Strategies for increasing lead flow, getting more customers and taking action with Chip Franks - I Love Marketing Episode #208

I'm dean jackson, he's joe polish, and.

This is the I love marketing podcast.

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

Polish, and we've got a special guest on the line by the name of Chip. Yeah. And now do you want to say a lot about him first? I do, because.

Well, here's the thing. This is, this is like a very special episode. I'm very excited about this because in episode 186, starting at about. What did you say, Joe? The 38 minute mark?

Yeah, about.

I think it was approximately 38 minutes and 53 seconds. Approximately.

Okay, so I want people to listen to this segment, listen to this portion of the podcast. We're inserted in here right now. And then when we come back, we're going to talk with our special guest because this one little segment here has started something that could be a very, very impactful and important thing. And I'm very excited to have Chip on with us. So listen to this and then we'll be right back.

I was sitting there last night. Me and my girlfriend went to a assisted living home, a nursing home in Phoenix for a dear friend of mine who is 70 something brilliant psychiatrist named Janice, and her husband, who's a former brain surgeon who's 86 years old, he's now at the point where he needs assisted living. And so there's probably about 70 people that came to this dinner. And there was one individual who I saw sitting in a chair who was by himself. And I literally said hello to him. And you know, I was just really. It kind of saddened me because he just seemed sad, this individual. And I was sitting there thinking to myself, how do I create? And I'm putting this out there to the I love marketing community. If anyone wants to do this or possibly partner with me, if you know how to fully build this. I mean, I don't need people that have an idea. I already have plenty of ideas. I mean, people that truly have their act together and want to do something incredible. I said to Crystal, I said, you know how many people are in nursing homes, children's hospitals, pets that have no one to care for them, that are going to be euthanized, burn units, homeless people. Think of the whole world of volunteering where you need volunteers. I don't know if you've ever tried to volunteer anywhere, but there are certain places that need volunteers that will gladly accept know help from people, but then there's others where it's, you know, there's like a waiting list or they, they put you through a whole Rigmarole in order to try to volunteer. And there's like, layers of bureaucracy in that sort of world. Now, granted, with certain individuals, you need to do background searches. You can't just have anyone with a disease or a cold or something showing up in certain places and getting people sick. You know, I mean, even, like, you take Las Vegas. Las Vegas throws out more food probably every night that could feed the entire homeless population of many states, like, in one city, just due to the sheer volume of food that's thrown away. In a lot of cases, we don't have a, you know, a supply problem. We have or resources problem. We have a distribution problem. And I started thinking, you know, what if there was an app where anyone that wanted to volunteer, it literally made it match the volunteers with places that need them. But the app went through the background searches. It was like Uber, but it was like uber for volunteers where they could. Because I know if you're depressed, having addiction. And as you know, I even announced it at the Abundance360 event that my MTP, my massive transformative purpose, was to help reduce suffering for people with addictions. And I even said in front of everybody, and I probably had 40 people come up to me at that event. Oh, my God, thank you for saying that. Where I don't believe you can cure addiction, however, what if I had the approach that, you know, what if you really could cure addiction? What if there was a cure? And what if I could help be the person that helped find that? And I use myself, because I'm an addict, as a lab rat for this. And I found the greatest people and I brought them together. And of course, I'm a huge fan of 12 Steps. I mean, it helps more people with recovery than every other available option combined. You know, but even then, a lot of people still have, you know, challenges with. With addiction. So, you know, that was my big mass, you know, my transformative purpose. So I was sitting there thinking, if you feel crap, feel depressed, feel anxiety, one of the ways to feel better as a human being is by helping others. And if you think your life sucks, if you put yourself in a situation where you volunteer at a nursing home or a children's hospital or a burn clinic or help with animals or help with homeless people, I mean, it just simply makes you feel better to contribute to other people. I mean, human beings feel better. But there are so many people that are suffering in the world, and what's going to be the next technology that can transform that? How could you, not only just to help all of the People that are lonely and have lost their spouses and that have been through very traumatic situations, soldiers that have gone through, you know, post traumatic stress. I mean, just all of the different individuals that are out there. What if you brought people together that want to help and could help? In the same way that you could look up a car on Uber, in the same way that you can book a hotel on Airbnb, in the same way that you can find someone on TaskRabbit to help you with something? How do you bring it together on a global scale? And I thought of that, and those sort of thoughts come to me after going to something like abundance, right? Like, how do you bring that together?

So now, you know, Joe, we say things on the podcast a lot. I mean, we're over 200 episodes now, and we're. We've got ideas. We have ideas and we mention them and we talk about them, and we say, wouldn't this be cool? But in all of the episodes that we've done and all the ideas that we've presenced, this one episode, this one segment really spoke to at least one person we know for sure, and that's who our special guest is today. You want to talk a little bit about Chip?

Yeah.

Yeah. So I'll ask Chip in just a moment. Well, first off, welcome to. I love marketing. Chip, it's super awesome to have you here as a guest.

Thank you, guys. I appreciate it. And this is a dream come true. I really appreciate what y' all have done with the podcast. I listened to about every one of them and didn't think I'd actually be on one one day, but here it is. So it's a dream come true, and I thank y' all for that.

Well, so what's funny is you're. You're. I think you're in the middle of a vacation right now with your family, right?

Yes, I am at Disney World right now. Okay, awesome.

So here we are recording a podcast, but this is really, really important. This could be a transformational. Well, it could be. It will be. I believe this will transform the way that people volunteer. And so Chip heard that segment. He contacted me via, you know, Facebook and email, and then proceeded to send a FedEx package detailing his idea for Joe volunteer dot com. And I'll ask Chip in a moment to kind of explain that and how he set this up. And my team somehow managed to misplace the FedEx pack. And then it was discovered like, a week or two later, and I about nearly lost it because it was such a damn Good idea. And here we are. We're going to talk about this case study of how Chip has actually heard an idea on I Love Marketing and went out and made it real and has started this, and he's named it Joe Volunteer in a certain way. But before we get into that, I want to have everyone understand who is Chip Franks and what do you do? And then let's talk a little bit about what you do and then this whole idea, because I think it'll be really inspirational for a lot of I Love marketing listeners to see how you can launch something, how ideas that are taken action upon can become the starting point of transforming the world. In this case, reducing a tremendous amount of human suffering.

