The One About Architecting Breakthroughs - I Love Marketing With Joe Polish And Dean Jackson - Episode #78

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.

The Joe Polish.

Joe Polish. You see, I was like, I caught you there.

Just slide it off when someone says my name.

Yeah. So here we are.

Why? You sound a little down, Dean? I mean, I didn't even. The way you just said.

Yeah.

This was kind of like. Yeah. You know, not all excited to be talking to me or whatever.

I'm very excited.

Okay, well, we got thousands of people that listen to this, man. You need to put some enthusiasm into it.

Exactly. Go for it. Well, this is. Show us where you're taking about. I'm very enthusiastic about what we're going to talk about.

Okay, good. What are we going to talk about? We're going to talk about breakthroughs.

Yeah. Architecting breakthroughs. This is the thing, because it's been. It's really interesting now. I've been reading and going through all these emails that were submitted for our case study program that we're doing over the summer here. And it was really interesting to me because I asked people to send a, you know, summary of their business and where they thought the big breakthrough might be. And so I'm realizing that, you know, it's really, I think, a great idea for us to kind of look at how you take the big picture view of kind of analyzing your business, looking at your business, and deciding what the path is. Like, everybody realizes when you look at the eight profit activators that there are lots of opportunities to apply things to your business, but there's just a few. And every business has a different opportunity that could be the breakthrough for you. And sometimes just knowing what to look for and knowing how to kind of analyze your current business kind of gives you an idea of where the big breakthrough might be. So I thought that maybe you and I could talk about how we would look at a business, kind of breaking it into the. The three parts of the before unit, the during unit, and the after unit, what we'd be looking for and maybe some of the breakthroughs that we've seen that would kind of be the easiest to architect in somebody's business, you know?

Yep, Yep. I think that sounds like a grand.

Idea, a grand plan.

Yes.

So, you know, I kind of mentioned the very first thing is looking at your business as three distinct units. That's number one, you know, looking at. Rather than just kind of looking at your business as a whole, kind of dividing it into those three distinct units and knowing what to look for and knowing what to measure to see where you are and decide where you want to go so that you can figure out how you're going to get there. I mean you know those three simple questions. I love the way how you start every single 25k meeting. And these are people who are, you know, at the highest, highest level. You start with a simple one sheet of paper exercise that often for people people is even just thinking about it creates a big breakthrough before we even start the day. Where did that start for you?

Actually those three questions came from Ken Glickman. Years ago. I was watching Ken give a presentation. Ken Glickman used to be the. Now he's done a lot of things, I mean ran some of the largest karate school in New York years ago for over 20 years. Marty Edelston was one of his students. And Marty Edelston ended up being the founder of Boardroom Inc. Which is really large publisher of many newsletters including Bottom Line Personal, the largest consumer non advertising paid for consumer newsletter in the world. Ken became vice president of marketing for Boardroom and then he created the I Power seminars in the Time Magic seminars. And I first saw ken speak in 1991 and he was amazing. And he delivered a presentation. He talked about these three questions. You know, where are you? Where do you want to go? How are you going to get there? And that was really impactful to me. And over the years, you know, Ken became one of my best friends and he's spoken at many of my events. I've interviewed him a bunch of times. And we've constantly talked about just the simplicity but the power of those three questions. Because you can apply it to any area of life. Like if you want to get in better shape physically. Basically it first starts as Dan Sullivan says, all progress starts by telling the truth. So where are you? Where are you in your life? Where are you in your finances? Where you are in your business? Where are you in your relationships? Any area of life that you want to focus it on. In the 25k group of course, when I start the day with that form that says where are you? Where do you want to go? How are you going to get there? We usually typically look at anywhere from a 3 month period to 12 months out. Where they at in their business? Where they at in their personal life? So everyone writes down where are they? You know, where are you? Where do you want to go? You know, what's your goals? What's your objections? What's your opportunities? What do you want to get rid of personally and professionally and Then how are you going to get there? And if they focus on where are you, where do you want to go? The how are you going to get there? Part we can focus on in 25K. And so, you know, for everyone listening, it's just a great thing to, you know, get out a sheet of paper or even start your day. You know, in a day, where are you today? You know, where do you want to go? How are you going to get there? And you can literally use this for any particular area.

