The One Where It’s Your Turn To Try It - I Love Marketing With Joe Polish And Dean Jackson - Episode #4

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

This is the I love marketing podcast. Hey everybody, it's Adeem Jackson and Joe.

Polish live and coming at you from ilove marketing.com so good evening, good afternoon. Good whatever time it is, whatever part of the world you are at, me and Dean are ready to share with you some applications of more awesome marketing for those of you that love marketing. And if you don't love marketing, I have no idea what you're doing listening to the I Love marketing podcast because that doesn't make any sense. But we're going to make the assumption that you're here to learn how to make money and use awesome, ethical, powerful, effective, direct response marketing to make your lives more easy, more lucrative and more fun for friends and family. What do you think of that, Dean?

That's fantastic.

Yes.

I thought would be a good thing for us to do this week is because we've spent the last couple of weeks you were sharing about the first success that you had with your consumer awareness guide for carpet cleaning, and I was sharing the success that I had with the six steps to home ownership guide. And you know, the funny thing, and we kind of shared it a little bit last week that these are things that we did before we, even before we knew each other. And I think that the lesson in this is that consumer awareness or education based sort of marketing like that is probably the easiest, best way to get your feet wet with marketing. Just kind of start thinking about flipping the switch and offering something of value to your prospects. And so I thought what we could do is kind of, you know, maybe explain what, what's going on with that, the psychology behind it and maybe the kind of the mechanics of how that all works so that any of our listeners could apply that to their own business. What do you think of that?

I think that's a fantastic idea. Okay. Yeah. And, you know, it's something that me and you both had to kind of figure out the applic ourselves when we were using it in our own businesses. And I mean, of course, in the different businesses that we consult for and work with and our own, of course, we are always going through the same process. You know, what's the application of this psychology? Because I like to think of marketing in a lot of ways as applied psychology. And there's a really great marketing book written in the 50s called the Robert Collier Letterbook. And it was about, you know, copywriting words on paper, which can now of course be translated to, you know, words on the Internet or videos or audios or like this podcast, you know, wherever words are conveyed. And Robert Collier said, you want to enter a conversation that is existing in your prospect's mind. So you want to enter a conversation that's already going on in the minds of your prospect. And one of those conversations a lot of times is I don't know how to choose this company, I don't know anything about this product or service. And so you want to insert the things into the brains, into the minds of your prospects and your clients so that you can enter that conversation and answer the questions for them of what do I do? How do I understand it? How do I make a decision on where to go forward and how to move with it? That's what education based marketing really does is it just educates people on what they don't know enough of in order to make a buying decision or any sort of decision. Or what do they not even know that they don't know? That's your job. Can I read a quote real quick before we get started?

Of course, yeah.

I mean, some of you say, no, absolutely not. So there's this book that was written years ago called the Book of Survival by Anthony Greenback. And there's a quote that says, to live through an impossible situation, you don't need the reflexes of a Grand Prix driver, the muscles of a Hercules, the mind of an Einstein. You simply need to know what to do.

I love that quote because that's great.

Isn't it great? You don't need the reflexes of a Grand Prix driver, the muscles of a Hercules, the mind of an Einstein, to live through an impossible situation. You simply need to know what to do in order for you out there listening to generate more business. If that's what you need marketing for, you don't need to be a genius, you just simply need to know what to do. We'll do our best to guide you in how to use education based marketing in order to do what you need to do in order to get people to pay attention to you and to do business with you. So you want to start or you want me to start? Dean, how do you want to do this?

Well, I mean, I think we can start by looking at the first element of it, which is the sort of prerequisite to using education based marketing is to flip the switch of your attention by taking the attention off of you and putting it on your prospect. Because if you're going to offer something of value to entice your prospect to leave their contact information for you to raise their hand and Identify themselves, then you have to take the focus off of you and turn the focus onto your prospect. So for me, as a real estate estate agent, that meant turning the spotlight off of me, saying that I'm the best realtor in Georgetown, that I'm the guy that you should list with or that you should buy a home with, because I'm, you know, me, me, me, and getting my name out there, you know, I turn all of that off, turn that completely 180 degrees, focused all of the attention on the prospect, and realized what they really want is they know, how do I buy a home? They have all these questions about it. So if I make it seem like it's easy by offering them the free guide to six steps to home ownership, that was a very good, outwardly focused effort to kind of let first time buyers know that here's something that's going to help you, here's something that's valuable for you. It's the same kind of thing, same thing that you would have had to do with your guide to your consumer guide for carpet cleaning. You have to take the attention off of yourself and your business and using your big logo and all that kind of stuff. I never did see any of the ads that you ran for your consumer awareness guide, but I'm assuming that they didn't have your logo in there or the picture of your truck or all about you.