Great. Well, thank you. And I've already mentioned I'm an I love marketing listener, and all the folks out there listening to this. Oh, geez. The guy outside decided to wash my window. Exactly right now. Sorry.

We're all right.

I need a big sign outside. But everyone listening to this. It is such a great thing to have. I love marketing with it, and. And you've given us so many tools and ideas and things to do and so many. And have helped so many people with it. And again, I'm thrilled to be on it. I really appreciate it. But when you spoke about needing an app, an Uber, for volunteers, it did resonate with me. And it's kind of funny because y' all came back from a Peter Diamandis event with that, and that influenced your thinking. Joe, when you saw that lonely man in the nursing home, you spoke about it, and it resonated with me, because I'd actually volunteered in a nursing home before, and I got that idea from listening to a Tony Robbins product, the Time of youf Life. And at the end of it, he talks about going to a nursing home and talking with some folks there and saying, hey, you know, I'm not weird or anything, but is there anybody here that might be lonely or, you know, just needs someone to talk to or whatever? And I heard that, and I thought, yes, that's a really cool idea. And I took my kids to a nursing home, and we actually did a hug station for it, which is really cool. Just a great time. And the kids felt great about it. I did. But when I was there and when I volunteered for it, no one at the nursing home knew how to handle a volunteer. I mean, I called up and said, hey, I'd like to do this. And they told me, well, you can talk with this lady. She'll help you out at this certain time. And I just went there and it was a mess. They just didn't know how to handle anyone for that. So when you spoke about that and spoke about the Uber for volunteers, that again, it just struck a chord in my soul. And I said, wow, this really needs to happen and this is a great idea. So I took that and came up with some ideas about it, brainstormed the name Joe Volunteer was the winner in that. And of course it's name named after you because you started it, but it's really about the fact that any average Joe can go out there and make a difference in the lives of others. And that's the idea for it. And also the name has some personality to it. I brainstormed 20 names and that was the clear winner for me. In doing that, I created a website for it, just fleshed out the concept and the idea for it, and then put together the business plan actually separate from the websites, and then fedexed it to you, Joe, and put the big sticker head on it to get attention, which I don't guess it worked initially, but it did later.

It got attention of my team losing the envelope for a few days.

But it was great between the time that I sent it and that happened pretty fast. I guess I did all of that in less than a week after hearing it because it just really did. It spoke to me when you had mentioned that. And just on a side note, this is something that's completely funny, but back in 2012, I looked back at my goal list and Joe, I think I shared this with you. I don't remember, but on the goal list it said, become a friend with Joe Polish. Somehow, some way. Just kind of funny that that happened. And I found that after I actually got a chance to meet you and start working on this with you. So it's just kind of funny how life works out that way. But sent it to you and didn't hear back for nearly a month. And I was just thinking, well, maybe my idea wasn't as good as I thought, or maybe lots of other people heard this and sent in packages or ideas for it or what have you, and did something better than what I did. But reached out to you on Facebook and you told me you hadn't seen it. But then you just, you messaged me back right away and said, hey, this Joe Volunteer is great. And you looked at the website and had the folks find the package and. And from there you messaged me saying, hey, I'd like you to come out to Phoenix to talk with me about this tonight. Or tomorrow morning. And that actually happened, which was fantastic. Yeah.

And the reason is because you didn't just say, hey, Joe, here's a whole bunch of work I want you to do, and I need you to do this and I need you to do that. I mean, you thought through all kinds of stuff. I mean, you took the idea and you went really deep with it. You really thought it through, and I could tell that you were a player. I could tell that you take action, and also that you weren't expecting me to. You know, a lot of people come to me with ideas that are my own ideas or derivatives of my ideas or Dean's ideas, and then they want to partner, but they want us to do all the work for them and then do all the promotions for them and do all that sort of stuff. And that, you know, I mean, that doesn't work because we have our own businesses to run. And I even mentioned it, you know, even on, you know, the episode where, you know, it's just, I need someone to actually think this through and do it completely. Not, you know, because I need another project. Like I need a hole in the head. But this one was so important, and you actually saw that and you really did a tremendous amount of thinking. So I didn't have to think. I mean, you showed up with something where the thinking and the planning and the obstacles. Because anyone can get excited about a really great idea. The thing is, how do you make it real? And that's the purpose of this episode, is this will be the starting point of. In a lot of ways, I want our I love marketing listeners to see how an idea goes from a seed to nurturing it and growing it. Because I'd be really curious a year from now to see where Joe Volunteer is at. I mean, we're going to do some. You're going to do a lot of testing in the market where you actually live in and exist in. But the purpose of this episode is I want everyone listening to see that, well, how do you grow an idea? How do you take an idea and make it up and make it real? How do you collaborate with different individuals? What are the obstacles that will stand in the way of it? And how do you do all of this in the midst of running an existing business or working in a particular job or a particular career? Because you do have a family, one of your children. I want you to talk about your children. I'm not going to do it for you. I'll let you talk about your own life and what you actually do and how do you fit something like this in? That has a very big purpose Because I think most people that are listening, they have all kinds of dreams and aspirations, but a lot of these things never become a reality because life gets in the way and your family obligations and your work obligations and just financial constraints and there's all kinds of stuff that are obstacles that we need to overcome. And I want to have this conversation so that people can not only see this as a vision and something that we're together now, wanting to introduce to the world and trying to grow, but also as it relates to you. Like think about in your own life. Everybody has something that is a bigger future thing because if they didn't, they would never be listening to a podcast about marketing and about building and growing a business and about all the different things that we talk about. So what do you think? What's your real life like? Let's talk about that so people know who you are. And then let's talk about, you know, Joe volunteering, making this idea a reality.

