Thoughts on grabbing people's attention with your mailers and a few direct mail tips.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrBgrNKx5MM

Transcription

If you were your customer, what would you do?

Hi I'm Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

I want to talk about this, this because the psychology behind it is kind of cool.

My wife came into me with a piece of mail, we talk about these things once in a while, because we like to see things from our perspective of what would I do?

What are the things that attract my attention and what would I do if I was my own customer?

We watch for things that that pull our attention and like to dissect why.

This is a great example, we're going to talk a little bit about this envelope, and why it caught her attention.

So we own a property management company. And on occasion, we'll get a piece of mail trying to play toward that.

That's what this is, this was specifically playing toward. Well, specifically, it was more for an association that we used to be a member of. And so I'd like to talk about the envelope.

Now, the inside of the envelope was a different story, it's there was not enough there to really discuss, but I want to talk about the outside of the envelope. Because if you're sending out mail, I want you to think about how it affects other people and different ways of handling the same, the same issue.

Because there are many different ways that can work. It all depends on what you're trying to get and who you're trying to speak to.

Initially, I want you to think this about this not just regarding mail is just direct mail snail mail that shows up, I want you to think about regarding your emails, regarding your social media, regarding everything that you put out there to either prospective customers, current customers or previous customers.

Everything that you're doing, you have to think, what would I do if I were them?

The best-case scenario is if you actually have something in common with your customer, it's not always necessary but it's a good place to be in because you kind of come with that.

And if not, if you know someone that has similar traits that are in the same industry or you know your customers well enough, try and get their take on different things.

If you can do that, on a smaller sampling, before you make it a wider sampling, you'll save a whole lot of money and you'll get a lot better effect.

So let's talk this mail piece gives us a good idea of that. You can see here, there are a couple of things that they did that's very interesting here.

The first off right up here, it's very subtle.

Most people won't to catch it.

There's a person's name and address. There's no name of that this actually came a from an organization, company organization, what have you.

The name of the organization isn't up there. All it says is Michael P Akin. Okay?

That's all it says, that can be anybody.

It's from Alexandria, Virginia, a very commonplace to get things from, you know, larger area in Virginia. There's just nothing to really tell you who it's from.

If you're reaching out to person, especially if you're going cold and you're coming in for the first time. So the like that is actually pretty useful because it doesn't tell you anything.

Ok, two days in a row of Playboy content, I'm going to have to talk with Brian about this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieyNeohoG8w

Transcription

Business movie, American Playboy.

Hi I'm Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

Now, it's not the type of movie that I run out and watch on my own. This was recommended by Dan Kennedy, in his recent interview with Russell Brunson with his kind of return to form and having his company recently acquired by Russell Brunson.

And so it was very interesting.

He's discussed this before how Walt Disney is very similar in how he structured his company, too many other icons, including Stanley and Hugh Hefner, three people you would never really consider to be similar.

But you look at how they structured a whole lot of their branding, and their companies and so forth, and then you can see the similarities.

This was one of those things that I did not have a whole lot of knowledge on how the original Playboy company was structured, but it was very interesting.

Now, regardless of the controversy, or, you know, the controversy is endless from the very beginning. Playboy was started under the concepts developed by Alfred Kinsey in the 50s.

I think Hefner was in was in college at the time and came across this and it was this grand awakening that he was looking to spread the gospel of, through his magazines that he eventually came out with, and watching the transition of how that happens.

It doesn't matter where you stand on it, morally or otherwise, if you can step back and look at the business aspect of it and look at what he was able to do off of very little started really out of his garage, in a sense.

Built on to that time, but you know, piece by piece by piece over time, and morphed with the times in order to stay relevant, as relevant as he could, was a very, very interesting documentary.

So this is just so you're aware, this is a mini-series, specifically.

I could call it a TV show or a movie I just stuck with a movie because it has a very definite beginning, middle and end. But I believe it's 10 episode miniseries that can be found on Amazon.

If you look at it from the business perspective, it's worth watching for that because it is a documentary with elements of Docudrama built-in.

