Episode 143: Connecting with your Customers with Andy Buyting

Christina, are you.

Right?

I see you texting over there.

I'm not texting. I'm actually emailing you.

No, you're not. What are you doing?

I'm emailing you about business that we spoke about this morning.

Oh, okay.

About one of our events.

Oh, about mastery.

Yeah.

What's going on?

Well, talking about graduation ceremonies for certain classes coming up and how we want to handle their certification certificates and all that.

Oh, I gotcha. You know, I love it. I. You know what that is called? Doing it.

Yeah, I know.

You know, you're sitting here, you're like, oh, the clouds are so beautiful. Right? And I'm like, yes. Have you ever seen the animals? They make out of clouds. And Christina's like, doing work, doing work, doing work. That's what we need. That's what we need at this place. That's what we need at this place.

Did you hurt your hand? You okay?

No. A little bit. It was more of, like, one of those scared owls. You ever hit something and you think it's gonna hurt?

Oh, yeah. So you just say it.

Yeah, yeah. So I hit it, and I'm like, oh, that should have hurt. But it didn't.

Yeah, But I'm gonna say it anyway.

Yeah. And then you gotta react that way. Cause if I go out, it was really painful. Y. I broke some bones in my hand. You know what I'm saying? Have you ever done that?

Never.

What? Broken a bone?

Oh, yeah. Have you ever broken a bone?

I've lost bones.

Have you seen that? When's the first. When's the first time you discovered she was missing a.

When we had this little, like, Q and A session and she pointed that out. I think it was the same question. Have you ever broken a bone?

Oh, was that on your first day or that was. That was.

It was like, a couple weeks after.

Yeah, yeah.

Or getting to know you.

Getting to know you. And Christine pulls out her finger.

Look at it.

She pulls it out.

Well, she pulls out.

She whipped it out there.

She did a trick first time in. She has, like, a prosthetic. And she goes. She plays a trick on me. She goes, I am so hungry. I'm like, we don't have anything here.

This is not a true story.

She pulls me, and she shows me the missing finger. That is totally believable, totally real.

Just, like, to put it out there so nobody gets weirded out. Anyway, welcome to the Profit first podcast, episode 143. Yes.

Oops. I forgot.

Pushing it button.

There we go. I forgot to tell Andy. Grunting along with us.

That's why the lead is never the dj.

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

Why didn't that work? That upsets me.

I don't know. Welcome, everyone, to the Profit first podcast. I am Christina Bolduc, the mama bear of Profit First Professional.

You are pulling it out of the air, Mama Bear. And I'm Mike Michalowicz, the author of Profit First. You know, that's available every Amazon on the planet. Isn't there just one? That's a big joke. There's actually Amazon stores now, and Profit first is there.

Oh, cool.

Barnes and Nobles for this month when we're recording. But when this broadcast won't be there. But it's in the front of the store. There's like a gathering of books.

Yeah, but it's still in the store.

It's still in the store.

Yeah.

You can still get Barnes Nobles, every store near you. So pick up your copy of Profit first, the new edition.

Yeah, it's totally new. I bought three copies myself. Yeah, me too.

Actually, can you sign that?

Thank you for mine. Of course I signed. Did you read it? Yeah, that's real.

I read it before I started.

That's awesome. See, you haven't read the new one yet, though.

No, I didn't read the new one yet.

You might be in the new one. You are, Christine. Christina's in it.

Was that just allure? And then I'm gonna read the whole thing.

This sucks. It's a last page. Keep going. You know what?

What?

This is the Profit first podcast.

Yes, it is.

And I know I like to horse around. We like to have some fun, but we like to talk money, too. Sustainability. Not greedy money, but profit. Because with profit, you can do what you need to do in your business to do good things. The foundation of success.

Yes. You know, you can find us on itunes. Stitcher, Tunein Radio, Google Play. Where else are we? Oh, craftfirstpodcast.com. that's the Mecca, obviously. That is the mothership. So go on over there. Find us anywhere. You listen to anything and we're there.

Yeah, that's true. That's true. What have you been up to? I'll start with Kelsey. With the sun in your eyes.

What have you been up to?

Mostly, I've been trying to work out. I have a wedding in, like, a month.

Who's getting married?

One of my best friends from, like, second grade.

Guy or girl?

Girl.

Are you in the wedding party?

I am, yeah.

So you're getting jacked.

So expensive.

Are you maid of honor?

No, she's an asshole. She's an asshole.

Yeah. So. But that's kind of co. Cool.

Yeah.

Where's the wedding gonna be?

Long Island. Long Island.

Long Island.

Long island is a hike from here.

Yeah.

Now, do you have to get our wedding gift?

Yeah. I mean, I don't know if you have to, but I would.

I've told you're in.

The wedding protocol is you still do.

You have to buy your own dress, right?

Yes.

And you got. You should get a gift. Yeah, that's. It costs a lot of money for.

You and your guest.

Yeah. You pay for your guests, too. Even your new. Your new bow.

I don't know.

Oh, we're recording this.

And.