Well, thank you. The first thing and foremost, I'm actually husband to Laura and father, as you mentioned, to three beautiful children, Mandy, my 15 year old, and Allie, my 11 year old. And the amazing Alec who you talked about earlier. And he's three years old and he has down syndrome and special needs. But just the most incredible little joy in anyone's life. Just an awesome fella. And just as a side note, if you want to see him on Facebook, just go to the amazing Alec on Facebook. And he's just again, a joy. But I'm raising them. Being a family man, that is first and foremost. But I'm also a real estate broker. I own a traditional real estate company. I have 13 agents that work under me. I also have a property management company that manages about 400 properties now. And guys, I have to thank you from this because it's doing pretty well. And a lot of that are things that I've learned on this podcast. And Joe, you're Piranha marketing course and that's all helped grow it, which has been really good. Also do a little real estate investing. And I am also neck deep in finishing up a book about this whole process for it's called the Autobiography of a Couch Potato. But with that said, there's really you will make time for the things that are important for you. And I've heard it said that if you really believe in it and it's important to you, you will find a way. And if it isn't, then you'll find and and one of the. The things that just again, this really resonated with me and I am an inverse paranoid. I think that, that we have a greater power looking out for us and things happen for a reason, and that there is serendipity in most everything. And the fact that you mentioned it on the podcast, just really. It reached out to me and just let me know that I had to do this. And aside from real estate and doing the other things that I'm doing, this was very important. And one of the things I told you in the business plan because I did not want to give you a whole lot of things to think about or to do extra because I know you have a limited bandwidth and the people that you talk to and do projects with just, it doesn't leave you with a whole lot of time. So I'd be very grateful for any help that you could give, even if it's just pointing me in the right direction or what have you. And that was part of the business plan. And just thinking it out, I thought to myself, it would make me a better person to be able to do all of this and start up Joe volunteer at the same time. If I was able to do that. And it really has worked out well. It's kind of interesting. I'm on vacation right now. I haven't been working in real estate nearly as much lately. I've been working more on the business than in the business. And we just had our best month ever, which is kind of cool. So. And that's with spending all the time on doing this. And I think, again, things happen for a reason and that was meant to happen.

You know, I love the line you said about if it's important enough, you'll find a way to do it, and if not, you'll find excuses. I'd like to ask you because you are. You've listened to every episode of I Love Marketing. And there's, you know, we have quite a few people that have, but the vast majority haven't because we're talking about investing 200 plus hours of their life, which is a lot of time. And you know, what are some of the most useful marketing or business lessons you've learned in your life so far that you could share with everyone listening to this?

Okay, well, there's a whole lot here, I guess one of the biggest things we'll talk about? Tactics. First, the recorded messages. I love the recorded messages. I use them on specific houses and they're a lead generation technique, so people call in for it and saying, I need help. I need to buy a house. I created Several informational products, 7 mistakes Home buyers make, and the saga of the home buyer. And I use recorded messages to get those out to people. And of course, again, it's just an easy way for people to put up their hand and say, hey, I'm looking for a house. And I produce a lot of leads from those. And let's see here. I learned Jay Abraham. Dan Kennedy. I use risk reversal. That's one of the biggest things that's really good. And on all of our contracts with sellers and with property management owners, we have a love us or leave us guarantee, which is if you're not completely thrilled with their service, you can cancel it with no cost or obligation at all. And just a simple concept like that learned through I love marketing. And just being a student of the game with that has netted just a whole bunch of money and a whole lot of business with it. Use autoresponders. Joe, you've helped a whole lot with that. And Dean, you've also your magic nine word email with it. And that's part of the autoresponders that we send out to folks with it. And that just hearing something like that and just going to the office and implementing it and making sure it's on every single drip sequence that goes out to people has been a big deal. And of course, with that lifetime value of clients, cost per lead, cost per sell, the power of testimonials, scripts, presentations, knowing the numbers, knowing how many leads we need to turn into an appointment and how many appointments will turn into a sell, how much the average sell is. All of those things are through the marketing and learning all of this.

Well, you know, everything you just rambled off there in the last couple minutes. If everyone just like focused on all of those items, their business would dramatically improve.

Any one of them.

Yeah, yeah, any one of them.

No, of course. Risk reversal, free record investment tracking. Knowing the lifetime value of your clients, you know, cost per lead, cost per sale. I mean, those are. I love the love us or leave us guarantee. I mean, that's just a great way to speak to us. By the way, I'm hearing some background noise and so I just wanted to let all of our podcast listeners know this is the best we could do with all of us running around on the afternoon and catching a chip in the middle of a vacation. So please don't get mad at us for sound quality. We just wanted to deliver the best content when we could.

Here.

Wish all of us could be in a studio right now, which One day we probably will. Will probably, you know, as Joe Volunteer becomes the greatest, most amazing platform to link people that need volunteers to people that want to help. Be it, you know, animal shelters or nursing homes or children's hospitals or disaster relief or homelessness or you name the variety of human conditions addiction centers, which, of course, is what I'm really, you know, big on, is just helping addicts and all of that stuff, you know, that'll. But this is just the introduction to it. Now, you probably have a lot of life lessons, too, Chip, you know, with your family, with your son, with what you have done to basically build this business around building life and being the person who wants to just be a big contributor and a very caring, empathetic person. So what are some of your best life lessons you've discovered?