So what they ended up doing with this movie is they end up having people and I'm not going to spoil anything, but they do have clips in it that are dramatizing different sections of Hugh Hefner's life.

They have actors playing all these famous people and not so famous people that you get to know throughout the course of the film.

It's a very interesting way of doing a documentary. It's not my favorite way of watching a documentary, I don't mind a little bit of that it this is very, this has a very high-end high amount of, of Docudrama, built-in.

Now throughout that, they're also working in clips and recordings, and so forth of Hugh Hefner and other people that knew him.

And also, you know, talking heads and famous people today talking about what they thought about what's going on during the scene, you know, they start at the beginning of his life and go all the way to the very end.

It's very worthwhile in terms of watching it from a business perspective. Beyond that, in terms of entertainment, I don't know what type of things you find entertaining.

Don't worry, I've gone ahead and emailed this video to Brian wife so she knows now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Mace9-aSKU

Transcription

Belonging to the Playboy Club.

Hi I'm Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

Today, I have here a what I believe is a replica of one of the keys that you would get when you are a member of the Playboy Club.

Now, I'm not going to clear the air here completely.

I'm not saying one way or the other whether this was a good or a bad thing. What I want to do is discuss the thoughts behind it.

The business idea, the business concept behind it, besides the fact that it was you know, pornographic and everything else, I want to talk about the Playboy Club, which was a group of nightclubs that were started out by Hugh Hefner, back in the world would have been the would have been the early 60s, late 50s, I can't remember the exact date. They lasted until the 90s.

They had a tough time lasting but in the short run, they had an amazing run and it was extremely popular.

This key did not actually open any door now why when I bought this, they said that it was one of the originals that had never been used, had never been distributed. I don't know if that's true or not.

If you're somebody that can authenticate this type of thing, I'd love to know, I did want it for the concept of it.

Because there's so much to the entire Playboy empire, that if you remove all of the sex from it, I guess you could say, if you move all of the anything that could be seen as being nasty or wrong, or misogynistic, or anything else, you will remove that.

Just look at the structure of the thing. It was the Playboy Empire was not all that different from Disney. It had a mascot, it had a logo that is to this day extremely recognizable.

What they what he did, though, which was a step of well wasn't a step ahead of Disney, he and he had opened already opened up the Playboy Mansion as kind of a semi nightclub, what he wanted to do was have a very swanky place where people can go all across the world to different cities, and be able to go and be a VIP experience.

That was the whole idea behind it and what you would do is you would show them your key and this got you in the door that showed that you had paid membership dues, and that you were allowed in to the Playboy Club.

Now, what was different from the Playboy Club than everything else, it was high end, they spent a lot of money on it, the waitresses were were very partially clothed, dressed as a little in little bunny outfits.

Nowadays, it's very common, you go to a place like Las Vegas, nearly every casino, the the women are walking around dressed in very similar outfits at that time, it was extremely risky and very, very, to the to the end of things. But this is after the the magazine had already opened up right.

All this stuff was already he was already known for these types of things. So it just added a mystique and added everything else. But what what's the real power behind this the real power is, is when you had one of these you belonged to something you had access to something you could take care of any FOMO that you have that fear of missing out.

When you had one of these, you were the cool guy and that was the whole concept behind it. And because of that everyone wanted one.

Not everyone but you get my dread that in in it was very cool to have a key to the Playboy Club,

Bri, Bri is getting Sick, Sick…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jqC5eq3yzY

Transcription

Creeping disease.

Hi I'm Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

I have a house full of sick people, whatever's going around whether it's flu, COVID, or fluid, or Omicron, or whatever you want to call it, there's something that hit our household yesterday.

And today, it's spread out beyond just one person. And it's one of those things, I have a real question for you, and that is, what do you do when disease starts showing up just a little bit of time?

You may be a single person on your own but what happens when you just start getting a tickle in your throat or something like that?

Now, currently I don't believe I'm sick, I believe my body certainly finding something off, I'm a little more tired.

You know, a little bit of congestion, nothing major. The rest of the family's going nuts right now but there's a few things that I do.