But it came from because. Yeah, and I brought that up because, you know, it is so elegant. And I want to kind of, you know, look at those questions as the starting point when we start looking at each of the three divisions of your business. You know, so if we're talking in your, in your before unit, that ultimately what we're looking for in your before unit is a way to deliver ready to buy people who are going to use the services of your during unit, which is the core offering that you have. So if you know you're a carpet cleaner, it's delivering people, you know, who want to schedule an appointment now to get their carpets cleaned. That would be the during unit of your, of your carpet cleaning business. And the before unit would be everything that we do to deliver, deliver those people at a cost that you can afford. And so it's the same thing with any business. If you're a restaurant, it's delivering people who want to make a reservation for dinner. If you're a chiropractor, it's people calling to make an appointment to come and see you. If you're a real estate agent, somebody wants to call you and talk about selling their house or buying a house, it's that moment where business starts in your during unit. The before unit is about delivering people right to that moment. And we've talked about this a lot, that, you know, the very best mindset is to separate that from your business as much as you can, even mentally to start with, to kind of just look at it and say, if that's my goal, if I'm looking to, you know, create a kind of like a business within my business, that's only purpose is to deliver me people who want to do what it is we do, what would that look like? And so if you can set up a unit like that in your business that delivers as many as you want or can or can handle or desire, and you can do it at a cost that is affordable for you, and then that's really a huge breakthrough for businesses. A lot of times people, you know, they look at their business, they're very good at what they do. They're excellent at what they do. They put a lot of effort into doing a great job for people, but they often struggle with finding new people in a predictable way. You know, they get lost. And I see it a lot. I see it with all these. All the people who are sending in their case study emails, you know, there's lots of opportunity there to kind of create a machine. And we talk about. There's lots of metaphors that we use. I mean, we talk about, you know, creating a vending machine as an idea for your before unit that, you know, you decide who your target market is, who you want to attract. You decide what you can afford to pay for them. And when you put in that amount of money and push the button, out they come and they're delivered right to your, right to your during unit. So the best thing for people to do to start looking at their before unit is to see what's happening with what they're doing already. A lot of times people are spending money in their before unit. They're spending money on ads, or they're spending money on direct mail or on getting Internet traffic, Google traffic, on pay per click to their websites. They're doing all these things, but they don't really have a sense of whether it's working or not. You know, especially if they're doing advertising that is kind of, you know, promoting their business, just kind of getting their name out there and, you know, really making a conscious effort to look at it and say, what could I do that would just get people to raise their hand so that I can educate and motivate them about doing business with us and really just leave it at that. You know, it's funny because sometimes one of two things will happen. They'll either have a system that can generate business in a predictable way and not even really know it. You know, sometimes people get fixed up in this, in their budget, you know, where they say, well, we spend $500 a month or $300 a month on. On AdWords. And when they look at it, they realize that, you know, that $300 a month or 30, $600 for the course of the year, they look at it and Maybe they've made $30,000 or $40,000 from that, from that advertising that they've done and not really realize that, hey, if I spent $600 instead of sticking with my $300 budget, they could double the amount of business that they do from that.

Vehicle. Oh, yeah.

Have you ever seen that? Where people just, they've got a winner and they just don't maximize it?

See it all the time. They see it all the time. That's one of the things that I used to talk to Gary Halbert about all the time is when people have leverage points and if they really just look at their business and say, okay, because every part of someone's business in life has areas that are working and things that don't work. If you can identify the areas that are working and say, okay, can I really leverage this and exploit it simply by spending more money on advertising to increase the messaging or to increase the lead generation or whatever. And people just get so caught up in activities that they miss the ones that are working that they can easily replicate and duplicate. In your example of, well, you know, we only have X for a marketing budget. And I've always, you know, I've always hated that whole concept of business school budgeting as it relates to specifically the area of marketing. Because as we've talked about on previous issues, the only episodes, issues as if this is a magazine episodes of I love marketing is that the only time to budget your marketing is when it's not working and you don't want to go broke so quickly and you're having to test it and figure things out so you don't gamble the whole farm. That's why I think looking at the before, during and after units is so critical because I continually run across people who are fantastic at say, generating leads, but terrible at conversion or really good at converting, but they are not generating enough or they're really good at the delivery of their business. You know, carpet cleaners is an example. I mean, many of them are the nicest people. They deliver a great service, their during unit in terms of how they deliver it, and even the referrals are good, but they just don't have enough people. And so, you know, there's all different divisions to look at. You know, it's funny, I don't know if you can even hear this in the background. Dean, on this recording, I'm actually doing this call in my kitchen at home. You know, I'm flying to Chicago tomorrow for Strategic Coach and it is pouring rain right now at the time that we're doing this show.

Oh, really?

Wow. Yeah. And I mean, it is. I don't know if that's going to be picked up on the mic, but.

I'm sitting there, I don't hear it at all.

Okay, the mic may pick it up. So that's the case.

Just in case you hear my mouth.

That's thunderstorm here.

That's funny.

It's quite distracting right now because I think it's more interesting than listening to you.

Impossible. That's impossible.

I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Nothing is more exciting than listening to you, Dean.

