What Is Your Level Of Risk In Marketing? How To Get People Talking!

Hey, it's Mark Podolski, the land geek with your favorite niche real estate website, www.thelandgeek.com. and I'm really excited for today's guest and he's got quite a story. But before we talk to our guest, I would be remiss. I didn't properly introduce my co host, Six Sigma. You know him, you love him. Scott Todd from scotttodd.net landmodo.com and most importantly, not automating your Craigslist things, hosting domination.com TheLand Geek Scott. How are you, Mark?

I'm great.

How are you?

Pulse is normal, respiration is fine. You know, rocking the treadmill desk. Feeling good.

Are you?

Are you ready to talk to our guest?

I cannot wait to hear this story.

I can't wait to hear this story. And I think we're going to learn a lot. It's going to be, it's going to be mentorship beyond mentorship. Who's I talking? Or I was listening to a podcast with Naval Ravikant and he said the five chimps theory, right? And he's like, be careful what five chimps you surround yourself with, right? Because you start taking them on. I found my fifth chimp, right? It's today's guest because Saul Colt from Saul is is the smartest man in the world. Saul, how are you?

I'm doing great. Thank you so much for having me on the show. This is exciting.

So, Saul, you're the smartest man in the world. How did you become the smartest man in the world? And how did you have the confidence to just kind of state, I'm the smartest man in the world?

Well, so it wasn't so much that I had the confidence to say it. Google has been saying it for years and years and years. But I guess I probably started it. It's one of those things where I guess, you know, you, you say it enough that it becomes true. But how did I sort of net out at this point? It's kind of a curse. I know almost everything and I'm also one of these people that is all too happy to share what I know, good or bad. So it works both ways.

So you are a award winning word of mouth marketer, professional speaker on the subjects of social media, customer service, and best of all, word of mouth. Can you give us an example of word of mouth marketing?

So word of mouth is really like empowering customers or empowering people to, you know, turn to someone next to them and make a referral or make a suggestion. So we get so caught up in social media and, you know, something has to carry on Twitter and all this engagement. But in actual fact, 86% and almost every number I give I'm going to make up, except for this exact one, 86% of all word of mouth actually happens in the real world. So most recommendations, most referrals are happening in line at the grocery store or at kids soccer games and things like that. And absolutely no one is going to refer your business or talk about your product unless you give them the tools to do so. Ask them to remind them they should be talking about it. If you're not being proactive with these sort of conversations, most of the time the conversations people are only going to talk about you in a negative fashion. But you always have to remind people, if you like this, share it. It sounds so simple, but very few people actually do it.

So just ask. It's that simple. Just ask Scott. Todd, what do you think about word of mouth marketing?

Well, Mark, I think that like one of the things that I saw in my own business was when I would do these email lists, like the, you know, to my buyers list. Then one day I'm like, what would happen if I. What would happen if I asked people to send this or share to other people that they know that might be interested? And they did it. And so that became like a staple of my emails on my deals of the week and everything. Hey, send this to someone that might be interested or if you're not interested today, who do you know that might be? And I started getting people to refer or send that email around and I started getting sales from it. So it's not just about the people on your list. I think Saul's right. I mean, get to people and ask, ask them to do something and they'll do it.

And a lot of times you don't have to ask them. You can just wow them with something. So one of the companies I've had a very long history with is FreshBooks. For those of you who don't know, FreshBooks is the number one online invoicing platform for small businesses, freelancers, people who bill for time and expertise. And one of things I've been doing with FreshBooks for almost 10 years now, it's crazy to think 10 years is anytime someone in the company goes out of the office, whether they're going to a conference or anytime anyone gets on an airplane, they host a customer dinner. It can be four people, it could be 40 people. There's no sales, there's no anything, no motive except to Create an experience for these customers. So the number one goal of these dinners is to literally get someone to turn to somebody next to them, not at the dinner, but in the real world, and say, you'll never believe what I did last night. A company that I may or may not pay for the service because they have a freemium model took me out for dinner. Like, that is ridiculous. Or even better, we invite thousands of people to these dinners. Only, you know, a certain number of people can get in. But we want all of those people who didn't say yes to coming to the dinner to turn to somebody and say, you'll never guess. Like, I'm completely creeped out. This company wants to have dinner with me. Why do they want to meet me? Like, part of what I do is really prey on people's insecurities and make them feel uncomfortable. Because uncomfortable is a really powerful motive to get people talking. And it sounds silly and I'm half joking, but it's really about getting people to scratch their heads. And scratching heads usually leads to conversations.

