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Have you ever felt like taking a shower after seeing so many spammy ads? It makes you not like the idea of marketing sometimes or gives the wrong impression. What if you stopped thinking like a marketer for your business?

Change Creator Co-founders, Adam and Amy, discuss why you SHOULD stop thinking like a marketer and share some fresh counterintuitive perspective that will help you sell more and feel good!

We also recommend:

• Brian Robinson: Becoming a Selling Jedi Master For Your Startup
• Adam Force & Amy Aitman: How We’re Navigating Covid-19 as Digital Impact Entrepreneurs 
• Russel Brunson: How to Get Tons of Traffic to Your Funnel

Transcription of Interview

(Transcribed by Otter.ai, there may be errors)

Adam G. Force 00:03

Welcome to the Change Creator podcast where entrepreneurs come to learn how to live their truth, get rich and make a massive difference in the world. I’m your host Adam forest co founder, Change Creator and co creator of the captivate method. Each week we talk to experts about leadership digital marketing and sales strategies that you can implement in your business and in life to go big. Visit us at Change Creator comm forward slash go big to grab awesome resources that will help drive your business forward. What’s going on everybody? Adam force here, hope you all are doing well. So we have some exciting topics to discuss today we’re gonna be talking about why you need to stop thinking like a marketer. And I know that sounds totally counterproductive but this is a fun conversation that Amy and I want to have and kind of share. We’re kicking off a Facebook Live series this week. So if you’re catching this live during Release here on the 21st. Or this week, just go to our Facebook page in our Facebook group and get to catch every day at 12pm noon. Yesterday, we will go boo will be going live can’t talk today. And we’re doing a series about sales and marketing for social good leaders. All right, and we’re calling it the mid year boost, because it’s been a crazy first half a year. And if you’re having some struggles, we’re going to talk about a lot of stuff that will help you with the second half a year to make sure that you boost your business so you can hit your goals and get where you need to go. So tune in to those Facebook Lives. You can catch them as we do them everyday this week at 12 noon, St. This conversation that Amy and I are having is, as I mentioned about stop to stop thinking like a marketer. And we’re going to get into a number of different topics and tell a couple stories around this. I think you’ll find really helpful it’s like a perspective shift. And if you missed the last episode, it was with john MacDonald. We talked about optimizing your existing website. site traffic so that you can get more, you know, sales buyers and things like that out of it. So, you know, we don’t want to just keep paying for paying advertising and getting one offs and things like that we want to for all the people we bring in, we want to get as much out of it as possible. So we had that conversation. Alright guys, I’m gonna let I’m just gonna get right into this conversation today. So let’s talk about why you need to stop thinking like a marketer in order to grow your business. Okay, show me that. Hey, what’s up everybody? We are so excited to be here right now. Because if you if you have caught us over the weekend or since late last week, we have been mentioning that we’re doing our mid year boosts. And this is going to be the first session for that mid year boost because it’s been a little bit chaotic the first half of the year, you know, few punches in the business world. But hey, this is no reason for us to not be successful and growing our businesses. So we wanted to use this week, every day this week to do a conversation at the same time 12 St. To kind of ramp you up and get you pumped with information and insights that will help you for the second half of the year. So you can be the guru sales and marketing person you need to be as a social good leader. So now if you’re catching the replay, just a reminder, I would love for you to let us know and just put replay in the comments. And of course, guys, if you have questions, put the questions in the comments, be part of the conversation. I know you’re not on here live like talking with us. But if you’re listening, and you have questions or comments, fire them up in there, we will get back to you and answer those. And we’ll take it from there. So, today, Amy, what are we talking about? I’m gonna pass it over you to kind of TSF on the topic and such.

Amy Aitman 03:50

Oh, well, today. This is really exciting because I think when I think of a mid year boost, I mean 2020 has been quite a year as we all know But like you said, it’s no excuse for us to keep growing our business because we need to boost our sales we need to boost our marketing we need to boost our the money that’s coming into our businesses so that we can help more people. And that’s why we’re here. Which video we’re going to cover the topic

Adam G. Force 04:23

thinking like a marketer, so you can have better marketing dude. All right, so stop thinking like a marketer Why? And you might be like, stop thinking like a marketer, I need marketing for my business. You know, so let me explain this a little bit because we’re going to cover a couple key things around the tech and the things that Amy outlined, and you’ll see in the description. But let me just kind of I want to share a story real quick that will help demonstrate this. So I had a just recently in April, we had a newborn baby little Jackson. Alright, he’s three. He’s just a few months old now. So my wife and I, we live in this amazing condo, we’re so lucky and grateful. here in Miami. We’re on the only little island in Miami we have an obstructed ocean views. My balcony is like an outdoor living room. It’s insane. And so love love being here. But ever since we had this little man, we need a little more space. Okay. We, that we’ve been together for over 10 years married and we decided, hey, we are going to buy our first house and we’re going to go into a nicer neighborhood by the bay and all this stuff. And so now we have to get rid of this condo and we don’t own the condo we’re renting. And yes, that is costing a fortune to be here. But it was well worth every penny. That’s for sure. You know, as we’re going through all this, guess what? We’re buying a house we’re selling. We’re getting this condo pass over to new tenants. We had the baby we had COVID we we had the Black Lives Matter movement, like everything is piling up. And so it’s been pretty stressful. So as people were coming in here, we had to keep cleaning up the house, get people to show the house too. And so the owner and the real estate agents, they’re all kind of like trying to get this done because we are out of here at the end of next week. We’re moving. That’s it right here. So they need someone to fill our space. Alright, so we had these couple come in, and we have many couples come in right? And so I would always try to talk to them if they had questions whatever I share insights but the the one day this couple came in, they had a baby, they’re about our rage. And they’re going through the house and they had some questions stuff. And I started like, really brain dumping like oh my god, you got to know this about the building. Oh, I don’t know this about the staff. Oh, this restaurant over here and I’m going I’m going I’m, I’m like doing all this stuff. And finally they left and they were here probably the longest compared to anybody because we really connected they’re really cool couple and they were very kind of in line with who we were. They had a baby that was also born in April. She was carrying it on her chest.

Amy Aitman 06:51

The odds of that, right.

Adam G. Force 06:55

So when they left my wife is like what are you doing? Like, what do you mean? What am I doing? And so she’s like, why are you selling this condo so hard, though, who gives a shit about it? Okay. And so I was like, confused for a second. I was like, Yeah, you’re right. I was like, honestly, I’m not selling the condo, I just, I genuinely love this place. I love where we are, I don’t really want to leave. I’m doing it because I love my my new son. And we want to get a new opportunity where we have this neighborhood and stuff. And so I sat down and this is a perfect example of when we are thinking of selling and marketing. You take the marketing hat off, stop thinking about marketing and think about what you love why you do what you do. If you are in line with who you truly are and something that you’re passionate about. You’re not selling, you’re not marketing, you’re truly genuinely just sharing information because you want someone else to get the same benefits that you’ve had. Right? This is when marketing and sales becomes a beautiful thing. And this is When you can truly help people get something special out of it, because you’re not approaching it with just a money mindset. When you do that we call it money breath. People know, you have money breath, and it never works. And you might get some wins here and there. But there’s nothing better than waking up and being super excited about what you have to offer. Because you love your clients, you love your customers, you want to help transform their lives, you want to make the world a better place. So this is what we do. And that was a great example of me not even realizing it and my wife calling me out okay,

Amy Aitman 08:34

but don’t leave us hanging. Did they ended they ended up renting out the condo,

Adam G. Force 08:39

very next day. I was supposed to have another group of people come in and they didn’t show up. So I reached out to the real estate agent and I guess there are no she was Oh, forgot to tell you. The couple yesterday made an offer and I said hey, how much of that commission do I get? I was so so Hello. So I don’t get any commission, but I get knowing that another couple who has a young baby is going to get this beautiful space that I know they are going to just adore. Okay, so that’s what makes me happy, right? It’s not to say I’m not going after a sale, I’m going after someone’s happiness, I’m going after helping them, okay, make some very, very big difference in our perspective, and the results that we ultimately get. So that’s why we say stop thinking like a marketer. All right?

Amy Aitman 09:31

Oh, that’s really yeah, that’s so true. And that’s why I’m part of this discussion that we want to talk about today is like when you need to ditch the tech and when you need to, like, embrace the tech. And we’ve seen a lot of people come to us and they feel like they’re one tech solution away. One, you know, one tactic away from their marketing really exploding. And like Adam says, they kind of put on this what they think is this marketing path and for some reason, it has to do with With tech and tactics, like we’ll hear a lot of marketing gurus out there talking about the next tactic and in next, a system or tactic or something that’s just going to save them for the marketing, and especially for social good leaders and people that have put a lot of passion into their business like, like Adam showing the apartment. I mean, he really loved this condo, it was any love the people and he could, could see them there. It wasn’t, it was completely genuine and we really love our business. So I thought sometimes I wonder why we seem to want to put on this marketing hat and think about tech and tactics. And we forget all of the things that make us special.

Adam G. Force 10:39

Let me just say based on that is the tech part of your business? Of course you need some technology. Do you need it to make sales and get going if you’re in the early stages, not at all You don’t even need a website, okay? And I can, I can stand behind that hundred percent. Now, the town end as we’re trying to grow and do different things like that. So, yes, the tech can feel overwhelming. But that’s why we have mentors and groups and people, they walk you through it, you don’t have to be overwhelmed with those things. That’s like the easy part. Honestly, it’s how we’re using it and what’s actually filling that tech, what’s filling it up have information and things like that. Because if you have that wrong as a marketer, like, if I was saying the wrong things to the wrong people, when I tried to sell that condo, apparently I was selling that condo, you know, it wouldn’t have connected with them and it wouldn’t have worked. All the tech and angles I played in order to schmooze them wouldn’t have mattered. So this it comes down to really what’s what’s what you’re putting into the machine. You know what I mean?

Amy Aitman 11:44

Yeah, that’s a really important point and I’ve had in my career as a digital marketer and storyteller and communicator. I’ve helped a lot of people like improve their funnels and the first thing I know a lot of people look at is like, did you set this up? Write this up today. Pirbright. The first thing I like to look at is like the messaging is the stories that people are telling. Are they really connecting? And do they know who they’re serving? So one of the things we want to talk about today is like how to attract the right people. And, and how to see like, are you really attracting the people that are going to buy from you that you can help? Yeah. Because you could have had, you could have done like, 10 showings of your condo, and they might not have been the right people. It might have been people that you know, you just you couldn’t see. And as soon as these people came in, and so many things in common with you, you could see them in the apartment. And I feel like that’s how it is with our businesses and our solutions to I meet people, I talk to entrepreneurs All the way All like all the time that are really, really perfect fits for what we do and the captivate method. I also talked to a lot of entrepreneurs that aren’t ready yet. And I say to them, I don’t think you’re ready yet. I don’t think this is for you like, right. You have to really know like, if you’re attracting the right People and I can tell you from experience here at Change Creator, you can get a lot of attention from the wrong people, you can get a lot of attention, you can get a lot of attention. I mean example. So back in the early days, we had one of our contributors, one of our writers that contributed for us had this huge audience in I want to say, I forget the country, but it had a huge audience. Very different. They were they wanted to become writers right out and they want to become writers and he had a huge audience. We asked if he could share one of our lead magnets of the time for the magazine with him. And guess what, we got a lot of people on our list that danger 1000 maybe 15 like for a couple of years. Yeah, couple of thousand one day. And as we were talking to those people, and as we reached out to these people that came on our list, we realized like this is not a good fit. They didn’t really have businesses, they were freelancers. They were like amazing. People and they love what they were doing. But they weren’t a fit for what, like what we were selling. And it was a really good lesson. Like, a lot of people focus on traffic and on getting tons of traffic and getting tons of eyeballs, which is great if you have the right message. It really is. It’s really true.

Adam G. Force 14:18

I mean, everybody, a lot of times people skip that messaging part and we don’t really know what it means to get to how to find that message. Right, that clarity. And you know, I say the word clarity a lot because it’s important throughout every step of the business disparity. And it’s amazing because Amy and I will still get clarity today on things that we are already sharp on and we’ll be like whoa, fresh perspective, like even more clarity. And you’ll notice as you go from five figures to six or seven years like there’s constant stages of clarity as you mature as an entrepreneur, and it makes a big difference and your point about the wrong people as well taken even some of the people that came into to continue my condo sales story. You know, they did come in and do some people didn’t ask as many questions. They looked around, they’re in and out quick. And it didn’t inspire a conversation where I was really like pushing hard. It was this particular couple that came in, they were asking questions they were, and they were the right fit, you know, and all of a sudden, I’m selling hard to these guys, without even realizing it. It’s just because I loved it. And I wanted to see their family, find this place and get all the great benefits and have a wonderful, you know, experience here. So it’s so it’s like, as you get further further along, it’s like you realize these things and and you can simplify the overwhelm of your business so much, right,

Amy Aitman 15:41

you’re so right, that clarity is so important. And one of the things that I’ve really realized is that clarity of self we spend a lot of time working on clarity of self and the captivate method for one reason. And 20 has been a crazy year. And, I mean, this is what happens in businesses. I mean, I saw About an email yesterday and I talked about the changes that that we have to endure. And one of the changes that we have found that’s so important is how you grow and you change. Like Adam said, we still become clearer to our messaging to what we’re doing to our offer every day, because we’re still working on our clarity of self. And this is a mindset and a lot of people want to skip over this. But I can tell you who doesn’t skip over this step seven, eight figure entrepreneurs. That is all they do. This is what they focus on. The ones that need the social impact leaders out there, like, could you imagine Adam is like Blake Mycoskie didn’t tell a story didn’t have clarity themselves. I mean, he still works on that. I see I’m on Instagram feed all the time. And he still journals he still looks on himself. He still looks

Adam G. Force 16:49

Yep. Oh, and maybe I got something in the mail about his new business like I guess Ron is this because you know if you guys don’t know we interviewed Blake, we did a really great like video interview. You could check that stuff out tons of good information. They’re, and he sent this thing in the mail to me. It was a whole package about a new business. He was starting in a powerful story behind the whole thing. trinkets and I’m like, all I could think is damn it must be nice to have the money to send this out. My point is, though, that yes, everything was wrapped in the right stories. And it was pretty, pretty impressive stuff. But yeah, so you know, so I mean, why do some so many digital market goes broke? I think we kind of started hitting that it is because of this lack of clarity when it comes to the message. Or, or let me say and, and this desperation of trying to sell where you’re going after the money which Yes, we all want to get rich. I want to get rich. I want to be rich and money. I want to be rich in my freedom and my joy and everything in life, right? But when it comes to money, we if we’re doing what I did with the condo and we’re selling from a public In our heart without even realizing we’re selling, it’s just that we want someone else to get these great benefits we’re offering. That is the selling that works. And you’re not even thinking like a marketer, or you have the Oh my God, I gotta pay my rent. I’m panicked, I’m nervous, and I got to make How do I make a quick thousand this month? How do I make a quick 5000 and then all of a sudden, you’ve got money breath, and it doesn’t matter if it comes out of your mouth verbally or not the non verbal gestures from bodily expressions. It reeks

Amy Aitman 18:28

from experience. I mean, we just bought a brand new Jeep. And I can tell you, we went to a couple places, and the first person, like kind of wreaked of money breath. I mean, it was like, I mean, I understand it’s been through COVID he’s got bills to pay. He wants to sell us this Jeep, and I can tell you one thing, like we were like, 80% of the way there we went in to see these jeeps. Yeah, we’re like we’re getting a jeep. No one’s talking about that. We want a jeep. This should have been an easy sell. Like a lot of you have people in your audience that are like that letter. Let it Me and my husband getting this cheap. They want what you have. But we put up these barriers because of like, Adam says money breath, or we’re thinking about the bottom line, or the end of the month comes and we have to get our quotas in it or our sales goals in and that’s like, that turns everybody off,

Adam G. Force 19:18

I enroll the wrong perspective like, though what drives their perspectives, sometimes their perspectives that are created from the stimulus of stress, right? You go so that stress creates that perspective that you have. So we have to start orienting ourselves and say, Where am I right now? Like, why am I feeling these ways? How do I overcome that? Because we really it cut, right? I mean, it comes down to that perspective of how we are approaching these situations, that’s going to make all the difference. And, you know, we’ll keep reiterating the story of the condo versus that money breath. Those are the two, two sales worlds that make to make this very easy today, to think about because they’re very different perspectives and You know, I can get into the science behind this. But yeah, people they know and they sense everything that you’re feeling too. So it’s like, it’s like translating to them.

