From Chaos To Clarity: Build Your Ultimate Marketing System | Allan Dib

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There are some products that are just so revolutionary they just pull demand. But for the most part, those are exceptions and a lot of people just use that as a cliche. Hey, we're the best in our industry. And fundamentally, that's usually not true. Alan Dib is a bestselling author, marketing strategist, and entrepreneur whose book, The One-Page Marketing Plan, has over a million copies sold globally. Allan has become one of the most successful voices in business growth and practical marketing strategy.

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>> The worst thing, the worst mistake you can make is to say, "Yep, we do everything. We do SEO. We do web development. We do brand design." You're you're signing up for Mission Impossible. But you don't have Tom Cruz on staff. Unfortunately, over a million books I've sold, nobody's ever asked me what my why was. They just saw through the book. They thought what it will do for them. You know, Steve Jobs wanting to change the world or make a dent in the universe

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or whatever. Nice story, but that's not why I'm buying the hardware. So, where you want to start with is who are my people? Who's my tribe that I serve that I care about? And a lot of times you'll find it's your former self. >> What's the biggest mistake you typically see with entrepreneurs and how they price uh their products or their services? This episode is brought to you by Wix Studio. Here at the Agency podcast, we're building a community and we would love

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for you guys to be a part of it. So, we would love to hear from you. What are you enjoying the most? What would you like to see more of? And what do you think might be missing? Drop a comment. Make sure you subscribe. And now, on with the show. Man, I just I'm a massive admirer of your work. I think you've become a part of the literature in the landscape of like getting up to date with marketing and I understand your background actually wasn't even in the sport of marketing. So like just take me

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into that briefly man cuz I think that's so fascinating how this whole journey started for you. >> Yeah, not even remotely. I mean I started life as a dead broke IT geek. Um and yeah, I was I was working for a boss. I'm like why am I working for this idiot? And um and then I became the idiot and I'm like uh I'm I'm good at the the technical thing I'm doing but like you know I think Michael Gerber calls it the entrepreneurial seizure right it's like I'm good at the thing I

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I'll start a business so and of course customers will start rolling in and of course they didn't and um you know out of necessity I just had to figure out the game of marketing. How do I get new clients in the door because it was frustrating. I'm good at what I do but can't get clients in the door. So that took me on a good decade long journey on figuring this thing out. >> I I love stories like this because you know Michael Gerber like I'm a huge fan of the E-Myth uh which is one of the

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first books I ever read and it's a meticulous read but like his concept around you know the entrepreneurial journey. It's not an easy one. Yeah. >> It's it's not something you just you know happily walk into. It's a it's a tumultuous, painful, rigorous journey >> and it's frustrating when you're good at what you do and you know you're technically good at what you do and and in fact I mean we were in the situation where some of my competitors would hire

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me to train them on the newest technology and they'd run rings around us financially and I'm like what is going on? Like uh we're we're so good that competitors are hiring them hiring us to teach them the tech but they're miles ahead of us financially. And that's when I figured out and thanks to a I had a mentor at the time. Uh he's like, you know, people don't know how good you are until they buy from you. Before they buy from you, they only know how good your marketing is. And that's

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when the penny dropped for me. And I'm like, >> wow. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. So, >> can you take me into that? Like if that was your uh seizure moment, like like what happened? Like walk me through it. >> Well, he's like the best marketer wins every time. And initially I'm like that's not fair. That's that's you know that's uh you know why shouldn't the you know we believe in meritocracy right and unfortunately we don't get what we deserve we get what we negotiate right

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so if life was a meritocracy nurses firefighters school teachers would be the highest paid people in our society right but turns out that that's not the case so you don't get what you deserve you get what you negotiate and that's what I really learned from my mentor and he he took me on a on a journey around Hey, the best marketer wins every time. So, you've got to think of yourself as the marketer of what you do, not the service provider. So, you're not an IT guy. You're you're a marketer of IT

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services. You're not a butcher, baker, candlestick maker. You're a marketer of those services. And that's what makes the biggest difference because really everything is downstream from marketing. If we don't have demand, you're screwed, right? So, no matter how good your product is, that's a customer retention tool. It's not and we need customer acquisition. >> Now, you would have experienced this like I have where you have a tremendous amount of conversations with clients and

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I'm sure you've had tens of thousands of experiences. There's that common question around like, but our product is really good. And that's the argument is like, "Yeah, but we're the best and we put the most energy in and all our competitors suck and we really care about the outcome." How much of that is a myth with how you can actually build a business? Look, there are some products that are just so revolutionary they just pull demand. Like you you think of something like an iPhone or at the time

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iPod or whatever, but for the most part um those are exceptions, right? So when someone wants to be exceptional, by definition, they're an exception. So you might think you're the best accountant, the best doctor, the best lawyer, the best agency, the whatever. In reality, that's rarely the case. You're an exception. you're like the, you know, Olympic ver equivalent of a someone in sports, right? So, you may be really good at football, but you may not be at the AFL level or you may be amazing at

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running, but you're not at the Olympic level. Now, if you're at the Olympic level, okay, that's we we can have a conversation there, but that's an exception. So, for everyone else, and you know, myself included, you included, everybody included, we've got to figure out a way. How do we get in front of our ideal target market so that we're ideal for them rather than just saying we're the best or whatever? And a lot of people just use that uh as a cliche. Hey, we're the best in our industry.

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We're the leading provider. We're the whatever. And fundamentally, that's usually not true. I >> I would agree with that. And I think where I kind of picked this up early in my career was uh Grant Cardone had this great quote where he's like, you can't build a business in obscurity. >> Yeah. If they don't know you exist, how the hell are you going to do business with them? >> Yeah. And the other thing is you don't need to be the best. Like for example,

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um Tiger Woods would be a terrible coach to coach me at golfing because I mean he's just so far far ahead. The best coach for me would be someone who's maybe, you know, several levels above me who really can relate to how a beginner needs to hold a club, how a beginner needs to start, what what should I what should I do fundamentally. I mean, he's he's operating at such a high level that, you know, he would be giving me little tiny tweaks, which is kind of useless for someone who doesn't even

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know how to hold a club or hit a ball, right? So, you don't need to be the very best to really win in the marketplace. You you need to be the best for your client. You need to be the best solution or the best perceived solution for your client, not necessarily the best in your industry. You're you know, you're not trying to impress your peers. You're trying to impress your ideal target market. >> Oh, that's prolific. That makes more sense because then you're appealing to

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person who's actually doing business, not the person who's trying to take you out. >> Totally. There's something I I I saw about Tiger Woods and there was a quote where uh he essentially created the metaphor where he said, "Okay, let's just say you don't know how to play golf." He said, "If you're a professional at playing golf and I want to make you a world champ, it's going to take me four years to train you." >> Yeah. >> But if you're a beginner and you know

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nothing, it'll take me two years. >> Yeah. When you think about entrepreneurs in the market and the way they build business, are there behaviors and things that they need to unlearn when it comes to being effective at marketing? >> Yeah, I I see it all the time. So, we see the same recurring patterns. So, a a lot of times is what I call Superman syndrome. It's like uh or you know, they they're kind of the vanilla ice of their ind. So, I'm dating myself here, but you know, if there was a problem, yo, I'll

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solve it, right? So um and so that there's that Superman syndrome where you know I'll take on the problem everything comes through me uh and they become that bottleneck and it becomes in the beginning that's great everybody doing everything in the business them being the superman who solves all of the problems them having all the knowledge all of that that's great get you up to a million in revenue maybe 5 million in revenue maybe at the out outermost depending on your industry you could get

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to 10 million in revenue that way but at some stage you're going to hit a ceiling and you're going to be the blocker in your business. So really figuring out how to build a team, how to build infrastructure. So a lot of what we do is help people build marketing infrastructure in their business because a lot of times the rain maker is the entrepreneur, the CEO, the founder. Um they're the best person to sell. They're the best person who clients always want to connect with. All of that sort of

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thing. And so that's just a massive massive growth bottleneck and every everything has to go through them. Every decision, every piece of content, every idea, all of that sort of stuff. And so massive massive roadblock. So see that all the time. And so the answer to that is how do we build a systemized process that marketing gets done whether you're in the office, whether you're out of the office, whether you're traveling, whether you're whatever, right? Busy on the next project, talking to a client,

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all all the rest of it. I'm excited to get under the hood on this because I think there's a lot of people potentially listening to this that feel like they are the bottleneck in their business and I know I've experienced this. I'm sure you have. Um where where it just feels like you need to solve every problem and if you don't things aren't going to work out. It's going to be the worst case scenario. So, I want to start with something that I feel like is quite potentially contrarian, but I

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think is awesome, which is um a statement that you mentioned, which is start with by, not why. >> Yeah. >> What do you mean by this? >> Look, you run a branding agency, so I'm sure you've had every stupid branding discussion on on the planet, right? Um and so, I mean, I I've been on a call with entrepreneurs so many times where they're like, I'm looking for my why, you know? I need to figure out my why. I'm like, dude, you manufacture screws for, you know, industrial car parts,

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right? Like, you know, so don't don't worry about your why. Let's figure let's figure out how do we create more value for your target market so that they value what you do more so that we can charge more so that we can deliver a lot more value. And so really, at the end of the day, no one cares about your why. Uh, and I'd suggest, you know, whether it's you, me, nobody cares about my why. Maybe my wife, maybe my mom, you know, other than that, people want to fe want to know what value uh do I deliver.