So can you give us an example of how you've made somebody feel uncomfortable?

I make people feel uncomfortable all the time. It's sort of my charm. But, you know, when you think of it on, like, a big scale, you know, like, we ask people to do things, you know, for, you know, I'm, you know, I'm a word of mouth marketing consultant. I own a word of mouth marketing agency. But, you know, like, I've. On behalf of customers, I've taken 50 people to, you know, you guys know what air guitar is and things like that. So there's actually like air guitar championships. But there's also this thing called air sex, which is, you know, it's basically. It's no nudity. It's. It's. It's more weird than anything, but people will stand up on a stage like you would with air guitar and pantomime sex acts. And it's amazing, and it's crazy, and it's actually a ton of fun. I've taken 50 customers for a company to this event. The goal wasn't to make them feel uncomfortable. It's just like, I knew their target market so well. I knew what we could get away with. And we got to the, you know, we created an experience that they were going to have conversations around it. They were going to tell people, you'd never guess what happened to me. This company is so crazy. I love this company. They really get me. They know how to have fun. There's so much more to creating a brand than just your visual identity. You know, people think of brands as logos. A brand is really every touch point you have with your customer. And you know, there's the old saying, your brand isn't what you say it is, it's what Google says it is. I think that's kind of baloney. I don't know if we can swear on the show, so I'm just gonna keep throwing out deli meat and stuff like that instead of swear words. I think that's kind of baloney because, you know, it's really like you do control how people experience your brand. It's really only the companies that don't invest in that experience that are letting it to other. But for the most part, you can completely control your brand. And it's a lot of work, but it's well worth it.

Scott.

So you're right. I mean like building a brand is hard, right? It's not something that you just throw a logo out there or just have this name. It's like that FreshBook example that you gave. That's part of their brand building experience. How does a company that's starting out, just me as an individual guy duplicate that and really build a brand around these experiences?

Experiences can be everything. I'm completely oversimplifying it because it is actually really hard work. But if you don't have any budget and you don't have time or energy, well, hopefully you have some time or energy because this is very valuable part of building your company. But you know, it's like people think it's cliche, but sending handwritten thank you notes is so. Excuse me. It's a great way to like forward perception of your company. It's a great way for people to really feel a bond with your company. You know, follow up phone calls, follow up emails, talk to people like they're humans. You know, I say you should know your first hundred customers by name. And that means, you know, until you have a certain number of customers, you should never use marketing automation. You should be writing personal emails to these people, let them know you know about them. You know, it's like it's all. And people are going to roll their eyes and say, you know, that's so, you know, 1980s or whatever. But I actually believe like I live in 1980s when it comes to marketing because, you know, like I take business cards, I write things on the back of business cards, of conversations we have. When I follow up with emails, I highlight the conversation we had and make sure people know that I spent time with Them, I wanted to learn a thing about them. Now everything is so automated and transactional and all these things. I over invest in relationships because it is people that bring, you know, new customers. It's people that spread the word for your business. People that, you know, build the brand with you. So it's again like I could go on for hours and hours and hours, but it's really like most of everything I do is, it's just, it's elbow grease. And the reason I can get away with it is because most people don't want to invest the time in this. But it's really, it's all about people, it's all about relationships, it's all about treating people great because those people are going to find you your customers. FreshBooks is a great example. I already sort of did the elevator pitch, but just sort of to bring it back into things. There's such a small amount of the population that can actually use the FreshBooks product. You have to be a small business. You probably have to be a micro small business. You have to bill for time as opposed to a product. So it's a very small sector of the population, but everybody in the world can talk about this product. So instead of actually marketing the product per se, we market the idea, the promise, everything around the product. Sure, we talk about the product because that's going to be the thing that you finally decide on. But we create experience after experience after experience for these customers and even for people who aren't customers. Because chances are, if you're using our product, you know, 10 more people who can use the product and we ask you to bring those people in. And we have all sorts of amazing incentives and referral programs and all sorts of things. But I could never find every person who is a micro small business in North America because chances are they're working out of a second bedroom. They're, you know, in any number of situations. I can't find every single one of them, but I guarantee you I can find enough of them and those people will know 10 more people and 10 more people and 10 more people. And then you all of a sudden you've got yourself a gum commercial and you know, your business is, you know, forwarding in the proper fashion.