And I'm curious to find out what you do to help us out. One of the things I do as I tried to depending on what it is, I really try and listen to my body on what I need more of.

Sometimes that requires drinking more water, be more hydrated and if I do that, I also add in some salt or other, you know, what they call electrolytes, you know, to help so that your body holds on to the water that you're putting into it.

That has always seemed to seem to help.

Another thing is just I pay closer and closer nutrition, closer and closer attention to nutrition.

That when it comes to any type of winter colds, or flus or viruses, I like to like to take zinc have for years, I have a couple of couple supplements that I'll take a little more of or take some that I don't want normally take.

I'll take it just to give my immune system a little boost that tends to make a big difference.

For me also, most of the time, I tend to pull back on food, I tend to eat a whole lot less if I can unless there's something that I feel my body is specifically craving that might be able to help I'll test it out and see, see what happens when I do it.

But we've got toilet issues and vomiting and all this other fun stuff happening in the Pombal household. So this is a two parter. I'll let you know how things go tomorrow. If I'm sick as a dog, you'll be the first to know.

But just a quick idea.

When you're in business you got to have you got to have kind of a game plan for this type of thing. Because you know, it's bound to happen eventually.

You got to be prepared on what you're going to do what works, what doesn't work. And I'd love to hear what you do to help combat these things. Most of the time, I can get by I'm fact my entire household can get sick with something and I don't tend to it doesn't tend to hit me as hard as everybody else.

I'm not sure why but I do try and pay attention to these things. I also don't focus on it.

I don't keep saying Oh, I'm getting sick, I'm getting sick, I'm getting sick.

You say things too often, I'm certain that you can cause your immune system to not react properly and cause your body to just take on the sickness.

It's just me, maybe I'm completely wrong.

Maybe that's completely woowoo garbage but I've just seen that people who tend to talk about getting sick the most tend to get sick the most.

Thoughts on subscription models, tripwires and upselling.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5AirDMxfeE

Transcription

Taco Bell's, Taco Lover's Pass.

Hi I'm Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

I can't believe it. This is a really interesting concept, especially when it comes to business.

So this is a show where we talk to people who are business owners when people want to be business owners or people that are at least executives within their business.

You're the movers and shakers, the ones that really make it work from top to bottom.

And I wanted to talk about this concept of the Taco Bell that the taco pass created by Taco Bell.

Look at this, look at this article that I came across this was this particular one was in USA Today. There were a lot of people that talked about it but it basically says you pay $10. And you get, I believe, 30 days of tacos.

So you get a taco a day. But you can go every single day into Taco Bell and get a taco for $10. And I think it limits it to one a day from my understanding. But this is an interesting, really interesting concept, I want you to see it first from the consumer end, and then look at it from business owners' end.

So from a consumer end, there are a lot of people that I know at one time, at one time in my past, I was eating from Taco Bell on a regular basis.

I would have gladly paid $10 once to have a taco every single day.

No problem whatsoever.

And it's a done deal for people who are hardcore Taco Bell people.

How do you go wrong and how does Taco Bell go all this time or any restaurant that you know of without offering subscriptions?

Subscriptions work in just about every single place you could think of I have not found a business yet that you cannot somehow tie a subscription to if you can't, that business has other issues that needs to be that need to be fixed.

But there's no reason why you should not be able to have a service or a product that can be offered by subscription. Any fast food joint can easily offer a similar deal.

And why not?

Why not make it renewable to where every month that automatically charges you another $10 and tries to bring you back into Taco Bell more often than they would have otherwise.

How many people are going to pass up Taco Bell when they have a subscription?

You could take Amazon Prime, you could take anything, and there's so much magic to the concept of a subscription.

It's unbelievable that most businesses don't take advantage of it.

Go check out this book, the automatic customer.

I've talked about many times, I don't have a physical copy in front of me. So I put up this picture.

This book is incredible.

It's the best book I've ever read on subscription model, whether you're talking about a membership, whether you're talking about what would be considered a traditional subscription.

