High-Trust Business Podcast

In this episode of the Book More Show, I sit down with Reuben Schwartz, a computer science expert turned sales and marketing consultant, as he shares his journey from working with Fortune 500 companies to building tools tailored for independent consultants.

Reuben opens up about his struggles with traditional sales and how they led him to design a CRM system that feels more like a relationship-building tool than a sales task. Through Reuben’s experience, we explore the value of genuine connections over typical sales tactics and how this shift can make sales feel less daunting and more authentic.

We dive into strategies for creating clear, targeted messaging that aligns with business goals. Reuben emphasizes the importance of defining your target audience to avoid the noise of vague communication, helping small business owners focus on meaningful conversations with the right clients. We also tackle the common “fear of missing out” that plagues many entrepreneurs, highlighting how a specific focus can enhance productivity and satisfaction.

From an introvert’s perspective, Reuben shares practical tips for networking and relationship-building, mainly how to transform significant, overwhelming events into opportunities for authentic connection. We also discuss maintaining relationships beyond events and leveraging tools to facilitate meaningful interactions without feeling overly mechanized.

Wrapping up, we explore balancing automation with personal touchpoints in lead generation and client communication, with Ruben’s advice on structured documentation and personal reflection as tools for deepening client relationships and refining your approach.

SHOW HIGHLIGHTS

Show notes & video: 90minutebooks.com/podcast/176

Reuben Swartz:

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In this episode of the Book More Show, I sit down with estate planning attorney Matt Ferry to discuss how he strategically uses an easy-to-understand book to transform client relationships and position himself as an expert in his field.

Matt shares his journey from a small law firm to establishing his successful practice focused on estate planning and elder law. He explains how writing a concise book helped initiate important client conversations, simplify complex topics, and build credibility. 

We delve into the motivations for creating an educational book in the financial industry and how narrowing broad subjects can target specific markets.

Matt discusses using storytelling to make complex concepts relatable and leveraging constraints to provide the right level of information. He also offers practical examples of how marketing the book in different formats, such as webinars and podcasts, can empower professionals to effectively nurture client engagement. 

As client meetings evolve post-COVID, Matt provides valuable insights. He highlights the importance of embracing technology and subtleties like reducing anxiety through guidance.

SHOW HIGHLIGHTS

Show notes & video: 90minutebooks.com/podcast/175

Matthew Ferri:

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Today, on the Book More Show, I sat and discussed strategy with Luke Hessler of Ace Branding.

Luke explained how his firm helps thought leaders and businesses enhance visibility through strategic media placements and digital integration. He emphasized capturing attention on digital devices and establishing consistency across online platforms.

He underscored the shift from novelty websites to comprehensive digital footprints and how embracing technology allows small enterprises to thrive. He also shed light on perceived credibility cycles and initial online impressions, underscoring how authoring books boosts reputation.

Lastly, Luke highlighted the importance of building long-term brand relationships over short-term gains.

SHOW HIGHLIGHTS

Show notes & video: 90minutebooks.com/podcast/174

Luke Hessler:

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Today, on the Book More Show, I learned valuable business-building strategies from Lee Ramey's experience when He transformed his cleaning company into a leading mold remediation service.

He discusses his journey of self-education in the 1980s to become an expert and how overcoming challenges like influencing industry categories helped establish authority.

We discuss educational materials and how they can empower consumers and validate health concerns, highlighting Lee's commitment to being education-focused rather than sales-driven.

We, also, touched on his insights on book publishing, from writing and design to creative marketing tactics, and provided a framework for leveraging expertise through informative content.

SHOW HIGHLIGHTS

Show notes & video: 90minutebooks.com/podcast/173

Lee Ramey:

Questions/Feedback: Send us an email

(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)

Stuart: Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Bookmore Show. It's Stuart Bell here and today joined by Lee Ramey Lee. How's?

Lee: it going. Oh, excellent, thank you. Thank you for having me on Pleasure.

Stuart: I'm actually excited for this because I kind of start every episode with a bit of context of how I know the person. And we started off doing episodes just internally and it was often me and Dean or me and Betsy. And then we've done a large number of of author interviews, which is what this is with people who we've worked with. And then we've done a few kind of other companies who who just have a very complementary way of doing business, which have been a few of the recent ones, but with the author ones, I think, just the way that we invite people, we tend to invite people as they're getting towards the end of the process and then we're not good enough at remembering to invite people from a few years ago where they've really got this experience.

So this is what we're talking about today, because you wrote your book a couple of years ago and the way that you're using it is really um, I think this will give a lot of inspiration to other people in the way that they can use it. So we'll get get to all that. But let's start with a bit of context. So why don't you share with everyone kind of what it is that you do in the organization and then we can jump off from there.

Lee: I started a cleaning business, actually June of 84, so 40 years ago this June and I was doing just, you know, janitorial window cleaning, carpet cleaning, things like that. And as people would ask me to do more things, I would have to go find out how to do it. It wasn't the internet then or you couldn't use YouTube University, so I had to go, you know, ask questions and read books, things like that, and I got pretty good at things. But once I found out there was a science behind cleaning, there was a science behind drying something out that just was the light bulb. You know the inner geek in me just, oh, I like this, I like wine.

And there was a time period in the late 80s, early 90s, that mold started to be a lot in the news and lawyers were involved and basically nobody in the business really wanted to deal with mold because everybody who touched it got sued. But people kept on asking me you know, we got to do this, got to do this, and it actually was. A church member says we got a problem here and could you please just help us out? You know we're not going to sue you, you know, it just just happens.

And so I started searching around and at that time I had to go all over the United States just little pockets of knowledge knew about respirators, knew about filters, knew about mycology, you knew about, you know using, you know what kind of vacuums and so forth. And a lot of this information was a little bit like the asbestos business and there was used some of the same protocols. So such one of the smart ones. But I happened to be lucky enough that I was being taught by the same people who was, uh, writing the books, writing the standards setting you know in the forefront of doing it right.

So, um, as they were writing the books, they had called me up and say hey, we don't know whether this, that a works or b works. Try one room this way and one try this way. You know, give me some interesting.

Stuart: Yeah, so it was really at the kind of, as they were setting the standards and the best practices, you were really involved in that kind of I don't want to say trial and error, but the oh that's beginning to be right.

Lee: That's such an interesting.

Stuart: Right, it's such an interesting place to be because you kind of put yourself in that conversation that's going on with the people who are setting those standards. So again, that doesn't that opportunity doesn't come up for everyone, but it must have been a really interesting time in the market to kind of be involved at that level it was, and because just my personality, you know not being satisfied with you know, just a surface knowledge.

Lee: You know not being satisfied with you know, just a surface knowledge. I kept on wanting to do better and better, and as soon as a class was available I would take it, and so forth.

I spent a lot of time away from you know home. I wish my wife can attest to that. You know conventions, things like that. But as I continued to get better, it came that there was nobody in my market. And then I'm in Birmingham, alabama, nobody in my market that was actually doing it according to the way the books were written, and so I've been in the business so long. I even had to talk the yellow pages into having a category for mold removal, a category for mold inspection.

I bring back a yellow page from Dallas or Atlanta and say look, they got it. Why can't we have one here?

Stuart: You know, right, that's so funny.

Lee: Yeah, so been in it a bit and it seemed, as I continued to grow I was able to help people, and at that time I was just doing the mold removal. That's called remediation, removing the mold. Well, to do the mold removal correctly, you really need to know beforehand what's the scope of work, what needs to be done. Well, at that time the industry was relying on what's called a CIH, or Certified Industrial Hygienist, because they've been working with the asbestos people, and so they had some protocols. They knew how to do that, but they actually didn't know building science. They and as best as, once you remove it, you know it's gone forever. You remove it, but the environment's still there. It's going to pop up in the same place. So they didn't have a full grasp of what was going on. So then I went back to school again to become an inspector and uh, so that was uh and was that and go ahead?

Stuart: was that an existing inspector certification that, like they, they existed, they just weren't really used? Or is this really laying the groundwork for what a mold inspector needs to be, because it was all new territory?

Lee: it was all new territory. It was all new territory because the cih is uh, fantastic at what they did. But cih means certified industrial hygienist, so they were used to the industrial setting. You know having to do with hearing and in fall protection and you know safety around. You know safety around. You know big moving machines. That was their niche. But a indoor air quality professional for a residence it wasn't known of, and so we were kind of. I was fortunate enough to be on some of the trade associations that was first started and learned how to not only get the work done but communicate it and how to make sure that we're doing it well and it satisfies the need for the customer and the need for the science.

Stuart: Yeah, yeah, actually that's a great point. That's customer understanding of something when you're in an industry that has I guess financial advisors are the same in the sense that there's somewhat complex products that confuse people. So customers have a surface understanding of what they want, but not the details. You guys for sure I mean people see mold or suspect mold, but then they don't know the, the details of remediation or, even more importantly, maybe the the cause of it in the first place. But that education gap or understanding gap, is that more, and it may have changed over time. But is that more educating the customers so they know more about it, so they can make better decisions themselves? Or it's just a familiarity or a feeling that they're in the right place? So they're not at all interested in the details, but they just want the certainty that you know what you're doing. How engaged are the customers? Typically because it's residential rather than commercial uh, you have both, you have.

Lee: You have the just bottom line people. How much is it going to cost? Am I going to be able to sell the house? Well, that's a lot of times, you know, that's a lot of times that kind of customer. They just want a certificate saying it's been done so they can get rid of that piece of property or whatever. Then I have quite a few medically very, very sensitive people and they are allergic to everything, probably allergic to their own breath.

I mean, you're just scared out of their mind about everything. So a lot of it was, you know, talking to men off the ledge. Yes, mold can be an issue, them in off the ledge. Yes, mold Mold can be an issue. But God made mold. It's everywhere. It's going to be outside. It's going to be dissolving things. God meant it to be.

We just don't want too much inside our house and we don't want any of the bad kind. They're just saying it plain and simple that takes care of 95% of all the population, actually 97% of all the population. Now there is a sensitive group and the backstory is my mom got really, really sick. We lived in a moldy house, so I saw the result of us being in a moldy house and so indoor air quality always kind of had a in the back of my mind, a very part of my psyche, Right Personal connection to it, Right, Right. And so, to answer your question, for those who just want to know that you know what you're doing, and then just, you know, just flashing it or just saying you have it, you know. However, I have had customers who come back and text me back. You know five or six. On page seven you said this 49.

Stuart: Well, that's fine.

Lee: I know that they're engaged and most of the time they become my best, best, uh, cheerleaders, because they they have. They feel like they're validated in all the research they've done right.

Stuart: Actually that's such a great point, that idea that it gives people. So we're talking in case people are just listening we're talking about using the book as the tool and people are engaging with that at various levels. But it's something that I don't think has come up in in the podcast that we've talked about before this idea that it gives the receiver of the book a validation of their concerns or approach or desires, because someone has written something that resonates with them and it backs up either a thought process that they've been trying to share with a family member or even a peace of mind that they're in the right space.

Lee: That kind of buy-in right, because a lot of times it will only be one in the family, or maybe the wife and a kid, that that's. That's kind of the scenario.

The husband I'm not saying anything bad about men, but they sometimes are oblivious to the home environment and so they say, well, I don't smell anything, you know well, I mean, the kids are going to get sick, they go to school and all that. And the wife says I have, I have this when I walked to this part of the house. Or remember, we go to this vacation spot and after two days I feel great.

As soon as I get home within a few hours I start feeling lousy again. So the females are much better at connecting the dots between the way they feel or the way they observe their family to something having to do with the house, and they may not know what. And so mold is kind of the first thing they think of most of the time. And I will say at this juncture I can go into it later more if you want but as a certified industrial excuse me, certified indoor environmentalist there's about seven or eight major things that I take care of, including asbestos and radon and lead paint and bed bugs and VOCs and radon things. There's all different kinds of things in your house that can make you sick, but mold is that first thing they think of.

And because it's a complicated subject and it's got a lot of moving pieces, I found myself just spending hours and hours on the phone just answering the same questions over and over. And that's why I started back in and I'll tell you it was the spring of 2002 because I'd had an accident and I was bedridden for about five months. I was in a wheelchair for five months. So as my kids were running the business, I was sort of making these consumer advisories and they were, you know, 12, 13 pages long on different subjects, but mold seemed to be the one they really wanted to learn more about, and so that became the nexus of answering a lot of the basic questions. So it would save me time in that Right. So in a way it is kind of selfish in the first.

Stuart: Right and serving the community that's there, trying to give them as much helpful information as possible in the most efficient way as possible. I think all of us who are listening are within the business because we've got a passion for it to some degree and we really want to share the message. So this idea that having the time and the foresight to capture the questions and then feed that back to people, it's just, it's serving the market that's there and knowing that that then leads to business further down the track because you are establishing yourself as the experts. It can seem there is the option of thinking about it in a selfish way, but it's really just. Sharing that information is the least selfish thing around. It's trying to help everyone in a way that makes the most sense. So in 2002, we've got the Consumer Reports coming together.

You were saying the carpet cleaning type background, so I'm guessing that's where the Toronto marketing and Joe Polish's worldishes world comes into it yeah, I was the father of brother joe, polish for right and those early I mean again, we've both got enough gray hair, that um, that we've been around the environment for a long time those early consumer guides or reports, or room by room review or the carpet audits.

That joe would do all of these things to kind of move the not quite esoteric knowledge but move the kind of the conversational knowledge and the the experience based reckons on on what the answer is to something that's a little bit more formulated and and official looking. So whether it's together in a report or a book, whether you've got a room-by-room review or the carpet review, which are some techniques that they've talked about in the past, but all of it goes to establishing this authority and building some rapport with people. So, before the books were around, did you find that you were getting people feeling back? Or the conversations that you had were referring to these guides that you'd created to people and the conversations that they helped start?

Lee: Yes, and that's a great question because I try to look forward. But you have to get feedback from the past to know which way you want to go, and so I knew I didn't want it to be salesy. I wanted to be educational and we call ourselves an education-based company Because a lot of people hear the word mold and get scared and that there's there's, get panicky and even with and say we're talking about upholstery or carpet cleaning. A lot of people really did appreciate the fact that here's a guideline if you got blood and you go, you use this. If you got, you know, crayon, you try this you, before you call us, maybe you don't need us, right?

Yeah, that was, uh, something that I really uh got the most feedback on it the fact that people would say, well, you know, thank goodness, you're not going to charge me $100 and do five minutes that I could have done. If I just know Now that if you were a short-term thinker and you were transaction-based only, you'd say, well, I don't want my guys, I don't want my people, you know, doing their own stuff. But the relationship was far better, you know, when they're doing their job playing bridge, whatever, bowling, whatever if the subject comes up. We're the. We're the ones they want to recommend.

Stuart: Yeah that idea that you become their guy. That goes to person because you've started by being helpful first and the the small amount of transactions that you would get from those low value jobs versus the goodwill and all the larger jobs that you get. Because, okay, I low value jobs versus the goodwill and all of the larger jobs that you get. Because, okay, I can do these steps as myself, but this job is too big. Or today I can do these steps myself, but tomorrow the same thing happens, but I'm out of town, or it's a rental property that needs to be done immediately. Or there's lots of reasons why, once you've kind of claimed that space in their head is the, the, the helpful go-to person that fills the spot much more opportunity to write a bigger piece of the pie down the track so a term we use a lot in our, in our safety and sales meetings.

We want to be their trusted advisor right, yeah, yeah, and I think a lot of people use that term as a kind of a throwaway term and they kind of put it out there, thinking that if I say enough, people will believe me, but they're not actually fulfilling that role. Everything is a little bit more transactional, but it's overused sometimes. What that really means, as it really establishes a relationship so much stronger and and evidence, is that you're the trusted advisor, not just you're trying to tell people you're their trusted advisor. It's a, it's a slight mind shift change. But and it goes into this abundance type a lot of our clients are strategic coach clients and strategic coach has this very big emphasis on an abundance and a multiplier type mentality rather than a scarcity and a lock and in type mentality. So it ties in so well with a much better approach to doing things.

Let's move forward. We've got 2002. We've got some guides. There's some good feedback coming from that. Where do we start thinking about bringing that together in a book? Because I know the first book was before we had a relationship. You were bringing some pieces together for that was it a? Was it a relatively quick transition in the thought and then it took a while to execute, or did you think about writing a book and then immediately started bringing it together? How long did it take to percolate?

Lee: oh, I, if I'd had a, if I, if I could have done it over, I would have come to you first. It was a slog, it was a tough slog to get through. Um, so my, my books I tried to keep. I tried to keep most of the small little subjects that because of printing. My dad was a printer so I learned a few little tricks and we had we did our own printing actually here in in shop. Oh wait, uh.

So we tried to keep them at either 16 or 32 pages and after 32 pages I really wasn't telling enough and I really didn't want to, and so I started saying, well, I guess then I got, I need to either do an A and a B you know you know two or you know a continuing series, whatever you call it. But then, because I did, I've always listened to marketing ideas and so forth and they talked about a book and that resonated with me because there's some kind of aura. Maybe not as much now, but there was always kind of an aura If you had the ability and time to write a book.

It just seemed that people put you up just a little higher in their estimation a little bit, and so everything I was doing was not a perfect bound or you know as I like them now, and they were either spiral bound or stapled together, things of that nature. But when I decided to do a book, then I had plenty of information Right and I'm an early riser. Unfortunately, I wake up at 3.30, you know, by, by 3.30.

So I would spend an hour or so most mornings and it took me about nine months or so to put the information down and then categorize it into chapters and so forth, and then it took me probably another year to pull the pictures. And you know and I'm not it wasn't a really simple book, it was because mold can go deep. It had you know the chapters on, you know the chapters on. You know what do you need to do, what can you do? When do you need a professional? Uh, what about contents? What if it's in the crawl space? You know, you know each of those, and but I had of the scientific data, I had the indices in the back, which then I had the footnotes to come back to, which is a little more complicated.

So you know, I really applaud Betsy and Kim for all the hard work they did getting that done, because we'd have it all set up and then we'd move a paragraph and we'd lose the link Something would change yeah.

Something would change or do this, and all of a sudden the picture's way out here. So, but I got through with the whole thing. I put it on Amazon. To be honest, I, I don't, it never did, and I was a hundred percent correct. I never did sell a lot on Amazon, right? However, just being able to say I sell it on Amazon for 1295, but here is, here is your copy, that has more emotional impact.

Stuart: Yeah, it's so. You're talking there about the kind of heat and light and and authority for one of a better term that comes from being having the book on the subject. I always I mean there's so many examples now we've we've worked with over a thousand people, but the example always brings to mind is a podcast that you might have listened to that I've recorded last year with paul ross, who's a podiatrist, and he tells the story of. He's got three or four books on several different conditions and the latest one was called my Damn Toe Hurts, and it's for whatever the condition is that makes your toe hurts, but he tells the story of a guy coming in I don't know if it was a guy or a girl, but a patient coming in and being sat in the chair, and this was a new patient. There was no kind of real connection with them and halfway through the the process they were saying oh, I've just realized, you're paul, you're the person who wrote the book, and there was this kind of elevation in the the experience because he'd written the book.

I often say that exactly the same words on a website or on a youtube video don't have the same impact as the fact that we print them on and glue them together on dead trees. It must be the the dead trees in the paper and the dead cows in the glue. There's something about that combination that makes it appealable to or appealing to people. But there is definitely something about that and our approach is. I mean, we're pretty adamant the difference between a traditional book and a conversation starting book, and we're in the conversation starting book world because the traditional book world is expensive and there's a lot of effort put into it. That doesn't get the returns for us as real business owners, but one of the things that we definitely do get is the fact that it is a book. We call it a book. It looks like a book, it's printed as a book, even if people are using the digital versions. We tell people to refer to it as a digital version of the book and not an e-book, because that is irrelevant and unnecessarily devalues it.

Lee: I didn't know that I learned something. Thank you.

Stuart: Okay, yeah, so there you go. So when you say to someone, when you say to someone on the, when you say to a customer, I'll send you a digital version of my book, or you say to the next customer, I'll send you my ebook, what you're sending them is the exact same thing. But even just talking about it now, you can imagine the perception on the other end. Someone receiving the digital copy of the book oh, that's great. Someone receiving an ebook like an ebook is a pdf I can download off the internet. Why is that valuable? So just those little psychological things that reinforce that.

Not that we're doing this purely for authority, but if there's authority there to be taken, we should make the most of it.

It's another reason where I'm not sure.

So the later ones that you did with us versus the earlier ones, the the ones that the digital versions that we send out are laid out exactly as the book is.

So there's left and right page pagination and whereas there's a blank page in the book, there's a blank page in the digital version. Again, when you think about the use case, having a blank page on a digital version is pretty irrelevant. But the reason that we do it is because we're trying to keep this, this, uh, this perception going that it's a digital version of the book and because it is, because we're trying to keep this, this, uh, this perception going that it's a digital version of the book and because it is a published book, that has more authority, so anyway, all of these things that kind of amplified. The point that you mentioned is that out in the world there is a enhanced credibility and authority and and heat and light that goes along with having a published book. We know behind the scenes that that's easier to do now than it was 30 years ago, but still it has that, has that element to it, and I can I ask you a question?

Lee: I'm going to interview you for a second yeah, of course. So, uh, some some documents I may buy are in a flip book format and you know, you hear, you, you, you, you hear the page going over. Is that something that you have tried and recommended?

Stuart: so it's funny I was so I'm down in the office in Florida now rather than at home in Pennsylvania just this week and I was meeting yesterday with Betsy and christy and we were running through some of the additions that we want to make to the package and we wrote down on the list those flipbook page turner type things. So when we last looked at it a few years ago, it was problematic. Everyone needed a special app in order to download it. They were typically hosted on a subscription service at the provider and then it was slow and clunky. If people were doing it on a cell phone or an ipad, it just didn't really work very well. So the technology has improved a little bit, but there's still a little bit of a barrier to to doing that, because typically it's not as easy as a PDF, where you send someone an email and it's got a PDF embedded in it or it has a link to a PDF that's on, like Amazon or Dropbox. They can just click on it and it will just immediately open up in the browser. Every other solution is typically either they need to download something or they need to go to a web page and it's got the other websites chrome around it and it's a little bit clunky, so I think we're still generally in the camp of it's not worth it.

The benefit of keeping to that book framework with a formatted pdf that looks like a book takes the majority of that, but it is something we're looking at to see if there's a tool that does it, because I think the use case there would be to send it out in an email to someone and say hey, thanks for requesting a copy of the book. There's some really great information on it. Particularly if you're in this scenario, check out this section. That is really useful. I've actually included two links for you. One is to the pdf, just the pdf, and then another is to the page turner. So depending on which you prefer some people prefer one or the other just know that it's the same content, so that might be a use case for it.

Lee: Yeah, that would be a good A B test to see which one they choose.

Stuart: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think still the majority of the services that do it. Well, it's a subscription service, so there is a cost overhead. One of the other ways of using it might be is if you do in videos and you're talking about the content of the book and you were doing like a screen share, like so you did a behind the scenes, like in the email sequence after someone opted in. If you did a behind the scenes, like a deeper dive on one chapter and you were doing a screen share, I mean it might be worth having a page turner just because maybe it's more visually compelling. But again, that would be a test between is it more visually compelling or is it just unnecessarily distracting.

So it's definitely interesting and the good thing about all of this conversation the good thing about it is technology continues to move forwards and having created the thing, you've done 90% of the work for whatever technology change there is in the future, like if the whole PDF standard changed and it went away and everyone switched to the MOB or MOBI, like the KDP, the Kindle books, like, imagine that everything suddenly changed to that. Well, you've done all the work. It's just a case of reconfiguring it for the new platform. So it gives so many opportunities once you've got it created, just to keep up with whatever the latest use cases for it. Gotcha, that was a long answer to a short question.

Lee: Well, I'm sorry we didn't rehearse that, but that was just really interesting because I'm studying for a test and that's what they provided is for me too Ah okay For my test scores.

Stuart: That's interesting then. So your experience of using it if you imagine that you had that flip, had that flip version versus just the PDF version where you would just scroll through in whatever PDF software that you had the experience of you doing it, was it more clunky using that page turner or did it add anything to it and then, from right, didn't add anything to?

Lee: it and then, from right, didn't add anything. It did not because what I wanted to do was print a few pages at a time so I could lay in bed and not be in a screen. I was trying to cut down my blue screen time before I go to sleep, but reading, you know, just a few printed out pages would satisfy that. And also, you know, help me do my studying at a flight time.

Stuart: And you know I didn't want to be if you drop from sleep as you fall asleep and there's some paper falls on your face, that's one thing, if a ipad falls on your face, that's a different story.

Lee: That's right so it did not satisfy what I was actually aiming for, so in it right that context. I only had to do it at my computer, yeah.

Stuart: And a lot of reasons people do it as well is this idea of locking stuff down. So a reason that some people or some organizations don't like PDFs is when the PDF is out there, it's out there, you can't do anything or it's very difficult to do anything to restrict it. So sometimes they'll put them in these other platforms. That restricts entry. But then again the use case for that it's a misalignment between the customer experience and what you're trying to do. You're trying to lock this stuff away and you make it additionally inconvenient for the client because they can't open it on every device or they can't print it off when they want to, or they can't. Most most PDF softwares now allow you to highlight and mark up in the document itself. So again, thinking about it from the user's perspective rather than from the company's perspective. Another reason for keeping it simple and and making it as accessible as possible.

Lee: Right, yeah, making it as accessible as possible, right, yeah, so I was able to go from. I did. My first book was around 64 pages, and so then is I went. I didn't want to do it in in because I didn't have the equipment. I took it to an outside printer and, uh, had about 200 printed and that lasted me six, seven, eight months, something like that. I was giving them out left and right and that I ordered more. I think I ordered, maybe you know, 1200, you know, over the over the over the years, and every year or so I would update a little bit here and there, change out pictures, as, as I would be explaining things to people, I think of an illustration I says that's what I want to use.

So I'd go back and tweak one paragraph or I. Would you know if there was a news event or something like that that was more current, then I would try to bring the and plus. I wanted to change the copyright date every year. You know when I did it too, right, okay? Yeah and so I'll see more up to date, exactly, exactly yeah, but um, the uh, the last, the last version that was would call a book, was in 18. I last really did any major tweaking to it in 20 or 21, something like that.

And by that time I was so busy during COVID I really didn't have time to do anything else. But then, as things came back a little bit to normal, then I wanted to do a better rewrite and I said, well, I'm going to use, you know, because I always had continued listening to you and your guest. I mean, you have some awesome, very smart guests. I don't know why I'm on here, but you have some wonderful, you have a wide variety. That gives me, you know, expands my universe, right.

Stuart: And it's easier. I don't know if you find the same, but I find it's easier to listen to someone else's specific business but think about the principles and then apply them to my own thinking or even apply it to their business, because then you're just thinking about the principles and you're not thinking about the implementation. Because then you're just thinking about the principles and you're not thinking about the implementation, like if every guest was in the remediation business and they were talking about things, a reasonable portion of your brain would be thinking at the details of the actual job of work, the remediation piece, and not the marketing principle piece. So anyway, I'm not sure if you're the same, but I like listening to a broad spectrum because the ideas you can concentrate on the ideas and not get stuck in the weeds of the business itself.