That's about right. So when you look at it, I think having that mindset that you're not going to get fixed into, limiting yourself to a budget when you've got a winner, you've either got something that works that you could duplicate or do more of, or you really don't have anything, or you've got something that's struggling where it really is an expense, where you're spending the money, but you can't point to a return on that money. A lot of times business have a bunch of things that they do because they've always done them. You know, like they always have an ad in this directory and they always have this yellow pages ad and they've always had this banner on the, you know, on one of the local sites or something like that where, you know, they bundle up all of these things that they're doing and they don't really look at, you know, individually are any of them actually getting me a return on that investment or you know, are any of them actually winning? And unfortunately they look at them and it ends up the big pile becomes like a Jenga puzzle, you know, where they can't really, they're really careful to like pull one piece out because it might make the whole thing crumble. You know, they don't know what's the one thing that's actually working and you know, not tracking things and knowing how that works. So, you know, I look at that as really being like Dan Sullivan says, you know, the first is telling the truth, is knowing what the situation is. You either have a before unit that you could predictably put money into or you don't yet. And if you don't then that's where potentially the biggest breakthrough in your business could be, is if you could figure out how to get people to, you know, to do business with you through a sequence of events of either, you know, a multi step process of mailing a postcard or bringing them to a landing page where they can leave their name and their email address and then communicating with them in a way that's going to educate them and motivate them to take that next step. Really thinking through what's the process that people have to go through to be delivered to your during unit. And one of the biggest mistakes that I see people making is in that before unit is trying to do too much with the ad. You know, I mentioned I've been going through some of these case study emails and people have been sending me ads that they're using. And, you know, I think about it, even just right away, I see people trying to convince somebody from a postcard why they should do business with this company or in their display advertising, you know, which the most prominent thing in the advertising is the name of the business and why they're more professional than the other choices that people have. Or somebody else had sent me something where they're doing a postcard, sending people to a landing page with a video where on the video they're trying to educate and convince people to sign up for a continuity program where knowing what to do first and knowing how to kind of break things down into baby steps, where you're only ever trying to get the next step in the combination. That's why when we talk about the compelling people to raise their hand, compelling them to call to identify themselves. And the third profit activator is educate and motivate people. And they are meant to be two separate things where the only thing is to get somebody to engage in a dialogue. And now that you have their attention, continue then to educate them and answer all the questions that they would need to know. And that's where the consumer awareness guides are a fantastic tool for that, for answering all the kind of overt questions that people have, the most common questions that they have, maybe even some of the questions that they didn't even know that they have. And then, you know, the motivating part, because educating is not enough. It's not enough to just educate somebody about all of the things that, that you do, but you need to motivate them by, you know, making offers to people in, you know, inviting them to take that next step. You taking the initiative. We've talked about that as using that cookie idea, like, if I'm bringing you into my house, rather than just saying if there's anything you want to eat or drink, there's lots of stuff in the fridge. Instead of saying that coming in with a plate of freshly baked cookies and saying to you, would you like a cookie? So rather than just saying, hey, if there's anything we can do to help you, we're more than happy to answer any questions, don't hesitate to call me or email me. You know, all those things where we're kind of passively just hoping that educating People is going to be enough. It's so much better if you really take the initiative for people and be a leader. You know, it's like inviting them to schedule a carpet audit so that they can find out what the, you know, what's going on with their carpets or, you know, I like that whole audit idea that's probably applicable in a lot of businesses, you know, just to see what. What's going on. But getting people to kind of raise their hand to get something, you know, that's. That's really how you're delivering people to the during unit. And there's nothing more profitable and, you know, able to fuel rocket growth than figuring out and cracking the code on your before unit. Because once you figure it out, then it really is a matter of the more money you put in, the more money you get out because it's completely scalable.

Well, yeah, I heard a negotiation guy at a Vistage meeting that I went to earlier this week talk about how if you go to a doctor and they give you a prescription without diagnosis, it's malpractice. And I thought that was an interesting line because if you go into a sales situation and you don't even, you just immediately start saying, oh, you should buy our stuff, just because you should buy our stuff. But you don't educate them, you don't identify who the list is, that sort of stuff, in a lot of ways, you're just creating marketing malpractice. And the audit process that I started using for carpet cleaners going way back when is like I thought to myself, okay, well, first I got to get the call and get people to invite me to their home. Preferably they're going to call me on the phone first. Sometimes you can make the sale over the phone and people will just want to book it. Other times, you have to literally go there in person in order for it to become a real sale. But even if you're just going there to sell them or they're already sold and you're going there to deliver it, while you're there, you are best served to actually give them something different than just an estimate and a price. You want to know a little bit about what you're about to perform, the service, you know, the people, the home, the living habits, that sort of thing. And so I came up with this carpet audit process where I would evaluate the condition of their carpets, how old it is, how many times they clean it. Was protection applied in the past. Does anyone in the house smoke? Do they have children? Kids, you know, any things that would be useful to know. And I would. I created this robotic system of evaluating the condition of the carpets and having a dialogue with the, you know, prospect with the client versus a monologue saying, okay, I measured it up, here's how much it's going to cost. You know, I want them to answer questions. So it's very Socratic and it was very non threatening. And also while I was there, these people learned more about how to care for their carpet. And then I gave them a prescription and that was something I called the wearage. You know, and I just came, I made it up. I mean, I made up, you know, based on if you are going to continue to care for your carpet in this way, based on what you've told me, here's how long you can expect it to look like this. If you clean and maintain it. Here's, you know, what I think you can expect from it. I got great.

It's kind of like that real age for your carpet.

Exactly, exactly. And so I started using this process and it was very awkward the first few times because I was trying to test something out. I just had a sense that if someone, the way that I've approached a lot of this stuff when it comes to selling is how would I like to be treated if I'm going to go into a situation where I don't understand, understand something, you know, how, how do I want to be brought to a level of confidence in making an informed buying decision. And I really. And it's almost impossible to satiate this need and desire that I have developed in my own brain. I hate doing business with companies that do not have a process. And the problem is hardly anyone has a process. So when I come across a company or an organization that has a thought through process architected in order to sell me in a way that, you know, because then it's never, it's never a regret. I mean, you know exactly what you're getting, you know how it's going to go through the process. And I'm not talking about, you know, wasting my time. I mean, nothing's worse than someone trying to use clever, you know, marketing that they think is, oh, let's educate people and they're putting out boring videos and boring sales letters and, and something that could have been delivered to me much quicker. There's much differences. Like the last episode when we talked to James Schenko, his name just bugs the hell out of me. I've known the guy for several years and I still can never pronounce his name right. But James The Australian dude on the last episode, he talked about spin selling. And spin selling is really a book about making larger sales, more expensive sales than small sales. And the closing techniques and methods that are what most closing books are about. You know what, Neil Rackham, is that his last name that wrote Rackham?

Yeah.

Spin selling is really about the, you know, the larger sales. And there's a much different way that you, you know, process that. But they can all be broken down in before, during and after. And so I think just looking at your business as if there's a disease that exists, a sickness, an illness, and your product or service cures it, what would you call it? And before you actually label that they have it, what is the disease your clients have? You know, how do you get to that point and identify it? And so anyway, those are my thoughts.