And, I mean, I would. Absolutely, but he's a fireman, and it's like. He's a forest fireman, so it's their fire season.

You never know what.

Yeah.

So I know a lot.

Yeah.

What's his name?

Matt.

Matt. It's a good name. It's a solid name. Single, simple names are the best.

It means gift from God.

Does it really?

Yeah. My brother's name.

You researched this?

No, I told somebody about him, and she was like, oh, you're like, you know, he's a gift from God.

Know you have boyfriends.

I hope that's not the friend that's getting married. She'll be lecturing the whole time. Oh, you know, you shouldn't be doing that, because God would not appreciate.

Oh, my goodness.

We've been up to Kempster.

We're trying to plan a vacation. Alex and I, actually, we've been dating for about a year and a half, and we haven't gone on a real vacation. We've gone on, like, little weekend trips. So I'm trying to find, like, a good spot that's reasonably affordable for us to go. I was looking at Groupon, and they have, like, smart. Yeah. They have, like, four night trips all inclusive to, like, Punta Cana and all these places. So we're looking into it.

Wow. Good for you.

We're beach people. Big beach people.

Yeah, the beach is the best.

It is the best.

Yeah. Yeah. So. So for me, yeah, I. You know, what's. The holiday? Comes up with the green. Thank you, guys.

You're very Irish. I can tell.

Clearly, the Irish side's kicking up. I decide to get a new St. Patty's Day shirt for the office. So I. I order on Amazon, and then I go. I have seen Patty's day shirts I've never worn to the office. So I quickly scrambled to cancel my order. I just made it.

Yeah.

Sometimes that other Time I didn't make it.

Yeah. And then they ship it to you.

Sorry.

Yeah, keep it.

Oopsie.

So I was gonna get a lucky charm shirt. I thought it was kind of funny, and I'm like, oh, cute. Yeah, it's cute. And it was stupid.

Okay.

All right, Kelsey. I mean, Kev or somebody. Do we make community shout outs?

We do have a community shout out. This goes out to Carolyn Young. She emailed in, bruh. She read profit first, but she hasn't implemented it. She's like, I'm committed to profitability, and I'm going to do what it takes once and for all to become permanently profitable. So she hasn't taken the steps yet, but we've gotten her inspired. She's actually from Cape May, by the way. Shout out to Cape May, Jersey.

Oh, nice.

Gorgeous area.

That's a good vacation spot for you.

I know. I. We actually have family there, but I don't know if we want to stay with family because.

And then what was they listening?

They're listening.

Well, yeah, they are. They are listening. There's only people.

Carolyn Young. Shout out to Carolyn.

Carolyn, I got a question for you. You haven't done profit first yet. Christina's looking for a place to go on vacation on the cheap. Here's the deal, yo, Hook up. Christina and I will help you get profit first implemented. Ooh, there you go. Is that true?

Thanks in advance, Carolyn.

Yes. No, I swear to God.

Don't tell her to shut up.

No, no, that was back to me. That was a disbelief.

Shut up.

Okay.

You know, like. Are you kidding me? No, I'm serious. Are you serious?

Yeah.

Yes. You know the people that make the show a reality?

Our corporate partners.

You know who they are?

Yes, I do. Okay, do you want me to rattle them off? Who?

Just who does. Who was that?

I think that was our mystery guest.

That was weird. Was that Ryan?

What?

Who was that?

No, it was Ron.

No, I heard it. Now I heard a tambourine. This is freaking me out. All right, keep going.

Tambourine?

Yeah, I swear to God.

Okay, so thank you, and we'll go into detail later to funbox Vendera Nextiva recipe and zero.

Yep. We'll tell you more about them in a moment. Tell me. Before I bring our esteemed guest on, I want to know about a member Shout out. Do we have any?

I do have one. This one goes out to Cindy Noel. I know. I'm sorry. This. She sent us a bottle of wine. It's something that we're doing for our profit con. Event coming up. We're having our event. Oh, my God. Our members share their success stories and we're gonna crack open a bottle of wine at the event in celebration of them and with them to get schwasted. So, Cindy, shout out to you. This was back in December. She landed five new clients in her niche in one week. And she said. And for the first time ever, she is now living in Florida for the winter. And that's thanks to the success of her business. So shout out to Cindy.

You're not done, Cindy. His name is Andy Biting. You know where I met Andy?

Where?

In Boston. Boston. He's from Canada. I'm from the US and we met in the middle Boston, which is still in the U.S. so there's an annual conference there of entrepreneurs. About 80 of us gather. I've been going for 15 years. I actually recently stopped going, but it continues on. It's called Gathering of Titans. And first of all, a lovely man. Second of all, a genius. He had a business prior to this current one, but he decided that he would start a. A new. I'm sorry, a magazine for entrepreneurs. And now it exceeds distribution of, like, some of the biggest brands out there. I think it's more distributed than like, Inc. Magazine or Entrepreneur. Yeah, it's like big time. And he came up with a cool strategy. You, as a business owner can publish your own magazine now through his company. So you could make, you know, Dentist magazine. The lead article, by the way, talking about last week would be why you shouldn't floss other people's teeth like that. Yeah, that was. That was creepy. That was creepy. Yeah. Here's an idea for marketing with a massage. Yeah, right? That was real creepy. So he's going to tell us why maybe you should be running or creating a magazine for your own business. Andy, welcome to the show.

