Killer insight from 3 events in 9 days
I just got back from a mini tour. I spoke to loan officers in Dallas, then co-ran my Driven Mastermind in Cancun, and then closed it out speaking to martial art school owners in Phoenix.
I gave three very different speeches to three very different audiences.
The loan officers learned how to use webinars to get real estate agents to refer them business.
My Driven members learned how to convert the most podcast listeners into business leads.
The martial artists learned how to better deal with objections and close more memberships to their schools.
Along the way I had some reflections on success and I wanted to capture them here in this article in the hopes that you may find one or more helpful.
Social Media is Where It’s At…
And it’s hard.
Part of the reason I’ve decided to speak more is to gain followers. This seems a real dumb way to do it - because I may pick up 50 here or 100 there… but quality is always better than quantity.
Quality gets quantity.
My call to action is to follow me in Instagram. By amassing the best of the best fans (no better followers exist than those you meet in person) it will tip the algorithm. The game of business these days is you’re either everywhere all at once or your nowhere.
I ain’t on the shelf yet but I have it in my sights.
People GET marketing
Ten years ago I’d try to teach real estate and mortgage brokers even the most basic marketing stuff and I’d just be met with resistance. Or if they implemented, it was the barest of strategies.
Nowadays they are some pretty badass marketers. Going into the presentation I was nervous because I thought I had bit off more than I could chew - in terms of what I was attempting to teach.
A few years back that’d’ve been true - but I nailed it this time. The right balance of simplicity and complexity. Businesses respect the marketing these days and I’m excited to see them eager to implement.
If you want to make an impact in this space - give people models to follow. General advice is out - specific, applicable step by step is in.
Even better if you customize to THEM.
In my case, part of the deal for speaking at this event is it’s for a consulting client. He paid me $25,000 for a day of consulting and a bit of that was used to give me insight into what was best for his audience. I got paid to learn how to dovetail my speech to his clients.
Wise investment - because I showed up with a talk customized specifically to that audience. The more you can do that, the bigger the impact you can have.
Demonstrations always RULE the day
I had no idea what I was going to say to the martial art school owners until about 30 minutes before I got on stage. I had prepared no slides and they didn’t ask me for a title for my speech… so I wasn’t locked into any topic.
I was speaking first thing in the morning. I had just gotten in the night before from 3 intense days of running a $35k mastermind.
I went down and grabbed the first guy who seemed knowledge - a vendor named Allen who was there at 7:30am. I asked him what the audience needed to hear that would help them the most. He gave me an answer. I asked a follow up. Got more intel. Asked more, got more.
Then it clicked.
What the audience needed the most was to close more. They’d get people in the door wanting to enroll their kids in martial arts, but for whatever reason the sign up rate would be lower than it should.
That tracks - most people just can’t close.
If you learn ONE skill before anything else in business, learn to close.
So I get on stage and freestyle it - I tell the audience to give me the objections they face, and I will give them the closes right there on the spot. This is working without a net.
I set up the closes with this point - you can’t just tell… you have to SHOW. If you care for your customers, you can’t give up on them early. You have to risk pushing and offending them if you genuinely feel that what you offer is the best thing for them.
Then I showed the audience in real time. I demonstrated the exact point I made. I’d teach the technique, then demo it, then have them run it back and identify the technique… all while setting up the NEXT technique.
Crazy.
Easy to do after 15 years of practice. But this what competence looks like my friend. Pick one thing and devote ten years to it and you, too can do what you now would think impossible.
If not that, then just consider this - how can you dramatically demonstrate a value to your audience that, without even putting words behind it, changes their paradigm? To shift an “I can’t” to an “I must”.
Successful people aren’t who you think
Sandwiched between these events is our Driven mastermind, which is the best high ticket pure marketing mastermind on the planet.
You got amazing industry leaders from all over who come to our events, and not just attend but share and participate. These are legends in their fields… and also mostly as inept as the rest of the world.
Some fly in without reserving their rooms. Oops. Others drink a little too much and we have to get them escorted back to their rooms. Some make dumber business mistakes than you ever have, yet those same people also seem to come up with the greatest breakthrough you’ve ever seen, too.
There isn’t much that they have that you don’t.
If you can hang out with enough millionaires for enough days, you’d believe more in yourself - because my members are broken human beings who, despite their flaws, become amazing business leaders. And I love them. And I am them.
I make more dumb mistakes before Tuesday than you probably make in a month. But I adjust fast. And that’s true with my members.
We don’t get it right - we make it right.
For this audience I pressed hard on the idea of podcast traffic. These are all experts in their fields, so podcasts make sense. And podcasts tend to produce the best leads. In their businesses, most right now rely on cold traffic - and because of the election (and other reasons) ad costs are stupid high. So when you can’t run ads, you go the other way - get organic.
The theme is constant - when the market zigs, you zag. When everyone is focused on scale, don’t. The goal with podcasting is the same as my goal with social media - quality, not quantity.
The VERY best leads you can ever get in almost any market are podcast listeners.
So just like I have a framework for webinars, I shared for the first time my framework for podcasts. I haven’t perfected this framework yet… but it’s way ahead of how most podcasts guests just show up and tell stories and share knowledge.
The framework is too raw to share it here but once I field test it enough I’ll break it down. Point though is this - better to get in front of a few of your highest quality leads right now and really connect then to try to reach everyone through impersonal marketing.
Lastly
I’m making a commitment to you - to write an article a week. No more excuses. Hell I just was on the road for 9 days straight, got back Saturday and here I am writing to you this Sunday.
I think people are undervaluing the written word. Everything has went video. This is me zigging to the zag.
I fell in love early this year and it’s changed everything for me. Really put a spark back into my life, and as a result, my work. So I write this as the kids are in the other room cooking dinner and playing annoying music that makes my ADHD boil out of my eyes. Yet the writing gets done.
And it feels good to be back. Stay tuned.