The One About Even More Ways To Use Recorded Messages - I Love Marketing With Joe Polish And Dean Jackson - Episode #40

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.

Here we are.

Here we are again at a fun filled day for I love marketing listeners worldwide. And I do want to mention that the meetup groups@ilove marketing.com we now have a very special tab up there and you can see meetup groups that are propping up all over the world. And it's awesome.

Yeah. How exciting is that? Right from the homepage of Ilove marketing.com just that little tab says meetups.

Yep. So go there. And you know, we've been having some very lively, awesome meetup groups at Piranha Marketing, and it's just bad to the bone exciting.

And, you know, I'm excited because now this is. We can say this now because we didn't know whether our audio test was actually going to work last episode, but it did, and it sounds great.

Yeah. So assuming I'm not screwing it up on my end with the recording here, I think we're good. So for some reason, if this sounds. If we do have a backup, because we are backing up the recordings the way we're doing it here, but we are still relatively new at this, and it's only a matter of time. You know, the sarcastic side of me says it's only a matter of time before, you know, one of the recording things just, you know, has a hiccup and then we have to use the backup recording that's done over the phone. And then, you know, a few people will complain and I'll feel real terrible and. But for the most part.

Yeah, but let's say right now, I'm going to say that if that does happen, that we will cheerfully offer everybody a refund for that particular episode if we ever have to use the backup audio.

Yes, exactly.

Okay.

Exactly. All right, so what are we. Last episode we actually talked about, we were going to kind of do some of my riffs. We're going through this hundred list that I have, which is basically we got to number one clicks on the dial. Yeah. And I think we started with free recorded messages, and we kind of didn't go beyond that.

But that's okay.

I know everyone.

Such a great topic.

Yeah, Yeah, I know we got a lot of people now using free recorded messages as a result of that. And that is awesome. And so, you know, we're gonna still kind of pick up where we left off because it is a marketing method. And there's three things you need in order to Sell something. You need a product or service, you need a sales pitch or marketing message and you need a delivery system. And a free recorded message is a delivery system. A website is a delivery system. A direct mail campaign is a delivery system. Tv, radio, you've heard us talk about this all the time and we will continue to talk about it because there are just some very foundational things to always remind everybody about. And free recorded messages are a great delivery system and there's a lot of ways to use it. We can talk about ways to use it before the sale in order to get someone to become educated, to lead, generate, to request a free report, a consumer awareness guide, a dvd. There's lots of Apple applications where you can use it, but you can also use it after a sale during, you know, for instance, a carpet cleaner can have a, you know, recommendations on after cleaning, what to do after the carpet is cleaned. And they can leave, you know, a little card on the, you know, kitchen table or the counter.

Well, that would be a great. Yeah, that would be a great thing. We talked about, you know, a carpet cleaner dropping off maybe a spot remover the day after they clean the carpets. And maybe along with a little card that's saying, here's a little voicemail recorded message that answers a couple of emergency situations or something.

Yeah. And why I already have cleaners that do that all over the world.

Imagine that.

We'll put. Yeah, imagine that having free recorded messages. They even use them on refrigerator magnets. One of the very clever things that I came up with years ago ago was you would have a lot of companies that will leave calendars. And sometimes people put a calendar up like Farmer's Insurance or State Farm or whatever. And that's kind of cool. Assuming someone wants to have a pitch for a calendar hanging on their wall. And some people do and that's fine. Others put refrigerator magnets, which are great. And I thought, how do you remind someone continuously about their dirty carpets? Where can you put it? Where it's always going to be seen as much as humanly possible on something that is directly related to carpet cleaning, as an example. So I started having carpet cleaners put free recorded message stickers on a vacuum cleaner. So when they're at the home, they would say to Mr. And Mrs. Jones, Mrs. Jones, in case you ever have an emergency spot or spill and you need to get a hold of us, I'm going to place this sticker on the top of your vacuum cleaner. So you will always know where to find us. Because most people don't misplace their vacuum cleaner, they can always find it because it's big and you turn it into a benefit for the homeowner that in case there's an emergency spot or spill, they always have your phone number. And I say put a bright red or fluorescent yellow or green sticker that says, are you fed up with your dirty carpet? Call this 24 hour free recorded message. And they can also have their phone number, their website on the sticker too, if they want to do that. Or Len and Annette, who live out outside of Toronto, Niagara, you know, you've met them before, they're great clients. And they have a sticker that says dirty carpets and their phone number and it's right there. And so whenever Mr. Mrs. Jones is vacuuming, and it's probably rarely the guy most, you know, and sometimes they'll have a housekeeper. But the point is, if you let them know that's where your phone number is and if they actually vacuum, you know, two or three times a week right there, what are they looking at? They're staring at a, you know, a sticker that's a dirty carpets.

And if the carpet, that's the perfect place for it. You know, it reminds me of. It reminds me of when Snapple was launching their mango flavor, they contracted with the Mango Growers association to put stickers on 10 million mangoes that said, now available in Snapple. And you think like, what a great, you know, being in the right place because mangoes are kind of an acquired taste. But who would like mango flavored Snapple more than some. Somebody who's buying mangoes, you know?

Yeah, yeah, totally. And you know, let me mention something, Dean, because now that we have this fancy backup recording thing, we don't have to worry about this as much. But just in case, your regular telephone, I can hear it like staticky and crackling and everything. So if you're able to kind of, you know, fix that, please go right ahead. For no one else's benefit, other than it'll be easier for me to hear you.

Right?

You know what I'm saying?

I hear you.

I always wonder what the people that read the transcripts of these calls actually must, you know, what it must sound like without hearing our voices if they're just reading the transcript.