They've got let's call it bud before Unit Deficit Disorder.

Yeah, that's so funny. They got. You know what is even more funny is that Dr. Edward Hollowell, while we were sitting here recording, he actually left me a voicemail. He's the top ADD ADHD psychiatrist on the planet. He's speaking at my 25K group in New York. The event we got coming up. And the guy's awesome.

We're lucky enough to have him as a friend.

Yeah, he's a great guy. I've interviewed him several times.

He really is.

And he talks about attention surplus disorders, the type of people that ADD people.

I was funny today, just today I was listening to his. His interview with Darren on the Success magazine CD from a couple of months ago.

Isn't that.

And Dan Sullivan.

Yeah, yeah. There's a. That was in the June issue of Success magazine and it's. Ned Hollowell and Dan Sullivan are both on the cd. And of course I introduced both of them to Darren Hardy, the publisher Success. And then last month, of course was me. And that's in the July issue. And the time we're recording this is in July. And then in the August issue it's got Richard Branson on the COVID And what's funny is that the CD in the August issue, Success is Daniel Amen, who we just put up as an I love marketing episode right before James. And then Frank Kern is on the CD too, the interview with Frank Kern. And that's in the current issue in both of them. So literally, Richard Branson, Frank Hearn, Daniel Amen, Dan Sullivan, of course, they're all episodes on I Love marketing. So if you reach Success magazine, you.

Want more than just. We know some pretty Cool people.

What's that?

I said we know some pretty cool people.

Exactly. We know everybody that's worth knowing that.

That's exactly right.

Yeah. If we don't know, you know, you don't need to know them either.

That's it. Let's talk about the metrics for the before unit. Because, you know, part of knowing where you are is being honest about it. Looking at all the things that would, you know, all the things that you would spend money on, all the things that, the activities that you currently do to get business and really taking an honest evaluation of it, you know, is it really getting a multiple of the money that you spend on it? You know, are you getting new business at a, at a level that is acceptable and your, you know, the, the amount of money that you're able to spend to acquire a new customer is really going to be determined by what's the lifetime value of that customer. You know, what's the lifetime value of that relationship? Relationship going to be. If you've got something where, you know, people are going to come in and spend, you know, $100 a month for 10 years or five years with you, you've, you know, you've got a five or $10,000 lifetime value with somebody, you may be able to spend more money than if you've got something where somebody's going to come in and spend a hundred dollars or $150 and not have not continue to do business with you again and again and again. So you want to just kind of really evaluate what's the opportunity that you have, how much can you afford to spend and what is the metric that makes sense for you, you know, how, how much can you either multiply the money that you spend on there or can you acquire new customers at, you know, a break even in 30 days or 60 days or whatever's a comfortable level for you. All of those things are really about, you know, having an awareness of what the dynamics are, you know, what is it that that's actually in play monetarily for your before unit and then going and crafting a way that is affordable for you to continue to multiply money where you're putting it in and it's repetitively, you know, scalable, doing whatever level you're able to accommodate. It's pretty exciting if you can really have an incredible before unit. You know, when we look at the, we've talked a lot about the, our money making websites for realtors or the getting listings program where they're completely packaged solutions that are money multipliers you know, you just install it and. And it continues to run like, we know that when people are going to, you know, spend money on their. On sending people to their website, that we can, you know, spend 300 or 600 or $1,000 a month and know that that money at the end of the year is going to multiply itself by 15 times on average. So, you know, that it's just a matter of how much money do you want to multiply. And that's the kind of confidence that is really possible in your before unit if you dial it in. Like, you've got ultimate confidence, Joe. If you were opening up a new carpet cleaning operation in any city in the country, you know, immediately. I mean, not that you would ever do that, but, you know, 100% confidently that you could be up and running and generating business and have a very profitable business in the first year, even though you've had no exposure or activity in that market. You know, I've got that kind of confidence in you. I think you could do that.

I mean, absolutely. Wouldn't even be in almost any service business, for that matter, because I know so much about it.

Right, exactly. And that's the thing, is that what you've learned doing it for carpet cleaners and what I've learned doing it for real estate agents, and now we've been doing it for all kinds of businesses, all those principles are still the same. So the before unit is really your ticket to the stratosphere or whatever level of growth you want to have within your business. It really is. And looking back at all of the. The episodes that we've done all about using consumer awareness guides, using direct response, using free recorded messages. I mean, it goes on and on and on. How many different strategies we've talked about here. And picking those and applying the right ones can make all the difference.

Yeah. I want to actually share with you a story of what, you know, what has taken place with Tesla, you know, the new cars made by Elon Musk. And basically I'm going to do a little search here and see if I can find on the server. Okay, Tesla Motors. I've got all these. Your official Model S reservation is complete. So when. About a month ago, or whenever it was, I was in Santana Row in San Francisco area where they have a Tesla store. And I was with. Who was I with, Dee?

I'm not sure who you were with. Was that when you were with you?

Because I was down there with you on the floor.

Were you with Brendan?

No.

Brendan maybe trying to think who Was.