No, not at all. I mean, as a matter of fact, if they had company name in it, it was kind of down at the bottom. It wasn't the main thing they saw. I mean, the ads, like any good advertisement, has a headline and headline. This is like copywriting 101. A headline is an ad for the ad. It's the marquee at the movie theater. Back in the day of newspapers, Dean, I would always tell people think about a headline as an example, that when newspapers were actually the main way that people actually got the news in print, not the Internet, could you imagine trying to read the New York Times and there were no headlines. It was nothing but text of different articles, that there was no way to identify what one article was compared to another article. There was no life section, There was no sports section.

They just all blended right in.

Yeah, it was all blended right in. I mean, how difficult would it be to fish through all of that to try to find an article that had something to do with something you were interested in reading about? I mean, it'd be almost impossible. Yet people do that constantly in their advertising. They don't make themselves stand out and if they do, they focus on themselves, like what you're saying they do, like the name of their company or how many years they've been in business or they'll put their dog in. This is the most ridiculous things, but they don't know any better. So putting the focus on the consumer, where you focus not on you, but really is like, what's the consumer looking for? What do they need to read? How does it need to be laid out? Going back to my Consumer's Guide to Carpet Cleaning. It's just that Consumer's Guide to Carpet Cleaning and Consumer's Guide to Chiropractic Consumers, Guide to, you know, Web Design, Consumer's Guide to, you know, Cosmetic Surgery. I mean, whatever your thing is. And that is just a template. So to make this as basic for everyone to kind of follow, I'd almost. I think it'd be good for us to kind of go back to talking about some of the education based tools that we created and then some of the ways we got those tools into the hands of prospects.

Mm, absolutely.

And if. And you can either kind of take people through. See, I'm trying to be really nice today because usually I'm just bulldozing over Dean because he's not a, you know, I mean, he's not a very nice person. So this gives me an opportunity on the I Love Marketing podcast to do that. But, you know, today I'm an especially nice mood. So I want to see if, you know, you want to talk about it first and then of course I can one up you.

Perfect. Well, you know, when I look at the, you know, we talked about the starting out with education, like my first thing was the first time home buyers and doing that guide to six steps to homeownership. And then the next thing that I did, I started thinking again. And I think the, the process here is what's instructional. The process of how you think about it. And it ties in with what you were saying in the, in the Robert Collier letter book. That. Which is a fantastic book by the way, even though I don't know when that was written. What year was that written? You know, it was like, I think.

It was like 1950 or 1951 or, you know, but. But again, I could be wrong. I'm known.

So if it was written that late, and it may.

I don't.

I'm not even sure that it was that late, but if it was written that late, it was sort of late in this guy's career that it was a retrospective. So it was talking really about Everything that he'd Learned in the 30 years prior to that. So it was like in the early, you know, in the 1920s and all those kind of things when it was kind of in its infancy, direct mail. And so when he says, you can only enter the conversation that's already going on in their minds, that is a. That's a clue to you to start thinking like a prospect. So when I start thinking like, what are people thinking about when they're thinking about moving to Georgetown? And so, you know, because I had already successfully had the first time buyer guide, because I was focused on what they want to know. What they want to know are, what are the steps to buying a home, how much can I afford, how do I figure out how to get a mortgage, what do I do with all the paperwork, what do I do when I find a house? All of that stuff. They really want to know that. And when you educate them, you kind of raise your esteem in their mind. You become the one that they turn to. Now, when I started thinking about that, another target market, another group of people who I wanted to serve were people who were moving into Georgetown, people who were moving into Halton Hills that didn't know exactly what to expect when they get there, or what the houses sell for or any of that. And so I created the Guide to Halton Hills House Prices to give people an idea that of the kinds of homes that are available, the price range, give them maps and community information and all the things that somebody who was moving to Georgetown would want to know. And so put that together and offered that as the free, you know, 1993 guide to Halton Hills House Prices. And so people would eat that up, they would call for that, because it's exactly what they want to know. If I was really started to think about the arc that somebody goes through when they're thinking about moving to a new community, you know, they start by, well, what about Halton Hills? You know, what about Georgetown? What if we went out there? I don't know what houses sell for out there. Let's go take a drive out there, or let's pick up the real estate newspapers when we get there and see what prices are. Maybe we'll pop into some open houses or start gathering information. Everybody, before they make any kind of decision or any kind of purchase, especially a major purchase like that, they're going to do their homework, they're going to do their research. And so I put together a guide that had. I went and took 60 pictures of different house styles that were available in Georgetown put them all nicely in a guide format and put a little pricing grid so you could see that, you know, these kind of homes, these three bedroom bungalows, all are in, you know, this price range, price range B. And I had the foresight to kind of grid them like that. So all I would have to change to update the guide was change the price ranges so that all the B's were all going to go up relative to the C group. Same kind of thing. Even if they went up, all I had to do was change the inside page that showed the prices. But that little process of offering something, when people are looking through that Holmes magazine and they come across this ad that offered the free guide to Halton Hills house prices, they say, that's exactly what I want, that they would do something like that. The first time that they look through the newspaper, the first time they come across it faster than they would call somebody on a particular property to find out any information about it. And so when you think about that is what is the first step that somebody would do to start investigating whatever business you are in, whatever kind of business, whatever kind of service you're offering or product you're offering, what would be people's first steps in order to educate themselves about that? And so that formula of thinking about who your prospect is, it always starts with a target market. It always starts with that. Once you know who that target market is, you can do what may be the most valuable thing you could possibly do is to start thinking like they would think about buying what it is that you have. And so when you start thinking like that, you really can kind of get into that mode and you get into that scenario of thinking, where would I go to get this information and what kind of information would I be most interested in? And you can build the answer to that. You know, you can build the solution by just thinking through what are the questions that they would have. What do they need to know in order to make this decision? What's their criteria for comparing one option versus another option? And so just thinking that through, and that would apply to anything, and that would apply to any kind of a business. And you and I have seen this applied to countless different businesses. Did you evolve your consumer awareness strategy from the first guide to doing other types of educational marketing like that?