Well, there are several mentors, and this is one of the biggest things. And I think the folks that listen to a podcast again, called I Love Marketing, get this and understand this. I mean, if you're listening to this, you're a pretty unique person, and you have the drive and they get up and go that 90% of the people out there, probably a lot more than 90% of the people don't have. So you do things like you read and you have virtual mentors, and I have several virtual mentors. You guys are actually up at the very top of the list for having listened to you for, again, over 200 hours. Jim Rohn was a big part of me wanting to do better and work harder on myself than I do on my job. And he put it. He said, if you work hard on your job, you'll make a living, and if you work hard on yourself, you'll make a fortune. And that's something that's just really important. And again, the people that listen to this get that. So you listen to podcasts, you go to the seminars, you order the courses, and you do that. And that's just something that's really good with it. Something lately I've been thinking about, because, honestly, about eight months ago, I was just. Just kind of depressed with life, really. You know, I had a pretty good real estate business, and I love my. My family, and everything was going well, but I just. I kept waking up in the middle of the night, you know, 3 or 4am And I don't know if y' all ever have these experiences where you just wake up and you're like, what am I doing with my life? You know, what am I here for? And. And I just. That was a really tough time for me. And something that that really helped out is I happened to read a book and again, it was a moment of serendipity, a book called Choose Yourself by James Altucher. That book was. It really helped me a lot because I started doing what's called a daily practice. And every day I did something physically good for me, mentally good for me, spiritually good for me, and emotionally good for me. And one of the things that I did on the mental side of things is I started writing down ideas every single day and really developed my idea muscle. And it just helped out with a lot of things. And actually because I read that when I did again, another moment of serendipity, my idea missile was firing on all cylinders. And it led me to flesh out Joe volunteer with it. And that's something I'd really recommend to anyone to go out and read that. And it started a self development, I guess, that has lasted over the last eight months. And I'm starting a new real estate company in Austin that I'm real excited about Now. Joe volunteered, obviously, and hopefully has a really good lesson because I'm a really good end to it because I'm writing about it with the book as well. So those are all good things. And I guess the last one here, and I'm sorry, I'm kind of rambling, but Steve Jobs wrote, or actually he spoke about this and he said that when you grow up, you tend to get told that the world is the way that it is and you just need to live your life inside and not try to bash the walls too much and have fun, have a little bit of money and have a nice family life. But he said that that's a very limited life and it can be much broader once you discover that everything around you was that we call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it and influence it. You can build your own things that other people can use. And the minute that you understand that you can poke life and something's going to pop out of the other side and that you can change it and you can mold it, that's just kind of a neat thing. And I've really started to get that and understand that in the last few months that that life doesn't have to be just what's handed to you. And you can make it something extraordinary by having a big idea and following through on it and talking to the right people and getting around people like you, Joe, that are literally changing the world. And it's just a fun thing. And those Are, I guess, some of the life lessons I've learned here in the last several months and few years of doing real estate.

You say that because when we were at Abundance, one of the kind of the keystone takeaway message was that our real limitation on our achievement is our ambition. It's really our setting our sights on something.

We.

We just set our sights too low. That's really the real limitation on our accomplishment. That's kind of what you're saying is you can, you know, think bigger.

Absolutely.

That helps. Yeah.

There's no reason you shouldn't. And again, to everybody that's listening to this, because I'd like this to be about you, too. I know that you probably have an idea that's burning in your guts and something that you feel like you have to do with your life, and maybe you're not getting around to it, or the moment doesn't seem to be right, or all of the stoplights aren't green at the same time. I mean, you've got to get up and get off of your butt and just start to do it and take some action and just really get it done. And that can completely transform your life.

Yeah, I love it. I love it. I may ask you some more questions about related to life lessons and taking action and managing time or whatever, maybe. But what I want to do, I want to give people a real good context about what you have created here with Joe Volunteer. And I'm enormously appreciative of you taking an idea that we discussed on our podcast and actually making it real, which was also my request. I said, I hope someone can do this. And you actually did. And my friend Janice, who had the, you know, the gratitude dinner for her husband Tom, just a few short weeks later after I had that, you know, that sort of epiphany where I saw this older man in the nursing home, and I was with my girlfriend, literally with, you know, tears welling up in my eyes and the corner and talking to her about this. Tom ended up dying. He ended up having a fall. He had a break in his hip, complications. He ended up passing away. And, of course, Janice, who's one of my dearest friends, and I'm extremely close to her. I've known her for many, many years. Tom was a former brain surgeon, and Janice is just this brilliant psychiatrist with a degree in addictive medicine. And both of us are very much about wanting to help people with addictions. And, you know, she was grieving and just very. She doesn't have children. You know, she has a sister who's incredibly ill. So she already has a tremendous amount of complicity in her life. And when I told her what you were doing with, you know, Joe volunteer and how you had, how this was started at this gratitude dinner, and then of course, you ended up talking with Janice because I introduced the both of you. And I mean, she literally gave her so much encouragement, so much inspiration, and it was such a great thing to have happen in the midst of losing her husband. And it proved that one of the best ways to help mental pain, suffering and human anguish from the very deep to just people that are sad or lonely is through contributions of other human beings, communities coming together and helping. And so she is so damn excited about this. And it also reinforced what a deep value this is. And everyone that I've shared Joe Volunteer with loves the idea, and they're like, you know, how do we help grow this thing? So I'd love to have you just explain it to all of our listeners, where you're at with it, how you think about it, it, what it is. Why should anyone listening to this actually care about this? And I'd like all of our listeners to pay really close attention because I really believe here, as, you know, not only starting with an idea on, I love marketing and sharing it with our listeners, but I think together, I would love to have people just understand this and simply ask that if this resonates with you. I'll ask you, Chip, to give out any information where people, if they want to volunteer. I know you're going to start it in your hometown to kind of beta test it. But, you know, even before we started recording this podcast going, heck, we should do a, you know, maybe a podcast episode series, you know, or you. I mean, I even said to you, Chip, I said, you can run it. I mean, you know, it's. You started this. I mean, you are doing it. So I would just love to have our listeners see if this is as exciting to them as it is to us and watch the progression of something that we hope literally not only starts out very powerfully in your hometown in Texas, but we can take nationwide, but we can, you know, we need an army of people to do this, and this is all being done simply to help other human beings. None of our conversations about how are we going to make money off of this. It's none of that. It's just simply about it's going to require money in the form of donations and contributions and stuff to build the app and all of the things that need to be done. But it's like this.

God.

I mean, the amount of good this could do, I think not only can it reduce a lot of human suffering, but I think it can save lives. And we don't have a. As I mentioned in the clip that we played earlier, we don't have a resource problem. In many cases, we have a distribution problem. And so there's all these people that want to help, but there's bureaucracy and complexity that prevents them from just helping other human beings, helping animals, helping causes, helping disaster relief, you know, all that sort of stuff. So I'll shut up and quit rambling and let you kind of give us an update of where you're at.