Make their own voices up. What if they read us as, like, Kyle and Stan from south park or something?

That would be weird.

It would be weird. We should hire some fascinators one day.

Yes, yes.

Let's get.

Can we get back to business here and quit getting distracted all Right. All right. I mean, how often am I having to keep you in line from going?

I know, it's like role reversal. Yeah.

So. And I don't even know how long ago we actually started, so I hope.

You don't you worry.

Okay, so basically. Okay, so basically, you know, there are before strategies you can use. There are during strategies, like, you know that and there's after strategies. What do you do after you've made a sale? You know, and so following up with people and going back to kind of free recorded messages, I wanted to talk about different uses of robotics, automatic education based marketing. We'll talk about in the context of free recorded messages. Although this can be done with videos, this could be done online, this could be done offline. And there's different applications too. So you can use free recorded messages as an example to sell and to lead generate. You could use free recorded messages once you have a client to continue to be educated. For instance, let's talk about carpet cleaning again. In between cleaning, if people want recommendations on how to remove a spot, there could be a 24 hour emergency spot and stain removal hotline. And to keep it, one of the things that these little nuances within each industry, you don't really remove stains, you remove spots. Stains are permanent unless you then go in and start removing dyes or adding dyes, things like that. So in the carpet cleaning world, the proper terminology is spot removal, not stain removal. Although that could be done, you know, but the point is, you know, emergency spot and stain hotline, what do you do if you spill something? And you could have a hotline that just gives people advice or how to keep your carpet looking great after it's been clean. You know, call this 24 hour free recorded message. And it's just, you know, maintenance tips. So we have many of our, you know, Piranha members throughout the country that have things like that. And you can find, if you really want to see some of these free recorded message examples, I mean, you'll have to go fishing for them because I don't have phone numbers right in front of me and nor do I try to, you know, put, put that out publicly because, you know, people pay for these things. And frankly, if you really want to see them, you can go to ethicalservices.com and you can look at some of our Piranha members that are members of ethical services, look at their website and you can see how many of them give free recorded messages out on even their website or they have consumer awareness videos and things like that. So you can actually see examples. But while you're at it, you might as well hire one of them to get your carpets clean. And if you hire a piranha member that follows my strategies, you'll see how they use this sort of stuff in all their different marketing. Just like if you were to hire one of Dean's clients for any of your real estate needs, you'll see the same sort of stuff. One thing I wanted to talk about is another sort of way to use a free recorded message and talking about Terry Hunnefeld. Remember that guy? Do I remember?

It was just his birthday a couple of days ago.

Yeah, well, if he was cool, he'd be listening to Ilove marketing.

I think he does. He does. Hey, Terry.

Well, good. Yeah. Well, let's, let's, let's see him, you know, make a positive comment on here.

There we go.

Yeah, so when I, you know, when I first met Terry, he was, I mean, he was using free recorded messages on answering machines and, you know, his basement, you know, running multiple different answering machines. And he was doing a great job of, you know, I think he was the top, one of the top, if not the top real estate agent in Grand Rapids for a period of time. And, you know, he was selling a marketing course to real estate agents using the same methods that he had used to become very successful selling real estate using direct response. And he had actually bought one of my marketing programs for carpet cleaners because he wanted to see it as a model for selling information products because I was doing some pretty cool stuff with, with, with carpet cleaners. And, and Terry, of course, was doing some fantastic stuff with Realtors and he was selling, you know, a couple hundred thousand dollars a month worth of training course, a really great training course teaching Realtors how to use direct response marketing using free recorded messages in order to, you know, build and grow their business. And I had read his entire course. I mean, we're taught it was a solid, legitimate. Even to this day, that course is fantastic. And a lot of the stuff that, you know, you've taught yourself through by referral only, you know, that sort of stuff. And, you know, he was getting $50,000 a month in refunds at one point, and we were having this conversation and he was a master at using free recorded messages. And I said, well, Terry, you know, why don't you take the same sort of strategies you're already using, teaching Realtors how to market themselves and, you know, use it for after someone buys your marketing program and put a sticker on the outside of the shrink Wrap or the box when someone orders your course and drive them to a free recorded message. Because when you're selling information products, you can sometimes have really, really powerful marketing. And what we always have to remind our clients is sometimes you have to sell people just as strongly to keep what it is you sold, to keep.

And use what it is, to keep.

And consume exactly as it was when they first bought it. So Terry put together a sticker that basically said, warning, call this 24 hour free recorded message welcome line before you open this up. And he put it on the outside of the shrink wrap, and he also had another insert which he put inside and he tested different variations of it. And I'm doing this off memory, but basically people would call a free recorded message that was on the shrink wrap of the marketing package. And it basically was a message like, hello, this is Terry Huntefield, and what you hold in your hands is the most powerful marketing course ever created for real estate agents. What I'd like you to do is watch the Quick Start video, which was on VHS at the time, listen to the Quick Start tape, which was on audio cassette at the time, and read the 10 step quick start guide and you can start getting results in your real estate business like these people. And then it would go on to play actual live testimonials, case studies from users of the Gold Rush system. And by adding that sticker to the marketing program on the outside of the Shrinker app on the box, an insert that he put inside the packaging, it cut his refunds literally in half. And he ended up saving about $25,000 a month in refunds. And see, these refunds weren't coming back because it was a bad program.

It was overwhelming. It was a big, beefy program.

