Strategies and Ideas to Build and Grow in Business: A Hot Seat Featuring Paul Monaco, Joe Polish, and Dean Jackson - I Love Marketing Episode #441

We live in a world of just, there's so many more different options of things that one could do in order to build a business. And it's like if you have a thousand options, you don't have any options. And so part of it is there could be so much to do that we live in a world of shallow.

If you'd like to join world renowned entrepreneurs at the next Genius Network event.

Or want to learn more about Genius network, go to geniusnetwork.com Everyone, this is Dee Jackson. Welcome to the I Love Marketing Live. We're going to do hot seat today. We got Paul Monaco who has a golf business. And one of the things that we're going to attempt to do is share some strategies and ideas about how he can build and grow his business. Unless, Paul, it's something different from when this conversation with you first took place. We mean, you shot a little video at Genius Network and I sent it over to Dean and said, let's have you as a guest. So Paul, if you. And here's what I want, how I want to frame, I'm going to have Paul explain who he is, what he does and what he would like to have happen. If he could like wave a magic wand, what would you love to have happen? Then we're going to go into it. But the way that Dean and I will talk about it is so it is as relevant to everyone that is here participating and watching so that you can get ideas from this and things that you can hopefully apply into your own business and into your, into your life. And so try to listen that way and listen from the frame of like, you know, this doesn't apply to me, to how does this apply to me and how, how can I utilize this? And we'll see how it goes. And if this is a, if this is really beneficial and useful, then we will look at doing more of these. And so Paul, welcome and great to see you. And who are you, what do you do and what are you looking for? And let's figure out if we can make, make some magic happen today.

Sounds wonderful. Thanks Joe for having me.

Dean.

Both of you guys are, you know, respect both of you guys immensely and it's a real honor to be here as a member of Genius Network. For the past year you've played with my head with this elf biz part of it, you know, easy, lucrative, fun. It's not that it's, it's very simple process but it's not that hard. It's not that easy to do sometimes. You know, it's that mindset change. Anyway, getting back. Paul Monaco, born and raised in Toronto. We have a. An E commerce business that sells golf apparel and shoes. Our primary focus is in the off price business. In previous season we don't sell hard goods. This year we invested a lot more into inline goods. We have offices until we have a website in Canada and a website in the USA.ca.com and collectively we probably do between two of them, around $5 million a year. Our biggest challenge, our number one challenge is database growth. In 2019 we spent over a million dollars in Facebook and that was a very, that was a zero sum game. So you know, we have a database of about 100,000 which you know, which, which you know, we can't get past. We can't seem to get past that threshold. And our, our core, especially over the past year, over the years has always been shoes. You know, we've been strong in shoes but with supply chain issues, besides with supply chain issues, inventories a little bit have been harder to get in the off price world. So we've invested it into inline goods which our margins are not as good. However, we still want to have the diversification of that category because we have customers that want those products. But again, our number one challenge is growing our database. It's been a nightmare to get past it because the churn of people unsubscribing and the amount of new subscribers is just a zero sum game right now. So no matter what we do, we can't get past certain sales points, certain sales goals. So we believe that if our database was 500,000, you know, our business would multiply. Yeah, it would.

Right. If only there were 500,000 golfers.

Only if there were. Well, there's two of us that I know of.

Right, exactly. That's funny.

So I think that's where the problem lies for us and maybe I'm totally wrong.

I doubt it. One of the things. Can I ask some questions about some of your metrics to see whether, maybe look at it from a different perspective here. How much of your business right now. You're familiar with the way we break things into before unit, during unit and after unit.

Right.

So in your situation, I would say that if we look at, for the, you know, trailing 12 months, how much of the revenue that you generate right now comes from people who were on you, on your list 12 months and 1 day ago that have not. Not new people to the list. Because I'm going to ask you that next. But how many people are. I would consider your after Unit to be the, you know, people who have bought. I'm talking about your customer list now, not your prospect list. We'll talk about that in the before unit, but your, your database of customers. Out of the hundred thousand that you have total, how many of them are people who've, who've bought from you?

So we have about 50,000 customers.

So half the people are customers.

Customers.

Okay.

All right. And if I've answered your question correctly, we have a return customer rate of about 70%. Okay.

Now that's great. So that means that they. And because golfers are golfers and it's the kind of thing that, that is an itch that is never not itchy. I mean, there's perpetual. You need new shoes all the time, new stuff, new whatever, you know, so that they're constantly itching and the, you know, when you've got that relationship with them and they're, you know, you're a known quantity to them, it makes sense. So how much of the business. Because you save these things, 70% of the people who buy one time will buy again is what I hear you saying when you say you've got a 70% customer rate. But the number that I'm actually asking now is of 100% of the revenue that you did in the last 12 months. How much of that came from people who are buying again who are already existing customers versus new people?

I'll try to answer this too in this way. So a year and a bit ago, we introduced a membership program which was you pay $29 a year, you get free shipping and free returns. Perfect.

Like Amazon Prime. Smart. Right.

So we have now up to, I think we're about 2,500 members. And of that, of that membership based, it represents 33% of our revenue.

Perfect. That's really good to know if that's helpful. Yeah.

The returning customer rate, it's, it's, well, it stands.

It's.

70% of our revenue comes from returning customers. Perfect.

That's, that's good. That's what I want to know right there.

That's what it is.

Okay, and then of the, the remaining 70%, what do you do to drive that? What, what's the driver of the new, new business?

This is where we're challenged. You know, we've done Facebook marketing before. We've done Google Ads before in Google Shopping. And now we just recently invested with, you know, Kassam with regards to the, you know, Google Shop, Google advertising again. But it's so early. But that's the first initiative that We've taken in the last 14 months.

What kind of ads are you running? Like, what's your objective with the ads? Are you advertising merchandise with a direct link for people to buy or what sellers, that kind of thing?

Yes. So they are product specific for purchases?

Yes. So one of the things that I would suggest to you is, are you familiar with in the hotel industry? They've got a driving metric called revpar, which is revenue per available room. That's the standardized metric for the hotel industry to compare one hotel to another. So when I look at what you're basically doing is you've got. Your business is primarily driven by your subscribers, by your email subscribers, right?

Yes.

And so you've got an asset of a list of how many did you say? Of both prospects and customers?

A hundred thousand.