Amy Aitman 20:09

Again, it’s the stories that you’re telling yourself. And so that clarity of self is really important if you’re telling yourself the stories of desperation, or I need to make the sale or I’m not sure if my offer is good enough, or I’m not sure if I’m helping enough people, or there’s so many are selling books, you keep saying your marketing sucks, or here’s one that we see all the time. And if this is you, I want you to be bold, and I want to put your hand up in the chat. You see me you see sucky marketing all the time. And you’re like, Oh, I don’t want to be on this list. I don’t want to see this ad. I don’t want to be on the side. If that is you, I want you to turn that back on you and say why are you seeing that? Is that how you feel about your offer? Because I can guarantee you if you believe, with like, no shadow of a doubt That your offer is helping people, and that your business is helping people and you will love to sell. Because that means you’re helping more people. And that means that you’re changing their life. And if you are someone that sees marketing all the time as slimy and skeezy. Yes, are they’re the slimy gurus out there. They’re the slimy people out there. They’re just I mean, he was part of the deal. Of course, there’s a there out there. But if that’s all that you’re seeing, that I want you to take a step back and look at yourself and look at your money mindset. Look at your sales mindset, and change it up, change that up. Because guess what you’re going to start to attract the things in life, the more authentic you’re gonna start to see that, you know, selling really is helping and we’re going to say this over and over again, because it’s something that

Adam G. Force 21:49

we all need to hear. It’s important to tee up the series this week, too. That’s why this first, we want to create like a little bit of like a stepping stone mindset. And I think we’ll wrap up here, Amy, and my final state is gonna be You know, this is really about how sales becomes authentic, right? And getting new customers, buyers clients, whatever you want to call them is not about being a great marketer or salesperson. It’s really about loving what you do. And truly wanting to share that transformation with someone who want to help someone you want to do something good, like when you approach it from these perspectives, because you’re excited you love it. It just works out way better.

Amy Aitman 22:27

Really great tip to leave us mid year boost on. So your first boost is like, it’s about loving what you do and doing more of what you do. Let’s take our marketing right now.

Adam G. Force 22:38

It’s I hope that the condo story that we did here does demonstrate that well. Okay, Amy, what are we gonna leave them today? I mean, they want to basically let’s give them some clarity. Let’s give them like some things that they can focus on for their own business that we know will be helpful. And I think maybe that’s the the impact business blueprint would be

Amy Aitman 23:03

yeah well we both think that you can download the impact business blueprint. It’s free leave in the comments of course we want you to join us for more days left of this mid year boost sales and marketing series. So bring your questions we’re going to be talking about sales we’re going to be talking about more about marketing we’re talking about find those the right clients.

Adam G. Force 23:24

All that good stuff.

Amy Aitman 23:25

Yeah, that’s pretty good. Oh, what? We’re gonna be talking about sales funnels. That’s gonna be fun.

Adam G. Force 23:31

Oh, yeah. Tomorrow 12pm PST, we will be back. Thanks for tuning into the Change Creator podcast visit us at Change Creator comm forward slash go big to get access to free downloads and other great resources that will drive your business forward.

Listen to our exclusive interview with Gessie Schechinger:

Subscribe to this show on Spotify  |  iTunes  |  Stitcher  |  Soundcloud

What are some strategies you can consider and test to sell better as an entrepreneur? We find out from Gessie Schechinger who is the VP of Sales at OnCourse.
—
Gessie Schechinger is the laziest salesman in America as well as Vice President of Sales for the OnCourse Sales Engagement Platform.

Gessie is passionate about leveraging technology and automation to surpass revenue targets so he can help protect golf and bar time for the salespeople of the world. Gessie won annual sales awards at 2 different Fortune 500 companies. His 20+ years of sales experience began in an outbound call center where he averaged 450 calls per week and blew out his quota by 297%. Unsurprisingly, he moved to field sales where he traveled 300 days a year convincing the biggest companies in the United States to open their wallet.

He now spends his time educating sales leaders to utilize the most effective sales tool in the world and co-hosts the mediocre podcast, TechTales.

Learn more about Gessie and his work at > https://www.tryoncourse.com

We also recommend:

• Rod Yapp: Next Level Business with High-Performance Leadership
• Jim Lawless: Overcoming Fear and Operating With Risk
• Jacob Morgan: The Future Leader & The Skills & Mindset They Need Today

Transcription of Interview

(Transcribed by Otter.ai, there may be errors)

Adam G. Force 00:11

Hey, what’s up everybody? Welcome back to the change coder podcast show. This is your host, Adam force. And if you missed last week’s episode, check it out was with the Vice President of sustainability and one of the founding partners of the massive scooter company called lime. These guys have over 100 million rides. If you’re living in one of the cities, they’re doing the tests and you’ll see scooters flying all over the place. Really great conversation. So swing back and check that out. We’ve talked about a ton of good stuff that you guys will find value in. This week, we’re talking with Jesse, I’m not even gonna try to pronounce Jesse’s last name. It’s a little bit of a tongue twister, but it’ll be in the description notes. He is the vice president of sales at on course and that is a sales engagement platform. And Jesse has been in sales for I think most of his life and he has a ton of experience. So we’re going to pick his brain about selling because obviously this is something We all need to do if we want to scale impact Don’t forget to stop by Change Creator calm we have a ton of fresh content out there for the podcast feature articles. Plus we have the waitlist for the captivate methods. So if you want to power up your marketing with storytelling, and really set your business up for automation and long term sales, this is a program for you. So when you’re on the waitlist, we’re going to send you some info, and you’ll get invites to check out some next steps and learn about the program to see if it’s a good fit for you. Okay, all right, guys. We’re not gonna waste any more time here. We’re gonna dive right into this conversation with Jesse Okay, show me the hate page. Jessie, welcome to the Change Creator podcast show how you doing today, man?

Gessie Schechinger 01:41

Awesome, man. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

Adam G. Force 01:44

Yeah, well, I appreciate you making the time as usual. Very cool. You know, you’re you’re big into the sales scene, which is why I’m excited to talk with you today. So we’re gonna dig into some of that good stuff because, you know, as entrepreneurs, if we’re not selling all we got is a hobbie right

Gessie Schechinger 02:02

that is the bane which is the revenue, no doubt about

Adam G. Force 02:05

it is that no revenue, no impact? Yeah. So why don’t you kick us off with just a little bit about what you have going on in your world today. I’d like to just get to the peak of the of what’s going on and see where you’re at now and then we’ll we’ll back into how you got there.

Gessie Schechinger 02:21

Sure, not a problem. So what I’m what I’m majorly into is just really like how technology is impacting sales, and all of the different tools and some people get super lost, and I call the CEO of SAS, right, and there’s a million different solutions out there. And really, what I’m all about is how you can amplify your sales efforts, and what tools you can use to amplify those efforts and leverage you can pull and so we have a little program, on course, which is a sales engagement platform, but that’s really what our messages is amplifying sales teams, making sure that That the brainless type of work of sales you don’t burn too many calories on and really focus on the area that you can you know, that actually takes your time and make a difference.

Adam G. Force 03:10

Yeah, I love that. It says in your one sheet or that I got about you it said you’re the laziest salesman in America. Tell me Tell me about that.

Gessie Schechinger 03:21

No doubt. So I’ve had like every different sales job you could have from working in a call center to out there Field Sales, doing you know, traveling the road, 300 300 days a year, and really as it comes down to is one nothing annoys me. We’re more than like, brainless paperwork and entering things into a CRM, like I would go out stay at like some Embassy Suites, a little cocktail hour from like 530 to 730. It’s like, I just want to be drinking and having a good time. I want to be sitting here entering in things, and there has to be like a much better solution for that. And so I teamed With the the guys that simtek and we build a platform like literally, all I as a sales professional want to do is just be in front of customers and talking and reaching out. It’s like how can we automate all the nonsense so that I can kick back and have a beer?

Adam G. Force 04:14

I love it. I love it. I you know, Amy, my co founder and I, our philosophy here at Change Creator is work less make more.

Gessie Schechinger 04:23

I’m 100% I’d be a great fit.

Adam G. Force 04:27

So right now you’re vice president of sales for on course right, which is that the sales engagement platform you mentioned?

Gessie Schechinger 04:35

That’s correct. I recently I’ve kind of moved to be the chief revenue officer. But But yeah, I’m very much engaged in the on course platform.

Adam G. Force 04:44

Awesome. Awesome. So now you you’ve won some annual sales awards and things like that, and you’ve been doing this for a long time. So maybe just give us a little bit in a nutshell about your the highlights of your sales experience, and then we’ll start kind of digging into it.

Gessie Schechinger 04:58

Yeah, sure. So Early on in the call center type days, I was working and we sold a medical record retrieval service for attorneys and big life insurance carriers, stuff like that. And we would sell the service to people and then I, again, largely being lazy and everyone was calling all the same people I was like, I gotta figure out a shorter way to sync this bot. And so I was like, Who else needs medical records and getting into workers compensation group found a big loop there as a brand new market and things got you know, all the low hanging fruit just kind of hit it was like Okay, perfect, boom, smash this year’s quota. And then furthermore, just really trying to you know, I moved from there to working for a couple of big companies. One of them is a very global, very large plastic factoring company. Did Field Sales and national accounts for those guys. Again, also exploring I mean, we are big into plastic is has a tough record, especially with with your And audience, but we were definitely trying to work on sustainable solutions and corn and all those type of things. Yeah, we’re gonna kind of have alternatives kind of reduce that footprint, right? And so work for those guys forever. And then eventually just got to a point where, again, Embassy Suites burned out whatever, like this, there has to be an easy way. And I got into technology. And I tell everybody about delving into the software world that it’s a lot like scuba diving, in the sense that it’s as beautiful as it is terrifying. You learn about all the things that are possible with software, and then you learn all the scary stuff that happens along with those amazing beautiful things. And so when I met up with these guys, I we really had to focus on like, let’s juice up sales and we built a tool. We put in a couple key components. And I’d really love to you know, Adam, a lot of people I know from listening to your previous podcasts might be in that first like five years of their business. And the one thing I know about that is like that’s typically where money is the tightest, and you’re trying to hit a squeeze rocks to get some blood out of a squeeze every dollar. And I really just wanted to talk a little bit about how the zip tech path and what we did and then how that led into on course, and really just some real stuff that you can do to amplify your sales efforts if that’s fair.

Adam G. Force 07:32

Yeah, sounds good.

Gessie Schechinger 07:34

So, Adam, yes, you this and this is probably a silly question, because I’m only a nerd the reads this stuff. But have you ever heard of the Toko report?

Adam G. Force 07:43

I haven’t read it. I’ve heard of it.

Gessie Schechinger 07:46

Yeah, so basically, the Toko is a organization that all they do is study outreach, and they study lots of things on like, how many emails until somebody engages How do you best like how many times touches lead to a sale. And they do all of these really cool data and analytics, and it’s over Twitter 42 businesses. But using some of that stuff, who am I really toyed along with in today’s market, you have to hit people on a lot of different channels because you’re not really sure how people are going to communicate. Back in the day, everybody was cold calling, and you’re just smashing through the nose dial for dollars. And the more people I call, the more sales I’ll get. Nowadays, it’s a fundamental waste of time, because you’ll spend two to three minutes and some automated phone tree like that times burned, you know. Whereas if you move to LinkedIn, and you can prospect there, you get a lot faster you have email, I would never recommend SMS for cold outreach, but it’s amazing on follow up and customer retention. And so you have all these different channels and levers you can pull and conducting, you know, kind of automated sequences in order to priming the pump. And so, for example, the total report tells us that an outbound lead is going to take you anywhere from 14 to 16 touches. And those touches have to be everything from called email to LinkedIn. Right? So you need a warm body to do the calling, but you don’t need one to do the email. And the LinkedIn can be fast. And there’s ways to do that personalized. So have you cut down the beginning part. So you’re only spending your time doing the calling that’s actually worth your time. And not just leaving voicemails all day? All right,

Adam G. Force 09:31

yeah, no, I love that. We’re all about automation in you know, setting up those sequences, and we always call it a digital conversation on our side. And this is what you know, we teach on our end for entrepreneurs just to just shift the perspective away from funnels, because when you think about it, it’s like back in the day we go door to door and we knock on the door, we can sit down for an hour and talk to somebody but today we’re not really doing that. And we’re kind of breaking up that one hour conversation into these little digital sounds. bites across the internet. And you got to kind of figure out how to get someone to go through step by step to hear hear that sales conversation, right,

Gessie Schechinger 10:07

Oh for sure.

Adam G. Force 10:09

That’s the tricky part

Gessie Schechinger 10:12

I know you got to be different. And actually, one of the funny story about that is, I was super fascinated the first time somebody sent me an email that had like a video embedded in it. I was like, This is the coolest thing in the world. We’re gonna crush it with this. Yeah. into your point, like you have to navigate and you have to know it’s applicable. I like literally, like pulled the cruise ship a different direction, like everybody first email, send off these video emails. It’s gonna be awesome. And then we looked at the analytics, and we realized that like, nope, actually, everyone just deletes their first five emails. And we’re not getting anywhere. But when we positioned it around the sixth or seventh one, like Oh, man, it was awesome. And we started getting, you know, way up as far as are open and click rates started increasing dramatically and so It’s all about the cool, shiny new object. And it’s also about when you use it.

Adam G. Force 11:04

Yeah, timing is important, right? And this is constant, a constant point of conversation for us is, you know, not only in the the steps you take as an entrepreneur, but even in the sales conversation, your timing of when to say things, when to do things is gonna matter a lot, because if you hit the person, and they’re at the wrong point in their journey, it’s just gonna fall flat.

Gessie Schechinger 11:27

Oh, 100%. And I know that like in previous podcasts that you’ve had, you’ve mentioned, you know, like, like sales systems, right? Like getting your sales system in place. You know, tools, like on course, because of the analytics and moving the messaging in different areas and places like it really helps you to kind of drill down and map and nail that sales system, so that then you can amplify and you can make those adjustments into new people in personnel and all that kind of stuff. And so you’re not burning money. I thought it was an excellent podcast. You have it on exactly who the guest was. But you talked a little bit about it’s kind of useless to hire a bunch of salespeople until you have a system that works. Yeah, I think that’s an excellent point.