Oh, yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, once I started teaching cleaners, you know, then we have all the different sub niches of that, you know, in the cleaning industry, from restoration to, you know, house cleaning to hard surfaces. You know, that's kind of where it first started, then it started going into other service businesses. And we've got consumer guides for heating, air conditioning, for pest control, for home remodeling, for printing, for auto sales, on how to buy a used car, how to not get ripped off by a, you know, car salesperson, how to not overpay, how to, you know, medical karate, schools, florists, painters. I mean, you know, everything from very high level. You know, there's this one organization, Pinnacle Care International, that's a concierge medical service that created a consumer guide for, you know, very affluent people looking for the very best, you know, concierge sort of, you know, medical and health care, you know, consumer guides for, you know, graphic design, for, you know, lead conversion business to business, you know, consumer. We have consumer guides for nonprofit organizations that explain, you know, what in many cases are not called consumer guides. They could be free reports or they could be called educational booklets. We have, you know, guides that once some. Someone's already a client, how to actually navigate through the different services for employment agencies and credit repair, that sort of stuff. So, yeah, back when yellow pages were such a big. Which they still are, which is kind of funny, most people would not think that yellow pages people advertising anymore. But I don't know if I mentioned this on one of our previous podcast, but I recently went to Alaska and one of my piranha members in the cleaning industry had been running yellow page ads for years with my stuff, over a decade. And they're still running a yellow page ad where most people have just completely dropped out of the phone book in its entirety. And they told me they're getting a very big roi. And what do they do in the ad? They drive people to a free recorded message to basically get the recorded version of a consumer awareness guide and drive people to a website in order to get educated. So, yep, it is applicable. One thing I'd like to mention, Dean, you're talking about your real estate application. I want to again read my consumer guide, but this time I want people to listen to it from a different angle. I'll say it as if I'm reading it for the carpet cleaners, but I'd like you to insert your own business in it and see if you can come up with the number. The specific things going back to when I first paid a copywriter to write my consumer awareness guide, before I even understood all this marketing stuff, back in 1992. 1993 was when I first started using consumer awareness guides. You know, I had to sit down with a copywriter and Talk through all of the things that consumers didn't know that they didn't know about carpet cleaning. And I needed to take something and make it sound exciting because the typical, you know, promotion that I was doing was name, ranked, serial number, blown up version of my biggest business card. What, you know, name of the company, what we did, list of services, phone number, you know, I mean, that would be the. To this day, that's what many businesses are. They have their logo, they have their name, they have their list of services or what their product is, a list of features. And if they're lucky, there's some benefits. A feature is what the product or service is or what it does. That's the feature. The benefit is what the product or service does for the person using it, how they actually benefit. Instead of a brochure, I wanted something different that was more valuable. And so on the very cover of this consumer guide to Carpet Cleaning, which is literally, it could be an 8.5 x 11 size paper folded over as a booklet, and it could be printed on black and white paper, made very inexpensively if you're doing a print version or of course, PDF or however you want to put it online. And it would say Consumer's Guide to Carpet Cleaning by your name and then your company name. Read this guide and you'll discover. See, people love to discover things. In many cases, the word discover in the right context is better than the word learn, because most people don't want to learn anything, they want to discover things. So read this guide and you'll discover how to avoid 4 Carpet Cleaning RIP offs. So I had to come up with what are the four ways that carpet cleaners actually rip people off? And if there would have been seven ways, I would have written the seven ways. So how to avoid four carpet cleaning rip offs. So if you're in, say the auto repair industry, and there are ways that some auto repair companies actually rip people off, or charge them too much, or have someone that's naive about their car come in and pretend like something's wrong with it. I mean, how do people actually take advantage of people? So that was up at the top because no one wants to get ripped off. So that's one of the reasons why. Read this guide and you'll discover how to avoid four carpet cleaning rip offs, or how to avoid four web design or lawyer, or whatever, whatever your industry is, what are the rip offs that they have? So that was the first one. The second was six costly misconceptions about carpet cleaning. And by the way, one of the four carpet cleaning rip offs is people that use bait and