[EO Orange County] Building an Eight-Figure Company With Scott Empringham of Empringham Media Group

Welcome to the Rising Entrepreneurs podcast where we feature top founders and entrepreneurs and their journey. Now let's get started with the show.

Dr. Jeremy Weiss here, founder of Inspired Insider.com where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders. Today is no different. I am going to formally introduce Scott Abraham in a second of Abraham Media Group. And Scott, I always like to point out other episodes people should check out of the podcast and one person in particular, Todd Taskey, who has the second bite podcast, check it out. But he talked about how with agency owners, he pairs private equity with agency owners and help them sell and sometimes they make more on the second bite than they do on the first. And that's a really fascinating conversation of valuation, how he thinks about selling. Also had Duncan Allen. Duncan Alleny is an agency in helps food and beverage companies. And so check that out and we'll talk about niches on this podcast. And before this episode is brought to you by Rise25. At Rise25 we help businesses give to and connect to their dream 100 relationships and partnerships. And how do we do that? We actually help you run your podcast. We're an easy button for someone to launch and run their podcast. We do accountability, strategy and the full execution. And Scott, we know each other a little bit. You know, for me, the number one thing in my life is relationships. And I'm always looking at ways to give to my best relationships. And I've found no better way over the past decade to profile the people and companies I most admire and share with the world what they're working on, like Scott. So if you've thought about podcasting, you should. If you have questions, go to rise25.com to learn more. And really, John Corker, my business partner, introduced me to Scott and the cool things he's done. And let me just introduce Scott. He's got a tremendous background. I have Scott Embringham. He's founder of Embringham Media group. And in 2018, after 20 years of building an eight figure agency and just put yourself in his shoes for a second, all right, Scott lost it all. He was left with no office, no staff, no customers. And beyond that, to make matters worse, $500,000 in debt and he had 90 days to turn around. I mean, he had to pay that debt back. So what he did is he turned to social media and he actually shared his story, which is brave. A lot of times when we go through hard times, we want to hide it. We don't want to share with anyone. And sometimes it's hard for people to Help if you don't share it.

Right.

Um, he shared his story, his plan and his goal to get it all back in 90 days or less. And he actually did it in 88 days, which is crazy to think about. But. Scott is a recognized digital marketing social media expert with over 20 years of expertise. He's helped over a thousand entrepreneurs, small businesses and Fortune 50 companies get customers of social media and AI. He's worked with virtually every major OEM, Ford, Toyota, Cadillac, GMC, Honda, and many, many more and over 2,000 dealers. He's also worked with owners, CEOs, marketing departments of insurance companies, plastics, financial, and a lot more. You can check him out. He also has, you know, he is really one that I see carries on relationships and is a giver. And he has an on demand social media certification course and a coaching program too, just to help teach people because some companies can't afford his services. Right. So you can check that out. Smart90Social.com. Scott, thanks for joining me.

Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate being here.

You know, Scott, some people, for motivation when they're working out, listen to their favorite music. Okay. I listen to people like you. And like last night, I'm, I'm thinking I need to, you know, I like to do research. It's, you know, 10 at night. I'm like, I need to listen to a bunch of Scott's interviews. And so I went and I did a workout and your story pumped me up because it's just a story of comeback and it's a story of just hard times and just take me back for a second. Take us back to your daughter. Okay? Your daughter's on your lap. Just paint the picture of what's happening.

Yes. I assume you're talking about when I shut the office down. I think you're going to take, take me right back there. Wow. You went right, right for it. So you did your homework. You really did your homework. I'm closing my office and my attorney has just informed me that I can't take my laptop because it's an asset of the business. Now the business is gone, the customers are gone, the employees are gone. Public face plant on social media. And I know that I'm deep underwater. I don't know how bad it is, but it's bad. And the attorney and my daughter and my son go back to the office for the final time. My office in Newport Beach. And I'm taking one final look around as I'm about to leave the office for good, knowing that I'm walking Out with nothing. And I'm sitting in my office, and I started to fall apart. My stomach was in knots, and I was sinking, and I just felt beneath, so far beneath the waves, I didn't know how I was going to come up. And I started to cry. And I'm looking out the window, just thinking about everything that I'd lost. And my daughter walks in. And as a dad, I wanted to pull myself together not to freak her out. And she said, daddy, are you crying? And I said, yeah, yeah, these are. These are happy tears. Everything's okay. Everything's okay. And she sat on my lap and she said, what are you gonna do now? And I looked at her, I said, we're gonna start again. We're gonna start again. I said, great. And, you know, kids don't understand the gravity and the enormity of maybe what a dad or a mom's feeling when they're going through something like that. And I said, we're going to start again, sweetheart. She said, great, I'll help you. So what's the name of your company? And I hadn't given it any thought, and I said, it's Embringham Media Group. And she said, great, let's do your first social media post. And it was exactly what God Nature designed for me in that moment. And it gave me that. It helped me turn a corner. I said, all right. I got out my phone, and it was the last piece of property I had for my business. I had free social media accounts, and it was a great reminder of what I still had. And so she said, great. What is it going to be? And if you go on my Instagram account, you can see it's like June 18th or June. I should know the date, but it's in June. It's a very first post. And it's something about when things fall apart, we start again. And I found a quote, and that was my very first post for Impregna Media Group. And it's on there today. And it was the very first step to rebuild and, you know, the optimism of a child. Right. She says, great, well, let's go get some ice cream. And I walked out. I took one final look at the office, and as she walked out, I had the foresight to just take some pictures as she's walking out. She's in her jammies, in her rug boots, and she's walking out. And I still use that picture sometimes in my. My campaigns today or in my videos today to say, this was the last day in my office. And it doesn't matter where you are. It doesn't matter what happened. It doesn't matter how deep you might be underneath the waves, taking one step at a time, you can, you can accomplish some amazing things. And I'm. I'm a pretty good proof of that.

