0484 | Eric Holtzclaw

Hi, I'm Eric Holtzkaw, chief strategist at Liger. And you are listening to EA interviews.

EA interviews, episode 484, inspiration, transformation, success stories and the imperfect action round. Seven days a week. Join Mario Ficcini for today's expert Authority effect interview. Do you know your core values? Do you know what your business is about?

Do your customers do the people that you're selling to, do they know what you're about? I think you might think you have an idea, but when this episode's over and you're done listening to it, I think you're going to have a much better idea. I have none other than Eric Holtzclaw on today's episode. And we're going to be diving into all of this and more. Every business needs a book, including yours. And that's why I'm launching my new book to help you, regardless of where you think you your current writing abilities are. Visit eapublishingmethodbook.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 eapublishingmethodbook.com Here he is, ladies and gentlemen, Eric Holtzclaw. Eric, how are you feeling today?

Doing well. How are you doing?

I'm doing great. And I want to talk to you about core values and why they're important to a company. Why do you think they're important?

Well, without your core values, you don't know how to talk about your company or what you do effectively. And you can always tell a company that doesn't know them because they sort of, they have a mixed message to the market and, or the way that they're delivering their products and services is inconsistent across the company. So it's one of the key things to define you. You always walk into, you know, some of our favorite stores or restaurants and the ones that have it nailed. Every time you get that consistent approach, that consistent service, those that don't, yeah, it's a toss up. You never know.

I don't want you to name anyone. Maybe once I kill the camera in the live stream, I'll ask you a few, but I know exactly what you're talking about and I know the audience does too. What, what do you think the differentiator is? Why are some companies so on point with it and others are just kind of, I say there, well, you know.

Core values and mission vision value and all those types of things, those are often lip service. A company will say that, you know, we have a mission, vision of values and it's painted up on our wall or we know what our core value is and they don't really own it or embrace it. For companies that have really done it, well, their employees live by it on a daily basis. In our company, we use our core values to promote, demote, fire and hire. And we have week shout outs to people in our company that are either exhibiting those core values and you know, how they've done that and how they've helped the company and moved it along. So if you're, if you're not living it, every. It ends up just being a phrase on a wall. And most of the time, employees don't even know how to talk about it or mention it. And if you're not using it as your barometer for who you're bringing on staff, then you're not. It's the way that you establish that culture is the way that you really think about who you are and what you want to be in the world.

So what I'm hearing so many questions. I'll start with this one. What I'm hearing is if you, if you're, not, if your staff isn't in alignment with your core values, it doesn't matter how good they are, does it?

No, absolutely. And there's a lot of thought around. Even if you've got a great staff member, so you've got that excellent salesperson, but they don't follow your core values or they don't fit within your core values, you should get rid of them. And that's a very brave thing to do. So you've got this great performer, someone who's really good at their art, but they don't follow your core values or feel like your company in the way that you would expect. That is a person that you should consider maybe removing. They're being protected in a way, and it also causes others not to follow your core values to the, to the level that you'd like.

Can we go deeper on that? Because I feel like this is a little controversial or at least edgy, and most people would avoid it. And I want to dive deeper into it to help more people because they tend to avoid it. I'll raise my own hand first. I actually just let someone go the other day and.

Yeah, this is spot on.

It's like a sigh of relief. I mean, you don't want to admit it because they're either holding something together that you didn't, you don't want to address or take care of, or you really think that they're the reason that you're being successful in a certain area. And what they're doing is holding back your company. If they're not carrying forward what your company is about, where your company's headed, then they're really detrimental to the overall mission, vision, and values of the company itself.

And it's not just the one written on the wall. You mean the ones that you actually exude? Because there's something else I heard you say about the ones. Not just the ones saying it, but the way you feel when you walk into the place. There's a big difference from just having it on a friggin plaque.