Lee: Exactly, Exactly, yeah, and so I really I do appreciate the fact that it it looks.

Stuart: I've added, I think it we're up to 160 pages on the new book, right, a lot thicker, and it looks good, feels good, and so you, you can't deny it is a book, right yeah, I think that the way that you did it as well was the perfect way of starting off with something that's manageable and then adding over time based off that real world feedback, because so many. It's like the lean model of get something out there first, or the what's the saying no plan survives contact with the enemy or the mike tyson one if everyone's got a plan until I punch him in the face just a bit more direct. But this idea if you could spend and this is why I yeah, I'm going to try and not go off on a rant because I think I did that one or two shows ago but the whole bestseller marketplace that's out there with people charging tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars to write a book under the premise that you'll become a bestseller, and then sit back and people just start knocking on your door. There is definitely a use case for that. But it's the top of the market where creating the Rolls Royce of a book in one go and putting all the eggs in that basket, where that pays off and you get a return on that investment.

The majority of us, the vast, vast majority, was real world business owners. If we start off with our reckon, first our field, for what's that? What will resonate with the market, but then we add over time not only does it mean that it's likely to get done because it's the scope is more constrained, but if it turns out that we need to pivot, then we haven't kind of sunk everything in one. I mean you were talking about the breadth of your business is pretty broad, but knowing that mold was the first one and starting with that, and you can imagine a scenario where you started with water remediation or air quality or something that didn't quite hit the mark and then the feedback that you get people are always asking about more mold questions. If you just spend 50, $60,000 on the air quality book and years to write it. I mean it's your approach of creating something that starts the conversation and then iterating based on that feedback. It's by far the most successful way of doing it.

Lee: Right, and because we do want to be an education-based company, be an education-based company. It is a slow migration toward the rear. I start laying in little hints we can help people with that, give us a call, and so forth and we're probably 30 pages in before I really start putting those hints that, yes, you may have this problem and you can take care of it, but if this is too much to handle, I'm here for you. And so no advert saying you need to call us because we're the best, or anything like that. Don't, we won't, we won't, we won't to set the bar and then let them decide who's reaching that bar or not. Because, yeah, because, in my business there is, there are so many shysters, so many high pressure salesmen. They want to scare you into doing work. Oh, my god, your house is going to be different mode. You need to run, right, you know.

Stuart: Burn the house, yeah, yeah whatever like, as, as soon as they start asking questions, it's well, and if I mean, if you want your children to die, then I mean you could not do it.

But it's like the, uh, the, the, anything to do with babies, the. Not that I've personally experienced in this, but I've heard people say like you go into the, the, um, the stroller, is that a british word or is that an American word? I'm getting confused. Anyway, like the pushchair, the stroller type fails people and they say, well, there's this model and this model which is in the price range that you're thinking about. But for people who really value their child's safety, there's this thousand dollar plus model over here and it's that psychological and I think that's what everyone is super conscious of, even going into it. Like the reason that the husband, to a certain degree kind of, is turning a blind eye to it is because they don't want to make the call and have that salesman saying well, clearly your wife is suffering here, so if you love her, you give me the thousand dollars that I'm asking for right it.

Lee: Your ethics over time will always outweigh the cost you have to charge, because I'm not going to be cheap. We're not going to be the cheapest.

Stuart: We're going to do things right.

Lee: I got $4 million worth of insurance just because I got the word mold in my name. Right? Yeah, and so it's not a cheap business and so and it's a complex with a lot of variables and put pieces of the puzzle and and I like the way one of your previous ones, Tim, starts with a W, but he talked about it being complex and it's not a transaction here I want a hot dog.

It's not a transaction here, I want a hot dog, it's not that right because a lot of times when I go in and do an inspection I charge for inspection. I do testing and so forth. So people may say, well, people. Some people will say, well, I can get a free, free mold inspection. You know from you this three letter over here and I says, well, are you getting an inspection or are you getting a salesman? You know, because I haven't spent this, you know 30 years of education and can give it away, and because we charge for it. It's the wording I like is SIF, sort and screen. If they are willing to pay my $259 for me just to show up the door and spend an hour and a half to two hours with them, then I know they're serious enough to possibly do work with us.

Stuart: Yeah, go ahead, and they know that you're coming in there, you're providing the service for that inspection to give them the best information on what the next step is and if they've come through the book funnel anyway, they already know that you're willing to share and give away the knowledge to put them in the most empowered position to take the next step. Most empowered position to take the next step, but that inspection that is comprehensive and more broad than some of the kind of dash in dash out and it's just a sales opportunity they get.

Lee: They get a written report, usually seven to ten pages. You know at the end is the notes and so forth yeah, they get good value for that exactly, and it's part of the process.

Stuart: So that's why I really like about the, this idea that we keep reinforcing of the conversational um, the conversation starting book, and that that conversation is broader than just a transaction. So, starting that journey by educating them and helping them understand the questions that are important to them or things they might not realize, or reinforce the things that they know already. And then the next step is we need to elevate this conversation to something that's more fact-based and detailed and it's not just coming in for a reckon and a sales call. It's actually giving you the value and even at that point you still may choose to take that somewhere else. But hey, we're all happy with that because we've brought the conversation along and there's an introduction to the services. There's a value exchange in the value that you give and the cost that's charged for it. I think it's a much more transparent type of relationship.

Now, if you're in a business where you're able to do something that is zero charge upfront because because there's not the um, there isn't the, the cost overhead or the value overhead, like that, that initial transaction, the value proposition on that is much smaller then hey, it makes sense that maybe there's no charge type things like for us when we have we have um, like I'll do a 20 minute call with with pretty much everyone to talk about their book idea, because I've got the bandwidth to do it and there's there's the ability to do it. It's quite quick. But as we're starting to get more into, if we want to do a consultation on what your book idea is and then you walk away from that with some real detailed steps to the process based on our framework, but you could take that and go away by yourself, then that's the that's-stepping that we've got. But I think that adding value and and having a value transfer, a transfer of value at the right level as part of this broader conversation, it really makes sense for bringing everyone along in the same way.

Lee: Two things I want to mention. One it's amazing.

More people will pay attention to you if they're paying you right, yeah, a lot of people have you the expression free advice is worth every penny, and the other thing is a lot of our. If I go in and do an inspection and I find out, hey, you need to call a plumber. Your HVAC is what's causing this. You need to get your HVAC fixed first. Yeah, we can remove the mold, but until you change the environment or the nexus of the problem in the first place, you're going to be mad when that new mold comes back in two years.

And so I had a customer call nine months ago. He says oh, I am so sorry, but we hadn't called you, but we had this happen, this happened. I had to get this done. I finally got what your recommendation list said. I'm finally ready for it. So you know, give me a new price on this project and we're about $24,000. And that's an average. That's a little better than average job for us, but a lot of our jobs are in the $7,000 range, so it's not a $3 hot dog it's complicated.

It's a time process and you have to be that advisor along the way and after you give them the book. It's best if you could now I'm a texter so I will just text did you get your hvac you fixed or did you know? What did the plumber find when he went there?

you know those kind of things just every couple of months, every couple of weeks, every couple of months or something like that, or just shoot them a a paint a picture of you know a product that would really help them right because it keeps the conversation going.

Stuart: I mean this whole idea of conversation starting it just happens to be the books in the most effective way of starting that conversation, but the product, the the thing that we're most interested in isn't book sales, it isn't even the books themselves, it's just that's the mechanism that we're using. It's the conversation, because it's the minority of people who are ready to take action immediately. It's not like, um, like I say, it's not a transactional business. We're not selling them a hot dog outside a football stadium and they're hungry, and the transaction takes place immediately. Or or you're not the plumber where they've got a water leak and it needs to happen immediately. These are cross processes and projects that have a certain cadence to them, which is a little bit longer, and keeping that conversation going in the way that's the most convenient for you and for them. Lots of opportunities, and I want to make sure that we talk about I always joke that time goes fast, but yet again, time goes fast. On the, on the podcast here.

I want to talk quickly before we wrap up, though, about the ways that you're using the books, and I'll include some pictures here, because Lee was kind enough to send across a few pictures of the way that he's using it. So, as you're listening, check out the link on. I don't know if it will show up in the podcast feed, but on the website there'll be the links in the website. So there was a couple of pictures he'd sent through, three of them that really stood out. One was there was a sticker on the book where you were using it in a certain place. Don't want to touch on that. The other one was their vehicle wrap, just because I find that funny. It's not quite the right word, but it just tickles something when I see it. Don't talk about that quickly. And then the third one was there was a picture on a what do you call them Like the rollout board things outside the conference room. It looked like the poster board, the poster board. Thank you, yeah.

Lee: That poster board is right now in our foyer, but when we would do trade shows and so forth, that would go to the trade show and we would have stacks of our books. We'd have one book out there. You know scarcity, we wouldn't show them all because that would that kind of lessen the value.

But yeah, yeah well, you can go get one, and, and so how much would this one? You know how much is this one and, and I sold a few. But if they If they really did, you know, have us call out, then I would just go ahead and handle, right. So so I kind of felt I wanted to feel the real interest before. I gave them at that time a five dollar book. Now they're going, you know, that'll cost a lot more than that for me to to do um yes so the poster board is one thing.

One thing that you'll see is now, this is a little um ninja, I guess I don't know what the right word is, but the sticker on the on the front says waiting copy. Please do not remove. See back cover. And on the backside I had another one says to get your free copy of this, go to freemoldbookcom, and it also had a QR code that they could do. So. Do you think I went and asked permission before I left them in the waiting room?

No, I give it to all my employees I say, when you take your kid or grandma to the, you just leave it there. You know that's hilarious, you just leave it, all right. So they're there because of health, right, right.

Stuart: And so that's my target audience I tell you what you were joking before saying hey, you've had some other great guests. I don't know why I'm here, but if, as anyone's listening, this is the gold for this episode, that kind of griller tactic of just because we often talk about this idea of complementary, non-competing businesses and I think I've even used an example of, like, a doctor's waiting room is the perfect place to leave some things, but I must admit I'd never thought about just just doing it.

Lee: But that's the perfect, that's perfect um, and before covid, we had one salesman. He's no longer with us, but I had assigned him to sell air purifiers that was what he spent his time in. So he would go and visit allergists and so forth, and we'd leave one in the waiting room. It says to get your own. We had a bumper sticker made just a property of, but to get one of your own, go to call this number, go this website, and so forth. Just a puppy dog, and so we sold one or two. But the people who call on doctors, they have a. I have to admire them. They have, they have a certain way of handling things. They're very suave and very diplomatic. You know, our guys was just, you know, didn't look like. You know one of those farm reps.

And so it happened to be that I was ready to get a wrap on my car anyway wrap on my car anyway and so I waited. You know, I waited two or three months until I finalized the new picture this one, of course, I paid for the graphic. I paid, you know, got the rights to use that many years ago, changed it up and so I use and for myself I use some. I use a guy on Fiverr, been using him for about 10 years. He's got all the logos and everything for both of my companies and he's just kind of knows what I like Very few good English, just good conversation, reasonable price. English, just good conversation, reasonable price. And so that fit in with the rest of my logos and so forth that are already on the wraps and on the vehicles.

Stuart: Right. So do you track at all or do you have an indication on how that lands with the people out there? How many people use the qr code to get a copy of the book, or how many people grab it from the vehicle, or or the the um, the events. Obviously you're there so you know what happens at the events, but you don't feel either specifically or anecdotally. On the other, ones.

Lee: It's not perfect, but yes, to some extent. Uh, we had the option of being able to send out the book of you know automatically when somebody did it, but we decided we opted not to do that because my daughter, who's actually the marketing uh lady, she sees everyone and we you know, she can.

Stuart: You know if, if somebody from a foreign country you know, we can we can just tell that you know they want us to send it you know there's a lot of spam, you know and robots and whatever.

Lee: So she sees every one of those and it does ask how did you hear about us? Now, on our front end we have a call-in sheet that Ms Deborah asked and she goes through all of those and right on there she's instructed and she does a good job at this. The Columbo question If you remember Columbo, he was almost out the door and he'd ask one more question.

Stuart: Right, one more thing, yeah, one more thing.

Lee: So oh, by the way, how'd you hear about us?

Stuart: And so yeah, that was written down every time yeah, those, um, this idea of getting out in front of audiences and understanding where they are, so the kind of connection between the doctor, surgery and people being there for health and more might be something that they're interested in. Does that go broader than that? Do you have other examples or the other, because you've been doing this for a while? So is it an easy thought process to think, okay, there's this group of people who might be the perfect match of clients and they're in this space. Is it easy for you to think about where they are? Or was that that doctor's surgery example? Was that the response, the, the outcome of like some dedicated thinking and like a brain trust for a period of time?

Lee: I don't. I don't remember the thought process at the time. Um, you know, entrepreneurs have way too many ideas, but that they don't ever follow through, right, uh, so a lot of times, a lot of our business also comes from people who are in the real estate business, either from the real estate agents or inspectors.

So yes we go to realtors offices and mention, you know, mention what we do and how it benefits them to maybe have the owner re-look at the house and make sure they have a chance to make any adjustments before somebody else comes in and wants to lower the price because they found or won't walk away because of mold, so we can do pre-inspection there. Found or won't walk away because of mold, so we can do pre-inspection there. Or if somebody on the other side, if somebody's buying, then a special Alabama is not one of those that requires a mold inspection. Other states do, but a lot of people who are moving in just assume they're going to get that in a radon test.

And so they ask for it and I'm on the rolodex of uh, probably out of 150 inspectors in in town, I'm probably on the rolodex of probably a good 30 or 40 of them okay, yeah and gee, I recorded a podcast yesterday so it'll probably be the show before this as people are listening to it, but a couple of weeks ahead of where we're talking today.

Stuart: So Jeff Klein, who I was talking to yesterday, helps business owners who and try to kind of like transition into speaking events and and not to become professional speakers, but kind of like as a lead generation type thing.

So he had a list and again, if if people have been watching along, they'll have seen it last week. But he had a list and again, if people have been watching along, they'll have seen it last week but he had a list where he documented all of the Chamber of Commerce meetings, all of the I forget what else was on the list now, but there were several of these kind of industry organizations that had a mandate for bringing speakers in for their guests, that had a mandate for bringing speakers in for their guests, and then the premise was, of course, if you have a book, you've already got the majority of a delivery there, and now you've also got a book as the call to action, the next step. So is that something that you've explored or had opportunity to do? Kind of speak to those you mentioned the realtors, like speak at a realtor organization or the inspectors I'm would have the same thing or even Chamber of Commerce.

Lee: Right, I have not done Chamber of Commerce, I have done Building Code. Now, that's an odd bunch. They are really, really to the, because I took my code book. He had his code book and he's saying, well, look here it says this. I said, well, I understand, but over here it says I can't do this.

And so once he saw, I knew what I was doing and I says I am not doing anything to detrimentally hurt the house, it's only an improvement. What you, the way you want, it is great, but this is better and right. And then I and I brought out, you know, magazines and other organizations who said the same thing and he, finally, he finally acquiesced, he, it took him, it took two or three weeks before we came to. But would you know, but did you, would you know that he called me the next year. He says, mr Raymond, would you come and talk to our association of building? It was, you know, about 20 different cities who come together every other month and they just had, you know, meeting three that kind of thing.

So it just sort of again being able to get in front of the right people, because change is hard. People don't like change.

And the way that we can take care of crawl spaces is change from what the codes say and it leaves the house, you know, cleaner and more healthier, doesn't smell and, you know, saves the energy. All these different things. After we removed the mold, we changed the environment of the crawl space so the rest of the house gets healthier. But that changes hard of the crawl space, so the the rest of the house gets healthier. But that's right. Change is hard and so again.

Stuart: Uh, you, sometimes you have to fight for what you believe in yeah, and people admit some initial responses, particularly, I think, where there is this kind of confrontation type industry of the building respectors someone's trying to do this and they've got to be led through the law. No, it has to be this way around. Or, um, when changes come through, there's either it changes a whole load of practices underneath or there's some conflict about whether it's changing to a or b. So I think people's natural response sometimes is that no, push away or stand off first.

But the illustration that you gave there is perfect in this idea of conversation starting. We're usually talking about it in terms of clients and that kind of funnel, but this conversation starting with other industry professionals and that cohort of peers where there is a relationship that can be developed over time, and the fact that a book exists and brings all of that information together in a way that is either a backup to a conversation that's had or a next step or it just brings it together. All of these conversations start and lead towards things further down the track and I think throughout all of this conversation that's what's really resonated and I hope it resonates for listeners is you've brought together this information in something that is a book that's got more authority than if you had it in a different format, but it really lays the ground for this longer term relationship with people and and just kicks everything off on the right foot and and takes that brings people along with you, whether that's clients or partners or collaborators. It's just such a great way of doing it. Time's flown by. What were you going to say there?

Lee: I usually hand it to a customer in a sleeve like this very cheap Alibaba or something like that. That adds value. They feel like it's been and plus, mine were getting all you know wrinkly and in the car, so this is preserved the way they look. So if you carry them around and that added that's a to me that was just a nice little yeah again.

Stuart: I'm pretty sure I'm going to call this podcast something to do with guerrilla marketing, because these ideas are fantastic. That extra thought process. When you think about who your clients are, that the baseline is health concerns. When they're thinking about mold, they're already thinking about kind of like the hazmat suits and the breathing apparatus and that's their mental space. So you giving someone it's like the whole covid when you went to hotel rooms in covid like increasingly everything was individually wrapped and separated because the, the psyche, the mentality was like this protection I want. There's something out there that's trying to get me that your clients are already in that brain space to a certain degree. So the fact that you've given it to them in that plastic wrap that has a subconscious element of hygiene and we're we're thinking about this type of thing, I mean what a fantastic extra step oh they, less than a penny a bag, you know, in bulk right right.

This will definitely circle back in a few months and talk about some more of these ideas in. In some give people some more ideas that you're going through, but the it's such a heavy lift for people. So if they're thinking about doing a book by themselves, that's the most difficult way of doing it. I understand that some people do it that way, but it's the most difficult. Working with us is a much lighter lift, but there's still some. You've got to put some mental effort into it exactly, and it's the most disappointing thing that you think people get to the end of the process and they kind of think, oh, thank goodness for that. Now it's done and you don't see people doing things with it.

Once this is created, I mean, give yourself a week off if you want, but come back to it and then think, okay, I've now got this asset. What are all of the ways that I can use this asset in the most effective way? Is it physical? Is it digital? If it's digital, which format? Going back to the pdf versus page, turn the conversation. If I'm at a conference, do I want to give them a copy of the conference or just make it easy for them to get a copy if they're coming in and I'm asking them where they heard about us identifying that they did come through the book or didn't come through the book, how does that change the follow-up in the conversation, whether it makes sense to text them or email them, all of these things about. I've now have a series of assets and how can I use those to the best degree possible? Just that little bit of extra effort and attention and and using it I mean it can really make a huge amount of difference for people.

Lee: Right, but once this gets, once I feel like it's left the nest. You know it's on its own and I've got all the because. Here's a damaging admission my weakness is one of the campaigns I plan to do next, and I haven't got to it yet is I'm going to go back to all my a chance, one of the first chances to have this new book and your free copy. So I'm, I'm, I'm lack on that. That's, that's a future project for me. So everybody's got something to prove on right.

Stuart: Like you said before. I mean there's entrepreneurs, business owners. We've got more ideas than we have time to execute on them, so everyone's got. Everyone's got a list of things we should. We'll talk after we wrap up for a second, but we should talk about having a strategy. Call about that, because we've got lots of experience of doing that with people, so we can do that and maybe we can use that as the example to circle back in six months or so and do an update show just to give people some more ideas and go a little bit deeper on the ones that we've tried. Before we wrap, I want to make sure that people have got opportunity to find out more about you and the organization there, so where's a good place for people to go to learn more?

Lee: Okay, if you want the book itself, I have a dedicated website called freemoldbookcom. Dedicated website called freemoldbookcom. My website is alabamamoldcom. Alabamamoldcom, pretty simple. It is geographically confining a little bit. But rest assured, if you are from out of state and you decide you want a book, that's fine, you're going to get it. You know you're going to get a PDF and we look forward to answering any questions. And for all of your readers and listeners and viewers and so forth, I'm just going to say I've already got a swipe file. I've already stuffed on my second book. I'm going to do a book for lake owners and the humidity problems that go with lakes. Ah, fantastic.

But, so I would just suggest that go ahead and take the first step. The book will pay its weight in gold and dividends.

Stuart: Yeah, fantastic, I mean, for anyone who's ever thought about mold issues. I mean, as you say, there's pages and pages of your expertise and experience in there that will help them out and to see it as an example of how you're using it to engage customers and start that conversation. Perfect for that as well. I'll make sure that there are links to um, to those web pages and to your linkedin profile as well. I'll put all of those in the show notes so, as people are watching and listening on the podcast player or on the website, there'll be links straight through.

I'll put, as I mentioned, I'll put those images you sent through in the show notes as well. So I'm not sure I think they show up in most podcast players not iTunes, but most podcast players. I think they do, but I'll put them on the website as well. So another reason for people to head across there. Lee, fantastic, this has gone so fast. I really love just the implementation of this and the ideas again out there, because it's one thing to create something and I think the process that we've talked about in our process helps you to create the best thing possible but it's another thing to actually be out there using it in all of these fantastic ways to start the conversation.

Lee: So I'm sure you've made a book. Don't let it sit on on the shelf. Get it out there yeah, exactly, exactly.

Stuart: Well, thank you again, really appreciate your time thank you.

Lee: Thank you, I appreciate it.

Stuart: Privilege been a real privilege um it's a pleasure and we'll definitely circle back in a couple of months and do a follow-up. So, everyone, make sure you subscribe to the show and check in for the emails, because spam's an issue these days and mailboxes don't always want to deliver emails. So make sure that you're checking out things and then we'll catch you in the next one.

Today, on the Book More Show, I spoke with Aubrey Berkowitz of Alter Endeavors and Armada Digital. He shared how thought leaders, authors, and speakers can establish an online presence that strengthens their distinct brand and captures qualified leads.

We explored the evolution of personal branding in a post-pandemic digital world and the vital role of a focused online platform. Aubrey also provided proven conversion strategies for driving speaking opportunities through tailored pitches and comprehensive, accessible content that pre-qualifies the speaker.

Lastly, we discussed leveraging books and other assets to build online credibility and maintain an authentic personal voice in today's AI-influenced landscape.

SHOW HIGHLIGHTS

Show notes & video: 90minutebooks.com/podcast/172

Aubrey Berkowitz:

Questions/Feedback: Send us an email

(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)

Aubrey: So knowing what that end conversion is usually dictates the path we take, because there's different areas of attack that you can go about it as a speaker and a thought leader too. Now, going back to it again, there's going to have to be critical assets, because if there isn't some kind of asset, you're only pitching yourself and you're relying on a heavy amount of your personal brand, having already done the lifting.

Stuart: Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Bookmore Show. It's Stuart Bell here, and today joined by Aubrey Berkowitz. Aubrey, how are you doing?

Aubrey: Doing. Great thanks for having me, stuart, appreciate your time.

Stuart: Pleasure buddy. I'm looking forward to this set this scene for people so we know each other. We've had a few calls and there's such a great crossover between the businesses. I think this is really going to be an interesting podcast for people, because it's going to be ones that are directly applicable, like sometimes we're talking about subjects that are maybe slightly not es esoteric, but maybe one level removed, but I think this is something that's going to be 100% on mark for everyone listening. So why don't we start, give a bit of a background about you and the company and then we'll go from there?

Aubrey: Yeah, my name is Aubrey Berkowitz. I'm the managing partner of Alter Endeavors, which is a digital lead generation company, as well as Armada Digital, which is a hosting and ongoing support company. We help authors and speakers and thought leaders build out online platforms and lead generation strategies to help. Whether that's driving more speaking engagements, whether that's adding to your newsletter, taking a book to market, whatever that final conversion point might be, we help speakers and thought leaders build their personal brand.

Stuart: Fantastic. Such an interesting this idea of the specific use case for the asset. It's something that we talk about a lot in terms of books traditional books people think about a build it once and they will come, or it's a thing that sits on the shelf and maybe serves several purposes, but we're really talking about that specific purpose for you guys. I know a lot of the conversations that we've had have been specifically around that book web, book-based website to promote that brand and build the build that asset as a lead generation tool. Obviously, websites aren't anything new for people we're 2024 now, so they've been around for a little while but I think people still approach it as an afterthought or something that's trying to serve absolutely every purpose. For a lot of people that you're working with, the websites that you're building, do these tend to sit in addition to other websites that people have got, or are they the main and only one that people are using that people other websites that people have got, or are they the main and only one that people are using?

Aubrey: So it's interesting. You brought up kind of the historical background of how we view websites, because the online world has changed so quickly in the last few years. We're having your own digital online. Let's call it a town hall, a hub, a platform is now more important than ever because when we're talking about thought leadership and when we're talking about driving leads and conversions, ultimately that has to happen somewhere. So the website now, rather than being a brochure, rather than just being purely informational, has turned into an area rich for conversions, for speakers, for thought leaders, for consultants, for fractions. So that's the shift that we're seeing is that these strategies that might have seemed like afterthoughts have become even more important as we're transitioning to an even more digital world.

Stuart: Yeah, and the kind of fracturing of those presences and almost people's ownership. I mean kind of think about it from a couple of perspectives either if you're a employee and trying to be a specialist in your area and there might be a positive interest that you want to move elsewhere and promote yourself, or there might be the kind of negative side of layoffs happen and you might find yourself on the outs before you realize it. Establishing your presence separate from the company presence is important. And then from an entrepreneur, business leader, founder perspective, the turnover of businesses is much faster than it was before. Brands reposition or pivot or whatever positive or negative reason for it. But having an entity which is you and people can build that rapport with you and then as the other things move, you're still you.

Aubrey: That is so much more important now than the last couple of years absolutely, because you look at the way and let's talk about some of the more niche instances where this is very applicable. So let's talk about if you are someone that's in maybe the private equity space right, you might be work, you might have an interest in 10 different companies, or you might have written three different books. So how do we bring that all together, right? And how do we bring together maybe, things that might have a different content to them, right? And maybe you're an author that speaks in different areas of leadership?

Having that online hub, having that personal brand, like you mentioned, is a way to differentiate yourself. Banking is another example where we see this. Bank presidents, you're able to go and create your own business, hunt your own business, but people recognize you as the brand. So how do we maintain that? But also, at the same time, create a lead generation environment that can contribute to both, too right, and can contribute to multiple areas that you might be involved in? And again, that speaks back to the new critical importance of having a personal brand website, to the new critical importance of having a personal brand website. If I were a car dealer 15 years ago, it's not as important as it is now, where we still want to shop local, we still want to have a relationship with the people. So that personal brand site also functions as a way for people to verify their referrals.

Stuart: Right and to that point you're making now about the people still want to shop local.