Yeah. And so what it was is like void of jack in the box, jumping out of the box and running someone's life for them. You want to engage people. The way that I explain this is kind of like if you can imagine a train that's connected and by the time someone orders something. And back in those days, it wasn't even like immediate download delivery. Some of the things even that me and you sell are instant. Someone can buy an ebook, someone can buy a video training course, and boom, they get.

Well, this was before the Internet, really. I mean, it wasn't even. That wasn't even a viable thing. This is, you know, in the mid-90s.

Right, right. And so, and so what happened and what I want to point out was just by the use of having a few minute free recorded Message included with the package they had bought. He ended up, you know, bringing in, you know, directly to the bottom line, an additional 25,000amonth. And it's not even the 25 grand that he got that he saved. That didn't come back as a refund. It was a lifetime value of that client because if they kept the program, then they obviously bought more stuff. They would go to his events, they would sign up for his newsletters, they would get additional training. And so anyone that sells anything on a continuity basis, I would encourage you to have the use of a free recorded message for any sort of stick strategy. I taught this to Dean Graziosi. He's the first New York Times best selling author to ever have a free recorded message on the top of his book. Yeah, you know, I mean, someone could be in Barnes and Noble, pick up a copy of the book and they can call the free recorded message and literally he could lead generate if he wants to, right off the book, before someone's even read it, he could tell them why they need to read the book. You know, that sort of stuff. And you know, Evan Pagan has used it on his dating advice products. There's just tons of people that have used free recorded messages on the outside of product packaging. In my Nightingale Conant program, I have a free recorded message sticker right on the COVID of it. So as soon as someone buys it, they hear a free recorded message from me thanking them for investing in the program, letting them know how to get the most out of it. Even if you don't sell information products, you can still use this in any sort of format. You can send a postcard to people, you can send an email to people, you can send a text message to somebody after they've bought something from you. If you had a restaurant and you're like, hey, sign up for our text messaging thing. As soon as someone is finished eating there, if you have a little card that's filled out, you could send them a thank you along with maybe mention this code and get a free dessert next time you come into our restaurant. Whatever. There's a lot of different applications to use it, so love to get your commentary on that. Dean and I want to talk about different ways you can use this to even hire employees.

Well, I was just going to mention that as another alternative thing. I mean, there's just so many ways. But thinking all the way through, if you start thinking about where in your system, in your business could you use a free recorded message? I mean, even if you use it just in standing Things, you know, if you've got a retail store or a location where people might come in and if it's closed to have a sticker on the door, you know, after hours here, call this pre recorded message, you know, and you can tell them whatever you need to, whatever you need to tell them. I mean there's just so many, so many different ways to use it. I really like that sticker idea on the actual vacuum cleaner. I mean for, for anything, for anybody, that's a, that's a great thing to use whenever and wherever there's an opportunity that matches a site specific type of thing, you know, like with your car or with, with anything like that that you could put a sticker on the actual location. That just takes kind of thinking through and reverse engineering what you want to happen. I mean if somebody is going to notice a spot on their carpet or they're going to notice something, it's probably going to be in the context of while they're vacuuming the carpet and that's going to be there right there for them.

Let me point out a couple of examples. For instance, there's a dealership in the valley that I have bought three Land Rovers, two Mercedes and a Jaguar from. And you know, they're all, you know, it's just one, you know, automotive dealership that owns a bunch of different, you know, dealerships and there's a few cool people there, but there's like idiots that run this thing like most car dealerships, right, what's that?

Like most car dealerships?

Yeah. And I mean, you know, part of it is they're just lucky. I really like Land Rovers and you know, that sort of stuff. But I think I'm gonna buy BMW next. But I give away cars, you know, I've given away a lot of vehicles for my better your best contests and stuff that I do for my Piranha members at my conferences, which is a whole nother subject we'll do on contest on a future edition of a podcast. But I've got a great way to just encourage your clients to utilize how to training stuff. And I've taught it to many, many information marketers. And basically when I go to the dealership and you buy a new car, it would be really nice to just know how to use the stuff. If automotive dealerships actually had a sticker that was on the dash every time someone bought a new car or any sort of walk people through servicing, not only would it be incredibly helpful and beneficial, but it would save them a bunch of manual labor of having to Explain people how to set up their radio, how to set up the navigation system. And you know what I would do in a situation like that is have a sticker that's put on the dash that says call this free recorded message to give you some tips on how to get the most out of your new vehicle. And go to this website so you can see tutorial videos on how to set up this. I mean, they could walk people through. So where they need a visual, it could show them a visual of different things that they could do with the car. I mean, in anyone, like in the appliance business that sells refrigerators, I mean, you name it, that sells anything that has steps in things that could be explained to people verbally. You could have a free recorded message where you get, you know, you can put it on a business card. Call this free recorded message for, you know, the most frequently asked questions about, you know, your new whatever or, you know, visit this website to see a video, you know, and you could drive people to a video that's sitting there on YouTube. I mean, you know, this is not elaborate stuff. And, you know, those are just some ways to do it. I have a friend that owns a fitness center, several fitness stores in the valley, and they sell very high end treadmills and exercise equipment and stuff. I don't know to what degree he's gotten there yet, but I'm hoping he takes it to this level. This is what I told him though. He sells True treadmills. And I'll just say that the name of his company is Fitness for Home Superstores and his name's Bob. So basically, Bob is one of the top sellers of a brand of treadmill called True. And they're more expensive than like a treadmill you would see in, you know, Sears or Costco. But to an uneducated person, they look identical. You know, you look at a, you know, $800 treadmill, why would someone buy a $4,000 treadmill? And I said, what you should do is you should get mannequins and you should have like put shirts on them and you put a button, you know, in the middle of the shirt. And you, you know, have like press this button to hear why this is, this treadmill is so awesome. And they press a button and there's like a free recorded message literally built into the mannequin right sitting there next to this treadmill. And it educates people on what makes this treadmill different than like an $800 treadmill or a $500 treadmill. And if you really want to get really kind of cool. You could take this wonderful creation by the very phenomenal innovator, the late Steve Jobs, and you put an iPad or any sort of, like, portable DVD player built into the chest of a mannequin, like a male mannequin, and, you know, click a video and watch an educational video about that particular piece of equipment. And if I owned a retail store and had an unlimited budget, I would literally do that for clothing, I would do that for shoes. I would do that for anything, because you could. I mean, it's like.