How old was she at the time?

This was in 2018. It was probably four years ago. She's like nine or eight. Eight or nine, something like that.

Wow. Yeah, I'm like doing squats, holding dumbbells last night. I'm like, if he got through that, I could do a couple more reps. This is, you know, so I appreciate that. But, you know, at that point you had built up an eight figure agency. And we'll get to kind of a little bit about what happened. But you got some really key advice from David Meltzer.

Yeah, yeah.

And can you talk about that?

Yeah.

And he's been on the podcast too. He's a really cool story. Great advice.

So, yeah, he, he gave me a great piece of advice. Now, this is just after I shut everything down and I was feeling particularly desperate. The clock was ticking. It was one of the very first meetings I had after I'd shut everything down. No money in the bank, half a million dollars in debt, really. Just starting to figure out a plan. And when I went to him, he asked me, how's business? How are things? And he didn't know anything about my story. He probably looked at maybe my social media and saw the old company. And I decided to be perfectly honest with him. And I said, I've lost everything, David. I've lost everything. I'm starting completely from any. So at that moment, the whole interview, because I was sort of interviewing him and it took a turn and it got a lot more honest, a lot more real. And he sat up in his chair and he leaned forward and he said, I've been there and can I give you a good piece of advice? Can I share something with you? I said, yeah. I said, at that point, by the way, I'd been humbled. And there's never a better place to start than by being an open vessel when you don't know everything. And at that point, believe me, I felt like I didn't know anything. And so I was open to advice. And he said, I want you to do something for me. And this changed everything for me. And he said, I'm going to share with you the concept. The concept is gratitude and service. And I said, I. I know they're just words, but let's put it into practice right now and I said, I'm familiar with obviously how important gratitude is and I'm familiar with how important service is. He goes, yeah, but we're going to put it into practice. He said, I want you to do me a favor. Think of a meeting you have today or tomorrow and I need you to think about how you can serve before you go to that meeting. It could just be, I want you to be in a peak state. It may be thinking about how you could serve that person, how you could bring value, how can you add value, how can you add 10 times more value than anybody ever could possibly expect and then be willing to take a dollar dollar back, ask, offer $20 worth of value calls like the 20 to 1 rule, offer $20 of value and take $1 back. Be, be confident and be appreciative of the fact that you deserve a dollar back if you can offer somebody $100 worth of value or $20 worth of value. But the concept is be thinking about service. He goes, what's the next meeting you have? I'd just been a group called Entrepreneur Organization here in Orange county and I said, well, I've got a meeting today and there's a meeting, it's a board meeting. He goes, how can you serve? How can you serve massive value to everybody? Don't worry about getting. He goes, because the key is right now you're going to be thinking about how do I get wrong energy to put out in the world. If you really want to get energy back, if you want to get wealth, if you want to get abundance, you want to attract that, you have to be that. And the way to be that is go and serve, go and contribute. So he said, what could you do? I said, well, I know it's a brand new board. I could take my phone, my only piece of digital marketing equipment I had at the time, and I'm going to do interviews and I'm going to post them on social. They probably want to promote their businesses. They're proud to be on the board. So I did interviews. I got there, I lined everybody up at odd times. I did interviews and I just served and then I posted that on the channel. I didn't do a video myself, I didn't post anything about myself. I didn't do a selfie, but I did videos of everybody and they were like, wow, I really appreciate. What do you do again? Tell me what you do. And I literally came back and I thought to myself, that night, I did a special prayer for, for David Meltzer because two out of the, you know, Eight board members said, hey, let's talk on Monday. I think I could use your services. You know, I really could use some help with my digital marketing and social media. I said I'd be delighted. I don't know whether I can afford you. I said, you. You can afford me. Can afford me. I'll figure it out.

Yeah, thanks for sharing that, Scott. I think, you know, I hear a lot of people ask questions, hey, if you were to start with nothing in a laptop, what would you do? I mean, you didn't even have a laptop right at the time. And not only that, you know, you had to pay back this debt. Okay, so you started there. What were some of the steps you took next to. Again, it just feels insurmountable.

Yeah.

At that time.