Welcome, Andy.

Thanks.

Was that you?

Thanks, guys.

Was that you who gasped earlier or was that something weird? And do you have a tambourine?

I do not have a tambourine. I don't think it was me that gasp.

Yeah, maybe a heavy mouth breather. So I gotta ask you a lot of questions, but first I gotta ask you one because. And you're the last guest we're asking this. This has been going on for, I don't know, 30 episodes. Something ridiculous.

Maybe like five. It's been like five.

I'm gonna play an audio clip to you, and you gotta tell me what this is. Okay, here it is.

All right, go for it.

Okay, here it is. Okay. Do you know what audio that is?

Absolutely. It's a T. Rex in a big tunnel.

He is so close. He's so close.

You're not actually right, though.

And you're not actually right. You're totally wrong, actually. That was my mother yelling at me. No, here's what it is. I'm gonna give you one tip. It rhymes with Mozilla.

Okay. Yeah, yeah, It's Godzilla.

All right. Congratulations. What are the guesses we had? It was like some ridiculous stuff. Someone's like, oh, it's a whale.

Someone said it wasn't ridiculous.

Rubbing up against a truck hitting a bridge.

Yeah. So it was Godzilla. Thank God that's over.

Featuring some kind of movie. And the first thing that came to mind was Jurassic Park.

Right.

Obviously I got that confused with Godzilla.

So that was such a good guess.

So close. So close. So, okay, let's get to the business order. And yes, I want to know about a newsletter or a magazine. I mean, it sounds like such an expensive endeavor. Is that really a profitable venture for small businesses and medium sized businesses to pursue?

Yeah, absolutely it is. And actually, if I can, I'll share with you the story, how it came about. You, you actually alluded to it. I was in another business before and it was a family owned retail business where we had multiple locations and they were actually home and garden centers. And for like 15 years, or maybe even closer to 20 years, like, we were doing our own newsletters and we were doing these eight page newsletters that we would send to our customers on a regular basis. It was hugely profitable. The best marketing that we had done, and we would send this out, but every time we'd send out this eight page, two color newsletter, it would cost us $15,000, let's say, out of our advertising budget. So it's not a cheap endeavor. No, but every year with our retail stores, we had $60,000 budgeted for four newsletters per year. Well, this mutual advisor, mentor of our guy that we both learned from, which was Vern at Birthing of Giants, who said, andy, you got to own the ink in your industry. He said, listen, whatever your customers are reading had to come from you. He said, why aren't you guys publishing your own series of gardening books? Or he said, why don't you publish your own magazine? And that sat with me for a while. And I thought, we do these newsletters that are costing us a fortune. What if we could step that up and do our own magazine? Wouldn't that be cool? So we started putting this idea, putting pen to paper, putting out a plan, and one of Our staff members just blurted out this idea and said, our marketing coordinator, she said, you know, I bet if we go to, like, some of our suppliers, they'd actually buy an ad in this magazine. Like, let's try it out.

Love it.

And sure enough, we had some of our suppliers buy ads in our magazine so that they could help us help pay for the vehicle that would help promote their product so we could sell more of their product. I mean, it was a win, win, win all around. And the interesting thing was, is our very first magazine went out. We sent out 30,000 copies or something like that. And I remember at the time it cost us, our costs went from 15,000 to 28,000 to put out an issue. However, we actually recovered about $20,000 in AD sponsorship. So my cost as an organization, we put out 32 page, fully gloss, beautiful home and garden magazines for a net cost of 8,000 bucks. Where my old 8 page, 2 color newsletter that was born in the early 90s or late 80s, was costing us $15,000 net every time we put that out. So it was a huge shift, a reduction in our cost, a massive reduction in our cost. Our vendors were all too happy to sponsor this thing, some advertising, and we put this magazine out there in the marketplace and we were the guys that were publishing our own magazine. It was a really cool thing as far as a branding tool. Like, it just set us head and shoulders above everyone else. All of our other competitors, whether it be national, you know, the Walmarts and Costco's of the world, or the local competitors, we were just head and shoulders above everyone else. Okay, that's where the idea came from.

I got you. But how do you make a magazine a branding tool? I mean, do you put your picture on the COVID of every magazine? It's always Andy, that's actually.

Well, in this case, our business was Green Village Home and Garden, and it was Green Village Home and Garden magazine. So it was like the Costco magazines that you get in the mail. But the difference is this one here was something that a little company, relatively relative to Costco, was putting out and branding themselves with something that rivaled the big nationals.

Okay, but what about the circulation? I mean, you said up to 28,000 or something. Does that mean you're reaching a million people? I don't understand how the numbers work into reach.

So in our case with the retail garden centers, we had a database of 30,000, roughly customers that we would send this to, and that's who we reached with that. So it actually went out to our Customers. You know, it was a way for us to communicate a value added, you know, tool or information that we were providing to our customers that was better than anybody else was putting out there. I mean, it was really world class, beautifully designed magazine.