Yes. Yeah. Well, and you know, our. Our company is named Liger, and it's named after the movie Napoleon Dynamite because that was his favorite animal. And that is very much embedded into our culture. We have a disco ball in the middle of our office, and we have one of our conference rooms named Tater and the other's named Todd's. And so we have sort of this mythology that's based and baked into the movie. But we could do that and be fun and kitschy and whatever around this movie and it still wouldn't matter if we didn't truly follow through with our core values and support each other in the way that we say that we do. That's how you know that someone's a good cultural fit. We'll. We'll talk about someone who's been with a company for a period of time and say they don't have Liger blood, meaning they just. They. They're a great person, they contribute well. But there's some component of what they do and how they sort of interact with the world that doesn't represent our brand. When we're servicing our clients, working with our partners, you know, trying to even work together as a team and as an entrepreneur, you know, it's hard to find people and get people on board. And then it's really hard to face the fact that you may have a. Somebody who's a great performer, they're a great salesperson, great customer service, great project manager, whatever those kind of skill sets you have internally. But there's just this edge. There's a part to them that causes ripples into the other parts of your organization. And that impact.

It can end up boiling your company. You've heard the story of the frog that gets boiled over time, you know, so it's that same kind of concept.

Like a ticking time bomb.

Yeah, Well, a frog, if you drop a frog into hot water, it'll jump out immediately.

Yeah.

If you put frog in water and you warm it up slowly, one degree at a time, it will eventually boil to death. And so having people, because it doesn't notice the temperature change. And so if you have someone in your company that seems to be performing, but not performing at the full level, not really following your core values, they're slowly boiling.

They're ruining the rest of the company. So whether they're a top performer or underperforming, like I think a lot of people, again, I'll raise my own hand under, you know, here's the standard of performance. You're underperforming. That's real easy to see. This isn't working out. But when you said, oh, you know, great sales guy, it's like, well, they're bringing money into the company. And it's like, yeah, but they're killing it.

Yep. Yes, absolutely.

It's reminded me of an episode of the Office when they're faced with the same dilemma and they're like, have you seen the show?

Absolutely. I'm trying to remember which episode.

It's the one where Meredith was, let's say, dating one of the sales reps and getting the Outback Steakhouse or whatever.

For the paper sales.

Well, it's kind of a gray area. They're like, no, it's pretty clear. They're like, well, let's just forget about it.

It was a whole HR thing.

And I got to ask, it was the Napoleon Dynamite reference. Do you. Did you hire anyone named Tina or is there a room that you named or.

So Tina is the name of our conferencing system in the. In our big conference room. So our big conference room's named Tina.

And what about Tater Tots at any of the group parties or anything? Co. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. Anytime we do parties, they are high end Tater Tots and bourbon. So we do bourbon drinks and high end Tater Tots. That's how we. That's how we roll. Those are our favorite kind of appetizers to hold in any.

Sounds good to me.

Company of that.

Wow.

Fantastic. So I, I want to dive more into that. But how did you decide all. There's a lot of good movies and everything. How did you.

So I've done a lot of businesses and often they've been sort of boring businesses. And I started marketing firm. I wanted something that was a little more fun. And so we were trying. We were making this business out of forming two businesses together. So we're taking a strategy company and an execution company and Forming them underneath one brand. And so we. To look for something that meant two things, but was really strong, that type of thing. And then Liger came up as one of the options. And I have some friends who still haven't forgiven me for watching the movie because they didn't get it. And you have to watch movie twice to really get it. And I can't get them to watch the second time. They're like, we lost an hour and a half of our life. Why would we do it again? I'm like, because you need to understand the movie. And so when that came up as a possibility and I thought through all the, you know, the way we could do the logo and we could really lean into orange, which isn't a color that most people would use. And those types of things for our marketing firm is a great way to stand out. We are a firm that works primarily with brands and individuals that are not number one. They're either number two or number three and they're trying to be known. And that's kind of what story was. And so. And he comes up behind Pedro and makes, you know, gets him voted into office. So it feels really good for what we think about and how we live in the world.

That's interesting. Some people are upset about the movie. You name the whole company and ethos around it, like, that's fantastic.

And then I see these friends on a regular basis and they're like, I still can't believe you named a company after that movie. And I'm like, I know, isn't it great?