Adam G. Force 12:11

Yeah, you know what? We did something about my co founder, I did a talk about delegation. And this quote just kind of jumped out from us. And we were like, you don’t hire a sales team. When when you need like, when you’re not getting sales, you hire a sales team when your sales are thriving. It’s like, if you don’t have the system working, you’re just gonna bring a sales team in to beat a dead horse that’s not working versus we have a process that works. We figured out our narrative and now you can really skyrocket the sales.

Gessie Schechinger 12:41

Yeah, don’t get like seven people trying to dig a hole with a spoon isn’t nearly as good as one guy with a shovel.

Adam G. Force 12:46

Exactly. Exactly. And it’s tough man. Like you mentioned, a lot of the folks who are listening are in the first five years, maybe even the first two or three and there’s decision overwhelm and you know, sad Which is shiny object syndrome. And it’s just so saturated. So it’s nice when you can get a little clarity on where to put your attention because we have limited attention but unlimited options.

Gessie Schechinger 13:13

That’s, that’s true and actually on the arm other companies called zip tech, custom development, and we build lots of applications for people. And one of the things that just like it just floored me was literally there’s a SaaS application to monitor your SaaS applications, which is just amazing. I got to show like, when they expire, how many licenses you’re using all kinds of stuff, but I was like to buy like we fit next level.

Adam G. Force 13:38

Yeah, that’s how I felt when they had storage units. I’m like, we have so much crap in our house now. We’re gonna just start expanding into another unit. Start putting more crap in there. That’s like SAS overload.

Gessie Schechinger 13:50

Oh, no. That’s the problem. The storage unit is like you realize like, you’ve just lived without that stuff for years. But to the the, the SAS is incredible and And one of the things that we’ve tried to do with encores is like we’ve consolidated a lot of tools, right? And so inside our tool, you instead of having multiple different things like we have the dialer, we have the equivalent to like a MailChimp, we have your general CRM functionality so that you can monitor contact management and pipeline, all that kind of stuff, as well as that sequencing portion. And, you know, one of the cooler things and, you know, I would encourage a lot of the people who are starting out because it’s a really cool way to differentiate yourself is SMS as like 100% open rate, like people for good or bad, they’ll always read their text. And one area that we found that it’s been crazy influential is customer retention. And a lot of times people look at these sales tools in their thinking like, Oh, I need to automate the front part. We all also need to think about How you can automate the second part because that could be a big deal. Because a lot of times, when you start out you have maybe have like a one or two like really key customers. And you can’t let those guys go right? Like they’re, they’re paying the power bills, the mortgage, like, hey, those guys are like get all your attention. But you still want to be catering to your customers and upsells and all that kind of stuff, make sure that they’re happy. And setting up automation to take care of the retention part is equally as beneficial. And we found that a lot of fruits came from that labor. And so we built in this SMS thing into the tool and it really use remarkable when like you have a depending on what you’re selling, but if you have a customer service person, whatever and they’re just fire off a quick text saying like, hey, how’d everything work? How is how you’re happy with your product, etc?

Adam G. Force 15:47

Yeah, so tell me a little bit like just ground us. I mean, we’re always looking to help people find tools that will simplify their efforts, consolidate things make it easier to have a automation and sales so as far as your as on course goes, let me just ask a couple questions just to give clarity for anybody listening because again, like we all we hit, we get hit with a lot of tools and you know you have you have the MailChimp, the active campaigns ConvertKit, all the CRM, the email platforms and all that stuff is, is this complimentary to that or supposed to replace that?

Gessie Schechinger 16:27

This is to replace all that is is designed to be we’re on the first of four releases. And it’s designed to if you’re an entrepreneur, setting up a business, you don’t have to go sign up for 10 different licenses. This is going to be your all in one sales platform. That’s our that’s our goal. That’s the part we’re trying to. We’re trying to hit.

Adam G. Force 16:50

Okay, so let’s pause there. So, as far as it goes, you’ll be able to set up different lists of people tag them for automation. kind of have branching logic and your email sequences Is that accurate?

Gessie Schechinger 17:04

Correct. And then in addition to that, you’d have the normal pipeline, you know, features functionality. And then we have a cool again, laziest sales guy in America, we have some cool extra features. So for example, if you prospect on LinkedIn, we have a Chrome plugin, where literally, if you just see a prospect your life, you click a little button, and it automatically creates the lead in for you, it throws him automatically into a sequence. And you’re just crushed right along, you can actually do big lists where you can just hit the chrome plug in and it’ll cruise down the list. So if you were really good filter, so we’re we’re really trying to cut out all kinds of time.

Adam G. Force 17:40

Yeah, and we’ve done a lot of prospecting on LinkedIn, we do some b2b work as well. And there is I mean, it’s a powerful tool and I forget I was using some other plugin to to see I can help you get people’s like emails and see the list of people and all the information they’re about and stuff. That. So it sounds like you are helping extract important leads and save them into the system from from LinkedIn.

Gessie Schechinger 18:09

Yeah. And I think that if anyone’s ever tried to prospect on LinkedIn, the one of the first things that they’ll find is like, let’s say that you went through 100 people, right? You’ve sent messages to all these other people. And then good luck scrolling back through your inbox to try to find that first guy, because that thing just like goes over and over and over. And so what the problem we fixed was like, Okay, well, that’s crazy annoying. And so we ended up putting this thing and so it just it sets a follow up tax and then just copy that URL into the LinkedIn URL so that you can go hit and get straight back to them and then you know, where you where the conversation. And the other I would say cautionary tale is nothing is more transparent than templates and LinkedIn messaging. And so if I had advice for all of your audience and I have done a ton and ton and ton of Nobody’s reading two paragraphs of your message in LinkedIn. They don’t they do not think that you put that together yourself. They they know that you copy paste it. And so brevity is important. And being real, understanding what they’re doing make sure we call the two by two, you take two minutes to make two personalizations. And really just kind of drill in that way. And, you know, as cool as automation is use automation to do the brainless stuff as far as the reminding and doing some follow up emails, and there’s definitely a place for templates when written correctly. But really, you just want to trigger yourself to just always be doing the right thing at the right time.

Adam G. Force 19:41

Yep, makes sense. I mean, it’s it’s it’s that relevancy because I get I get a ton of LinkedIn messages from people and it’s always about, you know, can I get on your podcast? Can I be featured in you know, the magazine or whatever it might be. And then, you know, or or just random messages that are like you said, A couple paragraphs, and unless there’s something that is very relevant that I would see and be like, Oh, well, it really makes sense that you’re reaching out for this particular reason, it will catch my attention. But I would say 98% I look I barely even look at because I just don’t catch my attention with anything relevant.

Gessie Schechinger 20:18

Ya know, and that’s why it’s super, it’s really important to to do to do two things, right. The first is, take the time, make it personal. But also, people like back in the cold call days, people just straight up hang up on you, like they didn’t care at all. People are kind of nice on LinkedIn by and large. And so they’re being pretty nice to us to be nice with their time is what I tell all my guys and like I said, Let’s find people that we actually, we looked at their business and we have, you know, before putting anyone into an automated sequence. Like this is the biggest I think miss that a lot of people have is like, they’ll just take down like a huge list from like zoom info or someplace. They start pounding out stuff to the list, it’s like, you could be burning a lot of calories on people that have no need whatsoever. My advice is like, take the time to make sure you got a super good list. And then you can’t beat the heck out of those people. Because you know, like, like, they’re either your competitor is gonna drop the ball one day, and you’ll be there or something. But like, take the time in the beginning to really drill down that list because you’re putting a lot of horsepower behind that intelligence. And you want to make sure you get it right from the get go. And then you won’t have you know, people are asking me to do all kinds of weird stuff like, dude, I work for a custom dev shop. I’m not gonna hire a custom dev service. Like please give it a second thought before you reach out to me.

Adam G. Force 21:43

I surprised they even said anything. That’s interesting. We should get a little educational feedback.

Gessie Schechinger 21:51

As a guy who’s had to cold call most of my life I’m very pleasant. I believe in karma.

Adam G. Force 21:56

Yeah, well, you know, and that’s, that’s the smart way to do it. For sure. Are you ready? Want to put your best foot forward and things tend to work out a little bit better that way. So tell me a little bit about just from your sales experience. I mean, I it sounds like on course, is in its early phases. Yes. He said it was first released right now.

Gessie Schechinger 22:17

That’s Yeah, yes. 100%. And so we’ve had the first release. And so we took on beta users in February. And then we’ve had about 200 or so users in it, that all through that we worked out all the bugs and kinks and anyone who’s listening that’s ever build software might be in the process of building software, they know how that stuff goes. Lots of lots of polishing because we like to put us Fs but like work through and then we launched in September. And not to you know, toot my own horn but beep beep we’ve we’ve had a bunch, you know, we ended up getting 500 new users and like two months in so it’s been pretty awesome. And our onboarding team and the only thing that I would say, is where how we’re trying to stand out is yes, obviously, I think it’s the greatest tool in the world, because I built it, right. But how we’re really trying to stand out is the fact that one we have a the two things that are always going to kill you with this stuff is a price. And then B, people are just like, I gotta take all my stuff and put it into a new system. Yeah, no, thank you. Right. And so we don’t do that. So we have a we have an in house implementation team. So you don’t have to find a third party. You don’t have to do anything. We have it all under one roof. We can go in and get you out of your old system into the new system. relatively painless. I like to say there’s no pain involved, but relatively painless way. We take care of all that for you. And then, as of right now, especially for all the people on the show. If you just say Change Creator, we’ll do $100 A month per user deal

Adam G. Force 24:02

$100 a month per hour per user, per user business owner, like the team that you’re saying, for users using the platform?

Gessie Schechinger 24:11

Yeah, per user. So if your company wants to do it, if just on the demo request, if you go to WWE, try on course, calm. And you mentioned Change Creator, that is about 20% off of our normal price.

Adam G. Force 24:25

Cool, cool. Yeah, I was actually gonna ask you if there is a trial, I know, a lot of times with this stuff, you know, hearing about and do all this stuff is great. But getting in there, and just getting a feel, seeing how it looks and how it functions is a huge step in that exploration phase for somebody when they’re making a big decision. I mean, if you’re just starting in your first year of entrepreneurship, this is easy peasy to migrate. If you even have anything set up yet. That’s easy. But if you have automations, and you have a 50,000 person list, and you got to move a bunch of stuff over, it’s a bigger decision, right? Like you said, so just having a that opportunity to check things out and get a real feel for it.

Gessie Schechinger 25:04

Yeah, I just want to make sure to clear so like, we will give any of your listeners a discount on the per monthly price. But we don’t do failure free trial, we will give you demos, we will show you the implementation plan. And for the first year, we provide training at no cost to you helping you set up all of the cool automation secret. Like the other big problem with these CRM systems is people only use like 30% of them. Because they don’t they don’t know what they don’t know. And selfishly, I’m talking to a bunch of business owners so we can all be real here. Yeah, right. You’re gonna get into the tool. And if I make it, if you know, it’s super well, it’s gonna get sticky to your business, you’re gonna like it and I’m gonna have you forever. Whereas if I just let you go willy nilly into the tool, you’d be like, Oh, well, you didn’t know about the seven features that might kind of help you. So we really believe in investing into our clients. Yeah, onboarding very heavily to make sure that everyone’s good. That’s why like, we hold your hand. So it’s basically a white glove thing throughout the first 12 months.

Adam G. Force 26:07

Yeah, I think that’s smart. I mean, it’s a good it’s a good thought process, meaning, you know, if you go in there, and you’re not really clear about how this can help, not just for where you are now, but where you can grow into using the features, there’s a lot then that could be missed, and you may not become, you may not use the technology and take advantage of it. So doing the demo is probably smart. So I think that that makes sense. That’s a good good philosophy, because you’re right, like you really then have an opportunity to see what everything is all about, and where you can go with it, you know,

Gessie Schechinger 26:42

exactly. And when I’m, you know, have my full sales guy hat on, I basically just tell people like this is the tool that’s going to help you grow so that you can hire more users. And so that’s what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to get your business to grow so that we can charge it for our users.

Adam G. Force 26:59

Yeah. No, it’s it’s good. I like it.

Gessie Schechinger 27:03

Everything selfish at a certain level.

Adam G. Force 27:05

I mean, listen, if we can’t make money, we can’t help people, I always try to reposition the selling process because people get so scared of it because they think oh, sleazy sales. And it’s really you have the wrong relationship with sales in your mind. Because it’s really, the best thing you can do for a client or customer is sell because that’s how you transform their life. And what you guys are doing is offering a service to make someone’s life easier, meaning they get more sales, they get a they grow a stronger business, so that you should be pushing the sale, you know?

Gessie Schechinger 27:36

Absolutely. And we’re trying to, you know, exactly like do that TEDx type routine and give them you know, the the amplification that they can for their business for sure. And, again, nobody would buy anything unless you could solve a real problem. That’s that’s all it really moves the needle in my experience.

Adam G. Force 27:53

It is Yeah, I agree. So I mean, it all sounds really cool, man. I sounds like there’s a lot there to dig into. So Listen, anybody listening? Now this could be an interesting evolution in SAS to just help scale your business because it’s coming from the mind of a sales person who knows what you’re looking forward to, to grow the business. So, no, I haven’t played with it myself. So I can’t say anything specific. But we’re always looking here at Change Creator to just to see how do we get more efficient with our time and our money. And the tools that we use are important. There’s just so many of them that you know, you just gotta, you just got to be smart about where he’s doing. Well, because we did a big migration last year, from AWeber to Active Campaign for reasons of behavioral marketing automation. And, you know, Active Campaign is very big with the behavioral marketing. It’s been pretty freakin amazing. And it’s done wonders for our open rates, click rates and all that stuff. And it sounds like you guys offer a lot of those types of automation. Among other things, for managing the sales process and stuff, so could be pretty powerful. So I appreciate you sharing some of those insights and the discount opportunity for people.

Gessie Schechinger 29:09

Yeah, absolutely. Again, like, so we’re getting the word out. And, you know, we’re our, our CEO, actually, he exited two different software companies. And even on the other side of the business, where we have some people that are building applications that basically are their business. And sometimes we’re their dev team for the business. We get these guys in because we know it just helps them grow. And they’re just like, everybody’s just so tight on budget in those first couple years that you use something that is going to be affordable, and that can get you through the next you know, five to six years.

Adam G. Force 29:45

I mean, that’s it. That’s it cuz Yeah, and you gotta be willing to invest in these things. Like one mistake that we’ve learned, just you know, this is my second business and I learned early on is you’re afraid to spend money because you don’t know if you’ll make it back but then you end up just spinning your wheels for a while. Time and spending more money in the end, because ultimately, you do need the right tools to grow your business and you have to be willing to invest in yourself, you know, I’ve paid over, you know, four grand just to have a sales page, someone do copywriting for a sales page, you know, it’s like these things, if you want it done, right, and it’s an important piece of your business, then, you know, you just got to do these things, right?

Gessie Schechinger 30:21

And I tell people, this is again, you know, call it sales pitch, call it what you want, but I tell people, think of how much it would cost you to have an employee to do it. And then you can justify the cost pretty easily that way.

Adam G. Force 30:33

Yeah. And hey, listen, you’re a sales guy. When you’re doing this stuff, you got to look at ROI. What is the ROI is it’s am I afraid, I’m afraid of the expense? Well, that’s the wrong mindset. The mindset would be what’s the return on this? So if I get something like on course, what’s the potential ROI here if I actually take advantage of it right.