switch. That would be one, six costly misconceptions about carpet cleaning, such as you clean your carpets and then they get dirty quicker. They never get dirty or quicker. That doesn't make any sense. Unless the carpet cleaner left some sort of residue that attracted dirt to it or that steam cleaning your carpet is going to damage the carpet. Well, it's not going to damage the carpet. It's actually one of the best ways to clean a carpet, but it has to be done by real professionals, things like that. So six costly misconceptions about carpet cleaning. So you would put six costly misconceptions about blank or two costly misconceptions or 17 costly misconceptions, whatever your industry is. And then I threw in a piece of interesting copy that said crawling critters and a guide to the slime, grime and livestock that's seeping, creeping and galloping through your carpet. Well, it sounds sort of funny, but the purpose of advertising is to not be funny. You don't want to try to humor people. You actually want to sell them something. You want to educate them. That was a piece of coffee that just happened to sound really interesting. Crawling critters and crud, a guide to the slime, grime and livestock that's seeping, creeping and galloping through your carpet. Whatever version you want to come up with, you could use something like that. Then another question that consumers would have is what method do I use dry cleaning or do I use steam cleaning? What do I use? For one, there's no such thing as dry cleaning a carpet like you would dry clean clothes because you could never, I mean, you just couldn't clean a carpet that way. You would destroy the carpet if you use the same solvents in the quantities that they would use, like a dry cleaner to clean clothing. So all methods of carpet cleaning utilize water. It's just they do it in different ways. Some are with steam cleaning, some are with absorbent compounds. But the average consumer, including everyone listening to I love marketing, don't think about this stuff. They don't know it. So which method cleans best? Because they're having different companies. So if you are in an industry where there's different methodologies than you would have, what brand works best, what method, what strategy, what application? If there's accrual accounting or there's a different way of tracking anything, you would be like, well, what's the best way to do it? Then we'd have eight mistakes to avoid when choosing a carpet. Cleaner. Well, almost every industry has mistakes. 7 mistakes to avoid when choosing a dentist, or 4 mistakes to avoid when hiring a realtor, or 10 mistakes to avoid when hiring a business attorney, whatever the deal is. So I put eight mistakes to avoid when choosing a carpet cleaner. Then the next one was the importance of value and price. When people say, how much do you charge? Well, compared to what? Compared to someone that provides a crappy product or service, or compared to the very best. What's the difference between Motel 6 and the Four Seasons? Well, it depends on what you're looking for. If you're looking for just bare bone price, then you know. But in many businesses, people know the difference between Four Seasons or Motel 6 if they've ever gone and stayed in hotels, especially either one. And most people have at some point in their life stayed at a really nice place or a really inexpensive place. But if they don't understand your industry or your business, what's the difference between this dentist over here that cleans teeth for $50 and the one over here that charges 400? I mean, what is the difference? Basically, it's always really good to have something that addresses price. And then the next one is why you want a clean, healthy carpet. Well, that's kind of assumptive because maybe they don't, maybe they just don't care about healthy. Maybe they just want it to look really clean because they're having a dinner party two days from now and they just don't want to be embarrassed. But why you want a clean, healthy carpet? Not just clean, but healthy carpet. And then the next one was 100% no risk guarantee. Well, we wanted to put 100% no risk guarantee on there because we want to take, take all of the fear out of doing business with you, as in my case, my company. But read this guide and you'll discover 100% no risk guarantee. Well, that just makes the assumption that you should never hire a company if they don't offer a guarantee. I believe that to be absolutely true. Given the choice of hiring a company that 100% guarantees that if you're not happy, you get all your money back versus one that doesn't, I'm going to feel a heck of a lot more safe with a company that offers in writing 100% money back guarantee. And then the last one on the very cover was four steps to a Fresh, Clean, healthy carpet. So it sounds real easy. Four steps to a Fresh, Clean, healthy carpet. It could be two steps, it could be five steps, whatever. And if this is for a personal trainer, it could be six steps to getting the body you desire in X time period or whatever. Then it would go on to say, provided as an educational service by your company name, specialist in carpet cleaning or whatever, your name, owner, your phone number or your website or your email, whatever you would put on there. So that's just the COVID I'd like to read some of the inside of it to kind of break this down so that everyone listening kind of sees the application. But I wanted to see if you had any comments on anything that I've said.