I love hearing the origin stories of businesses because most of them, the best ones I found, always have some uniqueness to them. It's not, you know, cookie cutter. I get away with office references. It just happens to be one of my favorite shows because it's like business entrepreneurship. Okay, there's some relevance. But I'm like, wow, this is killer. I just gotta ask, so.

Why do.

Okay, so the core values, you clearly went as deep as you possibly could go. Or maybe you got ideas to go even deeper with it. Why do you think it's so hard for most businesses to go, you know what, we're not only going to stand for this. I mean, that alone nowadays seems like I'm going to stand for something. You're a minority and now double down on it. Or let me say, stand for something, commit to it, then double down on it.

Yeah.

There'S. There's a lot wrapped up in that. So part of mar. So because we're a marketing oriented company, marketing is about choice. It is not about everything. So you are choosing an audience that you want to go after. You're choosing messaging, you're choosing the way that you want to kind of show up in the world. And so when you try to wash that out, then you just wash yourself into the background and you, you're not rememberable. So I work very hard. When we're onboarding clients, we take them through a thing we call brand therapy. And in that brand therapy, we're testing, you know, what they're telling us their core customer is and how they compete against their, you know, competition and, you know, how they take things to market and what they stand for and all those types of things. Because then we want to put a story or messaging or something around them that makes them stand out. Because you really don't do boring marketing. Like our, our mission statement is saving the world from boring, broken marketing. And we primarily work with B2B companies. And B2B companies either have boring or broken marketing or. And so we want it to be a visceral reaction. Either I love it, I hate it, you know, it compels me to work with you or it repels me because not every customer is the right customer for you. And that is okay. And it is a strong statement in today's world to say we're not for everyone. Like, we're for a select group of people. These are the group of people that we go after. If you fall in that category, we'd love to have you come to the party. If not, then there's another company that's probably going to be better in servicing you.

That's the polite way of saying it.

That wasn't my first reaction, but very well said. I actually recently shared something on LinkedIn and you know, obviously being a publisher and doing high end print books and also audiobooks, you know, I feel like there's a lot of people going looking for the cheapest route. And I was again with our marketing. I was like, you know what, forget this. And I flipped. Instead of saying looking for the cheapest, fastest and easiest way to do this, I invite you for a more fun, well done and a lot more expensive way. And it was go into the studio, you know, to record the audiobooks that take some time to film it and all this. And it doesn't take that long. Like a couple of days is not that long long in the Graham scheme. And I ended it with, you know, it's your choice, what's it matter? It's only your business and life's Work.

Yeah. Yep. Absolutely. Do it the right way or don't do it right because it's going to just wash out. And what's interesting to me is large companies spend an inordinate amount of time making sure they know who they are, they know what they stand for, they know how they show up, at least the good ones, because then you kind of recognize the brand before you even see them.

Do you want to name any good ones? Because that's not a slight against them.

Well, the. So what's an interesting thing to me is if you think about Target, Old Navy and Apple, they all use the color white. And you can tell a commercial or a product by one of those companies before you see the logo, just by the way the white shows up.

Oh.

So it's a very interesting, you know, study. And the way the psychology behind those three brands and the fact that they're very established brands. So as a small company, you. You have less money to spend. And so if you have less money to spend, choice, specificity, like who you are, what you stand for, is way more important because you only have the opportunity to re. You know, re. Stress those impressions over a certain number of times. And I find small companies, often they're changing their logo out or their tagline, or they're showing up in the world in a weird way. And what they're doing is every time someone sees that, their mind gets reset and they don't recognize to go back to ground zero. Yeah, you're a ground zero. It takes for B2B brands somewhere around 21 times for branding and awareness to be established. And so that's a long trail that you may be resetting because you don't like the way that the logo shows up on this ad or the way that that message that's been playing for six months is now boring to you, but not boring to your audience 21 times.

Does that matter if it's 21 days or 21 months?