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Nobody's ever asked me with with the over a million books I've sold what what my why was. They just saw saw the book. They they thought that it deliver them some value and they worried about what what it will do for them. Like, they don't care what my why was. And and frankly, it's kind of irrelevant. So, uh, and this kind of comes up in branding discussions. Like back in the day, I used to do kind of like corporate consulting and we're working with a a telecom company and they want to figure

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out their why and you know their brand purpose and all of that and we spend two days breaking our heads and come up with we connect people with ideas and content or some some [ __ ] like that, right? So, at the end of the day, we sell broadband internet, right? And uh never had a customer ask, "What is your why?" You know, they they want to know how fast it is, how much it is, how quickly we can get it installed, all of that sort of stuff. And so, this kind of discussion just becomes irrelevant. You know, every

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time I hear that, I know, man, the person's been sucked in by Simon SK, which look, hats off to the man. A great hook, really, really well done. Amazing speaker. I love the guy. But um this stuff is just a lot of fluff and really most of the time just distracts people from the core focus of where they should be heading. >> So there's something around this I want to like I want to play with you on because I think that a portion of our listeners would totally agree with what you just said and then a portion might

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be like well hang on a second I'm a fan. Um I'm thinking about like what you're saying here and I would agree with the part that the client is essentially a narcissist. And what I mean by that is like if you think like a true marketer, a true marketer goes all the client cares about is themselves, their outcome, their means, their benefits, their perks, their motives, their drivers. In the event where you see a brand uh with with a why attached to it? Is it something that adds meaning to the person in some cases or

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are you just flat out saying like honestly it just comes down to the intrinsic value exchanged? So, it's definitely above the intrinsic value and I'd love to delve into that where we talk about brand because brand is all about going above the intrinsic value of of what you do. But, um, so for examp I'll give you an example. So, Tom's shoes, right? So, they you know, you buy one, they give one away to someone in need. Love that, right? >> You get a good feeling. >> You get a good feeling. All of that sort

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of thing. But if I hate the shoe, even that that's that's not going to make me buy the shoe, right? that that's peripheral. That's something that makes me feel good about the transaction. And and again, I would say that's not really a why. That's really a a marketing tactic, right? So, uh so >> really your why is kind of like you know what your why is, right? So, you know, we've got Simon SK drawing about, you know, the the first little little circle, then the second circle, then the

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third circle, and people are like, "People buy why you you created that computer." No, I buy a Mac and I buy an iPhone because it integrates with all my stuff. It's uh it works really well. I can update it easily. It doesn't get hacked all the time like an Android or or whatever. That's my why. That's that that's the why I'm an you know, I buy Apple gear and stuff like that. So, uh, you know, Steve Jobs wanting to change the world or make a dent in the universe

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or whatever. Nice story. But that's not why I'm buying the hardware. >> Now, when you you're good friends with Donald Miller as well as as I understand it. So, when you think about like the brand, like the let's say the intrinsic value being exchanged, but then there's the the value above it that kind of carries over with it, the feeling that's attached to it, the experience, uh, the tone of voice, you know, the design, all that kind of stuff. what what potency does that add to a product if if you

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were to calculate its its uh its value like how how do you segment this product is going to exchange value for the customer the brand comes along with it like how do in your mind how do you see them working together as a different mechanism >> it's huge so um >> uh accountants I love working with accountants and bookkeepers because they give me straight answers and they give me my favorite type of straight answer a number right >> yeah So, um, and interestingly, uh, so I've been through several business exits

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and acquisitions and things like that. When you, like if you sold your business and let's say you sold it for $10 million, if $2 million was your, you had $2 million worth of inventory and then you had another $2 million of plant and equipment, your accountant would write $6 million goodwill. They would have a little line item on your balance sheet called goodwill. Now goodwill is a very tangible thing even though it sounds like an airy fairy concept and a lot of the goodwill will be the brand value of

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your business. So they'll they'll say all right 2 million planning equipment 2 million in inventory and 6 million in goodwill. So goodwill is something that is really tangible that is monetized. Now you don't it's not on your balance sheet till you make a transaction. it's not on your balance sheet until you know you you've sold the business or whatever, but you've been building it over the last whatever 5 6 7 8 10 years or whatever, right? So, um there's the intrinsic value of what you do. So,

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let's say, you know, we look at this glass and it, you know, what's the commodity or utility value of this glass? Let's say it cost 25 cents in materials, another 50 cents in labor or and then bit of packaging. Let's let's call it a dollar, right? So that's kind of the utility commodity value of that thing. Now if you have a a strong brand, if you if people want to choose this glass over every other glass in the industry because you've got an amazing reputation, you've got an amazing story,

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you've got a whatever the the amount above the intrinsic value, that's your brand equity. So if you sold that for $5, there's $4 worth of brand equity in there. And that's super valuable. That's that's what makes a business super valuable, that brand equity that you bring into the into what you sell. Otherwise, you're selling a commodity. >> I love what you're saying here because I think sometimes people can really oversimplify what branding really is. I saw a great metaphor recently where it

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was explained that you know if you think about a logo for a brand uh and then you think of what the brand means um it's like saying okay you you have a wedding ring which symbolizes something but the marriage is totally different. >> Yeah. So when you think about what the brand means to the consumer, if that goodwill is strong enough, if that equity is strong enough, you can sell your business at a force multiplier. Totally >> because of what the brand means. >> Totally. It's it's it's what it means

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and it's the reputation with your customer base or your ideal target market. So think of it this this way. Imagine you're a knock at the door, you open it, and it's some random stranger at the door and he says, "Man, um, can I crash at your place? I've got nowhere else to go." Well, you'd be like, "Who are you? Where where are you from?" and all of this. And maybe you'll maybe you'll help them out of the out of the goodness of your heart or face value or

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whatever. You have no reputation. >> Exactly. You have no reputation with me. But imagine it was your best friend. You'd be like, "Dude, of course, you know, help yourself to the fridge. Stay as long as you need. What can I do to help?" Or whatever. >> They have brand. >> Exactly. Exactly. >> That's a great metaphor. >> Yeah. So, that's exactly the way I think about brand is what's your reputation with your ideal target market and then monetizing that because if you don't

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monetize that, it's kind of pointless, right? So, if we look at the commodity value of anything that's got a great brand, whether it's Nike sneakers, whether it's Apple hardware or whatever else, the the amount you're paying over and above the intrinsic value of the thing, that's the brand value. That's the value of the brand. So, you know, iPhones are what, like two grand or whatever. They're probably $500 worth of parts, if that. So, there's so much brand value in there. And uh whereas if

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you don't have that brand value, you're selling your phone for $1,000, $700, $900, whatever it is the a lot of the sort of knockoff brands and things like that do. Clients want it all. A slick looking website that can run their business and scale with their success. Wix Studio is built for that. Plan out your client's whole site in seconds with AI powered site mapping and wireframing. Then when everyone's on the same page, jump into the creative. Starting off in Figma or in the Wix Studio editor with

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play from your playbook. If you don't mind, like how do you define the difference between and this is going to be a tough one, but like marketing uh branding and advertising? How do how do you tend to compartmentalize them in your head? Because I think for the viewers, if you can give them some definitions from your playbook, I think it'll add some good measures to how we go through the rest of today's episode. >> Sure. So, let's start with branding. So, branding, as I said, is kind of your

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reputation or the personality of your business. So, if you think about someone's personality, yes, how they dress is part of it, right? So, but that's not the whole thing. Like people obsess about colors and fonts and all of that. And yes, that's that is part of it, but that's uh that's where a lot of people stop and I liken that to how someone dresses. So I dress in a t-shirt and a jeans uh versus maybe a suit and a tie. So uh that's part of it. But just like we talked about, you know, your

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friend who knocks on your door, right? So the way they dress is not the whole of their personality. It's like you got to know them over the years. Maybe they've got a great sense of humor. Maybe they're really loyal. uh you love hanging out with them. So, and one of the reasons why I say start with buy not uh not why is because a lot of your branding is the personality of your business, right? So, what's you know who who does your friend or who does your business associate with? So, that's part

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of the personality. So, it's it's basically everything that creates an emotion around what you do. So, yes, it's how you present yourself. Yes, it's how you talk. It's the words you use. It's how you show up. But one of the best ways for someone to find out what your brand is is to buy from you, right? So, just like, you know, if you were to try to maintain a long-distance relationship, well, it is kind of possible, but very, very difficult, right? So, you know, if you and your

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best friend were hadn't seen each other for 10 years, you might maintain you might jump on a Zoom call every now and then, you might text every now and then, you might uh whatever, but you're definitely going to create some distance. You're not going to be as close as, hey, you see each other every weekend, right? So, very similar. The best way for someone to uh to build a brand is to sell. And when we look at a lot of the big brands, we think about, you know, the flashy billboards, the TV

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campaigns, and all of those things. And that's often the result of their brand success. That's not what preceded it, right? So, uh, when we think about like a Nike, they started by selling, you know, shoe, athletic shoes at track meets out of the boot of his car, right? Phil Knight. And then Coca-Cola started with a dude selling syrup toarmacies. Uh Apple started with the two Steves selling single board computers at trade shows, right? So they all started and built their brand on sales, on selling

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the thing. So the customer got the feeling of what it was like to work with them so that they built that reputation with their tribe around what their products stood for, what they were like, what it was, what it tasted like, what it felt like, what it what it acted like. So just like you know your friend will build a reputation with you based on you guys hanging out, you guys doing things together, you guys you know experiencing things together. So that's how I think of brand. I think of brand