And do you run your own ads in it? Like, how do people know it's you? Is it just the title of the magazine? That's it. How do you link your brand to it?

Yeah. So I mean, it's all. In that case, it was, it was all our content. And I'll kind of bring it forward to how. So where the. Our whole Carlee Publishing, the whole company was spun from was that idea. And make a long story short, I actually we launched a brand new company when that, that magazine, that garden magazine was seen by other garden centers in the country who came to us and said, you know, could you do something similar for us? It's. I don't know how you're doing that. That's amazing. So long story short is we spun out a whole other company doing these customized magazines for g garden centers across the country. And then from there it just spun out. My insurance guy came to us, we started doing business magazines. We spun out done home health and wellness themed magazines, home improvement and all different verticals. But basically what we do is the program is we have a. We call it a 3E's brand promise. So when a client partner signs on, we promise that it will be easy, economical and exclusive for them. The ease part of it. So with the process. So if you envision a Mike Michalowicz magazine, no one was subscribed to that first one.

Last name.

Let's get a better name than that. I like always Andy magazine, quite frankly, but okay, keep going.

Let's pretend we go with, we run with that.

Yeah, I got you.

Good idea or bad idea. We'll let the listeners be the judge of that. But. Well, let's say we're gonna do a Mike McCallowicz magazine. Our standard program is what we call a semi customized model. So a page magazine. We actually coordinate the inside 16 pages for you. So in those inside 16 pages, we would, for instance, coordinate some business content for you from different thought leaders who want to take part in the magazine. And we'll do all of that. So the inside 16 pages come together with zero time on your part, zero effort, and for literally pennies, the outside 16 pages. So the first eight pages and the last eight pages totally customized to you. So in there it's your customized front cover. You can call the magazine whatever you want. You know, as you flip through, instead of a letter from the editor, there's a letter from the president of the organization or a letter from Mike, a personal letter, news and events about what you have going on with profit. First, different articles, different content that you want to put in there. Maybe some ad sponsorship from some of your vendors. You know, if the business has that or local ad sponsorship and it comes together. But the whole thing, what's nice is that half of the content is totally coordinated by us. The other half is totally customized to you as a client partner. But the whole thing flows really nicely. So it just looks like you've collaborated with some other thought leaders to bring various business articles and content to them, learning opportunities and so on. But it comes together really easy. Another thing that we do to make that possible is even with your customized content, most of our client partners don't even write their own content because we have ghostwriters that'll write it for you.

But I want to know how to get started on my own. Say 28 grand is a lot of money. I want to do this on the cheap. Can I do it in house? And if so, you did. How do I get started?

Well, and to be honest with you, with the program, the way that we do it, it's actually a lot less money. Right. So when I was doing it as an independent, yeah, it was $28,000. But now we're able to do that for 17,000, you know, 15 to 17,000 for similar numbers because of the process that we put in place. So if a person wants to do it on their own, yeah, it's not a cheap endeavor. I know Joe Paloozzi as example, he has Content Marketing Inc. They put out their own magazine, and he says he's into it for $40,000 per issue.

Okay.

It's not. It's not inexpensive to do on your own. But when you can collaborate and what we bring to the table, that second promise, that economical process. So what we do, Mike, is we. And this is kind of the secret sauce to it, is that when we're doing a magazine for Mike Michalowicz, we might be doing one for Jack Daler or other people that want to put out their own magazine. That inside content, we actually produce that once, and it goes in every version of the magazine. So if you're doing one that you're sending to your clients, and it would be customized to your clients and exclusive to your clients, we wouldn't send any other version of that magazine to your clients, but we would have several partners across the country, in different parts of the country or in Canada, as well as the US who will do the same version of the magazine. So what ends up happening? And you talked about rivaling the numbers. So as an example, we have a. Well, one of our more successful verticals is program we call our Risk in Business magazine. And it is customized, again, semi customized, but it's created for individual insurance agencies across the country, across the US Even in Hawaii. We're distributing all across Canada as well. And with that, the center pages are the same in every version that we do. The outside 16 pages, the outside 50% are different. What ends up happening is still when our client, partner in New Jersey can put out his own magazine, the center pages are the same as the guy in. In, you know, in San Francisco or the guy in Wisconsin. And what that does, though, is it brings a cost down for everybody, because when we went to. When we're going to print, right now, we're printing over a million copies of those inside pages.

Okay, I got you. I got you. I'm gonna keep pushing you on this one, brother. I got you. So I could use your firm, but I want to do this on my own. Maybe I can't do it a magazine level. How do I get started? Where do I find the content? Can I do it on one piece of paper initially? Oh, Christina's question. Sorry. I'm sorry. I got a little ornery. So why do I do it if I really, truly got to get started on my own? How do I do this economically?

