0281: Digital Stone Age: How the World's Most Successful Advertisers Use Traditional Thinking and Innovation to Drive Growth with Bill Durrant

Hi, this is Bill Durant from XVeris@XVeris.com and you're listening to EA Interviews.

EA Interviews, episode 281, inspiration, transformation, success stories and the Imperfect Action Round. Seven days a week, join Mario Ficcini for today's Expert Authority Effect interview. Have you ever wanted to increase sales? How about grow your company? I know I sure as heck have. And that is why I'm super excited to have Bill Durant, President of XVeris Media here today. And he is so impressive all the companies he's worked with. He is the new best selling author of Digital Stone how the World's Most Successful Advertisers Use Traditional Thinking and Innovation to Drive Growth. Now, if you've ever thought about doing something on YouTube, you probably want to learn from someone who's won YouTube ad of the Year award. He's also a Harvard alumnus and I am excited and I'm not going to cheat a little bit here because he's done so many cool things. He's worked with Coke Masterclass, Bonano's Knicks, and I know I saw Nike on there too. I can't wait to have him up. So I'm just going to jump right in, thank our sponsor and we'll be back with Bill Durant. Every business needs a book, including yours. Visit freebusinessbook publishingcourse.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction, lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. Once again, that's free businessbook publishingcourse.com Here he is, ladies and gentlemen, Bill Durant. Bill, how are you feeling today?

Feeling great. How are you?

I'm doing excellent and I'm excited to just jump right into. You have such an impressive resume and I know you've helped thousands of people and just I want to know more about what does it take to get to that level and what should someone that owns a business right now, if they're thinking about doing ads, what's the first thing you could say they should really focus on? Because I'm sure we could go for eight hours on here's all the steps. But what's the starting point?

You know, the starting point to a successful advertising strategy that grows a brand is actually to take a step back and have a better foundation. So if you have a stronger foundation, you're delivering a superior customer experience and you're actually putting out, you know, a true standard of why your business exists and what differentiates you. And that's something that you can articulate then driving people to your Business is going to be that much more impactful. So I always say start with the foundation, which often has nothing to do with paid advertising, and from there use paid advertising like a megaphone.

Do you have any steps as to how to establish that foundation?

Yeah, I do think that there's a few elements of it. Some of them are more technical than others, like ensuring that you've got your digital space or your physical space in order and really set up to thrive and to do business, to take orders. If you're a business that does that online, to collect leads. If you're a business that runs off of leads, making sure that you've got your house in order technically and in a very rational way first is very important. But then I'll go back to that question of why, what is your business's why? And if you can articulate that to consumers and do that very succinctly, you're ultimately going to have a much greater conversion rate and everything that you do from a marketing standpoint will be significantly more effective. So I think if you're starting off from the technical standpoint and making sure that users can actually find you can actually do the things that you want them to do and to learn the things that, that you want them to learn, to understand why it is that you exist and make sure that they've got the opportunity to do that in a very succinct way where they're not having to work hard to understand what you do and why you do it, then that is like steps one and two right there. And you don't even have to worry about, you know, hiring a fancy this or that, you know, in terms of advertising, to make sure that everything that you do from that point forward is going to be significantly more effective.

Now, when you're working with all these name brand companies, big name companies, well known companies, whatever you want to call them, impressive companies, have you found that most of them struggle with this step or do they have it dialed in that you don't really need to touch it, or does it really depend on the company?

You know, it does depend on the company, but typically we work with companies.

At Experis, which is my agency, we work with companies that are, even if it's a Coca Cola or a Walmart or a Post or a big organization, they've got startup brands, they've got younger brands within their portfolios and that's who we tend to partner with. So typically what we found is that those are the brands that aren't as well established and they're not going to run like a perfectly well oiled machine like the Coca Cola brand or the Sprite brand or the big brands that we're all familiar with Will. And I think for me that's the most exciting and fulfilling part of it is that you get to leverage what's worked in building these big brands, but what's also working in building modern brands, what's working in building startup brands and brands that from the very start have participated in the new economy versus brands that have been around for 100 years. And I think it's an exciting challenge and it's great when you have the opportunity to learn from others and build off of that, but to do that in a new way.