It needs to be done over time. So, like, what you'll find is companies try to do it. Like, if you watch, we'll just pick on the Golf Channel. So you watch the Golf Channel, they play the same commercial over and over again. That becomes background noise. So you're ignoring it because you've seen it so much. So you need it to kind of show up purposefully over a period of time, typically, because we do work with B2B, which is a more risky decision. So, like, if I make a bad decision in the B2B space, I could get fired. I could look like an idiot in front of my boss. I buy. You know, I started using a piece of software that doesn't work and now I'm stuck with it. We want those 21 appearances to happen over a four to six month window.

Okay.

So. And you're kind of increasing intensity of what that person's saying. So you might go just from brand to. Eventually you're getting them to download a white paper or getting them to like participate in a video or some placed content, those kind of things. And then that's what's going to make them choose to buy from you. Not feel like they've been sold to.

Wow, four to six months. Okay, so let's. You mentioned something content. Do you think it matters? Do you think too many people are focused on it or is it the one and only thing that people can control and should be doing a better job at?

Yeah, I don't think enough people are focused on it in the right way. What they do, they spend about, say so many people spend 80% of their time creating content and 20% of their time promoting it. Should spend 20% of your time creating the content and 80% of the time promoting it. Because content has a long tail. So when I put something out, I'm not sure. It's got to take some time to see what's going to work, what's not, what do people really want to hear about, what's it going to look like. And then supplementing that with all the right tools of social media and SEO and that kind of thing to drive traffic to it. Content is the great differentiator, if you think about it in the right way. If you talk about your company like it's a magazine, not, not a catalog. So like what are the stories inside the magazine? You know, tell me a story, those types of things, then we know that that is what's going to be successful over the long play with the clients that we work with. That's why they work with us. We get them organic traffic and then we can supplement that with paid and we're basing it all in content. That's educational. That's not. We, you know, we did this, we do that, but who cares? Like you're talking about you. What's, how do you put that person that you're selling to into the story and make them understand your product or solution is going to be the right one for them?

Okay, you mentioned the long tail. I, I was going to ask you. You kind of answered it. We do more organic, but supplement it with the paid is another great segue in there. But you said long tail. You don't just literally mean. It takes longer, but it's effective. It sounds like you, you're also aware of the SEO component too, is that correct?

Yeah. So, I mean, an SEO is such an interesting because like long tail keywords, like the way people are searching things and you know, that may be a way you can compete when you can't compete for some of the other keywords in your category. Right. But also knowing, like the changes with, you know, we're not exactly sure how artificial intelligence is going to impact this over time because there's so much around, like research and that kind of thing that people are using AI for that they used to use search for. And the other component of that, the light just turned off. The other component of that is that we also want to think about the way that Google is going to start representing search results. So it's going to look more like a Wikipedia page than it has in the past. And so you're going to have a longer definition of what that result is. You're not going to have like these individual. So it's going to dramatically change if you don't have the right content in place.

What are the top three things that someone should be focusing when they're creating the content and what type of content is it that's working best?

Yeah, so that does change regularly. So it is a reason to work with an outsourced person. I know I'm kind of selling what we do, but it's like working with your financial advisor and asking them, what stock should I buy today? It's like, well, today you should be buying in this district, you know, in this sector, because that's doing well. And three months from now I might not tell you the same thing. But, you know, we are seeing longer form pieces. So 800 and above words.

Keyword rich formatted correctly so that Google is happy, but also so your reader is happy. You know, often people will lean one way or the other. They just write to the reader and some people just write to Google. So it needs to be something that I want to read and understand.

Yeah. And that have the human element.

Yeah, yeah.

Because it's got 76 keywords in it. But it's like reading a blunder.

Exactly. And, and Google gets that like they understand it and they, they're not really. They're not here honestly to drive traffic to your site. Google is not here to drive traffic to your site. They're here to answer the questions that are being asked across their search engine and they will send people to the most educational site that's going to answer that question. So think thinking sort of editorial like any journalist. I've got a quasi journalist background that's helpful in this world because we think like in headlines, you know what's going to be.

People want short stuff.

