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This is the 500th episode, So Gary has invited a few recognized leaders from dentistry to share tips on what makes a thriving dental practice in 2021 and beyond. Show notes https://bit.ly/2Xir7hd

Gary is still under the weather! So Gary picked what he thought you all would enjoy!

Gary is still under the weather! So Gary picked what he thought you all would enjoy!

Gary, Lisa and the gang talk about getting the vaccine and listeners who have gotten their first or second dose call in to share their experiences! Plus, there's a Fraiser update in the works! So Gary and Lisa take a trip down memory lane to the time they met Jane Leeves and Peri Gilpin at a party! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Beck Power, the host of the Amplify Content podcast, interviewed me about content marketing and how to build trust in a digital world. You can watch a short video snippet from our conversation.

Miss Queenie of England is here! Well, on the podcast. Prince Harry is hurt about all the royal issues surrounding Meg-xit! So Gary and Lisa give you an update on what's happening with the royals! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Oftentimes patients have a better relationship with their hygienists as they spend more time interacting with them. In today’s episode, Gary examines the role of the hygienist in increasing your case acceptance. Gary highlights the importance of measuring your case acceptance rates as well as acceptable benchmarks dentists should strive to attain when it comes to case acceptance. This episode is full of tips to help increase case-acceptance rates for your ideal treatment plan significantly.  Intro to topic > 01:30 Benchmarks > 03:56 How to get there > 08:02 Tips to make hygienists your partner > 10:35 Raising the bar > 21:50 About the last MBA of 2020 > 23:30 Resources LEARN MORE REGISTER LEARN MORE Transcript Naren: This is the Less Insurance Dependence podcast show with my good friend, Gary Takacs and myself, Naren Arulrajah. (Gary’s voice): We appreciate your listenership, your time and most of all, we appreciate your intention to reduce insurance dependence in your practice. Our goal is to provide information that will help you successfully reduce insurance dependence and convert your practice into a thriving and profitable dental practice that provides you with personal, professional, and financial satisfaction. [Music] Naren: Hello, everyone, welcome to another awesome episode of the Less Insurance Dependence podcast show. This is Naren, your co-host. Today, we are going to be talking about something interesting. This came because Gary and I were having a conversation the other day about some of our common clients. And one of the things that I asked Gary about is, "Hey Gary, what's the secret for the common clients, meaning the coaching clients who also happen to be, you know, our Ekwa clients, doing so well in case acceptance and specifically some of the comments I heard about, you know, them working as a team towards case acceptance". So Gary said, "You know what, let's make it a podcast episode", and here we are. The topic today is ‘Hygienist as your partner in case acceptance'. So this comes from Gary's experience, working with 2200 practices, you know, fine-tuning LifeSmiles and the client practices. So let's jump in. Gary, how are you this afternoon? Gary: Naren, I'm doing great. And I love this topic, you know, and I'm so glad you noticed in our common clients, some really great results with our clients. And I'm talking specifically is our case acceptance percentage. We measure that. You know, we measure that. You've heard me say, Naren, that data never lies. People do. When I say that, I don't mean that cynically. But let me, let me get very specific about what I mean on case acceptance. If you do not measure your case acceptance percentage, you may have a very different perception of what's going on in your practice than what's really going on, because you're likely to remember it anecdotally. Let me explain what I mean. If I talk to a doctor and I say, "Doctor, tell me how your case acceptance is and others when you present dentistry, how are you doing with patients accepting that," If they don't measure it, they might say something like this: "Well, Gary, I think I'm doing pretty well because yesterday we had two new patients. Both of them needed treatment. I presented the treatment and they scheduled. So I think I'm doing pretty good." You know, remember what their memory time is, it's yesterday, you know, and it's their most recent experience. Conversely, if they don't measure it, the doctor might say, "I don't know, Gary. Yesterday, I had two new patients. Both of them needed treatment and neither one of them scheduled. I think I suck at that". And neither one of them is accurate because it doesn't have a  ... it's not scientific. It doesn't have a long enough, you know, range of measurement. But when we start measuring it, it actually gives you information out. Naren, you know, I'm going to quote Stephen Covey and, you know, I'm going to quote the second habit. You know, Stephen Covey, the epic author of Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. And the second habit was 'Begin with the end in mind'. So is it okay if we start there? What should (00:03:52 – 00:03:53) case acceptance be? Naren: Great. Let's start there, Gary. Gary: Okay, so these are the benchmarks we use with our clients. At emergency dentistry, in other words, the patient came in on an emergency, they've been awake the last two nights, haven't been able to sleep with a toothache, and you present what should be done. What should our case acceptance be on emergency dentistry, Naren? Naren: I think it should be close to 100 percent, maybe 90 percent. Gary: Well, I'm gonna correct you, say 100 percent, one hundred percent. If it's a true emergency, you know, the patient hasn't slept in two nights and we can help them. Can we agree that that should be 100 percent? Naren: Absolutely. Gary: Yeah. So now but let's talk about the, what would be likely more common. Let's talk about necessary dentistry, where the situation is asymptomatic, where it's asymptomatic. No, it doesn't hurt. And a great example of that would be old amalgam fillings that are clearly breaking down. And you can see every different way you measure, you can see it through radiographic evidence, you can see