Okay, well, first of all, I just. I think you start with the end in mind or at least have some kind of concept of how it's going to work. You know, what is the outcome and what are you looking to accomplish? And in doing this, we have a bhag. And a bhag is a big, hairy, audacious goal. And the way that I see this is to increase volunteerism by tenfold across the world. And I know that's a big one. Dean, you're talking about the power of ambition. And this is definitely a big one. And we're going to do it by creating a movement and. And to get people in the thought process of volunteering and also just making it very, very easy to volunteer, because rarely does someone just get in the mood and say, you know what, I want to go out and help somebody today. But our app is actually going to, because it's able to do a push notification, it's going to somewhat interrupt you and say, hey, the animal shelter needs help, or, hey, there's some soldiers with PTSD that you could be helping out with here. And it can keep that top of mind for people around the world to keep that in mind and to help other people with it. So in doing the app, the app is to get people involved with that. And also I'd mentioned earlier about the nursing homes and they didn't really know how to handle volunteers or if someone wanted to help and just randomly comes up and says, hey, I want to help your organization. Tell me how. Again, a lot of places aren't trained to do that, so the app is going to. Well, the idea that I have in mind and we'll talk about this because we are open for inputs and we want the ILEV marketing listeners to help out with this because again, it's a big cause. But what we're going to do is have our joes, which is what we call our volunteers. Go out and teach each organization how to put their need of volunteers into the app and then from that, send out to all the Joes that need to help. And that's the concept. And each of the Joes are going to be able to help the concept, help it move and help this movement that helps everyone volunteer a lot more. And that's the idea for it. And of course, there are a lot of logistics involved in that. And the idea, of course, is to do a, like you said, just beta test it, to do a small prototype of the concept and then have work out all the bugs with it, the kinks with it, and then grow that to two markets and three markets and six markets until we're covering the entire United States and then from there the world on how to do this. And what I see happening too is as we scale the idea and it gets bigger, is that we have frequently asked questions on the website and on the app and videos of how to sign up, how to know if you're an organization that we're going to be helping. I'm sorry, my phone is cutting out here.

Wow.

But that's the idea that I have for it. And again, I see this working in places like Iran. I know Joe, you had a guest on that was talking about how oppressed their society is, but somebody that could do that or work with their in their country or the remote areas of Africa. I see Joe volunteer actually being able to help those and help again, like you said, all the people that need volunteers and need someone to talk to, need food, need clean water. All of that can be encompassed by this. Yeah.

Love it.

Love it.

So, Dean, you know, there's so many things I could speak to on this, but I want to give you an opportunity to ask any questions and kind of give your thoughts and insights on it and explain, you know, what you think about this and creating a movement and putting your marketing cap and your business cap on this.

Sometimes when people set a big idea like this, this is something that could be huge. It really could be a global thing. But everything has to start somewhere. And the most important thing that you can do, just like we Talked about, profit activator 1, select a single target that really is about the discipline of forcing constraints on yourself to set up a situation where you can plan to dominate. I mean, if you talk about that as a, you know, I plan to dominate. I'm not saying we're not in a contest with, you know, we want to do more good than anybody else kind of Thing we're better than you. I'm saying that dominate being a word that will use as a placeholder for do the very best thing that you could possibly do. So when you think about globally, the opportunity there, it's all going to stem from how much good can we do in Killeen, Texas or in Austin, Texas, where you're starting right there at the grassroots. It's in an area where you can see what's happening, you can see the impact. You can personally talk to the people, you can create that, that movement. And I think from there is really where it all spreads out. I mean, people often forget when they've got something that you are planning to take over the world with, that it all, everything that start that. That is really a big global idea started out as something that was small. I mean, Oprah started out as a local talk show in Chicago. And you too, the band started out as the second best band in Dublin, Ireland, you know. And so when you start thinking about starting where you are and setting the constraints on that and say, let's create this incredible, well organized, well thought out, well run movement within Killeen, Texas, to set a model for how that works in Austin and Dallas and Houston and wherever else it goes to be an inspiration, almost like approaching it, almost like a franchise prototype in a way, you know, where you've got a model, a scalable model that's going to address the needs that this is going to have to be successful, which is the basic two things. Finding people who would be interested in being volunteers and connecting them with people who have things that need to be done that could be helped by volunteers. And that is really the simplest of ways to look at it. Even though it's got the potential to be huge, you know, it's just sometimes a temptation to get caught up in the, in the bigness of it when the reality is that it's all gonna, you know, crop be an outcropping from solving it for Killeen, Texas. And it's just so exciting to be on the grassroots of something like this, you know?

Yeah, exactly. So Chip, give all of our. I love marketing listeners how. Because I almost look at this as everyone. They have their ideas, they want to build and grow their own business or they want to go into a new career. And they clearly understand that marketing is a critically important aspect of the storytelling and enrollment and engagement process to the marketplace. Because without marketing, you know, rarely are you going to get discovered. And most people that listen, I love marketing, realize that, you know, even though you can build a Better mousetrap. That isn't the way that people beat a path to your door. I mean, people need to be made aware of stuff. You know, it's not going to just get discovered, except if you're really, really darn lucky or it has something that, you know, just other people, you know, spread the message. And so with Joe volunteer.com it's going to need, you know, all the above. I mean, you need to explain to people what it is. Why does it exist? How do they get involved? What's it going to do for them? You know, how do you share it? I mean, there's a draw shop video that has just been put together, which is pretty awesome. And I'm happy to put all of that stuff up on the show notes@ilovemarketing.com and I would love to kind of prepare our listeners as we go through this that if you have ideas about this, this is one of those episodes where we love to have you just share. What do you think? Are you interested in this? Would you to be involved in something like this? Because most people have all kinds of situations that, you know, they, they have either volunteered in the past or they know of companies or organizations that need it. And the beauty of Joe Volunteer is there's a lot of causes and a lot of nonprofits and it's. That's so funny, that scratchy sound. I'll have to apologize for everyone. We have no idea where that noise is coming from. But anyway, you know, there's a lot of people that, you know, have awareness of different causes that can absolutely use something like Joe Volunteer. Meaning Joe Volunteer.com is the solution for so many causes that need people. But many of these people don't even know about these. And I had a really smart entrepreneur tell me that.