Gessie Schechinger 30:53

And as we all know, there is no ROI as great as email. And even with all the junk coins you get, and even vault The ones you’d like one of the things I do every single morning. I don’t know why, but I smile about it. Because I delete, like 20 emails, the very first thing I come to my computer, but some guys get past me, you know what I mean? They get to me, they’ll say something like, okay, maybe I do want that. Yeah,

Adam G. Force 31:16

it works. And I mean, it doesn’t work. And we’re very big on email. So that’s not going anywhere. And I’m curious about, you know, the chat bots on things like Facebook to help like with messenger, but also the SMS. And I’ve been sensitive about SMS technology just because it’s much it’s, it’s more personal than email is today. So it’s really for I think, when you’ve already built trust with somebody, so they’ve already raised their hand for your business, like you said, I think I’d feel more comfortable with very selective follow ups for them that they request.

Gessie Schechinger 31:50

Yeah. And it’s, you make a great point, right? Because again, it’s a gamble. It can totally rub somebody the wrong way. Like if I get these weird, like text messages, right? Normally, it’s just like, oh man, like, Who is this guy get out of here like you must think sometimes in sales. And I’m sure the sales guys out there, they could relate to this. So you’ve gone out and you’re calling on. Now you’re emailing back and forth. And they get that first text. We’re like, who are relationships move to texting now, we’re getting close.

Adam G. Force 32:20

It’s true. It’s true. Text Messages where I’m like, what the EFF is this? Like, who are you stop? Like, why are you in my personal like, this is for family and friends. You know?

Gessie Schechinger 32:29

Like, sorry, homie, we’re not there yet.

Adam G. Force 32:33

Yeah, it’s like, it’s like, well, yeah, it’s exactly yeah, we’re not there yet. But yeah, these things all its timing and, and being smart. And I guess one thing I always like to ask people in the sales space and we’ll wrap up here so I can be respectful of your time. is, you know, telling stories, like how important have stories been to giving clarity to people and getting people to understand you know, and pull them across the finish line.

Gessie Schechinger 33:00

So I, at when I was at Barry global, I did one of the sales trainings. And as a part of that sales training, we talked about how a story was 1000 times more memorable than just throwing up facts of people. Right. And so here’s a classic example. And hopefully this is relevant to the conversation or the question you’re asking. Sure, you know, as an example, it’s like, our plant is five miles from your facility. You know, like, that’s a great stat and they can allude to it. Or, you know, the alternative is like, hey, Adam, you know, I gotta be honest with you. I had this customer two weeks ago. He’s right down the street because our plant was eight miles away. He was an emergency. We got the order over right there. lickety split, same day, blah, blah. Like, you can see how the two messages are a little bit different one like one like you’re like okay, I see how this advantage plays out. And So moving some of that narrative stuff into a story is extremely helpful. And it just makes relatable people just remember stories better.

Adam G. Force 34:07

Oh, yeah. Oh, they do. So depending on where you are in that conversation, like where somebody is, you might need to tell a certain story to help them understand. So if they have some objection about not having the time, you might tell a story about how somebody used your, your product and ended up freeing up a lot of time, right? Oh, okay. So meaning I should make the investment then it’s not that. They might say, I don’t have time to learn something new, but in the end, it actually solves that problem, right.

34:35

100% Absolutely. Yeah.

Adam G. Force 34:38

Awesome, man. Well, listen, I appreciate your time here today. Any final messages for young entrepreneurs? I mean, trying to get their sales rockin and rollin.

Gessie Schechinger 34:51

The last thing I would say is that the old adage for sales was 75% of the job is showing up. You got to be there to get the yes With the tools today, go out and find things where you literally only have to do the 25%. Now, because 50% of the showing up, the follow up all those things is getting done for you. And so don’t be hesitant or fearful of the tools don’t worry about, you know, depending if especially if you’re in a high velocity sales situation, I highly recommend Rhea to do lots of selling to lots of customers. In order to build your business, you’ll have like just four key ones. When you’re doing that kind of stuff, don’t be afraid of the automation. And also don’t lose your personal touch. Just because it’s templated template or something that doesn’t mean it can’t be in personal. It doesn’t mean you can’t hear your voice through it. If you talk like an attorney and avoid can an email message. Like it’s not if you say Hey, what’s up Adam? How’s it been? Like, you know, it’s gonna be a lot better than just trying to throw up some random facts about your company.

Adam G. Force 35:57

I love it. Be yourself. Be authentic. People do want to know what you’re all about, like, why are you doing this? Like, why? What’s in it for you? Everyone always says that the customer wants to know what’s in it for them, which is true. But they also get to you and say, Well, what are you? Why are you doing this? What’s in it for you? Because you know what I mean? Are you shady? Are you real?

Gessie Schechinger 36:16

Well, yeah, that’s like, it’s like, hey, I want you to get involved because I think I could turn your company so big that you go for two users to 100 users, and I want to ride that train. Like that’s what I’m trying to do for your company. I’m trying to suck more money out of you. Boy, I suck money idea, you’ve gotten way bigger. So that’s really what we’re trying to do. I love that man.

Adam G. Force 36:34

Well, and on that note, appreciate you sharing and sounds like you have a really interesting product that is doing well so far. And let’s give one last shout out where people find you. And so they can learn more. And what that that discount opportunity was in case anybody wants to check it out.

Gessie Schechinger 36:54

Yeah, no, thank you very much. So if anybody’s interested, just go to try on course dot COMM And then also in LinkedIn, it’s on course sales engagement platform. You can look us up there. We’re also like on everything, Twitter, Facebook, all that nonsense. But you can find us all there. And then again, if you mentioned something to the SDR that helps you with that request. Just say like, Oh, I heard about him on the Change Creator, podcasts, it will make sure that right now we’re typically at 125 bucks, but for you guys to do for 100 bucks.

Adam G. Force 37:29

Got it. Awesome. All right, man. Appreciate your time, Jesse. We’ll be in touch and talk soon.

Gessie Schechinger 37:36

Hey, Adam, thank you so much. I really enjoy your podcast. It’s fantastic. And, you know, it’s great. I learned all kinds of business stuff from you. But then I also realize that there’s stuff like pig island in the Bahamas. There’s all kinds of weird stuff that you can get from this podcast, in addition to the education, so that’s great.

Adam G. Force 37:54

Awesome, man. I appreciate it. Thanks so much. That’s all for this episode. Your next step is to Join the Change Creator revolution by downloading our interactive digital magazine app for premium content, exclusive interviews and more ways to stay on top of your game available now on iTunes and Google Play or visit Change Creator mag Comm. We’ll see you next time where money and meaning intersect right here at the Change Creator podcast.

Listen to our exclusive interview with Kenn Costales:

Subscribe to this show on Spotify  |  iTunes  |  Stitcher  |  Soundcloud

How is the market-place shifting today due to the pandemic and what can you do to continue growing leads and revenue for your e-comm biz? The founder of Monolith Growth, Kenn Costales, who was on the Forbes 30 under 30 list, has his eye on the market and shares a ton of key insights to help you navigate these uncharted waters.

Kenn Costales is the Founder and Lead Consultant of Monolith Growth Consulting, a paid search and social marketing agency that helps Shopify stores & Lead Generation businesses around the world grow their revenue & ROI. Kenn is a 2019 honoree listed in Forbes 30 under 30 Asia, for Marketing & Advertising.

What sets Kenn’s agency apart is that they build fully paid ad funnels for their clients. They specialize in customizing the landing pages and emails to maximize conversions. They build custom dashboards, where clients get to see all sorts of data like customer lifetime value, frequency of purchase, and basket analysis, to maximize retention.

Before starting his own marketing agency, Kenn worked as a Brand Operations Manager for Procter & Gamble, and has managed multi-million dollar businesses in Asia like Olay and Head & Shoulders.

Learn more about Kenn and his work at > https://monolithgrowth.com

We also recommend:

• Charlie Hartwell: What Investors in the Social Impact Space Look For in a Startup
• How Companies Can Accommodate Three Different Generations of Workers 
• Steve Cockram: Become a Leader People Want to Follow

Transcription of Interview

(Transcribed by Otter.ai, there may be errors)

Adam G. Force 00:11

Hey, what’s going on? Welcome back to the Change Creator podcast show. This is your host Adam forests hope everybody is doing well and staying safe. I hope all of you entrepreneurs are thinking like entrepreneurs being problem solvers during this time, extend your empathy to your customers, what are the new problems they have? And how can you help solve them? All right, we have some new Dynamics here to face these days. If you missed it last week, we had an episode where Amy and I were talking about how to effectively set up some systems and things you should be thinking about, all related to this situation where you are in with COVID-19 so if you missed that, you can go back and check it out. I think there’s a lot of good nuggets in there for you and we’re gonna have more talks from Amy and I coming as well. So guys, today we’re talking with Ken castells. So he is the founder of monoliths growth, all right. And they’re focused on helping e commerce and SAS businesses really kind of scale up their revenues, get more ROI and leads and things like that. So we have a very good conversation coming here, because we’re going to talk about the, what he’s seeing in the market. He was, he was on the Forbes 30, under 30. And he’s done a lot of great work over the past, you know, since he started this company, and so he’s seeing a lot in the market, working with clients and how things are shifting based on COVID, and all this kind of stuff. So there’s gonna be a lot of great insights for you to consider here, when it comes to running your business online and how things are changing. So hang tight, and we’re going to talk about those things with Ken. If you guys have not yet, you know, this is the time if you’re not already digital, and you’re losing money with your business, and you want to get digital. We want to hear from you. Right so we have so much insights to share about creating systems online, like using the power of your story. To really get out to the world and create those digital revenue streams the right way. And that is through our program, the captivate method. So this is the time guys, like there’s no time like the president, right? So you want to get out there, you want to start thinking about how you can serve your audiences, and kind of compensate for any losses in revenue, with brick and mortar or on the ground doing, let’s say, trade shows, and now you’re losing, you know, business as an e commerce company. You know, we want to help you really get your marketing strategy, right. So storytelling is your marketing and marketing is your business. Right? So we’ve, we’ve got to empower those things and set it up in a way that applies to the business and really can systematically get leads and sales. And that’s what we want to help you with. So this could be opening up a whole new world of revenue for you. And we just need to consider what are the steps we got to take and, and and how do we do it? So that’s where our community comes in. We have tons of great coaches. We have a great community of people to get into Baldwin who are all here to make the world a better place. So it’s a great tribe to be part of. You can very simply go to our website Change Creator calm, you just go right on the top right of the menu and you say join captivate, get on the waitlist, we’ll start sending you some emails to update you. And then you’re going to get an invite to join the program to actually watch our masterclass because we want you to have a chance to learn what this is all about and how it can help you so you can decide if this is a good fit and you want to be part of our community. So guys, definitely swing by Change Creator calm, we have a lot of fresh content on there and get on the waitlist for the captivate method. This is such a great opportunity for you right now. Alright guys, so without further ado, we’re gonna jump into this conversation with Ken we’re going to talk about the climate of marketing and what’s going on and I hope you get a lot out of it. Don’t forget to leave us a review on iTunes. This is always a big help. And that’s it guys. Let’s dive into this conversation with Cal gay. Show me the heat Hey Ken, welcome to the Change Creator podcast show how you doing today, man?

Kenn Costales 04:04

Doing great. Thank you. How about you?

Adam G. Force 04:07

I’m doing great as well, navigating these unique times as during the time of this call here that we’re recording. So yeah, I mean, let’s like, let’s dive into this thing. You know, one of the things that caught my eye is that you were in the Forbes 30, under 30. Is that right?

Kenn Costales 04:24

Yep. Yep, that’s correct. I was in the list last year. 2019. Okay.

Adam G. Force 04:28

And that’s for your marketing and advertising work that you’ve been doing? Yeah.

Kenn Costales 04:32

Yes, that’s correct. I threw my marketing agency.

Adam G. Force 04:34

Cool, man. Cool. Let’s let’s dive into how you got there real quick. So just want to just give people a little bit of background about what you’re working on. What’s what you’re all about?

Kenn Costales 04:44

Sure, no problem at all. So just a quick background. So I run a what I would call as a ROI focused digital marketing agency. So what we do really is that we help specifically ecommerce and lead generation businesses. Getting Revenue and get more leads online. So it can be done through Facebook ads, Google ads, landing page optimization or conversion rate optimization. But really what we do is that we try to find the right marketing model that fits for your business. So for each and every client that comes into mondelez, we normally develop a custom plan for them. And we use that custom plan to drive results, specifically ROI for them. So that’s the main thing that we’re doing. And luckily enough, I got into Forbes, for my work come in that company.

Adam G. Force 05:32

Yeah. So how does that how does that play out? How do you get noticed? Is there any tricks you can share about getting on that Forbes? 30 under 30 list?

Kenn Costales 05:40

Yeah. So I think I did a couple of things I think about in about 2018. So what it did was that I actually not really spied but I took a look at the profiles of previous agency owners. So I took a look at businesses that have a similar business profile as mine and try to identify What was in their profile? So for example, I was looking at these agency owners in the US and in the Europe. And what they noticed was that, first they talked about their client lists, specifically their biggest clients. So normally it should be a brand name client. I think that’s one factor. And the other factor is that that there should be what’s called a signature campaign. Meaning Was there one particular client where you drove tremendous results on, right and given that what we did was because normally we focus on SME companies. So for the very first time, we actually reached out to a large enterprise client, and it was pretty much a near breakeven type of deal. But the reason why I took it on anyway was with the intent of number one doing extremely well for them, and then use the case study as part of the pitch for Forbes 30 under 30. Because because that’s what’s point 1.2 is in Forbes 30, under 30. You can actually self nominate so you don’t have To wait for someone to nominate for you, you don’t need any special connection whatsoever you can nominate yourself. So based on those two things, I was able to get in lucky. And I think the formula worked because I was able to get in last year.

Adam G. Force 07:13

Nice job, dude. That’s awesome. Yeah, yeah, pretty exciting. And, you know, I’m looking at your website and stuff. And so tell me like, I’m curious just how you see marketing evolving. I mean, we have on the line listening is, you know, we have early stage entrepreneurs and beyond. And, you know, I think that the climate of marketing and technology is obviously always changing pretty rapidly. Obviously, we have the COVID-19 impact. And I’m just curious one, just how you see things changing and maybe any, anything you are noticing with clients and how you’re helping them pivot based on some of the changes with COVID on top of everything else.