it through photographic evidence, you can see it through visual inspection. And then you even ask the patient, "How long ago were those placed?" And they'll say, "Geez, I don't even know. Gosh, it has to be 25, 30 years ago". You know, we often hear that, right? So for general dentistry, that's asymptomatic, that it doesn't hurt. Our goal is 70 percent case acceptance. And notice I didn't say 100. And the reason I didn't say 100 is, we always like to set our goals realistically. Realistically, there will be some people with those asymptomatic old amalgam fillings that need replacement, "Oh, doc, I'm just going to wait till it hurts", which is not a wise decision, but that's what their thinking is. But our goal for general dentistry, that's asymptomatic, we should for 70 percent case acceptance. Now, let's go a little deeper for optimal dentistry. In some cases, you're going to think of elective treatment. They don't need to have it done. Optimal treatment, ideal treatment, comprehensive care. We look for a case acceptance somewhere between 30 and 40 percent, 30 and 40 percent. And the way I like to share why we benchmark it there, Naren, I happen to enjoy baseball. I grew up in a baseball family. And on a professional baseball, a player, Major League baseball player, if a Major League baseball player has a career batting average of, say 350, Naren, I know I'm going to ask you this question and I know I might be taking you slightly off-field /afield (00:06:38 – 00:06:40) because you're in Canada and you probably think more about hockey than you do baseball. But I'm going to take a chance and ask you that question. What would we call this Major League baseball player that had a career batting average of 350? What would we call that person?   Naren: Hall of Famer? Gary: OK, you got it right. I was a little worried there for a minute. If I asked you a hockey statistic, I'm sure you'd get it right, but you got it right. We'd call that person a Hall of Famer and let's break that down. What does that mean? That person got a hit 35 percent of the time, 35, and yet they're a Hall of Famer. That means they didn't get it 65 percent of the time. So let's translate that to case acceptance for ideal care. Then we're going to look for somewhere between 30 and 40 percent, somewhere in there. Even 30 percent on the low end of our goal is pretty awesome. You know, if a career Major League baseball player had a career batting average of 300, yeah, that person had a very, very, very good career. So that's how we benchmark that, 100 percent for emergency dentistry, 70 percent for asymptomatic general dentistry, and somewhere between 30 and 40 percent for ideal care, comprehensive care, elective care, the care that we like to say things to consider, you know, things to consider. Now that we have the measurement, we begin with your mind (00:08:00 – 00:08:05), let's talk about how to get there, right? And I love thinking about your hygienist in particular as your partner doctor in case acceptance, your partner in case acceptance. And think about it for just a minute. Sometimes, sometimes doctors don't want to recognize it, but I think we need to recognize it, sometimes the hygienists have a closer relationship with the patients than the doctor. Would you agree? Naren: Hundred percent, that's the case for me, you know, like because I see the hygienist for a longer period of time and I see the hygienist more consistently, especially if you have the same hygienist. Definitely, I kind of look forward to seeing her because, you know, I know her. I know her kids. I know, you know, and we have similar kids in similar ages. So we chat, you know, because when I'm sitting there, you know, I have to do some thing, so I chat, yeah. Gary: Well, there's another dynamic here. You know, a patient might have a little bit of a cynical perspective if a doctor is recommending treatment, you know, they might be saying, "Well, of course, you're going to recommend that, doctor, it’s your practice. You know, you have a lot to gain from that". Now, I don't think everybody looks through that lens, but some people might. But they view the tier team members as more independent and they view your team members as they're likely, think about your patient base. Your patients are likely to identify more socioeconomically with your team members than they are you. That makes sense? Naren: That makes total sense. I think, I have even overheard some people say, "Hey, you know, doctor said this. Do you think I really need this?" Gary: We hear that routinely, as approachable as Dr. Paul and Dr. Tim are, you know, they'll ask the patient, "You know, do you have any questions?" And the patient will shake their head, "No". And they'll leave the room and then they'll practically tackle the dental assistant or the hygienist and say "I don't know, what do you think?" You know, I don't, I wouldn't take that personally. I don't think that has anything to do with Dr. Paul. or Dr. Tim's demeanour or the presentation. I think they're looking for validation for, subconsciously they're looking for validation from someone that seems more similar to them. Naren: Yeah, this is Dr. Cialdini's principle called 'Similar others'. So, you know, "Hey, I can relate to this hygienist. I'm kind of like her, you know, socioeconomically, family, you know, etc., etc... So, hey, I want her opinion. What does she think?" Gary: Yeah, yeah. Okay, so let's talk about some techniques and some tips for a hygienist to be partners with your doctor. And one of the things I want to encourage our hygienist to do is to prepare for your appointments, to look ahead. We get this in the morning huddle, but you can do it on your own, you can do it in the morning huddle. But look at the patients that are on your schedule today. Look in their treatment plans and see if there is any unscheduled part of their treatment plan. In other words, treatment that's been recommended but hasn't been scheduled. Now, your practice should have a good system for noting that in your digital records, somehow. Pretty much every practice has, they have a system for checking off what's been done and what remains to be completed in the treatment plan. And let's go back to that example that we used earlier about the asymptomatic old amalgam fillings that need to be replaced. So let's say, I'm the patient and I have some fillings on the upper left that have been recommended by the doctor to