Episode 291: Targeting the Perfect Client with Kirby Hasseman

Kirby, thanks for being here. Really appreciate you.

Yeah. Are you kidding me? This is exciting. I always love when I get a chance to just a. Just catch up with you and the whole skew. Common skew gang. But just you and I having a conversation is just, like, the best part of my day.

Yeah, I love it. Thank you, man. How would you define. I mentioned the intro, the new book, and reference some of your other books that you've written. How would you define a fixed mindset versus a growth mindset? And I want to also mention there was an episode I recorded with Kyle Spencer where he talked about abundance mindset, and he talked about being a surfer, and that one of his big mental changes that he went through was he would be out there as a surfer. And he was like, if I. This is the wave. If I don't catch this wave, I'll never catch another wave. And it was a quite an opening for me. It was like. It taught me a lot. How would you define fixed mindset versus cork mindset? Yeah.

And so. So for me, the. The book Mindset by Dr. Carol Dweck is, you know, how those. You have books, and you and I both like to read. It was one of those books that, literally, as I'm reading it, I just sat up because it so resonated with me. So, you know, a lot of what I think about when it comes to mindset is through the lens of Dr. Dweck's work. And so, yeah, fixed mindset is that idea that, you know, we are what we are. We are as smart as we are. We're as fit as we are. We're as creative as we are. And growth mindset is the idea that if we continue to work at something, if we continue to try to master the craft, that we can continually get better. And I think that making that shift is so incredibly powerful in a lot of areas of your life. And one of the things that struck me about the book is that she said that you can be different mindsets in different areas of your life. Because the whole time I'm reading it, I'm like, oh, yeah, well, I'm. I'm. I'm growth mindset. I'm growth mindset because that's what you're supposed to be. And then somebody says, hey, how are you? You know, are you a good artist?

No.

Right. Mindset. Right. Because I haven't drawn anything since sixth grade. And so I think understanding that and making a shift and realizing that failure is not failure. Failure is just an opportunity to learn, which it sounds so trite, because we hear it all the time.

Yeah.

That's a mindset thing.

Right.

And that it. I'll tell you one of the things that said from the book that I took in parenting and I took. I take in my leadership, is it that you never tell a child that they're smart, which sounds totally counterintuitive. Right. But it can force them into a fixed mindset where they don't want to try anything that will prove that wrong. And so you encourage them on the effort, like, you worked so hard on that homework. You work so hard on that test, because they can replicate that. And so for me, fixed mindset versus growth mindset really has to do with being willing to know that we're all work in progress. Right. We're not who we are going to be, and that's a good thing.

It's funny how you said that we can be that way in our. In our life at the same time. Like, you can be a runner, you can be physical, and you can have a growth mindset in that category. But as a. Maybe as a salesperson, you might be like, you know what? I've got all I can handle and I don't want to do anymore. I just talked with Stephen Musgrave, who talked about the very same thing in terms of. In using different terms, but it was a fixed mindset versus growth mindset.

Yeah, yeah.

And we were talking about how account management is a big part of that secret. Right.

Is.

Is like managing an account. Like, you. You and I know this, and everyone listening knows this, but you will do the same amount of work for a $10,000 client as you can for a hundred thousand dollars client often in this business. But we as salespeople, where do you see we have a fixed mindset that gets in our way sometimes?

Oh, I think it's different for each person. Right. Like, and. And I think that. But your point is exactly right. I think where. It's like the. Where the correlation I would draw to it is that you have to take every client, you have to take every order back to the wave. Right. If I don't get this one, then. Right, right. Then. Then my whole business will fall apart. Like I see it where, where distributors interacting with suppliers, like they're like, oh my God, I'm messing up this order and that's going to ruin my whole business. And obviously you don't want to have any problems with orders and all that sort of thing, but we get more opportunities if we continue to surf. If we continue to surf. Right. And so to me, that's one of the places where we get a little fixed mindset. The other place, actually, as I sit here and think about it, it goes back to the artist.

Right.

There are so many people who are salespeople who are like, well, I don't do. I couldn't do the creative side. Right. And vice versa. Well, I can't do the details because I'm the creative. That's kind of a bullshit excuse. Right, Right. We can all do a little better.

Yeah.

And so, yeah, I think those are a couple places that come to mind.

Yeah. The book Hit the Target. You talk about these different aspects of it. Targeting the perfect customer. Attracting the perfect customer. Reach across platforms to build momentum. Go get it. Enthusiasm. Track your activities. Target. Of those listed above, what do you think our industry particularly does very well? And what do you think? Where do you think we need the most work?