So I was having this conversation last week with a couple author clients of mine and it's interesting how you sell books nowadays because it's, you know, majority online, you know, with the keywords and everything, versus the traditional way where you can do a PR tour and all these other things. And I think you should do both. That's just my professional publishing opinion. But I want to ask you about some of the companies because you mentioned the traditional brands that have been around 100 years.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of these startup brands where you can do new things with them that may have not really worked for the other companies just because of the time where they were living in.

Yeah, you know, it is an exciting time and watching how, you know, and this is the most important part. How are consumers? How are the people that are buying from brands or buying from us, how are they shifting and evolving their behaviors? And there's a lot of exciting things happening, but then there's also a very big element of stasis and a lot of the things that we used to do, we still do. Doesn't matter that Covid happened, although that accelerated a lot of change. And you know, from our standpoint, the most important thing is that a brand has the foundation of what's worked for them and understand, understands rather what, what has worked for them and done the research behind that, but then has the tolerance, the risk tolerance to try new things and to try new opportunities. Because what we found is that the science is very, very, very clear. And this is when you kind of ladder it up to the biggest brand level, folks that are in the tens and hundreds of millions of dollars and of course beyond that point is that you need to combine what's worked in the past, what's kind of traditional, so to speak, with new era tactics which typically fall into the Bucket of digital. And in combining those two ideas and not saying it's one versus the other, that's where people find the most success and that's where startups and direct to consumer brands are finding the most success. Now we've all heard of Casper and Chewy and all these different online platforms that were direct to consumer brands and they all grew based off of digital marketing channels. A lot of quote unquote new things, at least new to the last 10 or 15 years. But what they really needed to do was they could only get to a certain point from doing that. They needed to do was combine that with tactics that we consider to be traditional. Some folks even consider to be old fashioned, which is, you know, television, regular old linear television, outdoor media, radio. You're still talking about the fastest way to accumulate reach in television, the most impactful way to reach someone in the context of their daily life with outdoor and the highest reach of any media channel, which is radio, at least pre and post Covid. And you know, it's funny to watch new startup brands learn what they need to borrow from the past and it's of course equally as interesting and enjoyable to watch brands that have been around for a long time learn what they need to borrow from kind of what's happening now in the future. And ultimately finding the most success by not being rigid against one set of channels or strategies versus the other.

That's a huge expert authority insight, being flexible with what you're doing because like you're saying, the older brands, they may have never done keyword optimization on multiple platforms because they didn't need to. You go on tv, you say something, everyone's buying it, especially in the early days. Conversely.

If you've never done anything on tv, I want to ask you, if someone's only doing social, email, digital, you know, they're going up the ladder here on the digital side. Keyword optimization on Google, stuff on Amazon for keyword research. And then you have this side with the radio, you have the tv, you have the publicity and all that. And I'll put publicity in the center because that's, that's getting a lot really blurred lately. But tv, radio and any traditional means, how far do you think a company can grow? What are the biggest companies, you know, that are only digital? And how, where are they getting for a market cap versus the larger companies or the old traditional advertising?