Yeah. The first step I actually took, you know, I was going to go right to the first step I took, which is identifying my target audience. I promise I'll get there, and I. I'll make this as short as I can. The first step I took was asking for help. And. There was a point in June, early June, after. After I'd shut everything down, I was in a really dark place. It was about a week after that. I was medicating myself with sleeping pills and alcohol just to try to get through the night, because I was just so anxious every night with my stomach and knots, thinking how I was going to get out of this. It was like being in a box that I couldn't see how I was going to get out. And it now was July 4th, and. And all my good friends were all on trips with their families and their wives and their significant others. And somebody messaged me on WhatsApp and said, how you doing today, Scott? And they knew that I just shut my visit on. And. And I don't know if you've ever been in this place or anybody listening has ever been this place where somebody asked you how you're doing, and the real answer is not good, not good, not good at all. Now, there's two kinds of not good. It's not good, the general not good. And really, you don't want to bore anybody with it. But then there's the not good, which is where you need help, where you're in such a dark place when it's probably better that you just admit to a good friend or a colleague that you're really not good. And I had the unique good fortune, the wisdom, to tell my buddy, not good, and his name was Anthony Gerasi, and gosh, you're really. You're really Asking some good questions here. And Anthony was at a party in Laguna beach and a holiday party, and he sensed from my WhatsApp response that I was really not good. And. And I dropped off the WhatsApp group in about 45 minutes. Although he was at a party, he left everybody and banged on my front door. And when I opened it, he looked at me and he realized I wasn't good. So he sat down and we talked and I asked for help. That was the first step, you know. And I'll tell you, the two things that really made a big difference is number one, I asked for help. And then number two, I took help. He gave me some good advice. He said, it's not what you lost, Scott. It's what you still have that you're not recognizing. It's what you still have that we. You're not noticing. It's what you still have that you need to step up and deliver for it. He took a picture of my kids off of the desk behind me. He showed me the people that were still counting on me. He reminded me that you've got 20, 20 years of working in this industry. You helped Ford generate a billion dollars worth of sales. What if you could do for you what you did for them, which is get customers with digital marketing, social media. All of a sudden he got, I felt like Superman. He got me to look at what I still had as assets. And I started noticing all these amazing things that I still had that then helped me get back on my feet. I went for a run that afternoon after he'd left, and I came back down and I wrote down an eight step plan. It's the same eight step plan I've been using for 20 years that I learned in guerrilla marketing from Jay Conrad Levinson way back in the day. You've probably heard of I see you nodding your head right, Jake. $0.07 marketing plan. I, I made some tweaks to it over the years and I wrote down my plan, my target audience, my goals, my budget, my messaging, segmenting, how I was going to do them. I wrote down a basic plan that I teach in my workshops, I teach in my course. And I took massive action. I mean, I didn't. I was relentless. I was absolutely relentless. When I say relentless, I just, after I got that plan, I knew the only way out was through. And every single day, I just took massive, massive action. But ironically, it started with just taking, asking for help and taking help, taking advice.

We're going to circle back this in a second, Scott, but I want to go through A little bit about the plan and ASAP plan, because you actually teach this to people. You have a free workshop. You also teach this in smart90social.com and. And we could link up scottabraham.com because they can find all that stuff there or they can go directly to the website. But there was a boutique that you worked with and you took them through this place?

Yes. Yeah, the boutique. This is one of my favorite stories is Covet hits. And a woman comes into my workshop and she starts taking my course. And she said, now I need a lot of help. Covet has wiped out all my traffic. I've got two stores and zero traffic. I've got overhead. I've got, you know, bills to pay. How am I supposed to do this? And I said, it starts with step one. It worked for me. I promise it'll work for you. It works for Ford Motor company, professional services company, podcast. Doesn't matter. Step one, you're like, I've been there. I said, who is your ideal customer and what problem do you solve? And she said, oh, I know. Ideal customer. I everybody. I said, no, no, go. Go with me for a second. Who's your ideal customer and what problem do you solve? And she said. And she started using kind of marketing, what she thought would be marketing language. I said, no, plain English. And she said, mom's in Laguna Beach. I said, great. Mom's Laguna Beach. Why Mom's Lagoon said, is that your kind of your ideal customer? You picture some. Somebody coming in and buying all the stuff from you? And said, yeah, ideal. Ideal customer would be a Mom's in Laguna Beaches. Great. What is her problem? What is her problem right now? And she goes, her real problem right now? Yeah, she's stuck at home, she's bored. She misses her friends, connected with her friends, and she'd probably love to do a little bit of shopping, but you can't right now because she's stuck at home. I said, great. Where does she live? Second one was about your ideal customers. Where do they live? Meaning not necessarily geo, geographically, but online. She said, well, she's. She's about 40 plus, so she's probably on Facebook and Instagram. I said, great. Did you know there's a little thing called Facebook Live? What if you were to do a live event and a virtual fashion show? Would that not solve her problem? She said, you know what? A virtual fashion show would be really good. What's the cost? It's zero. And so I walked her through a couple of strategies on how to set up the virtual Fashion show using Facebook Live. How to promote it with email, which is also free. How to share it on all of her personal channels, which is also free. How to invite other partners from that local market area, some musicians, some people who are going to bring some drinks, all that. And she was able to do these virtual fashion shows. Zero cost, lots of promotion. And not only did it save her business, but then she ended up picking up business from outside of Orange county, outside of California, outside of the United States, and across the world and around the world. And for the first time, she had calls coming in and emails coming in, people from Italy and other parts of the world that said, I'll take that blouse, I'll take that dress, I'll take. This wasn't record shattering numbers, but it was enough on a zero budget to keep her alive and help her thrive during a time when everybody else was shutting down and closing. She was making sales, paying bills, and building her business and building her brand when everybody else was contracting. Using some basic principles, identifying your target audience, what problem do you solve for them or can you solve for them? Where do they live so you can meet them where they live? She also promoted into Facebook, Laguna Beach Facebook groups, the community groups. She then shared that those were some of the strategies. Those are two of the strategies. And there's, you know, six other steps. She did probably four out of the other six steps, but it was more than enough to get her moving forward and building her business again. And then most importantly, she had control again. She felt like she was in control of her destiny again. And as somebody who's felt like they've lost that before in my life, I think that part of that, part of that mental game is really important to make sure you feel like you've got momentum, you've got control. And that was something that I was really proud to be a part of. And it was exciting to see her grow.