A hundred thousand people. So what I look at is calculating your revenue per prospect. When you look at the per available prospect, rev Pap. I look, I call it. So you would look at your $5 million total revenue that you generate, and that came from the 100,000 people. Everybody who bought is a subset of those 100,000 people this year. Right. So you generate somebody who's quick at math, can maybe help with this. But if you have 100,000 people and you generated $5 million in revenue, that means that the yield on that asset was a number per subscriber, per email, per addressable prospect that you have.

I believe that's $50 a person.

So $50 per person per year, that's in the last 12 months. Right. So when you look at this now, the real objective here is to take a different approach to the lead generation and separate the compelling from the convincing. The most valuable thing that you can do is build your list of golfers, not necessarily that they need to buy, because everybody who buys is a subset of people who golf. Right. And so rather than make raise the bar high when you're doing the ads to present yourself to somebody for the first time to show them what you've got and that they have to buy something now to have that value. I would look at separating that and having your before unit objective with at least a portion of your revenue be to drive golf, subscribe, you know, golfers on your list. Because if you can do that for something less than $50, the ROI on that is tremendous. Right. So I would only be concerned with, you know, if we look at the before unit profit activator one, select a single target market, you've got golfers, and we'll look at some of the, you know more granular flavors of those golfers. But Profit Activator 2 is about compelling people to raise their hand. We want to. You've got, when you're showing ads on Facebook, you're showing ads to invisible prospects, you don't know them yet. Right. You're showing the ad to everybody who looks like they've got an interest in golf, but you don't know them yet, you haven't met them, they're not on your list, you can't address them specifically. Right. So the objective that I would be looking at is looking at driving that list of just growing the list of golfers. Now I would bet that if we put our heads together that you would be able to drive golfers onto a list for under $5 per person. And if you could do that, if you spent, you know. How much did you say you spent on Facebook in the last 12 months?

Nothing in the past 12 months. But the previous time was a million dollars in one year.

So if you imagine if you did a million dollars and you for $5 got 200,000 extra subscribers, that would change the trajectory of your business, right?

Yes.

So when we look at that and that was really only your, you know, that was really only first year, you know, when we're looking at one year as $50 is the, the yield for that, for that list. So when you get kind of out of the expense based approach to advertising, which is what that is where you're hoping to run the ad, get somebody to buy and hopefully have a profit before the credit card bill is due at the end of the cycle. That's how people measure in this, you know, traditional direct digital marketing world. That's like a home run. If you can have a self funding kind of ad spend that you get a return on your ad spend within 30, 60 days. But when you look at it, it's, it's very sort of short term thinking because the real value, if you take the five year value of your, of an email subscriber, if it's $50 a year, it's $250 and you only have to pay to get them on the list one time. So making, rethinking about it and making a capital investment in building the asset that is your list of as of yet unconverted prospects, then making offers and because your incremental cost to add 50,000 people to your list is marginal, very, very little. You're already, you're already preparing the emails, you're already, you know, sunk cost of the copy and the marketing and the team that's putting those together, not going to cost you any more to send to 50,000 more people than it is to send to 100,000 people. Right. So all of that cost, all of that investment is front end loaded in building the asset. And now you get, you know, you can get even better at converting those prospects with, you know, better and better offers if you do it right. Like if you start thinking about separating out the individual jobs of work that you're doing, like identifying and getting golfers to subscribe, building a list of golfers that then pay attention to your emails, you know, if you're adding value to those things that you're almost like creating a media property, then that also has value whether they buy from you or not, because adjacent to you, there are so many other things that people are going to buy that you don't necessarily even participate in. You know, with a group of a hundred thousand people, you could be putting together with a partner, with a collaborator, trips to the greatest golf destinations in the world. You could be having a travel component of this where people get to, you know, gather or come. You could create a golf league or a membership or a, you know, something in the after unit where you're looking at building, deepening, nurturing those lifetime relationships with people. You know, there's, you've got so much potential there. I don't want your head to spin so quick. We're only a few minutes, but what, what, how's that all landing? What are you hearing so far?

You know, that resonates with me extremely well, Gene, and just to share one of the thoughts that we had come up with recently, but I mean, this has been like on the, you know, in the background for a long time with regards to creating content to get people to subscribe. And one of the categories that we shine in is golf shoes. And to be really known as to do content around golf shoes because I, I believe that as golfers, yeah, one of the products that we really need, you know, help with is golf shoes. I mean, you know, polo's a polo, but shoes, there's a lot more research and development, more, a lot more technology and it's a little bit harder for consumers to decipher which is the best for them. And I thought we could help them, you know, make those decisions whether they buy from us or not, because, you know, that's where our expertise is, is in shoes.

Yeah, exactly. And that, I think that's, that's awesome, you know, like thinking that way of all of really thinking about the ways that you can add value to, to people or the different topics that you could write about. How often do you email them?

Our custom, our database, we email like two to three times a day with offers.

Nice. Okay, look at you. Yeah. Only mail on the days you want to make money. That's the general rule.

That is so true. Yeah, yeah.

Can't go wrong following Amazon.

But I'd love to hear your feedback in regards to like picking, like, is that a viable plan to pick a category within that, within our field, within our industry and be the experts at that, at that one specific category?

Yeah, I mean, you know, you look at. Have you heard of Wayfair.com? yes. So you know, before they were wayfair they built 270 individual category brands. They started out doing with all barstools.com and everything that they sold was bar stools. They totally built that out. Then they got, you know, speaker racks and then every grandfather clock.com and ottomanempire.com and all of these things where they went and single focus on each individual market. They got them all up, each a standalone. The Procter and Gamble model. Right. Procter and Gamble has 23 individual billion dollar brands that are all independent of each other. Right. And so you look at that, that's how the shoe market is a viable market. The golf club market is a viable. The putter market, the travel market, you know, every, all of it is a. Are all viable, you know, because you can build a pretty amazing like footprint that way for the people who are seeking those things. But they all would be a subset of people who are in the grand category of golfers.

Agree.

Because if you buy in shoes, you're going to need other things.

That's exactly right. You can't golf barefoot in most unless you're golfing at John Daly's club or something. Yeah, that's the thing.

Let me pipe in and say something too. There's been some really good comments. Quite a few people. But Mike Aguilera, he has always got something insightful to say. Mike, why don't you. What's your sense of this? Because early on you started posting some really good questions and stuff. But now that you've heard some of this, what would you say?