Okay. Yeah, I'm looking something like with an ear to what the motivators are for people like when you think about what really. Because it is really all about psychology. So when you think about it, we know that people are motivated by either pain or pleasure or they're motivated to move away from pain or towards something good. And it struck me that, you know, these consumer awareness guides because we always use kind of the fear based. We kind of play up that avoiding these mistakes because people will go much farther out of their way to avoid making a dumb mistake than moving towards something. Some people. But then, you know, you can use that same thing with the moving towards appeal by promising not just the information, but promising sort of information that leads to a big pleasurable benefit. I'm going to tell you about my friend Lane Bowers, who's the world's leading barefoot water skier and how we applied this all these same things to his. His barefoot water ski school. But let's finish up and I'll tell you. I'll use Layton's example here of how we put together his free ebook, how to be the best barefooter on your lake.

I love it. I love it. Yeah. So once I've written those bullets on the front of the consumer guide, you'd open it up and it would say dear homeowner. And if you're business to business, it would be dear business owner. Or if you're a patient. Dear patient. If you are, what would be a barefoot water skier? Yeah, deer. Barefoot water skier, whatever. A runner. Deer runner. Deer skier, deer fly fisherman or fisher woman. Or if you're an alien, say you're marketing to aliens. It would be like dear alien.

Yeah, the aliens guide to moving to Earth. Yeah.

Yes, exactly. Or to abducting, you know, whatever. I mean. And again, aliens, I think for movies tend to abduct, but I really don't think they're that way. But anyway, all right, so see you come to. I love marketing to hear crazy people talk. Dean actually is crazier than me. Although I may sound weird right now, trust me, Dean is the crazy one.

That's probably true. Yeah.

So. Dear homeowner, choosing a carpet cleaner isn't easy. Why? Because you're bombarded with misleading advertising, confusing claims and simply bad information. From super low prices and high pressure sales to unqualified technicians and near worthless methods. How do you ever find a qualified, competent, professional carpet cleaner? You start by reading this consumer guide. In this fact filled booklet, you'll discover how to avoid four carpet cleaning rip offs, eight mistakes to avoid when choosing a carpet cleaner and four steps to a fresh, clean, healthy carpet. We wrote this guide to help you better understand carpet cleaning. Now with this information you can make an informed, intelligent decision. And if you have any questions about carpet or upholstery cleaning, you're invited to call us at your phone number. We've dedicated our business to educating consumers. We'll be happy to help you in every way. Cordially, your name, your company specialist in carpet cleaning. So that's like the first introduction. And again, we're giving you this under the assumption that you're ethical, that you're qualified, that you deliver great services and all that. And if you're not, you really need to get skilled at delivering an awesome, wow, incredible service that really adds value for other people's lives. So going with that assumption that you're doing that this sort of marketing is non threatening. It's totally ethical. Even if someone choose not to do business with my company at the time as a carpet cleaner, I'm still giving them very valuable information on how to make an informed, intelligent decision. Which the paragraph I read says. Now let's say pick an industry dean other than carpet cleaning that I could apply this to, that you could think of.

Podiatry.

Podiatry.

Do you know what that is?

Why don't you inform me? Something to do with kid pets. What is it?

No, podiatry is a foot doctor.

Oh, really?

Yeah. The reason I said that I just played golf today and I saw this.

You went to a podiatrist today?

No, no, I played golf today.

Oh, you played golf?

Country club. Yeah. No, one of the guys at my country club is a podiatrist. Oh, I see, I see.

Yeah, I've actually had to go to a podiatrist before and you know, I won't even go there. But anyway, let's say.

Okay, so I've had.

No, actually I'll tell you. I'll tell you a story too. I have had a nail permanently destroyed by Going to the wrong doctor for a hangnail, that was so bad years ago, it was like killing me. And I went to this doctor and he literally like injected me into my big toe and cut in to my. I mean, it would probably like, you know, it'll probably gross people out if I tell the whole thing, but literally it took like almost a month for my toe to heal. And to this day it's always been sort of irritating. And had I had a consumer guide at the time to actually help me select that sort of thing.

Consumer guide to hang Nails?

Yeah, could you imagine? So let's not talk about that one. That one gives me nightmares. Let's pick another one. Although that's an easy one to do. Dear patient, choosing a podiatrist isn't easy. Why?

Blah, blah, blah. So I actually played golf with my dentist.