So Saul, you know, we buy and sell raw land, right?

Which is super sexy.

It's super sexy, right? We shuffle paper, we make money. What would you recommend? What would be a creative fresh books type experience that we could provide for our customers that would actually kind of scale like I couldn't take all my Land customers to their land and have a, you know, have a party. It just wouldn't scale. Right. I would lose money. What could, what could I do besides what you just mentioned that would be kind of creative, like, kind of like the crazy experience you provide.

You could mail everybody a little piece of dirt and tell them that this is the next opportunity. Like, there's tons of things you can do around that. You know, it's really about being creative and standing out. So I'm going to get to this sort of at the end of the show, but, you know, but I guess I'll have to come up with a different tip of the day. But, you know, it's the way you create experiences, the way you really latch on to, you know, that word of mouth opportunity, that word of mouth moment is knowing where the line is of good taste. I say good taste, but it's not really good taste. Knowing where that line is of expectation and crossing it by two baby steps. So if you're always on that line of what people expect, chances are nobody's gonna remember it. Nobody's gonna pay too much attention. Think about when you get a postcard from like, your cell phone company or your cable company. It's all just come to us based on price and you look at it and if you need it, fine. If you don't need it, you're gonna throw it out, but you're never gonna turn to a friend and go, oh, my God, you'll never guess what Time Warner did today. But when American Apparel put pubic hair on a billboard, people are like, holy mackerel. Like, I've never seen that before. That's ridiculous. So every company, every brand has a different level of risk. So my level of risk is very far. I love doing crazy things, but my job is to figure out where your level of risk is, then just go two baby steps past it. Because if I were to pitch you an idea based on my level of risk, chances are it would blow up in your face and it would be negative because you know your audience, you know the type of people you're working with. The goal is to really know your customers well enough that you can still surprise them with something, but you surprise them with just baby steps. You don't go crazy and, you know, 10 miles down the road and all of a sudden you're saying, you know, let's, let's all just get on a plane and go hunt homeless people or something like that.

I love it. I love it. Scott, Todd, what are your thoughts, man?

I like what he's saying about, you know, just take two baby steps, you know, like, just. It doesn't have to exceed too far. Just, you know, if people are expecting nothing, just anything, even small, is a big enough piece to help move the needle, you know, And I like the dirt idea.

And it's like the level of expectation or the bar is so low because companies don't actually treat clients with any sort of individuality or fun things. So when you think of how are we going to actually catch these people attention? Littlest. A bit of, like, love and affection will just set the world on fire because they're just so not used to it.