You think I would know this, but. Oh, I was with Mike Klein, okay, Mike Klein, tech guys who get Mars marketing. And so we had just gotten done with a two day Singularity University event. We were up there hanging out with his girlfriend and my girlfriend and we, you know, went to Santana Row and the gals went and got massages and we were just walking around, you know, this really kind of cool area. And we're actually at a two day Singularity event with Tony Robbins who brought his platinum partners to Singularity University. And these are all the people that are in Tony's $65,000 a year group. And so. And we actually did schedule the I love marketing episode with Tony. So that's going to be coming up shortly. Assuming he does reschedule, then we will be interviewing Tony Robbins. So anyway, so, you know, just, you know, walking through there, I had called Peter Diamandis, who's friends with Elon Musk, and I said, hey, is there any way that you can get him to, you know, if I was to get a Tesla to move it up, you know, because there's a long waiting list. And he said that, you know, Elon said every time someone asks him that, he just laughs because everyone, their brother that knows him or has a link to him is trying to get their car quicker. So, you know, we're walking and we go in the Tesla store. And what's cool is that the Tesla store has been designed by George Blankenship basically. And he's the guy that designed, he worked for Apple, Gap and then he designed the Apple stores. And now he basically is the VP of, I think, customer experience for Tesla. And so he designed the Tesla stores just like the Apple store. So they're reinventing the way that cars are sold. They're not having like car lots, they're actually putting cars in shopping malls. And so it's really elegant and it's really cool and it's kind of like going in. Well, it's very much like an Apple store because he's taking the same model, you know, because Apple has, you know, the most profitable, one of, if not the most profitable retail stores in the world for the square footed space. And so he's taken the same concept to Tesla. And so we go in there, no intention whatsoever that I was going to buy a Tesla Tesla. And I just love the experience. I mean they're, you know, they take me to a computer, they kind of show me the whole thing, kind of walking me through it and I'm like, this is pretty cool. And I had met Elon very briefly in February at the Singularity University event that was at Fox Studios and he was there speaking as much famous people and billionaires and it was cool. And so, you know, I've, I really think what he's doing with Tesla is pretty awesome. And you know, his goal is to literally, he would love to make, you know, any gas consuming vehicle, you know, disappear off the planet. But anyway, so we go in and I put a $5,000 deposit on a Tesla Model S which they now, you know, if someone goes to teslamotors.com they can see the new car. I think it looks really awesome. It's four door, it does cool, 300 miles on a single electric charge and it's just totally badass. And it, you know, the price is around 50 grand for base model, all the way up to like 90 something thousand and you get a few thousand off for, you know, incentives because of the environmental, you know, battery operated car sort of thing. And so, you know, going through the whole process, they're like, yeah, you know, you put down a $5,000 deposit, but it's totally refundable. I mean, when it comes time for us to deliver your vehicle, if you decide you don't want to do it, that's fine. And I'm like, well that's pretty risk free, right? You have to put up the money of course, but it's not like you're going to feel like you're going to get screwed. So you enter all your information into the database. So it's done all online through a Mac of course, although I think George even designed the Microsoft stores too. So basically they capture all the information for you and you're now put into the system. Series of emails. This is the before unit, of course, really well at work, nicely designed, store, smart, nice people, unlike any other car experience of buying a car you've ever gone through and taking you through this whole process. And so what they do is they make all the reservations and then, and of course I'm piecing this all together and I actually had an email yesterday to see if I can set up an interview with George Blankenship because I think that'd be really cool to kind of, you know, that's one of my goals is to get him to, you know, do an interview. We pop it up on. I love marketing, but basically I get an email for. And I'm going to see if I can find the exact one. See, I wasn't prepared to actually quite talk about this but it says get hi Joe Your Model S test drive is confirmed. Please bring three passengers. So which one was that? All right, it's so funny. So it's time for you to drive Model S. Our Get Amped Model S tour is coming to, you know, Scottsdale, Arizona. We're very excited to get you behind the wheel. We have, you know, Model S with different blah, blah, blah. I'm going to skip through things. Your driving session will be about seven to eight minutes. Mine was actually 12. So this is what I'm trying to pull up. I've got so many of them. I've got different emails here, but they basically send me an email and it's like, we have a store grand opening in Scottsdale. So they opened one up at the Scottsdale Fashion Square Mall and it was this week. And so I didn't go to the grand opening, but I set up a reservation just like you would if you use an Apple and you're, you know, go to their Genius bar and you all want to set an appointment. So, I mean, it looks the same as Apple. It's like really cool. And you set up an appointment and you go there and you test drive the car. Which I did day before yesterday. No, actually, I did it yesterday at the time of recording this. I did it yesterday morning. All right, so I shot some videos and actually if we have our wonderful friend who has a first name that starts with J, do some fancy editing for me, maybe we can pop these up online sooner than later. But I videotaped like the whole drive inside the store. I even videotaped it, which I often find the videos when I was in San Francisco actually purchasing the thing. And so I have to look and make sure I be comfortable with putting that stuff up there. But nonetheless. So I videotaped this because I'm just thinking this is such a cool before, you know, during, after setup. These guys, I mean, they have an architecting of how they're going to sell Teslas that is just brilliant. And so going into what they do is they'll look at where they got reservations and if they've got enough reservations, customer support in a particular area, they focus on setting up stores in those areas. And so it's a stick strategy. So, you know, here I am in Arizona.

They sell like how you said that they asked you to bring three passengers for your drive.