Yeah. Compelling thing that's going to bring somebody into the deeper story.

So you, I think you answered it again, you're very polished and know your stuff. You kind of answered it. But I wanted to ask explicitly about the Web. You're mentioning 800 characters, 800 words and more. For anyone who doesn't know when you're doing content, it should be in a certain range and for competition and all that, we're not going to get into everything. Last thing, but are you talking on site directly or does any of this apply to LinkedIn articles or whatever other blogs are out there now? Or is this all on site optimization?

So we think about it in kind of circles. So you have your website which should be your very best brochure. So that's where you get to get away with like the catalog information and it should be the thinnest part of your content layer. Then we want to layer content on the outside of that. So all those things you're tempted to put into web pages like write them more for your audience and put them in your blog or your insights or whatever you call that. Then you layer that with social media and SEO that's driving traffic into that on site content. The reason we want the on site content to be there is you don't control a lot of these other vehicles and they could go away or the person who runs it could go crazy and decide to completely rename it and destroy the traffic that's being driven to it. So you might not have control over that. So like we don't like to build things on other people's land, but we want to take advantage of their land once we have those three working correctly. So that's when we get into like earned media, you know, trying to get placement and high ranking, high authority websites, you know, working with maybe co opetition or partners to get content out there and then cross promoting it because you're creating a spider web that's bringing people in eventually to your site. If they are looking for your, your company and they are have been around for any period of time, they get the trick that once they end up on one of your digital properties, you're going to start following them around and so they do Avoid your digital property until the very last, very end of the sales cycle. So it is important for you to have the content in all the other places. But it. But your site has to also support it. It reminds me of, you know, you've got all these sites that will send you to a restaurant. And so you go on, the restaurant looks beautiful, you know, ah, that's where I'm going to go tonight. You make your reservation and then you show up and the restaurant's kind of shabby. So you're like, well, I'm never going to come back. So the site is important, but it's often the last stop. So interestingly, we build out of like, the last stop and then build the spider web because we want to make sure everything we're doing has something that is pointing back to. So there's an approach to it. And it's regrettably, it's not an overnight success kind of thing. Like, you've got to do this and do it cleanly. You can use like paid to to accelerate, at least make you feel like you're accelerating the success, but you need to be backfilling it with organic as quickly as possible.

Yeah, I've noticed that ever since I launched the show. Very much so. Because ever every episode. It's great because we actually do a lot of this.

Because you should. And I've noticed a lot of shows, it's just like, they throw the audio on there and they're like, here's a link to the website. I'm like, y' all didn't even pick out a theme. Like, just. You didn't even have 50 bucks for a theme just to go, hey, we'll do something different.

But yeah, there's so many things you can do. And I mean, when you say repurpose and then you say content creation and then social media, those four or five things are so voluminous. Now. I know people, they're like, oh, they're still saying, screw websites, basically. I'm like, that's nuts. And there's other people saying social media is useless now, too, unless you're paying for it. And it's like, I interview so many experts in so many areas. It's like, okay, well, they're running six, seven, eight figures a year. And this, this, this and this. So something, you know, someone's got it right.

Yeah, it depends on what you're driving. So, like, if I were running a trend, we don't do a ton of transactional clients. Our clients are mostly B2B long. That's awesome big sales.

We're very much the same way.

And so content's really important for us. Like it's, you know, today, tomorrow, the next week, different people are going to be coming into this problem statement. It's going to take them a period of time to make that decision. They were doing transactional sales and I was selling candles that, you know, the holidays, I might say, you don't need a website, let's just go run some ads and make Shopify. Yeah, let's go do something to Shopify.

Merry Christmas.

Yeah. So are you standing up a pop up store that's going to be a bodega in the mall for a period of time? Are you building a long standing company or long standing brand?

Those are two totally different approaches. Neither one are wrong. You can make money off both of them but you need to understand which way you are. We are not, we don't do a lot of strong transactional because we're in it. We're in to build relationship with our clients to make sure that they're successful over the long run and that, that is a longer. You're looking further out with those kind of things.