Well, to start with, you want to. You want to have a plan. So you have to have an editorial plan, right? You want to think about what kind of content you want to put in the magazine. Because quite honestly, and I'm a huge fan, too, you don't talk for the sake of talking. You talk because you have value to add. So think about what kind of articles, what kind of content you want to get to your customers. And, you know, it doesn't have to be all about, you know, this strategy or that strategy or this idea or this concept. You know, you could do articles, feature a client of yours, right? Do a. Do a story about a client of yours. Do a few of those. Do a story about. You could also work with some of your advertising sponsorships. So who would come into this magazine that would have an interest of hitting the end reader? The people that I'm going to be sending it to, my audience, who would be that person? And maybe it's another company, a local company that you collaborate with. Go to them and say, listen, I'm doing this magazine. I'd like you to come on as a sponsorship. Here's what I'd like you to do. You help pay for part of the cost. You can have an advertisement in the magazine as well as an article space. Just spitballing here, but that's an idea that you could run with. But you need to start out with that plan. If it's 32 page magazine or 16 pages or 48 pages, whatever the number is, what is going to be the editorial plan that you have for the magazine? Because you do want it to be a value. Every time you put another page in there, it costs you money. So you want to make sure it's a value to your end, your audience and start there. Then what I would do is immediately, you've got to, you know, if you're going to write the articles yourself, I mean, if you have the ability to do that, perfect, great. If not, work with an editor or a ghostwriter or somebody that can write the article, the content for you. Because, you know, ultimately you got to get thoughts on the paper if you're doing it on your own. Like what we did back in the day is we hired an outside design firm, basically local marketing firm, who we hired to lay the magazine out, put it all together. We collaborated with a printing company, a local printing company. Get quotes, know what you're going to go with. And in the printing world, the most economical way to do it is you want to expand by ideally 16, at least 8, if not 16 pages at a time because the printing processes. So you know, it's going to be a 16 page magazine or you know, ideally it goes up to a 32 page or you know, if you can go in multiples of 16, it's your most economical way to actually print, you know, logistically print the magazine itself. So you want to have that plan put together, get your pricing for your, for your printer. And then of course the printer will handle it to the point where it comes off the press. Then you have to have a plan for, okay, I gotta get. You want to make sure that they get to a target audience that makes sense. And one of the, you know, and that's usually one of the biggest strategic decisions to make is who's going to receive this magazine, who's going to receive it? What's my purpose for putting it out there? What's my, you know, editorial plans going to be? But who's going to receive this magazine will dictate the quantities you're going to do which will dictate pricing. And, you know, this. Publishing a book, your first copy costs like, I don't know, ten grand. Every copy after that is like, you know, a couple of bucks or something, you know, so when you're pricing all of this stuff out, if you do small numbers, of course it's going to be much more expensive per issue. The more numbers you get, you get those economies of scale. But you want to think about who is going to receive this magazine. Maybe I'm better off sending out, you know, 700 magazines to a very target audience rather than shotgunning 7,000 people in my local community.

As an example, do you have kind of some advice for, let's say, if I was a business owner and I wanted to send out a series of our own magazine, is it smarter to have different sections of the magazine, like some people have, like, client success stories and then you go into the how to section of doing something, or is it more beneficial to kind of do themed booklets where it's one month it's all about marketing and strategy, and then the next month it's about, you know, selling and, you know, like, what. What is more beneficial for the reader?

Yeah. So my thoughts on that, my. What kind of our philosophy is that? I. I know a lot of people do like to have themed, you know, themes with their different issues, but I'm a big fan of having. You've got to know. I mean, you would know this from podcasts, blogs, and so you want to know what your purpose, what you're trying to accomplish here. And I'm a big fan of trying to have something in there, try to have a little bit of variety. And the way I look at it, I give this example often, is that, you know, one of my favorite magazines to read is Inc Magazine. Now, when I pick up a copy of Ink magazine, I know I'm going to love a third of the articles. A third of them I might get around to, and a third of them I'll probably never read. So quite often, and it's how we approach content as well. And what I would suggest others is that, you know, if you do it all around, I don't. Customer service, you're doing a business magazine. It's going to be all about customer service. Well, the person that's not interested in customer service may lose interest in your magazine very quickly. But if you have an article around customer service, you have, you know, another one or two, or you have another one around sales strategies around finance, you know, you might have another one, one or Two around client features, but giving a bit of a variety, I believe works as long as it is relevant to the target audience that you want to want to hit. So if it's a business magazine, obviously going to businesses, you want to have business related content.

I want to know about the articles themselves. Do you write articles that are purely educational or does it say in there, you know, if you want to learn more, make sure you call andy biting at 800, blah, blah, blah. Meaning do you have a hook in there to sell that person?

Quite often we will, Mike. It's a good question. Yeah, quite often we will. It's a bit of both, though. So you want to. Absolutely. Whenever you're doing any content marketing, you want to absolutely give value first, because if you don't give value, you're going to be discounted and people are not going to be interested in the next issue. I always tell people, you know, when you're thinking of your content or when you're strategizing putting together your magazine, you want people to not only pick it up and enjoy the articles, you want them to look forward to the next issue. So make it relevant.

We should try that with our podcast. People actually look forward to it. Yeah.