be replaced. But I haven't scheduled that yet. The hygienist can bring that up in a very educational way. You know, she can say, "Gary, I noticed the doctor recommended some fillings for that area on your upper left. You know, the one thing, the reason why the fillings were recommended is there's very likely to be decay underneath those existing amalgam fillings that you have. Very, very likely." And you might be thinking, "Well, I'll just wait till it hurts." But if you wait, decay never fixes itself. It can't scientifically fix itself. Decay only gets worse. And if we wait till it hurts, what now could be treated with fillings, in other words, replace it with new filling material, might be more comprehensive treatment like a root canal and crown. Now, that'd be good for us, but not good for you. “I'm going to have doctor take a look at that when Dr. Paul comes in to do the exam today. I'm going to have Dr. Paul take a look at that. Just give you a status report, so you can, you know, you can kind of decide what to do from here”. And that's it, you know, just a heads up, I've noticed that, so now you're earning favor with your patients because you're paying attention. "Gary, I noticed that doctor recommended fillings on the upper left that remain to be completed. I'd like doctor to take a look at those today and kind of give us a status report." And then when doctor comes in the room, make a verbal pass off, you know, in front of the patient. That's called the 'overhear' (00:13:05 – 00:13:07)technique. And it might sound something like this. "Dr. Paul, would you do me a favor and take a look in the upper left for Gary? I noticed that he has some old amalgam fillings that you've recommended replacing, that remain to be completed. Would you do me a favor and look at those and give Gary a status report on those? I'm concerned about that area." Notice what I just said. "I'm concerned about that area". Naren: Right. Gary: Now, Naren, put yourself in the position of being in the chair as a patient. If the hygienist says "I'm concerned", what just happened to your ears? Naren: They're gonna perk up. Gary: You just perked up. Naren: Yeah. Gary: Right Naren: Yeah. I mean, I think the people who go to hygiene visits regularly, they want their teeth to be maintained. So that's the mindset they already bought into. So when the person who's responsible for that, the hygienist says, "I'm concerned", I'm concerned too, meaning, me, the patient is concerned too. Gary: Right. Now, and that conversation can be held with any patient that has recommended treatment that remains, remains to be completed. And of course the doctors listen to this. Doctors, I want to help you with verbal skills as well. When the hygienist, you know, does the verbal transfer of information to the overhear technique, I want you to say, don't script this, but in your own way, "Kelly, thanks so much for pointing that out. I'll absolutely take a look at that. Thanks so much for pointing that out to me." And it's just the patient's going to feel like "I'm being taken care of by a team of professionals. They are on top of it, they've got my best interests at heart. Right? But now let's talk about how the hygienist can actually be, you know, kind of a scout, an advanced scout for elective treatment for what we call a high value treatment. And this is so powerful and it's something that you're seeing it now in our clients. Now we're talking about that 30 to 40 percent of ideal care. You know, the ideal care, the elective care, the comprehensive care, the things to consider. So imagine you do adult orthodontics. i just like this (00:15:24 – 00:15:26), I'm going to role play with some information. Imagine your office provides adult orthodontics. And imagine that the hygienist notices that the patient has some crowding in his lower arch. His lower teeth are crowded. Okay? She can say something like this. "Gary, let me ask you a question. If there was a way to correct the crowding in your lower teeth, relatively quickly, would you have any interest in that?" "Oh, yeah, yeah, I really would, you know, I just, I don't want to look like I'm back in middle school again, you know, and have it take two years and, you know, but if it could be done quickly, yeah, I'm interested in that." Well, we offer adult orthodontic treatment for our patients today. And one of the really cool things about the advances in orthodontics, things can be done much quicker than they were in the past. "I'm gonna have doctor, when doctor comes in and does his exam today, I'm going to ask him to take a look and see if you're a candidate for adult orthodontics today". And then when doctor comes in, make the pass off and the pass off might sound like this. "Dr. Tim, Gary's interested in learning if he... in the crowding in his lower arch, he's interested in learning if he could be a candidate for adult orthodontics, would you do me a favor and take a look at that?" And hopefully it's good news. "Great news, Gary. Absolutely. You're like the perfect candidate for Six Month Smiles, for Invisalign, whatever it is you do". But notice the role and notice how it was done, Naren. If I say, "I'm going to ask Doctor to take a look and see if you're a candidate for that", how does the patient feel? The patient is anticipating, right? "Okay, I hope I am." You know, hope I am. And most of the time, you know, I'd say 95 plus percent of the time, they're absolutely a candidate for it. And one of the things you can do, doctors, is you could run an in-service training for one of your team meetings and just educate your team members about who are candidates for some of the procedures that you do. You know what? Who are perfect candidates and just let them understand that. But notice the questions she asked. "If there was a way to correct the crowding in your lower teeth, would you have any interest, and relatively quickly?" Or if there were, "I noticed there are spaces in your lower teeth, if there was a way to correct those spaces relatively quickly with adult orthodontics, would you have any interest?" Very simple. We're not looking for occlusion, we're not looking for posterior occlusion, we're not looking for canine guidance, what is it I’m just looking for, crowding or spaces? Naren: Right. Gary: Is that within the bounds of a hygienist to identify crowding and spacing? Naren: Absolutely. Gary: Absolutely, it is. Naren: Absolutely. Gary: In fact, if it's