Yeah, I was getting that impression and I think I always tell people there's a question coming up shortly about customer lifetime value in that and that's another thing that I think people, they're so focused on the now. It's like three months from now is not that long. Six or 12 months, like if you're over 18, it goes by quick. So this whole short term, some people take that as 30 days or less. Why don't I have the company of my dreams in the first month? It's like maybe take a year at it, screw up a little bit, figure out what doesn't work for you, refine it.

If you do a shortcut then we. I've talked with many owners who were like, yeah, I had a business, it was running really well. I had all this stuff working and Google wouldn't, you know, yeah, platform du jour and platform du jour fell out of favor, stopped working the way that they expected and then they lost everything. Everything.

When Facebook was out, I remember they were people going, oh, you don't need a website. Just make a put all your stuff on the Facebook page. And then Facebook was like, oh, we're changing this. You just lost four years, you have no email list, you have no everything and this is gone.

Don't build long term businesses on borrowed land.

Yeah, love that. That's a great expert authority effect insight. I agree 100%. Who would you say is your biggest success story and why? Because people say success is different. It's always interesting to hear this.

So we have a couple case studies on our website. One that I, I'm very proud of is a company called Gen Cap. Gencap is a wholesale insurance brokerage. So talk about. We're primarily in some boring spaces. So financial services, Fintech insurance, Med tech, some of those Gen Cap, we've been with them for years and we help. They consolidated. They bought like 17, 18 other companies and put them underneath one umbrella. So we love M and A. We love working with companies, buying other companies and figuring out what should the overarching brand be and then how do we bring all those brands together so that we're consolidating the marketing spend.

Sure.

Getting organic reach off of that. So it's been a fun company to work with because they also have followed what we've told them. Like, you know, sometimes, sometimes you end up in these, like conflicted. Like, this is our advice. We're the experts. And they're like, yeah, but we still want to do it this way. And we're like, okay, we have a, we have an internal rule. We say no twice and then we say yes. So we tell them no. And if they don't trust us because we're an expert, we tell them no. And why. And if they still insist on it, we tell them yes and let them and make sure they understand the ramifications of that choice. And GenCap Land, they've really followed what we've told them. We've been able to build this really just up into the right organic growth for them. Add on the display ads. They've got great brand recognition. Like things just move along in a very smooth way. We create gorgeous content for them, you know, environmental white papers and they do some like cannabis insurance and things like that. So it's been a fun partnership because they've, they've done what they do well, which is build their business and they've trusted us to get it out tomorrow.

I can relate to that. It's all. It's always nice when it goes smooth. I might have to, I might have to up ours from three to two.

From three to two. Yeah.

You said, well, here's what, like with book publishing, like, well, I wouldn't do that because of this, this, this and this. And it won't play well over here.

Yeah, yeah.

But I still want it. Okay. Well.

Yeah, yeah, that's the. I mean, at the end of the day, they're Paying the bill. They're the client, you know, and it's. And I think about it in the way I work with my financial advisor. I have a set of money that I give my financial advisor every month, and I want things to move up into the right. And he has an understanding of, you know, what I would invest in and what I would. Until make a recommendation and he may come back to me. I'm like, yeah, I don't want to do that. And he's like, yeah, but I really think you should. Well, eventually I'm like, you need to. It's my money. Like, do what I tell you to do, Right?

Yeah.

But then I. I'm gonna fill the ramifications of that decision if I haven't listened to his expert advice.

Yeah. And I'm joking about a little. It's more with our guided programs, the concierge one, where we're doing everything for them. It's like, what's the least I'm. I can do? Just, you know, and that's nice because I do it a lot with people I hire because it's like, I don't want to deal with this. I've got this. This, you know, three different divisions, my own company to run. So let me know when it's done. What do you need?