Yeah. And kind of going back to what you said is asking for help and taking that help. Like she had to kind of admit herself and go on your program and ask for your advice and help. It was the first step. And some people just are frozen and they bury their head in the sand, don't want to deal with it, and the problem stays there and gets worse.

Yeah, yeah. And it's that, it's that concept of, you know, you can't fill a full glass of water. And part of it was a lot. Many of the folks that come through my coaching program and the online course, they have to unlearn some of the Things they think they already know. Like, it's impossible to promote my business during COVID It might be impossible to promote your business, but it's not possible to serve. David Meltzer got me to look at a totally different way, you know, and part of step one that I teach is people ask the wrong question. Everybody says it's how do I promote my business on social media? That's not the right question. The question is, how do I serve? How do I connect? How do I teach? How do I educate my ideal customer on how to solve their problems? You get in front of a room of a thousand of your best customers and you help them solve some juicy problems, they'll be to beat a path to your door. And that was a big shift, and sometimes it's difficult to see that. David Meltzer got me to look at that differently. Anthony J. Got me to look at that differently.

SCOTT if someone's listening to this, there is a video of, of this, and I love for you to talk. There's two pictures of Muhammad Ali behind you and talk about the significance of that.

Oh, sure, these were in my office when I had my, when I had my office in Newport Beach. But when I was a little kid, my dad was my hero. Maybe a lot of young men's similar, their, their dads, their heroes. My dad worked a lot, and he provided a great living for my mom and my sister and I. He was enormously successful in business, and it took him away from home a lot, busy working night and day. And I got to see him on the weekends, and every once in a while on a Saturday, we'd be sitting there, we'd watch Muhammad Ali. And that was a great bonding experience because he would talk to me about Muhammad Ali and some of the things that he believed in and he stood up for, and it was a great experience. So that was a wonderful bonding moment between my dad and I. And that was happened to be one of my first book reports when I was probably like 8, was on Muhammad Ali and the Story of Cassius Clay and Muhammad Ali. And it was a, it was a great way to bond with my dad when I was a kid.

What did he do, your dad?

My dad was, he started out as a, as a money manager and giving a speech at a group called ipo Young Presidents Organization. And after a speech one day on financial management, a woman by the name of Joan Irvine III came up to him, said, would you manage my money? And that's now the city of Irvine, part of that Irvine family here in Orange county. And Then another gentleman, Anthony Moiseau, came to him and said, boy, I like what you said. How would you like to move to Orange county and help me build a city and be the chief financial officer of Rancho Mission Viejo and build the city of Santa Margarita? And my dad said, I think that day when he. When he came home, we lived in San Fernando Valley. He came home and said, kids, we're moving to Orange County. A little place called Laguna beach and Emerald Bay. And I drugged my feet. I didn't want to do it. And then we got to Emerald Bay, and I said, no, this is going to work. Private community, right on the beach. It was beautiful. He was a very successful CFO of a company where they built a city.

It sounded like speaking helps his career a lot. And I know I was watching videos of you and you've really been honed in on speaking. Can you talk about. I mean, the one video, I think you went to a retreat and people were coaching you. So I'd love to hear some of the advice that they gave you that you took to heart with your speaking.

Wow. Yes. An entrepreneur organization, which, if you are a business owner and you are interested in surrounding yourself with other business owners who have similar challenges, similar problems that you can sort of level up with, I would highly recommend it. Inside that organization, there's something called Global Speakers Academy. Global Speakers Academy is run by a gentleman by the name of Pat Quinn and then several coaches. Coach Jimmy Hayes Nelson, he's on the Grant Cardone tedx circuit. Renee Marino, also coach to Grant Cardone. Tony Robbins, Hope Zavara, Danny Brazell, Diana Swillinger. You have basically five or six of the best public speaking coaches in the world with you for five days. You come in with a speech that you think you want to give, which was my case. I said, I do this all day long. I know exactly what I'm going to do. Diana Swillinger, in the first five minutes, said, I'm out. You're giving this much information. I want you to give this much information. I want you to cut it by 75%. Pat Quinn identified the single most important thing that I needed to do when I got in front of a customer, which is this. Who is my ideal customer? What problem do I solve? I went in to this workshop talking about why this course. I want to help people do retargeting and drop pixels. They said, stop, stop. What problem do you really solve? And when I was done, I understood that I actually helped smaller businesses figure out where to start. And I've got A thing called the authority framework. He said, don't talk about that. Just tell them you're gonna help them where to start. You're gonna teach them what to say, you're gonna teach them how to say it. And the fourth and last thing you're gonna do is you're gonna teach them how to get it all done when they've got all these other things to do. And I said, wow, that makes a lot more sense instead of getting into the weeds of retargeting and authority frameworks, all these different things. So once I win it, once I left that environment after five days of refining my presentation, my keynote, now I talk about. It's called Rising from the Ashes, a 90 day comeback story fueled by social media and AI. And I will teach you where to start, what to say, how to say it, and how to get it all done in less time. And that's it. And it took off once I, I trimmed things down and reformatted it. It was a tremendous experience. And every day they just teach you and refine, help you with the opening, help you with the closing, help you with the structure. It was like boot camp for public speaking is.