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as your reputation and the personality of your business. >> It's such an important lesson because you touched on sales there and I think oftentimes that you know people think about branding and marketing and advertising and they kind of skip sales. they kind of overlook how crucial that is at the very genesis of scaling a business. >> So when you think about sales and when you think about getting out there in the market for the first time, what are some things that founders should think about

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before they start branding and designing and all these other extra steps? Y >> how how crucial is the sales process and how should they how should they utilize it? So I really believe in a super integrated approach from uh from start to end. Meaning what a lot of people do is they start with okay we've got this product, we've got this widget, we've got this technology or whatever. Now let's sprinkle some marketing on top and try and get people to demand it and buy it and all of that sort of thing. Um

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you've always got to start, especially if you're in the beginning, you've got to start with who your people are. So we want to sell stuff to our people, not find people for our stuff, right? So very very important distinction. >> Okay, make that distinction though because a lot of people confuse the two. >> Yeah. So a lot of people are like, "Oh, look, I've come up with this amazing app idea or I've come up with this technology or I've got this widget or

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I'm importing this product. Okay, now let me find a market for it." And so in Silicon Valley they they call it a solution in search of a problem. you know, I've got this kind of technology, I've got this app, I've got this whatever. Now, let me go out and find someone. And nine times out of 10, you find out actually no one really wants to pay for this. It's it either doesn't solve a problem or it doesn't solve a big enough problem that someone's willing to pay for it or someone's not

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really willing to pay much for it. Uh so, that's a massive problem. So, where you want to start with is who are my people? Who's my tribe that I serve, that I care about? And a lot of times you'll find it's your former self. So, uh, you are perfectly positioned to serve the person you once were. So, I once was a dead broke IT geek as we we discussed. I was trying to figure out how do we how do I get clients in the door? I'm really good at the technical thing I'm doing. Uh, I I love the work I

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do. I do really good work, but no one's buying from me. You know, I can't find clients. And so, I know what that feels like. And so when I write copy, when I think about my target market, I think about my former self. I don't have to kind of, you know, work with weird concepts or try to think about what how is my target market feeling or whatever because I know because I've been there. I've been in the trenches. I've been at 3:00 a.m. awake worried about how am I going to make payroll? Where's my next

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client going to come from? Being frustrated that my competitors are doing better than than I am. And so that's one way to really get very very clear around your target market is if you have been part of your target market before. If you haven't been, you need to do quite a bit of in-depth research and and figure that out. So sometimes you just see an opportunity, you say you see an underserved market and you think, you know what, I could do a solution for them. And that's totally valid. Then

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that's totally fine. But if you you're not part of that target market or if you've never been part of that target market, well then you've got work to do. you need to do a lot of deep research and and figure that out. So, first you this is where you want to start. Who are your people that you're going to serve because once you understand them really really well? Once you can enter that conversation that's going on in their mind, it's going to be really really easy to come up with a a solution that

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really gives them product to market fit, which is really the holy grail of business, right? So we want something that's got product tomarket fit that really solves a painful solution for our target market. Is there any danger in what you're saying there around um being your own target demographic? And I have an example um and it was uh Mark Written and he had this great teaching in one of his programs where he said that okay I'll give you a scenario. Scenario A, you're um a tennis racket company and

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you have two options. You have a famous tennis player or you have an experienced marketing veteran and you can choose either or to help you identify and lead your next marketing campaign. He was stipulating in the event where uh uh let's say we we choose the famous tennis player, >> they might overindex on what they themselves think the market really wants, but they're a professional player. They don't serve or represent the greater market >> whereas the marketer might ask a lot of

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questions to your point like you got to do your research. >> Yeah. When you think about people self diagnosing, is there any risk there of people assuming that they know the target audience, but they they're really identifying themselves, but maybe they don't symbolize or represent the greater group, if that makes sense. >> Yeah. Yeah. I know what you mean. So, in that case, I mean, if you were selling to professional tennis players, I mean, that's a different story to you're

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selling to the wider market of people who are amateurs and who are interested in tennis and things like that, right? So, um, >> but if you're an exact fit, that's different. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. So, uh if like I know what it's like to be an entrepreneur who not getting leads, who's struggling, who's like technically good at the thing and and those sorts of things, right? So, I think that's why my books have resonated so well with my

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target market is because it's very very clear that this this is a book I wish I had when I was first learning marketing. Right? I wrote I I always write books that I wish I had that my former self wi wishes he had. Right? And so if you can create the product that solved your problem. So let's say you've gone through a weight loss journey, let's say you've gone through divorces, let's say whatever, and you can now help people who are going through a similar journey. It's very very different to if you'd

00:30:13 - 00:31:13

never been there. If you'd never been in those shoes for for multiple reasons. first of all from a product to market fit perspective. So how closely can we create a solution that actually solves that painoint but also from a marketing perspective because we want to enter that conversation going on in their mind and we want to connect with them emotionally that's going to be very very hard to do like you know if I if I had to uh connect with a target market that I know nothing about that's a challenge

00:30:42 - 00:31:31

right and so it's not insurmountable I'm going to need to do research I'm going to need to figure it out and I'm going to need to go cheap. So, it is possible, but it's way more of a challenge than if I had been there. If I'd been in those shoes, >> which I think is why you're talking about the sales process being so critical. >> So, you say selling is the best way to build a brand. Can you take us like way down the rabbit hole on what exactly you mean by that and how people can do this

00:31:07 - 00:32:05

for themselves, how they can rigorously test to make sure that they're building something that is super marketable to their target demographic. >> Yep. So early on what we want to do is we want to figure out product market fit. So what product market fit means is we've got a painkiller to someone's pain, right? So if you think about if you've had a splitting headache um and you you open the the cupboard, oh damn, no, I've got no pain medication. You rush down to the pharmacy. How much

00:31:36 - 00:32:22

selling does the pharmacyist have to do to get you to buy pain medication? >> Not much. You're already there. >> Not much. Right. So and even if he doubled the price on you, you'd be like whatever. like I just need to get out of pain, right? >> Like service stations or petrol stations. Yeah. >> Exactly. Exactly. So, uh that's what I mean by product market fit. And so, you can only figure that out and often there's a trial and error component for sure. So, and often you can only figure

00:31:59 - 00:32:50

that out when you're trying to sell a product. So, the only the only definition of product market fit is are people buying this? Are people buying? So, it's not theory. It's not, you know, I think people may buy this. I think people may want this or whatever. No, it's people are buying this and it solves a real pain point for them. You're selling painkillers. You're not selling vitamins, you're selling painkillers, right? So, vitamins are nice to have and maybe want to prevent

00:32:24 - 00:33:24

problems or whatever, but most people are much much more motivated by painkillers. So, is it a painkiller that's actually going to solve a problem for your target market? And that's demonstrated by buyers, you know. So uh always test your ideas on check writers or people who you what what people do with their wallet not what people do what with what they say. Uh in marketing we call that revealed uh preferences versus stated preferences. A lot of people you know sometimes people will do

00:32:54 - 00:33:54

a survey or whatever they'll say hey if I created this app or whatever would you buy? And people yeah for sure I I would buy that. I would pay $20 a month for it or whatever. And then you go oh great here's the signup page. uh uh well, maybe another time. I'm not sure if I need this right now or whatever. All of that sort of thing. So, uh you want to base it on people's actual behavior, not what on people say they will do and not what what people think they will do. Like, it's funny, like I saw a um I

00:33:23 - 00:34:30

think it was on Twitter and um a guy posts this uh shirtless picture of himself, his uh muscles are popping and all of this sort of stuff. And um and you know there were tons of comments below say saying um I much prefer dad bods and all of this sort of stuff. But when we see actual swiping behavior on dating apps and stuff like that we find that no that's actually not the case. They they don't prefer dad bods. They prefer the guy who's ripped and tanned and uh you know in shape. So what people

00:33:57 - 00:35:01

say and what people actually do very very different. So sales is that filter like someone pulling out their wallet or and their credit card and buying the thing. That's the signal I want. It's not them telling me, "Yeah, sure. I'll I'll buy it if it was was ready." >> Right. So you're saying that when you get into a transactional state, the uh consumer, the client, the audience will transition from uh sure I would to well hang on a second. Yeah. So what is it

00:34:29 - 00:35:30

about the sales process that allows that to happen and how can people test that? Like for example, let's go into maybe uh product versus service and how do people test each? >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> So yeah, the asset test is does this thing sell? Does this solve a painoint that someone is willing to pay for? So if we think about it in a in degrees of pain, right? Someone might be in a little bit of pain but and they're willing to pay maybe a little bit of money for it u but not as much as you're

00:34:59 - 00:36:02

asking for. So, uh we we want to figure out, hey, we've got a problem. We've got a and a solution that someone is willing to pay a lot of money for or at least as much money as we want to make from that product or service. So, this is this is where we want to test with our with our market. Will someone actually buy this? So, is this something that actually solves a problem that someone is willing to pay for? So, we would test that with products, we would test that with services. And there's a ton of variables

00:35:31 - 00:36:25

from a pricing, packaging, and positioning perspective that that we may we may dial, but uh we want to figure out is this something that's actually solving a problem for my target market that they're willing to pay for? Because a lot of times, uh uh you you may have a solution to a problem, but it's just not a very big problem in their life. They're just, you know, it's a minor irritation. It's not something it's, you know, if there was a solution there that was cheap or free, maybe maybe they'd do

00:35:58 - 00:36:48

it. But, um, it's not that big a deal. I've seen that so many times with like, uh, an app or something like that. And when you look look at your phone, there's probably maybe, I don't know, a dozen apps that you use on a regular basis. The rest, you know, if they've got uninstalled or deleted or whatever, you probably wouldn't have noticed, right? So, uh, very, very similar in your target market. Is this something that actually solves a problem that someone's willing to pull their wallet

00:36:23 - 00:37:24

out for? And now we've got data, right? So, we can see, okay, so they're willing to pay this much for it. And then, uh, the beautiful thing about the sales process is, objections, questions, um, retention. So, did someone pull their wallet out thinking they were getting something and they got at something different? now they're asking for refunds or there's complaints or bad reviews or whatever else or what questions are we getting in the sales process. So that's something that we

00:36:54 - 00:37:52

want to feed back into our marketing. You know uh are people asking the right questions and what objections are they getting? So uh a lot of the when we work with a client we generally look at three areas where we get really really good data on what does the target market actually wants. One is sales. So we'll listen to sales calls or look at sales transcripts. What are people asking? You know, what are the recurring questions that keep coming up? You know, does it do this? Does it integrate with this?