Well, now the real thing, I mean, what. What I think really is going to come from this is with those with the QR codes, which are. Are just sort of an, you know, another way of using a recorded message or a robotic way of selling. There are QR codes that go straight to a video on your smartphone. I mean, that's really. That's the same. All these things that we're talking about are things that are, you know, robotic marketing. They're automated. And it's the same principles that apply whether it's a recorded message or whether it's push a button to start a recording or to scan a QR code that goes to a video. You know, it's the same. It's the same kind of thing.

Right, right. You know, at our I Love Marketing conference, and a lot of the people that attended saw this, we actually had, you know, we had banners, we had. What do you call those? Like a frame sort of signages?

A frame sort of signs.

A frame signs, but I think there's a term for them. But, you know, I mean, my wonderful staff actually gets all kinds of, I Love Marketing branded, you know, things printed up for our conference. And we have, you know, all kinds of band.

The QR codes. Right on the. Right on.

We have the QR codes on all of the signs at the conference. So when people are walking around during breaks or. Or before the event started, they literally could go up to one of our signs, they could get their phone, and they could click on. And that drives them right to a page where they not only could enter their name and their email to be put on a list, but it also gave them some free goodies. And on business cards, I have a free recorded message on a business card, I have a QR code on a business card, I have a website on a business card. Because what we want on business cards is not name, rank, serial number. You don't want something boring. You want something that actually, like I'd said on the last Episode where we talked about free recorded messages. And if you haven't heard that one, go back and listen to it. It was the episode right before this one. You know, one of the things that I talked about is, you know, paper is expensive, cheap. And so a secondary reason for response, not just who you are and what you do, but make, you know, the. Make your message say more. How do you, you know, how do you say, how do you give someone a long sales letter without printing out a long sales letter? You put a free recorded message or you put a, you know, you put a code.

Right. Especially if you're doing things like postcards or things that have limited space. You get so much more, so much opportunity that way.

So what do you think, Dean, about, like, you know, the term secondary reason for response? You know, when you're running an ad going back to the days where there was no Internet, you know, most people would focus on what they. Who they are. They would put their logo or the name of their company, what they do, and they would have features, not really benefits, but what they do. And then they would have a phone number where people would call and hopefully buy or ask them questions, and they would get them into the loop. Whereas, like the term secondary reason for response, where you would place another sort of response mechanism in. Let me say this before you respond to it. Like, you created a different sort of response mechanism when you created the first opt in page on the Internet back in 1997. You know, you're like, oh, instead of someone going to a website and then looking at a bunch of information, let me set up like a door where they have to. Before they could enter, you know this. Before they could enter into the big space, let's have them give their name and their email. You know, it was a. It wasn't a secondary reason for response. It was just another way to think. Think about why someone's visiting a website. Well, the same thing goes for looking at an ad. The same thing goes for a business card. What are different ways that you can take that space and use that messaging to get people that are not ready to buy right now, but you can at least get them into the funnel. So what are your thoughts psychologically on that?

Well, I think that when you have it, when you have something that's easy for people to respond, even if you've got your regular phone number on there, and the ultimate purpose is you want them to call you and schedule an appointment or whatever it is, having something that's easy for people to do, that's sort of risk free for them to do right away without having to talk to anybody. It improves your response. I mean, we talked last episode about how as soon as I put the words free recorded message on my ads, I literally got between three and four times as many calls. Literally, you know, went from, from 10 to 12 calls to 30 to 40 calls. And that was a, that was a dramatic, dramatic difference. One of the things that it was kind of a cool thing we did in a yellow pages ad that I did for a dentist friend, he was running ads that were just like all the other dentists. I mean, like you were saying how all the ads typically have the logo and the name. And if you look at ads in any industry, they all look just like the other ads in that industry. You know, what does Dan Kennedy say about it? It's just like incest. You know, everybody gets.

Yeah, marketing incest. Everyone looks at what everyone else is doing and pretty soon everyone gets real stupid.

Everybody gets real stupid. Exactly.

It sounds kind of offensive to some people, but, you know, I mean, it is an accurate description of what people actually do in a.

That's exactly right. I mean, so you look at all the dentist ads. All of them had a half page ad and they all had or a full page ad. It was all the stuff about their dental practice, serving families or pain free dentistry, or they'd all have something that was making them try and stand out in a prettier logo and a picture of the staff or something like that, but all the bullet point things. So we took a little eighth of a page ad and put. It looked just like a public service announcement and it was just black ink on yellow paper. And it said, need a dentist right now. Call this free recorded message. And it had a phone number and we'd just say, you know, if you're having a dentist dental emergency and you need to see a dentist right away, just give us a call and go through the whole thing. But that was a dramatic improvement in the response that she ended up getting from her ad because she went from a half page color ad to an eighth of a page black and white ad and got more business from it because she was able to sacrifice who might be looking in the yellow pages to dominate. The real reason why somebody would look in the yellow pages, if you think about it, the reason somebody's motivated enough to look through the yellow pages and look for a dentist is because they're in some kind of dental paint, you know, not because most people are not kind of proactively looking for a dentist. In the Yellow Pages, but realizing that and focusing her attention completely on that and having a. You know, you don't have to call the office directly. You can call and listen to this free recorded message. It's kind of like a relief for people, you know?

