on the road and two days later you realize you were sick, what are you going to do?

No, that totally makes sense. That's great. I mean that was fantastic.

I need to go back on record saying I clearly do not believe that.

McDonald's burgers are healthy.

No, in the context you explained it though, it totally made sense though. Yeah, it's a consistency. Yeah, yeah. I mean that should be their new slogan.

Actually, McDonald's, it probably won't kill you.

Well, you laugh, but how about Domino's new slogan is we have real cheese. I mean they actually, that's a marketing point they're making. They're really admitting that for 30 years we had fake cheese. Like now it's some somehow it's a, it's a great thing to have real cheese. See, I call that the ante to get in the game. I call having an excellent product or service just means congratulations, now you can be in business. Now get busy marketing so you can survive and take care of people you love, like hopefully yourself, and make money and serve the community and pay your taxes and pay suppliers and make money for your friends, your family. Have a nice lifestyle. I mean everything comes down to doing tremendous, excellent market.

Totally, totally. You know what we're going to do, Steve? We're going to put up the 10 minute talk that you gave at 25k as a bonus episode. We may put it together with this Podcast, or we may do it at a separate occasion on one of our marketing matinees that we do. And it's really, really good. So if people are not currently subscribing to I love marketing, go to itunes and subscribe so that you get it automatically sent to you every time we put up a new episode or a special announcement. And since you're in Genius Network, I'd love to have you share what are two or three distinctions you've gotten from being part of Genius Network that someone listening to this could apply to have more success in the business because you've been pretty active in the group for a while.

Well, I gotta tell you, that is a great question. I just like you. I'm addicted to marketing and a marketing junkie. And I love marketing conferences and I love listening to marketing materials and reading marketing books and whatever. So, you know, I've been attending these conferences since I woke up, as we discussed earlier, to the power of direct response marketing, maybe about 10 years ago. And I see kind of, you know, same people and the gurus and the speakers and whatever. I know them and this and that, whatever. When I come to your group, Joe, the 25k group, I'm meeting people that I otherwise would never see. I mean, I don't know what you do or what you did. I'm just glad you do, because, you know, people that I would otherwise never meet. And here's how I explain it to other people. I say, you know, and I explain it to them right there at the meeting when I meet the actual people you bring into that group who are actual experts. And I'll meet them and I'll say, hey, how are you? Who are you? And he's like, yeah, I have eight. This is common in your group, Joe. He says, I am one of the world's top authorities on this subject. I have 18 New York Times bestsellers. I speak at every university in the world for the last 30 years on this topic. However, I have no list of prospects and I make almost no money off of market. And I look at them and I'm like, really? Because I take Joe, local plumber, and through what we just discussed, through YouTube videos and self publishing and articles and blogs and videos and podcasts, whatever I form him, I take what's already in his mind and make him make the public realize he's an expert. How much more I could do with someone who came to me and said, I actually. Which happens also, they come to me and say, I actually am an expert, Steve, now help me that's a real joy. So those are the people I meet in your group, Joe. The people that really are thought leaders of the world. It's an amazing group. So my advice is if you are not, my number one advice would of course do whatever you have to do to get into the 25k group. But if you're not going to do that, at least broaden your horizons and look to whatever you got to do to get around thought leaders. Different people from all over the world that actually are experts in all different topics. I mean, it is. I look forward to those couple of days and not just the meetings, but the dinners, the lunches, just hanging out. I mean, it broadened my horizons and opened myself up and it's just really an enjoyable part of my life that I love. So I recommend everybody do that. That if you don't let Joe do it for you, do everything you can, which would I think in fact cost a heck of a lot more than just 25k to go try and meet all these people. But go ahead and try and do it on your own, but do it.

As much as you can.

No, that's great. Thank you. Thank you, Steve. And how can people learn more about you and do business with you if they want?

Well, that's simple. I put this talk on myself on my own website because I thought that was cool. So SteveSypress.com, which is just my name, Steve and then S I P as in Peter R E. Or they can go to vwowstrategy.com you have to have a V in there because somebody got wowstrategy.com before I did. So thewowstrategy.com or stevesypress.com awesome, awesome.

Thank you. And Dean, do you have any final last words here?

Awesome. I think that was great. Thank you for sharing.

Yeah, we are in time.

So.

No, it was great. So everyone please share your comments@ilovemarketing.com love to hear the insights that you got out of this and if you know any small business owners that definitely could utilize the help and most people do, then share this interview with them and we will talk to you next time on I love marketing. Thank you so much, Steve.

Thank you, Joe and Dean.

Sam.