It's a great question. And you know, there are people that I think in our industry in advertising there's this huge push towards everything digital and you know, if you want to talk about traditional marketing channels or media channels, you're old fashioned and that's not going to catch headlines. And there's a lot of people that have kind of positioned themselves as contrarians in the market and said, you know, is that really true? Is that really what works the best? And you know, what they found is, you know, a lot of them have kind of asked this question now for the last five or ten years of what brand, what truly great brand has been built without ever doing any traditional marketing exclusively online? And I think for a long time, I know for a long time we really struggled to even have kind of stabs at brands that may have done that and to even have guesses at brands that may have done that because they just didn't exist. And, and so, you know, those brands were inherently limited in terms of their ability to grow because they were never leveraging, you know, traditional channels that gave scale, that gave reach. And I think there's a few reasons for that. Number one, it helps a lot to have the impact and the scale of a radio or the impact and scale of television. But it also builds trust. When a brand is on television, we implicitly trust that brand more than a brand that we've never seen on TV. So you can talk about TiVo and DVRs and no one's watching commercials, but at the end of the day, when you run that kind of marketing mix analysis, TV still works for most brands in most scenarios, not all the time, of course. And I think that's really shocking to people. And what they didn't realize was how much they were limiting themselves by not participating with television. The good news is that for any of those channels, and this, this learning we found is pretty universal. So if you're growing a small business all the way up to a huge brand, this learning is universal. Of I'm utilizing digital channels. We have a number of brands that only use digital. And part of the reason why is that that's just where their budgets are at. They can't afford big massive campaigns. So we found is that those brands will grow utilizing those digital channels and they'll benefit from bringing in something from kind of the real world or traditional channel or something more tactile and tangible to their business. So for a big brand, that could mean something like outdoor or radio, but for a smaller brand that might mean something like trade shows or other types of in person events. Like you said, publicity is really straddling the line. Publicity is a good thing no matter who you are or where you Are, that's for sure. And that's what's really exciting is that this kind of essentially universal learning of if I can implement the best of what's working for me digitally, then augment that with other things that really reach people in the real world and continue to help me build trust and exposure. That's how I know I'm going to be most successful. And once you hit that insight, the kind of dogmatic, rigid approach to marketing goes away and your results and your ability to grow increase substantially.

Well, I appreciate you for sharing that. I know you want to take a quick second, but.

I wanted to ask you about the. Let's talk about the press releases because when we were talking about the publicity getting the gray area, I think again you start down here with, and it's not to say they're any less, it's just on this side, you know, you have SEO and digital stuff and then there's a mixing point and I'd say that's the press releases, because the press release essentially goes out digitally, but it gets picked up traditionally and that can be like the accelerant juice. So.

We'Re obviously saying that both sides are good. But would you say that you should start on one or the other, depending on where your business is? And there's a timing component to this as it, you know, if you're digital only at some point, it sounds like you should entertain traditional. Once you have that risk tolerance and budget, frankly to be doing it.

Yeah, I think that's fair to say. And traditional may mean, you know, like I said, traditional may mean participating in an in person trade show. Assuming you know those will happen again hopefully soon. You know, it may mean participating in something, you know, that's if you're a local business, something that's local to your community, a local community event. It's not just making sure that you've got your digital house in order. What I will say is that starting by having your digital house in order is imperative for almost every business. There's always going to be a few businesses that are kind of more geographically based, located in the physical world and aren't really as serviced by digital marketing channels, but they're very few and far between. They are the exception, not the rule.

And so do any come to mind for you for expert authority world? Like, do you even have a handful of those types? Because I know they're out there.

They're out there. It's more of like what is a, what is something that is an add on to another experience that I'M not pre planning that. I'm not searching for something that becomes kind of part of another experience. So, you know, let's use like the simplest, most basic, terrible way of explaining this, which is I'm at Disney World and it rains at Disney World all the time. I'm planning my whole trip to Disney World, everything about it, but I'm not planning on buying a poncho. Eventually I'm going to see those storm clouds and if I'm about to enter the park, I'm going to buy a poncho from the nearest CVS or the nearest person who's selling that or at the park.

They're only, they're on sale for 100 bucks.

Yeah, there you go.

So I'm looking at something that's not really a pre planned exercise that I'm not looking up even while I'm on the way, while I've got that need. And so those needs are very few and far between. Now for the most part we're doing our research and at the very least we're searching for something that we need even if it wasn't a planned need, and putting that into Google. So if you don't have your digital house in order first as your foundation, it's going to be a lot harder for you to get business. And if you've got that in order, that's when it's much easier for you to move on and start doing things like you said, like publicity. Because now when people learn about what you've got going on, what your news is, they've got somewhere to go and there's something they can do about it and that is so critical and key is that the journey just doesn't end right there and then hopefully they run into you at some other point in the future. The journey can actually start from there. When you've got your digital house in order.