They still want to have a relationship with a person.

That almost the change in the last couple of years, kind of post-pandemic, and more and more people working from home although I mean that might be changing slightly, but still it's much more of a separated place that we're in now rather than the workspace where everyone is in the same place and when you meet you ask what they do and they talk about their job or their role, having the person piece tied to it.

It's, I mean, in marketing, what we've said for years that people buy from people, they don't buy from companies, whether that's at the macro level and thinking about brands and big identities, down to the kind of micro level of the transaction and you get a rapport with the person who you're dealing with on the phone and that idea we work with a lot of realtors in another part of the business but the idea that you become their guy. A very good friend of mine, jim hacking, is our immigration attorney, so he's the go-to guy when I think immigration facilities. I think Jim, he occupies that spot in my brain, so the same ability to build that personal place where people can go and feel like they've got a relationship with you.

Aubrey: And we've just moved Stuart to such an online content driven world as well, where unbranded searches at the highest percentage it's ever been, and what unbranded means is that people are searching for terms and phrases around subject matter rather than just company names. So it builds further to what you're saying and we love to quote do our own research. What does do our own research mean? Right, it inevitably means we're going to go back to Google or we're going to go online, because we are now trained and conditioned to know how to actually use the internet to achieve the goals we want. My five-year-old nephew now understands how to use an iPad and understands that he can search the internet for YouTube videos or other content mechanisms that he enjoys, and the future generations are growing up with that baseline.

They're growing up with the baseline that you and I had of let's go to the library. Well, that library is now online and it's infinite.

Stuart: Right actually that's a great example. So our youngest is uh 14, almost 15, and just graduating at eighth grade, so he's getting a. He's had an ipad for a little while, but he's getting a phone finally. So he's very excited about that. But when we're out and about or when he's not near the ipad, he'll ask something and he'll either say let me borrow your phone or right, yeah watch us as we're typing the search if he's in the back of the car on the other side of the room.

We're just trying to do it and whenever I do it or his mom does it, he always says we get a response and he always queries it. Well, let me see what you type. Let me see what you type. Yes absolutely.

Because you and I came up in a kind of more Boolean type world of typing in Google searches, where we're trying to guess what the I don't know if I mean it was an algorithm, but you wouldn't necessarily have called it an algorithm back then we're trying to guess what search parameters will yield the best results, whereas if you see the natural language way that they search today, they're just typing in as if you're asking a question. As it moves more towards voice, that's just even become more prevalent. So you were mentioning about the natural language search and the unbranded search and people just querying this online assistant to find the things. If you as a presence are there, someone might remember your name, we might remember the subject you're related. To start searching that, going down that rabbit hole if you don't have anything related to you and they're missing the connection with the brand. It's a gap that's going to get more and more pronounced over time. I think absolutely, and there are internets and they're missing the connection with the brand.

Aubrey: It's a gap that's going to get more and more pronounced over time. I think Absolutely, and there are internet statistics online statistics that show the difference in what you're mentioning as well. So your son's generation is 18% more likely to focus on local search than our generation is.

Stuart: Right.

Aubrey: And where this also comes into play is how you mentioned how they approach search terms. So we used to I don't know if you remember the original Ask Jeeves, but it was term comma right and we tried to match like you said. But the younger generations, they're searching for content around key phrases Now, taking a step back. For speakers and thought leaders and authors, this is an amazing opportunity Because it means suddenly the content that we create is exponentially more relevant in search. Now, we've all seen the search algorithms using AI. They've been using AI for years, they always will be. But even now, when they're integrating AI into the Google search, it's pulling from content and it's pulling from the content we create on the internet.

So, there's untapped potential now to utilize your content in a way to where you can drive people back to your actual platform. Now how do we all make it come together with the book? Right, the book is the richest source of content that you can create. Book, right, the book is the richest source of content that you can create. Yeah, it exists, and you can then take pieces from your book that you know are relevant, write content around that and create an ecosystem to where we're driving results that are relevant to the subject you actually talk about.

Stuart: Yeah, actually that's a great bridge, because we obviously don't do anything with websites at all.

That's out well outside of our scope of interest.

But we're definitely encouraging people to, now that you've done the work of creating the content, take that content and amplify it elsewhere and elsewhere.

It makes perfect sense that it's on their own site. So the idea of let me use the scorecard book as an example so the scorecard book has eight steps in there, eight building blocks of a book. Those eight things are pieces within their own right, so to be able to either take the raw content or take the idea of the content and then elaborate and expand on it. And because these books are created based on the things that you know so well in your head, and a book is a relatively confined, one of the elements in there is specifically beneficial constraints. So we actively try and keep people constrained so that the project gets completed. But any one of those elements that you're talking about, as a business owner who's been doing this for a couple of years, you can talk and write and develop and expand on those individual pieces out of an item, almost. So the website seems like the perfect place to then, if you're doing that work to then bring it together.

Aubrey: Absolutely, and the advantage, like we said, of a personal brand site is that you can have different books on your site that all relate to what you do overall, rather than branding your site around the book and I know we're kind of tiptoeing around it, but we keep mentioning the importance of books, and if the one major determining factor we've seen for consultants to have the most success is do you have a book, do you have something that you're saying in the market that is unique? So where the opportunity then lies is let's take this personal brand you're starting to build and let's build out some of the ancillary funnels of it too. Let's have community built around your book to where we can actually start getting to those what I call late end conversions, late end conversion being a consulting gig, a speaking gig or wherever the monetization really comes in comes in.

Stuart: Yeah, it's interesting that the idea of people wanting to speak, particularly at the beginning, unless they've got a very established track record and kind of they've got a demand created so people are coming to them.

For the rest of us it's probably less that there might be some referrals and there's a bit more kind of relationship capital passed down, that down that connection. But for everyone else it's kind of putting the passed down that connection, but for everyone else it's kind of putting the opportunity out there and hoping that someone will respond and pick up to it. And again, speakers are the same. By having that, I almost imagine that it's the case that if you pitch to a organization that's looking for a speaker and they then look for you and you don't have anything out there, even if you had the best pitch deck or presentation on paper, if they're not actually looking for you and seeing something that's out there, that's reinforcing that this is something that you can do. I imagine that's like a resume problem of kind of yes, no, yes, no, yes, no. You just filtered out at the first.

Aubrey: It's an audience problem too, because what we see a lot of times is speakers and thought leaders.

We like to think about where everyone can get passionate about what we talk about.

In business, we can all get passionate about it.

We can, and sometimes people can deliver the most amazing speech ever, right? But we're thinking about it of the audience being who we're actually talking to, as, as a speaker, the audience is not the one booking you. There's going to be somebody in the organization and they're going to have to go back to their board and justify your cost and justify your value. Now, unless they've heard you speak before, and even if they had, what are they going to use to go back to their people? It might be a pitch deck, sure, but everyone now expects to be able to go online and again going back to doing your own homework, being able to find something on that person, on their personal brand, being able to engage with their content, whether it's download a chapter of the book, whether it's join a newsletter, join a newsletter. These are all things now that, by doing it the right way, you can pre-qualify yourself when it actually gets to the point where the speaking decision is being made and who's speaking is being right that principal agent problem.

Stuart: If you've got the, there's a disconnect between the end audience and the gatekeeping audience of who's actually buying.

Yeah right that's another reason why it's such a great opportunity to speak together, because we're so aligned on this approach. The amount of times that we talk to people about a book project and then go through that, that, that initial ideation point of, okay, well, who's the ideal prospect? Okay, within that ideal prospect group, are they the end users or are they the end customers? Because that might be a different group. And where it is different, it's very important to make sure that you're either could be the right answer, but you're pitching it at the right level and you understand the impact, the downstream impact, of what you're setting up.

The really interesting one is and again this is a bit out of scope of of what we're talking about but you can imagine a scenario where people, once they understand that there's a gatekeeper in place, there's an agent in place between them and the people that they're ultimately delivering to, but that presentation of the package, that value proposition that you're putting out there, if you can address that, both of those markets, by saying here's what I'll deliver to your end customers, but here's what I'm delivering to you to make the decision as easy as possible and overwhelming the evidence for each step, it only takes a little bit of orchestration, to separate yourself from the crowd, because I think the majority of people don't do that. They're just focused on what they do and they're in that mindset of well, I do it and I'm passionate about it and I'm the best, so everyone else should just understand and jump on board.

Aubrey: Yeah, and I can speak about what I talk about every day, right. And then the other trap kind of bringing back to what we had discussed a little bit earlier is so, once your presentation's done, having a book as a leave behind piece is something that these program coordinators all prioritize, because they want to keep continuing to provide value to their audience, to their users. I'm going to use a hospital association as an example, because we have a client that's a speaker for hospital associations and what he's been able to do is leave them behind with materials that consistently provide value beyond just what he speaks about.

Stuart: Right.

Aubrey: And that's where the real late stage rich conversions come in. For consultants, right I almost like to think of it as you're speaking is sometimes just your paid lead generation. If you're a thought leader right, you're just paid to hopefully get an ongoing engagement with somebody that you're speaking to. But that only happens if you're providing value, right, and if you're providing something that they can take back with them. Whether that's a book, whether that's joining a newsletter community, whatever that might be providing the value is the real way to engage and create longstanding customers as well.

Yeah, I don't know if that's the same for you, but I don't see the very many people getting rich off just the book anymore right, exactly, and the with the speaking has been the gateway.

Stuart: It's the start of the conversation. For us, our whole model is it's according to the phrase of the conversation starting book is exactly that premise. It's the start of the conversation that leads to something else, saying that the book isn't the product, the conversation from the book is the product, and the same with the speaking element and the same with the website. All of these things can layer in to reinforce the credibility or the ease at which someone gets to say yes, particularly when you're dealing with employees of an organization where it's their job to to book these people or to make these engagement pieces, because they're not as, on the one hand, they're not as passionately engaged with the outcome as an owner might be that, hopefully, they're still good at their job and they're passionate about their job, but there is a difference, but then also they're doing this every day, so they've got 100.

Focus on this particular role and as much as you can streamline that for people and make it an easy decision to say yes to. There was a. I was on a call earlier today and a similar call last week where the person was talking about a conversion heuristic and I have it written down but it's on my other desk so I'll try and remember it for the I've never heard of this term, so I'm fascinated real quick so he was talking about conversions and get into a yes.

So the outcome of a yes is a multiple of four times the motivation, so 4m um plus 2v, which is two times the value proposition plus two times the incentive or the ease of use of doing whatever the action is, but then minus any friction and any anxiety.

Aubrey: And I butchered that a little bit isn't it funny how conversions have become so math-like. You know we think about it as so much psychology and so much people, but there's still an underlying element of math to it.

Stuart: Right, there's that art and science, but there's definitely a decent amount of science that you can test against. So all of those things the motivation, the value proposition, the ease of the incentive to actually click, whatever the thing is against the friction and the anxiety, whatever we can do to ease that overall completion whether it's on a webpage or whether it's putting a speaker proposal out, or whether it's standing on stage and delivering the material and then leaving people with a book which reduces anxiety, which removes friction, increases value proposition, leading someone to an author website or your particular brand where you have the whole world view of the thing that you offer. Easily presenting people, whichever way they come into it, easily presenting them with the next step all of these things are kind of levers that we can pull to streamline the whole process. So when you're dealing with people, how many people come with a very clear idea of what they want to do, versus they've kind of got a loose idea of the outcome that they want and you've got to guide people towards making it to that finish line.

Aubrey: That's a great question, because speakers, thought leaders, authors are very particular about their content. So typically we'll find that people have that I want to say blue sky ready in their mind right of what that looks like. Now the interesting thing is that not every speaker is going to be set up for the same late stage conversions. You know, if you're someone that is focused on retirement planning, you know you're going to be much more focused on getting consultations with maybe an entire company to set up their benefits and so on and so forth. So knowing what that end conversion is usually dictates the path we take, because there's different areas of attack that you can go about it as a speaker and a thought leader too. Now, going back to it again, there's going to have to be critical assets, because if there isn't some kind of asset, you're only pitching yourself and you're relying on a heavy amount of your personal brand, having already done the lifting.

And that's something that we all like to think. We're known in our industry, but if you look at the Google search volume, for most companies the founder is probably the seventh or eighth term that they're the highest position for. So you're still getting traffic off of yourself, but there's that opportunity to branch off and really create something of your own. Create something of your own. So typically there's also steps as well. Right, maybe I'm looking to host event series and I want to have my book be a part of that promotion, or maybe I want to build a community, but it all always comes back to what that end point conversion is. The biggest problem I see speakers and thought leaders fall into. The biggest trap, I guess, is the idea that my content alone, just what I say, can drive an entire personal brand. That's only half true.

Stuart: Right.

Aubrey: Because there still has to be some kind of ongoing conversation, like you're saying, to where we're still elaborating every day and training our audience every day and nurturing that audience to where, when we have them come back to the personal brand and site, they're actually ready to convert. Whether that's sign up for a speaking engagement book for press, is a big one in that nature. If you're using a PR company, they're almost always going to insist you have a personal brand website. They're going to insist that you have things like press and media. And where does all that live? So that's really where it all starts. For us is that personal brand platform allows you to have the legs to do other things beyond just what you say and lead generation.

Stuart: Right. So the people who are kind of consuming the site, the people on the other side, is there any? I'm trying to ask a question in a way that isn't the obvious answer. It's different for every person. Are there any trends, I guess, around what people are looking for now? So if, when I'm thinking about the people who've written books with us over the years, there's that mix of kind of very small independent financial advisors to larger business owners who are looking to establish more of a movement or a different way of approaching things, the kind of manifesto type book of how we're planting a flag in the ground of doing things differently, so the people who are coming to those websites, the information they're trying to consume, is going to be a mix of potential clients but then potential network partners or people who are, who can kind of amplify that message out in the broader world. So is there any kind of trends on the types of information that people are wanting to see when they come to that site? Will be that everyone's different?

Aubrey: Yeah, absolutely. I think that there are several things lately, and I'm going to take this in two steps, because, with the platform there are, because I see this as a two-part answer. With the platform, there are certain things that if you are trying to be a speaker or a thought leader, it is almost essential to have. One of them is, you know, press kits on your actual site. If you give presentations, having unique URLs for your presentations so that you can drive traffic specifically to that Small things, even though, like having your headshot, we see that all the time where they won't have their headshot. But a streamlined experience once someone gets to your site is the first step of this answer.

Now, in terms of what people are searching for, we get to put our math hats back on again, because the way that people search is always changing. We mentioned the more of the unbranded traffic, but there are several factors to consider in your organic traffic. The first is how much volume is there, right? So how many people search over a 30-day period? The second being okay, what is the competitive density? So how many people search over a 30-day period? The second being okay, what is the competitive density? So how many of my competitors are trying to rank for this term and then Google will actually give a score for the term of how difficult it is to rank for. So we want to act almost like a financial planner here, where there's going to be some terms that are worth the optimization for and some that we might say there's less traffic but it's less competitive.

Now, backing up. What does that mean? Well, again, with math, 65% of Google search results end in the first three results. 80% end in the first five. Once you get to page two, you are getting five to 7% of total traffic. So if you pick a term where you're going to be on page two but there's, you know, a hundred thousand searches, that might not actually be worth it because you might not be getting enough of that math. So what we look at now is the actual trends and we pull the data and what we've seen overall is that people are searching for specific content around their pain points. So with the book, what pain point do you answer? What are you alleviating and what value are you providing? Then let's start focusing on optimizing towards that.

Stuart: And it's such a great example of A why it's difficult for people to do themselves. Now it's such a complicated and busy space. To be able to rank for anything by yourself is probably difficult for someone coming in today. Now there's going to be legacy players who did do it themselves and they've got the benefit of age and kind of holding that ground initially. Kind of holding that ground initially.

But for someone starting from scratch it is pretty challenging, I think, to have a map of, to be able to see that landscape and the map of which ones are worth it and which ones aren't. And then the other point that I really love and again it's one of the reasons why books are so valuable is this idea of topic bridging. You've written 60, 70, 80 pages worth of stuff that's in your wheelhouse, in your ballpark, but there might be four, five, six, slightly longer tail keywords that are accessible and worth doing. That you might struggle to come across yourself, but working with someone like you guys, you can then take the existing content that you've got and then bridge it into a relevant search term, and it's a much easier job of doing the bridging work rather than looking at a blank page and thinking I've got to create this thing from scratch.

So it just gives so many opportunities to leverage the work that you've done into this whole other realm of optimization and organic traffic, and then, as we were saying earlier, the specific outreach and the dedicated pieces that you do. It's kind of, once you've done that work, it just opens up so many opportunities. And the underlying tentpole piece is a book which in and of itself has an outsized authority compared with the same information in a video or on a web page. Again, there might be good use cases for doing those things as well, but the fact that it comes back to the book, it's just a disproportionate advantage, I think, particularly while still I mean books are getting more and more popular for people to do, but still it's a small minority of people who actually do it.

Aubrey: You know, something I've always found interesting too is that authors in general and maybe it's just the ability of writers, right, in general authors have an easier time relating and explaining the audience for a book than on the website. So what we found is that by pulling content from the book, that's easy, blog material that can be repurposed, that's already been used or it can be managed in different ways to where we already understand who the audience is. And the pain point is Because you mentioned it, there are legacy players. Yes, that happens. Your social media can actually be a huge driver now, depending on what platform you're on, if you're on Twitter, if you're on LinkedIn something that can be a huge organic driver.

But at the end of the day, people, we use websites now as a tool. Websites are not just brochures. We as a society, go to a website with an expectation that we can accomplish a goal, and if your personal brand site doesn't accomplish a goal that leads to conversions and leads to more business, it's just a missed opportunity. In general, right, and like you said, that book often bridges the gap, because the book reinforces your authority each step of the way while someone's engaging with your personal brand.

Stuart: Yeah, it does kind of accelerate the whole know, like and trust process. Now you've got a place where people can, one place that's convenient, that people can learn more. It brings it all together and, whatever the touch point is into that world, you're always presenting people with the next step and, in a way, that kind of builds on the authority and credibility because you've managed and brought together specifically the journey that you want to bring together for that audience. You talked about having unique urls for things.

When you're out there reaching to people, one of the things I've said to people for the longest time is, if you have the opportunity, if you know you're addressing an audience, one of the easiest ways to do is give people a copy of the book in the first instance, if you feel like there's any friction to asking them to name an email to download it, but then say, hey, actually we've only got 20 minutes here on stage, but I actually recorded a bit of a deeper dive on one of the main subjects in a video and head over to this page and get a copy of it there.

So, again, using the assets that you've got the speech that you're delivering, the email that you're sending, the book that you've sent out, but personalizing it with a note and then delivering more information to just use a small step, that again has a larger amplification of that personal connection, because all of it is about personal connection. We're really trying to make that, make a person feel welcome and that we can help them, and we're enthusiastic to help them. So as much as possible we can make a conversational conversion, a one-to-one relationship. Even if that one-to-one is at scale, then it just oils the wheel so much more.

Aubrey: Yeah, absolutely, and you talk about just building that authenticity too.

Right, and one of the big trends we saw out of the pandemic was people trying to move towards a e-learning or some kind of virtual learning as a consultant, because the idea was oh well, we can sell 10,000 licenses. That also relies, though, on having built that authority. It relies on having something that you can say like, and the best example I've seen that works is actually taking chapters out of your book and building an e-learning course out of that and the book as a side-by-side material, because we all want to create these different sticky mechanisms to keep people within our funnel, within our environment, within our ecosystem. But the interesting thing is, to this day, people still are willing to make the commitment on a book over an e-learning class, regardless of the cost. Cost nine times out of ten. So it's an interesting thing we're having the partnership works, but if we're trying to just pull and be an e-learning or, you know, having that virtual classroom type, there's still got to be some kind of legitimate content associated to it, right?

Stuart: yeah, it's two things that spring to mind, as you mentioned. That is one, this idea of minimum viable commitment. We call it when we're talking about books on the back cover, this idea of the small step, the smallest viable step that moves people towards a buying decision, to be able to give someone the book, which is the overview. And yes, there'll be a certain amount of people that don't take any steps more than just request the book. But they would probably never your clients anyway. It's a very tiny minority of people who would read the content that was in there and then think, okay, I'm done, now I don't need anything else. It's a disproportionately larger majority that will consume the content there and realize, oh, this is the starting point, and now I need to go to the next one and the book has done that kind of conversion or compelling piece for you to move them forward.

And then the second point that you mentioned is the backup or the reinforcing element of multiple formats, so to have a book as a follow-along, even if people don't actually read it. There's a psychological again. I was on a call earlier today. Actually, I wrote down because I thought I need to remember this because I'm going to use it yeah, this happens to me all the time.

It's normal, right right, yeah, unless I write down, it disappears again. So the person was talking about landing page conversions and we were running through some older landing pages and the language that was on there and there was a longer piece and someone commented well, that's a long piece, I'm not sure that someone's going to read it. Or there was. It was, uh, adding reinforcing elements to the page. So there was the copy and then the bullets and then some overcoming objections and some logos, icons for credibility and some testimonials, and someone made the comment oh, there's a lot of stuff there. It'll take a long time for someone to read through it.

So the comment was that I don't want to teach people to read. I want to compel them to make a decision. And those things that are on the page, or if there's an e-learning course and the fact that a book is there to back it up, it's not necessarily that you're trying to create more content than they're actually going to consume. It's that you want to add to the value proposition so that it compels them to take the decision, and the decision then moves them on to the next step and they may never revisit some of these issues or some of these elements, but it just builds on this momentum of yes towards that decision point and we know from you know, obviously, the thousands of years of mankind that there's really three things that lead people to buy.

Aubrey: Right, there's the do I trust you? The authority, are you saying the right thing and is it easy for me to make the decision in the conversion point, right there? So when we're thinking even about web user flow, there's almost a narrative we want to build on a page, and if it takes a little, want to build on a page, and if it takes a little longer to build that narrative that includes those three things, that's fine, as long as there's a conversion point. Now, at the same time, we can look back now and say that some of the most simplified conversion landing pages perform the best. Let's take a look at Google.

What do you do when you get to Google? There's only one option. Right, there's one, or well, I guess you can. There's multiple. Now, you can go in the menu and all of that, but when you land on the page, your only option is to search. Now, that works because we've already decided Google is an authority and we trust Google, at least for the searches. Now, when we're designing a landing page though, sometimes you're right it does take a little bit of time to answer that, to prove that you're an authority, to prove that what you're saying is correct. But throughout all of that, if someone comes to your site and already knows, you just want to pepper in conversion points throughout.

Stuart: Right, and that, I think, is something to do Right, and that knowing where, where they come from, and this kind of second level thinking around everything we do, it's not the hey, we should have a website. So let's build a website and that's it. It's okay. Well, what's the purpose of the website and how is it being used?

Aubrey: it's not right who's?

Stuart: the something that gets overlooked far too often with websites yeah, and this idea that the home page has to do everything and do everything for every person, whereas in certain use cases and I'd say a lot of use cases the entrance points to the website are unlikely to be the home page.

They're more likely to be a deeper page, either whether that's directly linking someone to it or because they've searched and found one of the answers to the questions which you were talking about before.

We've kind of over-indexed, I think, in the work that we've done in the past around landing pages, in that our mental model pretty much comes from an ad or a direct response-based world of someone sees something that drives someone to a landing page and therefore the landing pages that we've got typically are just very short and very the text almost replicates the ad.

So from the ads to the page and then the opt-in, because the thought process there is that someone's already made the decision that they want the thing, the fact that we technically need a landing page to capture some details, which obviously is bypassed with lead ads and things like that, but it's just a function of having to get to that next step, but that's fine in that use case where they are coming in through that particular funnel, but the example that we were talking about before. You send a pitch deck to someone to promote a speaking engagement. They then search for you all, go to a home page or go to a page that you point them towards, which is the speaker organizer landing page. If that was just a name and an email opt-in, that wouldn't be the right answer. What we want to present to those people is this amount of stuff that makes their decision easier. So, anyway, anyway, a long way.

Aubrey: The other thing to consider here because we haven't mentioned this and you just kind of touched on it when someone's booking you for a speaking engagement, they also want to know that you have your own audience and means of promotions. Because if you are able to promote their conference or their event or whatever that might be, through your own personal brand, you're a lot more attractive now as a speaker because you come with some clout. And now you know, I look at several examples of you know some of the big time circuit speakers and yeah, I mean, yes, it is kind of a you know chicken versus the egg problem, right, Like, once you get to a bigger, big enough platform, you probably don't have to self-promote as much, but the ability to promote where you're speaking at those types of things, that's a value to a lot of conferences, to a lot of events, so on and so yeah, and again it comes back to that orchestration of it.

Stuart: So, and there's only one, gary Vaynerchuk. There's only one, tony Robbins right, the majority of us aren't at that level. So as you start coming down in the kind of tiers of speakers below that and get more into the real small business world of actual business owners delivering presentations on things that are delivering value to other small business organizations, then that same it becomes a degree of. It's not a difference, it's a degree.

Aubrey: If that makes no, absolutely yes, because you're having to separate yourself now and yeah, and provide, and that's why we really think it's super important for personal brands and for thought leaders to have the ancillary assets like a book right, like media pages and bios and things of that nature, like the newsletter. You know, if you're going to be pitching your book to a publisher one day, or to an agency or anything of that nature, they're going to want to see the size of your following and your newsletter.

Stuart: Yeah, I mean you can imagine a scenario of speaking at an organization at a lower level not a big stage level, but a more realistic level for the small business owner or the speaker who's kind of just getting going or getting some traction, but to be able to send that organizer to a page where you're obviously promoting the event after the event. You've got social media snippets If you talk about what a great event it was and how, how good they were at organizing it, anything that you can do to. Again, it reminds me of that joke of the two guys walking through the jungle and they hear a lion and one guy's putting his sneakers on and the other guy's laughing at him and say you'll never outrun a lion. And he looks across and says I don't need to outrun the lion, I just need to outrun you. So it's that same little bit of orchestration of your presence that makes you the easy choice over other people. And then just talking about the traditional publishing routes and we've had authors that have gone that direction after they've worked with us that the idea is kind of germinating and it's turned into something bigger.

But I was on a. I dialed into a virtual meeting last year sometime and the speaker from stage was the operations director of a big traditional publishing house and he was saying hey, listen, if two people come to me and one person's got a 10 000 person audience and the other person's got a couple of followers on social media, we're going to pick that person because we're in the business of selling books, which isn't our business. We're in the business of starting conversations, but they're in the business of selling books. So if you're not coming with an audience and the same goes for speakers they're in the business of making their event as successful as possible, and some of that is you delivering the value and leaving the assets that enhance the experience for the attendees after the event, but also if you can do something to promote it and make them look good even better.

Aubrey: That's the secret, right, that's the secret is when the person, that's because you mentioned it, there's the gatekeeper and the audience right, and the gatekeeper's tail is on the line for how you perform, not the audience right, how you speak. The audience is going to hear what you say regardless. So the other thing, too, that you know you mentioned that a lot of speakers and thought leaders overlook is getting the actual video clips of their speaking engagements right.