It sounds like the problem he's trying to solve is breaking through the barrier of 5 million, which it sounds like based on the 100,000 the list, what he's doing sounds like he could break through that just by either creating an outbound department. And some questions I have is one, what is the average sale of the person and then what's the lifetime value of somebody, say over the last three years?

That's a great question. So our average card value is about $100. Okay, here's an interesting stat. Non members, people who are just customers are the lifetime. So lifetime value in the given 12 month period was I think was $160. Our members have a 8.1 more times propensity to buy the non members and their LTV is about 900, $888 or 889.

Yeah. So I think it comes back to like, what's the first problem to solve? I love everything Dean's saying but like for me I go, okay, so the membership's proven itself. I'm not sure on your website the membership is a good enough gateway in you have one pop up. I'm not sure it's enough value. I think something of a video or something that really promotes it besides free shipping. I mean, I'm sure somebody wants the golf tip. I'm not a golfer, but I'm sure they want the tips or a video or something. Something there. And so I would focus on getting as many on membership. Now do you have an outbound department that's doing outbound sales at all?

How do you mean? I don't know if I, if I've been understanding where you're at.

Like somebody that calls existing people on your database to find out how their golf game is going right now?

No, we do not.

Okay.

So you know, I think the new world, especially Covid, has pushed it where people are starving for connection. So if you could put an outbound department, I mean you could outsource this. But every time somebody joins the membership, somebody's calling them to congratulate them, welcome them and then starts. Because one day I'm not a golfer, my partner is and I watch two golfers and they just vomit golf talk for like ever. So if you could get someone on there and in between the golf talk, you're like, well, tell me about these shoes you're doing. Like you're not, you're not using like Walmart clothing to go golfing with your buddies or something so. So you can increase sales there exponentially. And the last thing is. Well, there's two more. One, do you have a formal referral program that's either in place or working now?

No.

Okay. So I think that's low hanging fruit to have a referral program that. I think there's two types of referral programs. There's one that's like hey, refer someone, you get something. And then there's the like charity program, right? The one plus one model, the tom shoes, like for everybody that buys a pair of shoes or does something, I'm going to do something good for the world. So I would consider that. And the last part, if you're still convinced that it's really a lead generation problem, which I'm not convinced at all. I think based on your members outbound like you to me I could see 10 million quickly here. But affiliates of course are going to be quick ways. I would imagine Tesla drivers, Mercedes drivers, genius network members that work with people that could afford, you know, or play the game of golf where they're regular or groups like you know, tiger 21 or financial advisors. I think there you're going to have a place where you have easy fishing ground without spending money on marketing. So maybe a couple points you could take from it.

Great, thank you for the feedback. One of the things that we like heard many times like affiliates, affiliate programs, but I mean I have no clue how to do that, any of that stuff.

Well, let's do it like you could do it real quick here. Hey, does anybody know anybody that's golfers? Is there some way that we would be able to give them value? So I think you have an audience already here. And then the other thing is how do you get buyers to buy more, understand how buyers think. So I believe surveying is now outbound survey is going to be great because you're going to get that connection. But also just doing an email survey of what do you like best, what haven't you purchased? Have you seen this? Or whatever type of survey that gives you a little emotional intel into how they're thinking about you. And I also don't know your based on your website. For me it looks like any site you'd go to buy a bunch of stuff. So I'm not sure there's what we would call like an X factor positioning. Something that's makes you very, very unique. Like hey, our golfing stuff, you know, you're never gonna have to worry about like some crazy beetle coming through it or you know, some crazy rash you're gonna get from it or we have sweatshop making it like so I don't see that competitive uniqueness in there.

I agree with that totally.

You know, you know what I forgot to do. And Mike and Dean obviously know each other. Mike, I didn't introduce who the hell you are and what you've done. So Mike has actually built very big businesses. Give the quick Bio bragging about who the hell you are, what you've done.

All right, cool. So I built a plumbing H vac, electrical business. Took it from under a million to 32 million under 10 years. So I had 200 employees, 165 trucks, double digit profit. I sold that in 2017. In 2014, I started a company called CEO Warrior where we coach the blue collar space. In 2020, we did 40 million in coaching. We sold. I sold that company in 2020 to a PE firm. I'm still a shareholder. And now I own a company called Food Dog Group. That pretty much my theory is in order to 10x anything, you got to 20x yourself. So I help people 20x themselves today. And then I have a company called Business Forge where we take equity and companies to help them grow and exit in the next three to five years.

So. So yeah, So I just want to give some context because he's super smart marketer and he knows how to build a business and he's been super supportive of genius recovery and what we do in addiction recovery. So just cool, dude. So I. And he was posting a whole bunch of stuff that I thought, yeah, and when, when someone has some insight here. I mean, that's, you know, I never tried to make this around. Yeah, this is the easiest thing for me right now too. I just, you know, Dean, what should he do? That sort of thing. Mike and I just sit here, People think I'm smart. It's actually kind of funny. But yeah, so that's. So Dean, go ahead and add to what, you know, what Mike has suggested and stuff. How do you see it right now?

Yeah, I saw. I don't look at them as separate things either or I look at. You're going to drive all of it. Right. So you're going to have the, you know, what Mike's describing, of course, is some after unit strategies. And part of the thing that you know, is the sort of wisest thing you can do is separate them as separate units of your business. Even just, you know, the way you think about them. Not, you know, you look at your after unit as the sole business. The only thing is to come up with ideas just like what Mike was saying that can further what you do with the people that you already have a relationship with. Right. So through different, you know, product lines that you might expand or different relationships, different people that you might affiliate with to introduce new things to your existing clients, to orchestrate referrals among those. I don't know whether you measure that as a separate thing or how you sort of approach the idea of generating referrals. So it's certainly an amazing way to grow then the before unit. We look at that separately and think the best way to think about you before unit and I'm speaking to everybody now because these things are universal in whatever business you're doing. The best way to think about your before unit is as a supplier to your during unit. So the job of work of the before unit is to supply new customers to the during unit. Right. At a profit. That's really what it is. If you could have a, you know, if you can kind of create a metric that, you know, what would you be happy to, you know, pay for a new customer? And that depends on, you know, knowing the lifetime value of what your customers are, knowing what your margins are, your, you know, how much you can allow to acquire a customer. Have you ever thought or look through to see like what would you cheerfully pay for a new customer?