How many people? How many. Yeah, it's fine. People are good. How many people do you think when they're looking for something they immediately do a search for it versus call someone or text someone or oh, these, these.

Days it's, here's what I will say. The vast, vast majority of people are doing a search for it. The most powerful touch point, however, is when they are having that interpersonal conversation with someone and get that recommendation or that idea or that lead that is far and away the most powerful way.

So you know which, whether it's on the phone or a text, they're probably going to say, I'll shoot you the info, I'll Just text it to you.

Right, exactly. And think about how many times that's happened to you. And you know that, you know, seven times out of 10 you just went straight to whatever product was recommended. And the other, you know, two to three times, you @ least very carefully considered it, which is almost businesses can ask for. And that's, you know, that's the foundation of word of mouth marketing. And, you know, really the best way to generate word of mouth marketing isn't to kind of pursue people who can help you there. It's to have a great product experience in the first place. If you've got again, that foundation or a great product experience and you make it easy for people to find, you find what you do and why you do it. Everything else that you do cascades from there. Substantially more.

Success.

You're sharing so much good information here. I so appreciate it. And it's just strengthening the case about the digital because I've had that debate with people. They're like, well, I don't really search stuff out. I just ask for recommendations. I'm like, what's step two? You're either driving and you're on the phone because you're being safe or you're, you're texting. In both scenarios, they say, well, I'll just text you the info either way. Which is a digital medium because you're going to the website to check it out. So I love that you're talking about that because I know you've done a lot with both and I think it's vital to bridge that gap because there's people who only specialize in one or the other. And it's why I asked early on, because, yeah, if you're doing TV ads, guess who hates keywords? And if you're doing keywords, guess who hates TV ads? And I never really saw it that way. I personally always saw it as if you have the budget, do both, however, to take out a Super bowl commercial the week you launch.

Probably not the smartest thing, even if you can afford.

It. Yeah, well, we're definitely aligned. And that's really the central thesis of the book that I've written, which is called Digital Stone Age, which is really that we are living in a digital age. But these tactics and these ideas and concepts that modern marketers consider to be stone Age, quote unquote, are actually just as effective, actually in some cases more effective now with the rise of digital, because there's more you can do about it when you're exposed to something that you see in a kind of traditional environment. And so understanding that duality is really important. But even if you're just thinking about things from a purely digital standpoint for budget or for any other reason, or you're just an exclusively digitally based business.

There'S actually another element within that, which is what am I communicating to people when I'm reaching them? Am I constantly asking them for their information? If it's a lead based business, am I constantly asking them to shop now or buy now? If I'm selling something online, am I constantly asking them to do something right away? Or am I blending messages of motion right now with messages around who my brand is, what we stand for, why we exist, what we believe, things that we call brand equity, and that's the other area that needs to be balanced, is even if you've got an exclusively digital marketing mix, you need to be consistently reaching people with messages that share who your brand is and what it stands for. And you need to be reaching them with messages around buy now, do this action, do whatever it is that you're trying to get them to do. And the folks that kind of overemphasize, and they almost always overemphasize on the act now message, they're missing an opportunity to not only drive some sales or drive conversions right now, but they're missing the opportunity to do that in the future, a week, a month, a year from now by building brand equity. So one of the things that we like to say is all media is performance media. Because even if you're not asking somebody to do something immediately, you're still finding out that you can drive a sale through a brand equity message. And it doesn't have to be Nike with Colin Kaepernick. And something that's divisive and powerful and meaningful and costs a couple million dollars to put together. It just needs to be something that shares who you are, what you stand for. So that then when they see the message that says shop now or buy now, they already know you and they maybe even trust you a little bit and they understand you and they want to do more research or they want to buy you or fill out that lead generation form that you've asked them to fill out. And that's what's also really important for marketers to get. And that also is universal. How you're communicating to people is just as important, if not more important than where you're communicating to.