You know that's something that we always press of. Do you have video clips that we can include of you speaking on that personal brand site? What can we do to keep building that authority and legitimacy? I mean, even if it's just something as simple as you walking through, you know, a couple key points of your book on a five minute YouTube video. Reinforcing that authority is something that often gets overlooked because, again, the trap we fall into we in general, as speakers and thought leaders is that the audience is the one that's going to be looking for us online and that's just simply not the case yeah, yeah, it's a second degree element, not the first.

Stuart: Again, that's what makes it difficult for people, I think, trying to do this by themselves is there are so many moving parts and it's not so much that it's rocket science apart from the bits that are rocket science, because clearly there are bits that are more difficult to do for people than others, but everyone can get something up.

So there's a debate about whether that something is good enough, but it's secondary. So that's something is good enough but secondary. So that's almost like a point in time problem, if it's either good enough or it's not good enough and either fix it or don't fix it. But the bigger picture is what you're alluding to there. It's the constant reinforcement, or the constant ability to reinforce, to stay that one step ahead of the competition all the time, to be able to orchestrate and bring together all of these elements in a place that makes the people looking for us find something that we want them to find and accelerate that conversation towards yes, I'm in the right place and yes, I want to do business with you right, because a lot of business owners when they exit, they exit because they were successful, they have a story and they are an authority and thought leader in their space and kind of the what's next?

Aubrey: Well, yeah, obviously I want to be a consultant, I want to share my experiences and my success and kind of grow the next generation. But your story doesn't always just resonate alone. It has to be relatable, right, and I think that's where, from a content perspective, people and thought leaders need to really focus as well. As when I'm writing this book, when I'm developing this website, am I saying something that's going to actually resonate with people, or am I saying something that maybe is unique to me, that might put people off, because people search online also for subjects related around their problems? So, optimizing pages for the, again, the pain points you solve in the book if those resonate with other people, that's how you really build solid, organic traffic.

Sometimes we see people get very lost in in what I call their own internal isms, okay, and we like to think about the fact that, because we use a term very often that somebody thinking about us or looking for us is going to use it too. So that's just another trap to avoid where, with your personal brand site, you can be very targeted and specific about the message and make sure you're alleviating those pain points, rather than on social media you're kind of shooting a little scattershot of of. I hope my content resonates with whoever is going to see it on their feed that day right and, at the end of the day, it's not something that you own.

Stuart: There's always that huge risk of, yes, use it as a gateway out to the world, but make sure that you're bringing people back to the thing that you own and the thing that you've got control over and someone's not going to rug pull you because some algorithm got triggered and then your account's shut down for a week you bring up a great point, because there's also an existential reason to have a personal brand site, because, as we move into a more online and technical world, owning your own name online is going to be way more important than it was maybe 25 years ago.

Aubrey: Right, you know? I mean, we see, one of the first things that I recommended my brother-in-law to do when he's, when his children were born, was to buy the URLs. Buy the URL their name, you know because that's virtual real estate that is only going to appreciate in value.

Stuart: Yeah.

Aubrey: So if I'm a speaker, thought leader, and I have any idea that I might want to do this one day, owning the url is the first step, because that's something that you want to make sure also, that you own your own space online for the future, right yeah, absolutely.

Stuart: And, as you say, moving into a world where it's going to get increasingly difficult, slash impossible to tell the difference between a surface view, at least, between what is, I'm going to say, real but even have to air quotes real these days, but what is genuinely authentically you, actually you versus what isn't the whole idea of. At least this is the place that you own, and if stuff appears outside of that, it's one degree of credibility less. The place that you own has to be the place that is the, the sort, the single source of truth of what you're willing to put out there. It's, uh, again, increasingly important, and even more so for people like authors and speakers, people who business, owners, who appear out there in the world more than just an employee on the street that doesn't really have an online presence. The fact there's so much of your content out there I mean this podcast. We're 180 episodes in, so that's 180 episodes on awesome.

Yeah, 180, 180 hours of me talking about this out there real achievement, other podcasts that we've achieved. So if someone's scraping and wants to create content that sounds like me but isn't me, hey, I've fed them a lot of stuff to kind of feed that machine, but at least I know that no one else is putting stuff on my website. It's the place that I've got the keys to.

Aubrey: I'll give you a hot take for this, but I do really believe that as a society, we are recognizing AI generated content quicker and quicker than ever before. We are starting to notice the patterns of how AI writes content, for example. So, like, the here's blank is going to be chat GPT. We know that right, but I think we're going to eventually, and I think of the saying. What makes me think of this is the saying that I wanted AI to do the dishes and the laundry while I created art, but instead AI is creating art while I do the dishes and laundry, and I think that's so true to where eventually, we will start going online.

Now, I'm not discrediting AI within content strategies, because AI is always going to be better for creating efficiencies, but are you going to build that same trust using AI as we, as a society, start understanding what AI looks like? There's times I'm sure you've come across something where you're like I can tell that's an AI generated article, or I can tell that this page has AI generated content. Now, there's nothing bad about that, but we're trading the trust and authority for efficiency. So I always want to remind people about AI generated content. Is it worth it? Is that trait of efficiency worth the authority and authenticity of your voice, because that answer is going to be different for everybody, right?

Stuart: exactly, yeah, exactly. It's understanding the trade-off, and that's again. I mean. We started by saying that I was excited by this show because we got such a line thinking about things. Obviously, people ask us about ai generated books and you said exactly what I say. The reason for, the only reason you would do it is either you don't have your own ideas which isn't true for the majority of people that we work with or you're definitely not a good idea, if you're a speaker or thought leader, to be going out ideas.

Good luck, yeah it's relatively self-selecting, yeah, or you're trying to do it for efficiency and the reality, particularly using our process up from the book generation side of things is it's 90 minutes of your time and it's 100% of your voice and if the outcome is a conversation, the outcome isn't a product. You're not trying to sell a book for $5 and sell a million books and then retire. You're trying to have conversations with people who are eventually going to come in through your door or jump on, zoom and talk with you. If the book doesn't represent the way that you speak or the way that you think or your approach, that's a disconnect, that isn't gonna, that isn't gonna jive. And then the language and trying to clean up what is generated to make it in your voice. It's just not efficient. It's not the best way of doing it.

A much better way of doing it is create some unique, authentic content yourself, like this podcast. We've got an hour now that we've been talking about this. We'll absolutely use ai to amplify it afterwards. But the efficiencies that we're doing is in the distribution and the generation and the clipping. It's not in the ideas or the thoughts. The ideas and thoughts are the uniquely I don't want to say the uniquely human thing, because that sounds a bit pretentious, but it's the uniquely our thing and our approach in the way that we do it. So definitely use AI to amplify things, but don't use it as the seed of the thoughts.

Aubrey: Right, and there's also there's really no true answer yet about how Google is going to handle AI generated content.

Stuart: Right.

Aubrey: How search engines are going to handle AI generated content. Now, my personal belief is that eventually, all content will have to be run through an AI for the optimization, and that's how Google will approach that and we'll you know, for us as content creators and us as search engine people, we'll have to make tweaks and optimize from there, and you know, the humans will come in after getting the feedback from the AI. But the dystopian view is what is twofold? What if Google doesn't prioritize AI at all?

Right prioritize AI at all. You've been creating all of your content and all of a sudden, google says that content is not valid and legitimate content for our search engine anymore. What's the next step? The second dystopian fact is that, ultimately, when we're talking about keywords and we're talking about rankings, humans are going to make the decision about their business better than an AI, and I firmly believe that. And what an AI risks is getting into negative feedback cycles to where the AI doesn't know the difference.

Right, if it's raining or overcast, if it's supposed to rain, if the forecast says it's raining, we can look outside and be like, oh, it's just overcast, I don't need my raincoat. So I think that's something. To be weary is probably not the right word, but look around the corner, right and start thinking about that, and maybe the answer will be one day that Google says all content that's gonna be ranked properly needs to be generated by AI. Maybe that will be the case, but there will always be a need for us, as humans, to step in and increase the effectiveness, authority and legitimacy of whatever that efficiency is creating.

Stuart: And I think that ties us up neatly in coming back to the whole idea of personal brands, because it's that individual approach to doing things. We see this with financial advisors a lot. I mean, a 401k is a 401k at the end of the day, but how they present their business, their priorities, how they work with people, the care that they give to their clients, that's the differentiator. And just as much as one person will work great with this group of people, another person will work great with this group of people. So there's an abundance out there where just you as your personality, your presence, is more than enough to win at this game. Um, time always goes fast, it's uh, pleasure talking with you.

Aubrey: Great to come on.

Stuart: Thank you for having me yeah, no problem, we should definitely circle back in a few months and do a kind of a 202 or follow-up level. I want to make sure that people we gave some great pointers there for people in terms of thinking about how they should bring their personal brand together, but then of course it runs up against the practicalities of doing it. So I want to make sure that people can kind of pull some more of your resources and see what you guys do, because you've got a lot of great stuff over there to take this to the next level. So where's a good place for people to go?

Aubrey:* Yeah, the first step I always recommend with people is the data, everything online. For little people to go yeah, the first step I always recommend with people is the data, everything online. We talked about the math. It all comes back to data. It all comes back to making informed decisions. We offer complimentary search engine optimization audits.

So if you go to alterendeavors. com and you go on the side menu, you can find our complimentary SEO audit. We'll go through, look at all the data, all the traffic. If you don't have a personal brand site yet, what we can do is we can look at some of your competitors and see what they're doing and see what resonates with your story and your mission. But at the end of the day, why I say to start with that is because websites are only as good as the traffic you drive to them. And if we're not driving quality traffic to a site for a speaker, for a thought leader, for a personal brand, it's going to be difficult to get good speaking engagements right, it's going to be difficult to get good consulting jobs, to get that good end point. So that's why I think starting with what is the actual search term, the strategy for getting organic rankings, so on and so forth. That's what I always recommend to start with. So you can go to alterendeavors.com and in our menu there's a free SEO audit.

Stuart: Perfect, and I'll make sure I'll link directly to it as well in the show notes so, as people are listening either in a podcast player or on the website, they can just click straight through.

I'll also link your LinkedIn profile as well, so people can connect with you directly, directly. We could talk for so much longer and looking forward to doing another one of these and diving a little bit deeper. It's such a, as we start off by saying, it's such a great crossover between what we do and the way that we talk to people and try and get people to think about a book. The fact that you guys aren't thinking about a website purely from a design perspective and it has to look pretty and not really that worried about functionality or who's engaging with you, really, starting with the end in mind of this thing, is here to do a job of work and let's make sure that it does that. So, yeah, ties in so well. I'll be. Thanks again, buddy. Really appreciate it everyone. Thanks for listening. Make sure you check out the show notes for links straight through and then we will catch you again in the next one thanks.

Today on the Book More Show, we're talking with Craig Lowder from MainSpring Sales.

Craig shares how his book Smooth Selling Forever established his credibility and sparked meaningful conversations with many new leads.

Craig explains how a book can do more than sell - it can strengthen relationships in today's digital market, and really set the stage for a trusted relationship. We explore shifting sales strategies, with Craig emphasizing adapting methods to virtual selling.

From online presence to tracking indicators, his insights are actionable as he emphasizes the importance of audits and feedback loops in sales performance.

SHOW HIGHLIGHTS

Show notes & video: 90minutebooks.com/podcast/171

Craig Lowder:

Questions/Feedback: Send us an email

(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)

Stuart: Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Bookmore Show. It's Stuart Bell here, and today joined by Craig Lowder. Craig, how are you doing?

Craig: It's a wonderful day here in Wisconsin. Thank you for inviting me, Stuart.

Stuart: I'm excited. So this is one of the shows. I kind of reference it sometimes with how I know the people, just to give the audience context. We're kind of 170 or so episodes in now, so there's a bit of a bit of history about how the show runs.

So the conversation with Craig came from a LinkedIn introduction through mutual conversation and again one of those really interesting calls, and there's such a strong crossover with our audience here that I think this is going to be really insightful for people, not only because you've used a book for your business for a long period of time, so they'd be interested to hear a little bit about that but also the nature of the work that you do in the kind of orchestration of new business through referrals and cold connections and helping people make that outreach, which, at the end of the day, is why the majority of people who write books with us write those books. So, with that being said, why don't you give a bit of an introduction to everyone about you and what you do and then we can dive into some details?

Craig: Thank you, stuart. I grew up as a child if everybody's seen that movie First person in my family ever to go to college, received a degree in marketing and a graduate degree in marketing and finance, did the corporate route for about five years and decided I was not a fit for corporate. And for the past 40 years I've been working in small to mid-sized business. What does that mean? Those are companies anywhere from startup to 200. And typically it's in the 10 to 50, 10 to 75 million dollar range.

And back in 2012, I decided to get off the road and stop doing turnarounds and restarts and go into my own strategic sales consulting business called the MainSpring Sales Group. And as part of that, like we all meet the best people that we can possibly meet through referrals. I was introduced to a gentleman that spoke on sales out of Philadelphia and he says Craig, you really ought to write a book and I know just the guy you should write it with. And he introduced me to my publisher. And back in 2016, I published my first book, smooth Selling Forever, which was designed specifically for small and mid-sized business owners who were struggling to significantly and profitably grow their top line on a predictable and consistent basis.

So this book was designed to share my experience over three decades and what are the 12 reasons that I found why sales are falling short of expectations I'm going to use the word expectations literally anticipated, dreamed of, et cetera and what to do about it. And this has become a bestseller on Amazon and my publisher just asked me the other day he says you use the book differently than a lot of our other authors and speakers do Can you tell me how many clients and how much revenue this has potentially generated from you since 2016? And I said you know what. I'm glad you asked 28 new clients and just short of $1.1 million in personal income.

Stuart: Right, and that's the key difference, isn't it that expectation gap or break from the traditional world where publishing is very the book is the product and we're doubling down on that as the gateway to things through to a more orchestrated way of using a book as a tool to start a conversation and engage with those clients. The conversation with the publisher there were they surprised because your approach was different from everyone else and this was kind of like new news to them? Or had they started seeing other people doing things and you were the best example? So they were reaching out to you as someone who'd been doing it for a while.

Craig: That's a great question, stuart. Many of the other authors that they work with are also professional speakers, so they were using their book to provide credibility in order to get them speaking engagements, along with their sizzle reel, and my goal was not to become a professional speaker, but rather have an impact on business owners' lives, and this was used really also as my business card and a credibility builder in order to convey to the reader that this is not my first rodeo. I've been doing this for a long time and the results that we achieved across a wide variety of industries in the b2b sector could apply to them, and it was designed to facilitate that opening conversation yeah, that orchestrating in that journey.

Stuart: They're using it with a particular case in mind, not just to kind of build it and they will come, type mentality. It opened so many doors because, as he said, the credibility, the authority, the value of the gift giving, the bringing all of the pieces together under one, within one jacket, under under one banner it has a outsized benefit compared with the same information spread out across a website or on various YouTube videos. Just the medium itself does something different. Do you find that the majority of people who get a copy of the book get a digital copy of the book or a physical copy of the book?

Craig: Well, or audio copy, which is the third, the audience that I think that is attracted to me. They like something tactile, something that they can hold in their hands. And what really surprised me, stuart, is when I would go in and meet with prospects or clients. There were post-it notes throughout it, pages were dog-eared, there were areas highlighted and it's like I never really anticipated this.

And hey, craig, you said on page 47 this Can you unwrap that a little bit for me? Yeah, and that was a foundation for developing a trusted relationship that was founded in depth and experience and having proof points, actual stories that I could communicate to my prospective clients. So again, they would say, okay, you've been there, done that. Now I'm still just wondering how you can help me. So I'm going to test you a little bit and see how you respond, and there's a way that I go about doing that to make sure that I cover the full spectrum of a business owner's needs and they understand there's a lot more than they imagined. Or there were a lot of things that they haven't even thought about yet that they need to consider to grow that top line predictably and sustainably.

Stuart: Right, that element that you were talking about there including some stories in there, and the fact that people turn the page over and in a conversation that, without the book, would have started with hi who are you, what you do? The discovery piece of the conversation, and both parties are kind of testing the ground as they go. But the fact that the book does so much of the preemptive work to get you on the same page, not only does it speed up that conversation because they know your way of thinking, but the fact that they're playing your words back to you and then when you elaborate and dive into it, they're not hearing it for the first time, you're just reinforcing something that they believe already because otherwise they wouldn't be on the call. Such an advantage over just cold outreach or even outreach in any other way. It's difficult to get that same volume of understanding or buy-in or belief from a client through email or video or anything that isn't a book. Now, not to say that those pieces that don't form part of the puzzle, for sure, but a book has an amplifier that really kind of accelerates all of the other things. Um, yeah, such a fantastic tool.

Let me ask you about the content. So you were saying that the first book there was kind of 12 steps or 12 elements that broadly business owners need to know about the pipeline or the funnel or sustainability. Those 12 things were they? It's the best way of asking were they kind of foundational to the work that you've done over the prior decades and they were really clear tentpole pieces that easily came together in a book? Or did you start off with an idea and then it was a job of work to pull together the actual pieces that went into the book?

Craig: That's a great question as well, stuart. It's really a compilation of my learning over three decades, listening to other very wise people and mentors, jumping into it both feet and breaking a leg and learning and always coming away with okay, what did I learn from that experience? Continue to do what I'm doing, do something a little bit different. So it's really a compilation of what I've seen, because at the time I went into business, we were still sort of in the era of the corporate man who goes to work and works for the same organization for 30, 40 years and I found myself changing companies every 18 to 24 months. So during those 30 years I was employed by probably 16, 17 different employers and each case they were facing the same challenge. They were on the same quest they wanted to grow that top line profitably.

And how do I do that predictably and sustainably? And I kind of fell into it's all about the strategic sales infrastructure. So it's growing, it's changing, it's understanding that the buying environment, our sales environment, is not static. Rather, it's constantly changing. Therefore, we need to periodically test our beliefs, our tools, our systems, either if there's something dramatic that changes in the business environment or you put something on your calendar, it says every three months, every six months, I'm going to sit down and review what I'm doing to ensure it's still working the way that I intended it to work and if it's not, it's a matter of stepping back and reassessing and saying what do I need to do to change?

Stuart: Right. It's such a great point, isn't it? Because there's so many indicators, particularly when you're busy and you've got to head down in the job. There's so many indicators that turn out to be lagging indicators rather than that upfront indication of what will still be successful this month and in a couple of months, in the future. It's very easy I don't want to use the word kind of sit back on your laurels, because I don't think that's the. I don't think that's most people do. It's just that all of a sudden, it's may the 14th as we record this, and yesterday it was new year. The year goes by very fast.

So if you don't structure something, put something in the diary, have a reason to review something, it's very easy to get caught out and, as you say, the ground's moved underneath and an algorithmic change has happened or a market change has happened, and you catch yourself on the back foot. That that philosophy of having those scheduled check-ins, those review periods, the framework which people review, the things that they're looking at, so if it's a marketing strategy or outreach strategy, or the email sequence or even their onboarding, that's very poor practice. I forgot to mute my phone before we started that practice of scheduling. The review is something that people can get their head around, but is there a particular framework or a way that you suggest approaching how that review is done? The idea of suggesting to people that they do like a ground up review of everything is a little bit cumbersome. But are there some techniques or pointers or tricks that people can have to make that process a little bit more effective or efficient there?

Craig: is. And, yeah, at the highest level you can do a SWOT analysis or a PESTEL analysis, but that really, or together, and that really takes some effort and it takes a group of people, including the owner, to have that discussion, a group of people including the owner to have that discussion. But for what I do, it's about lead conversion, execution sales execution four areas. Take a look at your strategic growth strategy right channels, right products, et cetera. Secondly, sales methodology your lead conversion process. Does that documented process still hold true? Third, and you mentioned that, lagging indicators what I refer to as sales success standards and, between us, we won't say it out loud, they're KPIs. However, results and you said it are lagging indicators and most companies need to focus on the leading indicators, which are the activities. So now we're getting into the 30. Well, what are our sales leadership or sales management practices? Are they still relevant? Are there ways that we can enhance them? And then, finally, hiring and performance management.

Most of the companies that I see today are struggling with what's worked in the past and we are in a different world of sales and marketing.

We are in a virtual selling and digital self-serve world and owners have to understand that if they're seeking leads. They need to have a very strong online presence in a number of areas and understanding that the old days of belly-to-belly selling is not what you need to be doing today and it's not the sellers that are driving it, it's the buyers. Particularly as they're getting younger, they're saying I don't want to meet with you, I can do all my research online. So the smart companies, they're still doing in-person meetings, but the many of those are moving to virtual meetings, like what we're doing today, and the telephone conversations are moving to virtual conversations. So we can go face to face, eye to eye, see the facial expressions and, as a guy that I used to work for, from Missouri, when he didn't believe something he'd say cripple that bird flat by me again. Or he'd say that dog don't hunt. And. But you know you could see it in his words, the expression on his face, and you lose so much if you don't see the expressions on someone's face.

Stuart: Yeah.

Craig: Stuart, you're not quite I'm not sure you quite fully comprehend what I'm saying. You know, come back to me, tell me what you're thinking right now, what you're feeling right now, so that we can develop a closer bond and a trusted relationship.

Stuart: Yeah, it's such a great point, isn't it? Even people's attention. I mean, it's easy to be on a phone call and walking around doing something else, but on a Zoom call you've definitely got that eye to eye attention and it makes so much more of a connection, much more of a connection. I like what you were saying about the multi-channel approach and the fact that there's such a expectation now of digital delivery of things or instant access to information, the fact that so much of the research is done beforehand, and I think it's a gap in some people's process where they assume that all of the knowledge is only what's delivered to people, it's only what they push out, rather than all of the either explicit or implicit knowledge that people gather before they even get to the call.

It's was talking to someone last week and we were saying that a book isn't at the same stage as a website. There isn't the same expectation that if you don't have a website. I mean, we're old enough to remember pre-website days and then website was a curiosity, and then it was a nice to have, and then it was a convenience and now it's a an indication that there's some kind of problem if a company isn't, doesn't have an online presence. A book isn't quite to that degree, but there's definitely a lot of telegraphing and bridging the gap between the old world of making a personal connection and things being printed on paper and typeset by monks, through to a digital delivery and a Zoom call and reinforcing some of the information that was said. So I think it's definitely an opportunity for people to revisit their strategy, particularly for legacy companies or legacy industries.

Going off on a little bit of a tangent here, but just as we're recording this, openai released their latest version of their model and the presentation they did had some videos showing the demonstrations and it was very interactive voice back and forth conversation with a with an ai agent. So the opportunities to kind of make some of that personal connection with people but then bring them to a real personal connection. It's people buy from people. They don't buy from web pages for a lot of the businesses that we're in a Bit of a tangent there, sorry.

Craig: There's a scary thing in today's buying environment. Picture an upside down snowman with three balls and, of course, the biggest one is on top. When a buyer makes a person's decision, they go through the process of cognitive thinking what do I need to buy? Divergent thinking Now who can I buy it from? In convergent thinking, this is who I'm going to buy it from. The cognitive thinking aspects is all being done online now. Or the buyers reaching out to people they know and trust and say, hey, I'm looking at buying this. Who do you know have you had experience with? And, quite frankly, as I mentioned a little bit earlier, with the younger professionals. They're doing all their research online. So it's absolutely critical that we are where they're doing their research and we're delivering an impactful differentiating message so that they say they need to be on the list under consideration. And maybe even before I decide what I'm going to buy, I may want to reach out to them and have a conversation with them to see if I'm missing anything, so that I get my decision criteria right.

Stuart: Right, yeah, that's a great point as well, and it does tie in with.

I mean, obviously the premise of the podcast is we're talking to people who have considered a book or have written a book at some point, so bridging it back to that subject all the time. It's not that a book is the right answer for everyone, but I think it gives an easy framework for people to hang their hat on or to overlay their business model. On the point there that some people, when writing, we hear people say, oh, I don't want to put all my secrets out there, I don't want to give too much information there, this idea that people have secrets and they've got a completely unique way of doing things. It's the absolute minority where that's correct. Now you might have a better way of implementing it, or the way that you deal with people, or the soft skills. All of that might combine so that it is better. But the knowledge, the information itself nowadays is less likely to be that thing. Two minutes of Googling will get you all the answers that you want, and then it's the discerning piece and everything else.

Craig: So that how true, how true. And because the shopping is being done online, you're better off giving for free, making easily accessible many of those differentiators. Otherwise you're never going to have the opportunity to have a conversation with that person, right? Because? They see you as just a commodity.

Stuart: Right and someone else. They've built that relationship with someone else who is given the information, whether it's on an email sequence that they've been receiving for years or a YouTube channel that they watch, or whether they're just searching for the first place and they resonate with a video that they see that helps them answer a question. So how then does that tie in with probably, I guess let's think about some numbers. So maybe 70 to 80% of the people who will receive this podcast by email are lists that we send out to small business owners or people responsible for their own book. So there's a very one-to-one relationship between the business, the overall outcome and the outreach that they do. And then there's another group of people who are kind of the sales executives or the advisors responsible for their own book, but they don't necessarily own the business.

And it's sometimes a case where that second group of people, although they're completely responsible for the book themselves, for closing the deals, there is a bit of well, I'm waiting for the corporate organization to do some stuff. I'm sat here struggling for leads because the parent organization aren't pulling their weight, aren't doing their things. Now, for me, I think that they've got the opportunity to take ownership of that and even if they're not the parent organization, they've still got the opportunity to create content, to write the book, to create the videos, to outreach to people talking about that industry. With the people that you work with, do you find that a kind of a cognitive gap between people wanting to improve their sales but almost kind of sat waiting for the company to do some more stuff, or is everyone that you're working with a little bit more dialed in and proactive, whether or not they own the company?

Craig: That again is a great question. I feel that they fall into two camps. That's my experience. Either they're waiting for the company or they don't know what they don't know. They don't know what they're missing and how they can I'm not going to say fix or improve, but enhance what they're currently doing. And in many cases where a company has a senior sales leader, they're really looking for a resource to help them make those changes so they can enhance their performance. And they need to understand that I'm a resource, that I can enhance their performance, and they need to understand that I'm a resource that I can work alongside them and actually do a lot of the work for them with their input, so they don't have to do it.

In most cases, sales leaders say I'm already too busy, I can't take on anything else. Well, we're going to bring somebody else in to help you. No, that's my job, I can do it. And the reality is it's kind of a catch-22. They want to do things differently or they're not quite sure what other options exist for them. So in many cases it makes sense to bring in an external resource to help them open their eyes. Open their eyes and I do that through a sales operations audit to help them determine where they're good and where they need to take a closer look at at specifics in order to enhance the performance of the sales department.

Stuart: Right and those audits on the sales operations does that. I guess it works equally well for both. But is that mainly for small individual operations or sales departments where they've got multiple sales team members as part of the bigger organization? Does it have to be it only works at the organization level or does it equally work for individuals?