Okay, great. So what we do very well is ge. I think we go get it.

Right.

Whether we're ready for it or not.

Right.

And so, And. And when I'm giving critique to the industry, I'm looking in the mirror a lot of times too. Right. Like, I am a person who is ready. Fire.

Right.

And so now, again, that's still a strength. Right. If you're really good in one area and weak in another, I would. I would argue that the two places that I see are. Are sort of the most foundational. So number one is the target. And again, looking in the mirror for years, I. I'm in a small rural area. You know that. Right. And so there's not Fortune 50 companies on every block, as a matter of fact, on none of the blocks. And so I. I started as a generalist, and so I had clients in all kinds of areas. And so when people would push me to say, okay, who's your perfect customer? Who's your target? Like, I didn't. I really didn't want to let go. And I think the key there is to understand it doesn't mean you have to hang up on everybody. It's that we only. Each of us only has so much time, treasure, and talent. And so identifying those people that we really, really resonate with and that resonate with us really affects your business. And so we. It took me years to go through that exercise. And. And I think most of the people in our industry are generalists. And so those, you know, focusing on areas where we can really speak the language is. Is number one, and then number two is A. And that's really building the list. And, you know, One of the things that, you know, I think you and I have talked about this separately sort of off the podcast, is that, you know, we get really comfortable with rented media. And this is true of. Of most industries. Right, right. Rented media is that we're going to pay for the, the radio spot, the email. It is. But building our own list where we get the opportunity to communicate with prospects and customers when we want to is something where I think I see a lot of folks falling short.

Such a great point. Oh, it's such a great. Is that because it's such a heavy lift?

Yeah, I think part of it is that it's a heavy lift. Part of it's that they just haven't thought through how to do it. Right. Like, because I think when we first started the email thing is like, if you just ask, hey, sign up for my email newsletter, then, you know, you'd actually get some people who would do it. Now nobody does that. Right. Like, nobody's like, oh, please send me another email. So you have to make the shift to say, okay, I'm going to provide some sort of lead magnet, some sort of value proposition that is so awesome that I'm willing to give up my email. And it's got to be something good to do that. And I think most people a struggle with the idea of what that's going to be because they don't know who their perfect customer is.

Right.

Because once you know your perfect customer, you know what problems you need to solve for them, and if you can help them solve it, then you can create a lead magnet that. And then they just don't have. They haven't thought through the logistics. Right. The. Okay, here's where I'm going to capture them, here's where I'm going to keep them, and then here's what I'm going to do with that list once I get it, if that makes sense.

Yeah. And I think a lot of us struggle with allocating the resources of time and money toward that for days. Well, yeah, when you talk about investing in your own properties and investing in that particular part as opposed instead of rented media, I think a lot of us struggle because we know that that takes an incredible amount of time. It really does. The thing we don't talk about in marketing a lot, and it does take a lot of time. And I think that's where we get.

We.

But we also simultaneously get frustrated that we're not either producing more leads down the road or doing things like that. But. But it's that investment.

Yeah. And I Think the other piece is the folks who own the audiences do a superb job of making it easy for us to rent that media, too. Right? Like, and I'll throw my. Throw myself under the bus here. Right? Like, so my wife and I have some Airbnbs, and it occurred to me, literally, pretty recently, that all of our traffic came through Airbnb. Airbnb owned that audience. We did not. And we'd done nothing to build our own list. And it occurred to me when we were slow, and I'm like, oh, well, I should shoot everybody an email who's rented from us. Oh, we don't have them. And if Airbnb isn't promoting them, then we didn't have a way to communicate. And I'm like, okay, this is what I practice or what I preach. I need to practice it. And so we then set to building our list so that we could address that. It doesn't mean that Airbnb is bad. Right. They have a great platform that we want to continue to use, but having that as an. That's something that I'm continually working on on that business so that we can build that list.

Often, as you work on a book, you end up becoming the biggest student of the topic that you're working on. So, you know the areas that you were struggling with or was there anything new that came to you through the book, writing the book that you were like, you know what? This is an area. I probably should spend more time on all of them.

But. Right. But there's. I joke, but there's some truth to that. But the honest answer is the R. And that's going to sound counterintuitive because you think, well, I, you know, I create a lot of content. I do a lot of social media, but I think that during the week of the book launch, that's when it really becomes. We. I talk about this all the time, Bobby. We all have that voice. We all have that voice in our head that says, it's too much. Stop it. Everybody's tired of hearing you. Like, don't. Don't post another post. Don't do another video. And during a book launch, it really got loud for me.