Yeah, it's so true. I mean, I can remember when, Gosh, what. You know, a guy I was working with, he sent me a thing from Dean and DeLuca, right? And it was like, he didn't have to do that. It was just so nice, right? I mean, really kind of set it apart. And, you know, the. We talk about glue gifts a lot on the podcast. Giving a little unexpected extra. But I think, you know, the little unexpected piece is the most important piece. It's because if it's on their birthday or it's on their anniversary, it feels kind of, I don't know, obligatory. But if it's unexpected, right. That's where the magic, I think, can happen. Do you.

Do you agree? Solutions? Absolutely. So it's like, it's really wonderful when people wish me happy birthday on Facebook, when it's my actual birthday. But I probably remembered a lot more if somebody wished me a half birthday six months from my birthday, because it's just like, on my birthday, I'm an egomaniac. I'm sitting counting how many people remembered me and stuff like that. But if somebody six months from my birthday is just like, hey, I'm thinking about you have Happy birthday. I'd probably be way more jazzed by that because it's out of the blue and unusual.

All right, so you're at dinner, right? And you can bring three people to dinner, Anyone who's alive in the world. To talk about marketing. Let's say, who would you invite and what question would you ask them?

It's a shame that they can't be dead people, because all my idols are almost dead.

Should we include. All right, fine. I'll give you the dead people because I'm curious now.

I'll throw in, like, I'll do a mix. So, like, one of my idols is William Gaines. William Gaines was the founder of Mad magazine. And, like, you know, if you ever read Anything about William Gaines, one of the most interesting thinkers out there. You know, some of the stories, and I won't bore you with too many. But halfway through, like Mad's history, the printer that they used to publish the magazines ran out of the really awful paper. So Bill Gaines started paying more for crappier paper because he was afraid if he started printing Mad on really beautiful paper, people would expect more from the magazine. Like that to me is funny. Things like that. Like, so William Gaines is a fascinating guy, but you know, other thinkers, let's see. So Gene Pressman is a guy who's the author of one of my favorite marketing books of all time. It's called Chasing Cool. And Gene was the son of the founder of Barneys New York. And he's an amazing thinker when it comes to subcultures and building fan bases and stuff like that. So he would definitely be someone I would invite to dinner and another person I would invite to dinner, I would ask them, you know, a thousand different questions. But another person I would invite to dinner is, I don't know, like, I like, let's see, Stan lee, you know, Mr. Comic Book. It's not that I'm such a comic book fan, but I really love, like, I love people who get self promotion, I love people who get the bigger picture and I love people who really make things personal. And so those would be my three people.

What would you ask them?

What I asked them. So with, with, with Gene, you know, or with, with William Gaines, it would be all around company culture. So I actually think Mad magazine invented like office culture. They did so many crazy things. Whether they knew it or not. Even into the early 90s, people weren't allowed to use computers in their office. All the scripts were typed on actual old school typewriters because William Gaines thought they just made the scripts better. So I'd ask him tons of questions around work culture and things along those lines. Gene Pressman, it's all about building subcultures. How do you identify which groups are the type of people that can really make your brand sort of explode on a major scale? And Stan Lee, it's all about self promotion. You know, like I put myself out there all the time and I get people who love me and I get people who hate me. And some people get the joke and some people don't get the joke. So it's sort of, I think the big question I'd ask them is, you know, as you get older, how do you keep up the energy of self promotion? Because it is exhausting. Being me.

I can imagine. I mean, being the smartest man in the world is exhausting.

Yes. Because it's.

It's a lot. You've got to keep up with your. Your content. Right. People are expecting, when you brand yourself the smartest man in the world, something smart or different or creative or cool. And that's, you know, I'm the land geek, and I feel that pressure to come up with something that's geeky a lot.