00:37:23 - 00:38:34

Does it whatever? All of that sort of thing. Then in at the help desk, so what are people writing in uh either complaining about or or saying good things about or what what what issues are they encountering? And then reviews. So those three give us really really strong data points around messaging. So uh what message is going to resonate with our target market and all three of those require a sale to have happened right? We can't uh just pull those out of the air. So someone needs to have bought for them to be able to leave a

00:37:58 - 00:38:47

review or to deal with our help desk or customer service or uh have sales objections and those sorts of things. So from that we can ga g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g g gather real actionable data that we can use in our marketing because now we're entering a conversation that's going on in the head of a buyer. It's not someone who's just random who may be thinking about it, who maybe doesn't care or some survey or whatever. >> Yeah, I like what you're saying about

00:38:23 - 00:39:15

like really trying to look at the transcripts in the sales process. We recently had Dan Martell on the podcast. We Yeah, he's great. We're having this great conversation about, you know, uh, marketing and copywriting from marketing funnels and so forth. He's like, "The best funnel copywriting you'll ever get is if you get a transcript from a successful sales call and then you move that across to the funnel and you say that on the website. You say that in the funnel." >> Totally.

00:38:49 - 00:39:53

>> Now, something I want to talk about regarding like target audience and how they might differ in the sales process. So we hear a lot of conversation that Gen Z are obsessed with values perhaps more than other generations. What's your take on the different motives of each generation and how they might differ? >> Honestly, I uh I think of audiences not in terms of generation and um you know there are definitely subtleties and things like that but I think of it much more in terms of psychographics. What

00:39:21 - 00:40:19

what are their dreams? What are their desires? What are their hopes? What are their fears? what are their frustrations? And so, yeah, that that may differ slightly, but at the end of the day, like you said, uh the na the narcissist's approach, right? It's like, what will this do for me? Um, yes, the the values may be part of the purchasing decision, but I don't think it's ever the main thing. I don't think that's the the main event. If the product doesn't solve my problem, but you have amazing

00:39:50 - 00:40:45

values and all of that sort of stuff, probably still not going to be a sale. So, I'm always thinking about what are the psychoraphics of the target market. What are their hopes, dreams, desires, and then thinking about um niching in a multi-dimensional way. So, when people think about niching, they're always thinking about like industry like I'm going to sell to dentists or I'm going to sell to lawyers or I'm going to sell to doctors. That's great, but that's one dimension. Then we can look at other

00:40:17 - 00:41:26

dimensions like um what's a uh what's an outcome that they want? Uh so maybe they're wanting to exit their business, right? Or maybe they want to import products from China or maybe they want to get a government grant. Um so uh that's another dimension. Then we might look at um another dimension like geography. Maybe they're based in Melbourne or San Francisco or LA or whatever. And then as we layer those different uh dimensions of of niche, that's when we we really start to

00:40:51 - 00:41:48

pinpoint our people. So when we've if we said, look, we want to work with dentists who are based in the LA area who who are looking to retire and exit their business in the next two or three years. Now we can come up with a very very targeted solution for them, right? Because if we say, "Hey, you know, we'll work with any and every business on the planet." Um, you're going to have to come up with so many different custom solutions for people. One guy wants to exit this his business, another one

00:41:21 - 00:42:16

wants to grow it, another one wants to scale it. Uh, one guy works in construction, another guy works in dentistry, another guy is in whatever manufacturing. So, it's going to be very, very hard to be all things to all people. Whereas if you can say, "Hey, we work with this particular target market who has this particular problem who want this specific outcome," um the sales going to be a lot easier. The results are going to be a lot better and you're going to be able to really create that

00:41:48 - 00:42:38

production line of results because if you're having to do custom work for everybody, uh you know, we've got different people who want different things in different ways, that becomes very, very expensive. So that's going to really smash your margins as well. You've probably seen that um classic uh iceberg, right? Under the water, right? So, at the top, you've kind of got the superficial stuff. You've got the features, the benefits, the intrinsic value. You know, it's made of good

00:42:13 - 00:43:13

glass. It's, you know, it'll last you a long time. All of that sort of thing. And the false lever that people try to pull is our thing is better, our widget is better, our service is better, our whatever is better, right? And unless it's really truly 0.00001 O001 world class that's not going to really move the needle much because once you get to good enough like if you know if the glasses will hold the water and it's not going to spill everywhere that's good enough right I don't need it to be the

00:42:43 - 00:43:55

best glass in the world right so once you get to good enough you get diminishing returns so the the lever that you really want to pull ne to get now a little bit deeper is can you deliver it faster is it going to be easier to use is it going to be less risky? Is it going to have fewer side effects? So that's kind of like level one below the surface, right? Then if we wanted to go level two below the surface, it really comes down to story, right? This is the glass that King Louis III used or whatever. Like uh like um

00:43:20 - 00:44:16

like if I if I ask you like what do you reckon the most valuable painting in the world is? Like just just out of >> the Mona Lisa. >> Mona Lisa. Everybody says Mona Lisa. And so um I think it was back in 1929. Do you know why it got famous? >> No. Please tell me the story. >> Okay. So uh I think it was back in 1929 or whatever it uh it got stolen >> and um >> in the 1920s the Mona Lisa got stolen. >> It was not a big deal. Like it was like a random like it was valuable painting.

00:43:48 - 00:44:42

It was a Da Vinci but like like it was like all the other Da Vinci. No one really cared about it. it. No one cared about it so much that it when it got stolen, no one noticed for a couple of days, right? So, it was like not a big deal at all. >> Some security guards like, "Yeah, hey, >> yeah, it's it's gone." You know, and it it was missing for a ages. And um and uh it was not a big deal, but then it became a a thing of national pride. You the press picked it up and they're like,

00:44:15 - 00:45:05

you know, someone's stolen it. They've disgraced our country. This and that. They all of this sort of thing. And the story behind it is what's made it so valuable. >> I didn't know that. >> Yeah. Wow. >> So, prior to that, no one no one really cared at all. >> You find out later it's just a giant marketing plan by the museum. >> Well, it was this whole thing. It was this uh you know, it was gone for years and some guy had like it the because the

00:44:40 - 00:45:32

press blew it up so much the because the guy was initially was going to sell it on the black market or whatever, but now it had become so famous it's in every newspaper. Everyone's crying out that it's gone and missing and all that and he's like, I I can't I can't sell it now. So, he just had it hanging in his lounge room for like years until it got found or whatever or I don't know. He turned it in. I can't even remember what the exact story is. >> Just turns it back in like my bad like

00:45:06 - 00:46:03

>> but yeah, it was it was not at all like now it's a priceless probably the world's most priceless painting out there. Why? Because of the story, right? So level one is kind of features and benefits, intrinsic value, the thing that what it does. Then level two is okay, we can do it faster, better, cheaper, with less risk, with fewer side effects or whatever. That that now increases the value. You know, if I need this super fast and you can deliver it really fast, great. You've increased the

00:45:34 - 00:46:41

value of that that product. Then level three is story. what's the story behind this that I can really get behind that really touches me emotionally that you know creates that pride or greed or lust or desire or whatever. And um the deeper we go the more we can charge. >> Now I want to talk more about positioning and niching. Sure. >> Um now you've said that the days of the generalist are kind of >> over. What do you mean by this? Because I'm constantly in debates with clients

00:46:08 - 00:46:59

about their notion that hey like we're targeting everyone. I think personally that comes from a place of fear of like well if I'm niched I'm not going to get the conversion. I'm not going to get the attention. There's not enough people in the market in that niche. >> Yeah. >> How do you help people wrangle and and come to terms with this? >> It's so counterintuitive. Like it just feels like uh if you widen the net you've got a bigger addressable market.