crowding, she can even say, “One of the concerns that I see there, Gary, it's hard to keep that area clean when you have crowding. It's hard for you to do your home care with that,” and so it's a right within her authority to identify that. Now, interestingly enough, as I presented this to hygienists over the years, most hygienists get really excited, "Oh, yeah, I, of course, I can identify crowding and spaces." I had a hygienist ask me one time. Said, and she had a good question, she said, "Are patients ever offended if I say they have crowding or if they have spaces?" And I answered it as I'm going to answer you in this podcast, Naren, "I've never heard the patient respond with any offense. They know their teeth are crowded. They know they have spaces. It's not, it's not like news flash. But now you're, you are viewed and, this is what I want a hygienist to take away, you are viewed as one of their providers in this practice. They respect you. They respect your wisdom. And I, up to date, now maybe that will change in the future, but I have never heard a patient respond in being offended by the fact that the hygienist said crowding or spaces. Naren: Gary, is it okay if I share something that I noticed about what you do with your coaching clients real quick, Gary? Gary: Please. Naren: See, many of these things are not like one time you learn about it and we are done, right? These are things that are ongoing. And the thing I love about your approach to all of this is you look at it like, you know, let's say you have a BMW car and you are with a BMW dealership. They treat you like a VIP. They do things for you. They pick you up, they drop you off. They'll tell you when things need to be taken care of. And the damn car is solid. So it usually doesn't break and they just take care of things, so you don't have to worry about it. So I think, you have kind of built that model, in even though we are using the word coaching, it's really practice management support where, you know, you have verbal skills training, you have team training, you have book clubs where you did a book club on, you know, case acceptance. So, you're constantly reinforcing these ideas. And then, of course, your practice management support team just, you know, checks in with people to make sure all these things are happening consistently. And of course, you check the numbers, you and your team look at the numbers and say, "Hey, is it working or is it not? If it is, then great, good job. Keep doing it. If it's not, let's troubleshoot. Let's figure it out." So, I think you have figured out something Gary, that is, is like a game-changer. And you are doing this virtually, so the cost is also like really, really low. Gary: You know, it's an empowering exercise, Naren, when you have good team members. They want to contribute to the success not only of your practice, but they want to contribute to happier, healthier patients. And let me go back to this adult ortho. I can't, you know, adult ortho's a big part of our practice. We love helping adults have beautiful, healthy smiles. And I can't tell you how many times the patient, you know, has come back as, "I am so happy I did this. You know, I am so happy. I mean, I've never felt better about the appearance of my teeth." And that's heart-warming for patients. You know, it's very much patient-centered. I think maybe that's where we can close today's episode. This is about really raising the bar on how patient-centered you are. Are you really patient-centered? If you see something that needs attention or that could benefit the patient and you don't bring it up. I mean, I think we let our patients down. Now you're not intentionally letting them down, but I think we let them down if we don't share, you know, information with them. What we want to do is we want to share information with them so they can make great decisions. Hey, if the patient says, "I don't care one bit about the spaces in my teeth”, make a note in the, you know, in your digital records and don't bring it up again. Don't pound a square peg in a round hole. You can respect that decision. But most people, and I'm talking about way, way, way above 90 percent, are going to respond with interest. They want to improve that. So think about it in the context of really being of service to your patients and truly being patient-centered. It's like you have this information, and you keep it to yourself, that's not helping them. Let's share it with them, share it with compassion. Let's listen. And like I said, if the patient doesn't have any interest, no harm. And on the rare times where a patient doesn't have any interest, they don't feel offended that you brought it up. They're thankful, but they may be, for whatever reason, they don't have any interest. Gary: Well, Naren, as we wrap this up, I think this episode will be a good one for our Less Insurance Dependence listeners and remember those benchmarks. I want you to shoot for those goals on your case acceptance. A last reminder, as you're listening to this, very soon after, we have our very last Thriving Dentist MBA livestream workshop. That is Saturday, December 5th. That's the last one of 2020. It's coming up on Saturday. December 5th, it's eight hours. I go through the 10 elements of a thriving practice. I want to encourage you to attend that one because you will have all kinds of information to allow you to set goals for 2021 that will, in fact, result in 2021 being your best year yet. Come join us. It's all done livestream. It's eight hours of CE. (00:24:04 – 00:24:06) We do it in a workshop format. We go through 11 different exercises so you can apply this information to your practice. And at the risk of sounding proud, this will be one of those CE events that you will look back on in your career 20 years later and say, "I am so glad I took that MBA livestream workshop because it literally set me on a course that changed the direction and results of my practice. Come join us. I'll put a link in the show notes. You can register for that. They do sell out. I would encourage you to go to lessinsurancedependence.com/mba. And if there are spots available, I would encourage you to sign up. You'll notice that the tuition is very affordable because of the livestream format. We strive to make that as affordable as possible. On that note, let me thank you for the privilege of your time today. Hope I get to see you at that Thriving Dentist MBA workshop.