So I'll speak to that. So I've. I've been living on the Internet for, you know, 10, 13 years now. Whatever it works out to, I've gone in ebbs and flows with my content creation. I used to blog every day. Then I started, you know, sort of trimming back, and now I really only blog when I have something interesting to say. But I'm always somewhere, you know, whether I'm on your podcast or another podcast. I do videos on YouTube that aren't very frequent, but I basically answer people's questions. I do a lot of speaking at conferences. I'm creating a ton of content to the world, but it's not always in one place. Sometimes it's directed at a individual audience. Sometimes it's mass, you know, through a blog post or Facebook post or something like that. So I'm always creating content. I just have sort of been a little bit more selective over the last year or two about bad content because I used to think volume was what I needed to do, and now, you know, there. There are days where you don't hear from me, and then there are weeks where I'm doing 12 things a day. So it's really more. I'm trying to make it more interesting and at least be a little bit smarter and more strategic about, you know, how I'm screaming about things.

I love it. Scott, I want to ask you, like, what's your biggest takeaway from this podcast before we get go to the tip of the week?

I mean, I'm really thinking about, like, the two steps piece, you know, like to get the word of mouth out, just, you know, little things that you can do. It doesn't have to be like big, big glues.

In fact.

Ever since we talked about that, I'm like, my head is spinning with different ways, little things that I can do for my customers and for my audience that would just surprise them in a way. And it doesn't even need to be that expensive.

Yeah, I love that. My biggest takeaway was something that Saul said that I found really interesting. It kind of made my heart Sink. But then I thought, well, that can't be that bad was emailing individual people up to your first hundred customers. Right. Because, you know, saw, we're really into automation and processes and systems and that doesn't scale. But I think for your first hundred customers, there's something to be said about having these. These hundred people delighted and you really intimately know your customer and then you can scale it.

Yeah, those customers are going to teach you so much about your business. Like, ultimately, you. They're the ones that are giving you money. So they're going to tell you what they want. They're going to tell you, maybe not directly how that you can get more money from them. They're going to actually tell you what they like and don't like about your business. If you're speaking to them, you know, like humans and speaking to them on a personal level, they're going to. They're also gonna let you, like, make a few mistakes. So if you think about it, you know, look at Twitter, and Twitter can be a really awful place. It can also be a really wonderful place. But one of the reasons now, if brands realize they're doing this consciously or subconsciously, consciously or not consciously, but no one's ever gonna say so you can look up any major brand, you know, AT&T, Ford, anybody, and there's gonna be at least one person on Twitter has been like, AT&T, I hope you d AIDS. But no one is ever going to say, Mary from AT&T, I hope you die from AIDS. So when you have this personal relationship with your first hundred customers, you're going to be allowed to make a few mistakes and they're going to stick with you. If you're this faceless organization, big or small, people are just going to be like, well, screw that. Let's see who else is offering the same thing. So that first hundred customers really makes or breaks your business.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And I'm actually going through that right now, lonegeek IO where, you know, I'm instantly involved. I'm doing the demos. Doesn't scale.

Right.

But I think I have to talk to the customers. I have to do every single demo and walk them through it so I can see their flow and what's working, what's not working. And. And you know, a lot of times I, I beat myself up. I'm not there enough. But, you know, that's something I just have to work on. It's good to have this kind of podcast kind of remind me, hey, you know, so I Call your loan key customers more. So that's good. It's a good reminder. All right, so we're at that point now where I'm gonna put you on the spot, and I want to know your tip of the week. A website, a resource, a book, something actionable where the art of passive income listeners can go right now, improve their businesses, improve their lives. Your mentorship has been amazing. What do you got?

So I've already given you a book recommendation. I've already given you a tip of the week. I feel like I've kind of, like, overshot, overstayed my welcome.

Not at all. Not at all.

So one book I really love is Marketing youg Dreams, which is a book about Bill Veeck, who is. He kind of invented, like, promotions in Major League Baseball. You know, Bill Veeck owned the Chicago White Sox. He was the guy who did Disco Demolition Day and things. So Bill Veeck's story is incredible. But as far as, like, a little piece of advice, I'll sort of end with this. You know, sort of talked around this. We didn't get right on the nose, but, you know, if you can't compete with your competition, just change the rules. Kind of what I've done my whole career, you know, if you can't outspend a competitor, if you can't out market them, if you, you know, all these sort of things, make them come to you and change the rules. And it's like doing the occasional thing that doesn't scale could fall under the category of changing the rules. It's unexpected. It's something that will provide a different sort of results. Don't be afraid to actually break out of your own comfort zone because you'll. You'll notice the results will. Will be really impactful.