Craig: Yeah, there's actually a third option there, stuart. If I look at the businesses that I work with, they're bringing me in as a hired guy and a hired consultant to work alongside the sales team to assess, design and deploy solutions, but they're responsible for execution. So my role is of an external sales consultant resource break, fix it's broken, let's fix it, let them execute. I'm also hired with larger companies as a retained sales operations person that works as part of the sales department to put in the strategic sales infrastructure and marketing infrastructure that's needed in order to enhance performance. And the reality is we have to get good at lead conversion or sales execution, before we should turn on the lead generation pump. Why? Because it's like taking a bucket with holes in it out to the water pump and trying to fill it with water, and imagine that water is leads. Unless you're doing a great job of converting your leads, a lot of your good leads are going to evaporate into the soil.

Stuart: Nothing is going to happen right, it's such a great point and I think maybe we talked about this on the when we were catching up prior to the podcast we talked about the pulling the wrong lever is pretty ineffective and the difficulty is where there's kind of for good or bad siloed thinking around. Okay, well, I've got control over this element and I can send more leads into the funnel, but I don't necessarily see the conversion bit down the road. I was I can't remember whether we talked about it or I was telling someone else there was the NHS in the UK, the hospital medical service. There was a big push like it was headline news that waiting times accident and emergency was terrible and people were sat there for 10 hours. So there was a big push to reduce waiting times in A&E rooms. Well, that was fine and the numbers came down. It was headlines about how good it was.

But then six months later there was a report about how many people were on trolleys gurneys behind the door of A&E. So they were being processed and assessed at that first checkpoint. That was being measured. But then they were just being put on trolleys in the back in the corridors because there wasn't enough room to be actually seen. So this idea of pulling the wrong lever. Yeah, it's fine to get people assessed, triaged, at that first point, but if you're just moving the problem further down and I like your analogy of the leaky bucket it's a really wasteful to think that this is the answer to move, when actually he is pushing people into a system that doesn't that they can't convert.

Craig: Yeah, so, regardless of whether it's sales or medical services, it's all systemic is the issue, and the challenge is really getting to the root cause of doing that analysis and find out in what ways that we can change the moving parts in a way that we're more efficient and more effective.

Stuart: Right, yeah, yeah For the greater good. Looking at it holistically, at the outcomes, not just the activities, which is difficult, whether you're working by yourself and you've got only a certain amount of time in the day. At it holistically, at the the outcomes, not just the activities, which is difficult. I mean whether you're working by yourself and you've got kind of only a certain amount of time in the day, so your focus gets narrowed on one particular thing, or you're part of a big organization and this is your role and this is someone else's role. It can be. Even with the best intentions. It can be difficult to think about that higher level or higher outcome thinking without someone else being kind of in the mix to prompt you with the right questions or guide you in the right way exactly the book and the people that you help and the kind of first steps that they take.

Again, the audience listening a bit of a mix of business owners and people responsible for their own book, but everyone's responsible for their own book in the sense of their own book, of business, not book. But everyone who's kind of raised their hand and is interested has been brought to the idea of writing a book as a lead generation tool. So they're all ultimately interested in more business, more sales. So the book's got 12 points in there. We were talking about some of the strategic reviews and some of the making sure that we pull the right levers. When you're talking with people maybe from stage or first meeting or that first introduction point you have to them what's the low hanging fruit or the first steps that people can take, as they're kind of thinking about I need to do something better in this world.

Craig: The first step is really a conversation or a reflection or a conversation with a group of trusted advisors to identify where we want to be a year from now, what are our goals a year from now, up to three years from now, and what are the challenges we're going to face in getting there. So I typically will talk to a business owner or a trusted advisor, even someone that is interested in publishing a book, and say what's your desired outcomes for that book, what are your top three initiatives, goals that you want to achieve, what are your challenges in getting there? The key, in my mind, is their ability to articulate where they're going, where they want to get to and the challenges they're going to face, and then from there you can get into a more extended conversation about needs, wants, challenges and, based on the business you're in and what your book is about, I highly recommend what I do is a sales operations audit. It could be an audit for anything, but it's designed to engage the prospective client and have them think about what they do, and I can tell you of the 32 questions that I asked about, 10% are getting answered complete.

90% is incomplete, and for two reasons. Number one I've never thought about that. No one has ever said that to me. We need to think about that or we've been thinking about it, we just haven't done anything yet, right yeah? So the reality the companies that I work with the authors, I work with, the financial advisors I work with they're already successful in their own right, so they're not broken, they don't need to be fixed, but rather there is a lot of opportunity for personal and professional growth there If you look at things globally and you look at it from a systematic perspective globally and you look at it from a systematic perspective.

Stuart: Right, it's such a great point, isn't it? Particularly, it's different for people starting off the career and they're just starting because they don't have this kind of group of assets mental assets or actual assets to do something with. But anyone who's been in business for more than a year, you've experienced at least 80% of all of the experiences that you're going to have for the rest of your life. You're just going to see them in different ways. You kind of know what the answers are, the objections and the questions that come up. All of that within a year has been at least touched upon once.

So there's some, some what's what I'm blanking on?

Not professionalism, but some execution techniques or speciality around how you can answer it and how comfortable you are with answering it and anticipating what comes next. Kind of, with the familiarity and experience, you kind of improve your game a little bit. But as far as the breadth goes and the opportunity to make those first conversations, those first outreaches, if you've been doing this for a year, it's not unknown, knowns, it's known, unknowns or whatever the analogy is. So having that opportunity to talk to someone or work with someone, or certainly will make sure that people can get a know where they can go to get a copy of the book as we wrap up in a minute. But it's not a knowledge gap, it's a execution gap. It's not an understanding gap, it a implementation gap. So I think that when people think about it in that way, it makes it a lot less daunting for people, because having that confidence that you know the stuff this is just about making it as efficient as possible. I think that makes it easy, an easier step for people to take.

Craig: They then just need to take the step I agree wholeheartedly, and I look at clients who have the attitude I'm a lifetime learner. I don't know everything and I need to surround myself with other smart people that I trust. I need to review what's going on in my business on a regular basis and I need to understand that systems should run my business and not individual people right because, it's all about putting systems in your business and hiring people who can execute and enhance the systems that are currently in place.

Right, that's what creates a winning team yeah, yeah.

Stuart: It not only gives a an element of redundancy in case something happens that one individual you're not in a kind of like this key man situation where it all falls down, but also gives those individuals the opportunity to amplify what they do, because they might be the best person in the world at what their particular job, but they have to interact with other people. None of these roles are isolated completely. So at least then, having that system and framework in place, even if their piece is down and they're not going anywhere, how that interfaces with the other organizations, how they get the information in and then where it gets passed to, systematizing that it just streamlines the whole process absolutely, and if you're looking at career progression or you get concerned about somebody retiring, if you have the systems in place, then it's much easier for you to backfill that position, assuming that you're bringing somebody in with the right experience, skills and personality.

Yeah, just makes it so much more the opportunity to think about it while you're not having the pressure of a critical situation you need to deal with. Being able to think about that structure beforehand it makes it. What's the triangle? You can have it cheap, fast or good, and you've got to pick two of the three. You can't have all three, so at least by Cheap fast or good two of the three you can't have all three, so at least by four.

Craig: Cheap press are good. Yeah, you can pick.

Stuart: It's all a balancing act, right? Yeah, exactly so, at least having looked at the good element, the systematization element of it beforehand. At a moment where you need something fast, you're not having to sacrifice or let too many balls drop it at that critical moment. Time always goes fast on these podcasts it's it's like we enter a different time warp. It'd be really good to circle back a bit further down the track six, eight months out and then kind of allow people to consume some of the things that we've been talking about and then touch base again a little bit later in the summer and kind of give like the 202 level for people. But I want to make sure that they've. Anyone listening now has got the opportunity to learn more about what you do. Grab a copy of the book, for sure, and then kind of start working through these 12 elements to kind of refine some of their thinking around these things. So where's a good place for people to go, as they listen, to learn more about you? Get a copy of the book, see what the organization's about.

Craig: I believe there are two really viable options. Number one if what you heard today resonates with you, you can go to Amazon and pick up the book Smooth Selling Forever. It's available in Kindle as well as printed copy, either soft cover or hard cover. Or if you say sounds interesting, but I'd like to learn a little bit more, feel free to reach out to me directly. I'd be happy to have a conversation with you. You can email me at [email protected] and be happy to have a conversation with you.

Stuart: That's perfect and we'll put a link directly through to those, both the Amazon listing and the email address and phone number. We'll put those in the show notes. So, whether people are listening on a podcast player or on the website, we'll have links directly through Craig. Like I say, time goes so fast on these calls. There's so much information to share with people. I think some of the takeaways that, or some of the elements that we've talked about today, even if people take that one takeaway as the seed and then can you just spend we're in the middle of may now. I think we're a couple of weeks ahead on on recording, so this will be the beginning of june probably when we go live. So that's heading into the perfect time.

The summer is typically a time where there's a little bit of a downside. We're way past tax season for all the financial guys and summer's breaking up and vacation time. So I think this opportunity to assess the situation, start to think about a review of the operations that you've got in the processes, grab a copy of the book and go through the steps and then reach out to you directly with questions. This, coincidentally, this podcast, I think, is landing perfectly for all people as far as timing goes. So, yeah, just thanks again for being so open and sharing what you do, and it'd be great to circle back in a few months and give people the next installment be enjoyable.

Craig: I hope that your listening audience has some actual items that they can begin working on immediately, and I'd be honored if you were to ask me to come back again and speak on something more in depth or a specific topic.

Stuart: Fantastic. Well, as people are listening and checking out the show notes. If you've got any questions for Craig, we can certainly address those in the next one, but the quickest route is absolutely reach out directly, so do that. But yeah, craig, we can certainly address those in the next one, but the quickest route is absolutely reach out directly, so so do that. But yeah, we can circle back and see what, see what has come from the audience and answer some questions. Okay, everyone, thanks for listening. Again, check out the show notes in the podcast players and on the website for Craig's contact details directly. Really recommend getting a copy of the book and, as I say, the summer is the perfect time to review the operations and really get those things dialed in. So thanks for listening and we will catch you all in the next one. Cheers.

Making genuine connections is critical to building your business, and today, we're talking with a master connector.

I've known Mark McIntosh for about a year, and we finally got a chance to sit down and talk about leveraging LinkedIn for lead generation.

He runs an agency that helps business owners and professionals build their networks. He has helped people from all sorts of industries, including me! I've experienced his approach and the power of an orchestrated approach.

We discuss the benefits of building genuine connections by adding value and fostering trust and ways to position yourself as a thought leader without using spammy tactics.

Mark also shares practical strategies for warm connections, re-engaging people, and using mutual connections. These are all ideas he has detailed in his new book 'Attracting High-Value Clients', making it a valuable resource for anyone looking to enhance their networking skills.

This podcast is a great opportunity to delve into the world of network building and, of course, to understand your book's pivotal role in this value-driven approach.

SHOW HIGHLIGHTS

Show notes & video: 90minutebooks.com/podcast/170

Mark McIntosh:

Questions/Feedback: Send us an email

(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)

Stuart: Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Bookmore Show. It's Stuart Bell here, and today joined by Mark McIntosh. Mark, how are you doing, buddy? Good? Good morning Stuart. How are you Good? Thank you, good to see you again. Yeah, you too. It's always interesting. The show is because half of the people I talk to I know and half the people I don't know. I was chatting with someone last week who I'd seen go through the process. It was a client who had been through the process but we'd never got a chance to speak, whereas you and I know each other more. So it gives just an interesting dynamic. I always feel like sometimes it's a bit more of a with new people, but with people I know you can kind of jump to the chase a little bit more, but with people I know can kind of jump to the chase a little bit more. So to get everyone else up to speed, why don't you start with a bit of an introduction about you and what the company does?

Mark: I'm Mark McIntosh and I'm in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and we help our clients grow by filling their pipeline, keeping it consistently full throughout the year, and the way we do it is through a multi-channel approach that leverages LinkedIn, both outbound and inbound strategies, including content marketing. We also do email outreach and phone calls for our clients, and so, yeah, we're an outsourced lead generation agency and our primary method of doing this is through LinkedIn, and we also have discovered over the last year or two that leveraging email and a phone call in a multi-channel approach has been very effective. And another thing we do, which you know, stuart, is a lot of warm introductions and strategic introductions that you know somebody might not be open to a call from a cold outreach, so what we'll do is help them gain access to their prospects by leveraging mutual connections. So that's a strategy that we deploy that has worked really well.

Stuart: And that, I think, is one of the interesting approaches, because I mean, particularly in the last year, 50% of the emails in my inbox must be either people reaching out cold or agencies saying, hey, we can do it, can you take 10 more clients this month? Or we were working with someone in your area and we can fill leads for you. But what I mean I guess the connection that we had in the first place was a mutual connection through someone else, so that immediately warms up the relationship. But we've been working together for a number of months now and the this is a little bit anecdotal, but I think the most effective element of everything that we've been doing is that warm connection, and I think not only warm in the sense of not introducing to a very close friend or contact, but just warm where there's some kind of connection. There already there's some kind of anchor to hang it on.

It's not completely cold, so that is that we see with other clients as well, that kind of mix between, if I think about very warm it's someone who I know personally and genuinely know, for want of a better term and then there's kind of like a tepid introduction which is there's some connection there, and then there's just of like a tepid introduction which is there's some connection there, and then there's just the cold outreach stuff. So do you find that with other clients as well, that the warm, slash, tepid stuff is more effective? Yeah.

Mark: Yeah. So for example, during the first few months of a campaign for our clients, we like to look at their existing network and help them re-engage with those folks who might be good referral partners for them or prospects. And most of our clients they've connected with people, they've done a good job building their network but they've just lost touch or they've gotten busy. So for many of our clients there's a ton of gold in their existing network. So when we re-engage with those folks it's a warmer outreach because there's presumably some of that no like and trust and at least some familiarity because they're already existing connections, existing connections. And then to your point, when we make strategic introductions, or if our clients get with referral buddies and they make introductions to people they're connected to, that might be your second degree. Again, it's that familiarity and that just a warmer familiarity and that just a warmer, softer approach than just getting a cold message where they might not know you from Adam.

So for most of our clients the results from those two strategies is very, very positive. Now, the degree at which you know the volume of warm introductions and the volume of folks that we can re-engage with. There's a lot of factors that might influence that the size of their existing network and how well they've done building their network over the years. But those two strategies far and away have been our most effective across the board.

Stuart: I think that's a great point as well. It's almost the if you could sit and have that perfect, that perfect setup to engaging with people, if you knew you had all the time in the world to engage, versus the actual time that you've gotten, the effort that you've got to do it on your own, on your own behalf, working with someone else or having someone else taking on that responsibility to do some of the I don't even necessarily want to call it legwork, but the the work that you would do if you didn't have any other constraints. I think a lot of people are in the position where they would like to do this anyway, it's just they don't have time. I really resonate with that bit of forgetting about it.

Mark: That is the reason we exist, stuart. So a lot of our clients they're small businesses, entrepreneurs, ceo, founder that's wearing many hats and they're not quite big enough often to have an in-house marketing team or a sales team or a group of lead generation specialists and they want to spend time in their superpower doing what they love to do and what they do best. So for most of our clients, they may do the lead generation and the prospecting and the LinkedIn activities sporadically or just maybe for a couple of weeks, and then they get busy something else. So the done for you aspect, you know whether you outsource it to someone or you delegate it to someone.

That is why we exist, because our clients are bright. They can do a lot of what we do. They just won't because it's not their cup of tea, they don't like to do it. Maybe they haven't taken the time to understand all the nuances and the strategies, and so that's where we come in. We'll do it for them and you know that's our crowd is really the done for you crowd versus the do it yourself, and it really comes down to time and energy and them wanting to focus on what they do best and more strategic matters and serving their existing clients that's actually such a sweet spot with the people who we work with too.

Stuart: It's again it's not rocket science what we do, but the likelihood of someone doing it by themselves is so slim. It's being able to do it for them and someone adding their unique ability and their ideas and the stuff that is key to what they do, but us being able to take the heavy lift of the rest of it. Similar to the way that you guys work For you guys. Is there any particular group of people who you work best with?

Mark: Any particular types of clients. All of our clients are in the B2B business to business, and often they're selling a service or a solution. So they might be selling books. They're done for books, like you guys are done for podcasting or a lot of consulting firms will hire us, other marketing agencies hire us accounting staffing, a lot of technology solutions, and so, yeah, it's all B2B. Our clients they're usually smaller, like I mentioned before, where you know, maybe they're you know, a couple hundred thousand a year up to about five or seven million a year and they just need the expertise and the resources to do it for them and we're a cost effective solution for that.

Clients all over the nation and in fact we have one in South America I'm talking to a guy from Europe tomorrow, so really no boundaries geographically, but they're across the board. They're really good at what they do. They're excellent. Once they get in front of people, they just need more at they do they're excellent once they get in front of people, they just need more at-bats. And they have historically gotten most of their business through word of mouth, networking, referrals, but it's just not enough. So maybe that gets them to 80% of their goal. Maybe that gets them to 80% of their goal. But those methods are unpredictable and often insufficient. So how do they bridge that delta? How did they get to their ultimate growth goal? And it's by hiring us and getting more of a systematic, consistent, more intentional approach in place so they never have to worry about their pipeline or where that next client will be. So really adding consistency, predictability and intentionality and doing it consistently.

Stuart: And again, it's just a peace of mind and we're doing that on their behalf why they're focused on moving their business forward like you say, it's that real balance of being able to focus on the stuff that you do well and the stuff that you would like to do, if you remember to do it, allowing someone else to do that in a kind of collaborative approach, because I think it's so much more beneficial, having worked as I say now for approach, because I think it's so much more beneficial, having worked, as I say now, for a good couple of months it's so much more beneficial than just kind of the traditional idea of outsourcing that you think about, where the whole task and responsibility is shifted somewhere else, to be able to work collaboratively with one of the guys on the team. So that it is your message. It's literally the having a partner to bounce ideas off and strategize with, but then someone delivering your words in the way that you would deliver them if you trust them. So there's no kind of like separation. There's no kind of generic stuff, it's no kind of AI farm stuff just going out. It really is your message.

If you could, you mentioned this. We were talking about the strategies and, depending on how big your audience was to begin with, it would be. There's a couple of different options If someone really hasn't thought to use LinkedIn in the past or any LinkedIn works that they've done really has just been reactive and maybe just accepting some responses rather than orchestrating it. Is that still an option for people, or do they have to have done something already? Can you take people who are almost starting from scratch?

Mark: We, you know, ideally they would have had, you know, at least their first 500 connections on LinkedIn and have seen some success. So we don't have to convince them that, hey, linkedin is a goldmine. But we can certainly. I just worked with a friend of mine last week and he was virtually starting from scratch. So a lot of what we did during the first month was get his connections of targeted prospects and influencers and customers and vendors and existing connections, get that up to that 500 plus mark on LinkedIn. And so, yeah, we started from scratch.

He had a very basic, simple LinkedIn profile. That was really it wasn't compelling. That was really it wasn't compelling. It was just very basic, more like a resume. So we completely revamped everything his profile to really make it pop and shine, you know, clear, concise, compelling, client-centric and also complete. So, yeah, we work with people that are just getting started, all the way up to those that have. Some of our clients have 20,000 connections and they've done a pretty good job over the years building their network and their connections, but they've never actually engaged in a manner to monetize orchestration network right?

Stuart: yes, yeah, that idea of people using it as a resume. I've been around long enough to remember when linkedin launched and was using it in a resume. I've been around long enough to remember when linkedin launched and was using it in a corporate career and it was exactly that there was very little content around, it was all work-based experience and using it for the next role clients are you working with. Have they kind of switched now a lot to more of the? It's a content creation platform and an opportunity for lead generation, so you'd have to do less of that convincing that people should put more effort into it, or a lot of people who have that first interaction. We're still thinking of it as a resume platform yeah, that's a great question.

Mark: Every client is different. So some of our clients they understand marketing and most of them do they understand the importance of content. They understand marketing and most of them do they understand the importance of content. They understand the importance of prospecting and keeping their pipeline full and they understand because they've done websites for their company etc the importance of having a customer-centric resource and sharing value with their network. So majority of our clients get that and they've seen success, but they're just not doing it consistently. Or maybe they're doing it but they really don't know the best methods and they haven't put much strategy into the types of content they're posting and the frequency of content and how to lay out a piece of content with keywords and hashtags and things like that. So most of our clients I don't need to convince them that LinkedIn is a gold mine and all of their prospects have a presence on LinkedIn- Actively there.

Stuart: It's such an interesting space because it's so professional, in the sense of it's not like the other social media platforms that the hyperbole and the vitriol and the combative nature is, and it's such a supportive environment. It's so friendly. And then people are there for the purpose of developing professional networks, whether it's careers or business. But it's such a nicer place to be and I think that adding in the technical details or the tactical details and then helping people with the strategy is really quite a big difference in what you guys provide, the. You talk about the couple of stages of it. So one is the profile, making sure that the profile is aligned with the outcome that you want, and then another piece around outreach and another piece around content, kind of like the engagement.

I'm going to kind of bridge it into books a little bit and then talk about your book as well. We're using our book in our funnel as an outreach piece. So this idea of making a connection and then delivering something of value, we're using the book, obviously the scorecard book that I wrote, because it's such an easy introduction to the conversation and it's relevant to what we do. Do many people use that first step of delivering value? Are many of the existing clients using books, or are they using other pieces of content that they've got around?

Mark: Great Our approach and the best way to leverage LinkedIn is not the pitch slap or the connect and pitch.

It's all about adding value which creates that know, like and trust and also positions you as the thought leader out there in your space, but also as one of the good guys. So we're all getting spammed and pitch slapped every single day and it's not good. So our clients will always have something of value. It may be a book, it may be a podcast, it may be a blog post, an article, a poll, research, white paper, something, and we always encourage our clients more or less give your best stuff away. You know whether that's a book or a free chapter of a book, or you know a compelling case study or a white paper or something. But your audience, they care about what's in it for them and if you can educate them and share a point of view that resonates with them, pique that interest and that curiosity, and then also, by laying out these value bombs throughout the relationship, it really helps set you apart from the crowd and the people that aren't going about it in a value, trust-based approach.

Stuart: Right, it's such a difference. I mean, even I see it not so much on LinkedIn or on email, maybe, but people just leading straight away with something that they obviously want, even if they're couching it slightly in terms of providing value. But it's very rare that people are just delivering something of use. There's always that pretty obvious veil of value, but then asking straight away. So to have that strategy where there is a little bit more of a relationship building, knowing that there's a few touch points in it, rather than just going straight for the, straight for the oh, here's how I can provide value. It's much more. It starts the relationship off in a much easier and better way, which I guess actually brings us to your book.

So the idea that you were writing about the, the, the attracting people, the attracting people, the attracting high value clients that word attracting, it's very kind of magnetic and drawing towards rather than chasing or hunting down or trapping high value clients what was the thinking behind? What was the thinking behind bringing things together in this particular way? Obviously, you know the subject. You've got a lot of things that you could talk about. What was the thinking behind picking these particular elements to include in the book?

Mark: Yeah, I mean attracting high value clients. One of my guys I know he calls them right fit clients, high value clients. That's the goal. So we're all looking to find those clients that we know are a good fit for us and vice versa. So, by using the word attracting, that encompasses a lot of different ways to do that Inbound, outbound, referrals, warm introductions, email follow-ups, phone calls, LinkedIn strategies.

So I've always wanted to write a book. I just it was too overwhelming to even think about the process, and so, connecting with you as we got introduced by David, it was a godsend because I didn't realize it could be this easy to do and it was just such a relief to know that you guys had the process and the value and the pricing options and things that just made it much more easier and more efficient and smoother than I ever thought was possible. And that's like. I don't know if that answered your question about attracting high value clients, but a book is a great way and we do that on LinkedIn, where we position our clients as a thought leader, as an expert in their space, and that's a great way to attract high value clients. And a book I can't think of a better way than a book to really elevate yourself as a thought leader in the space. And what a great way to share everything we've learned along our journey and the valuable insights, and to do it in a friendly, useful manner than your books that you did.

Stuart: So that's why I was saying to someone yesterday this idea that anyone who's been in business for more than a year, you've got all of the knowledge in your head and the experience and your particular way of doing it to really add that value and attract the audience and lead with a given hand and start the conversation in a meaningful way rather than just go in. I love the term pitch, slap. It's so. It just happens far too often. There's so much more of a meaningful way that just gets your ideas out there and whether or not, I think people get hung up on the idea that they need to write a bestseller or a completely unique idea or it needs to be competing on Amazon's shelves against the kind of brightest and the best, but for most of us that's not, in fact, almost all of us. That's not where we're using it. We're using it to try and engage one person in a conversation.

That kind of leads to a next step, the process that you were talking about making it as easy and straightforward as possible. That's what I like about your guys service as well is I know what I would want to do if I had the belief that I would actually remember to do it consistently, but I'm not going to do it so to be able to, we help extract people's knowledge and get it into a book and you guys help extract people's knowledge and get it into a consistent linkedin strategy and those two things. There's such a synergy between the two the idea of writing the book and bringing it together, of starting the conversation with the people who you want to start the conversation with. I often ask people because this idea of kind of like beneficial constraints we've been in business long enough that we could write books and books and books worth of stuff. We've got that much knowledge in our heads. Was it an easy decision to what to include and what to leave for a later conversation?

Mark: For me it was easy because I had done e-books in the past. I've done a lot of presentations, so the framework or the outline of what I wanted to share and expand upon in a book format. That was easy because I had already configured that over the last several years. The fact that you and I you know one I didn't have the awareness of your solution and there were companies like yours that I mean just offer exactly what I needed for my purpose and my budget and my timeline. It was just a perfect fit.

Stuart: So I was scrolling through Instagram over the last week or two.

I must have clicked on a couple of the competitors and because I've clicked on a couple of things, then obviously the feed is just full of similar stuff.

So the number of we've been around now for 10 years.

So the number of competitors now are a lot more of time and the budget is so much more aligned with this idea of a campaign conversation starting book compared with, I think, a number of other people come to the project from a publishing world and everything is then just elevated to a level that's that's much higher than is is really what's fit for purpose in in this context.

So that's why I like the ability to kind of marry up the person's intent, the amount of time they've got, the use case and everything that kind of makes it an effective way of starting the conversation, either on LinkedIn or through email or through referrals. And again, that's why the two services align so well. So you've got the book now created, you've got all of the LinkedIn strategy and the ways that you guys work across the board. What thoughts have you got around how to use the book tied in with your own LinkedIn strategy, kind of trying to x-ray spec or shortcut for people listening in what you, as a LinkedIn expert, would do if you had a book. So, therefore, what they could do now that they've got a book.

Mark: Yeah, for one. A link to the book is on my profile so it's instant credibility. And I talked to a guy yesterday, before our call, he had already went out and purchased the book, so it just really made a big difference on that initial call. So that's one way we use it. Another way we use it as you know, each chapter and each there's several posts that we can create on LinkedIn, leveraging the content and repurposing the content that's already in the book. So that's been another way we've used it.