Contact Doug Brown: dougbrown1234@gmail.com, 603-595-0303TranscriptDiane Dayton  0:02  This is changing the rules, a podcast about designing the life you want to live, hosted by KC Dempster and Ray Loewe, the luckiest guy in the world.KC Dempster  0:13  Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Changing the Rules. I'm KC Dempster. And I'm here with Ray Loewe in Wildfire Podcasting Studios. And just a brief comment, we are running this podcast because we want to introduce our listeners to interesting people who are doing interesting things. And that usually means that they are the luckiest people in the world, because they have taken control of their life. They've planned it out, and they are living their lives to the fullest. Good morning, Ray.Ray Loewe  0:46  Yeah, that was really good. This time, you know, you're getting better and betterKC Dempster  0:50  I should type that out. So I can memorize it.Ray Loewe  0:52  Well, don't. Don't do that, because it won't work. But But, you know, you're absolutely correct. You know, we have a lot of people who work on this idea of becoming one of the luckiest people in the world. And this is a journey. It's not a one time kind of thing. And you have to keep working at it. And one of the things that we found with these podcasts, and they just energize me so much, because we get to talk to some of the most interesting, intriguing people. And they're really great examples for people who are trying to either get out of limbo to continue their lives or trying to figure out how to be the luckiest people in the world. And that means personally designing their own lives and living them to the fullest.KC Dempster  1:36  That's correct. That's what you always say.Ray Loewe  1:38  Yeah, that's great. So we have a really great guest today. And we're gonna take a quick break so everybody knows who they're listening to. And then we're going to come back with Doug Brown, and I'm excited about introducing him.Diane Dayton  1:51  You're listening to changing the rules with KC Dempster. And Ray Loewe, the luckiest guy in the world. We will be right back with more exciting information.KC Dempster  2:00  Welcome back, everybody. And I'm anxious to have our our talk with Doug Brown, because I've not spoken with him before. So Ray, take it away.Ray Loewe  2:09  Yeah. Well, first of all, I met Doug on a beach. Oh, no, that's not quite right. I met him in a room full of people where he was doing his thing. And I'm going to explain what that is in a minute. But afterwards, we were down in Boca Raton, and we went out on the beach, we had this magnificent dinner and drinks. It was a wonderful experience. So if you're going to meet exciting and interesting people do it on the beach. So Doug Brown, good morning. Say Morning.Doug Brown  2:37  Good morning.Ray Loewe  2:38  Good morning,. And how's the beach in New Hampshire this morning?Doug Brown  2:42  It is a little bit cold and rainy. But other than that, it's beautiful.Ray Loewe  2:47  Yeah. Well, I think you have the right idea. I think you you you move to a state that we don't hear a lot about, you know, when it's there. And it just kind of does its thing. And I've been there, it's beautiful. And you kind of got your own little law hideaway that you live in every day. Good job, Doug.Doug Brown  3:07  That is true. It's hour in 10 minutes to the mountains and 30. less than eight minutes to the beach. Yeah,KC Dempster  3:15  I have to say, a friend of mine. And I take a vacation every year from New Jersey to North Carolina and back. And one of the things that helps us helps us pass the time is we keep track of license plates. And I have to say that it's it's our opinion that the people from New Hampshire don't leave the state very often.Ray Loewe  3:35  So I have to make this comment before we get serious about this conversation, Doug, because I was on your LinkedIn site. And you have a post on there. And you know what, what a way to set somebody up the post was if you could interview anyone you wished anywhere alive or dead? Who would you interview? And this was just after I booked an interview with Doug Brown.Doug Brown  4:00  I guess your head dog.Ray Loewe  4:04  You know, good things happen from New Hampshire race.Okay, so Doug runs a company called Business Success Factors. And he specializes in business sales, business expansion and training. And I've heard of him because he's one of the most highly acclaimed sales and revenue growth experts in the country. Okay. And I know you coach a lot of high powered sales people in high powered executives. Add. Is there anything else you want to add about what you do?Doug Brown  4:38  Oh, you make me sound a lot more important than I I feel at times. Ah, no, I you know, I also have a training company that I'm starting at that I have started up it's called High Velocity Training, which is where I'm helping coaches, consultants, entrepreneurs, salespeople, frankly, how to sell more and how to sell more easily.Ray Loewe  4:59  Well, you don't Nothing in the world happens until a sale is made. Okay? I learned that a long time ago. And it's true. And you know, people rebel against that idea sometime, but but nothing happens in the world until the sales is made. And so when you do this coaching, you know, I'm sure you can give us this long approach of what you do normally with people, but what I'm really interested in is what's going to happen to what you do now going forward that we have a different paradigm than we used to have. So you're out there dealing with these high powered salespeople and business executives, and you're coaching them. And I guess you Well, I know, you used to go on, I used to meet them face to face, because that's how I met you. So what happens now, Doug?Doug Brown  5:49  Well, a lot of what happens before happens now, but it happens in a virtual medium. So, you know, so we met face to face, because we were both invited to that particular event, right. But that client prior to me closing them, I closed them virtually. So I hadn't met them before. Oh, wow. Okay. So this stuff has always worked. In other words, it has I mean, when I, well, geez, I'm gonna date myself back up a little bit. But when there was a man named Chet Holmes, who wrote a book called The Ultimate Sales Machine, and I ended up becoming, working my way through his ranks and becoming his independent president of training and sales. And we used to just close virtually, I mean, we were closing millions of dollars a week, virtually. I'll never mean. Yeah. So we used to do virtual presentations. You know, this is back before we had video conferencing. So everything was done over the phone, and we were doing it all over the world.Ray Loewe  6:57  Oh, no, I got you know, I'm sure you were able to do this without, you know, seeing the other people without getting that sense of touch. And, and, and looking at body language and things like that.Doug Brown  7:13  Yes. Because it's all about building rapport in a virtual setting. You know, like we're doing now, I mean, we're joking around having fun, and you know, we know each other well, KC and I, we met each other, but I feel like we already have some rapport going. Um, so the the whole thing is that a sales conversation is nothing more than communications. And the sale begins before you talk to someone. So the marketing, the prospecting, the positioning, everything that goes along is all designed to do one thing, which is to communicate with another human being, to resolve a problem, or challenge or frustration they're having that we can fulfill. And once we can do