That is exactly what I'm trying to say.

That's what I thought. But, you know, you and I are kind of preaching to the choir here because we've both been sold on using recorded messages, and we use them for hiring people. I like your strategy for. It's similar to my strategy, but I like yours better for.

I mean, I actually. I think most of the ways I use everything is better than yours. I'm totally kidding. No, let me talk about what you just said about the dentist ad. Say that again. Where you just. Because I really want everyone to hear this. And it's funny, the people reading the transcript. Read this again. So the dentist ad, the real simple black and white, said what again?

It just had a big headline that said, do you need a dentist right now?

Okay, so stop for a minute.

Yeah. Need anything you say.

Do you?

It just said need. Sorry, it was need a dentist right now.

Okay. I thought I told you to stop me.

Oh, sorry.

I'm kidding. I'm totally kidding. All right, so, like, what. So whatever business you're in, do you need a blank right now?

Need your business clean right now?

Right, Exactly. Do you need an IT professional right now? Do you need a haircut right now? You know, I mean, whatever it is, it is a template. Now. Is it going to work 100% of the time? Well, it depends on, you know, where you're running it, where people are seeing it, if they're. If you.

Certainly in the Yellow Pages, you know, do you need a plumber right now?

Right, right.

Yeah.

You know what would be so funny, too, about Yellow Pages? I would have. I would have cleaners. And, you know, this. This happens even today, with. Even probably more so today, where people would not be doing direct mail. They would not be sending out newsletters to their clients. They would not be nurturing their existing database. They wouldn't have a referral program in place. They would run ads in the yellow Pages because they can make a decision, a painful decision, once a year, and let the advertising salesperson sell them a yellow page ad, pay monthly for the thing, and then let the yellow page ad people put together the ad that looks just like every other ad in there. I would hear this so much in the beginning when I first started selling marketing programs. Why are you running a Yellow page ad, but you're not focusing on anything else. We're talking some people that would pay 1,000, 2,000, 3,000, $4,000, sometimes even a little more a month for running ads in the yellow pages, depending on how big of a city they were in. And they would say, well, you know, because so my, my customers can find me. You know, I run an ad so my customers know where to go. And I would always think, why on earth is your strategy for getting business sending your customers to the yellow base where all your competitors are looking? You know, I mean, like, they're all there. I mean, it's kind of like, you.

Know, and yet they wouldn't think about sending a newsletter to their clients or a monthly postcard to their clients.

Yeah, but they wouldn't do that stuff. And I will see people that will actually spend not only a lot of money, but they'll spend a lot of time on an image website. It doesn't have lead generation, it doesn't use compelling copy. They don't have a system of following up with people robotically. And they will just tinker with it and spend so much time, but you will not see them really putting together a consumer awareness message or putting together a 24 hour free recorded message, or figuring out an ongoing drip system campaign and all these things that could work so much better than this lame sort of website. And they think they need it. In the same way. They're like, well, I have to run a yellow page app because all my competitors are doing it. You know, I mean, I know many businesses that if they reallocated the time and energy that they put into, you know, doinking around and I'm. The word doink is like a nicer, you know, I don't have to use profanity, but I can imagine.

Why would you stop now? Really?

Right?

Well, no, why would you stop now of all time? To really stop? Why would you be concerned about it tonight?

Because, you know, there's different parts of me that sometimes has morality and others that don't. So.

You know, can I say Ilove marketing.com now, profanity free. Is that really?

Absolutely not.

Let's not go just. They're not gonna.

We should have a special. We should have a special profanity filled episodes of I love marketing and we should charge for them.

There you go.

Just so you know, people can hear, right? Triple X. I love marketing.

All right.

What was I saying, Dean?

I've lost track.

What I was saying was so people, they would doink around and I wanted to make sure the transcriber gets the word doink spelled correctly.

O I N K. Don't tell them. Oh, oh.

We're trying to test the transcriber here. Okay. So if you were to take the same energy that some people put into Facebook, into websites that really aren't getting a lot of results and just, you know, really get a good selling system down that is trackable, that is direct response, that is compelling, that really speaks to your, you know, prospects, to your, you know, ideal target market. You can, you know, you don't even need to have elaborate tools. You just need to have. You just need to have a system that works.

Right?

And so the reason we talk about free recorded messages so much and the reason this sounds like beating a dead horse to so many people is, I will say the Emerson quote, you know, you asked for a new idea when you haven't used the last one that we gave you.

Right.

And so if you're not using this and you're not really exploiting it, you know, we're really talking about this because we want to encourage everyone to go really deep with it. Because I envision a day where thousands of I love marketing listeners are just killing their competition in a good way using things like this because their competitors not only are not going to take the time to learn how to do it, put it together, get it right, test it, but they're just literally oblivious that something like that even exists. And then you can completely run a very successful business under the radar. And I mean, I speak from experience past and current, because currently, as an example, 25k group, at the time that we're doing this recording, I've got 93 people that pay $25,000 a year to be in my 25k group. That's close to two and a half, you know, I mean, another seven people, it'll be a two and a half million a year revenue business that doesn't even require a website. I mean, I kind of have it for no other reason than just to have a website. However, most people that have been brought into that were not brought in as a result of a website.

Right, exactly.