I'm currently in the process of updating our website where somebody can opt in to receive a copy of our book, the electronic version, and you know it's a freebie.

It's a huge value add and just by reading the book they're going to have everything that we do for our clients and be able to grow their business if they're willing to take the time to implement some of the strategies laid out in the book laid out in the book.

So having it as a lead magnet or a useful resource that they can acquire just by visiting our website is another way that we're using it. And then if somebody gets referred in and I want to send them a copy of the book, either electronically or a hard copy copy of the book, either electronically or a hard copy. That's another way that we'll use the book. And then the final way well, there's a couple others, but one to get on podcast, to get speaking gigs. Another one would be for our referral partners and as a value add or a gift for them all partners and as a value add or a gift for them. So there's a ton of ideas that we plan to utilize and get an ROI from this book, which may be the first book of many, because I've enjoyed this process so much.

Stuart: That's what I'd love about working with guys like you who have kind of the framework or the structure or the idea of how to use it is there and you can see the roadmap ahead. So it's always one of the more disheartening things is when you kind of check back in with people a year later and they've kind of finished the project but it's kind of fallen by the wayside and I haven't actually got around to using it that much. Much nicer like, creating the book is kind of like the first step. It's the it's. It's setting up the profile, the linkedin profile. It's the it's a foundational first step, but it's only the first step. It's the fact that it exists isn't going to do that much, but getting out there and using it. I really like the idea and again talk to people about this a lot.

The idea of the book now becomes the tentpole around which other content is created and refers back. So they're creating posts that refer to content that's in the book. Then when people see the book they're not hearing it for the first time. It's reinforcing and building on the message that you've kind of putting out there across many different ways and the fact that people are joining calls, discovery calls or initial calls with you and they've had some exposure to the book already. Again, the things that you're saying, they're not hearing it for the first time. What you're saying is reinforcing things that they've already read. They just read it in your book. So the synergies that can come from it, the kind of multi-channel uses of having done the work to create it yeah, it really does build this kind of army of assets out there that you can just get in front of the people at the right time and move them to the next step bring awareness, you know, to draw interest, to help reinforce your solution, to help seal the deal and ultimately win the client.

Mark: So it's throughout the funnel and there's a multitude of ways we can leverage the book. And another idea is for referral partners or people that also serve your ideal customer. I'll send them two or three books that they can give out to people, and they're the hero in that situation. What a great way for them to add value for their clients is to give them somebody else's book. Now, that's another way we're using that as well.

Stuart: That's a psychology of why people refer, the idea that people refer because they're happy to there's the baseline of them being happy to refer, but there's also this element of social capital within the group of of them wanting to refer something because it gives them a higher status in the nicest possible sense, but for a non-competing business. So CPA or accountants that works with other B2B clients, to be able to hear them talking about excuse me, hear them talking about someone having a LinkedIn challenge and they say, oh, that's okay, I've got you covered, I know the guy. And then here let me give you a copy of the book and kind of present it across.

Mark: yeah, such a fantastic idea since them as a a good guy and a thought later and a problem solver. So they're not just looking after their best interest, that they recognize the prospect is having challenges in other areas. You know what a great way for that cpa to stand out from the crowd and position themselves as a true, trusted advisor, as opposed to somebody that's trying to just sell them on their cpa services. So that's a great point.

Stuart: Yeah, that collaborative kind of approach to the greater good, because they've got no skin in the game. They're offering the LinkedIn book to one of their CPA clients purely as a greater good type option to improving their service and, as you say say, being that trusted partner. It's that's why I get excited and passionate about it. The more people kind of get this created into something that can be out there in the world making a difference, the more likelihood it is that it will make a difference to someone, and those differences only need to be small. But the world is a better place for having them out there than than not.

Time always goes fast on these shows. I really appreciate it. It'd be great to circle back in a couple of months actually and give people an update and then maybe talk about some more strategies. But in the meantime I want to make sure that people can get access to you and and what rev grow do. So where's a good place for people to head over to if they want to learn more about kind of utilizing and making the most of LinkedIn for themselves? Yeah, great question.

Mark: Appreciate that. Yeah, just visit my LinkedIn profile. So just type in Mark McIntosh, revgrow. That's one way. Another way is to email me at [email protected], or they can visit our website, which is RevGrow.com.

Stuart: Fantastic. As always, I'll make sure I put links in the show notes so, whether people are listening on a podcast player or they've gone to the website, there'll be links directly through there so that people can see what's going on. And on LinkedIn, I mean the connections that you make with people. Everyone listening to this show is kind of loosely connected in our world. So even making a connection there, this whole kind of referral opportunity of connecting like-minded people and being the go-to person for someone else, it's expanding that network. You never know where that goes down the track. And and of course, there's a copy of the book available there as well. So people should definitely follow, follow the links and grab that copy because, as you said before, even if people just read it and try and implement some of the things themselves, there's still a lot of gems in there to to make improvements until the point that they're ready to to get a partner to do it with them.

Mark: For sure.

Stuart: it's been a pleasure. Buddy, it's as I say, it always goes too fast. It'd be really good to circle back in a in a little while and see how things are going, but in the meantime I just want to say thanks again for your time and everyone, Thanks for tuning in and then we'll catch you all in the next one. Thanks, Stuart, and thank you.

Today on the Book More Show, I'm excited to share a really great conversation with Jamie Shibley from The Expressory about the opportunities to create a strategic engagement plan that keeps you top of mind.

Jamie shares her Dream 25 process, which nurtures high-value potential clients with personalized touchpoints throughout the year. This aligns so well with the top 150 approach we've spoken about in the past that I'm sure Jamie's approach will resonate.

We explore how outsourcing tasks like customized gift sourcing frees up time while ensuring the ideas are impactful and relevant to clients' interests. Our insights highlight the importance of maintaining engagement through various channels.

As you listen, you'll also inevitably make the connection back to your book and how orchestrating a plan can really engage the individual clients you want to do business with. 

SHOW HIGHLIGHTS

Show notes & video: 90minutebooks.com/podcast/169

Jamie Shibley:

Questions/Feedback: Send us an email

(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)

Jamie: And so what? We work with a process, that is, we've picked it up there's a term out there Dream 25 process that says that you know, once a year, define a list of 25 of your top dream prospects highly valuable and design a series of touch points to get in front of them and start to build a relationship that will be sent over the course of a year.

Stuart: Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Bookmore Show. It's Stuart here, and today joined by Jamie Shibley. Jamie, how are you?

Jamie: doing wonderful, how are you?

Stuart: I'm good, thank you, I'm good. I was at quite a few in-person meetings this week. So I often say to people I can talk on the phone for days and it's fine, but as soon as I get in real world my voice disappears. So I'm sounding a little bit more like it was a cigar convention, but but really it wasn't, it's just my voice goes, yeah it's funny how that works.

Jamie: I think it's like you have to talk louder in person.

Stuart: I don't know yeah, the projection element definitely. No career as an opera singer, yeah you and me both right.

I'm excited by today's conversation. So oftentimes we're sharing introducing people to their audience and the business that they do. They've maybe we've talked about before or there's an obvious connection. I think what stood out when we were first introduced is just your pretty unique approach to something that people will have come across before. We'll get to what it is in a second, but people will have come across it before generally. But I think the way that you guys approach it specifically is pretty unique and ties in well with what we're doing. So, as people are thinking about writing books to start the conversation, what you do really keeps that conversation going, both with prospects and clients. So why don't we start a little bit with, uh, some background on on you and the organization?

Jamie: yeah, so the expressory is a strategic engagement um agency right. So we help uh service providers um, professional service providers find and nurture their right fist prospects and also create loyalty with their existing clients. And I think the way you set it up is perfect because it is it's about that continuing the conversation, but really it's it's continuing to build and strengthen that relationship. I just this morning saw a quote. I don't know if you're familiar with Adam Grant. Author. Yeah, it's something like transaction. People who are transactional about their relationships only talk to you when they need something from you. Right, it's about their network and how you can serve them. The people who approach things on our relationship base talk to you when they think about you and when they care about you.

And that's really what we're trying to change. The approach in business is helping these business leaders who get it, who, who approach what they do in business from a relationship first standpoint what they do in business from a relationship first standpoint really show that they care about the people in their community on an ongoing basis when they don't have time to do it Right.

Stuart: That's a great point. It's that not only introducing the idea and resonating with the people who do get it and do understand that it's not only a higher value but it's a higher contribution to the community to stay in touch, not just when you want something but when you think of them, but then the, the, um, the procedural side of it, the remembering to do it. I'm almost the, the. I'm a classic example of someone who enjoys doing it, thinks to do it occasionally, but nowhere near as much. I don't get to chance to execute on it anywhere near as much as I would like to in a perfect world. So do you find that with clients it's maybe less about introducing the idea and more about the solution, the easy nature of what you enable people to do?

Jamie: Well, it's interesting because my first response to you was you are absolutely not alone and, quite honestly, like I was terrible, I still am terrible about it in my personal life. It's part of how I got here, like I was the person where the birthday cards are always late. But in business, you're absolutely right. I mean the reason you're not alone, because we have to run a business too, we have to do all the other things, and so it's an interesting question because some people yes, they come to us because, oh, thank goodness, like I knew this was an option, you do it for us. But we also find I think about half of people don't even know that it's an option to outsource it.

Stuart: Oh, wow, okay.

Jamie: And if they had an idea? The people that know about the solutions. I think they're familiar with other services who you know they're gifting companies or things like that but they don't quite do it the same way we do, meaning as the business leader. I'd look at it and say but they're not going to do it how I would want it done.

Stuart: Right.

Jamie: And that's to me what's important is that the work we do with you as the business owner has to reflect you and the care that you want to put out into the world yeah, it's an interesting point.

Stuart: I was just came off another call. We were talking to someone about this idea, that, um, that just because tying it in with the way that you would want to do it and having that as the driving force and not coming to it from the point of view of we've got access to gifts that we want to send as a transactional thing, it's almost the gifts become secondary to the opportunity to have the conversation, to connect, rather than, hey, this is a product and this is just a mechanism for sending the product. The conversation earlier was talking about books. We were saying that a lot of our competitors come to the book space from a publishing world where the book is the product and a lot of their approach is around the book being the thing and then everything else is secondary, whereas for us, the conversation is the product. The whole purpose of what we do is to allow people to get into conversation. A book just happens to be the one of the most effective ways of doing it so that slight change and and you guys, I think, are the same.

It's the approach first, the purpose first, and then the tool and the mechanism second right.

Jamie: I you know, when you and I first met your, your comment, the, the mindset change that offered, like you got to think about it like this is a conversation that's wonderful, that is a fantastic way to think about what you're pouring into the book, and I think you're exactly right. That's why we call this strategic engagement right, because it's creating the engagement that you really want with all those prospects and clients and, by the way, all the people that support you, because they deserve that care and attention and acknowledgement just as much.

Stuart: Right, let's dive into some examples then, maybe so the audiences we're listening here we send out to all the people on our list. So, primarily professional services companies perfect fit for the type of work that you're doing. We've got accountants, who are always the ones that spring to mind. I don't know whether it's my background is slightly in financial services or whether it's just accountants begin with a and in my head that's the one I get to first.

But those types of professional services organizations they've got long relationships with clients. They've got pretty robust referral networks or partner networks with people that they like, as you mentioned. They've got their team, and then they've got pretty robust referral networks or partner networks with people that they like, as you mentioned. They've got their team, and then they've got the list of unconverted prospects people where they've started conversations but not not converted yet. So what types of things? If a business owner came to you with hey, this is the audience. I know that I want to be better at engaging with people. What's's the type of things that you would begin to talk about?

Jamie: Well, it's interesting If we let's let's talk about some specifics, because you brought up like accounting and financial services, so we work with a number of financial, you know, wealth advisors, CPAs, accountants and with them because of, you know, compliance, it's it's a lot more about the relationships with existing clients and, if you think about that world, they're rewarded for their customer experience and you want those customers for life, and then you want their referrals, as you said, and so the best way to do that is to showcase that here and that you are always thinking of them, you know, and so we've had some wealth advisors transfer over to us. You know, for years they've had wonderful personal touch with their existing clients on birthdays I'm thinking of one in particular Every year they'd spend let's say it was like you know know, seven thousand dollars a month on sending flowers to all of the clients each month for the birthdays, right? Um, it's flowers, and while it's a wonderful gesture and certainly there are people who absolutely love it and would like nothing more um, not lasting, right. And so they came over to not only because it can be outsourced, it's taken off their team's plate, it's executed for them.

Every month, a list is coming over and what we've done is we've created almost like this catalog of opportunity you know, birthday gifts where, based on what they know about the people in that month list, they can go through and pick oh, send a wellness gift to this person, oh, this person is the. You know the whiskey drinker? Oh, this person. And so it's very personalized. But it becomes extremely easy to execute because we know, you know each each advisor is simply going through a list and saying, okay, a, b, c, oh, just birthday card for this one. So not only have we saved them money, but we've gotten meaningful because their personal gifts and the hands of their clients that are lasting and you know they tell us that they have never received so many points of engagement acknowledging the thank yous and the. You know they tell us that they have never received so many points of engagement acknowledging the thank yous and the addition. What you're really doing right is you're sparking that additional conversation. Yeah, yeah, I mean it's a very specific example. Sorry, long story, but no, no, no.

Stuart: And that's a great example because I think, even though we've spoken before and I've kind of got some understanding of what it is that you guys do, it's still it's like for us when people say book, they think traditional book, not conversation starting book. So it's a continual opportunity to bridge that gap into the thing that we do that we believe is much more effective. So, even though we've had that conversation before, it's still. When you think about gift giving and the physical unless you want to, but the specificity and the personalization and the to be able to execute that internally, the flowers were a $7,000 budget and it took 10 hours of time to try and personalize it for each person I mean that immediately becomes unsustainable. So just dialing in the opportunity.

Jamie: But let's stay with your book example, because we do have a lot of authors and even what we tell people is that even if you're not an author, leveraging a book is fantastic. Okay, so we do a lot of work with prospects, so agency owners are. We have clients who are. Agency owners are always looking for you know you want to have that new business pipeline, right, but it's very easy to get caught up in the day-to-day and all the management, but forget about this until it all dries up, right. And so what?

We work with a process that is, we we've picked it up, there's a, there's a term out there dream 25 process that says that highly valuable and design a series of touch points to get in front of them and start to build a relationship that will be sent over the course of a year. And so ideally, if you do this right, you're planning this up front and it's just executed throughout the year. When we design that for people, we frequently look for an opportunity to include a book, whether it is yours because you're an author, or it is some sort of topical conversation piece. It is valuable because what you're doing when you're nurturing, what you want to do when you're designing this is that whatever you put in front of that prospect needs to be helpful. You want to help them be better at their job and in their world, and usually a book has that great information to be helpful.

Stuart: Yeah, that's. This is funny, because this, I mean, this is why we've had a couple of calls already and we've got more calls lined up, because the synergy in what we do is so dialed in and the approach is aligned as well. So we talk to people a lot about this idea of oftentimes they'll talk about, they'll get on our calendar, we'll talk to them about the book, some of the early questions okay, what do you want to achieve? So one of the early conversations is around this idea of visible and invisible prospects. So oftentimes we're talking to people about a book is a great way of identifying invisible prospects, because you can put it out there, ads and that type of thing. And then the people who are self-selecting because of the nature of what was written. It identifies the invisible prospects, but for a lot of organizations the opportunity is in the visible prospects.

So, like you said with the Dream 25. So we'll dial in this idea of okay, imagine that you were just writing to that one person. This project becomes valuable if you execute on that business. So let's just dial it down to that helping guide, the, the mind and the thought. What I'd like, and I think there's a real synergy between the people who are of that mindset with us, and then what you can then facilitate is that execution of the long-term plan to get that engagement going. And I think for anyone where they have got that visible prospect list, which is, I mean, the majority of businesses out there could at least write down 25 well, you would think, but it is very like one of the first roadblocks we get is okay, we'll give us your list yeah, okay, that's interesting, but I think it's again because we didn't take the time.

Jamie:

Stuart: Yeah, right, yeah, just the top of the phone because it doesn't take any. There's not the drilling down or the thinking about it yeah, yeah.

I imagine that a lot of people when you ask them. Well, you can imagine that if you're trying to address some particular who's's, your ideal, put in mind, your ideal prospect. Okay, now imagine who they are. Okay, I can imagine that. Do they have some similarities? Yeah, they've got some similarities. Okay, well, who are those names? Ah, well, when it goes from kind of the broad to the narrow conception to the individual. But there must be so many tools I'm talking fast and I'm getting enthusiastic about the idea but there must. There are so many tools out there that can help. Now I mean even linkedin, for goodness sake, if nothing else, to narrow down who that person is. I wonder whether some of it is kind of like the analysis, paralysis or the fear of missing out. Oh, if I give you these 25 names, there might be 25 other names I don't write down and the kind of FOMO type thing yeah, I think there's some of that.

Jamie: I think there's. I think we block ourselves in a lot of ways. Well, even if I found that company, how do I know who to talk to? Oh, how do I know they're really in that position and we just keep stopping ourselves right so interesting enough, we just did, um, I just wrapped up a blog series on teaching this process, because if they do have a list and let's say, you, you know, as business leader, you've got five, you've got ten. Okay, I mean, you can start there so say they have that.

Now you ask them okay, what do you know about those companies? I know their address.

Stuart: I know their phone number, you know what I mean.

Jamie: Like all right, but how are we going to figure out what to send? Them, if you don't know much more. And so then you know. The next step is well, now you got to drill in and learn something about what are their challenges, what are their goals, what are their pain. You know who do they serve, because if again, again, if you're coming from the place of you want to show them, you are a helpful person worth knowing.

Stuart: Um, you got to know something about them yeah, I recorded a podcast yesterday so I think it's probably going to go the week before. Everyone listens to this. Okay, say, oh, uh, tim wachel, I think you know guys know each other sales professional, sales training expert. So does a lot of um, yeah, now I'm going, and it was just yesterday. I think you guys know each other. I'm probably butchering his surname because I tripped over it last time, but anyway, he so he's a sales professional, goes out and trains sales teams, but very much from the approach of just as you were describing. He calls it peddlers versus partners. If you're a peddler trying to transactionally sell things, then you're just engaging in the moment that you want to do some business, or at the last minute, and it's all about the close, the cell, whereas if you're a partner, you're much more interested in that long-term conversation and checking in when you think about people, exactly as you said, um, in, in fact, nothing to do. The podcast, but I'll connect to you guys on linkedin because the conversations you talk in very similar ways. So there's, there's again, it's uh, it's this like-minded community which is really the community that the podcast goes to as well, because people are receiving the email that will send out because they've explicitly expressed a preference in communicating and starting a conversation by adding value. It isn't a isn't a list of people who want to maximize row us on facebook ads. It's people who want to maximize ROAS on Facebook ads. It's people who want to give something more to the community.

The idea that you were talking about the Dream 25 and the connecting with people over the long term. We talk a lot. Again, the idea that the book is a conversation starter, so the benefit is in the follow-up. Again, the idea that the book is a conversation starter, so the benefit is in the follow-up. For the most part, we're talking about email sequences usually and keeping people engaged. That way, we do some individual work with people. That's a little bit more detailed than that, but for most of the conversations it's that educational follow-up piece. Talk a little bit more about what the follow-up is in your world, though, because you're obviously switching it into physical from digital, although I'm assuming there's opportunities.

Jamie: Yeah, yep, and we definitely. We will tell them up front. You know there's going to be it's got to be a mix, so there's going to be moments in this. What we do is, in the course of a year, we plan seven different touch points.

Stuart: Okay.

Jamie: Some of them should be digital right, and whether that be okay. I've sent you a couple things to get in front of you. Now I'm going to digitally invite you to, you know, interview on this podcast, right?

Because, that's my opportunity to bring you a little bit closer. Let's get to know each other. I'm going to invite you to, you know, maybe they're having a physical event and but so there's some digital or or. I'm going to send you some articles that are very specific to your industry, because I see that you guys are struggling with, or you know you, you share a lot of content on XYZ. I saw this. Maybe you're interested in it. We'll make those recommendations.

We leave a placeholder for that, and so we invite them to think about their own assets, their own materials. Maybe it's eBooks. They've done some research, right, Fill those in and then we come to the table with the physical items. But again, it's not necessarily just sending you know this a bunch of chocolate. Now, it's been done. It is. It has been done that you know, one of our clients sent 10 pounds of chocolate to their their list, and the people who are so blown away they actually saw, um, our clients at events and they're like, what did I do to get on your list? I mean, so it, it has its place, okay there's a way to do it.

It involves the messaging um but but a lot of the stuff. We look for what? What? Um, let me go back to research. So, as you've dug in to the people that are on your list and you're finding industry trends, you're finding you know this company is very focused on sustainability. This company is all about wellness. When you learn those things, there are certain themes that start to appear across your list. Then we take those themes and we look for how can we represent that with something helpful that you send to them. And this is where someone was just showing us that they pitched one of their clients. They saw that one of the prospects very into the Ohio State football, but he was also, you know, he's, a leader in the company and so they were talking about pitching a book written by one of the previous coaches.

you know from the football team, so you can see the detail, the thought that went into it, into planning these things, and that's what we look for. One more example I get just as wound up as you in this stuff, but one of our clients what we noticed across their 15 prospects, three different industries, but they all had a focus on this well-being, and so we proposed a gift. We gave a multiple options, but it was about wellness and the messages said. You know, we believe that you've now finished the first quarter of the year. Chances are you're moving fast. It can be stressful, you know, to run these stressful businesses. We really believe that, along with the work you do, you should take some time to invest in yourself. So here's a few items to remind you. So, in this particular case, it was pull up your favorite meditation app if you don't have one. Our team is always happy to make recommendations, but you can see it was nothing at all about the work they do, right. Nothing, no sales. It wasn't even a. You know this is my website.

Stuart: It's simply going to be signed by the owners of the company yeah, that orchestration of the idea for the long call, like without expectation, that this one email is going to be the thing to close and we're going to judge the whole success of the campaign on this one touch point. The fact that it's orchestrated and thought out and considered and there's a longer run to it than just what so many other people do, I think is the kind of Facebook ad to lead and if they haven't bought within the next 12 hours then it's dead and they're never contacted again yeah yeah, exactly, it's that thought that goes behind it and for the majority of people listening and the majority of people in our world, it's not a transactional turnaround, it's not checkout purchases, it's not commoditized assets or if the actual tool itself is commoditized.

I was talking to someone yesterday who owns a photography um for real real estate photography company in san Diego. So they're young guys. They've come into it recently. They were more kind of like drone pilots and had it as a hobby and then started offering it. So they're not photographers who have then developed a business. They went into this one in the business and the opportunity.

So, again, similar to what we were saying before, the purpose and the the tool. The photography element is just the tool. So real estate photography is relatively commoditized because there's a lot of people doing it and it's not. There's no real barrier to entry. But I was saying to them that the difference that they can make is the real estate agents, particularly now, given some recent legislation changes. It's now a listing agent world. It's not a buyer's agent world because there's no monetization there, so it's a listing agent world.

So the key metric for realtors success in the long run is their ability to close listing deals well if the photographer guys can make sizzle reels for the realtor that they can show in the listing presentation, yeah, it promotes why they're the people to get. That brings them in as a partner and it decommoditizes them from oh we just take great photos and we're the cheapest into. No, we understand that the single job of work that you have now is closing these listing appointments and we're giving you enough to do that. So, anyway, a bit of a tangent there. But this idea that it's thinking about that, it's orchestrating that journey, it's a long run, it's showing value as a partner, not just trying to close, close, close.

Jamie: Right, well, and they're showing they're helpful and that they understand. So one more nugget that kind of feeds into what we do. There's actual social psychology behind the foundations of relationships.

that say that in order for a relationship to form and to be lasting, people need to know that you understand them. They need to feel that you validate what's important to them, like you just explained, in the realtor industry. In the real estate industry, it changed, and by if they approach it from. This is what's now important we understand it. Here's how we can help. They are validating what's important to those prospects Right.

And then the third thing is care, and that needs to be if, if a person perceives that you care, that is a last, that's a reason for me to be in a relationship with you. So, as long as you focus on those three things understanding, validation of what's important and care you are moving that relationship into something solid for the long term. Right, and so I think you've got you know, I agree, we are very aligned in our approach and you're trying to. You're taking these books and you're trying to help your clients understand. It's not just this thing and done, right, right, this is the start. This is your, you know your, your conversation starter. It's the thing that's going to maybe capture attention. But how thoughtful you are from there forward is going to determine the relationships you create out of it.

Now I just invite you to think, create out of it. Now. I just invite you to think if I did this to you, if I were sending you some of those things that I just gave you examples, so you know, every seven weeks, the first thing, you got some book from me, and then you get this nice package about something I understand about you, and it still has no, there's no cell in it. Wouldn't you be intrigued, just at least to connect, to know me.

This person is interesting right and I promise you maybe it never converts to a sale of them being your client, but most people want to take the time to get to know you and you never know what other opportunity they can bring for you, because maybe it's not them, but they know other people.

Stuart: Right, yeah, that's a great point, tying in that or thinking about this kind of second tier order of the referral opportunity, and if some of the messages aren't direct commercial intent for you, but sowing the subtle seed of hey, here's some way. If you know of anyone else having this problem, give them pointers allowing them to be the um, the rainmaker within their sphere of influence, kind of just giving those opportunities to elevate their social status through things that you're able to do. It's, um, much more considered than just the hey, we sell widgets.

Jamie: You should buy them from us, right? Yeah, business people get it.

Stuart: Right, yeah, yeah, and I think these days where there's I mean there's Lucy, my wife is a kindergarten teacher, so in a Waldorf school, so they're very much not they're very much focused on the individuals in the moment in the classroom and not that they separate themselves from technology in any way, but it's very individual, focused on the people in the space. So as part of their reading they've read the. This example would be better if I could remember the name of the book, but the attention, oh and the premise of the book is that generations now are disconnected because of cell phones and social media and not having that personal connection or experience with people. And then there's a couple of other books that are kind of COVID related and how the psychological elements that had. But that one-on-one connection, whether it's kindergartners or high schoolers or 20-year-old employees or me who's no longer 20, that connection that you have with people.

There is a transactional element to the fact that so much of it is online, but there's also the opportunity to make a connection and it's not quite the same as being in the office or being on a train with someone and and spending that extended period of time, but there is a way, I think, even within condensed time frames, of having more of a meaningful connection with with a person because of a thoughtfulness that you put in it. So, like I'm thinking about our connection with LinkedIn, I mean, it was a connection from a trusted third party, so there was a little bit more there, but within a half hour conversation we had a pretty meaningful connection because there was a commonality and an intentionality that we brought to it. So, anyway, anyway, without getting too kind of woo-woo about, it no, no, I yeah, but that's what I like about what you do.

It's not just his. You should send something to people because it interrupts their day and it's a what's like the dan kennedy squeezy package type thing.