00:46:34 - 00:47:22

That's that feels logical, right? >> Yeah. If I have a fishing troll with a massive net, we're going to get more fish. >> Exactly. Uh and so it it just feels natural. But the the wider your net, the more general your message has to be, you know, like we talked a bit about uh earlier, right? So if I say, "Hey, my stuff is for anyone and everyone, then I've got to talk to the dentist. I've got to talk to the chiropractor. I've got to talk to the guy who's got a

00:46:58 - 00:47:52

million dollar business. I've got to talk to the guy who's got a hundred million dollar business." and they're they've all got massively different problems. They've got massively different ideas of what success looks like. They've got different ideas about what they want to do. And uh so the the more general you are, the harder it is to land a message because saying, "Hey, I'm for everyone." is the same as saying, "I'm for no one." Right? So what

00:47:24 - 00:48:25

we want our audience to do is when they see, hear, or read our message is to say, "Oh, hey, that's for me." Right? So, and that's going to be very very hard to do, impossible to do with a general message. It's like, hey, we're just doing everything for everyone. Very, very hard to do. And some sometimes I'm having that conversation with uh marketing agencies. In fact, I spoke at a marketing agency event and um you know uh you you run a marketing agency. I'm sure you you would have run

00:47:54 - 00:48:46

into this where, you know, clients just come to you and they're like, you know, solve all my problems, you know, like like >> and they're like, can you do it all all for me? Yeah. >> Do it all for me. Solve all of my problems. Make me go viral. >> Right. >> Yeah. >> Um and so, uh you know, the worst thing, the worst mistake you can make as a marketing agency is to say, "Yep, we do everything. We do SEO. We do web development. We do brand design. We'll

00:48:20 - 00:49:20

do Tik Tok. We'll do YouTube. will do everything. You're you're signing up for Mission Impossible, but you don't have Tom Cruz on staff, unfortunately. Right. So, um you're going to fail your client. Not because you're bad, not because you're incompetent or whatever. It's just like there are just like there are people who uh are like experts at one slice of one slice of one slice for a particular niche and there's no way that you're going to beat them at everything

00:48:50 - 00:49:53

for everyone, right? So uh the agencies that really win are the ones who clearly know who their client is, what solution they solve for that particular client and they do that at an exceptional level. So I'll give you a couple of examples. I know a guy who all he does is Tik Tok ads or coaches and consultants. That is it. So he has absolutely nailed that niche. He'll get bums on seats for webinars, for events, for whatever. And he just knows his craft and he can just roll that out over and over again. another agency that all

00:49:22 - 00:50:14

they do is get video testimonials for SAS companies, right? So, they know how to do that. They'll set up a Zoom call. They know the questions to ask. They know how to edit the video. And so, boom, you've now got a whole bunch of video testimonials on your SAS product page. So, I I think you can't be too niche uh because there's six billion people on the internet. Uh and >> Well, that's a good point because I think, you know, gone of the days where you're geographically locked with your

00:49:48 - 00:50:57

skill of expertise. Totally. >> Yeah. >> I mean, I've I've sold over a million books and I would venture to say 99.99% of the planet has no idea who Allen Dib is, right? And so with 0.001% market share, I can build a very very good business. I uh I've got a good personal brand. I've got a I've got an amazing business, make a lot of revenue, make a lot of profit, and hardly anyone on the planet knows who I am, right? So, you don't need a huge market to do very

00:50:23 - 00:51:26

very well out of whatever you're doing. >> So, is what you're saying here that there's more um a a larger likelihood to close business when you have a niche versus trying to have a mass broad appeal. >> Yeah. Far far more likelihood. Totally. If you even if you you before we're talking about the example with Nike, right? Like uh today they're in every sport category uh with every variant of every shoe you could imagine. >> Like you said, at once at one point in

00:50:54 - 00:51:42

time, he had a waffle irons shoe in one color in the boot of his car. >> That's it. >> That's exactly right. And same with Apple. It was a single board computer for hobbyists who want to kind of tinker in their garage with a personal computer. Right. So that was a very very specific target market. Now, and once you crush one target market, like let's say you're really dominating this target market. Great. Well, now let's add another and another and another. So, you

00:51:18 - 00:52:16

can you can add other verticals, other horizontal niches. >> Yo, my name is Dane Walker and I am disgustingly obsessed with branding. I had to figure out a way to do branding every single day. So, I branded myself. Then I started my agency, Rival. >> And hired a team of branding mavericks hellbent on creating brands so good that they'll make your competition their pants. So here's the thing. You want your brand to go viral and Rival makes brands go viral. That's why we're

00:51:57 - 00:52:52

offering you a free 30inut branding session to get an expert's opinion. If you don't believe me, the proof is in the pudding. Here's what clients have to say about Rival. Rival is trusted by brands like Nutrition Warehouse, Light My Bricks, and Voomie. >> So, if you want to absolutely smite the competition and make your brand go viral, hit the link below and book in your free 30-inute branding session. So, so what about the argument around okay like if let's just say I have two or

00:52:24 - 00:53:27

three perhaps radically different psychoraphics within one brand system how do I solve for the marketing in that case like I don't want to have a schizophrenic landing page that talks to everyone at the same time how do you manage that from a marketing standpoint >> so what what I would do is uh often I'll work with a client and we'll ex I'll say look let's export your entire customer base out of your CRM or your zero or your accounting system or whatever and just sort them for me from best client

00:52:56 - 00:53:41

to worst client, you know? So, at the top, best client is like, "Oh, wow." You get a phone call, it's it's going to mean something. It's going to mean good news, more business. They they're calling to rave about something that went well or whatever or tell you some good news. You always want to answer it. You love hearing from this person at the bottom. It's like, "Oh, god damn it. Like, not this guy again." Like, he's going to what's he complaining about

00:53:18 - 00:54:25

now? like uh you know complains about price, pays late, difficult to work with, always wants to talk to the CEO, whatever it is. And so rank them from best to worst. At the top, you'll find are the clients who pay you the most. They're the funnest to work with. They pay on time. They're easy to work with. You love working with them. At the bottom, they're just pain painful, pay late, always complaining, never never happy, whatever. Right? So, we start from there and then often you'll find

00:53:52 - 00:54:56

that those clients up there almost without exception, they make up like the most of your revenue and you probably spend the least amount of attention on them. You're spending most of your time putting out fires and appeasing the the guys who are complaining the loudest and always um creating problems for you. So, what we want to do is potentially even fire the bottom 20% of clients. You don't have to fire them, but often it'll just free up so much resource that we can just double down and focus on our ideal

00:54:24 - 00:55:22

target market. So you'll find that at the top you'll have ideal your ideal target market and there'll be a lot of commonalities. You'll find commonalities either in industry, in demographics, in psychographics, in size of business, type of business, what whatever it is. And so we want to do more business with those kind of people and then fewer less less business with some of those. Now in the beginning sometimes you can't be as discerning. You're like you know we need all the revenue we can get. That's fine.

00:54:52 - 00:55:45

No worries. Um you can decide whether you want to take them on. But the the target market at the top, the ideal target market, they're the people we want to actively go after. They're the people we want to create content for. They're the people we want to advertise to when we're doing our advertising and targeting. They're the people that we want to use the right messaging and language with. They're the people that we want to really focus. They're the people we have top of mind. Now, if

00:55:19 - 00:56:09

somebody outside of that target market comes to us and we want to take it on because we need the revenue or profit or whatever, you can decide that's fine. Look, I'll I'll take this on. It's not it's not an ideal fit client or whatever, but I'll take them on. So, as long as you're doing that deliberately and you're you know what you're doing and but you're still focusing your resources on attracting your ideal target market, that's fine. You know, >> that's such a good exercise and we're

00:55:44 - 00:56:29

going to encourage a lot of people I'm working with to do that. >> Powerful >> cuz I think in the event where you're like, man, who is our target audience? How do we discern what it is and isn't? That's a great exercise. What what should someone do in the case if they're looking at their current list of clients and let's say they're like, "Yep, happily would fire the bottom 20%." What should someone do if they're looking at their target audience list and saying to

00:56:07 - 00:56:59

themselves, "Well, the audience we want, we don't have them yet." >> Well, you you usually you'll have had some experience at least even if it was in the past or or whatever. But if you're looking at your business and all of your target market is wrong and you you hate them, well, you've definitely done something wrong, >> you're screwed. Yeah. >> Yeah. I mean, you you you'll you'll often um you'll often find that was a result of your messaging. You know,

00:56:33 - 00:57:25

sometimes um like I was talking to someone who was like, "Hey, I want to do like a 5day challenge to attract clients or whatever." And I'm like, "Dude, you're going to be attracting people who've got more time than money, right? people who've got money like like I want the the solution yesterday, I want it now and I'll just pay to get it done. Like I I was working with um a couple of years back we were doing our own rebrand and I was working with a web developer

00:56:59 - 00:58:01

and uh you know of course we're on a call and uh he tells me the price I go no problem and then of course I ask you know how long is it going to take and he goes oh well we've got to migrate the hubspot we've got to set up the web flow blah blah blah all of that right and he's going I reckon it'll take 6 weeks and when a web developer tells you six weeks it really means 3 to 6 months right um And I said to him, "Look, um, I will pay double if we can get it done in a week." Um, and he's like, "Uh, let me

00:57:30 - 00:58:24

talk to my guy or whatever." And anyway, we get back on court. Goes, "All right, done." Uh, so to me, it's way more, you know, saving those three, four, five, six months was way more valuable than paying him him more money. Uh, you know, I just wanted it done. We still didn't quite do it in a week, but it was probably close to two weeks, but it was wasn't 3 to six months, which is what it would have taken had I just gone with that. And you'll find that people in the

00:57:57 - 00:58:56

right demographic uh will value their time much more than they value money. Uh and you it depends what uh demographic you're operating in, right? some some demographic will drive all the way across town to save a few bucks on something and they just they've got more time than they've got money, right? Uh and so it depends who you're attracting with your marketing. So 5day challenge guy, I think you're going to attract more people who've got more time than they've got money. The person who's

00:58:26 - 00:59:24

got who's in pain, who's got money, who needs a solution right now, look, just give me the solution right now. I'll pay whatever it is and and just get it done. How can people test um messaging themselves? I'll give you an example. Let's say uh someone's really trying to reach out to the wealthy class in their space, but they don't necessarily have access. They've never dealt with them. What are some things people can do to presume how they can then position themselves for future clients?