They were brought in through direct mail, they were brought in through, through referral. We have like John Jantz who's in the 25k group. He's one of the top referral marketers in the world. So I got all these marketers that I learned from them and we did a great episode on Referrals with John, which people can listen to on. I love marketing and So a lot of these old school methods take techies and they don't get them all excited about it because they want to hear about some website technique or something or some social media method. I will tell you though, I mean these sort of old school methods are tried. They're proven.

You know what's kind of ironic and funny is that we're literally 40 episodes into I Love marketing right now and I don't recall that we've actually had an episode where we talked about websites.

Well, we've talked about them briefly a little bit and. But yeah, yeah. I mean, do we even need to. Should we ever talk? We should do an I love market and we never talk about websites.

No, I got some cool things to say about websites. So I think we should ramp that up and actually do an episode about websites.

Well, you're like what you're known as one of the top Internet marketers in the frickin world and you created the opt in squeeze page that millions of websites all over the world have used. So it's not like you don't know what the hell you're doing. Pretty impressive, isn't it?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So let me talk about how to hire employees because one of the things that you know would me and you know the crazy guy, Alex Mendozian did a marketing program a few years ago called Stick Strategy Secrets. Right. It was really, you know, a way of. Alex kind of talked me into creating a program where I would document all of these stick strategies that I was using because he would hear me talk about what you do after you've made a sale. And you know, why don't you create a stick strategy and I'll tell you, I'll tell you a story. I was one of the ways that I, you know, to this day I still have the number one selling marketing program at Nightingale Conant. It's a really great program.

It's the only marketing program at Nightingale Conant. We always forget to say that.

What's that?

You always forget to say that it's the only marketing program at Nightingale Conant.

No, it's actually not. There's.

I'm teasing, I'm teasing. But that would be funny if it was.

Mine's better than all the other ones because it sells more. Right, right. No, there's actually, there's so many great programs in Nightingale Conan. I would actually encourage people to get a copy of Earl Nightingale's Lead the Field. That is one of my all time.

Even Dan Kennedy mentions that was the first thing that he. That He.

Yeah. You know, and I should mention that during the live webcast that I did for Mr. Dan Kennedy, over $600,000 in sales of his program came in during the time I was emceeing and pitching that program for Dan as a favor, getting paid nothing. $600,000 came in during my webcast, which I would love to take 100% of the credit for that, but there were other people that were obviously endorsing it to their list. But I'll tell you, I was the pitch man. And so did he fly you there.

On a private jet?

No, no, actually.

Did he feed you a Southwest chicken dinner?

I flew Southwest to San Diego, which I like. Southwest Airlines on short flights. I love Southwest Airlines. They're the one. One airline that does not. Well, no, Virgin is great also, except I've mentioned this before. Virgin does not have a hub in Phoenix for Virgin America. So I can't really fly Virgin America out of. Out of Phoenix, and there's a few other airlines, but, you know, the whole airline motto, you know, we're not happy till you're not happy.

Yeah, Squirrel.

Southwest doesn't follow that. They actually do a pretty good job. So, Squirrel. Can I finish? Can I finish here?

Well, that's what I'm trying to get you to do. So we were talking about the hiring.

No, no, we're going to talk about Nightingale Conant. And so when I was. When I was talking with. With Vic Conant, who is the owner of Nightingale Conant, about doing a marketing program, I said, hey, I'll either teach you guys some really awesome stick strategies on what to do after someone's bought one of your programs, and I'll put a really cool one together for $50,000. That will cover everything. Or we can do a program with me, and I'll take all of my marketing strategies that up to this point, I've only really taught to niche industries like professional carpet upholstery cleaners. Although they would work for any sort of industry. The only way I was really teaching them was through my monthly Genius Network interviews and through private consulting. Other than that, I was very much a niche marketer. I never created a general market sort of training. And so I said, we either do this for 50 grand or we do a program with me. We work out a really awesome royalty arrangement. And, you know, basically we can test all of my ideas with. With you guys. And so one of the ideas was to put a free sticker on the outside of, you know, the. The Nightingale program that drove people. And so when they Have a sticker that, you know is my voice versus without a sticker, refunds drop by 3%, which is substantial. So for every million dollars in programs that are sold, you know, we keep an extra $30,000 because we have a sticker on there that cost, you know, literally less than a penny.

Right?

So the point is, you can use this sort of thing. And so, you know, like anyone that has a package, for instance, a template would be warning, don't open this package yet. Before you open this package, first call to hear a free recorded message from, you know, you put your name at blah, blah, blah, and there is a link to get a free recorded message on the last episode with COA Networks, Aaron Gerber. And then you put, you know, your first name has an important message for you even before you open this package. And so one of the things I want to do is get Tony Hsieh at Zappos to start using free recorded messages on the outside of Zappo packaging. I'd love to get Jeff Bezos to start putting stickers on the outside of Amazon boxes. So all of those things are in the works. But, you know, big companies, that takes sometimes months and unfortunately, sometimes years for things to get integrated in. But, you know, that's the deal. That's the deal. And so let's go to hiring. So hiring Alex Mendozian, going back to that goofball. We had done this really great program together. That was me just talking about all of the different stick strategies and including in the programs called stick strategy Secrets. And it's like 12 hours of training with all kinds of things that you do after you've made a sale in order to make a sale stick. That's why it's called stick strategy. You know, it's like the after dinner mint at a restaurant. The reason that they give you a mint when you're done with dinner is they want you to leave with a good taste in your mouth. So after you've sold something to somebody, how do you leave them with a good taste in their mouth? And so a stick strategy is a way to do that. So that's why we call it stick strategies. And so I want everyone listening to think about what are the stick strategies that you use not only to make sure that people are happy, but that could get them to refer you, that could make sure that they keep coming back, that could add value to the product or service that you've sold them. Those are different stick strategies. And so through the process of recording stick strategies with Alex and doing this, he Needed a bookkeeper. And so I taught him a strategy on how to use a 24 hour free recorded message to run an ad. And in this particular case, at the time, because this was back 2005 or something, that he did this, he put together a free recorded message on how to hire for a bookkeeper and he ran it on Craigslist. And at the time the headline was your bookkeeping opportunity of a lifetime. And that is a great template. Your blank opportunity of a lifetime. Assuming you have a business that you can say that to. I mean, if you have a really crummy job, you probably don't want to call it your crummy job opportunity of a lifetime. But if you can actually, whatever, well, you might work. I don't know.