Okay, let's do dentist because it'll be easier for me to pronounce than podiatrist. But dear patient or dear toothache sufferer, choosing a dentist isn't easy. Why? Because you're bombarded with misleading advertising, confusing claims and simply bad information. From super low priced dentists to prices all over the map to how do you determine who's the most qualified dentist? To pain free methods, to et cetera, et cetera. How do you ever find a qualified, competent professional dentist? You start by reading this consumer guide. In this fact filled booklet, you'll discover how to avoid choosing the wrong dentist. 8 mistakes to avoid when going to the dentist. 7 questions to ask any dentist before you have any cosmetic surgery or orthodontics of any kind. We wrote this guide to help you better understand, you know, making this decision. Now with this information you can make an informed, intelligent decision. Now obviously you can tweak it and there's some terminology that I would, I would change a little bit off the top. It's pretty formulaic. And so you can take this sort of template and use it it for anything. And I will tell you, people will spend hundreds of hours and thousands of hours and never get anything even remotely as compelling or as close as what I just went over with everyone in the last 10 minutes.

Of course we have all these transcribed so they can just take it right from the transcript.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. And so there you go. Now there's more way. Even in the Nightingale Conant program, there are templates of questions on how to create a consumer guide. I have a consumer guide generator that helps people walk through, but I've just explained the methodology on how to do it. Once you have this Sort of educational piece. You can turn it in. It could become the template for a video. It could become the template for a seminar. It could become guides. You can put it on single pages. If you just want to have informational things that are handed out to people, you can use it online, offline. You can have free recorded messages. There's all kinds of different ways. How many different ways are there to learn, to educate, and to teach? There are so many different applications once you get it created. And so I would encourage everyone you know, after listening to this podcast, to take a stab at creating your first educational communication to your prospects, to your clients, no matter what industry you're in.

Yeah, so. So. So let me share with you how we did this with my friend Lane, then. So my friend Lane Bowers, he's the world champion barefoot water skier. And have you ever seen anybody. Have you ever seen barefoot water skiers? Do you know what that's all about?

You know, I've seen it on tv, but I know nothing about it. Yeah.

X Games other than I can't do it. He won a gold medal at the X Games and all that stuff. So the. It's a. Basically, these guys water ski without skis. So they just go out and they're, like, going at 30 miles an hour or, you know, maybe even 40 miles an hour on the surface of the water with just their bare feet right behind the rope, and they're doing all these tricks and. And doing all these.

They're hopping like the Loch Ness monster and stuff.

Yeah, exactly. And so. So Lane is. Is one of the best in the world at this. And he's got a ski school here in Winter Haven where people come from all over the world to come and train with him. And he's got a huge list of people who are. Who are barefoot water skiers, you know, and this is something that we've been working on this now probably for 10 years. And, you know, you started out with. We started talking about how could we put together this. I started sharing within this formula, and how can we apply this to barefoot water skiers? So I asked him, you know, what do. What do barefoot water skiers want more than anything? Like, what's the best thing? And I had this idea because I know guys up in Ontario who barefoot water ski, and I know that they are really competitive about it, and they kind of. When people start barefoot water skiing, they start out on water skis a lot of time, and then the big thing is to drop the water skis and then see how far you can go with falling kind of thing. That's, that's the yahoo way of doing it.

You know, they go.

They go down and say, I got all the way to that fourth dock, you know, before I fell. And yeah, well, I got all the way to that fifth dock, you know, so they're very competitive about it. And so we came up with this title for his ebook called how to be the best barefooter on your lake. And because that's, that's where everybody does their water skiing and they're, you know, competitive with the guys that they ski with. And so we just went through and I started asking them questions like, what kind of things do people want to know? So we have all of these, all these bullet points that people, you know, that kind of offer big benefits. You know, the easy way to do barefoot ski front deep water starts from the boom and from the long line. How to do front and barefoot skiing back one foots like the pros without killing yourself trauma. The lame dog secret to easy front and back barefoot skiing toeholds and all these things, they don't mean anything to us. But to those guys, that's the language that they speak. You know, this is the kind of thing that they need to know. And then there was a very funny one because I was writing these, these, these bullet points for Lane. And I was like, you know, the secret to making your back swallow and look like a walk in the park. And it was. There was another one that, you know, and I was saying the easy way to do, you know, front line overs or what. I forget what the name of the trick was. And he's. He was kind of. I could tell he was a little bit uneasy about that one. And I said, well, why is that? And he said, well, that one's, you know, the reality is that one's really hard. There's no easy way to do that one. So he's like, you know, what would be more accurate is here's a good look at a trick you'll never do. You know, a trick you'll never be.

Able to pull off.