People. That's another great expert authority insight, because like you're saying a lot of stuff you can do the immediacy, the sense of urgency. You know, buy today, this weekend only, all that stuff. And that's great for a short term burst, but if that's all you're doing constantly, the year goes by. You got 52 weeks of one week sales versus even going slowly, you're building up that brand and you know, maybe they don't buy today. That's great. I'll be here in six months. I'll be here in 12 months. Watch this. Because I think at some point people get sick of the oh, this week. Only until next week when it's the same ad with one word, chain. You know what I mean? It's like people aren't stupid. And if you're selling to people who are maybe that saying something.

Too. We, we have this. We would joke. So our office is located on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. So, you know, we have beautiful views of the Hollywood Hills and everything LA is known for. But we also have the whole kind of overdone tourist scene as well. And every week when we first started, we would all go across the street to the everything is $10 store where the 10 was crossed out and it said $5 every week because it was constantly reaching tourists who were looking over there and you know, oh, everything's on sale, everything's half price. But we knew that everything was $5 all year long and it didn't matter. And it was like such a great way of pointing out exactly the point that you just.

Made. Oh, that's hilarious. I used to work at Best Buy and I'll never forget the Black Friday season everything. The DVDs were 11, 99, 12.99 all year. And you know, people were tearing apart the bins. You go in to buy two or three, they're leaving with 15 because they were 999. So you go in to spend 30 bucks, you walk out $300 later, for what? Because you, you screwed them over, huh? You saved your money. It's a whole other thing. That's hilarious. I kind of want to go there and check that out now. I didn't know that, but I've been there. How did you get into this? Clearly you're successful with it, but what's the backstory on.

It? You know, I got very lucky that.

I went to a great university. I went to Villanova. And we don't just do basketball. It's in school. It's known for accounting, finance and marketing, which is what I studied. And while I was in school, I spent some time in Australia and needed to kind of fill my days and ended up getting a role consulting For Fox, for 20th Century Fox @ the movie studio in Sydney and got exposed to all the facets of marketing and knew that this was the career that I wanted. And the first role that I got offered outside of college was to come to Los Angeles and work in media and advertising. And it's been 18 great years ever since. But I think a lot of it is because what really appealed to me is how do you combine very rational, logical, spreadsheet oriented thinking with creative thinking and bringing brands to life in the world and going beyond the numbers and, you know, being able to do both of those things on a daily basis has been.

Really fulfilling. I. That's inspiring and I can relate to it because especially with EA interviews, there's a creative aspect of it for sure and I want, I designed it that way. However, we got multiple, multiple, multiple spreadsheets to keep track of everything because this isn't just like happenstance to pull off what I'm doing. So I think it's great because we've been talking about both sides, that duality you've been talking about. And I think so many people focus on one or the other and the synergy you create when you combine them is pretty limitless.

Isn'T it? Yeah, I like to say that it's, you know, people like to think of many situations in life as black or white and I like to look at situations as black and white. And you know, doing that and having that mindset shift, you know, changes your perspective on a lot of things. It goes way beyond just the work that.

We do.

Well, I appreciate you for sharing what you have. I got a couple more questions before we thank our sponsor and one of them is what's been the biggest transformation you've been able to give to a client.

So far?

Yeah, you know, we, we've actually done the, we've done a lot of the, you know, we've done traditional marketing for years and now we're going to get into digital. But actually for one of our largest clients, we transitioned them from being all digital to proving to them that they needed to utilize television and outdoor to reach more people and to grow their business beyond the half billion dollar business that it is or that it was. And they're now at a point where that business is 3/4 of a billion dollars. And we know that their expansion into TV and into buying and planning TV in a very digital, modern way, not just trying to go by all the old rule book, but doing everything more efficiently has really, I think, helped them radically transform their business and complimented the phenomenal work that their sales team has done in getting the brand into more locations. And, you know, we couldn't be more proud of that transformation and.

That growth.

Nick and Steve, cut this, please.

Well, that's inspiring to hear. Just, you know, helping them increase a quarter of a billion dollars. That's not too bad.