And I didn't see this online but Scott, is there a book of the same name yet or Rising?

Oh no.

From the Ashes?

No, but I was approached. I, I'm, I'm looking at putting something together and I think it's a, it's a 2023 goal or 2024 goal for sure.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, well rise 25.

I'll, I'll be buying it. Hopefully there's an audible version so let me know when it comes out. Will. I remember I had a guest, Martin Griff of Site Tuners and he's a commercial rate optimization expert in I. He picked apart our site live on there and I was like, oh, I think our site's pretty good, you know. No, he tore it to shred. So I totally get you came in. No, I think I got this down and then yeah, the experts just shred it in a nice loving way. That's helpful.

Yeah, it's, it was. You got it right on the money. They were, they were encouraging, they were supportive, they were awesome. And they were also direct at times. They just said timeout and they knew that I could, I was open to it, love it.

You know, I want to get into again, you built this eight figure company and obviously did some amazing work there. And I kind of highlight what you do. I mean again, you do this for huge companies like Toyota, Ford, Cadillac and You also help small, you know, bring those same concepts to smaller businesses. Talk about what you did with Ford.

So with, with Ford, it was, it was just an enormous opportunity. As it is growing up in marketing, first building the business and working for smaller businesses. I always read books like Think and Grow Rich and I always read about Henry Ford. And it was always a dream. And so one day I found myself having an opportunity to work with Ford. I flew back to Dearborn. I landed late at night and as I was driving by the world headquarters, I'll never forget, it was late at night, going to my hotel room the first time I was in Dearborn, Michigan. I stopped right in front of the world headquarters and said, one day they're going to know my name at Ford. They're going to know what? Because I'm going to do great. I'm going to do great things. And I don't know if I ever did great things, but one thing I did do was as I went to work on campaigns, I focused on sales events because I knew that if I was able to create a campaign that could amplify the sales events, I could have a big impact on their marketing. And I iterated and I built essentially a social media software and I created a sales event campaign that portable. And all it was was a sweepstakes, essentially a vehicle, an online vehicle sweepstakes register for a chance to win. But I did one thing that was very, very unique. I made it portable and I offered it to Ford Motor Company so they installed it on their website. And then I offered it to all 38 dealer groups around the country, same infrastructure. And it was activated across all the different dealer group websites. All 38. And then I did something else. I made it available to about a thousand dealers at the time. So imagine this July 1st of a 60 day campaign. July 1st through August 31st, the sales event kicks off. That one promotion was live on all those properties. Imagine if you're fishing in a boat. Instead of having one rod and reel, you have like a thousand. Your chances of catching fish go up geometrically. I got a call from my CTO and I got a call from Dearborn, Michigan. A gentleman in Dearborn, Michigan named Venkat Nada who is an IT person in Dearborn. He said, scott, I believe your program has been hacked. And he's. And it was like at 4 in the morning. And I said, why do you say that? And I'm brushing the sleepers out of my eyes. He said, because we've now gotten like 20,000, 30,000 leads just in the first hour that the campaign has gone live, something is wrong. I wake up my CTO and I said, oh, my gosh, this is bad. This is bad. He goes, oh. Venkat says, our system, Ford Motor Company system, is crashing. And I'm thinking, my career's over. I'm like, somehow this has gone horribly wrong. I call my cto. I wake him up, he calls me back and he says, everything's working actually fine. He goes, it's working, Scott. We're. We're literally live across, like, a thousand dealers, 38 dealers and four brokers. We're crushing it. So I call Venkat back and I said, it's working. These are all legitimate leads from, you know, people that are registering for a chance to win. We're collecting leads at a massive rate. And so we had to quickly reprogram the sweepstakes to only allow leads at a certain metered pace. We had to write a program. Instead of let them all register real time and go into Ford Motor Company system real time, we had to meter them out, which is fine. We throttled it back. We hit a max across time. By the end of the campaign, we'd set all the records. By the end of the year, Ford had rolled it out to now 38 dealer groups and 2500 dealerships. Within 13 months, we generated a million leads. Plus for Ford Motor Company, we finally did what's called a sales match. We took all those leads and dumped them back into Polk, which is connected to the DM records. And we found out that we helped them sell over 30,000 vehicles matched back to this program that we did, which is over a billion dollars worth of cars and trucks and suv. That campaign, that idea, that singular idea to create a portable promotion like that put us on the map. Chevy noticed us. I started speaking in front of groups. And again, we use social media, we use technology, but it's still to solve some basic, fundamental marketing challenges. But that one campaign put us on the map.

I love it. I love the idea of a sweepstakes. Yeah, right. What are some mistakes people make if they're thinking, you know what? I should be doing a sweepstakes of some sort.