00:58:55 - 00:59:52

>> I mean, there's a deeper answer which we we could we could spend hours on, but the shortand I would give you is you want to sell time, money, or status. So that's if you can save me time, if you can elevate my status within my peer group, if you can make me money, uh then as someone wealthy, you've got my attention, right? So >> So as you move up the totem pole of people that have, let's just say, little to no means of resources and >> high agency and high resources,

00:59:24 - 01:00:29

>> you're saying that it tends to come down to time, money, and status. >> Yeah. And especially time like like once you've got money and resources I mean your most scarce resource becomes time and I mean we can get a bit philos philosophical about this but really what money is money is just stored time or stored value right so >> okay >> so money is just like an IOU for your time right so every everything really like the most scarce resource is is time so if you can if I've got a lot of money

00:59:56 - 01:00:50

my most scarce best resource out of anything else is my time. >> I would agree with that because typically the more wealthy people are on a sales call from my experience is like how long is this going to take? >> Yeah, >> you got 16 minutes. 16 minutes. Okay. Like you have you have this almost like this uh they cut through the noise. >> Well, the most interesting thing is you can hardly ever get them on a call. They'll usually do most of the business over text message. It's like, "Yep, just

01:00:22 - 01:01:17

get it done." like uh so uh if I mean and I mean I think of my own behavior. I'm not massively wealthy or whatever, but I've done okay. And you know, I don't want more Zoom calls in my life, right? Uh I don't want more phone calls or whatever. If I can just solve it with a text message or a Slack message or whatever, that's what I'll do. Like I've gotten down to really two uh meetings a week with my team and that's it. like I have an hour meeting with my CEO and I

01:00:51 - 01:01:50

have a half an hour meeting with my head of marketing. That's my meetings for the week, right? So other than that, I'm doing stuff that I enjoy like podcast, like writing, like traveling, like whatever. Right? So most of the stuff that that I would do and in my experience that high netw worth people do is just over text. They're just like, "Yep, get it done. How much is it going to cost? How long is it going to take?" Whatever. Right? So make it easy, frictionless. that is your path.

01:01:20 - 01:02:20

>> When it comes to the genius zone, do do you think that that's why potentially entrepreneurs can burn out is because they're working on stuff that they don't really want to be doing? Like like how many people do you think are really dealing with this? >> Oh, tons. And um you know, the best hack I've ever found is just staffing your weaknesses and also just figuring out the guy who's got the answer to your problem. So, I spent so many years just trying to do hack things away at trial

01:01:51 - 01:02:37

and error. You know, in school we get taught um you've got to figure out the answer to all all the test questions, right? So, if you're really good at English and your friend is really good at maths, you can't team up and say, "Hey, you do all the math tests. I'll do all the English tests and we'll we'll team up." Uh that's called cheating. That'll get you expelled, right? Whereas in business, that's exactly what you've got to do. You've got to say, "Hey, I'm

01:02:14 - 01:02:59

really good at this stuff, so I'm just going to focus and double down on that. You're really good at that stuff, so you're going to focus and and double down on that, and that's how it's going to work." So, the school system completely uh doesn't prepare us for entrepreneurship in any way, shape, or form. So, it's completely opposite. So, >> you're giving me flashbacks to high school. I had a one of my friends I used to catch the bus home with after school

01:02:36 - 01:03:21

was like like a total bookworm, and we used to play video games together, but he liked homework. he liked, you know, solving problems like that. But I remember saying like, "Hey, man, like you could probably sell this. People hate doing this stuff." And uh he's like, "Well, I can do all your homework." So I'd pay him 20 bucks a week to do my homework and all my assignments and all the rest of it. And then I was like, "This is great." Then I started going to the school and saying

01:02:59 - 01:03:47

to my friends, "Hey, I got a guy who can do all your homework. Give me 50 bucks." And I was doing commerce at school. I'd take 50 bucks a week. I give him 20. I'd use the 30 to buy lunch. So, like I get I get your point, but that's that's the that's the whole idea of like entrepreneurship is to uh find a problem, identify a problem, solve the problem, and put a team together that do the things that you're not great at. >> That's it. >> But you're the identifier. You're the

01:03:23 - 01:04:19

curator. You're the one putting it together. >> That's it. And that kind of comes back when we talked about Superman syndrome earlier on. Like in school, we get taught that we've got to solve all the problems. We got to figure it all out. We've got to do the test. we've got to, you know, and um that does not translate to entrepreneurship at all. Uh at best, you'll just hit a scalability cap. At worst, you you're going to fail in your business. >> Okay. So, with with pricing, and I just

01:03:50 - 01:04:56

want to really dive into some of the psychology around this because you've talked about it in your book. Now when people think about pricing they they often don't think about the actual price tag itself being a part of their brand plan. >> So how does pricing actually affect someone's brand perception in the market? Like take me into the science of how that works. >> Sure. >> Yeah. >> So there's three things when I think about pricing. There's the price uh

01:04:23 - 01:05:26

obviously uh there's the positioning and then there's the packaging. So >> it's a price positioning packaging. >> Price positioning packaging. So let's talk about each. So price uh let's think about like a little scale that we've got here. And so uh Warren Buffett says price is pay what you pay value is what you get. And so kind of uh obvious but um think about it on a scale like if pro if the price of something is below the value that's a good deal. You want to

01:04:55 - 01:05:59

everyone wants a good deal. I want something that's more valuable than the price I'm going to pay now. And the wider that gap is so if value is right up here and price is down here. This is a great deal. I'm I'm I'm in. There's product market fit. um we're we're going to this thing is going to fly off the shelf. No brainer. >> No brainer. Whereas if price and value are very very close, it's like yeah, maybe I might buy it or whatever. If um if on the other hand uh uh the price is

01:05:27 - 01:06:24

more than the value, we've got no deal. And in fact, you might even call it a scam, right? A scam is something where it costs something but there's no value, right? So um so we want to make sure that this gap between value and price is as wide as possible. Now one way to widen it is to lower your price, right? And so that's what a lot of people do. They're like we're going to lower we're going to widen the gap by lowering the price. Now you don't need any skill to do that. And you know there's always

01:05:56 - 01:06:50

someone willing to go out of business faster than you. It's a losing strategy and you can only kind of get to zero. The floor is zero, right? There's only one lowest price competitor in the market. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. And so it's it's not the way that that you want to go. So the other lever that you want to pull is value. We want value to go up so that you know the gap gets bigger and it becomes a no-brainer to do a deal. It's kind of like, you know, if we were to take this to the

01:06:22 - 01:07:28

extreme, if I had a $100 note and if I was selling it for $80, no brainer. I'll buy as many as you've you've got, right? So whereas if I was trying to sell it for $120, well, why would I do that? That's that's that's a that's a stupid deal. So um so we want to widen that gap. And I mentioned earlier a few factors that you can use to to widen that gap. The first one is uh speed. You know, can I deliver the thing faster? Uh so uh you know, if I if I'm in we talked about the web development service, I was

01:06:55 - 01:08:00

willing to pay double because we got speed. Uh the next is ease. Like think about um some of the things that we've switched to over the years like Netflix or Uber or whatever. They're actually the same as the old services. Like Uber's just taxis and Netflix is just cable uh TV or whatever, but they've added massive ease and convenience. You know, I I press a button on my mobile phone, I can track the the Uber coming to my location, it arrives, payments handled seamlessly and all of that. So,

01:07:28 - 01:08:32

it's the old thing, but it's just more convenient. Netflix is just TV, but we got rid of the ads and I can do it on on demand, right? So, I don't have to wait for a particular day or time or whatever to watch my favorite show. I can binge watch it anytime I want on demand. So, it's just the old thing more convenient. So, if we can do do it faster, if we can do it more convenient, the next one, the next lever is risk. Can we reduce the risk associated with and risk has kind of two elements. It's like it could be

01:08:00 - 01:08:51

the perceived risk that you won't deliver on your thing. But it's also a lot of times people look at the risk involved in themselves. They don't believe like I might believe you're the best fitness trainer on the planet but I don't believe that I can stick to it the exercise plan. I don't believe in myself that I'll stick to the diet or whatever. So, you know, that the risk element goes both ways and you've got to address that. You've got to say, you know what,

01:08:26 - 01:09:16

uh, I'm I'm an amazing fitness trainer and I know how to get people to stick to the the program. It's going to be really easy. I'm going to give you the the whatever, right? And then the final element is side effects. You know, I want the thing, but there's these negative side effects to it or or whatever. So, you know, I want the I want the new car, but you know, I'm going to have to service it, and there's no place that I can take to service it within 30 minutes of where I live or

01:08:50 - 01:09:48

whatever else. So, um, if you can address those elements, you widen the gap. So, if you can deliver faster, uh, or if you can do it more convenient or easier, that that increases the value. if you can reduce the risk, you know, if I've got more uh certainty that you'll deliver or that I'll be able to implement whatever it is or if you can remove the side effects of whatever it is, it automatically becomes more valuable and I can charge more for that. So, for example, uh I'll give you an