Jamie: It's not that, it's the making a thoughtful connection and the thing that is sent just illustrates how thoughtful that that connection is that you're trying to be but I think you're tapping into with the examples of the books, um, because I've actually got a couple of them um on my shelf, um, this is what's, I think, changing, changing about our world, and it's been moving fast for about the, in this digital space that we're losing. We're losing a societal, there's a societal disconnect, and it's more important than I think we realized. And so, by helping businesses, I mean I don't know to me, this is my woo side. Helping business, I mean I don't know to me, this is my my woo side. But that's that's what drives me, is if I'm helping one. So we actually handwrite all of our messages and there are times when the, the team will know totally cow, did you like that message?

Stuart: it makes us feel like we can feel it in the wording, um, and that's when we know you know you're doing it right it resonates, yeah yeah, yeah it does have that kind of um I don't know if I mean synergy is the word, but it kind of doesn't quite capture it but the, it's more than the sum of the parts. There's like a meaning that carries through. So right, I think there's so much opportunity for us to be transactional and fast and quick and just play a volume game, because that's the, the, the nature of how technology scales and with I mean we haven't even touched on ai type stuff, but the, the scalability of that just increases even more. And from a book perspective.

But even now we get people saying why can't I just write this with ai? And I mean, you can write something, but the outcome is you want to be in conversation with someone. So if they turn up having read your words in the way that you describe, that's very different from having read some words that talk about something. So the same with you guys. I'm sure there's technological based solutions that people will try just to get a push button answer to. But yes, use the technology to, to, to gather the information, but adding the connection, the intentionality, the personal touch, that's that's difficult to do without that human element of connection in there somewhere yeah we ended on a bit of a philosophical tangent.

I think it's important, but it is.

Jamie: It makes a difference yeah, I think we're seeing a little bit of a shift, like people are feeling tired of digital. The I mean ai is going to be great from a productivity standpoint and from, I mean, even what it's going to be able to stall for us, right, but from a human standpoint, yeah, you know you got to get the other side right too yeah, exactly, and that's a great point.

Stuart: That's the opportunity it will. It will allow us to scale and leverage some of the things that are more transactional and don't require the human touch and then free up the time to double down on that human connection and the time that it's like the service you provide the time that people would otherwise have to spend to do down on that human connection and the time that it's like the service you provide the time that people would otherwise have to spend to do the execution that you do. They can take that time and focus it on the individuals and and their part of the business that they do directly. Yeah, um, it's become a bit of a meme now because I end every episode by looking at the clock and being stunned by how quickly time goes, but honestly, it happens every time. Um, I want to make sure that people can find out more about you and and the organization and what you do. Uh, where's a good place for people to go?

Jamie: yeah, on our um, our website, you know, we've got some good tools that will walk you through some of the, the stuff we've been talking about with the dream 25 process and things like that. So the expressory, so theexpressory.com, and you'll be able to uh, follow along or down some of the download, some of those tools perfect.

Stuart: I'll put that link in and a link to your linkedin profile as well. I'll put that in the show notes just to make sure that people have just got to click straight through. And the sessions that you've done recently the webinar sessions, is that?

Jamie: series the q a's, or is that? No um, actually it's. It's ongoing. Um, so you should be getting an email soon on that. So it's a monthly free community call. We have conversations about relationship first related type tactics and strategies. Um, yeah, we talked about some of this stuff.

Stuart: So yeah, and super valuable. I've joined a couple of them. Now I'll put a link directly to that bit of the web page as well, so obviously people can find it themselves, but I'll put a link straight to it because those are were really valuable and super grateful that you put them on. Had some interesting guests. So, yeah, I'd recommend that, as people listen to that, they sign up for for that series as well thank you no problem.

Um, yeah, time goes fast. It'll be really interesting. We should circle back in a couple of months and do another show as well, just maybe dive into. We'll probably get some feedback on this one, particularly so, actually, as people are listening. If there's anything about this specifically that you want us to address in a follow-up, let's do that, so people can just reply to the message and give us a shout and again, really recommend people go to the website and just understand a little bit more about your unique approach, because it is much more valuable than just the generic hey, send someone something for no reason.

Jamie: Yeah thank you, this has been great you and I probably chat for a long time.

Stuart: I know, yeah, yeah well, I think we've got, uh, we're gonna jump on a call next week and we'll, uh, we might share with people at some point in the future what we talk about. Yeah, um, jamie, thanks again for your time. It really does go fast. Everyone, thanks for listening. Check out the show notes. I'll put some connections straight through to Jamie's world and, yep, reach out to either of us with any questions. All right, thank you, we will catch you in the next one.

We all have a sales role. Whether selling to clients, team members, or employees, the opportunity to improve our skills in this area can be hugely beneficial.

Today on the Book More Show, we're talking with sales expert Tim Wackel about what it means to be a successful salesperson.

Tim shares how his engineering background sparked a passion to focus less on individual transactions and more on the outcomes of the human connections behind every interaction.

We explore his philosophy that true sales mastery is an art that requires patience and care to understand clients' needs at a deep level. He offers a candid perspective on cultivating sales skills.

Tim's experience with salespeople across industries leads to some great examples and techniques we can all use.

SHOW HIGHLIGHTS

Show notes & video: 90minutebooks.com/podcast/168

Tim Wackel:

Questions/Feedback: Send us an email

(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)

Tim: But we've got to give those seeds a chance to grow. You know, I kind of grew up in an agricultural surrounding and you know my dad didn't wake up in the fall and say, oh crap, I need a crop. I'm going to go out and plant Right. You plant in the spring, you fertilize, you till you need sunshine, you need moisture, and then in the fall you have a crop. And it's the same way with selling and sales skills. You just you can't flip a switch and get good, it's a skill.

Stuart: Everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Bookmore Show. It's Stuart Bell here and today super excited because we're sharing this conversation with Tim Wackel. Is it Wackel or Wackel? I suddenly thought I tripped over a name. I started today by forgetting three people's names on calls, so obviously I should have been more caffeinated.

Tim: I do it all the time.

Stuart: So, yeah, super excited today because we're sharing this conversation with Tim. Tim and I were introduced through a mutual friend a month or so ago and what really stood out and why I wanted to get on the call today is not only is Tim using a book in his lead generation process, but his approach to business development and his background in sales really I think resonates with everyone that's listening here in sales, really, I think resonates with everyone that's listening here, because ultimately, we're writing books to be in conversations with potential clients and that inevitably leads to a sales conversation. Tim, why don't we start give people a bit of a background on you and your, because you've got quite an illustrious history.

Tim: Well, I don't know if it's illustrious, so I'm kind of an accidental salesperson, stuart. At university I studied electrical engineering and when I got out of school I was an electrical engineer but was quickly approached by the management team and they really thought you know, maybe my skills would be better used in a technical sales role. And I don't know that I necessarily had skills that would lend me to be successful at a technical sales role, or if I was just really bad at soldering circuit boards. I think it was more the latter and less the former, but I started that journey almost four decades ago and figured it out. A lot of people and myself at that time thought that selling was dirty, slimy, manipulative, and it took me a while. But I got my head around that. No, selling, when done correctly, is an art and a science and you're genuinely out to try to help people do things they don't know they can do.

Stuart: That's the key term, isn't it? When it's done properly, there's good and bad. It's all under the spectrum and it's certainly the bad that gets a lot of the heat and light and people kind of default to thinking that way when they don't know about it. It gets a lot of the heat and light and people kind of default to thinking that way when they don't know about it. But at the end of the day, we're trying to help people make a decision that's best for them and really kind of advance what they're trying to do. So I think it's a superpower. It can be used for good or bad.

Tim: And unfortunately or fortunately for me a lot more people use it for bad than good, and I don't think they're purposeful on using it for bad. They just don't know any better.

Stuart: Right. Actually that's a great point, that idea of not knowing any better. I think a lot of time people are almost like you were, to a certain degree thrust into the role and it's not necessarily something that they're looking for. It tends to be the more seasoned professional that's in it because they've developed a love for it. I think at the junior end of the spectrum it's a little bit more sink or swim and the pressure to make sure that you don't sink too quickly leads to maybe unaligned outcomes.

On that sales approach and this idea of if I marry up the thought of the conversation, starting books that we help people to create, so identifying the need, the question and then delivering value to start that conversation, that I'm guessing starts to marry in with work that you do and helping teams to both dial in their sales strategies and tactics but also the development and the presentations that they ultimately give to people. What if people are listening here, thinking about starting that conversation? What is it about the journey and the things that they need to know? That makes that a win for everyone, If that's not too broad a question.

Tim: Well, you know, it might be, stuart, so I'd be more than happy to drill down on it with you, but, at the end of the day, if what you do, if the service you provide or the product that you offer is not a good fit and doesn't have a real ROI for your client or your prospect, then you need to get the hell out of there. You need to live for another day, and if you've got that kind of mindset, and if you have that kind of mindset, I believe you can be very successful. Now, that's the good news. The bad news is, though, if you have that mindset, you're going to have dry weeks, you're going to have dry months, you're going to have dry quarters right, if you want to make $120,000 a year and you want to do it $10,000 a month, you probably shouldn't be in sales, right, because that's just not the way it works. Again, if you've got the right intent, it all works out in the end, but it's not a short-term play, it's a long-term play.

Stuart: How do you find that marries up with teams? So the work that you do with sales teams there's a pressure in a work environment to meet quotas and targets. Is that a tension that's difficult to balance out between the people who are trying to live in a customer-centric world as much as possible versus having to meet quotas?

Tim: It can be. I would tell you, stuart, that if a client called me, or a prospective client called me, and it was all about making the number, and they wanted to make the number this week, this month, this quarter, I'm probably not the right guy. Eventually, there's going to be so much pressure to perform that the team, quite frankly, is not going to be open to new ideas. If I come in and I'm hosting a one-day, quite frankly, is not going to be open to new ideas, right, if I come in and I'm hosting a one-day workshop, people are not going to pay attention because after about an hour they're checking their phones, they're checking their voicemail, they're checking social media because they've got to go kill dinner. So so oftentimes when I work with clients, it's like hey, listen, here's the way this thing works is, you know, we're going to work with your team for a full day or a half a day or two days, whatever the case is, but we've got to give those seeds a chance to grow.

You know, I kind of grew up in an agricultural surrounding and you know my dad didn't wake up in the fall and say, oh crap, I need a crop. I'm going to go out and plant. Right. You plant in the spring, fertilize, you till, you need sunshine, you need moisture, and then in the fall you have a crop. And it's the same way with selling and sales skills. You just you can't flip a switch and get good. It's a skill. I love to play golf and golf is the same way, you know. Hey, I really want to be good at golf, so I'm going to go take a lesson and now I'm good at golf. No, you're not. You know it's.

Stuart:It takes a long time to develop, uh, the skills, the mindset and the attitude to be successful, right? One of the podcasts just before this was with a friend of ours called dave depaula, who wrote a book. So they have a golf training aid that helps break bad habits on the swing. So definitely not my own expertise at all, but he was saying similar things. If you want to be good at it, you kind of practice, but then you need to learn, unlearn all of the bad habits and then you can go forwards, which I guess is there's a correlation there with sales training as well.

It's easy to pick up bad habits just from the pressure of the environment and what everyone else is doing yeah I think what I liked about the approach of the or the agricultural analogy and the approach of what you do, this idea of sowing a crop that yields over the long call. From the book perspective, we talk about a very similar strategy of there's no such thing as dead leads. You don't know when the day is for the person. The other person's in control of whether they say yes, our job is to identify them in the first place, which is what we use the books for, but then nurture that relationship over the long run until today is the day for them. That tension between needing to go out and make the kill versus being in it for the long haul is that something that a lot of people struggle with as well? Either because they're just conditioned to think about it as, like the Glenn Gary, glenn Ross type, always be closing, as opposed to this longer term cycle?

Tim: Yeah, I guess the easiest way for me to answer that is that's where you get the good sales reps versus the bad sales reps. That's where you get the slimy, manipulative, pushy sales rep versus a sales rep. That's really in it for the long play. So the hey, you know. You know, first place is a set of steak knives and second place is I fire you that again.

I don't play in that environment because that's that's not what selling should be, and so obviously you know then that begs the question. I don't know if it begs the question. Ultimately, it takes time to build that book of business. A guy I sold with years and years ago used to say selling is like a flywheel. Right, and you go up to a flywheel that is static.

It takes a lot of time, energy and effort to get that bad boy to start spinning. Right, you got to really put in the work, you got to put in the effort, you got to put in the energy. But once you get that bad boy spinning, then all you got to do every once in a while is just give it a little more energy, just give it a little more energy. And I think it's a wonderful analogy to what selling is like. So you know, you hire somebody, you bring somebody in or you put somebody in a brand new territory. To expect results in 30 or 60 or even 90 days, I think is typically in most situations, unrealistic. You've got to have a certain amount of time to develop that book of business and then, once you develop that book of business, then again you just got to keep the energy going.

Stuart: Yeah, that approach of keeping the energy going. The kind of line between sales and marketing is always kind of defined by definition and everyone's got a slightly different perspective on it the more long-term nurturing I think again, not being in that area of business, so looking at it from an outsider, you kind of have the perception that sales people think of the short term and marketers think of the long term. But understanding that it's the long term that makes the sales successful, the people who are most successful in that space, is that more from that long-term nurturing and checking in with no real a genuine interest in the clients rather than necessarily a sales intent? Is it much more about relationship building rather than kind of responding to a particular activity?

Tim: I believe. So I think salespeople kind of fall into one of two camps, that you're either a peddler or your partner.

Peddlers show up when there's need budget and timeframe. Right, A peddler is there to sell you something. A partner is not. A partner will sell you something and then, in 60 days, follow up and say, hey, how's it working? What do you like best about our widget? If I gave you a magic wand and there's one thing about our widget that you could change, what would you change and why? Right, A partner is there because they want their client to be successful, so they will have conversations and they will show up even though there's no food in the trough. The peddler only shows up if there's food in the trough. If there's need budget, timeframe, I'm there because I'm a peddler. Partners are more like hey, listen, I may not have a solution for you today, but I'd just love to know more about what you guys have got going on, what direction you're trying to get to and what are some of the current obstacles you're facing. Completely different conversations.

Stuart: I think that's the great thing, that's what resonated when we first spoke a couple of weeks ago this idea of being in conversation and adding value and nurturing over the long term until an opportunity presents itself that's mutually beneficial. There's definitely an element of that in the things that we do. So creating a book isn't something that the peddlers are interested so much because it's too long-term based, Whereas the partner approach, as you describe it's much more around adding that value from the perspective that we come to in terms of writing the book. At least adding that value in the perspective that we come to in terms of writing the book, at least adding that value in the thing that identifies the invisible leads to begin with and gets people to raise their hand, but is really the starting point of the conversation. And the book is never a build it and they will come type thing or you're very rarely converting people with the book, but it's starting that conversation.

How do you? Not secrets or magic tricks, but the challenge that some people have is okay, I can envisage collecting all of these leads and to a certain degree I can imagine staying in touch with them, but the practicalities of staying in touch or the mental models to remember to stay in touch. Are there any pointers that you have for people so that becomes top of mind rather than kind of day-to-day and peddler type activity, pointers that you have for people so that becomes top of mind rather than kind of day-to-day and peddler type activity?

Tim: Yeah, you know, consistency matters. You know 1% every day. What's the old saying If you just get 1% better every day, in 72 days you're twice as good as you are right now. So you know, it's not about blotting out the sun or boiling the ocean, but it's about hey, what can I do to make sure that the people I want to do business with know that I'm here and that I'm adding value? You know, in my own practice, every week we're pushing short form videos, two minute tips with Tim right. We're pushing that to over 30,000 people. I don't have 30,000 people calling me right now because they got this morning's tip right, but out of the 30,000, maybe we got 30 that got that tip and they're like golly, you know what? This is a great idea and my sales team really should get their head around this. Or, I'd like to learn more. I'd like to discuss this with Tim. So Again, it's about planting seeds.

Stuart: Yeah, and that's such a great point, isn't it? I think it's easy to underestimate the effectiveness of small, incremental but consistent activities. There's so many things Like you think of social media, the successes going viral when the likelihood of that ever happening is so slim in the first place, and even the effectiveness of that is much smaller than just a consistent, small amount of outreach and the overhead of writing or recording a long video. It's a headache, it takes some setup, but doing a quick selfie type thing, capturing something in the moment, being able to share that quickly and tools have definitely improved that even in the last five years, even since the pandemic the tools that are available it's really improved it. We didn't talk about this beforehand, so you might not have a particular opinion on it. I'm just thinking about tools, the amount that AI is available to support people at the moment. I think this is another example of things can be used for good or things can be used for bad.

And as far as book writing goes, we'll have some people that say, oh well, can't AI do that for me? And our approach is not in any meaningful way yet. And even if it could, the purpose of the book is starting a conversation. So you want your words and your framework and your language, because eventually it's going to end up in a phone call and people want to meet the person that they read. So, as far as sales goes, there's a number of just scroll through Instagram for a moment and there's a number of kind of lead closing tools or AI booking tools. That, to me, falls into the same category, at least at the moment of there's no silver bullet, and if you're trying to use a tool as a silver bullet, then it's a highway to failure. Being in the trenches, obviously more than I am do you see people asking the same questions, looking for shortcuts.

Tim: So I see, sorry about that, let me kill this phone. So I see a lot of people that think AI is going to be the second coming and it's not. I think the word you used is it's a tool. Too many people put too much stock into AI and when they do, ai is no longer a tool. It kind of makes them look like a tool, if you know what I mean, because AI is good but it has its limitations. I get targeted a lot. I don't has its limitations. I get targeted a lot I don't know why, but I get targeted a lot and 90% of it is really seriously. Did anybody even look at this? I mean, it's 80%, really good, and then it's 20%. No, I'm not a female living in Australia, so you kind of miss the target there, right? So it's just one arrow in the quiver.

Stuart: Right. I think that 80-20 analogy works perfectly well because it can amplify and give you an 80% advantage on the things that you're doing. But trying to get it to 100% and missing the 20% just puts a nail in the coffin of the whole message. Because we use the analogy of. We have another podcast called More Cheese, less Whiskers that Dean does and the premise of that name is a customer is a little bit like a mouse heading towards the cheese and they're all in and enthusiastic about getting to the cheese.

But if there's even a hint of whiskers of overly commercial intent or misaligned objectives, then it's run first and maybe come back later. So the hint of whiskers it's the same in that ai model. It's too easy, for if you're trying to just get a push and play type result, it kind of misses the mark. Um, we were talking now about the types of of organization, or we spoke earlier about the types of organizations that aren't the best fit, the type of organizations that you work really well with, clearly these partner type organizations, rather than the paddlers, the people who are in it for the long run. Is there anything else that kind of brings those companies together, any kind of similarities in the gut in the people who you work best with.

Tim: You know, I would tell you so in my world it's all going to be, you know, b2b. It's all more complex selling. You know, in the B2B world there's some people that it's, you know, one call to close. I don't know what that is right. We're not doing mufflers, we're not doing roofing, so it's all B2B and it's typically a more complex, longer term.

A lot of the clients I'm dealing with are trying to figure out how do I proactively grow my business. You know, way too many sales organizations today, stuart, have become reactive sales organizations. So they're waiting for that phone to ring, they're waiting for that email to show up. So they're waiting for that phone to ring, they're waiting for that email to show up. They're waiting for somebody to hit them up on social media, right. And too many salespeople have become really good account managers, and it's really important to be a good account manager.

I'm all over account management, but that's just one part of the equation. Right, you got to be able to service and maintain the installed base. You got to do account management, but you also have to spend part of every day, or every week at a minimum, proactively going out and trying to have new conversations, either inside of existing accounts or have new conversations with new logos, and salespeople don't want to do that because they don't know how to do it. And if you don't know how to do something, then you're faced with a lot of rejection, right, and nobody likes rejection. So you know they show up the next day and it's like well, I could spend my eight hours servicing the installed base who know me, love me and trust me? Or I could spend six hours servicing the installed base and then two hours trying to knock on new doors. Nah, I'd rather not do that. And again, you can maintain a business, I believe, by just servicing the installed base.

But what if 10, 20, or 30% of your rep's time was focused on really going out and acquiring new conversations, acquiring new logos? That's where you get the logarithmic effect is man, you've got to, you got to do both. Right, you got to maintain what's there, but you got to go. You got to go find somebody different. Because whether we want to believe it or not, one day every client wakes up and says you know what, I want to go in a different direction. That's just a part of life. And so if your pipeline is full of like, just three different companies and one day that one of those three decides to go in a different direction, you've just lost a third. Simple math. You've just lost a third of your funnel. Well now, what are you going to do Now? Using the analogy of the farm, this is like waking up in the fall and saying, oh crap, I want to crop Now what do I do?

Well, it's like well, you write this year off and you get ready for next year. That's the only thing you can do.

Stuart: Yeah, it's such a great reminder that even when in times of good, that's the time to plant new seeds, not in times when things are getting a little bit desperate because you just run out of runway or options, I think for the audiences that are listening, the majority of people have kind of expressed an interest in writing a book as a lead generation tool, so that I'm assuming that some of the other organizations that you work with have done something similar, whether it's actually a book or material information that they're sharing with people, that transition from someone raising their hand to taking that first call. I think that gives some people a little bit of reticence about how they make that transition or start to introduce a conversation above just passively delivering stuff. Do you have any advice or pointers for people kind of taking that step?

Tim: Yeah, don't pitch probe the number one thing I see I shouldn't say it's the number one thing One of the top things I see is a prospective client raises their hands and says, okay, I'm kind of interested, I'd like to learn more, and then people just want to show up and throw up. Right, it's the spray and pray mentality of let me tell you. Let me tell you how great we are. Let me tell you how diverse we are. Let me tell you how great we are. Nobody gives a rip. So the hardest thing for most people to get their head around is once somebody raises their hand and expresses an interest. This is where the work starts and you got to say, wow, man, I really I'm excited that you've expressed this interest. Tell me more. Why are you interested? Why is this important to you? What have you tried before? Why did it not work?

Assuming this would work, what it would mean to you? Are there others that have a stake in this? If I gave you a magic wand and you could design the perfect solution, what would that perfect solution look like? I mean, you've got to have this whole conversation where you've got to let that other party define for you. This is exactly what I'm looking for. Once we understand exactly what they're looking for, now we can take our products and our services and we can position it accordingly.

Right, if the client really doesn't give a rip, what color your solution is, why are you spending so much time talking about that? Your solution's blue, right. You're demonstrating that you didn't listen and you're wasting their time, and nobody has a bunch of free time. So, yeah, the number one tip is don't sell, just ask questions. Ask questions. You got to pretend you're a reporter for the newspaper who, why, where, when, what else you know? Just you've got to drill down, until you got to drill down so much that if you went home that night and had a cup of coffee with your spouse or your partner, you should be able to relay the story back Right.

And the story shouldn't be yeah, talk to this guy today and he wants a widget. That's not the story shouldn't be yeah, talk to this guy today and he wants a widget. That's not the story. The story should be hey, this organization raised their hand and they're interested in a widget. And what I found to be fascinating is that they've done this and this is how the widget would play, and this is why the widget's important to them, and these are all the people that would benefit from having a new widget right. You got to be able to tell that story, and if you can't tell the story, it's way too early for you to be selling.

Stuart: Yeah, that's actually such a great point because, even like I've been doing this long enough now that I should know better. But I enthusiastically get carried away because I think that the majority of people that I speak to should be using a book in their funnel, whether or not they do it with us, but just to be able to share their ideas. So enthusiastically get carried away in sharing that idea with people at the expense of drilling into the why as much as it should do. So it's a great reminder that not only does it take the pressure off asking probing questions it's there's no sales intent to that, it's you're not actually dealing with the rejection that you mentioned before, so it takes some of the pressure off but also to be able to tailor that enthusiasm. Not necessarily don't be enthusiastic, but you're right if no, if I'm excited that the cover is blue and they don't like blue, then that would be good to know beforehand, regardless of the sale, just to be able to talk to them about something that they're more excited in.

Tim: Yeah, I mean, you know the cover is blue, there's nothing you can do about it, but you don't need to go on about how blue your cover is right. I mean, again, you're never going to have the perfect solution. There's no such thing. But only through having a complete due diligence are we able to really say okay, you know, these are the hundred things that this client thinks are really important, or these are the 10 things the client thinks are really important, and out of those 10, there's seven we do really well. Those would be the seven I'd really want to focus on and and continue to advance the conversation until the client's like okay, you know, that's pretty good. And then, in complete disclosure, you go okay, listen, I know you love those seven, but there are three that we haven't talked about and three that we don't do really well. And I want to make sure you got your head around that before we get to the next step.

Stuart: Yeah, which that brings back to the partner point of you know that if you know that you're going to be checking in with people down the road, you want this to be a long term relationship. You don't want any nasty surprises. The whole point is doing this in partnership.

Tim: Yeah, yeah, because you know what, anybody can get the first sale, that's, I shouldn't say anybody. Getting the first sale is much easier. Getting the second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth sale, that's much harder. And you only do that if you do the first sale really well.

Stuart:Right. That's one of the things I like about this business is we've done a. I mean we could definitely do more, but we've done a nice number of second, third, fourth books down the track. Once people have got the first one out of their system and are seeing how to use it to be able to then think about from a campaign perspective rather than a bestseller perspective. Think about these tools is starting these conversations. It's nice when that happens, but we could definitely do more to more to encourage that, and that probably is from asking better questions.

One of the other things that springs to mind as well is quite often when we're talking to people about the back cover of their book, we're talking about conversation, starting books. The back cover isn't to sell the book. The back cover is to present the next step. So we're often talking about next steps as being for the people who are just broadly interested but not yet interested, consume more information and then, at the bottom of the option, the most committed, it's get started now or whatever that first step is.

But this middle step of those people who are more interested but not yet interested or don't have the relationship enough to raise their hand and jump on a call. It's what's that middle step? So we're often talking about things like scorecards or white papers or assessments, but actually I really like what you were saying and doubling down on this idea of probing for more questions. That middle step is the perfect opportunity to do that because it adds value by orchestrating useful questions but also the information that you're getting back Very useful. So, yeah, thank you, I'll steal that and I'll give you credit as I tell other people.

Tim: Well, I don't know if I deserve the credit. You know, if you're in sales and you don't do that, your kids start getting skinny really quick, and that's when you start to figure it out.

Stuart:So Right yeah, necessities of the mother in prevention.

Tim: It certainly is.

Stuart:I'm super appreciative of your time and I know you're busy. I'm glad that we got this on the calendar. I'm really excited to share this with people. I want to make sure that they've got opportunity to find out more about you and what it is that you do. As I said, the organizations that we've worked with and the people on the list span the remit from small companies to larger companies, so all of them have got some sales capability in there somewhere that they could benefit from what you do. So where's a good place for people to go?

Tim: Well, there's a couple of places, depending on how intimate you want to get. If you don't want to get that intimate but you like these kinds of ideas and insights, then I'd connect with me on LinkedIn Because, like I said, three times a week I'm pushing content on LinkedIn. Most of it's short form video two minute tip with Tim on prospecting, qualifying, presenting, building better relationships, handling objections right All those things that go into becoming a good salesperson. For those that want to go a step deeper, go out to the website and check out the website. Timwackel.com, t-i-m-w-a-c-k-e-l, timwackel.com and there's a lot of free resources out there. You got to peek and poke a little bit, but that would be a real, appropriate next step.