Oh, God.

What's mistakes and what some must haves.

So here's a classic mistake. I love this one, because here's a classic mistake we had. I won't even say the client. It was a car client. A car client called us up and said, I love what you do with the sweepstakes, but I want to do something different. I want to give out $50 for a test drive. And we said, love it, but you have to be very careful with the technology. Now we came up with the technology to, to allow us to offer it on Facebook but still make it exclusive. We called it pinpoint technology. A lot of technology behind it to offer exclusive testers non transferable. This gentleman was from a, from a car company. He said, no, no, no, we really need to drive sales for this vehicle. Let's just give anybody who wants to test drive a vehicle 50 bucks. What could possibly go wrong? Right?

Famous last words.

Right? Yeah. And I said, sir, we don't want to do that. It's going to go viral in two seconds. And, and, and people are going to be coming in left, right. So that's okay. It's on me. It's on me. Famous also last words. But I'm the vendor. And I'm saying, yeah, but I'm the one that's building this contraption that's going to go horribly wrong. He said, thanks for your input. I'm the client, you're the vendor. Let's make it done. I was broke. I needed the money. I said, okay, you've been warned. We put it online within an hour or two. Again, my cto, same cto, this is, year later, this CTO called me and said, we have a problem. This time we really did have a problem. And so many people had downloaded this. We broke the budget in two seconds. You know, in just two seconds, it was over. I called the client, said, we've had a lot of downloads. How many? 14,000 downloads. And he said, shut it off. 15 $50 times 14,000 downloads. A lot of money. We shut it off. They went back, they, they shut it down. They, they, the people that came in and did the test drive, they ended up funding. It was a disaster. It was an absolute disaster. And it's funny, is that automotive. With an automotive marketing background. Every once in a while I'll be online and I'll see Chevy or GM or I shouldn't pick on. I'll see some random car company offering a 50 test drive. And I look at, I go, oh, somebody's gonna be getting a call. I'm glad it's not me.

And so mistake, no qualification is that the.

I think there's, there's two mistakes there I think is you don't always want to listen to an expert. Sometimes you got to listen to your gut and you take good advice. But when somebody knows more than me about podcasting or something, I have to be willing to Say, listen, that is your area of expertise. Tell me more why that's a bad idea and then be open to it. But this particular gentleman was just so bullheaded. I said, sir, here's why. I was articulate, I was clear, I was specific. He said, got it. Do it. Okay, so he didn't listen to good advice. And then two. Yeah, for sure, for sure. Technology is a double edged sword. Technology can be really fantastic and get your message out. And it can also absolutely go viral in the wrong ways. And we've had a handful of those go go viral in the wrong ways. And so, yeah, in that case, there was no technical qualifications offering some incentive. You have to be very careful about offering incentives online, because incentives, if there's a loophole, people will find them. There's websites dedicated to exactly that. Fat wallet, deals, dot com. You know, there's all kinds of online communities that do nothing else then fund, you know, the toaster and the refrigerator and the car. They're online looking for these loopholes. And they're very smart. They're very smart. You know, they're clever at figuring these things out.

Yeah, I had a guy on my podcast, got Josh Linkner, who started E Prize, and then they sold it. And I think that's all their company did, was help companies with sweepstakes. Right.

Have you heard of them? Tremendous. Yeah, I definitely heard of them. We modeled a lot of things. We did. We did work with E Prize in the early days and we saw what they were doing and we modeled it and just did some tweaks. He did a great job. I remember E Prize was a very powerful company.

What are some. That was a mistake, a bad offer. What are some good offers you've seen out there from a sweepstakes perspective or ones that you help create or ones that you've just seen?

So. So one twist we did on the sweepstakes was, I'll give him a. Give him a shout out. To his credit, there was two gentlemen, Dave Spindler and Scott Moni over at Ford Motor Company. Scott Bonnie was a global social media person over at Ford, and they basically looked at our sweepstakes and they said, the problem with the sweepstakes is we are not teaching them anything about our vehicles. We're not showing all the wonderful things that F150 could do or a Ford Fusion or whatever it is, or Bronco. And so we reinvented it. We said, well, what if? So I said, this is actually a marketing, I think a marketing idea, or there's a lesson here, rather than just take no for an answer. I said, the problem, you're saying, is with a sweepstakes, you like the idea of capturing data, but you don't like the idea of not being able to teach them anything about the vehicle. I said, yeah. I said, what if we could teach about the vehicle before they registered for a chance to win? They said, you might have something there. So we created a thing called a watch win platform. And the watch sharewind platform was. Dr. Weiss goes on the website and says, I'd like to win an F150. And when he clicks, I want to win an F150. He watches a short 15, 30 second video about the F150, the interior, the exterior, the towing, and he learns something. He registers. And then he says, by the way, you could win five more chances to win. It'll only take you a moment. Watch a couple more videos on the interior and exterior, and you get those five, and then you go, yeah, I got. I got another minute. So you watch the videos, and now you've learned about the interior, the exterior, the towing. And then right when you're done, it says, last thing. Do you want five? You want to double your bonus chances? All right, you got me for this long. What do you want me to do? Just. Just copy this link. Just copy this link and post it to Facebook and you're going to double your. Your thing, your. Your. Your chances. All right, so you do that. What we've just done is essentially quadrupled or quintupled the length of time on site. We've doubled, tripled, or quadrupled the amount of information you know now know about the interior and exterior of the Ford. And now you've become an advocate for Ford. That was the secret sauce in that simple sweepstakes platform that really blew things up because not only were people entering to win, they were watching videos, they were posting the links online. And so we had this geometric impact on the market for years. For three or four years, we did that for sweepstakes.