You know, Dean, we haven't looked at it on a that granularly of what we would pay for a customer. We've had numbers before. I think you met earlier, you mentioned about like, you know, doing digital marketing and if it was profitable, everybody, you know, that was. But that's short sighted. You know, we used to do the same thing. If we sold something for a hundred dollars and our margin was $50, you know, 50% of it, you know, plus the cost of advertising. As long as we made 1X, we were like, you know, it was, we gained the customer, you know, and we thought, you know, the number that we kind of came around was like if we could get a customer for 25 and then convert them into a member.

Yeah, well that's the thing that becomes then what you're in your during unit. The moment somebody buys for the first time, when what are you deploying to immediately advance them to buy. The next thing to become a member to continue on that path that's going to turn them into a long term customer. And you know, looking at the things, one of the, if you have good margins on things, often one of the easy things to is a gift card to, to offer people. So I'll give you an example. So my girlfriend owns a studio here in Winter Haven called Amazing Brows and Lashes. And we built a list of thousands of women just within a, you know, 15 mile radius of her studio in downtown Winter Haven by offering people a gift card on for microblading. So microblading is a real popular thing that ladies do. The difference between $100 gift card and 20% off is nothing practically. You know, it's not. It's the same exact amount of money. But $100 gift card sounds like I'm getting something, you know, which is a really an interesting approach where it's much easier to offer someone a gift card than 20% off on something to incentivize a now purchase. Because most of the time when people are doing a 20% off on something, they're saying if you buy before June 30, you're trying to put a deadline on it to speed up the sale to get somebody to buy right now. But if they're not going to buy right now, but they're interested in microblading, that's still a valuable person to have because maybe they're saving up to get microblading or they want to do microblading, they want to do it in the future. They're just about to go back up north for the summer, but they're going to come back to Florida in the fall. You can grab and bookmark a future intention, a desire that you have by downloading this gift card. And now we've got a list of visible prospects who live within 15 miles of her studio, who are 30 to 65 years old and are women and are interested in microblading. So much so that they downloaded $100 gift card for the purchase of getting microblading. Right. So that became the driver of how to. Of building the list. And we were able to give away gift cards for under $2 on, on Facebook ads, you know, so, you know, to. You spend $2,000 to build a list of a thousand ladies who. It's the core of her business now every week she sends out email to them, you know, offering all of the things that she does with her super signature. She's been able to grow the spa, continue to add new machines or equipment. They've got all these facial devices and things that they use that cost thousands of dollars. But they're all enhancing now all of these ladies that they serve from the neck up, basically, you know, everything to do with your eyebrows and lashes and facials and permanent makeup, all of the adjacencies to what started out as just microblades. So when you look at, if you were to think about even the golf shoe, you know, a gift card for, you know, if you say you've got a 50% margin, if you give somebody a $50 gift card to use towards shoes, your cost on that would be $25 to build a new customer just like what you're Saying was your happy number, you know, but the. The thing for people to download, it's such. You get everybody, right? Anybody who's interested. I don't need new shoes right now, but I'm going to get this because I'm going to need them in six months. I'm going to need them. You know, these ones I'm almost ready for, or I do need another pair or whatever it is. You know, that you're gathering people who are doing that now, that's just one thing. But information is another way, you know, if you were to put together even a, you know, the summer 2022 golf shoe catalog. Yes. That information is a great thing where that. In combination with a gift card or, you know, even if it's a $20 gift card or a $10 gift card or whatever it is, when somebody downloads a catalog, I've discovered that catalog is like a magic word. You know, we were doing some. I've got a client who does bathroom remodels, and in Miami, and we were doing ads offering a kitchen and. Or a bathroom planning guide, a bathroom planner. We were generating leads for about $2.40 for. Yeah, for. For bathroom remodel leads. But we switched to the 2022 bathroom vanity catalog, and the leads went to a $30 same. Same audience, same, you know, sending them to the same people. But what I've done really discovered in that is that a catalog has objective data, objective information. Right. It's not me trying to get them to, you know, steer them towards any kind of a bathroom. A planner sounds like I'm. I'm not sure of what I want. But a bathroom vanity catalog gives me an economy of information that is going to be very valuable to me. You're going to get pictures, you're going to get a variety of. Of choices. You're going to get all the technical specs and the prices. So instead of just an idea book or an inspiration guide, you're getting something, you know, your people are, you know, anybody who downloads, of course, a bathroom vanity catalog is the only reason somebody's doing that is they're in the market for a. A bathroom vanity. Same thing with anybody who downloads a gift card for microblading. The only use for it is to get microblading. Right.

So, Dean, does that look like you do Facebook ads? And then you send them to a landing page where they have to put in their email address, and then we.

Use the lead ads product on Facebook, where they don't even have to leave Facebook. And Facebook auto fills the form with their name and email and phone number if you want that. But they automatically fill it with the Facebook information that they have. So all they have to do is click the button to say, yes, I won't. Send me the catalog or send me the gift card or whatever. Whatever you decide to offer, you know, and you can offer. If you think about one of the ways that I would think about this as a lead generator, all they have to do is, oh, I say, you know, looking at separating the compelling from the convincing. If I keep my eye on the prize of building a list of golfers, that's who we're looking for. So now I would look at who else wants golfers. You know, I did some work with a company in Canada that did party rentals and party rental company. So. Oh, yeah, you're from Toronto. So this was McLean party rental. Yes, in Toronto. So that at that time, it was the father who had built up the business. The kids were taking over. I believe they've sold the company now again. So. But this was in, you know, late 90s, early 2000, where we were working together, that they, you know, I asked them, what's the. The best thing? What's your largest check? What's the jackpot thing that you could do if you could get any kind of customer? And they said an outdoor wedding is like the big ticket thing because you get the tent and all the furniture and the tables and the linens and the dishes and the porta potties and the luxury porta potties and generators and lights, all of the stuff. It's like a big ticket thing. But picking a party rental company is not a sexy thing, and it's not a decision that brides are in a hurry to make. Right. It's like, further down, if you take the timeline from will you marry me? Yes. To where you know, I do, that can be a year or 18 months of a timeline.

And.