01:09:20 - 01:10:14

example from my own life. I've changed accountants maybe three or four times in my business career and I've never changed accountants because the new accountant was a better accountant than the last accountant. They've all got roughly the same bag of tricks. Um, the reason I change accountants is because the other guy's more responsive. He's faster. He's more on the ball. He'll reply to my email. Uh, we can we can get on a phone call quickly or whatever. The uh, so it was had nothing to do with the

01:09:47 - 01:10:48

core thing that they did. It's not because he's better accountant, not because he's the best or whatever, just because turns my phone calls really quickly, um, responds to emails, whatever. So often it's these peripheral things and we work with a lot of clients and we survey their clients. We we ask you know hey what do you why do you work with Dane? You know if we surveyed all of your clients I bet we would uncover stuff that you didn't think of and um and often people are like no people work

01:10:17 - 01:11:13

with me because I'm an amazing lawyer or I'm a great doctor. I really care whatever. We talk to the clients and we're like, you know what? Um, the re the reason I work with him is because of this thing that that they never thought of. You know, he's he's super responsive or he cares a lot or they always answer the phone or whatever, right? What whatever it is. And it's almost always peripheral to the main thing you do. So, I call that doing the common thing uncommonly. Well,

01:10:46 - 01:11:51

something I want to shift gears into because I I love what you're saying here about side effects and and making sure that like people are having a better experience and you're mitigating risk and so forth and it totally makes sense to me. Something I want to understand that that you teach really well is flagship content and building assets, not just ads. Um so you say founders need to build marketing assets like I guess people that build wealth or compound financial assets like what do you mean by this and and what might be

01:11:19 - 01:12:30

the first step? >> Sure. So um if you think about like people talk about you know hey the rich just get richer and um the reason that the rich get richer is because they've got assets that generate cash flow. So if you own real estate, you can generate rental income. You own stocks, you generate dividend income. Uh and so uh in the absence of assets in in this case we're talking about financial assets in the absence of assets, you've got no other choice but to use labor, right?

01:11:53 - 01:12:53

And so uh you in the beginning uh unless you've inherited wealth or whatever, you're exchanging labor for money, right? And yes, maybe your labor gets more valuable as you get more skills and things like that. You get you get paid more and more, but that's going to reach a cap pretty quickly, right? So, the way to incre continue to increase your wealth is through assets, through owning businesses, through owning real estate, through owning stocks and things like that. Now, from from a marketing

01:12:24 - 01:13:25

perspective, the exact same thing is true. We generate leads, we generate clients, we generate cash flow. We can do that through labor by doing difficult stuff like cold calling, cold outreach, interrupting people, all of that sort of stuff. And that's okay in the beginning. In the beginning, maybe you don't have any other choice. Just like if you start in the workforce, you've got no assets or whatever. You've just got to exchange your labor for, you know, uh for money. But as soon as you possibly can from a

01:12:54 - 01:13:51

marketing perspective, you want to build marketing assets in your business. So things that generate leads, things that generate clients, things that generate revenue without you having to create labor for it. So to use something to use an example from my business, it's my book. So this is an asset that every single day generates leads. People come into our business saying, "Hey, I read the book. I I want to join the coaching program or tell me more about this, that, or the other, whatever." I get

01:13:22 - 01:14:31

invited on a podcast. I get invited to speak. It opens doors that would never have been open to me had I not had this asset in my business. So, uh it's an asset that uh just keeps generating leads. Uh you so and it doesn't have to be a book. It depends uh on your business, depends on uh what your strengths are and things like that. For you, it's this podcast. This is a super powerful piece of content where you know pe attracts an audience. people get to know you, people get to connect with you

01:13:57 - 01:15:02

and generates lead flow, generates goodwill, generates that revenue. So, um, a really key cornerstone in my book, Lean Marketing, is uh is your marketing should be so valuable that people would potentially pay for it, you know? So, in my case, I mean, I don't make tons of money from the book. I make a little bit in royalties or whatever, but it's essentially free, right? You can get it on Kindle for like $2.99. People can listen to this podcast for free. Uh but it's so valuable that there would

01:14:30 - 01:15:36

definitely be a segment of an audience that would pay a subscription fee to listen to this podcast because it's amazing content, right? And so you what you want is you want to create a positive externality. So >> externality. >> Yeah. Externality. So ex an externality is a an economic uh economic jargon. So if you've studied economics 101, an externality is a side effect of an economic transaction. So I'll give you an example. Um I'll give you an example of a positive externality and a negative

01:15:02 - 01:15:58

externality. A a negative externality is you've got a factory that's manu manufacturing products and it's blowing dirty smoke up into the atmosphere. So economists would call that a negative externality. It's it's creating a cost to the community. that's, you know, people are now breathing in dirty smoke. It's causing smog, all of that sort of thing. So that's a negative externality in the community. So I'm I'm manufacturing all of these products. I'm

01:15:31 - 01:16:35

getting the benefit and the cost is going out to the community, right? And so a positive externality is where you create a positive effect to people not involved in the economic transaction. I'll give you an example from my own life. So, uh, maybe five, six years ago, we we built a house and we're high up on the hill. And then just, uh, overlooking my balcony is, uh, my neighbor's backyard. And they spend all day long in their backyard gardening and weeding. And they've got a beautiful fountain and

01:16:03 - 01:16:52

all of that. And I sit on my balcony and I enjoy that beautiful garden. It didn't cost me anything. I don't have to water it. I don't have to weed it or whatever. So, they've created a positive externality for me, right? So give us their thanks. You know, >> I'm like, yeah, I mean, they get to enjoy it for sure, but but they they pay for it, right? So I get to sit sit on the balcony. I look at the beautiful garden. I look at the little fountain that they've got. Um and I enjoy it. And

01:16:27 - 01:17:29

it's a positive externality. It elevates the street, elevates the community, all of that sort of thing. So from a marketing perspective, um historically marketing has been a negative externality. So we interrupt people, we spam people. Now we've got AI slop uh all over the the the place. And so for a very long time that was how marketing and advertising was done. It was just like we're going to spam people, we're going to interrupt people, we're going to uh send ads, we're going

01:16:58 - 01:17:58

to send uh interruptions and things like that into their life and a small percentage people will buy. So we were creating this massive pollution in the atmosphere with our marketing and advertising in the hope that a small percentage would buy. That's incredibly wasteful because we're first of all we're creating a whole heap of bad will like every time you get spam you're like god damn it like you know and you send them to the spam folder or delete it or whatever right so it's creating bad will

01:17:28 - 01:18:29

and remember earlier we we were talking about goodwill we want we want goodwill right because goodwill we literally monetize that from from a branding perspective so you're creating badwill um you know you're getting a very very low conversion rate, you're annoying lots of people. Uh, and it's kind of soul crushing to have to like speak to a thousand people to get one conversion or whatever. So, what we found is that a better way to approach it is with marketing that creates positive

01:17:59 - 01:19:02

externality. We want to positively affect people that will will never buy like uh just like you do with this podcast, just like I I do with my book. I mean, probably 99% of people who read my book will never buy anything from me ever. And that's totally fine. They they got value from the book. Uh it created some goodwill. If I helped them, that's great. And I get to hear all of these success stories. And uh you know, it's crazy. I get fan mail. I've gotten emails from people in Mongolia, right?

01:18:29 - 01:19:25

So, so I mean there's so many people who've been impacted by this positively and will never buy from me and that's totally 100% okay because there's a small percentage who will. But either way, it's creating a lot of goodwill in the marketplace. Same with this podcast, right? There's there's a ton of people, probably the vast majority of people who listen to it, get great ideas, implement something in their business or whatever, and never never buy from you, never never pay for anything. And that's

01:18:58 - 01:19:56

totally fine because the right people, a small percentage will they'll reach out to you. They'll say hey say hey man um help me build my brand. I really connect with your ideas and things like that. So from a marketing perspective um creating positive externalities is super super powerful but it's also super efficient and it creates a lot of goodwill. There's so much goodwill that that's created and even if someone's a non- buyer they may refer somebody. They might say, "Hey, you got to read this

01:19:27 - 01:20:25

guy's book. I really" and so many times that's happened. You know, someone who's not bought from me, but referred the referred someone or given a copy of my book and they've uh connected with us or connected with our piece of content. So, from that perspective, we want to create positive externalities. So, getting back to your question around flagship piece of content or flagship assets, a flagship asset is something that creates a positive externality. It's a piece of content or it's a tool or it's an

01:19:56 - 01:20:53

experience that creates a positive externality that you're famous for. So in my like I said in my case it's it's my book. In your case it's your podcast. So what's a piece of content or what's a tool or what's an experience that you can be famous for in your ideal target market that even if somebody never buys from you that still creates a lot of value for them. And importantly it kind of crystallizes some of your uniqueness. It uh shows them how you're different.

01:20:24 - 01:21:15

Um and it just creates a lot of value for your ideal target market. And we we're talking about your ideal target market. We're not saying for everybody. We're saying just for your tribe, for your people. It's creating a lot of value for them. It's something that they may uh share with their friends or whatever or colleagues or whatever else. And so we're creating that positive externality. We're not spamming. We're not AI slop. We're not interrupting. We're not sending cold calls and all of

01:20:50 - 01:21:39

that sort of thing. We're creating a positive externality in the marketing world. >> Alan, I love that you're shaking this tree and really making this a point because I I I totally agree with you. Some of the craziest uh things that have happened to me and our team has been from like giving stuff away. Like >> every time we do a keynote, we give away our online course. We're like, "Yeah, you scan this. You get it for free." We don't market to them. It's like boom,

01:21:14 - 01:22:09

this is yours. the book, like you said, like the the spontaneuity and the opportunities that a million copies of this book. You're saying that you can measure your success by the actual impact you're having on some community out there without asking for anything. >> Totally. Totally. >> What's the craziest thing that you've experienced personally uh through the book or through like a podcast or like through something you've thrown out there that like boomeranged back?