that, then it's really more of what I call a conversational conversion question, you know, question and answer session. It's just having a conversation, and basically bringing it to a mutual Win win. outcome.Ray Loewe  8:14  Okay, you're way ahead of me over here. All right, you know, and I, I mean, I'm, I've been a salesman all my life, you know, if I really go and look at at what I do, and yet, I miss very much today, being able to go out and shake hands with people getting able being able to look into their eyes and watch their body language and see whether they're reading me or not, how the heck do you do this, when you have only a phone, you're going down to a one dimensional kind of a thing? You really are, what what I do and what I teach people to do is to sell sell a lot, is to send a lot of follow up pieces prior to so somebody can get to know them. Right? So it's about establishing the relationship members the positioning prior to the conversation. Okay.All right. So we have this dilemma these days, I think, you know, the one dilemma is that nobody answers the phone anymore. All right. I don't you know, I'm sure your experience, and you have a way around this, but, but I know when somebody calls me, you know, I let everything go right to voicemail unless I recognize the number. And then if they leave a message, then maybe I'll call them back. Right? So how do I as a salesperson, or any kind of person out there deal with this, this automatic wall but people can put up around them so that they don't have to deal with you.Doug Brown  9:53  So it's a it's not just about a one one dimension communication piece anymore.  So if you leave a voicemail, you better leave a very good voice. Right? I did, too. He can't, it's not enough to differentiate anymore, right? It's but you got to be different. Right? So, um, and I like to use a lot of humor. And you know, but I don't teach people to use a lot of humor, because not a lot of people can pull it off without, you know, lots of practice.KC Dempster  10:22  So you leave messages and a Donald Duck voice or something like that?Doug Brown  10:26  No, but we might, we might leave it in like a radio broadcast type and say, you know, this is John from calling, you know, Doug calling from, you know, Cloud Computing, you know, the business spotlight, and you know, and I might do things like that, uh huh. And then just leave them a message or it's about entertaining them. Yeah, I see. Yeah. Right. So, you know, hey, you're harder to get than my, you know, my wife's boyfriend, George Clooney, you know?Ray Loewe  10:53  Okay, that's, that's putting yourself out on the line. Right. Okay, so So what do you do you have a you have a sales campaign. And basically, what you're teaching people to do is the campaign starts with social media contact, enter an email contact, what is that? Is that generally what we're dealing with?Doug Brown  11:13  Yeah, he all of the above, because you don't know what they're going to respond to. And so, you know, I teach people to use text, I teach him to use postcards, handwritten letters, email, LinkedIn, Facebook, you know, whatever, whenever they can get an impression upon. Because a gentleman, his name was Jay Conrad Levinson. And he wrote a series of books called the Guerilla Marketing Series. And I was talking to Jay one day, and he told me this factoid. Now, I don't even know if it's true, but I actually do believe it is. He told me it takes nine, nine impressions upon the brain for somebody to actually get to recognize somebody's name or brand. And, and I said, Well, that's not bad. He goes, Yeah, but it takes three views per impression to actually get the impression. So you have to contact somebody 27 times, according to him.Um, and, you know, he's, he's the guy who did the Marlboro Man commercials and things like that years ago. But he, he left that impression upon me. So when I was with Chet, Chet used to say it's between five and 12, five and 12 contacts, you know, on a cold lead. And so I would test these things out, because I'm just a curious guy who likes to optimize everything. So sometimes it was five to 12. But sometimes it was 17, depending on the industry, depending on the title we're going after. But getting a hold of people isn't as hard as most people think it is, as long as they're creative. Right? We in so I teach people how to do that creatively, whether that's using what's you know, called lumpy mail, you know, in the old days, right, you'd send something that had a kind of a lumpy package. And, you know, they'd open it up, and it'd be something that would be relevant to what we were going to want to talk to them about. I mean, there's different ways of doing it. But it can't be just the one thing that we all relied upon, you know, years ago, including myself. And you know, the 70s 80s was just hitting the phone, right? And this, this is constantly changing.Ray Loewe  13:25  And I would guess, now that when people are stuck at home, and it's easy to take a nap during the middle of the day, right? Yeah, I mean, you have to be even more creative. So give me a couple of ideas of things that you do that are really creative, that we can steal from you.Doug Brown  13:44  So the first, the first. First thing out is always something that's very short, needs to be short. So right, you may have heard something like this, I didn't make this up. But if you're gonna leave a phone call, there's different ways of doing it, you can do it, you know, hey, this is me from ABC Company, you know, and so one of the things that I teach people to do is mix it up. So it would be something like this. Hi, Ray. This is Doug from business success factors. My phone number is 603-595-0303. And the reason I called you today was to...and I leave it like that.KC Dempster  14:22  Oh, he goes little sneak.Ray Loewe  14:25  Okay, so So now now I I'm curious. Right? Right. All right, give us a couple of other examples of some creative things here. We're gonna go through your whole repertoire, we're gonna do the Doug brown course to success. You know, in our 16 minute thing, I know we can't do that.So, for example, on LinkedIn, or even email, right, you want to you want to have a very short, pithy and nice something, but you Here's the key, it's got to be relevant to them. The problem, the challenge with most people, is they're not selling, sending relevant information. So Ray, for example, if I was doing something on the financial services business, I might come up with a factoid that I found. And I might say, Hi, Ray, this, you know, I'm Doug, via LinkedIn, you know, I'm connecting with you. And I noticed you're in the financial services business. And I support people in the financial services business doing XYZ. I don't know, if you're experiencing either one of these three frustrations, like most of the people that I talked to, and I'll list the three frustrations, you know, is it worth a five minute phone call for us to discuss to see, you know, if there's anything that we can do, just something simple like that, people are complicating the heck out of it? And then on the next thing that I would send, I would send a picture. So I send riddles. You know, hum. How many? How many times does nine appear from zero to 100? in sequence? You know, how many times so if you went 9 19 29, you know, or three, I pick a number. And then I hit him after that with a short blurb about, Hey, I'm here to prove everything that I said I would. So for example, right? In this case, if I sent that and said, How many times does nine appear? You know, in sequence in, you know, from zero to 100, then