Everything that came from magazines and everything else, all the way down to when you're talking about Netflix, whether you're talking about Amazon Prime, whether you're talking about all the other things that you pay for on a monthly basis, I know it's driving a lot of people nuts, because like I'm paying for everything on a monthly basis.

It's true.

To findout more about Dean Jackson's VCR Formula, follow the link below.

link - https://ilovemarketing.com/the-v-c-r-formula-how-to-make-and-reach-billions-and-provide-more-value-than-your-competitors-with-dean-jackson-and-joe-polish/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=no7Q8MgXCVs

Transcription

Dean Jackson's VCR formula.

Hi I'm Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

I wanted to talk a little bit about Dean Jackson, who's a bit of a marketing genius, you can hear a lot of his podcasts out there. I love marketing, welcome to Cloudlandia.

All this other stuff out there is great stuff, Deanism is an amazing person to get to know and to find out more about. So be sure and look into him because he's got some great ideas.

This is one of them and the reason why I'm bringing up this idea is that it came back to me in my own voice with different words.

It's only because I had already heard it. So I had written down oh, well, there's really only three things that you need to be able to be successful in business to be able to move forward in business.

I kind of wrote down the kind of what was in my mind, these three things.

Then I went back and yesterday we were talking about this honey situation, you go back and watch or listen to that. And it reminded me of these three things. And I said, Well, we're really that's really tied to the VCR thing.

So I went back and I looked the VCR thing is identical, I came up with the same thing with different words and the words that Dean came up with are even better.

So VCR stands for three separate words.

Okay, and this is a formula, you got to find out what you you got to look at it in terms of what you bring to the table, and what you need from somebody else.

Now, sometimes you've got a wide enough spectrum of coordination, I should say that you can do this all on your own. This is why you see some people able to start good sized businesses and do it completely on their own.

Most of us aren't so lucky and most of us have a difficult time with that. And we were so good at one area, and not good at all. There are others.

So V is for vision.

C is for capabilities.

And R is for reach.

How explain this. So in no matter what type of business venture you're talking about, there's always a vision person, the vision person is the one that has an idea of where you're going.

At least some it may be completely vague, but they have some idea of what you're trying to accomplish, what you're trying to put together to sell in the marketplace or what have you. That's the vision person.

Now, entrepreneurs tend to be tend to lead toward the vision side of things, the people who we call entrepreneurs, or the business owner, that's, that tends to be the area that they at least have some idea of see is for capabilities capabilities, is the actual ability to do what needs to get done to be able to make to get the thing out to the market to get the product or service out there and done and functioning.

Providing and never all the things that go along with whatever your widget is. And I'm not talking product or service. When I say widget, it's anything.

That's what capabilities are.

Brian shares a story of a jar of local honey he got from his friend Jonathan…or is it Johnathan?

Who knows, just watch the vid!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eD4aXsYTOFg

Transcription

The story of liquid gold.

Hi I'm Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

I'm going to tell you a quick story and kind of my thoughts about it. This, my friend Jonathan gave me this. This is a plastic container full of honey, local honey, made from his own beehives.

Now, it's interesting, I liked the idea behind this story and I'm not sure where it's gonna go as I start to tell it, but I'm about to tell it anyways.

Because I think there's a lot of people that be interested, I'm being plugged in with a lot of people in the self reliance field.

In fact, I have a podcast out there you can go check out called offthegridbiz.com, which we've been we've had around for a few years now interviewed some great people in the business area of self reliance everywhere from environmentalists to survivalists to everything in between, I mean, just people all over the spectrum, but people who have an interest in self reliance of some sort, then go on and on about that.

But then what, what is one of those things that pulls a lot of them together, honey, honey is a really interesting idea.

For one thing, the preservation of bee colonies and everything with with a whole lot of the loss of bee colonies over the years. All the controversy around that had pulls a lot of people together.

People who are involved in any type of agriculture depend a whole lot of their crops depend on bees.

Honey is one of those things, it's, it's kind of everywhere, on my friend, Brad out there, which we we have an interviewer to with him on off the grid biz, and he he has an amazing product.