Wow.

I mean, think about all the nonprofits that have no clue how to market themselves that are doing good stuff. And then, you know, you know, my whole position on nonprofits, I'm a big believer in for profit businesses and I'm also a big believer that a lot of people that, you know, start nonprofits really, you know, they, they're doing it as a shell to try to, you know, disguise their own efforts to, you know, fill up their pockets with a lot of money and give very little to the cause. Whereas we've had deep discussions where we want this thing to work. I mean, we want to make this as lean as possible so that we can link, you know, causes that need it with people that want to help. I mean, that would be just a Beautiful thing. So that's the goal and that's the goal and the objective. But at the same time we could also simultaneously promote a heck of a lot of different causes just because of Joe Volunteer. Like all these places that need help. This becomes a platform to make people aware of all these places. And so, so talk about what it is that you would like to have happen and maybe we can recruit a lot of people from. I love marketing to get involved in this.

This is spectacular because I think you have some incredible listeners just again, anyone that would listen to this and put their marketing minds to work on it. It is deeply appreciated and really could help a lot of people. I think we talked about this in and what we'd like to do is actually on your page on your episode notes for this at. I love marketing for this. If we can have people share some ideas in the comments and give us some of your thoughts and how you can see it going or ways that we can make this a worldwide movement. We're not above asking for help and we're not going to pretend that we have it all planned out and know everything that's going to happen because we don't even with these two geniuses on the phone with us. And we really want your involvement in it. So if it does speak to you, go there, put comments and just some ideas on ways to get the word out, ways to recruit Joes, ways for the Joes to get organizations involved and how we can help other organizations, other nonprofit or as I like to call them, for purpose organizations. We just. And I got that from Adam Braun, the Promise of a Pencil, which is a fantastic book that I read about about creating a movement and doing something. It was fantastic. But a for purpose organization just doesn't seem to have the stigma of the, the nonprofits. And one of the things about Joe Volunteer that I'd be very adamant about is that, you know, Joe, you already mentioned, but it needs to be a very lean organization and any money that we raise or any activities that we do has to go directly to the mission of helping other people. And that's what we want to do. And that's something that's really nice about this is because it doesn't necessarily have to make money other than to pay its own way, I guess for an application and. Or spreading the word. But really spreading the word is something we're going to add. Ask Joe's to do. If you've listened this far and you want to know how you get involved, that's really what you need to do is go to joevolunteer.com and become a Joe. And especially if you've heard about it on I love marketing, then you are a special breed of individual. And you can put that on there because there's a section on where did you learn this from? And you can put in I love marketing. We can actually communicate to you directly because there are some things that we'd ask you to do that other Joes may not have the capacity for. So those are the ways I'd say to help us or to get involved now.

Yeah. And I would also encourage everyone. First off, everyone that has gone to the site and read it is like, wow, this is really well put together. This is really well thought out. I mean, it's a lesson in marketing to see someone take an idea and just turn it into a real thing. And so check out, go to Joe, volunteer and just read the whole thing. I think you'll find it quite inspiring and really quite encouraging. And when you even released the mention of this on Facebook, oh my God. I mean, the sheer volume of comments and people are like, I love this idea. The world needs this. I mean, there's so much engagement already. And so this is all the starting point. So, Dean, do you have anything else related that you want to ask him? Because I'm going to ask. I'm going to go back and ask Chip some questions about how he spends his time and his energy and that stuff because I think it'll be useful for the listeners.

Yeah, well, my mind always goes. I'm right back still at profit activator 1. And I'm thinking about defining the types of people that are going to be helped by this and the types of people who are going to be Joe's. And you know, when you were talking about, I would look at the categories of, you know, they're like seniors and kids and veterans and animals. You know, we start to kind of categorize the types of people. I think that's going to create some structure around it. You know, I mean, it's just so exciting the ways how it can all help. But I think what's going to be very important is, is contextualizing it, you know, and so to start with what you know. And I think that a lot of it is the, you know, we were just talking about what started. It was Joe seeing, you know, an older gentleman just sitting there lonely, not being visited. And you know, you think, how many of those people are there? And you know, you've mentioned several times, chips all chip all the Veterans and.

The.

You know, everybody's gonna have some sort of, they're gonna resonate with one, you know, one of those categories is really gonna speak to them. But having a way to organize it in terms of those, those distinctions is going to make it easier to kind of grow, you know, because it'll be. Then you can transfer that same architecture, that same structure across to the next town and the next town. Yes.

How do you think you're going to scale this thing, Chip?

Well, Dean has put it really well with that. My idea, which is subject to change or to improvement obviously is to create a prototype. And when we do this locally here in the Killeen area, that's where my, my first real estate offices, I work pretty close to there. But I know people and can actually get people involved personally into Joe volunteer. So what we're going to do is create that prototype, try and work out the bugs and see what the issues are. When we have our Joe's approach organizations, how do those conversations go? What are some of the objections that we come across or the obstacles in getting it done so we, we can start to categorize them and create a system that we can spread out and duplicate from town to town. So if we get people working well in Killeen and helping out and we have several dozen Joes actually we've already had several, dozens of Joe's sign up, but actually out there doing work and helping and we can document that and find out again how it's going for them, create success stories with it actually personal interest stories and videotape some people in action doing it, get some involvement from news organizations, approach newspapers and the best way to do that. And once we kind of have a series of best practices, we duplicate it to the next town and to the next town and so on and so forth. So that's stock, that's my concept and my idea with it. And then eventually at some point, I know the buzzword is scaling and we would have to scale it at some points and then do again Frequently Asked questions videos on how to do this or whatever. So hopefully we don't need as much human interaction or involvement as a bottleneck for this movement.

Yeah.