And make them look forward to the next issue. So. And interesting. You know, the first insurance agency we worked with, you know, we sat down and said, okay, how many articles this magazine ran out the numbers? And I think it was roughly 13 or 14 articles. He said, okay, I'll need 13 articles about insurance. And I said, luke, I said, that'd be, you know, if I picked up a magazine like that, be the first, last issue I ever picked up. Who wants to read all about insurance.

Yeah.

So that's why the whole idea was have a, have a variety of articles. Yes. If you're selling insurance or if you're selling financial services, you want to have an article or two in there around that because you want to position. The whole purpose for the magazine is to position yourself as a thought leader, position yourself as the authority in the marketplace. So you want to have an article or two around that, but in reality you want them to have enough. And this is sometimes hard for people to grasp or to accept, but you want to have enough of a balance of informative articles and entertainment type of articles, because let's face it, there's a lot of people that don't read nonfiction books. They only read fiction books because they want to be entertained. And it's not too dissimilar with magazine articles. You want to have a nice balance that's why I'm a huge fan. If a person's doing a magazine for their company, a branded magazine, put some client features in there. It gives the human aspect. People can relate to that, and it's a little bit more entertaining. They might not take something out of that article that they can use themselves, but it's entertaining. It has some entertainment value. You want a nice balance there.

How do I get my magazine to stand out if mine's starting to get slipped into my customer's mail with other, I don't want to say trash mailings, but, you know, sometimes you sign up for these things and then they just keep coming. How do I get mine to stand out and not end up in the trash pile?

Yeah, it's a good question. It really comes down to making the stories relevant and of interest to the end reader and profiling that well on the front cover. You know, it's funny, Mike, you know, I remember when you published the first book, and I think I published one shortly after. And I remember learning from an advisor of mine and he said, I mean, he said, he said, don't make your.

Book like Mike's, for God's sake. You'll die on the vine.

Okay. The second thing he said though was, you know, he said 40% of the value of a book is the front cover. 40% is in the name and 20% is the stuff inside. Because what you want it to do is you want it to. First and foremost, you want to position yourself as a thought leader with a magazine, something like this. The front cover means so much if you have a really good, engaging front cover that pulls people into the magazine. Because maybe you have a fantastic contributor or fantastic story and you want people to be pulled into the magazine. Put that on your front cover. Make sure that's highlighted so that people do open it up and go through it. Now, one of our. Actually, it's interesting. One of our client partners in their customized articles, the only content they put in are client features. So they just, you know, he's an insurance guy and he said, I don't want any insurance related articles in this magazine. It's going to be kind of a local business magazine and it has been hugely received. It's been so wildly successful for him because people can relate to these local companies. He's building this local community business magazine feel to it and people are looking forward to the next issue and it works really, really well.

Okay.

Yeah.

So people do judge a book by its cover, so to speak. Yeah. All right. I'm looking at the clock. Do you have something to ask?

Yeah.

All right, you asked and then we're gonna go.

Marketing tool. How effective do you think it. Like, do you monitor for your customers, you know, their return on investment for it?

Yeah. So what really makes it successful? And I know you guys are all about, you know, profit first and making things sustainable. So the whole idea with the magazine, one of the things that, you know, I think if somebody's contemplating doing their own magazine, they really want to think about it. The ad sponsorship is so key. So for a couple reasons. One, ad sponsorship obviously helps pay for the program. And you know, it done right. A lot of our. A lot of people that we work with, you'll break even or even make money. Some of them even make money on the magazine itself. But also with that is ad sponsorship legitimizes your magazine. So a lot of people don't think about that because they think of, I don't want ads in my magazine. You know what? But sure, I get it. You pick up like Cosmopolitan magazine or some of these big brands, up to 60 or 65% of the pages could be ads. And if you picked up a Forbes magazine, they're all the same. They're all very similar. I'm a big believer. You want this to be more value added than that. I believe so. I'm a big fan of aim to have about 30% of your magazine ads. Maybe it's 25, 30%, but ads do legitimize your magazine.

Great.

If you have a company advertising there, it shows that people value and they'll even spend money to be inside your magazine.

Yeah, no, that's a great tip. Ensures profitability. And I didn't think about the credibility. Andy, our listeners, if they want to find out more about you and your organization, where should they go?

Just go. Just check out the website. It's carlypublishing.com c a r l e the wordpublishing.com. but yeah, they just check that out. And actually in one of our upcoming issues, we'll have a Mike Michalowitz article in there.

That's right, baby. I heard it's pretty amazing too.

I heard it incredible.

Your editors came back to me 10 times saying, for God's sake, could you write better than this? You take it seriously. I like that. I had to rewrite it like three times. So that was cool.

He wasn't kidding.

No, no. So we will have it in the show links. Andy, thanks for coming on. And dude, next time you're in Jersey, let's you Know, booze together. I don't know.

Absolutely classy.

Yeah, well, the Canadians love that stuff. All right, Andy, talk to you later.

Bye, Andy.

Bye.

Thanks, Mikey.