Stuart:Fantastic. Well, I'll make sure that we put links into those as well. So if people are listening to a podcast player or if they visit the website, there'll just be a link there both to the LinkedIn profile and to the website. And, as I said before, I highly recommend people going across. Tim's got a stack of resources in there and I think this model, this methodology, just ties in so nicely with the approach that we're preaching all the time. But your point of view is obviously much more focused on the sales and the execution and we do the little piece that we do, but it really does tie in quite well. It's a nice mix, tim. I appreciate it. I know everyone listening will get a lot from this call. So thanks for the time and then look forward to checking in with you in the future.

Tim: All right, stuart, thank you. Thank you, bye-bye now.

Today on the Book More Show, we're talking with Dona Baker and Jeff Polovick about their experience writing books that serve very different purposes and how this led to a whole new service.

Jeff and Dona share a connection through Jeff's company, Driving Force, where Jeff's motivation for writing his book, Why Can't We?, was to document the challenges, decision-making processes, and lessons learned throughout his career.

Dona, who worked with Jeff for 12 years, reflects on her learning experiences and how they shaped her book, The Friction-Free Entrepreneur, that talks about the opportunities to maximize your energy and strengths as an entrepreneur by partnering with someone who can do the stuff you can't.

We discuss the need for storytelling, how she incorporates it into her work to engage readers, and how working through the ideas for the book led to the creation of their latest strategic HR company, Rhealize.

This is a great conversation and really highlights one of the unexpected benefits of writing a book where the focus of thinking about your ideas can reveal bigger opportunities.

SHOW HIGHLIGHTS

Show notes & video: 90minutebooks.com/podcast/167

Dona Baker:

Jeff Polovick:

Questions/Feedback: Send us an email

(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)

Stuart: Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Bookmore Show. It's Stuart Bell here, and today joined by Dona Baker and Jeff Polovick. Guys, how are you doing? Thank you.

Dona: Yeah, very well, thank you.

Stuart: Fantastic. I'm excited to share this story with people. The podcast recently we've shared a lot of author stories, but just the nature of the scheduling oftentimes it's people who are just finishing the process, whereas you guys had gone through it a little while ago. So I'm excited to share this story with people because you've got a little bit more longevity and have been using the book in a way for longer, which I think will give people more insights into what happens over the long term rather than the short term. Why don't we start off, though, by giving a little bit of a background share with everyone what it is that you guys do, how you know each other, and then we can move into the book part of the conversation.

Dona: I'll let you start, jeff, because you were the person that brought me into all this world.

Jeff: All right, well, I think. Just a little bit of background. First of all, I started a business 46 years ago. It's a vehicle rental, leasing and sales business Started from scratch and I had been in the industry for about five years prior to starting it, so I knew what I wanted to do and I had a firm view on what my values were and how. I thought that customer service was absolutely the most important part of growing the business. I guess very determined Failure was never going to be an option and 46 years later, we have roughly 650 employees. We're in 36 or 37 different locations in Canada and the US. Our sales are in excess of 500 million a year and the company is doing extremely well. I stepped down as the president and CEO eight years ago. I'm still a minority shareholder and I'm on the board of directors. I still care, but not as much as when I owned it all myself.

Stuart: So the opportunity to get that balance right.

Jeff: That's right. So I spend six months of my year in the Palm Desert, palm Springs area. The other half is in Canada, mostly in the Okanagan, but still many different locations where we have businesses. Edmonton is still home, and so that just sort of gives you a little bit of background. We've had a lot of great opportunities over the years, and what compelled me to write the book was really was for the benefit of my children.

Stuart: We have two children.

Jeff: They're certainly adults now.

But when I stepped down as a president and CEO, I really felt that it was important that I share, I guess, some of the life lessons and some of the things that I learned during that time where I was running the business and I think what the format of the 90-minute book concept allowed me to capture what I felt were the most important aspects of the lessons that I'd learned over the years. And now that I've completed the book, it's called why Can't we? And obviously that's one of the questions that was my driving force as we were going along I said why can't we do this? Somebody says you can't do it. Well, here we can. I just have to figure out a way around it. So I think what I did at the end of every chapter I kind of summarized some key bullet points in terms of what I felt that component of the chapter entailed. And both my kids have read it and both of my kids had given me the kind of affirmation saying you know, we didn't realize what you were going through when we were kids growing up. And I said well, that was really the reason why I wanted to write it, because I think quite often, as parents, you want to protect your children from all the hardships that you're going through or at least that was what my or what we tried to do and I think some of those lessons that the kids are running their own business now and not necessarily they're entrepreneurs, but not in the same. They don't have the same sort of views as I do, but the values are very similar. So the book has been a great tool for me to share with other people who are interested in some of the life lessons that I learned along the way and some of the values that I still believe in today. And I think I learned a lot of the things about myself through Strategic Coach, which I know you're very familiar with as well, and so I really felt that was really important.

Along the way and during the process of building the company, I got to a point where I knew that I had the ideas, but I didn't have the, let's say, the desire to look after all the details that need to be taken care of when you're working on a project, and that's how I actually got introduced to Donna. I had a specific criteria that I was looking for, and when Donna came along, here was a wonderful young lady who had worked in a government organization and I thought to myself, okay, well, she's making a choice to leave that environment to come into a free enterprise system. There's got to be something more to her than just making that decision. And sure enough, I was very pleased to be able to work with Donna for 16 years, and now more obviously since I've left. But what it really did, is it really?

She brings to the table for me a different way of looking at things. I'm probably more of an ideas person. You know you're bouncing from A to B to C to D to E or an F and whatever, and she kind of is the force that brings it all together and said well, look, let's put it in a more logical, organized fashion. And, quite frankly, that's one of the things that your 90-minute book concept did for me is it helped me to slow down and say, okay, these are the things that are important. And then finding an editor that would challenge me on the ideas that I'd captured in the book. And even still, I thought it was pretty structured, until you have someone review your work and then tell you hey, listen, why is that important?

You know it's obviously important to you, but why would it be important to me? And all of a sudden it opened up my thinking to say, okay, aha, and that's where the bullets came in. At the end of the chapter you can write the story right about the chapter and what was happening. But then what did you learn from that? And that was the part that I really enjoyed. So I hope that's maybe a little longer than what you wanted to hear, but that's the summary yeah, not at all.

Stuart: And that idea that we go through life and the ideas that we've got, particularly in the entrepreneurial realm, where you're not necessarily directly challenged on things if you're the one setting the tone of the organization and pushing out the ideas, it's not always that they're challenged. So to have to question your thinking because it is going on to a page and someone else is doesn't, isn't coming to the page with the same background that you've got to be able to question that, it does help refine those thoughts a little bit more. The interesting exercise even if the outcome wasn't a book, it would still be an interesting exercise to go through, just to think about your thinking a little bit you're right yeah, donna, from your perspective, you guys have worked together for a long time, going through the process and seeing these ideas come together.

did they all resonate? Or Jeff was saying that the kids hadn't realized some of the background to the stories. Was that the same for you?

Dona: So my book is quite different than Jeff's because his was about his journey building a company and all of the characters that were along the way with that a company and all of the characters that were along the way with that. Mine was reflecting on what I had learned working in an entrepreneurial sales organization with Jeff and observing someone who had what I think or has what I think are natural talent for the communication and for strategy and definitely for negotiation, so that this is a person that really gave a good example of how you run an entrepreneurial business. And then how can you make that successful? By partnering with people who can do the stuff that you can't and that is the book that I wrote was the friction free entrepreneur. How do you make for yourself? Do you understand what your qualities are and lean into that? Leverage that by then finding those people that can do the things that you find sap your energies and take your attention away from the work that you do best.

Stuart: So I think Jeff had mentioned that when that perfect synergy of finding the gaps that you either can't do or don't want to do or someone's better suited to do. They kind of bring the organization together. From your perspective, on the sharing the stories, was your approach a bit more anecdotal and story-based or more along the ideas of introducing this concept to people who maybe hadn't come across the idea before?

Dona: Yes, mine was more around the theory, I would say, or talking about the ideas behind why Jeff was so successful in this partnership or any business, how you could be more successful doing that. And I think if I were to do the book again, I actually would incorporate more story than what I did, especially if it was being marketed to entrepreneurs. These are busy individuals and that they may not necessarily care that much about what the ideology is behind the company and its operation and that kind of thing or even the partnership. And I feel like Jeff's book is very effective because it is a book about story and I think that's for any writer a good thing to remember it's interesting.

Stuart:I think I put myself more on the integrator side of the fence rather than the visionary side of the fence, even kind of heading up the organization here. My background and preference is naturally towards the behind the scenes systems rather than the in front of the camera stories. So it's still a struggle for me all of these years later to include those extra elements rather than just talk about the, the facts and the systems and the details. But it, I think you're right, it does give people a opportunity to connect with the person a little bit more or put themselves in the position as it's told through a story, as opposed to just sharing some details. It's Christy who I think you probably worked with through the process.

Christy is pretty good at extracting those stories from people. She's more naturally inclined to that type of thing anyway. And, jeff, as you were talking, it was probably christy who was kind of pulling some of those elements out as well in the process. As you've gone through both of your guests, as you've seen the other person go through the process and seen the end result, the idea of how you're each intending to use the book, you went into the project with particular ideas in mind but did seeing the other person go through the process open your eyes to other opportunities or other audiences that your own individual's books might resonate with?

Jeff: Well, I think I continue to use the book and I think the company continues to use the book as an example of what the earlier days were like at Driving Force, and I think the book is used partly as an indoctrination, I think, to some of the new people that are interested.

Some aren't interested and I'm fine with that, but for me, there's lots of people that you meet in your travels that are I've always done work with as a mentor and I know there's a lot, lots of people that you meet in your travels that are I've always done work with as a mentor, and I know there's a lot of young people that I've given the book to that I've said oh, there's some ideas in here that you might find interesting and they they generally do people are quite surprised that it's not a. You know, if you quite often, if you read a book about, success is a journey, it's not a destination, but you quite often they'll read about the things that took place during those 40 years and they're going. It wasn't okay. There were lots of challenges, there were lots of things that you know, there was survival one-on-one, there was survival two-on-one, survival three-on-one.

You know where you're at a situation where it could have been the end. It could have been the end of the business If things. You're at a situation where it could have been the end of the business if things hadn't turned out the way they did. And it's not always just your ability to make a decision to change the outcome. Quite often fate and luck has a lot to do with it as well timing. But there's still situations where you're in a real tough position, totally sometimes beyond your control, such as the National Energy Program that came into effect in Canada in the early 80s. It just devastated the economy in Western Canada and to survive that, I consider that to be survival 101. And you can do all the things that you need to do from a business standpoint to survive. And then there's other situations that come. So, as I said, it wasn't always the cakewalk. There were lots of ups and downs, but nonetheless we were still moving in the right direction.

Stuart: It's interesting. It gives people the behind the scenes of just seeing the success as it is now. It's looking at behind the scenes of the challenges and then lessons to be learned and taken away from your experience of those. It gives people more of an opportunity to see where they are in the current position and just draw from and pull from the various pieces that are out there in the world and try and make their best decision in the moment, but inspired or informed by what other people have gone through. I think if too many people see just the upsides of it, it's kind of like the social mediafication of everything. You kind of only see the glossy end product and it's valuable to see the, the messy under the surface work from from time to time. Donna, what about you in terms of kind of the access to the sharing the book with certain groups of people? Did that idea broaden either from when you started the project or haven't seen the way that jeff and the company are using their version of the book?

Dona: I was most interested about collecting my thoughts and then being able to understand, like, what is the aspects of an entrepreneur that need to come together in order for them to be successful.

And so you know, just recounting of these. Those early days of his company were perhaps more cowboy, but as he matured and, like as he says, as he learned, there became more structure in that organization, and when I joined the company in 2009, there was a banking crisis going on across North America and a stock market meltdown, and so I watched how he used the discipline of the structure and also this entrepreneurism and some very brave decisions in order to keep the company afloat again during a very challenging time, and so, for me, it was the art and the discipline of the business, that of running that business, that I felt like needed to be documented. And it isn't a story about Jeff's company, about driving force. It's more of a story about what are the things that an entrepreneur needs to balance in order for them to have a robust business, and I didn't just use my own observations about that. There's a lot of references to other people that Simon Sinek, and there's Christopher Gray, who you may be familiar with.

He's a British psychologist who writes on organizations, so there's people that we have referenced within the book. I feel like the end of the book was the thing that spurred the current business that Jeff and I are working in. We have a consulting business that helps organizations through succession and other transitions. We work with leadership teams in helping them to understand their own makeup and how they can work more productively together and avoid conflicts and these sorts of things, but we also are building a software platform that is helping them to recruit more effectively as well, and those ideas of how that software platform work came out of a distillation process that I used to write the book.

Stuart: It was one of the things that we were talking about off as we were scheduling the podcast this idea that, from the ideas that you were able to capture and that extra time to think about the thinking and bring it all together, really jump-started or kick-started a little bit this new organization. How do you have that as was it the seed of an idea going into the project, the book project, or was it really as a process of? Oh, now I've brought all of these things together and something is very clearly coming out of it. Which was it? Chicken and egg kind of? Which came first?

Dona: I believe that it was probably the egg that grew the idea. There was some other things that happened after that. Jeff is the first person that gave me an opportunity to work on organizational learning. Before coming into his company, I had been working in government, it's true, and I also worked in other kind of more administrative roles, and they were not aligned with what my interests were.

I really wanted to work in the human resources area. I had that education, I had developed skills in presentation and I knew I wanted to be someone who was heading up learning and development and helping an organization progress that way. So he looked beyond the fact that I hadn't worked in that specifically and allowed me to learn within driving force and to find my way. He's very much a supporter of people learning that way, so long as they, you know, like it's not a free for all. We had to come to him and explain our ideas and have some backing on that before we. We just sort of set off. But I did figure out working there that there was better ways to recruit, that we were failing in some ways because of some things we could do better, and it just when 2020 happened. Like everyone else, it was a good time and there was a leadership change also happening in the company and it just felt like the right time to do something different.

Stuart: Right, jeff, from your perspective, kind of step away from the day-to-day operations in the original company and then seeing Donna bring this together, was it an easy step to kind of get back involved to the degree that you're involved, or was it? Was she very persuasive at cajoling you into being involved?

Jeff: no, actually, when I stepped down as the president, ceo donna remained in the organization. It was no surprise that she wanted to do something outside of what what she'd been doing at driving, and also I told her that if you find something that you're interested in, I would like to continue to work with her in some capacity, and so that's really what happened out of this whole scenario as well. I mean, her ability, her analytical ability, her ability to put her ideas in a meaningful way, has always impressed me, and I do believe that the jury's still out in terms of whether the software will actually do what I hope it'll do. However, I think all indications are that it should be. If you can make the transition between requiring someone and finding the right person, it's the right fit is really critical in my opinion, and one of the things that I believe that I do have a good ability is to be able to assess people and judge people, and I think any success that we as an organization had is that we had good people, and you know our current president and CEO.

He was working in Whitehorse and he had a master's degree in computing sciences, and you know he fixed a software problem for an associate of mine that I ended up buying his company, and prior to that Ayman actually had joined our company as well. So I had met him three years before that and I said if you're ever unhappy, let me know. And one day I got a call out of the blue from him saying I'm not happy anymore. And so you know, it's about planting seeds, I think, and it's a networking, and when you find the right person, you know you've got to just kind of make a move on it. For sure.

We were very fortunate over the years to have people like that that. I think we've hired some very good people. When you're small, you can do things quicker, faster. When you get larger, to be a larger company, it doesn't quite work that way anymore, and so that's one of the things that I believe that what Donna and Lisa and I are working on now are going to be able to bring that small concept of finding the right person at the right time, and I think that's one of the things that this new company is going to do, and that's why I'm excited about working with Donna and Lisa.

Stuart: Yeah, donna, from your perspective the book was the kind of egg for the new idea. Is it still relevant as a conversation starter in the new world, or has it kind of served its purpose to a certain degree? And now you're on to slightly different things where it's not not ideal, for how transferable is what you've created already into the new company?

Dona: it's all still relevant because it's talking about the underpinnings of like. What is the rationale, why do we do it this way? And so that is helpful. I think that you have to be a person that that likes to read about those sorts of topics, like are you interested in thinking about, like the structure of an organization and what makes that tick Because it? And then getting into some questions that I have for a person hiring anyone, what is it that you're wanting that person to do and how much responsibility do they have? Those are the sorts of HR kind of things that we would ask somebody in order to make sure we got a good fit. So I think that it serves that purpose.

Still, I've had feedback from people who have bought the book and they found they got value out of it for that. But if it, if you're an entrepreneur more like Jeff and you're kind of, you know, looking for the story, then I think that Jeff's book is more fitting for that. We certainly need both of us in order to do the other work that we do with the consulting, that there is a facilitation and, you know, some process involved with that, and that's definitely the area where I have interest and I feel like I have. That's where I bring my skill right.

Stuart: It's so that balance of both perspectives of broadening the we often talk about books as conversation starting books and the idea that the two of them hit give more opportunities to start conversations with people who are in either the more detail-oriented integrator role to use eras language versus the visionary, slash, add type, moving fast role. The idea that they both serve a purpose and help people, help you get into conversations with the people that they might be working from the different channels. It's an opportunity that not everyone has got and I think it will work well because it does. The books themselves are often the starting point in the conversation but whether or not people read them or read them completely or just kind of get to feel that they're in the right place, they want to continue the conversation elsewhere. It doing its job of helping identify visible prospects and allow people to raise their hand.

And going to Jeff's point on the recruitment and the connection with people, I'm sure the situations where people read something years in the past, the seed of the idea sticks, but it's not for a long period of time until they kind of get to the point where they need to engage with you guys on the new company was kind of born out of the ideas that were within the book. The new technology is a subset of that as a capability within that. The types of people that you're trying to engage with, then, are they in particular niches or are they across across industries, but they're suffering from a particular problem.

Dona: When I've done the, of course, the research on it. Looking back over the companies that we have worked with, it's really funny that they have often been in financial business they're looking to improve. Many times it's been an owner-led business and they're looking to pass it on to a management group or perhaps to family members and they want to ready the people that they have from this stage of depending on the owner or the principal and they know that they have to exit out and they want to make sure that the people are prepared for all of that responsibility and accountability that they're going to have when that individual is out of the picture, mostly like they may be on the board still or they may be there for advice but they're not going to be there in the day to day. And I feel like that's where we really can lend some great insight and we can really help develop people so that they are feeling that they are ready.

Stuart: Right, and Jeff, was that your experience as you stepped away from the day-to-day stuff? Were you still somewhat involved in the organization or did you kind of step away completely?

Jeff: I didn't want to be that go-to person where all of the leaders would come to me for because I would typically have the answer at the tip of my fingers so you're going well. It'd be better if I wasn't there. So, although I'm still, I still was involved, but more at a board level. Rather than helping people find out what motivates themselves, which I still believe in I think I probably played maybe more of a role of a cheerleader rather rather than a motivator, because I don't think you motivate anybody. You help people motivate themselves, but and I still do some of that but I do think that I'm more of a cheerleader than I am a motivator does that translate sorry?

go ahead. Sorry, carry on I was just gonna does yeah, story, it's your podcast.

Stuart: I was saying as we just started the podcast. I'm down at the office in florida as opposed to home in pennsylvania, so the extra satellite delay is obviously just catching us out a little bit. I was gonna say the that experience of stepping away. Does that inform, inform the relationships that Donna was talking about, of helping other organizations as they're planning that transition? Have you found that most people are in that position where they're thinking about stepping away and therefore your experience kind of reinforces an existing belief? Or do most people find it difficult to make that transition and they've kind of got their fingers still in various bits in the pie and perhaps your perspective of needing to make that separation is a conversation that they haven't had before?

Jeff: I'll let you answer that, donna, because you probably look at it through a different set of eyes than I would.

Dona: I certainly utilize Jeff as an example in that to, to the extent that it. You know that I'm not being annoying, and because every situation is different and so the extent that a person needs to be there to support may be situational depending on the organization, but certainly we help the individual to understand that the mindset of being a board member and the role of being a board member that literal we actually write a literal job description for them because they sometimes have to see that document to go okay, yeah, remember, you're there to guide the CEO, but really not the CFO or the people that work inside the business and you're no longer in operations, and so that they do actually have to make this mental shift.

Stuart: And that requires coaching and it requires some structure yeah, I imagine it's so difficult, particularly for organizations where they've got the longevity and they've been there for so long. Not is it a job, but it's also what they do day in, day out. And then, as Geoff was saying, the fact that you do have the answers at your fingertips because of all of that 40 years of experience, and it almost seems like it would just be so quick to answer the question but to have the realisation that for the organisational good it is beneficial to step back and almost have to go through the pain but whilst you're still around, if the worst were to happen or if it was a very pressing question, but to kind of orchestrate that transition rather than just let it kind of tick over and all of the problems that that brings up. It's a it's a good insight that I imagine that a lot of people would find benefit from, actually not just theoretically being told it, but hearing it from someone who had been the mill of that.

Time always goes fast on the podcast, I could think I kind of I end every podcast by saying the same thing, so it shouldn't catch me out, but every time I look at the clock it goes fast. I want to wrap up, I guess by just looking at the two books, because oftentimes we're just talking to one person and we're in that one particular model. What I really like about this show is it's given the balance of the two approaches, but I think there's a similarity and a job of work that sits underneath both of them in this idea of a conversation starting book, and the two approaches are different, but it allows you to start conversations with those people. So is there anything that now you're a little bit past writing? Then obviously there's always the opportunity to make changes, but is there anything that if you were starting again from today, you would come to the project with a different mindset or try and get a different outcome from it?

Jeff: Donna, why don't you go? I'll finish, because there's a couple of things that I'd like to comment on, but I know, donna, you're much more analytical than I am.

Dona: So I do want to hear your thoughts.

Yeah, I think I would employ more of a marketing mindset and I would think, okay, if my audience is an entrepreneur, then I'm going to get more into the mind of that person and I'm going to write a book that's going to be helpful and appeal to them. And so I tend to tended in this book to start from my base of knowledge and that's not the way an entrepreneur thinks about their business. So then I would incorporate more language, so talk to entrepreneurs and ask them, like, what are the problems you're trying to solve, and then write the book that helps with that. So that would be now the approach I would take yeah it's so difficult, isn't it?

Stuart: because we all come to it with our own experience and it's difficult to kind of mentally switch that to the the different perspective. Jeff, what were you saying? Sorry?

Jeff: I think the one thing you know, you is critical and I think it's part of even looking at your format for a 90 minute book is who's your audience? Who's your audience and why are you writing it? And so for me, from my standpoint, my audience were my children, and I really wanted to have a strong message for the kids in terms of what actually took place over those years, and I think the book accomplished that for sure. And there's a lot of carryover because there's a lot of people who I think are entrepreneurs that think that there's things that happen that just fall into place. Well, nothing really falls into place unless you make it. So I think that message comes across really well in that book.

But to Donna's point, I also think that you could probably do I could have done more of a how-to. Some of the feedback I got from some of the members of the staff who read it that knew me quite well, said I'm really your book didn't go into enough detail. It's 190 pages or whatever it is. I wish it was 300 pages. I wish it was 400 pages because you know you've got so many great stories that you know they know me and they could almost hear me talking to them as they were reading it, and so if I were to have done that over.

I think the book I wrote was accomplished. What I wanted to do, the next one that I do I want to actually, this is pure entertainment, but it's also the book that I'm going to write is about humor and why humor is the great equalizer in any situation where there's all kinds of tension, and I think that was one of the things that I really was able to do. Well, but not from a marketing standpoint, but just from a pure, from a pure easy listening or easy reading and entertaining from it. I'd like to write a book that entertains you from some of the incredibly you know, incredible family stories that have taken place, and not only just family, but what I consider family, through work and situations that you cannot, you can't imagine the most bizarre and I have a sick sense of humor and I think I think people like reading something that's going to make them laugh and some of those situations and stories that I've been fortunate enough to experience in my lifetime. I just want to share that with people because there's some great stories.

Stuart: And that's the great opportunity, isn't it, To be able to capture those things and get them down in a way that other people can consume. It's so difficult, or such an unfortunate scenario. We had a good friend down here who unfortunately passed away, must be three or four years ago now, just at the beginning of not related to COVID, but at the beginning of COVID. Dick Holland was his name and he had such a wealth of fantastically hilarious stories and we even doing what we do. We were saying for years that we should get them documented and captured, but we never quite got around to it. So hopefully no one on the call or listening is about to shuffle off in the way that dick did, but it's a reminder to kind of capture them and get them down as quick as possible. Plus, I think you and I the three of us we share a kind of commonwealth sense of humor, which is much more hilarious than an american sense absolutely absolutely not wanting to offend half or three quarters of the audience.

I've really enjoyed this, guys, like I. Like I say every podcast, the time just goes so fast. It'd be really great at some point in the not too distant future to maybe do a follow-up show and just talk a little bit more in some detail. I want to make sure that people have got the opportunity to follow along with the journey and find out more about what you guys do. So where would be a good place to point people to?

Jeff: And I can make sure that there's a link in the show notes Amazon, and why can't? We is the name of the book and my name. That's all you need to do. Just google it on Amazon, you'll find it. Yes, I'm on Amazon as well.

Dona: Yeah, I was going to say I'm on Amazon as well. We both took well 90 minute books, helped us to set up our books in the Kindle app and on the Amazon site, so that was. I would have hated to have had to have figured out that process on my own. So we thank I'm very thankful for that. We also we do have our website, rhealize.com, and Rhealize is spelled R-H-E-A-L-I-Z-E beg your pardon, that it's. It's spelled that way because it's based on the mythical lady Rhea, who was the mother of Zeus, the Greek god, and Rhea was a person that used her intellect and her wily ways in order to solve her problems rather than using the power she had as a god, and so we felt that was kind of a very fitting and she was also the.

She was also the goddess over midwifery and why I felt that was appropriate for me as a person is I actually refer to myself as a midwife for entrepreneurial ideas, because I find that I can actually help bring that out of and yeah, but I don't stick around to like, raise the child, I just help them to get born and I move on that's okay.

Stuart: It's good to, like Jeff was saying before, it's good to know your specialties and your skills and then leave the rest to other people definitely an implementer, not a pro, you know, a program runner right, yeah, I'm, yeah, I have similar tendencies.

That's fantastic. I'll make sure there's a link in the show notes to those sources for people, everyone as you're listening. I think we've heard a couple of examples today. Both kind of tie into this idea of conversation, starting books, and whether it's a personal story that you're telling, or whether it's more of a how to, or whether it's more of a framework, just the opportunity to get this in front of people and move the world forward by starting more meaningful conversations. These guys have had a great example of that. So, donna, jeff, thank you very much for your time. Everyone, thanks for tuning in and we'll catch you in the next one very much.