You know, and by the way, if there's anyone that's listening that it's one thing about we've had a lot of people that are contributing and help this already. Most of that is in the form of consulting and marketing, messaging and things along those lines. But if you are a super savvy tech person, you know how to build apps that Sort of thing. We have companies that Chip is looking at. And when I say we, I mean I really need to give Chip the credit because you're the one doing the legwork here that, you know, has things identified of what needs to be done. It's one thing about hiring a company, it's another where people not only can do what needs to be done with Joe Volunteer, but they love the mess, they love the mission. They want to get involved in it. You know, if you need a chef, it's one thing to have someone that can cook. It's another thing to have someone that really loves to and wants to do it for a particular event or a particular engagement. And with this sort of thing, people that really resonate with it. If you read the website Joe Volunteering, this just, you know, clicks with you. Those are the type of people that not only can be really wonderful Joes to help with volunteering, but also in the, you know, creation of this company. But we need to filter these too.

They.

They can't be like half ass sort of things on, oh, I think it's great. I'd love to work for you guys. Well, what does that mean? You know, what does that, you know, I'd like to work on this.

I really think that that's going to be part of it. I really think that that's going to be part of it is getting the context for like, if you think about the five or six or seven most common categories that we're talking about here with seniors and children and animals and veterans and maybe people with addiction issues. I know that's a big thing, Joe. And maybe homeless. If you look at, there's probably six or seven of those that, you know, because I guess the danger in anything is that it could really help anybody. You know, you could really apply it to everything.

Yeah.

Could you.

Could you imagine like a storm or a hurricane or any sort of disaster and all of a sudden you have like a bunch of people with an app saying, I'm over here. We need this, we need help here immediately. You know, how it could corral the truth.

An army of Joes. Yeah, yeah.

Instantaneously to, you know, to specific locations at a specific time. And, you know, I mean, just how it would facilitate so much, you know, relief and how that could actually save lives. I mean, I see Joe Volunteer as being a giant tool in the future for just solving stuff.

You know, if you look at and just like the categories of the types of people, types of situations that this could help with. The volunteers also to have Some categories for the types of Joes, like, if you think about the Joes who are, you know, what they're willing to contribute, and that could be. It could be time, you know, it could be companionship, it could be money, it could be transportation, it could be skills, some kind of skills that people have that they would be willing to volunteer, you know, if they are, you know, skilled tradespeople or skilled, you know, something that they'd be willing to volunteer their, Their time or their, Their efforts specifically, too. Oh, yeah.

Everything from plumbers, electricians, to web design to app developers to copyright, to welders, to, you know, to just companionship. I mean, there's. There's this. So many things. So many things that could be done.

Pretty exciting.

And they could pat you on the back when you're coughing. Dean, I know we could get a Joe volunteer. You're at your coffee today. I told you you need to quit. Quit smoking and stuff.

All the smoking and drinking. Yeah.

And by the way, Dean does not smoke and drink. So I'm just saying that to be funny. So, Chip with all of this. How do you personally think about investing your time, energy and resources.

Into this?

I mean, you obviously have to manage and juggle. So I think for just business purposes, all of the entrepreneurs that, that listen to. I love marketing. How do you manage your time in order to get this stuff done? Because this is a big thing.

It is. The way that I like to approach it is. I think you've heard the parable of the big rocks and always doing the big rocks first. And we can put a link to a video on that on the show notes. But the parable is this and that. You always put the things that are most important in your life into your life first. Like if you have a bunch of rocks and put it into the jar, the rocks being the things that you need to accomplish and the jar being the amount of time that you have in your life. You always put in the big rocks first. And the big rocks can be things like taking care of your family or your massively transformative purpose that we talked about. The big things in life, and you always do those first. And then, of course, the smaller things tend to take care of themselves. But if you put in the big rocks first, the smaller things can also fit in versus if you do other things first, like TV or watching the news, which is just a terrible thing to do. And one of my tips to anyone out there would be just stop watching the news, because they get paid to scare you. Just brings you down all the time. But anyways, those types of things you just either don't put in the jar or they will fit alongside the big rocks with it. And specifically when I do that, I try and get away every Sunday afternoon. Today will probably be an exception. It's actually my 18th wedding anniversary today as well.

Oh my God. Now I'm feeling if it wasn't for Joe volunteer, I'd feel horrible. But now this is for a good.

No, I'm glad to do this actually. Later on we're going to the last day of Star wars weekend at Disney Hollywood Studios. So it's a great day. Don't worry about that, Joe. But anyways, just getting back to it. On Sundays, I like to take some time off and take literally at least an hour, usually more like two or sometimes even three. And. And Dean, you'll appreciate this. I do a type of focus finder where I dump out everything that's going on in my head out onto paper and start to organize the different things that need to happen for that week. The different that I want to happen.

I do that too.

Yeah, it's a great tool. I loved watching the focus finder video, so thank you. But I put that out and usually I have about three or four major outcomes that I want to have happen each week. And when I have those, when I get to the office or what have you, I have a big picture of Arnold Schwarzenegger that I put on my door that says do not disturb. And I turn off my phone and I just focus on those items. And I think that's the important part is the Pareto principle, which we learned about through the four hour work week. And then the Parkinson's principle, which is that your work will expand to the time allotted for it. So I give myself, say two hours to work on a project in a particular day and advance it or do as much as I can on that particular project and then the time is over and allocate more time to it later, what have you. But doing that just keeps other things from creeping in or ruining what should be used as your focus time for working on what's really important to you. Like a Joe volunteer.

Great. Now let me this question for people who may feel like held back from taking action for whatever variety of reasons or excuses, legitimate or not, what advice would you give them so that they can make their goals and their dreams a reality? Because you're clearly pursuing, you know, big picture stuff.