Regarding beehives, you can go and check that out. And an entire business wrapped around it. Learning how to make your own honey is a huge self reliance project in and of itself, whether you make a business out of it or not just learning how to do it is pretty wild.

There's a whole bunch of medicinal uses for honey. Honey is one of those things that's also shelf stable.

You know, there's no specific for my understanding, there's no specific date of use needed for honey, they found honey, you know, 1000s of years old, that's still edible.

So you can put this up on a shelf for quite a long time and not have to worry about anything other than probably a little bit of crystallization. But I think it depends on the honey to and the purity. It's just it's a very interesting idea.

A lot of people refer to it as liquid gold. Let me tell you the story behind this, this particular bottle.

So Jonathan, I'm sure he won't mind me saying this. He, he was he's been interested in keeping bees for a number of years. But between work and everything else, he hasn't been able to really spend time to really get good at it.

He was contemplating getting rid of it. So he wanted to talk to an expert, he talked to somebody who referred him to somebody that was kind of an expert at these types of things. And this gentleman, he said, and he said, here's the here's what I can do. Would you be willing to let me take care of your beehives.

I'll do everything for you free of charge. The only thing I'll charge you for is if we needed any equipment to update anything, or to keep anything up and running.

Do we really know celebrities at all?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCwQ2F6CbzM

Transcription

The real Betty White.

Hi I'm Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

Now, why would a business podcast be talking about Betty White?

Well, Betty White just passed away at the age of 99. If you haven't been paying attention, or if you're watching this or listening way in the future, she passed away on New Year's Eve 2021.

Just a very short period of time before her 100th birthday. Now, since then, social media has just been exploding with Betty White tributes and everything else.

You would have thought that a very sainted person had passed on or something, and not not to take anything away from Betty White.

But I want to pull this back because this does have something to do with business and has a whole lot to do with how people see you, or how people see your business or your product or your service.

Do they see it a certain way or not?

How much do they really know one way or the other?

A lot of people always think that, you know, you come up with the best product, you come up with the best service, you're automatically going to be number one. And that's not the case, because perception is a reality in the marketplace.

That's what you have to understand how much do we really know about Betty White? Well, I can I can speak for myself. I know that she's been in movies for years. She was on television for years, even before Golden Girls.

Most people remember her from Golden Girls. Many people may remember her from some for later shows that she was on. And a lot of people older people may remember her from Mary Tyler Moore Show and other older shows previous to that. She hosted the Macy's Parade I think I think I saw it No, it wasn't the Macy's Parade.

It was the Rose Bowl parade that happens every year, during New Years. And she's done a number of things. She's done game shows and everything else.

She's just one of these figures that has been relatively, you know, known but not necessarily a huge, massive star. About the only thing we know about Betty White for sure. Is she she has she she was relatively witty.

So you may have seen an interview with her here or there. And she she was quick on her on her feet.

But even even in her older age, she was quick with a joke back when somebody would bring something up, she'd have something quick on the on the tip of her tongue, which was pretty amazing.

But most people, especially my age, I'm in my 40s. Most of us remember her as Rose from the Golden Girls.

Was Betty White, Rose?

Probably not. And even if she was, how would that possibly be she wasn't a writer on the show. Right?

All of her lines were written by somebody else. They were all written by somebody else that character was written by somebody else.

Most of us have never met her, most of us do not know her. Another thing we may know about her real life is that she was a supporter of animal rights.

But besides that, how much of us really know anything else about her we know her image. We know her name.

We know the fact that she was just about everywhere. During the last 20 years of her life, they started using her constantly and everything.

She was the final person from the main cast of Golden Girls to pass away.

Brian shares a sad picture of a snowman in his local area of Grants Pass, Oregon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Tz4tnrsmJY

Transcription

Don't be the last snowman.

Hi I'm Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

Lately, we've gotten quite a bit more snow than we normally get in most winters here in Grants Pass or some winters that we don't see any other than on the surrounding hills.

But when we do get it tends to not stick around too long. But we've had quiet we've had two big, good-sized snowstorms where we had some snow that sat on the ground for a while.