Exactly, yeah. Well, hey, let me see if I can just. I've got. If I had my regular browser instead of an iPhone because the email actually comes in HTML. So it's time for you to test Drive your Tesla. Okay, so it says, okay. Reservation holders will be limited to one test drive. A Tesla product specialist will accompany all drives to answer questions and ensure you optimize your time in the Model S. You may bring up to three friends to ride in the backseat during your drive. Please arrive 30 minutes prior to your appointment time to receive a brief but very informative pre drive overview. And then, of course, it tells you where to go. And then when you, you know, you sign up and they follow up with a really, you know, really cool thing. And they've got stores in, you know, Tesla Fashion Square, Hilton, Washington, D.C. so they're opening up stores everywhere and they're in malls and join us for an exclusive event. Yeah, so when they. Yeah, exclusive event at Fashion Square.

See that process, when you look at that, you know, we talk about the, you know, going into the during unit now. I mean, when somebody puts down a deposit on something, you've moved into the, into the during unit. You know, you got to the point where you're sort of in process now, and it's a matter of really architecting the experience that you're going to have between now and when your car is ready. So you're, you know, completely satisfied to make the decision that you're going to keep it. You know, and so you look at everything you're describing there. Somebody architected every visual encounter, every audio encounter, every email encounter, every physical encounter that you had. Somebody architected that whole process. I mean, you described how when you, you set up the appointment and they told you to arrive 20 minutes ahead of your actual time for your orientation, somebody architected every word that's uttered in that, in that 20 minutes. And the things that people point out in your test drive, I mean, all of those things when you look at your during unit as a timeline, and, you know, great example of that was the episode that we did with Anthony Melchori from Hotel Impossible. You know, he's a master at architecting these guest experiences. And it's kind of a very rewarding thing to work on your during unit to get the core things right. Like we always talk about that. Whatever it is, if you're a carpet cleaner, the core experience has to be that the carpets get clean. Or if you're a chiropractor, the core experience has to be that your adjustment helps you. Or if you're a restaurant, the food has to be great. I mean, you look at the core things are one thing, but what really sets things apart, what really makes it and takes it over the top, are the things that add surprise and delight in that experience, you know, where now you really get a chance to wow people, you know, to create that kind of environment.

Well, yeah, like, you know, you talk about your interview with, you know, Anthony from Hotel Impossible. I mean, you know, what are the core experiences of a hotel? You know, cleanliness, a good bed.

Hopefully. Good food.

Yeah, yeah, good. Everything, hopefully. But, you know, the thing with the Tesla experience, which is really smart and very strategic, is they've got all these deposits and they want to assure that they get as many of those to result in full sales. And if they can start bonding with people well in advance, invite them to come to the store, do a test drive, be chummy with them. It's really hard to reject someone or a company or a product or a service that you have connected with, that the people are treating you well. It's not just a car.

And there's a level of commitment and consistency for sure in that. I mean, you've put down a $5,000 deposit on something. I mean, you don't do that on a whim, really.

No, no, exactly. And, you know, and if you take their. They've got about 10,000 reservations, maybe more even right now. And now that these stores are popping up, they're going to just be getting a ton more reservations now that the car is out there. I mean, you're just going to see, you know, and still there's a lot of people that are betting this company is not going to work, you know, that it's going to fold, they're never going to be able to pull it off, blah, blah, blah. But, you know, I definitely would bet my money on Tesla doing something very big. And, you know, basically, if you, you know, I don't know what their average sales are going to be, but, I mean, you know, for myself, I'll probably get every possible option on the car. I'll probably get the $90,000 version. And if you just say that the average of all of those 10,000, you know, reservations are going to be worth, you know, say 70 grand when you factor in. Yeah. I mean, how much money is that? I mean, it's. It's a huge. And it's financing the development and the purchasing, production of more of these vehicles. And I think everyone would be really well served if you're in a particular area just to go check out what they're doing and how they're doing it. And, you know, there's much applicability to, you know, how they set it up. And I think, you know, George Blankenship is just a genius in terms of the way that he's, you know, kind of laid out this whole retail experience.

I agree. And that's, you know, everybody has that opportunity within their own business. You know, you talk about where are the breakthroughs. We talked a lot about the before unit, but the during unit, there's, there's big opportunities in the during unit too, to, to really leverage the things that you're already doing. I mean, you look at it the, the things that are possible to monetize the increase in your before or in your during unit. You know, the breakthrough in your during unit is really having the leverage to either, you know, increase the unit of sale, add more value to somebody, you know, increase the things that you're able to help them do and raise your, your prices or your average ticket. And also the leverage of turning one piece of business into another piece of business, whether it's through a referral or if you're in a business where it's a local business where you're doing service on somebody's house and you're able to get another job within the 10 houses right around that house. Those are the kind of things, things that are opportunities because of your during unit, but you have to really kind of architect those ahead of time. You have to really understand where is the opportunity for me to either increase the unit of sale or to leverage this into another piece of business. And especially if you're talking about referrals, that really depends on, on and really is enhanced by your ability to surprise and delight somebody during the process, the smoother the process can be and the more thought that you put into really kind of anticipating what that experience is going to be. I love, love, love the book Raving Fans by Ken Blanchard for talking about creating incredible experiences in your during unit. And you look at anything that Walt Disney does, and you look at the Apple stores and you look at what you've described in Tesla. You know, just there you're surrounded by people who are really passionate and visionary. And I think that those are the two things that really everybody wants to be about their business. You know, everybody would love to feel that pride of creating an incredible experience for somebody. And that's what the opportunity that you have is in your during unit. And so when I'm looking at, just like I look at in the before unit, monetizing and measuring the return on the money that you're spending to acquire new people in your during unit, I look at it is how are you leveraging that? You know, And I look for, I would consider a breakthrough to be increasing the value of your during unit by 50%. And, you know, you can get to that level by either increasing the average sale or the average ticket of whatever it is that people buy from you, or turning that one piece of business into an additional piece of business through a referral, or, you know, strategically doing some marketing as a byproduct of actually doing that. Like, if you look at, at Tesla, if they're saying, invite three of your friends to come on a test drive. If you look at that, if 1,000 people go on these test drives, you said they've got 10,000 deposits, but let's say 1,000 of them bring even two people to come and test drive with them. What are the odds that out of 1,000 test drives with two extra people on average, they're being introduced to 2,000 people? That some of those people are going to buy a Tesla of their own?