Yeah, right.

And partially, I think, because most of the content that I try to do is give first. Right? It is. It's providing value. I'm not doing a lot of asks. And during the week. During the week of book launch, I'm doing more asks. So I think that's part of it. But I think the reality of it is almost all the people I Know who aren't professional content creators are not creating enough content. They are not doing our enough. Like that week I was like, I. I wanted to throw up every time I saw my face on social media because it was just so much of me. Right. But most people I ran into, I would literally, you know, face to face and I'd be like, hey, yeah, got a book coming out. And they go, you do? They had no idea. And so this voice was telling me that nobody wanted to hear about it again. Everybody was tired of hearing about it and most people hadn't heard it at all. And so I think that's the piece that I learned through the process. That. And it wasn't so much in writing the book, it was in literally living what I was trying to do. I was like, oh, man, this is harder than. This is just a really hard part.

It's a really good point. Such a. It's typical of you, Kirby, to help us wrestle with our humanity on that part of it. That it's. That it's not always just tactics. It's a dealing with the psychology of the self and all that. And let's stay on platform for a little bit. Not just platform specific, but that whole area that you were talking about, reaching across platforms to build momentum. You've been a prolific video creator for years. I mean, you, you have seen so many things come and go. It. We're seeing trends report, Obviously, we know TikTok and short form video has been insanely popular. TikTok, you know, just. I don't even have to say anything else about it. It's just incredible. Given your experience as a video producer, are you seeing trends over the past, maybe post pandemic that we should be paying attention to more?

Yeah, I think the thing that I find is I'm. So the first thing I would answer is, yes, short form videos doing really well. I find ironically, that the place that, you know, everybody's like, oh, you got to be on TikTok, which I'm doing much more TikTok than I had in the past. Facebook is killing it. Like, for me right now, LinkedIn is doing very well. For me right now, Instagram is not doing as well. Gary Vee talks about this all the time, where the attention goes. Then all of a sudden, you know what you want is there to be a lot of attention, but not as much content. Well, TikTok, there's a ton of content now. People have understood now. So there's a lot of folks who are creating in that platform, whereas now there's a little bit of a deficit in Facebook. And so. So that's the sort of the one thing I would say. And again, credit to Gary Vee for like leading the way and saying that. But me then going, okay, yeah, I'm going to try that and see if it bears out to be true in my area. And it has the other thing. I come back to this a lot. There's no one way, like, I think so many times we are looking for, oh, today we have to do shorts and that's all we're doing. And there's nothing else? No, man. When I post a long form video, it still does. Well, it's just having a mix of different things. Blogs are dead. Except they're not. Right? Right. I think what we need to understand is the people who A, everybody who's following you is not seeing all your content.

Yes.

And B, each one of them likes different things. They like to consume different things. Some people like to read, some people like to listen.

Yeah.

And like, for me it's funny because I create so much video, but if I have a choice between listening to a video, like a podcast version or a video, I'll probably listen to the podcast because that's when I'm running or doing something that I have time. So I say that to say creating those things across different platforms and across different formats still has a ton of value in my opinion.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's talk about the last T in Target. Attract your activities. And there's a couple of reasons why I want to unpack this with you. But what type of activities? And let's talk a little bit about the promotional products professional themselves and what they sort of are dealing with on a day to day basis. What type of activities do you track that help you the most at Haasman Marketing?

Yeah, I can get super specific because this is something we've really sort of unpacked this year. So I think one of the challenges is understanding what specifically to track. And so let me just talk about the difference between lead measures and lag measures. I think one of the things that people track all the time are the lag measures. Right. That's the thing that has happened at the end. So in the promotional products industry, I want to sell $10,000 this week and that's great. That is something that you should be tracking. But at the end of the week, on Friday, you either did it or you didn't do it. Right. You can't affect it at that moment. So that's one of the lag measures. Another One might be like invoicing, right? Like, how much did we invoice this week? How much did we sell this week? Those are great measures, but we like to focus a lot on lead meas. So lead measures are the things that you have complete control over.

Yeah.

That will lead you to the result you want. So in fitness, you know, I want to lose 10 pounds, but the lead measure is I need to, you know, eat better and drink less and work out more. Right. But like I'm going to work out 30 minutes a day, I'm going to eat so many calories. Those are things you have complete control over that will lead you to the goal. So in the promotional products industry, we found that we looked for years to try and figure out exactly what those were. Is it the number of pieces of content that we post? Is it the number of calls? Is it the number of meetings? What we found about three, four years ago is that the person in our company who sends the most presentations sells the most.