Right?

Never know. But so basically he would run this ad and they would call a free recorded message that says, you know, are you dependable, resourceful and responsible? Do you have lots of energy, a good work ethic and loads of common sense when it comes to book bookkeeping and credit management? Do you have at least three years of bookkeeping experience with direct response business activities online and offline? Do you also have a list of two or three solid references to prove it? Are you willing to keep all the financial matters current, including merchant and checking account reconciliation, client chargebacks, continuity programs, and any other financial related or conflict management predicaments you will face from time to time? Are you a champion at meeting deadlines? Do you have the talents to build and maintain broken rapport with high profile clients and the persuasive skills to overturn refund requests quickly? Do you have the patience to deal with the occasional meltdowns from problem children clients? Do you have enough emotional fiber to deal with the occasional meltdowns of your employer in that particular case? That would be Alex. Are you experienced with tax laws? And it would go on and on. And then it would say, we're a publishing corporation, no CPA is necessary. Our aim is in long term relationships. We are a high profile marketing company that is growing at a rate of 27% per quarter. This is not a W2 position. It would go on and on. But the point is he could say things in a recorded message that allows people to hear his voice and that he could use the right tonality. He could say a lot in the space of a small ad and then he would guide people to what the next step is. He would literally run. He did different things, but he ran this. What I was reading a template like that as the actual ad. And then he Said your next step, call a 24 hour recorded message and leave your name and phone number so we can set an initial phone interview. But before you call the number below, reread this ad twice and make sure it fits nicely into your philosophy and pocketbook. We want serious inquiries only. Key point. If you do not decide to call, we want you to sit back. If you do decide. I'm sorry, if you do decide to call, we want you to sit back, relax and listen carefully, carefully to the entire message. That way you can become absolutely certain that this is the position is the right fit for you because it may be your bookkeeping opportunity of a lifetime. And you can do things like within the context of a free recorded message. One of the things that I would do, I mean, I think the area where people just lie through their teeth is in resumes. I mean, I think resumes are just, you know, once in a while we'll use them because they'll contain like work history and references and education and. And that's kind of like a feature though. But I would tell people, write me a letter and tell me why I should hire you. And you then get the ability to. So there's all kinds of ways to sift, sort and screen people and do it robotically. I have videos that are basically videos about what I'm looking for. And I don't want someone sending a resume and then us having to interview them and doing all kinds of stuff. I want to sift, sort and screen people robotically. So I have carpet cleaners that are hiring carpet cleaning technicians that used to run ads and they would like have to field all of these phone calls, talk to many people that are losers in particular cases of not a right fit, that they shouldn't even be wasting their time talking to or having in person meetings with where they could sift, sort and screen people by using free recorded messages or videos in order to hire these people. And the cool thing is once you have it set up, if the position ever needs to be filled again, you just drive them right back to the free recorded message. So once you set up a hiring system using robotics, it's done.

Yeah. And you can turn it on whenever you. Especially if you need to hire somebody for that same position or any position really. I mean, it's very similar. It's funny because parallel to that, I kind of developed a system for hiring that was very similar to this. And we'd have people call and listen to the recorded message. And basically the recorded message came up with a little formula for the Recorded message. This could work to hire any. We used it to hire a real estate assistant. It would basically say, you know, thanks for calling about the real estate assistant position. We set up this recorded message to do three things. Number one, to tell you a little bit about who we're looking for. Number two, to tell you a little bit about what you'd be doing if you're chosen for the position. And number three, what to do if you think you might be a match. So first of all, let me tell you a little bit about who we're looking for. And you went on and, you know, listed the type of qualifications that you have for the person that you're looking for. And then the second part of it is to tell people what you'll be doing if you're chosen for the position. So here's what a typical day might look like or a typical week might look like. You'll arrive at our office between whatever hours, or you'll, you know, you could talk about the dress code, the office environment, or if they're going to be working from home or whatever the working conditions are going to be. And then how. And then the third phase of that is what. Here's what to do if you think you're a match. And I like this idea of send me an email, you know, or send me a letter telling me why you. You're a match for this. I mean, essentially, that's sort of what we were doing. But we would send people a, you know, an application to fill out with. We'd have a calendar, like a week at a glance calendar, and have them highlight with squares, you know, their optimal working schedule kind of thing. What the. What when they're available.

And.

Yeah, so it's just such a great, it's such a great thing when you have a system and an automated way to do something. So whatever position you're hiring for that, that's exactly how I would do it. And if you want to use that, that formula, it's, you know, here's who we're looking for, here's what you'll be doing if you're chosen for the position, and here's what to do if you think you're a match. Those are kind of the three big sections. You know, it's funny to me, Joe, how many things we've done that are so parallel without really the other knowing what we were doing kind of thing, you know.