Scott, do you. What kind of budget does someone need to do that? I don't know if I see as many smaller companies out there doing it. Are there any smaller company examples that you've seen?

Sure, sure. There's. There's some small programs. Like, a lot of people will go to Facebook. Really small companies will do book giveaways. Like, I happen to be really. I'm excited. I'm speaking with Tim Grover. Tim Grover is one of my heroes. In my darkest days, I would read relentless is just a Way to get out of bed in the morning.

Obviously, being from Chicago, Tim Grover is. Yeah, I'll let you. You say. Yeah, what he, what he does. Yeah, please. But go ahead. Yeah.

Tim Grover, what coach? Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, tons of basketball great greats, had a, had a gym called Attack Athletics. I think he still has that athletic facility. Or he's. He, you know, he's a coach at Attack Athletics. He wrote a great book called Relentless. It's about the mindset of getting into the mind of somebody like a Kobe Bryant or a Michael Jordan. And it's next level. I mean, these guys are the best of the best of the best. And what does it take? Well, it doesn't take. Just, hey, you can do it. It's a relentless attack, next level mindset of sacrifice to do this. And that was what I needed at the time. It's what I still am trying to strive for today. And, and so I'm speaking at Relentless with him. He's an incredible guy. There's an event at Entrepreneur Organization sponsored by Anthony Gerasi, who's also a member of Entrepreneur Organization. So it's in Ranch in Rancho Mirage. May 4th, 5th and 6th in there in Palm Springs or Rancho Mirage. And I'll be speaking with Tim Grover in Relentless. They are doing a bunch of giveaways on that Facebook page. Really simple win sign books by Tim Grover. They're giving away two books and there's only three secret formulas. Number one is the algorithm. Facebook algorithm loves when people comment right away. So first one to comment with the word winning will get a book. Then one random. Why one random? Because the more people comment, the better. And when you stack all those comments up and give one to one random, you've now created a reason for people to then comment on the page. Winning, winning, winning, winning. And when you get a bunch of those, Facebook says, wow, this is a popular post, and shares it with more people. And the third one is tag a friend who you think could benefit from this book. So now Dr. Weiss goes on there and says, you know, Scott's a big Tim Grover fan. I'm going to, I'm going to mention him. And you have some of those people do the, do the marketing for you. So Relentless is a good example. They're promoting this event. They did a couple of book giveaways. The cost was two books. Easy peasy, right? And they're having everybody else comment and do the legwork for them.

I love it. So in this situation, looking at rewarding the activity that you want and like, you you looked at what is going to make this go to more people and rewarding that those specific activities.

Yeah, exactly. And, and rule number one is again back to where we exact exactly started. So many people look at marketing and look at what they don't have. The real answer is start to take, take, take stock of what you do have. If you've got a Facebook page, you can go live today. If you've got an Instagram account, you can go live today. If you got a TikTok, you can go live today. I mean, there's so much you could do with the resources that are right in front of you. Most people just don't take a moment to look at what they do have, what they could use right now.

Scott, who are with the and I people can check out emp media group.com which is your website. Who are ideal clients for you through that?

Yes. Oh, thank you. Through emerging media, we work a lot with automotive companies, large franchise companies. Anybody with a franchise, whether it's mobile homes, motorcycles, SUVs, vehicles, we work a lot with larger companies. On the Africa side, on the agency side, with 20 years of working with companies like that, we've become accustomed to the two or three major problems that they have. So, for example, if you have a, a large company with franchises, there's some nuances that agency needs to be aware of to navigate some of those challenges and those unique challenges that the master company has versus the franchise company and navigating that and aligning those things are really, really important. After 20 years of making lots of mistakes and making lots of innovations, we figured out some creative ways to get everybody aligned around key events and then amplify everything. The key with companies like this, like the Ford Motor companies, the Chevys, the car companies or companies with franchises, is how do you align their interests and get them focused on one thing. Sales events, service events, test drive events. To the extent that you could do that and truly align them, you can create magic. The perfect example would be the example that we started with a little while ago with a billion, you know, billion dollars worth of cars in 13 months. It was all about figuring out alignment. And I'll share one other thing. When we first started that campaign franchises said, you will not put a promotion from the mothership on my Facebook page or on my website. Well, why not? Because all the leads are going to go back up to Ford Motor Company or Chevy or whatever it is. I'll never see them. And we found out that was a problem. Franchises, many times, as much as they are excited to be a part of that entire system, they get screwed. Their interests are not always aligned, and so they don't want to do what the factory or the manufacturer somebody else really wants to do. But if you can figure out how to align those interests, set up business rules that support both of them and get them aligned from a marketing perspective, one plus one can equal three, one plus one can equal five. And it really is, it's fun to work. I love that environment. It's a very fun environment.