I want to ask you about.

Can you.

Hear me? I can.

Hear you. Okay, so after increasing a company like that, do you search them out or do they.

Find you?

You know, a lot of it comes from.

Them learning about us and from people that they trust within the industry and then having that conversation of, okay, we've seen what you've done here. How could you apply that to our business? And, you know, getting specific, and that's been really powerful for us. I think the other thing that we've done to help people find us is to share some of what we've learned. It's not just, you know, digital stone age, it's, you know, making sure that we've got white papers out in the industry and that we've got our name out in the industry so that people can experience some of what we have to offer from a strategic standpoint. And then ask us again, how can you apply this to my business and be specific to.

My business? Okay, is there a point where.

Like, in a revenue amount, is there a point where you need, you would say, be at this level or above before even considering radio.

Or tv?

You know, not necessarily in the sense that there are a lot of brands that aren't generating much sales, certainly aren't generating a profit, but have really strong financial backing. And, you know, brands like Buy, so the Bai, the Drink, yeah, they, you know, they just went for it and went straight into mass advertising on television with Justin Timberlake and outdoor and radio, and you name it, and we're able to generate growth and achieve their business goals of acquisition that way. If you're a brand that's looking for a sustainable approach to advertising, we tend to be digitally focused up until, you know, probably like the, like $200 million range. But you can now be active in these channels. And that's for national brands, by the way. For local brands, you can be much smaller than that. We tend to activate those channels, though, now for brands at an earlier level because there are more efficient and effective ways of buying traditional media that don't necessarily require big seven, eight figure price tags. And that's what's really exciting for us, is that everything is being democratized in terms of how we buy, which means that everything is being democratized in terms of what we can offer to brands confidently that we couldn't do just five.

Years ago.

So you're saying all the way to 200 mil for digital if it's a national brand, and would you say maybe 20 to 50 if it's local.

Or regional? Yeah, I mean, I think if you're in a larger market, like a New York or Los Angeles, all the way down through the top 10, you probably would want to be, you know, comfortably inside that, that 8 figure in annual sales range before you started jumping into those. Those touch points. But for smaller markets and smaller geographies with less folks, you know, you can go. You can go pretty far down. You can go down into the seven figures in sales and still have TV be relevant and appropriate choice for your brand. You know, one of the things that we see all the time is for folks who are still subscribed to cable is, you know, there's still a strong and healthy kind of local business ad block that runs every hour. And, you know, those are businesses that are in the seven figures and, you know, are looking to grow and to grow their revenue and to grow their scale within this particular geography. And for them, TV is appropriate and they found the right way to buy it and.

Scale it. Yeah, because to your point, if someone is still. If they haven't cut the cord yet, they're. They're loyal. They're probably going to buy something because they're all, you know, they're.

Sticking around. Yeah. You know, it's interesting because we have to act on both the fact that people are cutting the court, and we have to act on the fact that there's still plenty of people who have not yet cut the cord or may never. And, you know, those are going to be two different cohorts that you reach in different ways with different mindsets and approaches to buying, and they're gonna respond differently to your business or brand depending upon what you offer. And understanding them is a really core part of what we have to.

Do now. You know, I think most wouldn't think about it, but that's a very niche, special advantage that you can take. Take. You know, I love that you're talking about all the nuances of all this, because it really does depend. There's no one size fits all for any of this. So thank you for sharing. Specifically, I got one more question before we thank our sponsor, and it involves the wheel of whatever. So you get to pick yellow or black. Ooh, that's Decent one. That's a.

Decent one. I.

Like yellow. Yellow. All right, this one. See how that works? So your question is, you do all this stuff online. What do you like to.

Do offline?

I am an avid soccer fan and soccer player, so. So go to soccer matches whenever I can, whenever they're being held. So go Galaxy. And I play as well here in Los Angeles. And yeah, I would say that if you ask my wife, that probably fills up most of my free time.