That's our favorite kind of client. They don't get it, want it, or have the capacity. They just hire us out. They know how to do their business. We don't have. We don't get involved in that. We don't know how to price it or whatever. We're just going to take it to market for them. And the best relationships are where they're trusting us for our marketing expertise and we're doing marketing as a service. So we're interchanging parts on the back end, and they don't have to worry about that. You know, if I think about the number of skill sets that GenCap would have had to hire over the years, and we just. We deal with it on the back end and get them the right person to solve that marketing problem.

That's fantastic. Who else in anyone else in addition to GenCap?

I mean, a lot of ours are like that. We work. I'm trying. I don't remember which. The other k. We got a case study, I think, around Maribou, which is an interesting business as well. They are. They sell ink to companies that buy ink to then print things. So, like, they sell.

Okay.

And so it's been fun taking that to market because you're in this Very specialized group. They you touch something that's been printed on Maribou wing seven times a day, you just probably don't know it. So like anything that's labels in the store.

I got my book over here. I'm wondering where that inks from now. With the printer.

Yeah. And so we worked with them to do a thing called the Gurus of Marabou. And so we brought all their like really expert engineers out and turned them into videos so that they could teach people how to use the ink more effectively and what ink goes on what substrates. And so we geek out about, you know, what other people might think are some relatively boring topics, but they're fun.

I think it's interesting because I watch a lot of how to and how it's made and stuff like that and a lot of people I think don't realize that there's a lot of businesses, there's a whole world of business other than Apple, Android, this, that, the other thing. The main companies, it's like, oh, there's this company doing seven figures in revenue. High seven. And they make straw for this mill that feeds the thing and you know what I mean?

When I'm going out for a, to meet a new client and we drive into some little industrial park and what that's my favorite, I'm like, ah, this is gonna be great.

Let's see who's back here.

People are gonna be a best kept secret. And I love taking desktop secrets and, and getting them some awareness. So.

Yeah, I love your passion for all this. It's. It's obvious why you're where you're at, so thank you for all the honesty and everything. I have one more question for this before we thank the sponsor. Yellow or black? Wish I could offer you orange, but my colors, yellow and black.

Black.

Oh, okay.

That's a lighter color, so.

Oh, okay. Black. Oh, you got a good question. See that?

Yeah.

If it wasn't Napoleon Dynamite, what would be your safety that you would have named the company after?

So my car is named Miles. And it's named Miles because my other favorite movie is Baby Driver. Okay. Baby Driver is Miles and I think he's kind of my spirit animal. So maybe that would have been the inspiration for the, for the.

Okay. And what kind of car is Miles?

Oh.

Miles is a convertible. He's a convertible Mercedes. Nice. Yeah, it's very nice little car. I, I love driving, driving him to and from meetings and work and things like that. So.

Yeah, you know, I gotta ask Detroit Motor City, so.

Oh, I know, Sorry.

Familiar?

Yep. No, it's a not. It's a German car that holds call last name. I went over to Germany and I got hooked on did the BMW for a while. Wasn't my favorite. Switched back over to Mercedes and I really like the cars.

Well, it's. You're supporting your own heritage. That's what you should be doing.

All right, we're going to thank a 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 I'm launching my new book@eapublishing method book.com so you can 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.

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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.

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I can't make a higher recommendation for.

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 eapublishingmethodbook.com to get your copy and I look forward to hearing your transformation as our next video success story. Once again, that's eapublishingmethodbook.com and we are back with the imperfect action round. Eric, are you ready to take imperfect action?

Sure, let's do it.

Three questions for you. Rapid fire answers. First one, what is the fastest path to the profits?

Consistency.

Number two, what is the biggest pro? That was a great answer. I was like, I was trying to make a comment on it, but I don't. I agree. I agree 100%. Like very succinct. Number two. What is number two? Number two is what is the biggest problem your prospects make and the fastest.

Way for them to fix it, they're not self aware.

Okay, and here I thought you were going to say inconsistency.

Number three, here's the one I promised you. What's the best way to maximize customer lifetime value.

Consistency?

Do what you say, say what you do, continue to be there. Like that's number one.

Fantastic. You've shared so much good stuff and I want to ask you, where would you like people to learn more?