I'd say the answer might surprise you. It's about the same amount of people who say no to a financial services offer.Doug Brown  16:42  Right? Creating, you know, if you're curious about the answer, it's down below my signature. And so what I want you to do is go down below my signature, because then I'm going to put a PS re, is it worth five minutes for us to talk? Okay? Okay, so this is this is what you do for people, you you sit down with a good executive, Salesforce or something like that, and you train them to look for these things.Ray Loewe  17:08  Now, do you actually write this material for them too? Or is that something that somebody else does?Doug Brown  17:12  Depends on how much they want to pay me but yes. Okay.KC Dempster  17:18  Well, you know, one of the things though, is that when you're using written communication, you have to be careful because sometimes your tone doesn't come through and it might sound abrupt or terse, or Curt or even insulting.Ray Loewe  17:33  Yeah, you know, you when we were talking earlier, you gave me this story about this contractor. Mm hmm. Okay, tell that because that was so, so much true about dot txt and things can convey a misleading tone if we're not careful.Doug Brown  17:49  Absolutely. So I had a contractor that I, you know, I've been trying to, it's hard to get contractors to come to do anything. Right. And then they're, you know, the challenge in that world is, they're not communicative. And, you know, so I've been trying to get this door, put on the back of my house, a sliding door that leads out to the deck for months, and I've had people say, I'm going to show up, they don't show up, they give me the price. I go, it's fine. You know, they don't you know, and so then they'll, they'll do it last minute, etc, etc, etc. So anyways, I found this guy, his name's Joe. He's awesome. Right? He did a nice guy came by we did it, boom, he put the door in, etc, etc, etc. And I had about five or six other things in the house I wanted done Joe's like, Hey, I'll come back. So weeks go by and I'm texting him. I'm saying, Hey, Joe, when are you going to be able to show up? He's not answering me. So I send him a you know, a couple of voicemails didn't answer me. I'm like, Oh my gosh, did he you know, catch COVID-19 to me what happened? Right? So then I sent him a text and I said, Hey, Joe, the doors in because I wanted another door on the side. I know you're busy guy. Would you like to have me have Lowe's where I bought the door from? Have them install it to kind of save some time? Or do you you know, do you want to set a time that you can come by and do this and the rest of the stuff? And he typed back, It's up to you?I mean, I was I was like, wow, this is you know, I'm gonna pay this guy. I don't know, you know, four or $5,000 to do the work right around. And I'm like, man, are they making that kind of money that they can do this, but then when I talk to people like that, they're always complaining like, I don't have enough cash. I don't have this. I don't have that. Right. Yeah. So yeah. So Gary atone.Ray Loewe  19:47  Okay, so this has been an interesting conversation. And unfortunately, we're near the end of our conversation already. It just flies. But you know, what I got out of this is that you've been doing this On non direct kind of sales work for years and years and years, it's not something new. But what is new is that you have to be much more creative. And between you and me, I think you were always creative with this, right? And you have to worry about the tones that you set and things like that. And that's why people hire Doug Brown to coach them in sales. Right.Doug Brown  20:22  Yes, that and other reasons, but, you know, generally they're looking to increase their sales revenues, or to improve their efficiencies, and, you know, process, whether it be, you know, super large companies, or, you know, midsize or whatever, smaller companies.Ray Loewe  20:38  But yeah, I mean, the game has changed, right, as you and I talked about before, and I don't think the game is coming back and force, the way it used to be.Doug Brown  20:47  I think people are getting used to working virtually now, and communicating virtually now. I do believe that in person meetings will come back to a certain degree, but you know, I mean, a lot of people now are not even going into an office, they're working from home, including big companies, you know, I just called GoDaddy the other day, everybody's working from home, you know, I called other large companies, General Electric, people are working from home. So I'm not sure that they're going to want to spend that kind of floorspace, you know, per square foot, per square meter, you know, on rent anymore. And so it's gonna be it's gonna be an interesting world going forward. But I mean, the reality is that it's not that hard to communicate with people, when you determined, and you have multi modality to get to them, because they will respond to one thing and rate. Can I say one last thing?Ray Loewe  21:37  You certainly canDoug Brown  21:39  I get asked this question all the time. How much follow up is, is too much? And the answer to that question is, until they tell, you know, until they say it's too much, it's not too much, because what a lot of people feel is, oh, well, I'm going to be now you don't want to hit them every, you know, five times a day, with with with a piece of follow up. But the reality is that when you're connecting with somebody, it's one of those views that Jay was telling me. So the more views you have, the more it will pull somebody toward you. Some people, sometimes people think it will push people away if they're communicating too much. And the reality is, most of the time, it does the exact opposite, because your competitors are not doing it, if at all, very often. So, again, you don't want to differentiate, you want to be different.Ray Loewe  22:32  Wow. Well, thank you so much for imparting your wisdom. And, you know, I can see, you know, Doug is one of the luckiest people in the world. I you know, he he has taken control of his life. He's got his own business, he does what he wants to do, he does it largely his way. And he has these creative spins that he you know, puts on everything. So, Doug, thank you so much for being with us. And we will put your website and phone number on our podcast notes so that people can find you. Okay, thank you. And it's been a pleasure, and I hope we're gonna have an opportunity to talk again, and I'm revamping my whole way of communication right now. So let's take a quick break Taylor, and then we're gonna come back and sum up.Diane Dayton  23:19  You're listening to Changing the Rules with KC Dempster. And Ray Loewe, the luckiest guy in the world. We will be right back with more exciting information.KC Dempster  23:28  Welcome back, everybody. And the exciting information is this is the end of the podcast. And we will be back next week with a very interesting young woman and keep coming back because we've got really great people that we talk to.Ray Loewe  23:43  Yeah. And again, another thanks to Doug brown for being with us today. Yeah, it was most interesting to me. And I think if you're in the business world at all, you'll learn a heck of a lot. See you next week, everybody.Diane Dayton  23:55  Thank you for listening to Changing the Rules, a podcast designed to help you live your life the way you want, and give you what you need to make it happen. Join us in two weeks for our next exciting topic on changing the rules with KC Dempster and Ray Loewe, the luckiest guy in the world.  