Right now. Excellent. Well, appreciate you for sharing that and all the information. We're going to thank our sponsor and come back for the imperfect action round. You've heard me say every business needs a book, including yours. And it's true. And that's why you should visit free businessbookpublishingcourse.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. But you know what? Don't take my word for it. Take it from a few of my authors like Lori, I went.

From having an idea and a possibility.

To actually getting my.

Book published. Or Catherine, thank you for.

Making my mom number one best.

Selling author. Or Mary Alice, what he got done for me in three days regarding my.

Book.

Launch.

Unmanageable. John Cody. I've worked with Mario over the phone and online and he's been very helpful in getting me where I.

Needed to go with promoting.

My books. Rocio there's no way in the world I would have been able to do this with somebody else again. I've attempted it in the past. It didn't serve me. As a matter of fact, I ended up more frustrated than anything. So this has been a very.

Seamless process. Adele, if you're looking for.

An amazing business coach, I highly recommend Mario Ficini or.

Bill Benner. I can't make a higher recommendation than to work with Mario Ficini. He has been great for me and right now I won't work with anybody else except.

For Mario. Hey, their words, not mine. Visit freebusinessbookpublishingcourse.com to get started now. And I look forward to hearing your transformation as the next video success story. Once again, that's free businessbook publishingcourse.com and we are back with the imperfect action round. Bill, are you ready to take.

Imperfect action?

Born ready. All right, three questions for you. 60 second or less answers. The first one is what is the fastest path to.

The profits? Fastest path to the profits? Get your digital house in order. Understand the why of your business and of course ensure that when you do have marketing, you've got something, something to say and somewhere to actually drive people to. That's going to.

Convert them. Fantastic. I got all three right. I had them in my notes. I was like, please say it, please say it, please say it. All right, number two.

What is the biggest problem you see your prospects making and the fastest way for them to.

Fix it? Rigidity towards one mode of thinking. So we talked about that quite a bit and whatever that mode of thinking is, there may be something that works best for your brand or business, but it's probably going to work better when it's combined with something else that may not feel like it's in the same family. And that's, and that's where we see the most success for marketers and.

For brands. Excellent. Number three, what is the best way to maximize customer.

Lifetime value?

Oh, you have to be service oriented organization. You know, we say all the time that we are a media agency at Experis Media, but the reality, you know, that's what we only say to the, to the outside world. Internally we say that we are a customer service company who happens to be extraordinarily good at media.

And advertising. I like that. What books would you recommend.

For Extra Authority World, aside from Digital Stone Age, my favorite book. You know, I think there's, there's a couple of books out there for business leaders. Ego is the Enemy is one that I've recently read and it was just a fantastic approach on the psychology of leadership. And you know, I would say that.

Goodness Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell is one that was particularly influential.

For me. Excellent. Thank you for those. And where would you like people to.

Learn more?

Well, you can visit our website for the agency, which is xveris.com, e x V-E-R u s dot com. You can also look me up Bill Durant with two R's on LinkedIn. And of course you can find the book Digital Stone Age on Amazon and everywhere you are accustomed to shopping for.

Fine literature. Excellent. And I will make sure that makes it onto your featured show notes page. We'll have all the links for that. So thank you for everything you've shared. I've thoroughly enjoyed it.

Appreciate it. Thank you so much. This was a lot.

Of fun. All right, Expert Authority World. We have another great one here today. I'll see you tomorrow. Have a great day. God bless.

You're already the expert. But have you transformed your expertise into a tangible asset that will generate and qualify leads while increasing profit for you 24 7? And if so how well are you promoting it? With the Expert Authority Effect publishing method, it's easier and faster than ever. Visit freebusinessbookpublishingcourse.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction lead and product generating business book in eight weeks. Visit freebusinessbookpublishingcourse.com to get started. Now once again, that's freebusinessbook publishingcourse.com hey, thanks for listening to today's episode. I hope you got a lot out of it. I know I sure did. If you haven't done so already, I invite you to subscribe to the show and also be sure to check out eainterviews.com for complete show notes, the full interview video experience, links to the resources we mentioned, and more. Have a blessed day and I'll see you tomorrow.