And picking the party rental company is a long way down the list of priorities that you might have. Right. But what are. If we go upstream, what are the things that must also be true if you're going to need a party rental company to fulfill your outdoor wedding? The base thing is that you're getting married and you want to have an outdoor wedding. That's the thing. So what we did was we put together a directory of 100 Great Places to have an outdoor wedding in Toronto. And we would advertise that in the newspapers, in the bridal magazines, and there's a whole bridal subculture in Toronto. There's Lots of places to get in front of people. And it's not very sexy to advertise your party rental company in a bridal magazine, right? But when you are getting people who are just in the process of planning their outdoor wedding, I mean, it's pretty high on the list. As soon as somebody decides they're going to get married and they're going to have an outdoor wedding, the next thing is what's the date and what's the venue? Right? That's. Those are the two top priorities. So why not put yourself right up at the front of the line, knowing that we're thinking like a chess master here. You're not thinking about that. We want them to use us for this, for their party rental company. But we also do the. We also do get all the information. Now we're able to turn that into a profit center because there are other people who are not party rental companies that also want to find brides early in the process, including the venues that we're featuring in the directory. Some of them want to stand out and have a feature ad in the, in the publication. Florists, music, you know, DJs and band bookers, all of that stuff that we were able to align with and turn the lead generation into a profit center. And that's where when you think about the before unit, if somebody's outside of the logistics and the stuff of the during unit of your business, where because if you're running a business that's doing $5 million, you're. You're probably stretched with a team that's very busy on. There's a lot of logistics of running the during unit of a business, right. So separating it and having somebody only be worried about how can we get more people on the list and having somebody who's a driver of the after unit, whose only concern is nurturing lifetime relationships, orchestrating referrals, presenting other ways that you can expand and deepen the relationship with the people who buy. Those are really. Those are big strategy kind of decisions that you can make, right?

It's funny you mentioned that one year we give away. We're giving away. Gave away a free pair of golf shoes on Facebook, right? We generated like about 6,000 leads, of course.

And you think about that one thing, a free pair of golf shoes. We did that. I worked with summer camp in Toronto just a couple of years ago. We did right before COVID offered a free week of camp and generated thousands of leads in the GTA of people who now have kids that they want to go to camp. And it's just like, you know, a huge explosion that's the driver is getting new golf on your in the before unit. But as Mike pointed out too, the, the big and immediate opportunity is getting the people you already have a relationship with to buy more, buy again.

Yeah, I think we do a decent job of that part of it. We squeeze that. I mean there is still some low hanging fruit like he mentions. 100%. Getting more database is. Yeah.

And I like Wimbledon and I may look at some of these experiences too. I sat at Wimbledon a few years ago with a friend who owns fuzzy yellowballs.com which is a tennis instruction site. Will. And you know, I was in London because I was doing a breakthrough blueprint event. I do small, you know, boardroom style events where we have 10 or 12 people and we spend three days focused on applying the eight profit activators. And I drive it all by sending emails saying, hey, I'm coming to London for marketing Mastermind and we're going to spend three days applying the profit activation. Would you like to join us and fill the room by email that way? So here I am at Wimbledon with Will. I was explaining what I was doing. He's got all of these tennis players that he could do the same thing for them by offering experiences that people could do at major tennis tournaments.

Right.

Or you imagine, you know, if you create a master's experience for all of the golfers that you have, or you look at all the majors or the Phoenix Open or the, the fun tournaments kind of thing, that you can create that kind of experience for people, high end experiences. Because you've got a rich of, you got a list of a hundred thousand people. There's rich people on that list.

There are, yes, there are.

And so you start thinking how high is high? Like what would be the, you know, Neiman Marcus approach or whatever, you know, the cat. What could you put that would be like a high end experience for people where they could, you know, I did a golf trip in Scotland. I've done, you know, three or four times. But the, the one that stands out in my mind is our third annual once in a lifetime golf trip to Scotland. And that was a. We used a company called Perry Golf, which is like a luxury golf provide. They've got these coaches that are like private jets with you know, eight facing club seats. And they do everything, they organize. We played all the, all the British Open courses in Scotland. We stayed in the best hotels, they handle everything. And that kind of, you know, you could with somebody as a division of that have an opportunity to do things like that. So Will came back, put together an experience for the DC Open in. He lives in Washington, and It was a $10,000 experience, and I forget how many people he had, but it was like a big hit that he put together. And he started doing those things now. The US Open, Wimbledon, Australian Open, where people could come. He'd set up an experience with a player, like a meet and greet or a clinic with Martina Navratilova or with the Bryan brothers or whatever. So you get tickets to the event, you get accommodation, you get. They basically handle the. The trip there. And so you start thinking creatively about all the things that you could. You could put together there. You know, that's fascinating.

You said. Because we have friends, like, I don't know if you're a golf junkie, like, with regards to golf, like technical, like shafts and stuff.

Right.

Are you.

I'm not really. I'm not really. But I mean, I. I'm an avid Go.

I love.

But I'm not a technical. Like, you know. Right. So I'm at 8 handicap. I'm gonna shoot between 78 and 82. No. No.

Okay.

Right. I'm not interested. I don't have the discipline or the technical thing. I don't, I'm. I don't think that it's an incremental increase in my happiness if I was three handicap or I'm not able to put in the work that beats.

So I don't, I don't really share this with a lot of people, but I have friends in the golf industry like, like club fitting.

Yeah.

And shafts manufacturers like that. Have you heard of KBS Chefs? Kbs? Yeah. So kbs, he's a personal friend of mine.

Oh, wow.

So I was thinking. And they're both like, they're all personal friends, like giving an experience that. A club fitting experience. Like, hey, for X amount of dollars, you get to meet, you know, Kim from KBS shafts, you get to meet Mark from the. From cool clubs. You know, for X dollars, you get fitting, plus you get a new set of clubs. Yeah, plus a golf club.

You start thinking about what that is. You know, you could. I thought about in Toronto one year, I met someone who was a regional guy for the golf. What's the golf store?

Golf Town.

Golf Town. Right, right. You know, and I thought about Golf Town should sponsor like the Toronto's greatest golfer competition, like the Big Break on the Golf Channel. And that's just an idea that only takes somebody to drive the idea. I mean, you've got the list, you've got access to everybody. It's like it would be, you know, a profit center could expand. Nike Toronto, when they came to Toronto, they set up these run to groups where they did a series of 5K races, but they built a list of 25,000 runners in Toronto. Right. Like avid people who are run enough that they would compete in a 5K. Right. And that's where you start thinking about, you're separating the, what I call the compelling from the convincing. The compelling is just getting them to raise their hand for their own self interest and then convincing them to buy what you got.