Well, I think it's. I think once you embrace direct response, you'll find that, you know, like, I think great dancers probably have a lot of the same moves. And yeah, that's, you know, I mean, I think there's a lot of similarities and I think a lot of people that listen to I Love marketing are, you know, that's why we want people to go to meetup groups because I think you can meet other people that are doing very similar sort of things in entirely different industries. And there's so many little nuances that I think you can just tremendously benefit by, you know, being in a discussion group with like minded people, seeing different applications, having sounding boards and what's really great and what I, you know, hear from people that are coming to our meetup groups is that, you know, they don't feel alone for one. You know, they're going to a place where people are understanding them. And because of what we talk about on the I Love Marketing podcast, they have content that they can go and talk about. You know, so at the next meetup groups, people can be talking about how to use a free recorded message to hire an employee. And they can show their ads, they can show different websites that they're running, you know, help wanted sort of, you know, ads on and they can show people that to free record a message. They're driving them to. If you have any sort of product packaging or different things, it's really great because it just expands the thinking and allows you to continually improve. Because I think I love the whole concept of Kaizen. Kaizen, however you want to call it. Right?

Yeah, Constant improvement, right?

Yeah, constant improvement. And the whole saying little hinges swing big doors. I think W. Clement Stone is the original.

Is that.

Who said that? I think, I think I could be wrong, but I think it was W. Clement Stone. And yeah, little hinges swing big doors and sometimes it's just a little hinge is going to make such a gigantic difference. One thing that I would like to. How much time do we have left, Dean?

We got about. Oh boy, look at the time here. I mean, you know, five minutes we could go probably without being too crazy. We only got.

Yeah, you know what I'm going to do then? I'm going to. I'm going to save till next week. A really powerful stick strategy. When I say next week, I should say next episode.

Next episode.

Yeah, next week. I don't know where, you know, it.

Reminds me of like old Batman episodes where. Tune in next time. Same Bat time, same Bat channel.

Yeah. That was a cliffhanger.

That was a cliffhanger. And I don't even know. I don't even know what it is. But I've got that whole excitement about that. This is a cliffhanger. So go ahead and set up the cliffhanger.

Now what I'll talk about because it'll take and I will literally give people a strategy on the next episode that has made. And because I have such high add, you'll have to remind me. So like if we get on to record the next episode, I'm like, what the hell did we talk about on the last episode? You'll be able to remind me there.

You ruined the whole profanity free thing.

That's not a really bad word.

That's not okay.

Yeah. I mean some people consider it, but you know it's not the F word, right? Like, all right, so man, this is a very distractible call to me just having it. I'm having many ADD moments, but basically I have a strategy with the exact copy that you would use for when somebody owes you money. So if you're in the collection business and you need to collect money from people, I have a great multi step sequence of sending a letter to people and you can do this in the form of an email, but it's way more effective in a physical letter if you are in the collection sort of arena where people actually owe you money. And I have people that have had accounts receivables that they've not been able to collect on and if they have tried to collect on them, trying to collect on them in a way without pissing people off or whatever. And I have a great, very non threatening, effective way to collect money. And this particular campaign has helped bring in just, I mean, probably in the millions of dollars of people that, you know, needed to collect money. And I will share the strategy on the next episode of I Love Marketing. And if anyone is interested in stick strategies, you know, I do have a lot of additional training on it and we do have a program on it. However, I, you know, we'll come up with either put a link up on the page or whatever, have people make comments about if they're interested in going deeper with stick strategies. And one of the things that I want to do is teach a lot of these so that people can share them and talk about them at meetup groups because we do want everyone to go to an I Love Marketing meetup group. And we would like you to start a meetup group in your own community because it is fun and we've been doing it here now in Tempe. You know, at the time I'm recording this podcast with Dean, we've Got a couple that we've done, and the people love them and they're awesome. And I've even got one tonight. And so that I'm going to actually be at because I can't always be at the meetup groups in Arizona myself because of my travel schedule and stuff. But I have a wonderful staff that runs them when I'm not in town, so. So I'm going to go to the one that we're doing.

It'd be great, Joe, to take a little video of the meetup group tonight so that people can see what actually happens at a meetup group.

I will do it.

That'd be great.

I will do it. And we will put it online.

Perfect.

We might even put it online before this episode goes up.

Can you imagine?

You never know. All right, so anything else, Dean, that you would kind of wrap up today's episode with?

Well, I think we've kind of. We talked about some stick strategies. We talked about some different uses for recorded messages. Not just as a lead generator, but just showing, you know, what you can do after the sale and what you can do even to hire people. I think there's. It's just so, so versatile. There's so many, so many different ways to use recorded messages.

Yep, exactly. So go to the link. If you want to get a free recorded message set up with the company, we recommend COA Networks. They'll do you well. And, you know, just start using it and give us your feedback and make some money.

Amen.

And then keep paying us for these I love marketing episodes.

Yeah, the prices remained the same all the way through.

Yeah, it's free. Free. You know, and if you do. Look, here's the deal, though. If you do make money with what it is that we are sharing with you, then go out and do good things in your community, you know, support some causes that you want to support, you know, continue to build your business and hire people, pay more taxes. Everybody loves to do that, you know, and support.

Start a meetup group.

Yeah, start a meetup group. Support capitalism that's done in the right way, that creates some great positive impact to other human beings. And, you know, just keep, keep, keep supporting entrepreneurism because that is what makes the world go around for money.

That's what I'm trying to say right there. Thank you.

Yeah. So thanks, everyone. Thanks for listening. Thank you, Dean. And I'm out.