I love it. I love it. Scott. Todd, what's your tip of the week?

Mark?

My tip is a simple tip, man. Like, this is a tip that I probably knew this before, and I forgot it, and I just rediscovered it in the last week. And you know how, like, you're in Chrome or Safari or Firefox, you got all these tabs opened, and then, you know, you want to move between the two tabs, you know, and there's. There's actually a keyboard shortcut to do that. I mean, I know this sounds crazy, but when you're in there, you can hit, like on the Mac, you can hit Control tab to move forward to the next tab or Control tab, and it moves to the next tab or shift Control tab to move back a tab. So if you're like, if you're doing stuff, you know, like, this may not be news for everybody. I've rediscovered it. You've discovered. I see the smile on your face.

It.

It's like, it's it. Saul probably already knew it because he's the smartest man in the world, but it's new to me.

Yeah, Saul probably knows that. Sounds like I've been doing that for 20 years. Come on, come on.

10 years. 13 years.

All right, well, I've got the best tip of the week. My tip of the week is learn more about Saul Colt. And I'm sure he's sick of me saying it, but he is.

I can never get sick of people.

Man, in the world. Saul is. And just, you know, it's so funny because, you know, there's two aspects of our business, and Scott will agree, it's mailing and marketing. But mailing is always marketing. So it's marketing and marketing. Right? That's the business we're in. And you might as well grab some amazing. I mean, I hate to call them tips, right?

But they're.

Because they're not. They're more than tips. They're deeper than tips. This depth of marketing wisdom from Saul is just on his blog alone would be enough. But you can friend him on Facebook and connect with them on LinkedIn, Twitter, RSSM.

So.

You know, with that five chimps theory, this is one of the chimps you want to be surrounded with, is a word of mouth marketer. One little, you know, piece of advice that Saul can give you can really move the needle in your business. And just on this podcast alone, like, I'm going to start implementing more of what he's saying is like, okay, what can I think of? That's just two baby steps forward that would be magical, joyous, unexpected for my customer.

Right.

Maybe it's a piece of dirt. Maybe it's a, you know, a branded rock that says Frontier Properties. I don't know. But I'm going to think about it a little bit more deeply, a little bit more carefully, a little bit more creatively. Maybe I'll go meditate after this podcast.

And figure it out.

But, Saul, are we good?

Yeah. This has been great. Thank you so much, Scott.

Todd, are we good?

Mark, we are great.

All right, well, I want to thank all the listeners. And look, the only way, the only way we're gonna get the quality of guests like a Saul Colt, the smartest man in the world, is if you do three little things. You gotta subscribe, you gotta rate, and you gotta review the podcast on itunes. If you go to landgeek.com, i think review, we walk you through exactly how to do it. But if you send us a screenshot of your review, we're going to send you for free. For free, the $97 passive income launch kit. And I might even just call you personally. Give me your phone number. I'm going to do a sol thing. I'm just going to call you, like, hey, thanks so much.

Right?

That'd be unexpected.

And if you want, I'll also throw in, like, an autographed picture of me.

And an autographed picture would be cool, too. So subscribe, rate, and view the podcast, get an autographed picture of Saul, get the $97 passive income launch kit for free. And I just want to remind everybody, today's podcast is sponsored by lonegeek IO, a Set it and forget it loan management system. All right, Scott, you ready?

Let's go, Mark.

One, two, three.

That's pretty good.

It's not bad. Not bad. He made Saul smile.

Yes.

That's good. All right, thanks, everybody.

Thank you, guys.