So how about like a webinar? So if we had like Kate, the founder of kbs, like we had like a, like a webinar, put it on Facebook and people could sign up for the webinar. Was that, is that a sound idea?

Yeah, perfect. All of those things, I mean you, you can live stream anything that you could imagine. You know, you look at the Golf Channel and anything you could set up those things, anything you can stream, there's nothing stopping you from doing any of that. Now you've got a built in audience, you know, and that's where driving and growing that audience is, you know, the big opportunity. Yeah, you're going to, you're going to be able to incrementally, you could probably double your business just focused on the during and the after unit. But to really grow it, really like truly expand it, you've got to have a dependable accelerator pedal that you can add new people and build the universe.

You know, with everything that you've heard so far, everything you've thought about, where your mindset is at right now, what do you think you need to do in order to best leverage what Dean talked about, what's been shared and what do you need to quit doing? Like what do you need to learn and what do you need to unlearn? What's your thoughts on this?

What I got from it? Joe, it's crystal clear to me A the good thing is that we have a vehicle, I mean a niche like shoes and content that we can create. But the thing, the takeaway for me is that we need a driver to execute it, to focus solely on that part of it, you know, and then a driver for the after. So we have the before unit. During an after unit.

Right.

But the before unit is where we don't pay attention to. We're just so caught up in the minutia of just making sales every day and try to improve that. We totally abandoned the before you gotcha.

You know what I would do? I would take the, I mean, you're, you're in Genius Network. So I would download the, my Genius Network tool and I would do a Genius Network tool just on the people that you need in order to make all of the things that you want to have happen. Because there's strategy, there's the technique, then there's the individuals that are going to help you do it. Like, and there's one thing too. Like, you know, I do believe there's a lot of to be said about the saying, you know, whenever you're a hammer, everything's a nail. So if you listen to a bunch of marketers, they're all going to give you marketing techniques on how to build and grow your business, right? And then my buddy Keith Cunningham has a great line where he's like, you know, more people die from indigestion than starvation in business. So much going on. And we live in a world compared to, you know, when I first learned marketing, as did Dean, when there was no Internet. We live in a world of just, there's so many more different options of things that one could do in order to build a business. And it's like if you have a thousand options, you don't have any options. And so part of it is there could be so much to do that we live in a world of shallow. And there's a couple of comments from different people about doing webinars or doing, you know, engaging with your existing prospects, your existing members, doing Q and A stuff. Someone talked about, you know, creating consumer awareness guides and doing education based things. And so for instance, you know, my girlfriend is a plastic surgeon and she is a brilliant surgeon. And she's also introverted. So she, her patients love her. She has billionaires that have pay her 50 grand a year to be the concierge doctor. And that's not for plastic surgery, it's for integrative health related stuff. And it's hard for her to do public speaking, but she's witnessing all of these different things that people want and how to help people. And she has knowledge. And so one of the things I'm helping her do is just start doing webinars where they're just Simply Q&As and don't even focus on trying to sell anything. Just talk to the people and answer the questions and just get, for one, use it as practice. You know, it's like one of the things I say, if someone wants to get better at something, start a podcast. I mean, you don't force you to have to just talk about things that you're trying to talk about. Right. And it's like we're doing here today. It's way easier to deal with someone else's marketing problems and deal with your own. I mean, I could tell everyone here, like, here's all the shit I'm dealing with in my life. And people would give me really good advice, some would give me bad advice, but for the most part, it would give good advice. And so if you started engaging with these people and just answering questions and educating them, like someone had suggested in the comments, you know, consumer guide on how to buy golf shoes. Right. Or a consumer guide on anything related to golf. Just anyone that would take just that and go deep with it with their clientele. It may be messy and it may be awkward and it may be weird, and you might have one person show up or no people show up, or three people show up. But if you just keep at it and you just really go deep with it, you can take any of these techniques and any of these strategies and then these methods and probably turn it into gold. But most people are not willing to learn how to be a miner, so they don't mind. And they step over gold all day long because they're not willing to learn how to mine it. And so the way that I look at all of this stuff and before, I would always say, that's the best idea. That's what you need to do. That's the key that Dean said or Mike said or this person said or whatever. But I'm now at the place where it's like, it's not what can you do? It's what will you do with your own. You know, I really like things that are elf. And some methods and strategies are way harder for some people than for others. And, you know, I mean, if you take Gary Vaynerchuk as an example, I mean, we've interviewed Gary before on. I love marketing. And when people try to go out and be like Gary, but they're not built that way, their life just kind of sucks because it's just. It's sort of a type of an attitude that some people, that's just not how they carry themselves. And so I take. Take everything that someone ever teaches and whatever someone suggests, put it into your own, you know, filtering system and say, yes, I can do it, but will I do it? And pick. Pick the thing out of all the stuff you've heard today, pick. And you read through all the comments. I would literally print them out, physically print them out and get a marker, get a highlighter and literally say that's an elegant idea. This is a gold coin. This is a silver coin. This is absolutely. This resonates with me. This one, you know, I'm not sure yet. So it's a maybe, it's a someday maybe. And just kind of go through and pick a couple of things that you consider elegant ideas. You know, million dollar ideas if you go deep with them and then, you know, just pick one and go deep with it. And that's what most people are not willing to do. Everything that Dean has talked about here is applicable to every business. Everything that Mike talked about is applicable to every business. So that's the way that I would do it. And you do want to put together a Genius Network. Like, you know, and for people that aren't familiar with the Genius network, like I have a tool called my genius network. And you put yourself in the middle and you can do it on a blank sheet of paper. I can even just draw it out for everyone and really let me see if I have a marker around here. So, you know, you just have yourself in the middle and you draw little boxes, eight boxes surrounding a circle. And I'm going to make a really ugly looking one here just to show people that to be pretty. Hold on here, just bear with me. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. So I've got a blank sheet of paper and I've got eight circles. So you're in the middle. Like you in the middle and around you are there's eight circles and you put the name of the person at the top and on the bottom circle you put their, their capability or their skills. So if someone wants to write a book, you may want a, you know, ghostwriter, you may want an editor. If you're trying, you may want a website designer. And in this particular case, the execution of the idea is it's not all going to be you. And if it is, it's unlikely that all of this is going to get happened. It's going to happen. And so you, how many people you got on your team?

14.