Kenn Costales 07:52

Sure. So I think I’ll kind of split it into two categories. One is the category of business assists that are online to begin with. So specifically ecommerce stores, SAS businesses, etc. And then there’s category two, which is the offline businesses. So first for the online businesses, what they’ve noticed is that there’s definitely a trend towards cheaper goods and more essential goods. So what we’ve noticed is that, at least for the food slash clothing related clients, sales are up tremendously. So we have one client in particular, they sell cakes. And in terms of the ROI that we are producing for them, well, I’ll start with a previous ROI. So the previous ROI prior to COVID-19, was about a five to one ROI, meaning for every dollar that was spent, they’re getting $5 back. Now during COVID-19, it is crazy. So we’re now getting 13 to one ROI, so that’s more than double in terms of revenue. So I think that’s one big shift that we’re seeing and we’re seeing similar patterns, not at the same level across And other essential goods. So I think that’s one big shift that I’m seeing in terms of digital. The other shift that I’m seeing, also for the online clients is a general trend towards cheaper goods, but more goods in one basket. So for example, we have this client, they are in the hiking slash outdoor space. So they sell like 200 to $300 bags, hiking bags, but they also have cheaper variants. So something in the range of $50 to $70. Now what we’re seeing is that average order value, which is basically the value of a basket, it goes lower, but the quantity of goods is higher, meaning they’re buying more of these $15 and $70 goods as compared to the larger SK use. And at the same time in terms of the revenue, it’s still flat. So maybe a slight increase, but generally there’s no huge impact when it comes to e commerce, especially if you’re in the you know, essential goods type of space. But overall, what I’m saying Seeing a stat, there’s a trend towards finding better value for every dollar that you spend. And what that specifically means is that more people are buying the cheaper stuff, but with using a bigger basket. So I think that’s for category one, which is for businesses that are ready and digital, for the offline people. What I’m noticing there is that they’re trying to disrupt themselves. So they’re trying to make their own digital platforms. So I think one interesting thing is that we have one client, what they are is basically a space. So imagine a space where they rent out small spots for small food business owners, basically a bazaar. Okay, so there’s a bazaar and they rent out spaces for small food business owners. Now, because of this thing that’s going on, it’s quite upright, momentarily. Now, what they did is that they tried to develop what’s called the cloud kitchen concept. And what that means is that they try to pull all of the food providers or the stall owners in their area And what they’re doing is that they hired their own logistics team. Well, it’s not really a proper logistics team. It’s basically like a dude as part of the team was now was now delivering orders for the company. So it’s a repurposed hire. And what’s happening is that they’re offering certain dishes at certain locations. So for example, you know, just using a random city, So say, for example, in Dallas, in a specific district in Dallas, they can sell specific dishes, and then in another district, they can sell a different set of dishes depending on who lives in that district. Right. So yeah, that’s what I’m doing right now. And the way that they are accepting orders right now is through Facebook Messenger. So there’s no like proper ecommerce type of website as of yet. It’s something that is being built along the way. And even then, are there special e commerce site, they’re just using a basic theme and Shopify, and they’re using or at least I’m seeing other businesses use that to accept orders. So I’m seeing People are going from a bakery to a website that just sells groceries. And beyond the restaurant or the food space, I’m also seeing people like fitness, or not fitness but personal trainers who used to work at a gym. I’m seeing people who used to work in dance studios. They’re not transitioning to digital to digital, but they’re doing in two ways. One is through like personal training. So in my own Facebook, I’m actually seeing people posting, like, like literal zoom screenshots of themselves working out where the personal trainer right at the top right area or the top left there. That was very interesting. So I’m seeing that Shen for personal training for dance studios or for dance lessons. And I’m also seeing some people trying to sell some courses here and there, but the more I would say one to one models working out better so people are hustling man. So something is happening for them, but the impact is so crazy. But I’m very, very glad to see some of these things are going on at least in the offline space, because these guys are the most affected over this situation.

Adam G. Force 13:08

Yeah, exactly. And it’s interesting because there’s a lot of support out there to, to go digital. I see other groups like taking, like, for example, one of our friends in our network runs, like, he helps people with Instagram selling, right? And he’s like, Hey, I know that, you know, you’re used to go into what do you call it, like sell your art at like, you know, different, like trade shows, and like all that, like on on boots on the ground kind of work. And he’s speaking directly to these audiences who now need other ways to sell their products. And so using his product as that solution, so sometimes you can like make a pivot but other times it’s really just Are you shaping your, your marketing narrative to speak to those people and attract them? Right.

Kenn Costales 13:56

Right, definitely. And I think the best way to frame that situation is that like before, because for me entrepreneurship is all about solving problems. So prior to COVID, there were 100 problems, and maybe 99 of them are solved. Now with COVID-19. And now with this new normal, the number of unsolved problems has increased. So maybe from 100 problem is not 150 problems, but instead of one on soft problems now 51 on solve problems, so there are new opportunities for people to tap into, because there’s a lot of people who are not used to the whole remote work engagement. They’re not used to remote software. They are bored at home. So cakes and many other joyful things are trending higher. So there’s definitely new problems that can be solved anything. There’s one interesting as well because another big business that or another industry router that’s impacted is the hotel industry. And from what I know in Philippines, there is this one hotel that converted the space into a commercial space. Because there are some businesses that can still operate. So they’re trying to accept some like commissaries to use or accepting some people to cook in the kitchen. They are for a certain cost. They are accepting some commercial businesses that is doing outsourcing services, specifically customer service. And they’re letting them work in other rooms. So people are repurposing to handle new types of problems. Right. So I think people are trying to figure things out along the way. But yeah, I think the main point here is that they’re new problems to solve anything. Our job right now as entrepreneurs is to find these new problems and look at ourselves what we have like what we do we have a skills, what do we have us talents as resources, and then try to kind of match the two right? So new problem, this is what I have. What’s a good new business idea that I can pursue to solve that newfound problem?

Adam G. Force 15:52

Yeah, now it’s as it makes a lot of sense that you know, my co founder, Amy, and I just had our little Facebook Live session where we were talking about how we’re The emotional talents intelligence factor is right now have empathy. Right, right, and really just putting yourself in other people’s shoes, because to your point, there is a whole new world of problems we have to now consider for our clients and customers and people that we help, right. So now they have different problems. And it’s like, how do we reshape what we’re doing? And, you know, I don’t know about you, but I see a lot of people getting into a panic. And, you know, because yeah, money goes out the door and stuff like that. But at the end of the day, we keep reiterating what you said, we’re entrepreneurs, we are problem solvers. So just take a step back, stay calm, put yourself in their shoes, and then either look at what you do, sometimes you can help people with a pivot that really isn’t going to be a huge change for you. Others, you may have to pivot a little bit more, but I think to your point, it’s just really like understanding this new set of problems and coming up with the solutions, right?

Kenn Costales 16:56

Yeah, definitely. And I think what what has also helped me and was Help comfort me during this phase is just realizing that this is not the first time that we’re having our session, right. So there were things that successful entrepreneurs did in 2008. There’s something that successful entrepreneurs did in 2001, in 1987, and then far back from that. So what I tried to do was that I just tried to kind of search around online, see what some other companies have done before in 2008 that have helped them manage through this recession. So looking at new ways to optimize for cost, like, for example, what I’m seeing is that, at least for some of the big bigger companies, they try to switch from labor to automation, for example. Yeah. So I think that’s one a big trend that I’m seeing. And another trend that I’m seeing is that you try to figure out what is the ROI of each and every piece of expense that you have, cut off all the ones which are not making money and reinvest everything into sales, marketing and r&d. I just read an article yesterday from being in company, which is this management consulting firm. They they said there that in 2009. Samsung in particular did that process which I mentioned, and they reinvested everything into r&d. And they pirated people from large consumer goods, companies like L’Oreal. So they got all of their best marketing talent. So in other words, they invested in sales, marketing and r&d. And what resulted from that is the galaxy series that is so popular today. So that launched in the middle of 2009. So I think so I think if you just reframe the way you think and just realize that this is not the first time the human race has faced or not the human race, but entrepreneurs in general has faced this problem. Yeah, just look for inspiration in 2008 2011. And just tried to figure out what other business owners have done before to manage the situation.

Adam G. Force 18:51

Yeah, that’s a good tip to just look back at other points in time where we face these types of shifts. I mean, it does happen and we all kind of just have to To put our best foot forward there, right? I’m just curious to like, are you seeing, you know, for yourself and the companies you support? I mean, I honestly see a lot of good positive results here because we see people pushing outside of what they would normally do. And when this is all over and said and done, they probably are gonna end up with different revenue channels that have expanded their business in the long run.

Kenn Costales 19:28

Yeah, definitely. So the cloud kitchen story that I mentioned earlier, is actually one of my clients and I was like helping them out in terms of setting that up. We’re also seeing a another restaurant business that also shifted online. So it’s actually a catering business, not really a restaurant, but so you have a restaurant, they also have a catering business, but their catering business is much larger. And since it’s Easter, they just realized that hey, maybe we can sell these large trays of food to people who want to prepare some food for Easter. So that’s working out well for them. So now so they have no Expand the revenue channel, even for me. So even for me while I am in digital and have the privilege of being digital, which means, thankfully, I’m not as impacted. I’m still also looking to disrupt myself. Yeah. So I’m now looking at more stable digital revenue streams. And what they mean specifically is pure digital bass like software, online courses, and other similar mediums. So I think in the past week, because I’m not the type of guy who usually does webinars, so for the first time, I didn’t have webinar for like about 15 minutes, because I think before that, I was pretty much I was lucky enough to get a lot of referrals for my business. But now with this whole situation, I’m not trying to do more marketing for myself. I’m now trying to pilot a new software that we plan to sell. And I’m also looking at other software businesses to pilot as well. So I’m also trying to distract myself because I also realized that hey, sure, I’m lucky in the sense of I am in the digital space, but it’s only one revenue stream right now. Which is digital services or the digital agency business? Yeah, it’s going to be wise for me to also diversify and look into other formats, such as an education format via online courses, or maybe a tooling format, such as software and many other ways to serve our customer base better as well.

Adam G. Force 21:19

Yeah, yeah. And so how has that progress been going for you?

Kenn Costales 21:25

I think in terms of internal progress, or it’s doing great, primarily, because I think the way that we are approaching it is that we try to do a hybrid version first. So what they mean specifically that for our existing clients, I tried to figure out, like what they want automated. So for example, we have this ecommerce client that wanted their logistics automated. So instead of an order manager, like pushing buttons in the backend of Shopify, we have built an automation tool for them that automatically, you know, does the logistics for them. So I think that’s one One thing Another thing is an automated dashboard. Which specifically means it helps one of our clients get the data from various sources from Facebook, Google, and all other channels, and then it will output a certain set of metrics that is custom for them. So we can’t use the traditional dashboarding software like scifi portfolio and all that. And instead, we had to build something from scratch. And we had to call the API’s through code. So we’re getting there. I think, at the very least, we have a hybrid solution. And I think the next step for us is to make it a pure software solution instead of a hybrid software and LIBOR type of solution.

Adam G. Force 22:37

So you’re doing custom is this internal development? Or are you able to, like outsource that to a team or something, but it sounds like you’re doing development yourself one way or the other?

Kenn Costales 22:47

Yes. So I actually know how to code. And I think for a very short time, we offered some web development services, but when I tried to sell it and when I serve some clients before with that, it was It was very difficult to manage because it’s an entirely new business in itself, right? So I decided to focus purely on digital marketing. And the only Avenue where I offer some web development is if it’s related to conversion rate optimization. So meaning if there’s a custom pop up that they want, if they want a marketing dashboard, that’s something that we can offer, you know, just six automation, it’s something that I did heavy research on. And if I could do it myself, and if I could pilot it, because I did the pilot first before committing, then I sold it. So I’m thinking piece by piece because because the reason why I learned how to code, I think in 2016, or 2017, so I took a three month boot camp. So the reason why I took that boot camp was because I wanted to build a SAS or software as a service business for myself anyway. So that’s why I learned that skill and slow and I’m slowly building that skill over time through helping an existing client base

Adam G. Force 23:59

cool, like The initiative? Yeah, I mean, that kind of skill set does come in handy for sure. Even when you’re working with others who are doing development, it’s good to have a base knowledge just so you know what’s going on.

24:11

Yeah, that’s so true. You know.

Adam G. Force 24:13

So I noticed too, you do a lot of support in the e commerce space. So I want to just kind of talk about e commerce a little bit. You know, you support people by, you know, driving up ROI, obviously, something everybody wants. And also, that probably starts with more higher conversion rates and leads. So I’m wondering if you could tell us a little bit about what you’re seeing in the e commerce space on, you know, how we’re, what are some of the things that are common problem for the sites that need to kind of be rethought with your support. Now, you don’t have to give us all the secret sauce or anything but trying to give people with e commerce or some tips and ideas about where things might be going wrong, why they might have low conversions. And maybe some ideas on what they should think ab

Kenn Costales 25:03

ut. Okay, sure. Um, I think my main philosophy when it comes to approaching ecommerce clients, or even any client in general, is to actually start with a wide base of ad copies and ad sets or targeting options to test. And what I specifically mean is that whenever I audit, an existing ecommerce store, they normally only have one type of ad copy or one type of creative that is being launched. Okay. And the problem with that is that you don’t, you’re pretty much putting all of your eggs in one basket, right? Because you’re, you’re betting everything in this single campaign. And it’s either success or failure. There’s only two outcomes. And what we do is that we try to test out a wide variety of ad copies and creatives. And the way we think through it is that we try to think in terms of different target markets. So even if say, for example, in the CrossFit space, so seriously You’re setting supplements specifically for crossfitters. We don’t lock ourselves down to just a crossfitter space. But we also try to target the strong men or the strong women, so people who like lift really, really heavy weights and go to competitions. We also try to target runners, we also try to target executives who want better performance. And that’s why they take a supplement. And we also try out other target markets as well. But our normal standard is that we need to have at least four different target markets, okay, and these target market should be completely different from one another. So, so that’s the starting point. And after that, what we’re going to do is that we’re going to target different interests or different targeting options for each persona. So for example, if we were targeting a crossfitter, we should target the CrossFit event. I forgot the name but I think it’s a I forgot the second word, but it’s CrossFit something so it happens early on in the Okay, we also target influencers in the CrossFit space as well. But our standard is to have three, so sorry, four rather. So we’ll have like four targeting options for each one. So what happens is that for target markets, times for targeting options equals 16 different varieties of personas, target markets, yeah. And targeting options. And there’s also another piece as well, which is for each persona, there’s also unique ad copy as well, right? Because the way you talk to runners is should be completely different than that of crossfitters from strong men, etc. What happens is that we have a huge variety of target markets and ad copies. And what happens after a testing phase which usually takes a week or two, we will be then be able to see what type of ad copy and what type of persona works better than the others in terms of ROI. So say for example, for runners, what works for them is pain based copy, like we lead with the pain. And then maybe for crossfitters, what works for them is review copies. Maybe for them influencers is very important as part of the ad copy, and they need to be featured there. So we get to see what works well in different niches. And what happens with that is that we get to iterate evolve it over time, and that results in improved ROI. And if something fails that say it’s below standard, or it’s below the target to see the target is five to one ROI, and it only produces three to one ROI, then we just kill it. So that’s how we produce results, because we put a lot of time and investment in the testing phase. Yeah. And that’s why you drive improved ROI for clie

Adam G. Force 28:44

ts. Yeah, but I mean, so let me take that a little bit further. So that’s on the front end. So basically top of funnel when it comes to ads, and read, you know, we always talk on our end about, you know, having like, here’s the thing, like you can run all the ads in the world and if you’re an Not set up on your, wherever you’re selling, right could be a Shopify store, whatever your website is, to optimize those leads, right? So like, You’re, you’re gonna fall short. So like there’s that one getting the ads to work and convert to the the lead, but then actually having yourself set up to get conversions and sales on the website, not only immediately, but over the long term. So any thoughts just on you know, like, for example, a lot of websites and e commerce will have a right when you get to the site on the top of the homepage, it’ll talk about you know, get a discount code or whatever. Right? Do you find that effective? Or do you find that you become a discount brand all of a sudden, like, that’s how peep that’s the only time people will shop from you now is if you’re like, they see you as a discount brand, like stuff like that I’m always curious about in the e commerce wo