Right.

It's very specific through common SKU to give that sort of shout out. And it was funny because in the meeting I discovered I was like, well, who sent the second most? And they said, who sent the second most? I'm like, who had the second most sales? Same person. It was, it was. And I was like, okay, once we unpack that. Well, that needs. The number of presentations we send out each week is an indicator not necessarily of sales that week, but of future sales.

I love it. Yes.

So, so it's touches, which is phone calls, meetings, all things that you can track through common SKU and presentations. So that's like the total and then presentations and then, you know, obviously we measure. Okay, have we gotten any more email newsletter people? You know, we have about, I think 10 different things that we track, but it's. Several of them are. Oh yeah, those make sense. Like how much do we have out in receivables, how much do we send, how many orders? You know, those sort of things. But then there's the lead message too.

I love this so much because it also takes away the angst of.

Right.

You know, you have this, this sales goal and the sales volume and it feels like you don't have a lot of power over, you know, And I've heard so many people you've done this. I've done this where I'm like, we're going to grow by 30%. And it was just like some wish dream that we pulled out of the sky.

And like, you know, it didn't, didn't

really have any aspect in reality. That's why I love the lead factor. It's so good.

Well, and the other thing that I find is in those weeks, and inevitably there are those weeks where sales suck.

Yeah, right.

What did our activity look like? What did presentations look like? And so a. We, like, I'll give you, like, again, I'm telling on myself a little bit. So our first five months, we were killing it. And then in June and July, we slowed down and as I went back and looked at our numbers, our presentations fell down, our touches fell down while we were busy, which makes sense. But had I, like, pulled on that lever earlier, maybe we would have pulled out of it faster. So keeping track of. That's why there's so much power.

Yeah, that's a great point.

But during, like July, I'm like, yeah, but what can we control? And what we can control is presentations and touches and, you know, reaching out to people. And so, you know that it's. To me, it's. No, it doesn't. It's not a surprise that August came back because we took control of those things. We could control it in June and July.

I love it. It gives us something tactical. We can do something tangible that we can do and measure and go to our team and do something proactive. Let's talk lastly about Kirby. We have about five minutes left. You are a voracious read. What are you reading now that you're enjoying or. And. Or is there some sort of. You also. Also seem to live by mantra ever now. Something that sieges you and you're like, you know what? I'm going to. I'm going to hang on to this. This is good. This is for me. Is there either a book that you recommend read lately or a mantra that's really been running in your head?

That's great. So I would say book that I just finished is $100 million leads by Alex Hormozi. He's written $100 million offers both really, really tactical great books. I'm listening to a book right now by Dr. Benjamin Hardy called 10x is easier than 2x. And wow, super interesting concept. And I'm early into it, but I love the idea. And the idea essentially is that if you are thinking 2x, then you're thinking, oh, I'm just going to do what I'm doing, but I'm going to do it twice as much. But when you think 10x, you're like, well, I can't do it 10x. I have to. I have to think differently about this. And I totally subscribe to that. I believe the idea that it's one of the reasons I believe in big goals, because it makes me think about the entire problem differently. And so I love the concept behind both of those.

Love it. In. In trying to learn more about people. I like asking a bolder guests, somebody like Kirby, who can handle any question I throw at him. This question. What is a heretical belief of yours? A belief not embraced by the majority, but it's very important to you.

One thing that is driving me crazy. And I think in all of these things, you. You swing one way or another, right? Like, the. The culture will swing way over here, and then they'll see. Swing way back. And so there was a whole thing there, you know, 10 years ago where it was like, hustle, hustle, hustle. And now it's like, okay, that's terrible. Right. And so I think that one of the things that drives me crazy is when people were like, well, you know, I've got all these obstacles in my way, so this must be a sign. This must be God's way of saying I'm not supposed to do that. This must be the universe telling me I'm supposed to do something else. And I think that is complete horseshit. Like, maybe God just wants me to work harder. Maybe. Maybe. Like, I know that mental health is incredibly important, and I think it's. The caveat to that is it's really important to say that. But just because something is hard doesn't mean that the universe is telling you to quit.

Yeah.

Often the one thing we can control in our life is. Is our effort, our attitude and our effort. And the. The idea that suddenly the obstacle is just proving that I'm not supposed to do that. I just don't buy that at all.

Such a great point, Kirby. One thing that I love visiting with you about is that you're such a great shot in the arm of optimism and hope and that whole thing you just said, effort, that you're looking for the levers that we can pull. And that's such a resonant message for all of us. Thank you, my friend, for joining us today.

Thanks, buddy.