14. How many of those people are other than every single one of them? How many of them would be involved in your mind, in marketing, directly involved in marketing?

Two, besides myself. So three total.

So I would have those people listen to this episode. I would have, I would take out all the different ideas and stuff. And I learned this actually from Dan Sullivan. When Dan Sullivan comes to Genius Network, he's in my 100k group. He's been in my 100k group since 2017. He takes his notes, he takes his ideas, and then he sits down with his key people, either be it in marketing or his assistant, and he just says, here's my notes, and says, ask me questions. And they literally just take his ideas and they ask him questions so that he can get in a dialogue. Because I find for many visionary entrepreneurs, they're so fast and they're so quick and they're thinking that they have a hard time telling other people about it. But if you can gauge it to where, like, let them ask you the questions and say, here's what it is, just so I'm clear. Because people, it's that, you know, people support what they help to create and get into the dialogue with them. And I think that'll be. And I think if you did that, we. I'd love to see what. I'd like to take this episode, have you implement some things and then, you know, come back, you know, three months, four months from now and do a report. And I want to see what the return on all of this is.

I will do it.

Yeah. Because I'd love to see you double your business. And I'd like. And look, the economy's in a weird place right now and it could get very, very bad for some people. And wherever there's anxiety, there's opportunity. And I think the people that stay on top of the marketing and stuff, especially like I launched my business, helping service businesses during a recession. And I remember and we've been through another recession during the period of time because I've had my marketing company since 1994. And it's interesting because the people that would just stay really in touch and bond with their clients would always do well in the middle of a recession compared to their competitors where they just didn't. And so there's, you know, there's a lot of great opportunities to, to bond with people. And then the last thing I'll mention about from a marketing thing is Gary Halbert would always say to me, the difference between being rich and being broke could be one good sales letter. And, you know, if you just craft. And that sales letter doesn't always necessarily mean they have to directly buy something from you. It's. It could be read a book. It could be join a webinar. It could be visit this site. It could be take this survey. I mean, there's many listen to this podcast. And it doesn't need always to be in the form of a written form. It could be Audio, it could be video and it could be shareable. It could be something. So referrals is an example. It's a huge part. Like Dean Mike mentioned the thing, do you have a referral program? But Dean Jackson, in his past life, he created all the marketing for a real estate company that, you know, Joe Stump was the founder of called by referral only. And I mean we've done numerous episodes on I love marketing about going deep with referrals. So anyone that has watched this or is new to this, go do a search on ilovemarketing.com or wherever you listen to podcasts and just pick episodes that specifically talk to any parts of the before, during and after unit. Because we have just a smorgasbord of different specific niched, you know, trainings just on how to do that. So those, those are just my thoughts and I hope that's, I hope that's helpful. And it is.

I do have a question for, for Joe and Dean and whoever else may want to participate in. I. Thanks for all the comments. I can't wait to download and go through it is one of the things is that, okay, so we, we are capable of creating the content that's, that's, that's pretty easy for us to do because we know it hard. The challenge is like, where do we publish this stuff? Where do we like we. Okay, so we want to do a webinar with a wonderful idea. So how do we like the execution of it? That's where I'm. That's where is where I am challenged. And when I get those roadblocks, I have a. Tendencies. Well, it's too difficult. I don't know how to do this. I, I don't. Then I don't do it. Right. Right. It's like our giveaways, we put them on Facebook. You know, that's the challenge is like where do we publish, you know, these things that we come up with.

Yeah. You know, I think to your own. I think a lot of those things you take this whole approach of get everybody on the boat. Right. Get everybody on. And then you're being the cruise director and having all these activities, all of these things for the people who are on your list. You know that your metaphor boat. You're not. You don't need to promote those events and things. It's costly to promote that to strangers.

Right.

Not the most cost effective thing. Your only thing I think to be doing for people who are not on your list is isolating profit activator 1 and 2 just to get people on the list the equivalent of the, you know, the outdoor wedding guide or the, the catalog or the gift card or whatever it is where whatever is the winner of getting somebody on your. On your list. And you can test. There's so many different ways to think about getting a golfer. You could have a thing of how to, you know, how to cure your slice or how to, you know, any, any kind of things that are the big things that dominate the mind of a, you know, of a golfer. And once you get them on the list knowing that they're a golfer, it doesn't matter. You can have so many different doors to come into the same place. But once they're on, then it's about all of this variety and all of the things that you're doing.

So if you don't mind sharing. So we come up with some content how to cure slicer or consumer catalog to the shoes for 2022 or whatever that. I mean so where would you like if you don't mind sharing so I can get a better vision, clearer vision of is that something you put on.

Facebook or on Facebook doing, You know, I mean and you look at. There's so many different ways to splice this on Facebook. Facebook. Luckily golf is a huge category. There's lots of interests on Facebook that you can target. So you get a pretty good sense that you're going there all the way down to micro targeting individual golf courses and only showing ads to people who are in the bubble of this golf course. You know, we've done that in local things. I've got a client that does that with college campuses where they only advertise within a bubble around. And we've set up some, you know, sort of sophisticated targeting, micro targeting things that you, you know, because you can only do a 1 mile radius on Facebook but you can also then abut exclusion groups. So you've got this little window that is just people within this.

Right.

300 acres kind of thing.

You know, so you're going sorry, yeah.

So that, that's all like. And they're, you know, talk about one person driving the before unit. You may have one person just driving. Acquisition of new emails.

Yes.

And that's really the thing where if you can. That would change your business. If you can drive new people on like I bet you if I said to you would you like 50,000 new subscribers now you would be. You would happily pay $100,000 or $200,000 to have those 50,000 golfers because you know that they're going to turn into at least $250,000 in the first year. Right. Your, your annual yield per subscriber is $50. So you could get them for five. It's a 10x on your one year return.

Would you say the primary source of lead generation would be Facebook versus I would be everywhere.

Like, I mean all the way. You know, you want to get it as out of the box and granular as you can. I saw there's, I remember Snapple. When Snapple launched their mango flavor, they contracted with the Mango Growers association to put stickers on 10 million mangoes that said now available in Snapple. Wow. So talk about a message to market match. I was playing at Celebration here in Florida and my friend, not me, my friend went into the woods down one of the halls and we were in there looking for his ball and, and there was a sign in there that said, looks like you could use our help. And it was the Golf Academy at Celebration that was offering clinics and lessons because if you're hitting the ball in here, you need help. And so I think any way that you can think outside the box, if you, the more creative you know you are about that, you could do, you could get very, very low cost opt ins and I would be looking for ways to make a profit just by getting people on there. Right. Like if you put together the directory of, you know, a GTA directory, that was something just for GTA golfers and that was something that you could put in conjunction with other people who are looking for golfers in Toronto. You could do it. So you could grow your list for a profit.