Kenn Costales 29:50

Um, so for that particular piece, like having a discount up front. That’s actually not a problem from what we have seen. Although it I think the correct answer is It depends. It depends because the way I like to classify it is in two different segments one is in the consumable segment and the other one is in the durable segment. Yeah, so the robots meaning furniture, beings, bedsheets and furniture Yeah. So the durable space and there is a consumable space which is cakes, essential oils and all that. I have noticed that for the consumable space, discounts are generally okay and it does not harm the brand. So that works out well for them. But they do notice that in for the durable space, it becomes a problem primarily because they start to expect it because the problem with the durable space is that there’s no real urgency for people to buy as compared to let’s say essential oils, there’s normally like a relevant pain to see for example, you have a headache and you want to try essential oils, then you try out the essential oil or maybe if you if there is an upcoming occasion. Let’s say your wife or husband has a birthday And you want to buy a cake, you can buy the cake online. So there’s like a, like a very there’s a time dependent need but for durables, if you want to buy furniture, you can like delay it as much as you want. Because it’s there’s no real pain, or there’s no real need to get it soon, right unless you’re moving in. So what happens there is that if you provide a discount, especially in the durable space, people tend to dependent too much. So I do see that the percentage of people who buy with a discount in this space is about 50% of users in the durable space but for consumables is much less like 20 to 10%. So what we normally say to our clients, who are in the doula space is to try to figure out a different way to incentivize people. So for example, a good way to incentivize people is to have a club membership. So if you’re part of the club, which is a yearly membership, then you can get access to these discounts. I mean, notice that while because and what we noticed that lifetime value is really high, because since they’re in our member, they now have an incentive to keep buying some more from that store. Yeah, if it’s in a durable space, so that’s one model. And the other model is to have some sort of wrapper. So for example, if they buy a piece, say for example $10,000 worth of clothes or $5,000 worth of goods, then they will get a trip or some sort. So when they do provide discounts, it’s normally like a really, really high value discount, or you need to like commit a lot to get that. So at least that’s the way that they do it. Because the thing is, is a big difference because as compared to website that offers 10% discounts all the time, it feels a bit cheap, especially in the durable space. But if you do something like a like a club membership, or if you do a raffle that has a high cost of entry like $5,000 to get access to a ticket, then the conversation shifts a bit. The principle is the same. The marketing principle is the same which is to provide like value to the consumer, but it’s done. in a different way that resonates with the target market that they want to go after

Adam G. Force 33:03

Yeah, I like that, and it doesn’t devalue your brand, right? So you’re kind of keeping the integrity because, you know, well, you might have a very low key transactional brand, but if you don’t, and you want to keep certain integrity behind the value of it, that was always something I thought about, and I see it all the time, like how these ecommerce brands are doing that and sometimes, you know, it could be a major brand that already has a lot of trust and brand equity and they don’t do it or smaller brands, they tend to like, like you don’t want to reek of desperation, either, right? It’s not like to get a sale and then all of a sudden your brand is seen as and I always thought like they’re going to be seen as a discount brand. So these are good tips. I like the club membership, the raffles, there’s other incentives basically are saying that you can use in place of just that that low hanging fruit of a discount. Correct.

Kenn Costales 33:51

Purchase also works very well. What is it? A gift with purchase, so if you buy it, if you get bad, then you get the free Like a bottle or something, something, so some item that also resonates with your target market

Adam G. Force 34:04

Yeah. Interesting. A knowing and being somebody in the marketing space, curious how important the process of storytelling has been to help clients increase their leads and sa

Kenn Costales 34:19

I think storytelling is extremely important, especially if you are a independent ecommerce brand as compared to a retailer. So what I mean by these two is that our retailer sells are well known brands like Nike or Adidas and all that. So for them, you don’t have to do storytelling as much because the brand equity is so strong. The brand name will help in terms of the sales process. But if you’re an independent brand with your own, like, yeah, if you have your own brand, then storytelling is extremely important. And at least on our end when you write copy for our clients, both on the landing page and On the ads reach out different angles, like a pain based angle, or a worldview based angle or a proof based angle, all sorts of angles. And yes, to your point, storytelling is extremely important. And I would say, if I were to rank all of the marketing elements in terms of helping clients get traction online, copywriting is definitely number one copywriting are celebrating so I would look at the two, that would be number one and all of the other crazy tactics in terms of email automation, optimization, etc. Those are secondary to the right storytelling

Adam G. Force 35:35

Absolutely. Yeah, I agree. That’s, that’s something that we always try to, you know, educate our members and audiences about, it’s just like, it’s like having the fuel for the car, like everybody wants to tactics, like all the pieces that put the car together, but then when they don’t have the strategy, the stories, the insights to really, you know, attract the audience and be clear and effective in their communication. It always falls short. So we got to make sure we have that marketing strategy, right

Kenn Costales 35:59

Yep. 100% agree

Adam G. Force 36:01

Yeah. So what else is? So what’s going on here? I want to be respectful of your time. So what is coming for you down the road and I want to make sure you give a shout out. It sounds like you have a lot of insights and expertise to offer people. So if somebody wants to find you learn more, maybe you can do an audit for their business, like how do they reach you stuff like that?

Kenn Costales 36:21

Sure. So, so they can reach out to me again, it’s completely complimentary or free. You can go to monoliths, growth.com. So monolith and growth small.com. And right there, there’s a free marketing audit button, and you can reach out to me and I’m more than happy to give you insights. And it’s not just like a quick call or anything like that, but it’s a proper audit. So there’s going to be 20 to 30 slides. Totally custom fit for you because the idea of that audit is that that serves as the foundation. If we do decide to work together, fine. And if we don’t, then at least you have a great custom plan that you can use on your own. So it’s totally like no strings attached

Adam G. Force 37:00

Excellent very cool. All right guys. I think that’s it it looks like they have a lot of good stuff so you could check them out again it’s monolith growth calm it’s that spelled mo NOL it Ah okay monolith growth all one word. can really appreciate your time today. Congrats on all the success and the things that you have going on and just like hearing how you’re pivoting and supporting clients is exciting. And yeah, appreciate your time. Appreciate you too. So for this episode, your next step is to join the Change Creator revolution by downloading our interactive digital magazine app for premium content, exclusive interviews, and more ways to stay on top of your game available now on iTunes and Google Play or visit Change Creator mag comm we’ll see you next time where money and meaning intersect right here at the Change Creator podc

Listen to our exclusive interview with Travis Chambers:

Subscribe to this show on Spotify  |  iTunes  |  Stitcher  |  Soundcloud

Travis Chambers knows viral videos. He was inadvertently launched into the social video marketing world with one — a short video of him and his wife “being dumb” (his words, not mine!) that he produced while still in college. It ended up paying for their student loans, a car, and led to a job at Crispin Porter Bogusky, a premier ad agency he’d had his sights on.

As the in-house viral video expert at Crispin Porter Bogusky, he worked on some pretty sweet ads like the one for Turkish Airlines that featured Kobe Bryant and Lionel Messi. It got 150 million views and 30 million shares — amazing.

And then it hit him: an early midlife crisis. After having a baby, a devastating medical diagnosis for his dad, and being let go from his position as Social Media Director at 20th Century Fox — a position he admits he wasn’t equipped or prepared for — Travis found himself searching for that next step.

Sound Advice From Someone Who’s Been There

He decided to follow some sage advice he heard in a podcast by author and entrepreneur James Altucher: If you’ve got nothing, you’ve got no ideas, just start with a service. He and his wife decided to give themselves three months to start their own marketing business. They lived off their savings for that time and landed their first client at the very end of those three months.

I think if I had tried to raise capital or launch some really big idea, I think I would have been in for a really rude awakening.

And just like that, Chamber Media was born. There has definitely been a learning curve. Travis’ company does a lot of video marketing and ad buying so he’s had to transition from knowing how to do to knowing how to teach. Nevertheless, things are going quite well for the five-year-old company. In the last year and a half, they’ve grown from six to 20 people, they’ve tripled the revenue of four multimillion dollar D2C companies, and they’ve driven $300 million in tracked revenue and garnered 400 million views across Facebook and Google channels.

In 2018, Travis made the Forbes 30 Under 30 list.

Social Media Advertising is Evolving

There was a time, Travis recounts, in the early 2000s, that free press was a thing. You had people getting millions of views for free because, as a result of numerous social platforms popping up and more users than good creators, pretty much anybody was happy to create content at no charge.

During his time at Crispin Porter Bogusky, 20 to 50 percent of all their views were earned media they essentially got for free as a result of seeding techniques that resulted in free reach. This type of free advertising simply doesn’t happen anymore, Travis explains, unless you are in the “elite top one percent of the one percent.” You simply can’t get free reach if you’re a brand or advertiser.

And so what we have basically accepted in the last few years is you’ve got to pay to play.

Advertising — effective advertising — is not free. The goal is no longer landing some free publicity; the goal is effective ad buying and creating content that sells. This, Travis clarifies, has nothing to do with how much earned free media your business secures.

It is possible, however, to garner some free virality if your ad is unique or at the top of a trend. But Travis warns that this is not optimal since it’s not something you can control or plan for. He adds that if someone wants to charge you so they can get your brand some virality, to consider it a red flag. A more effective option would be to hire someone to do a paid element that includes a very predictable, methodical, and replicable campaign with an activation on the side that will hopefully get some viral reach.

The Seven Foundational Ads

For the last year, Chambers Media has looked very closely at all the video ads they’ve ever made. They’ve categorized hundreds of ads and put them in a library. They named each category of ad and attached their effectiveness and looked at which type of ad got the most performance. What they found was that there were about seven different categories of ads that got really good performance on Facebook. More importantly, they found that all but one variety of these ads — anchor videos — were not that expensive to make.

Here’s a summary of those ads so you can get started on deciding which one is best suited for your business:

1. Anchor Video

• One to four minutes long
• Has a spokesperson
• Chatty and funny
• Large production, expensive so not realistic for 70% to 80% of brands

2. Product Demo

• Highlights product features
• Explains value points for consumer
• Can include unboxing or showing how product works

3. Social Proof

• Endorsement or approval from past product users
• Includes quotes from influencers, testimonials, user-generated content blogs, press reviews, or Amazon customer reviews

4. Closer Ads

• Ads that retarget and overcome people’s objections
• Generally address three to four objections
• Can be in the form of a selfie video
• Good for addressing and overcoming high checkout cart bounce rates

5. Case Studies

• Good for explaining claims or studies that demonstrate effectiveness
• Can be simple like a visualization of showing that the product works

6. Lifestyle

• More brand-heavy
• Helps the consumer imagine what the product feels like or how their lives will be like with the product
• Often includes beautiful models and a musical montage

7. Unboxing

• A simple video of the product being unpackaged
• Illustrates how the product is packaged and how it arrives to the consumer

For more information, you can check out www.chamber.media or find Travis Chambers on LinkedIn.

We also recommend:

• 4 Trusted (Old School) Marketing Techniques You Should Try and Why They Might Work for You
• How to Find Ideas for Your Social Enterprise That You’ll Want to Pursue
• Activecampaign vs. Hubspot: Make a Smart CRM Choice Today!

Transcription of Interview (Transcribed by Otter.ca; there may be errors.)

Announcer 0:00
This is the Change Creator Podcast.

Adam Force 0:11
What’s going on everybody? Welcome back to the Change Creator Podcast show. This is your host, Adam Force. If you missed the last episode, it was with Susan Meier. We talked about electrifying your brand strategy. She had lots of good inputs and insights and some great experience to share. So if you missed it, go back; you’ll get some good nuggets out of that. In this episode, we’re going to be talking with Travis Chambers. He is the founder of Chamber Media. And he was listed on the Forbes 30 Under 30, which is pretty cool. And right now, I think they have a team of about 30 people. The agency tripled the revenue of four multimillion dollar direct to consumer companies. And they’ve driven $300 million in tracked revenue and garnered 400 million views across Facebook and Google channels.

Pretty cool, man. I mean, these guys have definitely done something right and they have some really great video expertise. He’s been a keynote speaker at the Google growth summit, VidCon, and other things like that. Also, I think the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and he was featured in Inc., and Entrepreneur and all that kind of stuff. So this guy’s been around, he’s done a lot of good stuff. And he’s got a lot of great experience. So we’re gonna have a really good conversation about marketing and video and all that good stuff — something that we all need today as we’re pushing our businesses to the next level. We’re trying to connect with people; we’re trying to build trust. How do we do it? How do we cut through the noise? So hang tight, we’re going to have that conversation with Travis in just a minute. If you guys haven’t stopped by changecreator.com a while, swing by. We’d love to see you. Lots of fresh content coming out over there.

We have a new resource we’re putting out there very soon. So keep your eyes peeled. You’ll get updates on our Facebook channel. So if you’re not following us on Facebook, make sure you’re following us there and you can join our group. The Profitable Digital Impact Entrepreneur, when you want to get serious about scaling your business and making it profitable. It’s one thing to have a passion. It’s another thing to go from hobby to business, right? So, check us out over there, guys when you’re ready, and we’d love to see you. Outside of that, I think we’re ready to rock and roll. One thing I will mention: I was super inspired last week. I’m in a mastermind with my co founder, Amy. And I went to California — Redondo Beach — for this small summit. It was just 40 of us that are in this mastermind. And it’s, you know, a program that you’re part of, and it’s a paid program, right?

You pay in, and you pay a lot of money. And you’re part of these masterminds, and the idea is to elevate what you’re doing right? And I will tell you, I’ve been to a lot of conferences, I spoken at conferences, all that stuff, and they’re great. But when you’re in a paid program, and you’re in a community of like-minded people who are doing what you’re doing, I cannot believe the power of that conference. So you know, moving forward, this is a focus and I’m just putting it out there because as you guys are thinking about What conferences do I go to? Where should I spend my time? Getting involved in these communities and really hooking up with these guys that can elevate you. I mean, it makes a massive difference. I had a stellar time; the networking was incredible. And you just feel like you’re pushing yourself to the next level just from that community. Right. So anyway, just throwing that out there because I was super inspired and appreciative of everybody that I connected with out in California. Let’s jump into this conversation with Travis and talk about video, talk about marketing, and how we can sell more. Alright?

Announcer 3:36
Okay, show me the heat.

Adam Force 3:40
Hey, Travis, welcome to the Change Creator Podcast show. How you doing today, man?

Travis Chambers 3:44
I’m doing good, man. And I’m just doing so much better now that I’m talking to you.

Adam Force 3:49
That’s very nice. I appreciate you being here. It looks like you’ve had a lot of exciting stuff going on. So we’re going to dig into it and see what you’ve got in your brain that we can get from you to steal your secrets. So, tell us a little bit about just you know, what’s the latest and greatest in Travis’s world today? What are you pumped about? What’s going on?

Travis Chambers 4:10
Well, you know, in the last year and a half, we grew our business from six to 20. And we just went through all these new experiences on scaling. And so it’s been really exciting to like see our business grow and then instill the new learnings and things I have to learn in order to master all that and learn how to teach. You know what I mean? We do a lot of video marketing and ad buying and so I’ve had to transition from knowing how to do to knowing how to teach which has been more difficult than I thought.

Adam Force 4:43
Yeah, I know that feeling. So just give me a little bit of history on how you kind of got started with Chamber Media and why you started. I just want to get that little bit of background.

Travis Chambers 4:57
Yeah, so, I was in college. I was always very entrepreneurial. I had an MMA fight promotion that I put on. Three thousand people showed up. Ran a painting company which didn’t make any money. But eventually got really interested in video. And me and my wife put out a video actually, of just us being dumb and it went mega viral. We were on Tosh.0, Good Morning America, truTV. We made like 40 grand on this video and paid off our student loans and bought a car and… . Anyways, that led to a job in L.A., funny enough, at Crispin Porter Bogusky, which is one of the better, more premier ad agencies that I had dreamed of going to all through college but everyone said it was impossible to get in there. And they happened to reach out to license or video for Kraft Mac & Cheese and I said, “Well, how about a job?” and they gave me one!