So if you want to connect with me, LinkedIn is my platform of choice right now. I have a newsletter that comes out every Tuesday called Digitally Inclined which talks about how marketing and technology kind of merge together for the company. You can go to liger partners.com liger partners.com Fantastic.

I'll make sure that's on the show. Notes for eainterviews.com and I gotta ask, why Tuesday? Is there some marketing thing behind that? Why not Monday or Friday or Tuesdays.

Are a good day because people are catching up on Mondays. Thursdays are a good day to ask for money. So if you want to close the deal, close it on a Thursday. But Tuesday is a good day to kind of remind people you exist. Okay.

And is Thursday for asking for the money? Is it give them 24 hours or something before Friday the weekend? Or is it just like most people are turning off Friday?

Yeah, they're trying to get the end of the week. They're trying to whatever. They've been through everything. So like it's a good Thursday afternoon is a good time to see. Now interestingly, when I own the research company, we closed a lot of deals on Fridays, which you wouldn't think, but Thursdays are supposedly the best day to close the deal.

Interesting. And I'm gonna put a little disclaimer for anyone listening. I, if I were to ask you, is there a secret day or anything? Obviously you mentioned Tuesday and Thursday. Is that across the board or does it depend on your niche and your business and you should really do the research and figure it out for yourself?

Yeah, so the good, that's a good qualifier. So my entire career has been really a lot in B2B and services and stuff. So my experience falls like there's also like selling seasons for B2B that you should hit or not hit and some things like that. But that is, I'm a very strong.

Just look back at my career, all of it kind of goes back to a kind of a B2B focus and a very strong like services focus.

Yeah, I've noticed Patterns in ours as well. I actually have a calendar for every time we've closed someone over the years. And it's interesting how some days and times of the year it's like nothing, and then other times there's three or four from. I mean, going back to decade or two. And I'm like, holy smokes. Everyone was. I was like, I wonder what's gonna happen this year.

Yep. I love that fourth quarter. There's some stuff for me like, I love Labor Day to Thanksgiving. It's my favorite period of time. That's always a good time.

Yeah, I was gonna say because. Have you found people in the summer just kind of like summer?

Yeah. Like this Juneteenth to July 4th. It's like Christmas in the middle of the year. Like, no one's around for two weeks and then your clients are all like, why don't we do anything? I'm like, well, you rem were gone on for two weeks and we were gone for two weeks. That's why nothing's gotten done. So now we're going to try to catch up. It's not something people have recognized yet, but it's a night. It's this, like, period of time that really does impact progress. That is. Is new.

So, yeah, I've closed stuff pretty much 24 hours a day. One time, 3:30 in the morning with Australia. And I would never tell anyone. Oh, don't try. But also be aware of the ebbs and flows of just life and think like a person. Like, if you're sleeping, they probably are too. If it's the same time zone, if.

You'Re on vacation, there's. And there's a lot of people on vacation, like, just don't. And you as an entrepreneur owner, like, don't frustrate yourself. Right. Like, you can't. Like this year I intentionally went away during that Juneteenth to july fourth period because last year was a frustrating period. So just plan your life around it.

Yeah. You have shared so much good stuff. I wish we could go for a few more hours. But thank you for everything you've shared and sharing with Expert Authority World.

Appreciate the opportunity. Thank you.

All right, Expert Authority World, we have another great episode here today. I'll see you on the next one. Have a great day and God bless. You're already the expert, but have you transformed your expertise into a tangible asset that will generate qualified leads while increasing profit for you 24 7? And if so, how well are you promoting it? With my new book, the Expert Authority Effect publishing method, I take you through my process step by step. Visit eapublishingmethodbook.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction, lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. Visit eapublishingmethodbook.com to get started. Now once again, that's eapublishing method book.com thanks for listening to today's episode. I would love to know what you enjoyed most from it. If you haven't done so already. I invite you to connect with me on my new LinkedIn. You can go to it directly at eainterviews.com LinkedIn Once again, that's eainterviews.com LinkedIn. Lastly, check out the full eainterviews.com site 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 on the next one.