I know a lot of those you who are in more snowier areas are going, Ah, I wish I had that good. But I mean, I so reason why I picked to live around this area. It's a nice, really nice climate.

We had a situation where, during Christmas, we were out of town. And when we came back, the snow was still just starting to melt and it was kind of cool. But one thing I noticed this trend, and it was a trend that you would see the entire eventually you'd see the entire yard of somebody's yard.

No snow except for one snowman just hanging on and I got to take a picture of this one snowman here that you can see, if you're watching this, if you do not imagine a very pathetic looking snowman, with a baseball cap on and a stick hold partially holding him up. An even empty beer can or soda can next to him.

It's just, it's a sad thing. And it kind of reminded me of it as an analogy for a lot of people in business nowadays.

They will be so stubborn to stick with doing something the same way they've always done it.

Even though everything's melting all around them, their entire industry is falling around them or their competitors are falling down, and they're just gonna hang in there, they're gonna be the last one to melt, as if there's any good side to be in the last one to go down.

The last of the snow people, you know, snowman, snow woman, I don't know what the official term is anymore, but let's just say snowman for now.

It's sad to see that and if you're a person that's in business, and you consider yourself kind of stubborn, you kind of have to be stubborn to get into business, to begin with.

Then if you're gonna stick with business a long time, you can't, you're gonna have to be stubborn. But you got to be flexible in the areas that determine the principles of why you're doing what you're doing.

You know, what's the reason behind it?

Is it just a hobby?

Now, if it's just a hobby, I understand, okay, you've got money coming in somewhere else. And this is just a fun thing on the side, and you're going to stick to your guns and be the last be the last one standing. But it's not that useful.

For most of us, most of us get caught up in the wrong things when we're in the Battle of business, get caught up in the wrong areas.

It's important to catch yourself and realize that you're really the last snowman. And what you need to do is get up and move to a colder climate, you need to get out of town right away, or you need to to change, you need to become something other than a snowman, if that makes sense.

So these are these are some of the ideas that I I talk about a lot with business owners as I as I love asking people about their stories and where they came from. And it's a common theme to be the last one to melt and make sure that it's not you or anybody that you know.

Tip: Sales ain't about what you want, it's about what your customers want and showing them how to get it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWEhNZCkT3k

Transcription

Don't play psychic.

Hi I'm Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

I know, it's a funny thing this time of year, you tend to see certain people react in different ways. There's, most people out there are out doing their thing. They're kind of recovering from the haze of New Years of Christmas and everything else.

Then you have another type of person who is like raring to go, you know, and it might be you I know, I know, I relate with the second type of person more, that there's a there's like this beginning of the year.

It's like, Yeah, I'm ready to go, people are starting to come out of their slumber and their stuff to do and I'm ready to talk to people and start, you know, start my projects and keep things moving and stuff like that.

If you tend to see it more with entrepreneurial business-minded people tend to be more on that end of things, here's what you got to watch out for, is if you're that way, and you're out, going out and talking to people you want, you got something to say, right, you got something to put out there.

It may be via email, it may be over zoom, or whatever else but we can oftentimes get to the point where we're being very pushy about what it is that we want.

Don't assume you know what they want, though and for you to have a good conversation and to really make a connection with somebody and help bring them over to your point of view or what have you.

You got to really figure out what it is that they want. And see if there's a way that you connect what they want with what you want.

You've got stuff you're excited about, that's great, but find out what they want.

First, if at all, you can do that if you could quit assuming that you know what they want, and find out directly from them, what do they want, and then you help show them how to get it or you help show them how what you do or what you provide can help them get that. It's a simple idea.

But oftentimes we get ambitious and excited and everything else and we want to push everything out on other people. And it's best for us to sit and listen as much as possible, especially when we're most excited about things. S

o hopefully that's helpful to you. Just a quick tip for tonight. Go check out my book, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business. You can go and buy a copy or you can get a free copy at AmazonProofBook. com.

That's all I have for tonight. You have a good one, get out there and let the magic happen.