01:21:41 - 01:22:51

>> Oh man, so much. I mean like um like I said uh I mean I used to have a an IT business as I mentioned. I used to have a telecom business. Nobody ever called me and said wow uh thank you so much Alan. Um our telephone systems working so well like that never happened. The only time we heard from people was when there was a problem or something went down or whatever. Uh but I literally have two people in my team who help who help me sift, sort and screen fan mail uh from from people that comes in each

01:22:16 - 01:23:27

day. The door some of the doors that it opens. So I remember as a dead broke IT geek, I I would listen to audio books and I'd listen to like uh Duct Tape Marketing by John Jans or Profit First by Mike Mallowitz or whatever. And now um these guys who um were my heroes are now peers. We get together on a uh like we'll do webinars together. We'll promote each other's books. Once a year we get together at Donald Miller's place at his ranch and we share ideas for two days. We swim in his pool and um he he

01:22:52 - 01:23:46

sends a chef out to cook for us. And so >> bro, how do I get excited? >> Sell a million copies of the book and and you're in. >> Damn it. I'm only I'm not I'm not not quite there. But like it's incredible that um you know my heroes have just become my peers and you know I have to pinch myself sometimes you know I'm I'm hanging out with such cool people like I said Mike Mallowitz there's John Jance um meet Sati was there James Clear was there and um Amy Porterfield Pat Flynn

01:23:19 - 01:24:22

like it's just like the who's who of non-fiction and I'm like this is a room that you cannot even buy your way into right this is not an event where you can buy a a ticket to or whatever it's like this is an invite only event based on merit and and um is is incredible like to that you know people who are my heroes have become peers. Um you also just get invited to amazing events to speak to uh to get on amazing podcasts and things like that. So it's really really cool some of the doors that it

01:23:50 - 01:24:44

opens. And you know, like I said, a book is not for everyone. For you, it could be a podcast. For someone else, it could be a YouTube channel. For someone else, it could be just a tool. So, um, there there are very practical ways to do this. Like, for example, HubSpot for a very long time, one of their growth strategies was they had a website grader tool where you would go in and you would grade your website to see, I don't know, is it SEO optimized? Is it good for conversions or whatever? And they knew

01:24:18 - 01:25:17

people who were using that tool probably need a CRM system, right? So, uh, and that was the source of their lead flow. And again, they were creating a positive externality, a free tool where you can just go in and and you know, grade your website, get a report or whatever. And maybe the vast majority of people will never buy HubSpot, but a good percentage did. the the the point you're getting at is like if you give like genuine value to the market, people will find a weird way to pull you into their circles.

01:24:47 - 01:25:46

>> Oh, totally. Totally. It opens doors and it just creates massive, massive goodwill. And you don't know who your stuff is going to touch. And I mean, we talked about niching earlier. It's really about the right eyeballs. It's not necessarily about the maximum number of eyeballs. It's really the right eyeballs. And you know, you can, you know, some people are like, "Hey, I created this piece of content and I only got like uh 100red views or a,000 views or whatever." And I'm like, just

01:25:16 - 01:26:25

visualize a hundred or a thousand of your ideal audience in a room. That's you'd be stoked. Like imagine you were in a room with a thousand of your ideal audience. You'd be you'd be stoked. it whereas you know we see we compare metrics to like a hormone or a Gary Vee or whatever and um you know it's it starts to become just like vanity metrics. >> What's your advice to a founder who's considering giving it all away for free but they're fearful of a their competitors are going to steal it from

01:25:50 - 01:27:07

them or b that if they give it away for free why would anyone do business with them? >> Yeah. Yeah. Good point. Um, give away your best stuff. I I always say and honestly like you could give your entire playbook to your competitor and 99 times out of 100 they will do nothing with it. You know, people worry about their competitors way way way too much. You know, most businesses die of starvation, not murder. So, um, uh, I I heard another good quote. They said, "If you've got a really good idea,

01:26:29 - 01:27:27

um, you're probably going to have to ram it down people's throats. They're not going to steal it from you, you know." So, um, and that's definitely been my experience. Give away your best stuff for free. Um, and the question becomes is, "Hey, why would people buy your your stuff?" Well, exactly the same because it's a different experience working with you. You know, just the same as, you know, I can stream Taylor Swift for free on Spotify or YouTube or wherever, but

01:26:59 - 01:27:51

people pay thousands of dollars to go see her in concert. Um, why would why would you do that if you can hear the music for free? Because it's a different experience. Cuz, you know, reading the book for $2.99 on Kindle is a vastly different experience to being coached one-on-one with one of our expert coaches who takes you through the whole program, who helps you implement it, who helps hire the right people, and all of that sort of thing. So um and there'll be a segment of the market who are like

01:27:24 - 01:28:13

look just help me fast track this right I've become one of those people I mean I'll read a book by someone like if I'm trying to solve a problem I'll read the category defining book in that industry but nine times out of 10 I'll reach out to the author or their team and I'll say hey just help me fix this you know because I can muddle my way through it and try and figure it out and do trial and error and all of that sort of stuff but that's going to cost me time money

01:27:49 - 01:28:52

energy and it's going to end up way more expensive than if I just say, "Hey, guide me through this safely, you know." Uh, so the right the right type of audience will want that experience where you're guiding them and taking them through the the whole process. >> Allan, closing question. this this whole podcast that we've created, the whole idea behind this was how do we find people that are taking massive agency in their life? >> Yeah. >> And how do we create a moment where we

01:28:22 - 01:29:37

can make some of what they're doing transferable to those listening? >> This is a question we ask everyone, which is what does high agency or taking agency mean to you? Uh to me it it means just um living a rich life and you know understanding that it's all on you. And you know it's something that I've really learned over the the last few years especially as I as I've gotten older is that um particularly I I noticed this from a wealth perspective and I noticed it from a health

01:28:59 - 01:29:59

perspective. you know, no one's calling me up and saying, "Hey, Alan, um you're in your late 40s. You should go do these medical tests. You should do this preventative care. You should do, you know, a a DEXA body scan or you should do whatever, right?" They're going to wait till something's broken and I I come and they say, "All right, let's let's figure out how to fix it." So, it's all on you. And you know that was kind of I mean seems kind of obvious

01:29:28 - 01:30:27

but it it's it was kind of a revelation to me. I'm like you know the the whole system is built around break and fix whereas if you want to have an amazing life if you want to have a rich life you've just got to take it in your hands. And same with wealth. Again no one's ringing you up and saying hey you know you should take 20% of your revenue and just put it in S&P 500 or an index fund or whatever. They're like, you know, well, you know, the default is you put something into super or if you're in

01:29:58 - 01:30:56

the US 401k or whatever else and then hope for the best and you know, maybe maybe it'll work out, but probably it won't. Um whereas now I spend probably like a day a week on wealth, right? I'm like, you know, I'm trying to figure out what are the tax strategies, what are the investments, what are the things I should be aware of. And no, no one's doing that for you, right? So high agency is all about fi finally the penny dropping that it's on you. Whether it's health, whether it's wealth, whether

01:30:28 - 01:31:24

it's fitness, whether it's business, whether it's whatever else, no one's coming to your rescue. >> So So something you've provided us with is um we have some of your links to your different programs, uh your courses, your team, your books. Uh we're going to attach all those links to this episode for anyone listening to this. Um just whatever platform you're on, click on in the descriptor, you will have access to all of that. Um before we close, Alan, what can people expect uh in the future

01:30:55 - 01:31:58

from the one the onepage marketing plan uh and and future books? >> Yeah, so all of my books are about helping simplify marketing, helping you become a master of marketing in your own business. So we just talked a moment ago about agency. It's about taking control of marketing in your business. Not relying on anyone external, not hoping that it just fixes itself. Not hoping that your team will will fix it for you. It's just it's what do you need to do to build a marketing infrastructure in your

01:31:26 - 01:32:22

business because it's the thing that moves the needle more than anything else. We we opened by saying, you know, what's the difference between a great product or great service or whatever. It's really becoming, you know, the person who understands marketing, the best marketer wins every single time. So, if you're not a marketer of what you do, it's really going to be an uphill battle for you. >> And you have a second edition coming out. >> Yeah. Well, by the time this pod comes

01:31:55 - 01:32:44

out, uh the second edition of the onepage marketing plan will be out. So, um yeah, I'd love people to connect and grab a copy if you'd like. And I'd love to hear from anybody. >> Get a copy, guys. I've I've not like I've not yet read lean marketing, but I've read the onepage marketing plan. And this is one of those books I hand out to a ton of people. Amazing. >> Anyone who I meet who's like I think I do marketing, but they're just building their business on referrals. I'm like,

01:32:19 - 01:33:06

please read this book. Get the audio tape, listen to it on Spotify, like for the love of God, like this will at least give them some foundation of like what the hell marketing really is and how they can do it lean and how they can do it immediately. >> Amazing. Amazing. Thank you so much, >> dude. It's been a pleasure. I'm I'm genuinely a huge fan. It's It's like a pinch myself moment to have you here. Um it's been a pleasure and um yeah, genuinely, man, thank you so much for

01:32:43 - 01:32:50

joining us. >> Thank you, man. I'm a fresher.

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