Christina, punch me. Oh, that's what I needed. Okay. That's right, Christina. Kelsey, we're gonna talk about what we learned from Andy in just a minute. But first I do want to thank our corporate partners to make the show a reality. Do you know who they are? Of course you know who they are.

Hello?

If you don't know who they are, who the hell are you? We should have a listener. I know. I am. I am kind of rude. I am kind of rude. I think we should have a listener. We should just, you know, we should do. We should ask our listeners to give us their phone numbers then call them at random at Randall show. And like, hello, like, who's this? Like, it's Mike. Kelsey. Christina, we're calling like, well, I'm at work. What's going on? Like, who's the sponsors? Quick, name them and be like, that's what we should do. The way you're rolling your pen in your scarf, that's stupid.

It's a terrible idea.

Did you ever notice Kelsey?

Definitely.

When we play poker tonight. That's her tell signal. When she's nervous, she starts rolling stuff in her scarf all the time.

We talked about this this morning. I said I, I have a horrible poker face. Which is funny because I'm an actress. Yeah, but it's true. And Kelsey was like, maybe if I make enough funny faces, you won't know what's going on.

That's a good idea. I can't.

I can't do stone face, but I can make a lot of weird faces.

Yeah, yeah. Well, that scarf of yours, that rolling is just. Yeah, yeah, it gets me.

No, you know these twist pens, they're super hard to twist sometimes.

I know, I know. We got me at a discount. We really did. We did. Okay, so let's say our corporate partners talking about discounts. Go000 is an accounting cloud accounting software. But the beautiful thing about zero, it's from the cloud up, meaning they were developed in the cloud. It is far more sophisticated than other cloud platforms. And as our listeners know, we now have experience with multiple cloud based systems. I'm not saying I'm discontent with any system, but I'm super impressed by Xero.

What about Funbox?

How about them? Fundbox? You gotta make sure you enunciate the D. Fundbox. We found out Funbox is a porn site.

Yeah, we did. We learned that a Little while ago.

Half our users went to Funbox. We're like, what kind of group is supporting you? We actually gained a lot of listeners that way too. But Fundbox is invoice financing. They call themselves a cash flow accelerator. Here's the deal. You have an invoice that's due to you, Kal, right now. You don't even know it. But you do. I know.

How angry are you?

It's stressful. You deserve. You run a jewelry company. Who took the longest ever to pay you? Was it us?

Definitely you.

Probably first.

Bullshit.

I know. It took us like, 45 days to pay you. I'm so embarrassed. You know what you should have done besides suing us like you did? You should. You should have called Fundbox. They will release the funds to you. Then when we apps, we actually paid you, you could return the funds to Fundbox. You've never had any cash flow issues, and it was a total oversight on my behalf, so I apologize.

Well, no, no. She also waited to send us the invoice because she wanted to make sure that everybody was happy with their jewelry.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Everyone's blown away. My wife wears that piece all the time.

I wear mine every day.

It makes me so happy.

I still have that other piece I made for someone. I haven't given it to him because here's the deal. I made a psycho clown face.

No, no, no.

Did you look at.

It's a happy face.

No, it's really psycho smiley face. I'm afraid so. I wrote a note. My whole idea was to give this piece of jewelry that we made to someone randomly. I was gonna put in their mailbox and just say, I want you to know someone. This world loves you. That was like my whole, oh, my God, it's such an epiphany. And then I look at it, I'm.

Like, this person's gonna kill them.

They get psycho clown as a gift. That's terrifying.

Oh, it's cute.

I am stalking you.

Exactly. Someone loves you. Now look out your window.

Okay, what about Receipt Bank?

I love Receipt Bank.

Me too.

They were here today on a recording day. Now, I know this is a week later. It's not like they were here for the full week. They were here for one day. They taught us how to use their system. You know what their system does?

Sure.

What does it do?

Receipt Bank.

Could you stop rolling down your scarf? You're nervous. Yeah. What does Receipt bank do?

Do you know Receipt bank captures your expenses so you can easily scan in your receipts?

Yes.

And it captured all the Information for you?

Yes. Does your jewelry business have a lot of receipts? Yeah, it does. Okay, so maybe something. Consider. We have tons of them from different people. Ron. Ron, that guy. For a guy who says you guys stop spending money, spends more than anything.

He has receipts like every day, everywhere.

He comes in with a wad in his pocket. And usually he dumps a Christina or Eleni Kravitzel back there. He's like, oh, just, you know, take care of it. Use the receipt bank.

I should actually start using receipt bank. I got all these receipt.

I use it. We have it.

You could use it.

I could.

Your whole company can use it. It'll sink into your accounting system. Ron doesn't use it personally. He uses it to Lenny. Lenny then scans it, gets it back, and says, I put in your receipt back for you. Which takes like three seconds.

Yeah. What about Fundera?