No, exactly. You take the dealership in Scottsdale here that I have, they own a dealership that I've bought a couple Mercedes, a couple of Land Rovers and a Jaguar from. I've actually bought six automobiles from this dealership in the last decade. I have never once received an email saying, hey, come do a test drive and bring your friends. You know, I mean, it's just as simple.

But that, you know, somebody. Somebody architected that. Somebody architected that experience and really thought that through. And that's why this, using that timeline experience, you know, is an incredible visual tool for you to look at the, you know, look at everything, you know.

Yeah. So, Dean, so we're getting towards the time where, you know, we're going to be ending this episode. And I know people, like, they probably usually do after an I Love marketing episode ends, they feel really sad. I mean, maybe like dopamine or something.

We haven't even talked about the after unit breakthroughs. We still have to do that. We got time for that.

All right, well, go for it.

Yeah. Because so. So when you look at it, you know, we talked about the before unit looking for your breakthrough. There talked about the during unit looking for the breakthrough and seeing to yourself, you know, how it's setting yourself a goal of what could I do to increase the, you know, value in my during unit by 50%? That would be a breakthrough. And then in your after unit, you know, again, we're looking at this as a separate division of your business. Something that the whole goal of the after unit is to do two things. Nurture lifetime relationships with the people who You've already done business with the people who know you, like you, trust you, and orchestrate referrals. And I look at those as two separate missions. You know, you can do everything you can to continue to add value to the people who you've done business with. What, what additional services could you offer them? How could you pack up things that turn a one time or occasional sale into a monthly recurring billing sale that covers them for the whole year? I'm sure there are people who do that with carpet cleaning, Joe, that people, rather than just occasionally hope that somebody will call them to get their carpets clean. Some people will, would appreciate the opportunity to have their service done on an ongoing basis where they know that that's handled. And if you think that way, you start thinking about what other things could I do for people? What other things could I do to add value for them? How can I stay in touch with them so that at the very least when they do whatever it is we do, that they're going to do it with us? I mean, there's a lot of power in being the incumbent in whatever category you're in. As soon as somebody comes and gets their teeth cleaned in your office, you're their incumbent dental hygienist, you're the one who holds the position of their dental hygienist. Or if you sell somebody a house, you're the incumbent realtor, and if you're the last one to clean their carpets, you're the incumbent carpet cleaner. So there's a lot of value in that, that if you just maintain that relationship with people, they'll continue to do business with you. And so.

Let me mention something to that too, because that's what we teach all of our cleaners. You know, everyone's probably heard something similar to it's, you know, five or six times more expensive to acquire a new customer than to maintain an existing one. And there's a lot, you know, who knows what the exact figure is, but I would say that's probably pretty accurate. And you know, once you've acquired a client, maintaining that relationship is far easier than creating it. I mean, it's much easier to maintain momentum than it is to create it. And you know, in my experience, like, for instance, there's a presentation on I Love Marketing where I spoke to like 1200 people at Dan Kennedy's conference last year. And it was lessons I learned from Gary Halbert. People can watch it on I Love Marketing. Just type in, you know, Dan Kennedy or Gary Halbert. You can find my speech. And I had the Highest close of anyone in Glaser Kennedy history from that presentation. And people can see my clothes there and everything. And also we've gotten like no refunds. The only refund that I'm aware of, actually someone at the conference, they didn't even get the package. They just decided, well, I don't think I can do this and I don't want to do it, blah, blah, blah, whatever. But we've had people that I've talked to that have bought lots of stuff from events, from websites and things like that. I had one person tell me that your follow up after we bought this from you was so amazing. How could I ever refund it? Not only was the product good, but the way you followed up and explained how to get the most out of it was really great. Your company followed up and said thank you. And they didn't try to sell me anything else. They just made me feel appreciated for being a client. And I was like, yep, that's really cool. Because, you know, not that everything's always done perfect at any company or mine. It's just I really strive to, you know, let people know that when they buy something from me, I'm not trying to sell them a transaction. I'm trying to maintain, you know, we make a sale to acquire a client, not so we can make a sale.

Right?

And that's what the whole, that's value.

Like, you look at that and you and I are both, both very aware of that. And you know that now, you know, somebody who has, who has bought the Halbert program or bought anything from you is now a very valuable asset. You know, and we look talk about in your after unit to really look at the people who you do have that kind of a relationship with people who have purchased from you, people who are currently still purchasing from you, and the people who, you know, you know, the people who are your sphere of influence or even partners who are in complementary businesses that you know, that you could serve their clients or your clients could be served by them, that would enhance their experience. There's so much opportunity there to really manage that relationship portfolio for an annual yield, you know, and so we, I talk about measuring your ror, your return on relationships. And you know, we treat that after unit, that relationship portfolio like you would any valuable asset, you know, any valuable asset that you have that you can, you know, measure the investment that you make in those people and measure the return in terms of repeat business and referrals that you get from those people. And so you look at it, it doesn't Take very much, often to move the dial on your after unit, because these people already know you, like you, and trust you. And there's a lot of episodes that we talk about on. I love marketing about referrals and orchestrating referrals. And we did the interview with Ivan Meisner about referrals, and we talked with John Jantz about referrals. I mean, there's lots of opportunity in your after unit. It's probably the one where you can get the highest return for dollars invested. But a lot of times people don't look at that as their first course of action. A lot of times people want to spend the money in their before unit because it seems sexier to do a new ad and get new people as opposed to making an investment in the lifetime value of the clients that they already have.