Yeah. Well, thank you. Y' all had a really good episode a few weeks back, I think. Episode 203 and you and Dean were both talking about ideas versus execution. And this is a really big thing because. And Dean, you were all about the ideas and Joe, you were about the execution. And obviously there's some crossover. But both are very important. And you can't have one without the other, obviously. And I see it kind of as a mathematical equation. It's either ideas times execution or it's execution to the power of ideas. And one of these without the other is worthless. So my take is just that the idea is probably the exponential part. And Joe, you know about this. A single elegant idea can change a life or change the world. And a better idea is the biggest multiplier of things that you can have. So that's obviously very important. But Joe, the execution part that you were talking about is really a lot more rare than the number of people that have ideas. And execution is a precious commodity. And I'd say the majority of people just don't have that spark. So as someone that just really got started and I haven't executed a whole lot of ideas through my life, but I just really got good at it lately. And I'd say one of the things that got under my skin is just doing the whole self development thing and actually doing a project to make yourself a better person. And the challenge is, one of the things I heard is if you're still thinking about your idea and all of us have those ideas, if you're still thinking about it, you're not going to do it because otherwise you'd be doing it, not just thinking about it. So if you're listening to this and again, you have those big ideas or ideas that can revolutionize your life, what's keeping you from doing it? Something that I would recommend is actually getting onto that point too. Ideas are. Or execution is really another set of ideas. And that's a principle that really struck home to me. Because if you have those ideas, the next thing that you need to do is have ideas on exactly how to execute it or take it to the next level. And what can I do within the next 20 days to make a huge dense in Joe? Volunteer and you start brainstorming those ideas. From there, the ideas get easier to execute because you break them down into small steps. And yeah, I think that's real important. And then the other thing is don't leave the scene of a good idea without doing something to act on it. And I think that's important. And even if it's just to talk to Siri on your phone and remind you to work on that idea that you thought about and set up a specific time for. And you have to have some kind of system, either the weekly planning or the follow up CC or a tickler system or something like that that brings it up to you and keeps reminding you of that idea because otherwise it's just going to get lost in the mundane. And really the last thing I'd say too is if you're scared of the idea, if it's a big idea, if it's something that does that, then action cures fear about it. So just start doing it and make it happen. And the fear gets smaller. And actually what's really cool about that is you become a better person for having done it.

I love it, man. That was a great list. So I hope everyone took that seriously. Even with the static that was on the phone, you know, it's worth. We'll just see how committed people are to actually deriving powerful content. See, it started getting really staticky right while you were saying like something really damn impressive important there. I think there was a sign there that was weeding out the people that really just need, you know, need to be coddled, I guess.

Well, if we have another conversation about this, Joe, it will be on a much better phone. I'm sorry about, I apologize about my nice hotel room with a terrible phone line.

Well, it might, it might be Dean's fault. So I mean I'm more apt to blame Dean for these things because we never know. We never know with these things now. Okay, so how can people get involved with, with helping you, working with you if they like in Joe Volunteer and learn what they need to know@joevolunteer.com so they can just, you know, if this resonates with them. And I hope it does. I mean we really hope. We have a lot of. I love marketing listeners that will see this to be as important and as valuable and as cool of a thing to get involved in and help us in our mission to help reduce human suffering as much as humanly possible in bringing, you know, groups of people here to start a, you know, start a movement. And we cannot do this without help of other people that are like minded and aligned with what's going on here. So if you're aligned with this, and I hope you are, how do people get involved in this Chip?

Okay, the big thing is go to Joe Volunteer and sign up as a Joe and put I love marketing as how you heard about it. Because that way we can reach out to you and we have you specifically on that. And again what we said earlier about the show notes, if you have ideas or comments or things that you want to tell us or say, hey, guys, have you considered this or that? Put them in the comments. And the comments themselves will be a resource for everyone else to look at to stimulate more ideas on how to take this elegant idea and make it a reality.

Awesome.

Dean, any final words?

I'm so excited about just the whole genesis of this. I think this is going to be an important moment. You know, that all started from somebody taking some action. And I'm excited to kind of see where this goes. I think it's going to be a very significant thing over the years, and I think this will be a real storyline that we'll be able to keep referring back through here as we watch it grow. And, Chip, just, you know, kudos to you for really taking action and making this happen, you know, very commendable.

Oh, it's absolutely spectacular.

So, yes, I would.

I would agree with that. And thank you. Thank you so much, Chip, for taking one of my ideas, which was really important to me, and making it real. Because what it did was it actually reinforced just the value of, you know, what I felt to be a good idea. But without action, without your action, it would have never started. You know, maybe it never would have started at all.

I would.

You know, I've been thinking about something like this for a while, but you actually made it real. Which also goes to show the power of collaboration. Joe Volunteer will be as strong as the people behind it. And this is not about me. I really appreciate you naming it, you know, Joe Volunteer.

I think the name is perfect because it's so, you know, it's a generic name, Joe Volunteer, but the people on the inside, the inner knowing is that there's a real Joe too. That the real original Joe, you know?

Yeah. So it could be male or female. So It's Joe Joey volunteer.com and I actually even think for donations, that we could call them Joe Nations.

Oh, that's cool.

You know, we can put a Joe Nation. So if you want to be a Joe and you want to make a donation, you can make a donation from any Joe. Any Joe can donate, and any Joe.

Can volunteer right now.

Okay, good. And that idea came from my girlfriend, so I have to give her. That's funny.

Funny, funny.

So there you go, guys. Everyone get involved. Thanks for listening. Go to ilovemarketing.com and give us your comments. Subscribe to the I Love Marketing podcast at. I love marketing. I mean, well, you can do it@ilovemarketing.com you can also do it on itunes and different places where all your friends are available. Yeah. And share this message with anyone that you know that either volunteers has gone through the bureaucracy of wanting to volunteer. Because I mean, even going back to the original night where this idea prompted, you know, I went to the front desk and said, what does someone need to do in order to volunteer? And it just wasn't easy to do. I mean, you have to fill out paperwork, you have to, you know, get fingerprinted and all of those things are legit, you know, like I'd mentioned. But how do we streamline this? How do we make it more available? And more than anything, instead of people having to, you know, climb over frickin hurdles in order to volunteer, how do we make it easy? So like, hey, I want to volunteer. It's going to make me feel good. It's going to help people. The world needs it. How do we make it easy? You know, boom. So we want to basically transform the whole process, the whole industry of how people that need help get help. Because I really believe this goes way beyond just companionship. This can change lives, this can save lives. This can make the world a better place. And so Chip Franks, you're doing awesome work. Thank you so much and really great. This will only be the beginning of, you know, many things that we'll be, you know, putting out to the world. Related to Joe volunteer.com so thank you and everyone have a great day. Thanks for listening. And now go, go take some action.

Sam.