So I become the in-house…all of a sudden, I become the in-house viral video expert and a year later, Turkish Airlines says, “We want to make the most viral ad of all time.” They pointed at me and sure enough, we pulled it off. We got 150 million views, 30 million shares. We had Kobe Bryant and Lionel Messi in the commercial. And I [unintelligible] 20th Century Fox as the Social Media Director. I royally royally sucked at that job. I was just way out of my depth; thought I was way smarter than I was. Anyways, I [unintelligible]…well, they let me go after three months. I started…had a baby. Dad got Parkinson’s, had a early midlife crisis, started Chamber Media. And first year we did you know, half a million revenue and things just kind of kept slowly, slowly growing and that’s pretty much been it for the last five years.

Adam Force 6:48
Wow. Sounds like a pretty interesting ride. So I’m curious, you know, when you get your…when you got Chamber Media started, you mentioned you got 500,000 for the first year, which is not a bad start considering most people are in the negatives after year one. Now, did you have a client roster that you went after? Like what was the secret sauce to getting started there?

Travis Chambers 7:13
Yeah, so I had read The 4-Hour Workweek and I right away thought this book is unrealistic. It’s…but the principle here is it changed the way I started thinking, right? I never believed I could do a four-hour workweek. I still don’t believe that’s possible. I think that’s for really rich people or hippies, maybe that, you know… . Anyways, I read that and I read The $100 Startup and I never honestly after college never had dawned on me that I would ever be able to start a company. I just…I was gonna climb the ladder like my dad did. I read The $100 Startup and then all of a sudden I realized, Oh, I could just sell my time. I can just charge for my skills. I don’t…I didn’t know any….I didn’t have any great ideas to start a company. I didn’t have any capital. I didn’t know anybody, really, in that space at all. I just wasn’t connected in any way. I had no real prospects for clients.

And so I just said, I’m just going to tell the world that I’m available, and I put it out there on LinkedIn, and just my wife and I said, Well, let’s give it three months. That’s how much money we’ve got saved. And if we get a client in that time, then we’ll keep going. And I think it was literally the very end of that three months, when we were starting to use our credit cards for personal expenses when we got our first client. And it happened to be a $60,000 client — happened to be my friend’s uncle, of all things. And then I think once everyone on LinkedIn saw that I was really actually doing this thing, then projects just kind of started to trickle in, and that was it. And the insight there was I think if I had tried to raise capital or launch some really big idea, I think I would have been in for a really rude awakening. And so I think just selling…starting with the service, which is advice I got from James Altucher on a blog post he had. He said, Hey, if you’ve got nothing, you got no ideas, you got nothing, just start with a service. So that’s what I did.

Adam Force 9:30
Yeah, so what were you offering? Just like a video service at the time for video marketing?

Travis Chambers 9:37
Yeah, so what I started out offering was ad buying — ad buying, SEO, and influencer integration. So people would give us a budget. We did a budget with Acura, we did a budget with Polaroid. And they would give us you know…Iceland airlines…they would give us like $10,000, $20,000, $30,000, $40,000. And we would go get them a bunch of influencers for a campaign. And then we had a few, you know, ad buying clients as well. It was about eight months in that we started doing video production. And it just so happened that I pitched Nordic track on this big viral idea. They gave us 180 grand to pull it off. We got 12 influencers involved. We set up 50 treadmills in a giant barn. And we did the world’s largest treadmill dance and I produced this $180,000 film shoot and I had never produced anything in my life. And I just, you know, hired a director, hired a producer to help me and it blew up! America’s Got Talent took this treadmill dance on primetime and NordicTrack got 5 million free primetime views. And it got, you know, it got…I can’t remember how many million — eight or nine million views and it drove four or five million in trackable sales. And that was it. That was like the birth of doing like this, you know, big production video thing with social ads.

Adam Force 11:04
That’s pretty sweet man. So what was the hook to get you in the Forbes 30 Under 30?

Travis Chambers 11:11
So I pretty much bamboozled Forbes 30 Under 30. I have a friend Cameron Manwaring, who actually helped me on the Nordic Track thing, and he helped…he was one of our vendors on the Kobe versus Messi thing. He really helped my success. Anyways, he gave me this….he’s like a master of viral [unintelligible]. And he gave me this tip that I used for Forbes to get onto the Forbes list. And I actually posted on my LinkedIn about it, too, exactly. It’s called How I Faked My Way On the Forbes List. And so what I did is I basically just asked all of the biggest name influencers and actors I had ever worked with to retweet my nomination. So I had Laura Clary, who was a big Facebook influencer. She’d been in one of our films. We hit it off — good friends. So she nominated me. And then just all these people just retweeted it. And so what happened was it caught the attention of the editors, and they actually looked into my stuff. And that was enough social proof to get on the list.

Adam Force 12:24
That’s pretty cool, man. I like that story.

Travis Chambers 12:27
And what’s funny is, I told the same strategy, actually to a friend of mine, Jaan [unintelligible]. He works at Instagram, and by all means, he is so much more qualified, incredible to be on that list, right? I think he would have gotten on that listen, no matter what. But he utilized the same strategy and I just happened to be the guy he asked to retweet — to do the nomination. And sure enough, he made the list. So I’d say if you got some credentials, take a crack at it.

Adam Force 12:58
That’s pretty funny. Amazing. So alright, so you know, time goes by, you guys are building up Chamber Media. What is some of the…How long have you guys been in business now?

Travis Chambers 13:09
I think we’re about five and a half years now.

Adam Force 13:11
Okay, so five and a half years. You got some traction here, obviously. And I’m curious during this time, how have you seen the social media advertising environment evolving?

Travis Chambers 13:25
Yeah. So man, it’s so interesting. It’s so fascinating. I feel like something happened with social media that has never happened before and may never happen again, with advertising. And what happened was, all these social platforms popped up. And they were really hungry to get content and to get creators on those platforms and publishers. So what happened was, there were more users than there were good creators. And it doesn’t make sense that anyone would create content for free. But people did it. Right? It was this new era of make stuff for free, and you’ll get other opportunities from it. And so what you had basically for seven, eight years, is you had people getting millions and millions of impressions and views for free. That’s never happened before. Thirty, forty years ago, if you wanted to reach anybody, you had to pay a newspaper, pay a magazine, a radio station, a TV station. There was no such thing as free media.

And then what happened in the early thousands before social media took off is agencies like Crispin Porter Bogusky — that agency I was at; they actually were the best at it in the world. They were named Ad Age’s top agency of the decade — they started writing creative to the press headline. And so rather than How do we sell? How do we convince people? They said, Well, how do we get the press headlines? So they started getting free press. This was a new thing that hadn’t been done. They invented this process. And so they started getting tons of free press, right? And this was during the breakdown of journalism. Journalism went from mostly credible to absolutely not credible, crony capitalist journalism — paid off. This is when blogs were taking off. They were trying to stay relevant. Journalists were making less and less; publishers were making less and less. Newspapers were dying.

Anyways, that’s where it started and where it ended up was with social media, you can get free reach. Now, my whole point to this is that’s ended. You can’t get free reach anymore unless you are in a elite, elite, elite top 1% of the 1% of the 1%. You are not going to get free reach, especially if you’re a brand or an advertiser. And so what we have basically accepted in the last few years is you’ve got to pay to play. You know, we were doing viral videos, we were viral seeding You know, 20 to 50% of all of our views would be earned media where we basically got them for free. We did all these seeding techniques, and we got these influencers and these press features and we were just getting free reach. Now, we’ve totally ended that; era that’s over. And now it’s all about how good you are at adbuying and making content that sells and it has nothing to do with how much earned media free reach you’re going to get. And by now, I think most people understand that.

Adam Force 16:28
I think so. I mean, you see it more and more especially as these social media platforms have evolved. It’s a lot more pay to play, obviously. I do still see organic on areas like Facebook if you know how to build that up like that momentum. But you’re right, I mean, there was a wild wild west period, for sure. But I mean, is it fair to say though, I mean, if you have something that is, I guess, you know, unique and eye catching, or it’s really a top of a trend, you don’t think that there’d be an earned media cycle?

Travis Chambers 17:05
It’s possible. It’s absolutely possible, right? It happens all the time. But it is not something you can control or plan for.

Adam Force 17:17
Okay. Right. So it’s just to strategically have a process that like these other guys did. That’s, that’s dead.

Travis Chambers 17:24
Yeah, it’s almost like if somebody is telling you to pay them so that they can get you some virality. It’s like, red flag; go a different direction. But if they’re saying, Hey, we’re going to do this paid element, right? We’re going to do this very predictable, methodical, replicable thing. But we’re going to do this activation on the side and hopefully that will get some viral reach, then that’s a good sign. But I mean, I try to think of like, what are the viral campaigns from the last year, you know? Peloton. Peloton went viral? Right?

Adam Force 18:01
Yeah, yeah.

Travis Chambers 18:02
For that for that horrible commercial that they did.

Adam Force 18:05
The last thing that I remember going viral is the squatty potty from the Harmon brothers.

Travis Chambers 18:11
Yeah. And you know what? That was one of the last viral campaigns. If you called him right now and said, Hey, hey, guys, how many truly organic viral hits have you had since squatty potty? They would say, Well, I think they posted about it. They’d say one or two. Yeah, we’ve had one or two, you know, and even then, I think squatty went viral for a month or two, and then the paid media kicked in. Yeah, so that was like one of the very last and that was actually when they launched that was around the same time that we launched the Nordic Track video.

Adam Force 18:44
Really? Okay.

Travis Chambers 18:46
Yeah. And we kind of got into this game around the same time and the Nordic Track video was one of our only real viral organic hits, too. After that it was usually 80/90% paid after that, so, but yeah, I mean, you try to think right, you try to think of like, I mean, can you think of any other viral brand campaigns in the last year?

Adam Force 19:10
Nothing is standing out to me so yeah, it is definitely a lot more scarce. If they’re out there, I just didn’t catch them.

Travis Chambers 19:20
Yeah, I mean, you think back right, when you think back to like old, the last viral stuff you saw it was like, Old Spice: What your man could smell like, Dollar Shave Club.

Adam Force 19:31
Dollar Shave Club. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Travis Chambers 19:32
[Unintelligible] semi truck split with Van Damme. You know, but if you think that those were all like six, seven years ago.

Adam Force 19:41
It’s true. You know who does pretty good is Jay Shetty. I did interview him and spoke to him and stuff and his videos, some of them are, you know, 20-30 million views. I don’t know if he’s putting money into that or not, but…

Travis Chambers 19:54
I don’t think he is. I think…I think they’re like I said, I think there’s a space for the mega mega elite. And these influencers like Jay Shetty, they break through and what happens is they get whitelisted as creators. If Jay Shetty was a brand, it would never happen. So someone at Facebook — an engineer or an influencer or manager — has manually gone in and said Jay Shetty is a premium content influencer. He brings us 10s of millions of people a month. We’re going to open the algorithm to him. They do the same thing for Laura Clery who is a big Facebook influencer. She completely disregarded YouTube. She ignored every platform and she went all in on Facebook for a whole year and a half before Facebook even really monetized at all for creators.

Adam Force 20:52
Yeah, that’s interesting. So you know, I you know, you look at a platform like Facebook and you have your groups, your pages and then your personal profiles and you know, we always look at it as the whole ecosystem works together, but it sounds like there’s a lot of value in really putting a serious effort into your personal profile on outside of just the business page.

Travis Chambers 21:12
Yeah, yeah, that’s true, you know, but I don’t know that many personal Facebook pages I get insane reach. I think Facebook kind of like meters and throttles people. I honestly think that their engineers have figured out the exact number of likes that people the average Joe needs to get to feel like he should keep posting there. But but not so much that you know, that it’s…because it’s really competitive. It’s really saturated, you know. But for every Jay Shetty man, for every Jay Shetty, there’s 1000 creators who have all but disappeared, who have all but just gotten squashed. You know?

Adam Force 21:57
Yeah, yeah. Well, tell me a little bit about your process. I mean, you’re in the media world.

Travis Chambers 22:05
So you know where I met Jay Shetty? I was next to his urinal in the Seattle airport. And we, and I was sitting there and I was, we were both, you know, going taking a number one and I looked over and I was like, hey, Jay, got any inspirational thoughts for me?

Adam Force 22:24
You did not!

Travis Chambers 22:24
I did that, seriously. And he started cracking up. We were both mid-stream. And he’s just like, this guy just asked me so some life hacks while we’re going pee.

Adam Force 22:36
Yeah, don’t piss into the wind. That’s pretty funny. He’s a cool guy, man. I had a chat with him, too. And he’s super laid back and he’s smart, smart.

Travis Chambers 22:49
Hey, I was gonna ask you, do you know what ever happened to that Nicole Arbour thing? Did you hear about that?

Adam Force 22:54
Yeah, I didn’t follow it too closely. So I don’t know the outcomes of that.

Travis Chambers 22:59
Nicole…we cast Nicole in a commercial and I gotta say it’s the most negative comment feedback we’ve ever gotten on an ad that we had to pull it.

Adam Force 23:12
Really?

Travis Chambers 23:13
Yeah, yeah, just some things that she had put out — fat shaming stuff. So when she came out with that thing about Jay Shetty, like, you know, if you gotta tear someone else down to build your brand…You know, like, come on.

Adam Force 23:29
I saw that and I was like, I was like, total BS. Like, someone’s trying to take Jay like, you know, defame him and say all these things. And I was like, Hell no. I sat and talked to this guy for like, an hour. And he was like, the most genuine guy, dude. Like he’s not out there trying to like play games with people.

Travis Chambers 23:45
You know what I like about Jay is that he didn’t respond to it. I actually went and looked to see what his response would be. And I think he had the foresight and the wisdom to just not respond to it. I think anyon else, myself included, they would have freaked out about it. And they would have responded to it [unintelligible] more attention. I would take a lot of restraint and wisdom to just say, I’m just going to just not even address it.

Adam Force 24:14
Yeah, I mean, you’re anxious to defend yourself. Someone’s out there trying to drag your name through the mud. I you know, of course, that’s your knee jerk reaction, right? I mean, even Tony Robbins got up and was defending himself against BuzzFeed trying to knock him down.

Travis Chambers 24:28
Oh, I didn’t know about that.

Adam Force 24:29
Oh, my God, BuzzFeed went after him like crazy. And so Tony Robbins — saying all kinds of like slanderous things about how he was, you know, it’s always about guys like sexually assaulting women and all this stuff. And so they went after this like a very groundless claims and all this stuff, and he had all these people who are like, that’s totally not true. And he came out with videos saying like, you know, just speaking from his heart about, like, what’s going on and how BuzzFeed is — why they’re doing this and all this stuff.

Travis Chambers 24:58
Interesting.

Adam Force 24:59
Yeah, that was crazy.

Travis Chambers 25:00
Yeah, yeah, it’s almost like some of those things…you know, I’m a PR major and Public Relations 101 is that you always respond to everything. You have a response because you know, what happens a lot is people don’t respond to stuff and it just gets bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. But when it’s totally just unfounded, the best thing is to just do nothing, you know? It’s the hardest thing to do.