Oh, my God. When I think of amazing companies, I think of our company first, quite frankly. But thunder is up there. It's like number four. Well, it's not. It's not profit. First Professional. So best company Prof. First professionals. Number two. Obsidian Launch. Oh, company. Company Three. I don't know, maybe it is Fundera. Now here's what Federa does. If you need a loan for your business, maybe it's a capital purchase, we need to buy some equipment. Maybe it's to. Maybe you're in this tough situation where business is going great and you have a bad month, you need to cover payroll. They'll even fund that. If you need funds, go to Fundera's website. Tell them the loan you need on their website. Usually within 24 hours, they have sourced funds. Our own producer, not Ryan, but Corey, he owns the company. They got funds from Fundera to make software. So that's what they do.

Yeah, it's awesome.

Yeah, it's kind of cool.

What about Next Diva?

Oh, my God, I love Next Step. You know they're sponsoring our upcoming Mastery Meetup.

I know. For breakfast.

For breakfast. Yeah.

We gotta eat.

God, and we're gonna eat well because of these guys. Here's what nextiva does. Voice over IP phone systems. You know how important those are? Yes. Phones, I mean, I have no idea. You never use. Fine. They're the most important way to communicate. And now they have, I guess they've always had. But there's a high def feature. So when. If I call you and you're working from home that day, or vice versa, I don't know if you ever notice, it feels like I'm in your house, like behind You. Hey, Kellos, where's the report? I'm actually on the phone. It's so high def, it feels like you're right next to the person. It's pretty cool.

Or creepy.

The stalking episode. Oh, look out your window with creepy clown jewelry, man. Oh, now he's behind you with his next team of phones. God. I discussed myself.

Oh, man.

Is that all our sponsors?

Yeah. What'd you learn today, Mike?

You know what I learned, what I learned? Let's see. Ironically, talking about sponsors, get sponsors for your newsletter.

Yeah.

You know, I was thinking, oh, that's how you pay for it. And then he goes, but it also brings credibility. And you're right.

Yeah.

When I read my Cosmo, I always look at the ads and say, wow, this is a legit magazine. But it totally gives legitimacy. See?

Legit.

True.

What'd you take out of this Fireball?

I think in conjunction with last week's episode with Brian, it was so perfect for us. I think it's an effective tool that we could utilize to storytell more effectively to really get our message and our clients messages out there. I love that.

I know. We could send this to every accountant and bookkeeper out there.

Yeah.

I was thinking that while we were.

Recording, I think it's kind of cool. I think we should talk to Andy afterwards and get serious with them. It sounds like real money. But if we get the sponsors, if we ask our sponsors that sponsor this podcast to sponsor that.

Yeah.

Sponsors are key.

Yeah.

And it's like you said, it's mutually beneficial for everybody involved.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you want to be able to name you. Do you want to be able to name drop? Because people want that credibility. They want that trust. And the more sponsors you have and the more well known that they are, the more that they trust that your stuff is real. Yo, that's right.

Now, before you say your tip, what'd you learn? There we go.

I forgot.

I totally forgot we had that. Now, what'd you learn today?

I learned. Oh, very simple. Know your purpose.

Yeah. Yeah, right. Don't just write to write. Like, know why you're doing it.

Yeah. You know, you don't need to waste everybody else's time. Don't waste your time. Just. Just know. Know what the heck you're doing and know what message you want to get out there, and the rest will fall into place.

You know, talking about. What message did you learn? What's your pur. Purpose is to get your review. Oh, we want your review, listener. On itunes, Stitcher, wherever your podcatcher is go to the other ones and still leave a review.

You know, first podcast dot com.

Oh, yeah. Leave your comments there. We have a discussion around this. Hey, are you going to start a magazine? Tell us about it. I would like to. I want every listener of our show, you know, thousands of listeners. We want all of you to start a magazine and then send it here. Yeah, we'll have a master. We'll. We'll have a collection like. Ron will come in the door. Go. What the hell? I can't get be a stack of magazines.

The covers on the wall everywhere.

That would be fun. All right, Christine, take us out here.

Cute. Oh, no.

I guess it's my turn. Take us out.

Yeah, it is your turn.

I stole your part, but I thought there was more to it. Yeah, I'll take the rest of the way up. You know, there's a company that can make everything happen for you.

Prof. First.

Yes. Prop first Professionals. Now, listen, you want to have a magazine. I get it. You should. But you need to be profitable to have a business that can host a magazine.

Show me the money.

Show me the money. Here's how you do it. You. What the hell was that?

Oh, you are crazy.

Did you see those things?

Did you feel that freaking taste dream.

That whole thing started? Look at shaking still.

Stop it, Rod. I see you're giving me that look.

Literally the whole room started shaking. I am freaking out. Oh, my God. I got you out here quickly. So go toProfit First Professionals.com. click on the find button. We will find you an accountant or bookkeeper. Business coach. Someone who's suited to help drive profitability in your specific industry.

Someone like Cindy.

Cindy Nelk.

Yeah.

Yeah, she spoke. She focuses on plumbers, home contractors. Mike Bruno works with full service remodelers.

We have someone for everyone.

We have someone for everyone. Dentists. We actually. Connie jcox. No. Yeah, Connie Jacox was dentist. So go to propfords professionals.com, click on find and we'll hook you up. Anything else to say? We're done.

That's it. Thanks, y' all.

All right, we'll see you next week.

Bye.

Come on, man.