And so anyway, we put this together and he started. We put this on the front page of his. Of his website. And you know, it was the only option that people had. That's how the introduction to the Footers Edge.com was the how to be the best barefooter on your lake. And you can take a look at that. It's still up now atthefooters edge.com but it's the only option that people have on that front page. And when people come to that page, they leave their name and their email address. And Lane has a huge list of all these people who are barefoot water skiers. And now his ski school is full all the time. He's got thriving equipment sales business from all the people on this list by offering them continually updated new information. You know, he's constantly doing new newsletters and new videos and new tips and all these things that are free to maintain that relationship with people. And, you know, so I think that the kind of the real value of using that consumer awareness model or that informational type of model to attract the contact information of the people who you would love to have as your customers or your clients or your patients or, you know, whatever the right context is for you, coupled with a follow up series of informational education that you're constantly giving people updates. So with Lane, he's constantly doing new videos and, and new newsletters with the real estate agents. When I did the guide, I was offering a Market Watch newsletter that gives people updates of all the new homes that have come on the market in any price range that they're interested in. And that becomes your weekly ticket to communicate with those prospects. It's not just a, you know, get the guide and then they'll do what it is that you're going to, that you're offering. But you've got a way now to continue to communicate with those people. So I think that's kind of a, that was an evolution. That was something that I learned, you know, not with the Six Steps to Home Ownership Guide, but with the, with the Guide to Halton Hills. I learned that the great thing to do next is to continue to create kind of, I call it like a flagship publication. That is your ticket to communicate with those people every single week. Especially now that you can do it by. Especially now that you can do it by email. Even though when I started doing that in 1992 or 1993, it was all done by direct mail, it was all mail. So I would mail hundreds of people this weekly or bi weekly newsletter with all of the new, all the new properties that had come on the market. And every single time I mailed those out, people would call me up and they would be ready now to start the process of looking at homes. And so it could be whatever the. As long as you understand that different products have different buying cycles. You know, I mean, the buying cycle for somebody getting their carpet cleaned is probably shorter than the buying cycle for somebody buying a home or somebody coming to train, you know, or Go to a ski school. So having some educational material to follow up with is probably even more mandatory for things with a long cycle. Did you have anything after the guide?

Well, yes. Let me give a couple ideas though, of what you just said, though. So for everyone thinking, okay, well, what would I possibly follow up with people with? Because, yeah, I mean, you know, there was definitely monthly newsletters that we follow up with and some of these ideas, I've used all kinds of variations of them and still do. I mean, even on my main website, which is my name, we offer a report on how to write an ad, which is very along the lines of stuff that you teach Dean. I mean, we're so much in the same way.

Very along the lines. Let's just say it's.

But like some ideas for people based on what you said, if they're at a loss for what to follow up with, say they follow the template that I went through on the consumer guide. They end up creating their first communication report per se, you know, and like, it could be, you know, one of the things for cleaners could be allergy relief secrets. You know, it could be a dvd, it could be a free, you know, report, it could be whatever, a little video or an audio presentation. So all consumers have questions. So you could have frequently asked questions. You could start asking your clients, you know, any questions you have. And the funny thing is, most people listening to it us, they have tons of information in their head. They've just never dumped it onto print, onto a video. And so this is just a way for you to organize many of the things you're out there communicating daily or, you know, you're not communicating daily because you've never thought about it until you heard me and Dean talk about it. So whatever motivates you, you most likely have the knowledge. You just need to organize it in a way that it becomes useful to you. Because if you have all this knowledge but it's sitting in your head, it's not helping anyone. And it's certainly not helping you leverage your time because you're delivering it, you're just delivering it manually. I mean, the way that most people deliver this information is over the phone or in person. And that's just an incredible waste of your time if you can replicate yourself through these robotic methods of delivery. So frequently asked questions is one thing. Just start asking people. And if you have a whole list of them, think about what do people ask you all the time? And then what are the answers? So you can follow up once a week, every few days, every Daily, depending on the life cycle again of the sale, because all sales cycles have steps to them. Another thing is think about what do your prospects and clients hate about your industry, about people in your business, what are their irks, what are their frustrations? What do they complain about? And when you really pay attention to the complaints, you can address them in advance, whatever the client's irks are. If you went out to your whole list and say, what frustrates you about carpet cleaners? What do you hate about service businesses? What really irks you about going to the dentist? That sort of stuff. And literally put your prospects thinking about those types of things and have them tell you and then educate them on how to avoid those things. There's a whole slew of stuff that in many cases you would never even know really bother people until you ask them. Once you do some Socratic asking of questions, you start compiling some great stuff that you can create follow ups with. In my case, with carpet cleaning, we've taught this and for years have used it as a healthy home newsletter. So every month you mail a newsletter for reminders. There's always reminder postcards, there's always reminder emails. We have text message follow up now where we actually collect the phone numbers of people's cell phones and we will text them on a regular basis. Useful information. If you have videos that you have a YouTube channel as an example, whenever you post a video, you can do that, you can drip on people by creating everything from, from, you know, Facebook pages, Facebook fan pages, Twitter pages, that sort of stuff. So those are just different ways that, that I've done it and teach our, our clients to do it. Yep. Does that answer the question? I like that.