I like it.

Yeah.

Like years ago when we first started doing I Love marketing, episode number 29 was on the How I Develop Relationships with Other People and that became one of the most listened to downloaded episodes and people just love that episode. And we recorded that I think in 2010. So my upcoming book, I don't have a physical copy yet, but it's called what's in it for Them? This is a binder. That's what the COVID is going to look like. But it's called what's in it for Them? And it goes over the things that I have learned and discovered about developing relationships with people. How did how to avoid and put boundaries around narcissists and takers. How to focus on being a giver, not a taker. It's how to win the right friends and influence the right people. It's two years in the making and I've got till the end of this month to finish any final interior changes. And, and one of the things I'm doing, I'm not putting any testimonials or any blurbs or anything on the book in the book from people that have not read the whole book because there's a lot of famous people that will give book blurbs that don't read the damn book. And so one of my things to all my friends and colleagues is, you know, I know you could say I could get testimonials from almost anyone, but I'm only putting ones from people that have actually read the whole book. And one thing that makes me really excited, and it's kind of braggish, is Steven Pressfield, who wrote one of my favorite books, the War of Art. He actually read the book and he gave me a Steven says I'm always.

Irritated by how to books written by.

People who've never proved they know how to.

Joe Polish's what's in it for Them.

Is exactly the opposite.

I can tell you from 20 years.

Of knowing Joe that he's an absolute master at establishing relations, relationships with people he's in business with. It's called friendship and fun and it.

Comes from the heart.

This indeed is the critical element above and beyond having a great product and knowing how to market it, that turns entrepreneurship into success and makes it fun. And Steven Pressfield is the best selling author of the War of Art and Turning Pro.

I'm doing a new interview with Stephen. I think in, in like two weeks me and Dan Sullivan are going to do an interview with Steven Pressfield. He's an amazing author and he's. Yeah, the book the War of Art is one of. That's one book that I have read more times than. And you can. I would recommend people download the audible version of the War of Art. Steven reads it and I actually introduced him to Nightingale Conant years ago and that's. They're the ones that did that audio version of it. And so that version exists because of my introduction to him and Nightingale and it's really cool. But can we play the trailer for my book, Gina? Because we just got that this morning. It's a draw shot video from summer@thedrawshop.com They do great whiteboard videos. This is version one, but we're going to do a new version. But we just got this one and it's like, it's very short. So we'll play it. This is what the book is about. And then I just ask all of you if it resonates with you. Then, you know, go to the website.

There's no shortage of networking and entrepreneurship advice in books and on social media in today's world, but it's harder than ever to know what's authentic. To make matters worse, taking the wrong advice can result in superficial connections, transactional relationships, and unsatisfying interactions with other others without any real rapport. Fortunately, as entrepreneur and marketing extraordinaire Joe Polish has discovered there's a simple, though sometimes not easy way out that begins with one what's in it for them? In what's in it for them, Polish faces the problem of personal and professional disconnection head on, offering entrepreneurs a heart and mind expanding guide on how to deepen rapport and connect with others others by identifying and reducing their suffering. Update Dale Carnegie's insights to win the right friends and influence the right people. Overcome others intimidation tactics to find true appreciation in relationships Build character for better results than capabilities can ever give on their own. Use basic marketing principles to find true love, protect your efforts from the takers of the world and much more. More all to help the givers of the world thrive in business without neglecting their relationships early in life, Joe Polish's struggles with trauma and addiction led him to a disconnected life. After getting sober in recovery, he spent years developing his genuine and generous approach to building rapport and transformed from a dead broke carpet cleaner to being dubbed the most connected person on the planet for his work with the Church Genius Network, one of the world's most impactful networking groups for high achieving entrepreneurs. After 30 years of putting his own advice into practice, Polish now speaks to audiences all around the world and is surrounded by business leaders and billionaires he calls friends. Pre order what's in it for them today at www.wiiftbook.com and learn Joe Polish's one of a kind approach to rapport building that you can use to change your life and the world and discover a few cautionary tales along the way.

If you've learned something that can help you in your business, use it. Share with us what you got out of it. And if you learned anything that would be helpful to any other business owner that just needs it or is struggling or that you learn something here, go and share. Because one of the fastest ways to learn anything is just to teach it to other people. And Paul, I look forward to having you back on and doing an update and seeing if you've added, you know, a few hundred thousand or hopefully a couple million dollars to your business here in a short period of time. And then share with everyone what we did and how how we did it and Dave, I think it would be, I know a lot of people would probably benefit from what you're running with elf, you know, the ELF program. So if you want to tell people how they can get involved to find out about it, or maybe even me and you, at some point we do a session for everyone and just kind of give them a, you know, give them a taste of what that program is. If anyone wants to join that.

Yeah, that would be amazing.

That would be amazing. The best way is just shoot me an email@dave davilpolish.com and then we can set up a time to have a phone call or zoom or anything and no pressure or anything like that. Obviously I just love to help businesses and Joe's enabled me to have a platform to do that and it's helped fulfill one of my life purposes and passions. So thank you for that Joe and team really makes a big difference. One final thought for Paul too is Joe always says that a genius can do anything in the world, but he does it one at a time. Make sure that you don't implement all these ideas and not track them really well. There's that line that half my marketing's working, I just don't know which half. So you know, you might want to do one and see how it's working before doing 10 of them because you're like Joe said, there's so many ideas from today's episode and that goes for everybody, not just Paul. When I go back through my notes, I'm gonna pick one and target, you know, just that. So that's my final thoughts. But again, yeah, shoot me an email at David elf or sorry davidjoepolish.com and yeah, and we'll have the new website up this week also. Perfect now. So on behalf of myself and everyone, I hope you all had found this valuable. Have a wonderful day. And if anyone wants info on Genius network, it's for people that run at least a million dollar plus a year business. Have a great day everyone. Thank you and happy marketing. Don't miss another episode of I love Marketing. Subscribe today@ilove marketing.com for subscribe if you'd.

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