Right, right. Yeah. So, I mean, I think. Do you have anything else you want to add to this, Dean? Because I think we should summarize what we talked about, because we're at the time.

Okay, let's. So here's the summary. You know, if you're looking for a breakthrough in your business, it just takes a little architecting, you know, and I say architecting in the sense of really kind of creating a vision for what you could have. You know, looking at the divisions of your business, kind of, if it's the first time that you've done that, dividing it into the before unit, and really looking at what. What am I doing in that before unit are the things that I'm doing and spending money on right now providing and delivering people to my during unit, and then is it doing it in a way that is profitable for me? You know, it could be that you may be happy to bring people into your during unit at a break even, or maybe even at a slight loss. I mean, we did the episode with Dean Graziosi. The whole thing of selling a $19 book on an infomercial. He's happy to do that at break even or even lose a little money on selling somebody a book because he knows in his during unit, he's got so much value to offer people that their lifetime value becomes thousands of dollars. So that knowing what. What your particular business situation is and judging yourself accordingly so that you can, you know, invest in creating the right kind of marketing for your before unit. Then in your during unit, looking at everything that you're currently doing right now, from the time that you first meet with somebody all the way through the transactional process, and then adding that little step of the after sale experience to Architect, a wow experience for somebody. And to measure that in terms of how close can I get to increasing this by 50%? And I look at it, you can have an easy win by looking at the last 10 people that you did business with, the last 10 jobs you did, the last 10 patients that came into your clinic. When you look at it, what was the total value of those 10 transactions? And then going forward, looking at the next 10 transactions, what could you do to increase the value of those next 10 transactions by 50%? You know, what could you do to increase the unit of sale by adding more value? What could you do to get a referral from somebody during that transactional process? Or, you know, in the providing after sales service section, what could you do to leverage and turn one job into another job? But looking at that before or during unit and saying, how can I increase this by 50%? And then in your after unit, looking at and getting all of those relationships that you have already into one place, a lot of times, you know, everything is all mixed into one database where you've got your prospects and you've got the people, the jobs in process right now. And then you've also got the people who've done business with you in the past. Clean that up, have a way of tagging people or sorting people within your database so that you can treat this as a relationship portfolio and start looking at, how can I get, when you look at it, what's the yield that I'm getting from this relationship portfolio? If we look at it, how many people are referring you, how much money are they doing in repeat business as a result of sending them a newsletter or keeping in touch with them, or sending them birthday cards or doing all the things that you can do to nurture those relationships. And how are you doing in orchestrating referrals? What's your process for presenting people the opportunity to introduce you to their friends? And, you know, those three things, if you look at those in that broad scope, that's where your breakthroughs are. It's just a matter of really identifying which one is going to be the biggest breakthrough for you first and focusing yourself on taking action with what you know already or getting some. Some coaching on it, you know?

Yep.

Okay. So, you know, this week, Joe, we've got an opportunity for people to really, if they want to spend 10 weeks, the next 10 weeks with us, architecting those breakthroughs in their business. We're going to be starting our breakthrough blueprint program leading up to the conference in October. So we're going to spend 10 weeks going through the before unit, the during unit, the after unit, really going in depth on the 8 profit activators with exercises and homework and Q and A calls with you and I to really spend this, what for most people might be a little bit of a downtime in their business where they may have a little bit of time to kind of think through things and spend this 10 weeks really architecting a breakthrough and creating a blueprint that they can use to, you know, really explode their business over the next 12 to 18 months. So I'm pretty excited about that.

I'm super excited about it because I know it's going to freaking be life changing for everyone that goes through it.

So, you know what, if you're just listening to these episodes here, go to ilove marketing.com, and you'll see all the information about the Breakthrough Blueprint program. And we'd love for you to join us too. We're doing this. You know, the main reason that we're doing this is to create breakthroughs that we can brag about at the conference in October. And we're not charging any money for taking part in the Breakthrough Blueprint program. We're including it with your registration for the conference in October. Whether you're going to come live and join us in Phoenix or whether you just stay where you are and livestream the videos, we're going to be video streaming every minute of the conference. So you can do it from wherever you are, but you can take part in the 10 week breakthrough blueprint program. I'm very excited about that as an opportunity. Opportunity to really create some breakthroughs for people over the next 10 weeks. I think we're going to see some incredible things.

Yes, it will happen. So check out the site ilovemarketing.com and get yourself, get yourself hooked up and your life will never be the same. Today is the last way. No, let's see. How do you say it, Dean?

Today is the last day of the.

Way you used to be.

That's exactly right.

What if I said the last way of the day you used to be? That would have made any sense.

It's really kind of tricky, but I think people know what we're trying to say.

Awesome.

All right, let's wrap up. We'll look forward to seeing you guys in Phoenix and joining us for the Breakthrough Blueprint. And we will talk to you next week. Goodbye.