You know, the thing about having the, the, that vehicle that, that, you know, flagship that you're constantly communicating, even if it's only, even if it's only six months worth. Like if you just think that you're going to consistently follow up with somebody for 90 days or for six months or whatever the normal buying cycle would be for somebody. So even for real estate, we've got people who follow up with people for two years and then they pop. They ultimately end up buying a home. But carpet cleaning, probably, if they're a really good client, they're probably going to get their carpets cleaned. What frequency would you say every six.

Months, a year the average person does it about yearly, at least the ones that are concerned. And if you're listening to this podcast and you've not had your carpets cleaned for at least, it's been longer than a year. You really got to think about would you sleep in your bed for a year without washing the sheets or would you use the same towel for six months straight, never wash it. Would you wear the same pair of underwear for months on end and never wash it? And this is the same fabric that you're walking around with your shoes and your feet and other people are walking around on it and you're spilling things on and the gravitational forces. The carpet is a giant sink in the home. And I'm purely saying this just to discuss people with this gigantic fabric in their home that they're probably woefully neglecting and it's just filthy. So yeah, the average person, person goes six months to a year.

So if you look at that, even if they had a six month postcard follow up campaign where they just take what you were just talking about, the things that irk you or the frequently asked questions or the things to ponder, new information, new developments, those kind of things, and just kind of, you know, drip those things for six months, maybe even every other week for six months that could be at the end. While you're doing that, in that wrapper of the valuable education is your opportunity to then make offers that are going to make it easy for people to take the next step.

Exactly. You know, such as like the world's most interesting postcard and that sort of. So you know, and you know what I want to say, Dean, before we wrap up, because I know we're almost at that time for this amazing, you know, session, this podcast of I Love Marty.

They go so fast, don't they?

Yes, they do. They do. And you know, is much appreciated from all of you out there listening. So, you know, please give us feedback because then we know what it is you like and what you most want to learn about and how you're using it. We want to actually hear how you're actually making money because we love this stuff. We'll talk about it even if we don't hear from each and every one of you. However, we would love to hear and see the applications of these conversations because this allows us to literally share what has been so beneficial and so useful to us and so many entrepreneurs out there. We really love supporting and helping entrepreneurs, especially those that are really good at what they do and really create immense value and just want more ways to let more people know about it so that they can continue to build and grow their businesses. The thing I wanted to say, Dean, is that when it comes to different services, like, I mean right now there's different free recorded message services that we use at different times. I have a reluctancy to actually say it, but because sometimes a new service will come up and we'll recommend different ones, I think me and Dean are going to look at listing our I Love Marketing Rolodex and recommendation service for whenever we talk about different strategies on the I Love Marketing podcast on the website, we'll have places where you can see different companies that offer services that we recommend and that you can use and that sort of stuff. And the ones that we've done our due diligence with. And some of these companies will be ones that we use and others we just feel are interesting companies and we'll let you know about. But we'll develop that as we go along with these podcasts. At least that's my idea. And if it's not on the site, then it just means that Dean just shot me down because. Because he's Batman this month and I'm whatever the deal is.

No, I totally love that idea. That's a great idea because it is a valuable resource.

So.

This concept of I think we gave people a really good start of how to think about creating and we call it a consumer awareness guide or a free report or an ebook or a free book or even an article. Something that is an item that somebody who is your ideal prospect would find very valuable in their search. They're beginning to search for a solution to the problem that you're going to be able to solve for them. And so I think this would be the perfect segue into next time. Talking about what to do once people get that guide or that report or that that book to get appointments with them. Because that's really where it all happens. An appointment or a sale where they buy something for the first time or they invite you over to their house for the first time to give them a carpet audit or to show them, tell them how much their house is worth or to do whatever it is that your. That makes the most sense for a first step for your prospect. So I think that'll lead perfectly right into. Into next week because there's a lot to say about converting those leads. We've talked about how to create the tool that will generate them. But then what do we do once we're, you know, getting all those people raising their hand.

Yep. And it's more than tap dancing with a box of donuts. So. So if you think that's what this is, what I love marketing is all about, there will be no tap dancing with donuts.

That's so funny.

At least for now. At least for now. Yes. So I think this was great, Dean. So, you know, hey, that's all I got. What's that?

I think this is a good place to leave everybody and then invite them back. Next time we'll talk about how to convert all of those leads.

That's what I'm trying to say. So thank you all for listening. Ilovemarketing.com Vote for us on itunes. Really high ratings. Really, really high. Perfect.

That's what we need. Exactly.

Thank you, Dean, as always. And we'll talk with you next time by.