And Scott, who's a good fit for I know you've training? Smart90social.com who's good fit for this training?

99.9% of the companies we help are between $250,000 and say 2 or $3 million or $4 million. If somebody says, I don't know, I know I need to get on, I need to do more digital marketing and social media, but I don't know where to start. I don't know what to say. I don't know how to say it. I don't know how to get it done in less time. This course is for them. It's literally a on demand social media court that teaches them exactly where to start, what to say, how to build their ads step by step by step by step. It's an annual license, so you get it for the entire year. You could share it with your entire team, share it with your marketing manager, your intern, your overseas virtual assistant, but that course can be shared with anybody on your team and anybody that's listening to your podcast. If you use a SAVE90 discount code, you also will get access to monthly coaching for a dollar. For one dollar, you can go on and use that course. And for $1, you get 30 days of, of coaching. It's a weekly live call with us and we'll walk you through exactly how to get the most out of the course. We'll answer your questions. It's myself, my creative team, my development team. It's like having an entire agency over your shoulder to launch your first course for a buck. That's a pretty good deal. And so there's two, there's two, there's two discount codes. Sorry, it's Smart90 and Save90. But Smart90 and Save90, plug those in and you'll get that 90% discount as well as that coaching for a buck. And that's really what it is. It's a, it's an on demand course to just get you started, get you going, and then also have the coaching.

Wow. Well, thank you for that. I Do want to mention you do have a software as well?

Yes, yes. So we, we, we invented this software again. People in our course said, okay, now I know where to start. I know how to do my advertising. The one problem they had, like let's say the, the boutique. Boutique. She said, okay, I want to do a virtual live fashion show. I gotta write the copy for my Facebook event. I said, come on, we just told you the idea. That's all you gotta do. Write the copy for your Facebook event and converted that to an email, maybe do a blog and do some Facebook posts. Said, I don't want to, I don't, I don't have time. AI Content Pro is a software that sits on Top of chat GTP 3.5 Turbo Chad GDP 3. You answer five questions. Five questions. Your business, your ideal. It's a couple other questions. If you could do Mad Libs, you could do a Content Pro. And you answer five questions. We. It sits on top of chat GPT3. It inputs the information into GPT3, parses it out and spits back an entire 30 day done campaign. You get four emails, 12 social media posts and you get 12 social media posts and ads and a blog all done for you. So it's literally 30 days of content and it takes you two minutes. You don't have to master technology, you don't have to Master Chat GPT3.AI Content Pro is basically a thing where you go on, you answer four questions and you get the entire 30 day campaign done.

Scott, I have one last question and I know we only have a few minutes and. But I do want to mention this piece, but I do want to point people to all your websites and they can, you know, check those out. We mentioned them on here. They'll be in the notes and also on the video. But the last thing I just want to point out and mention is to add fuel to the fire. During this whole hard time, you were also going through a divorce.

Yeah. Personally, yes.

But there's a very small percentage of people that kind of, it spins out positive on the other end and so could you. Can you. I know we only have a minute or so. Just take me through just a shortened timeline of that part. Up until today.

In 2018, I was in the middle of the divorce, in the middle of losing my company. My entire life was in freefall. By the end of 2018, my company was done. That entire chapter was closed. I was rebuilding. By 2019, my divorce papers were signed and I was divorced through that period of time. I'll call it A period of refinement. A good friend of mine, Skyler Lewis, he runs a men's group. It's a Christian men's group, but it's just a group about building four pillars of your life. And he had an enormous impact on me. And I've got to give him a huge shout out. He called on me to help him start the marketing for Rise Up Kings, his men's group. And in that he said there's four pillars that he believes a man should strengthen if he wants to provide wealth for his family, spiritual life, relationship with his wife, physical body and financial life. If you have four pillars strong and you work every day to strengthen those four pillars, you can start to build, as he calls it, your kingdom. In marketing with him, he had a tremendous impact on me. And I looked at areas of my spiritual life that were, I wouldn't say weak. They were just destroyed. Certainly my relationships were destroyed. My physical body, I was drinking and using sleeping pills to get through the night and my financial life was in ruin. And so as I was working on his marketing, I started to really take a look at those four pillars. The last four years have been of my life, been cleaning up, strengthening and focusing almost exclusively, ruthlessly on those four areas. I'm happy to say I was baptized, my kids were baptized, I quit drinking. And I've just been relentless in pursuit of those four things during that process. One of the blessings that came back is my, my relationship with my, my now my. My fiance. On, on, on Valentine's Day, I asked my former wife to marry me again. Happily. She said yes. I. One of the blessings was I think she saw such changes in my life and we both changed and we just grew back together. And so on Valentine's Day, I asked her to marry me today. The movers will be here probably in two minutes and this house is going to be all an uproar. We own a couple of house. Well, she's got her house, I've got mine and I'll be moving back in and we're reuniting the family and I'm extraordinarily grateful for that. So I can say through just focusing on what I think are good fundamentals, life can really be amazing.

Scott, I'm gonna be the first one to thank you. Thank you everyone. This has been really episode of Gold. Check this out other episodes out and I wanna be the first one. Thank you, Scott.

Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me on. Thanks for listening to the Rising entrepreneurs podcast. This episode is powered by Rise25. Please subscribe and check out future episodes.