Adam Force 25:26
It seems like it worked for Jay. I think it just you know, that’s news and media — just over time, it just fizzles out and people…the next big thing comes around and that’s it.

Travis Chambers 25:35
Yeah, I mean, everyone’s forgotten about it. And it probably just made him bigger anyways. I mean, look at Logan Paul, right? He, you know, he had what you would think was a career ending move and come to find out he made a few mil off of it from all the exposure.

Adam Force 25:51
Thanks, everybody. Hey, if you’re smart, you capitalize on these things.

Travis Chambers 25:58
Yeah, seriously.

Adam Force 26:01
Yeah, so you never know. So listen, I just want to get a little bit more of your thoughts on some of the you know…for people listening here you know, we’re all trying to find traffic, get exposure, figure out how to, you know figure out…you know, reach our specific audience and you know at Change Creator we talk a lot about storytelling and connecting with people that way and using that throughout your digital ecosystem and stuff. So you have a big focus on videos, and I’m curious, just based on how things have evolved, like, what are some of the steps that you take and the way you think and approach your marketing now?

Travis Chambers 26:38
Yeah, so this is something really interesting. Okay, so we’ve been making really large video productions for a long time. And you know, obviously, when you have a big ad spend and a really big production, it makes it easier to succeed. So what we spent the last year doing is we took every single video ad that we have ever made and ran — and weve’ve managed about $55 million in ad spend over the last few years — and we took those hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of ad creatives and we put them all into a library. We called it the brain. And what we did is we categorized all these ads. We gave them all names. So there’s like six or seven types of product demonstrations. There’s six or seven different types of testimonials. So we named all of these ads, and then we attach their performance — how these ads performed, and we categorized everything into this library. And then we conducted this big research study to just find out which, what kind of ad creative gets the most performance. And we ended up with something that was really amazing.

We did find that there’s about seven different categories that ads can fall into that get really good performance on Facebook. And what we found is most of them are not expensive to make. So naturally one of those — and we call them the seven foundational ads. And one of those was what we call an anchor video. And an anchor videos a Dollar Shave Club video. It’s one to four minutes, it’s a spokesperson, it’s really catchy, it’s funny, you know, it’s expensive, it’s large production, all that stuff. That’s just not realistic for I’d say 70-80% of brands out there or causes or social good companies, right. Most people don’t have $40,000, $50,000, $60,000 to spend on a production. But the other six assets can all be made on an iPhone, basically in your home or in your office. And the other assets were product demos, which just highlights the product features and you know, the value points of consumer. This can be like, this can be you unboxing.

Or this, this can be just showing how the product works. Then the other one is social proof, which is — you may weave in quotes from influencers, testimonials, user generated content blogs, press reviews, what your review rating is on Amazon or whatever. The other one is closer ads. So, these are typically like retargeting ads that overcome people’s objections. So you write down three or four objections. And you can make literally like a selfie video, saying like, Hey, if you’re concerned about price, if you’re concerned about whatever, you know, whatever it is, and you can actually retarget those people based on who goes to the checkout cart and doesn’t buy. You put a pixel there. And those bounce to carts can get targeted. Case studies: So this is like, if you have any type of study or any type of claims, or even if it’s just like a visualization of showing that this thing works — lifestyle, lifestyle is more of the brand-heavy, this is what you can be like, this is what this feels like.

A lot of times it’s like really beautiful models with like music montage type stuff. And then unboxing. Unboxing; just showing the product being opened and how it’s delivered and how it shows up. So those are the categories: spokesperson, anchor, product demo, social proof, closer ads, case study, lifestyle, and unboxing. And what we’ve basically concluded is if a brand makes all of these types of ads, and then tests them, they’ll very quickly be able to figure out what message works. And then you’ll be able to double down, you know? You’ll be able to double down on these assets. And so that’s what I would share for anyone who’s wanting to get people to take action. Whether that’s a social good company — we’re working with a company right now, a social good company called 8 Billion Trees that they — have you heard of those guys?

Adam Force 31:31
Yeah.

Travis Chambers 31:32
Oh, really?

Adam Force 31:33
Yeah.

Travis Chambers 31:34
Oh, awesome.

Adam Force 31:35
I don’t know where but I have heard it.

Travis Chambers 31:38
Yeah. So we’re doing an anchor video with them right now. And we’re going to create all these ads for them. And we’re trying to get people to buy bracelets to fund the planting of trees. And so the takeaway here is exactly how a brand would act is how a social good company can act. Because ultimately, you got to get people to take action. You got to get them convinced and converted.

Adam Force 32:00
Yeah. And have they tested that? Have people been excited about doing the product for a tree?

Travis Chambers 32:07
We haven’t launched yet. We just started working with them a few weeks ago. So we’re in the pre production script writing phase right now. So if you have any good ideas, you know… .

Adam Force 32:16
No, but I know that, you know, they had the other group, 4ocean or something like that. And they for every pound of trash they take out of the ocean…they take a pound of trash out of the ocean for every bracelet that they sell.

Travis Chambers 32:31
Oh, cool. I’ll have to check them out. What are they called?

Adam Force 32:34
The number four ocean, 4ocean. Couple of surfer dudes, you know, started doing this trash pickup and then they started making these bracelets and started selling them and it became a big freakin deal. And now they sell other things like shirts and stuff.

Travis Chambers 32:47
Oh, cool. I gotta study them.

Adam Force 32:49
Yeah, so that’s pretty cool. It sounds I mean, listen, I love those…the way you categorize the videos and you know, obviously people will just have to work on the different kind of content they put in there and make it kind of quick. Like we’ve done a lot of videos on our side. And we noticed, you know, you really got to speak in the right terms for your audience specifically. And we noticed, like certain things that fall in line with their worldviews and things like that. Wow, they just catch on so much more compared to other videos that just die early. You know, so it makes a huge difference.

Travis Chambers 33:25
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It’s like the new virality now is conversion. It’s like, if you see an ad out there that’s running on Facebook, and it’s got a few hundred thousand views or a few million views, odds are that it’s really a profitable ad. And I love it, because I prefer it. Because virality is difficult. You spend a lot of money and get nothing. With ads, you’ve got the most powerful targeting platform in the history of mankind, you know? Not only can you target people based on their self identified interests, but with Facebook, they have pulled all this third party data for rewards cards, where people shop, Nielsen data of what TV shows people watch, credit card data on where you’ve traveled. I mean, it’s really creepy. And yes, obviously everyone’s really concerned about the ethics of it.

But at the same time, I feel like the silver lining of the evil Facebook, you know, brand right now is how many entrepreneurs have been minted because of them that never would have had a chance, myself included. For everything bad people say Facebook’s done, they have allowed…they have done…they basically democratized startups. Anyone can start a company now because anybody can reach their customer. I mean, look at us: Chamber Media, right? You would never think you can run ads to get someone to spend $100,000 on a video production. That just seems impossible, but we started doing it four or five months ago, and every $6,000 in ad spend, we get a few hundred grand of work. That’s just like, that is just crazy that you can reach people that are even like, you know, in that position. It’s just wild.

Adam Force 35:22
Yeah, I mean, it pays off to have a high ticket product. I mean, you know, when we started, we were sitting here doing magazine subscriptions for 50 bucks, which means your marketing spend kind of sucks. And now we have a $2,000 program and it makes all the difference because you have much more flexibility with your marketing budgets.

Travis Chambers 35:39
Yeah. And it’s like that never would have been possible with print or radio or TV.

Adam Force 35:44
No, no, I mean, I always liked Facebook. We’ve gone all in on Facebook this year, or actually last year and are now this year too. And, you know, other platforms, yeah, we kind of been just putting to the side. I think Facebook just has the most powerful ecosystem and we’ve kind of started to figure out some of the ways to build up organics and all that stuff. But there, you’re right, the advertising technology that they have is bar none the best.

Travis Chambers 36:09
You know, another interesting thing we’ve seen is Google and YouTube are a big opportunity. And what we noticed, the more we spend on Facebook, on all of our accounts, the more successful Google and YouTube become. And so Google and YouTube actually usually end up being 20 to 30% of our overall ad spend because people get interrupted by Facebook, and they get introduced to it, but then they go and do research, they go search, or they go watch YouTube videos around that certain topic or need that they have.

Yeah, and then boom, there you are. So that works in tandem well, too, and I’m really excited. I feel like YouTube and Facebook have had kind of like the oligopoly. But it’s further democratizing into Pinterest and Snapchat and TikTok. I’m the most excited about Pinterest and TikTok. I think, I don’t know if you’ve been on TikTok. I thought it was the dumbest thing a year ago. And now I feel like it is the best social platform. And I spend the most time on it because I feel like it’s enabled more people who would never be creative to be creative.

Adam Force 37:22
It’s true. I did, I made an account on TikTok because I was like, all right, this time, I’m getting in on the ground floor. And I just haven’t stuck with it too well. I don’t know about you.

Travis Chambers 37:35
I mean, I’m just dabbling in it, you know, but I think it is going to be huge. And it’s owned by the Chinese company… Oh, shoot, are they called? I can’t remember. But they’ve got bottomless funding.

Adam Force 37:49
But that’s the thing and so I don’t know if they opened up advertising yet, but you know, there’s gonna be a point where this is going to be like, you can get a shit ton of you know, attention for a very low cost like the wild wild west will happen on TikTok but then just like Facebook, it’ll go away.

Travis Chambers 38:07
Yeah, it will. Yeah, I think I give it like a year. I mean, I’ve thrown up a couple videos on TikTok to get like 4000 views and I’m just like, what the heck?

Adam Force 38:19
That’s awesome. All right, I got to dabble in that. I did sign up; I gotta make it happen here. I just you know, I have…I don’t have any attention span to get on all these different platforms. It drives me crazy.

Travis Chambers 38:30
Oh, I know. It’s just like you could spend so much time and effort and just get nowhere. That’s why I love ads, man. I love ads. You dial in your creative and your assets. And you just let it run and the lookalikes build and get bigger and it just…the Facebook AI does all the work for you and you just sit back and just make money. You know, we have a client — Transparent Labs — he is the coolest story I’ve ever heard of. So it was him and a partner. He hired us to do this big campaign. He had done 2 million in the past and just off of affiliates and some organic search. So we launched, right? And all of a sudden…we take him to 12 million a year just on basically on autopilot. He has no employees. He sources through a 3PL. So his 3PL, you know, his manufacturer, supplier and shipper, they front all of his inventory costs for him, because it’s so steady. They take care of his customer service. He literally does nothing. He does two or three email blasts a month. That’s literally all he does. He sends us a check. And the ads run and it’s our easiest account that we run and then you know, he just got acquired for like 10 mil. And it’s just like, that is the power of ads. How do you…how do you do 24 million in two years with no employees?

Adam Force 39:56
What is his business?

Travis Chambers 39:59
It’s pre workout supplements. It’s like the most competitive, impossibly saturated market. And for two years, two and a half years in a row been averaging five to one return on ad spend — six figure ad spend a month.

Adam Force 40:13
That’s the thing, like, you got to be like, like you said, you gotta be willing to pay to play. I mean, you can’t go in and be I’m gonna spend 100 bucks on a Facebook ad. And if I don’t get any results, it’s not working. Like you got to be willing to test and do like, collect data for several thousand dollars before you can really even start scaling anything.

Travis Chambers 40:31
Yeah, we’ve seen the same thing. Like, you gotta have four or five grand saved, otherwise, it’s just like you’re not feeding the artificial intelligence enough data to work.

Adam Force 40:46
No. And you know, even guys like Russell say the same thing. He’s like, you know, when he gets a new funnel, he’s got to put five grand into it just to get the data to iterate and optimize it before he really scales it you know, and we’ve learned that the hard way, too, because we would do, like, 1000 here, 1000 there, rather than really putting like four or five into something that’s like iterated over time. And that’s the way it goes. It works out, though.

Travis Chambers 41:13
Yeah, you know, I’ll tell you a trick. This is really shady, okay? There is a, I can’t remember what it’s called. Is it called LeadForce? I can’t remember. There’s a tool that — and this is not going to last — there’s a there’s a tool where you can pull user IDs from any Facebook group you want and then target them with ads.

Adam Force 41:34
Interesting. Yeah, I…why do I feel like I’ve heard that?

Travis Chambers 41:35
So you know, like, Facebook groups are probably the most niche targeted properties on the web anywhere, right?

Adam Force 41:45
Yeah, I agree.

Travis Chambers 41:46
And you can target…and that’s what we’re doing with Chamber, our own ads, and holy crap, it’s like stealing candy from a baby. It’s a ridiculous.

Adam Force 41:56
Interesting. LeadForce. I’ll check it out.

Travis Chambers 41:58
I think it’s I want to say It’s lead… Let me look, I gotta make sure that I’m not speaking out of…I want to say it is…

Adam Force 42:09
LeadForce Solutions Digital Marketing. I don’t think that’s it.

Travis Chambers 42:12
No, I don’t think that’s it. Oh, shoot. I don’t know what it is.

Adam Force 42:17
Just search for hacking Facebook groups.

Travis Chambers 42:22
Let me…dang it. I wish I knew what it was to say it on here on this episode, but…

Adam Force 42:28
Alright, well, we can always put it in the show notes if you can come up with it.

Travis Chambers 42:31
Okay, cool.

Adam Force 42:33
Yeah, I don’t see anything. Anyway. All right. I took a look here but I’m not seeing anything obvious come up. But it would be interesting. Group leads, group leads?

Travis Chambers 42:44
No, it is…ok, ok. Ok. LeadEnforce.

Adam Force 42:53
Like the AND, lead and force,

Travis Chambers 42:56
LeadEnforce. E-N-F-O-R-C-E. LeadEnforce.

Adam Force 43:01
Oh, like one word. I got you. Oh yeah, there it is.

Travis Chambers 43:04
And the other one we’re looking into now is Mailbiz. Anyways, I don’t know how black hat this is. It’s total sorcery. But holy crap, man, it’s, I’m gonna, we’re going to do a couple extra million in revenue this year because of this.

Adam Force 43:22
That’s interesting. Well, maybe I’ll start a different Facebook ad account so I don’t get shut down.

Travis Chambers 43:27
I know, right? But it’s like weird, though, ’cause it’s like completely separate. So you’re like, pulling these user IDs out of this, this tool, and then you’re manually putting them to your account. So it’s pretty, I mean, it’s pretty aboveboard in that regard. Pretty much zero risk, but…

Adam Force 43:45
Jump in on something before it goes away.

Travis Chambers 43:47
It’s not gonna last but I mean, but it’s like, dang, you pull user IDs on a few super targeted groups, and you run some good spend behind that, your lookalikes just became unlimited and literally, like, perfect.

Adam Force 44:04
I love that. Awesome. Listen, hey, listen, let me give you…why don’t you give a shout out? Where can people find you, learn more, maybe they want to work with you. All that kind of good stuff.

Travis Chambers 44:13
Yeah, if you want to work with us go to www.chamber.media and hit us up on the contact form. If you want to follow any of my content or thought leadership stuff, just Travis Chambers on LinkedIn — hit the Follow button. I post three or four times a week there.

Adam Force 44:28
And you can follow Travis on TikTok; he’s all over that.

Travis Chambers 44:31
Yeah, I’ve got four posts on TikTok. What is it? Everyone on TikTok says, Don’t let this flop. That’s the thing: Don’t let it flop.

Adam Force 44:42
All right, Travis, man appreciate your time. All the good stuff you’re doing and we’ll catch up with you later.

Announcer 44:48
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Transcribed by https://otter.ai