From motivation to mindset, personal branding to perseverance, you will learn tried and tested ways to generate leads, increase your sales and build a strong lifestyle business. Gary Das takes you on an entrepreneurial journey of education, inspiration, and motivation to help you become a Pro of your industry!   In this episode Gary talks about all things Facebook ads and why you should be using them in your business. Gary went self-employed in 2006, just as MoneySuperMarket began and you could buy sales leads and data for £15. The problem with that is as everyone bought more and more leads, the quality went down. So Gary ended up building a business that he hated that kept him trapped spending £20,000 per month on poor quality leads. That was until he started to use Social Selling and Facebook Ads.    What Is Covered In Today’s Episode Of The Financial Pro Podcast: Why you should be utilising Facebook Ads as early as possible in your business Why you shouldn’t be pressing the boost button with Facebook Ads Playing the slow game in sales The minimum amount you should spend on a Facebook Ad How you can maximise the results you get from Facebook Ads   Channels:   Join the Financial Pro Community https://bit.ly/2zQ3MaS   Buy Gary’s book The Self-Employed Mortgage Guide https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/178133403X/   Follow Gary on Instagram   http://bit.ly/2UrBYlJ   Visit Gary on Facebook http://bit.ly/2DefkSS

Gary Hamel is the author of five books including bestsellers What Matters Now and The Future of Management. His upcoming book is called Humanocracy: Creating Organizations as Amazing as the People Inside Them, which comes out in August.  Gary has been on the faculty of the London Business School for more than 30 years and he is the director of the Management Lab. He has been named “The World’s leading expert on business strategy” by Fortune magazine, “the management innovator without peer” by the Financial Times, and he has been ranked by The Wall Street Journal as the world’s most influential business thinker. He is also a fellow of The Strategic Management Society and the World Economic Forum.   This episode is brought to you by Cisco. Nearly overnight, the entire world has found itself adapting to a new way of working. The future of work requires a modern approach to collaboration – helping people securely connect wherever they work, while staying safe and being productive. Cisco is shaping this path forward. Check out their new page devoted to the future of work to learn more and check out their resources including articles, videos, and a workplace maturity assessment. There are some companies that seem to dominate at strategy and innovation--like Google, Airbnb, and YouTube. These companies found a way to create rule breaking strategies that have pushed them into the forefront in their industries. But why is it that some companies can figure out how to do that, while others (the majority) have such a difficult time innovating? That is what Gary has been trying to figure out over his career and what he found was that most organizations are alike--they are all using the same bureaucratic model that stifles creativity, innovation, and adaptability. As organizations we need to move away from this old way of leading, but how?  Why we haven’t moved away from bureaucracy One of the major reasons why organizations have not been able to move away from this outdated model is because leaders do not trust their people. But because of that lack of trust, it ends up being a self fulfilling prophecy. If leaders feel that they have to treat their people like children because they can’t be trusted, the people will feel that and they will stop making decisions on their own. If leaders try to control every aspect of the work, then what motivation does the employee have to do something new and innovative?  Gary says, “I make the point in the book that there's a great irony in the fact that most of us, you know, at some point in our life, we're going to buy a car or two or three as we go through life, many of us will ultimately buy a dwelling of some sort. And yet those same human beings go to work and can't requisition a $300 office chair without somebody's permission. And we know from a kind of academic research that when you shrink somebody's autonomy, you also shrink their creativity, you shrink their courage and people just kind of give up. And so, where they may be very engaged in other parts of their life, they're not very engaged at work.” The reason why Gary wrote his book was because he became frustrated looking around at a majority of companies that aren’t focusing on innovation. They are only changing when they face a crisis and have to change. And while 87% of CEOs think innovation is the top three priority, 94% will tell you their organizations are not very good at it. So Gary wanted to help organizations to see that you cannot become more capable of innovation if you don’t change the structures and principles that have kept organizations in a stand still up until now. He also saw that organizations are not utilizing their people to the fullest. Not only that, they are actually holding the people back.  We have been using the wrong definition of leadership There are many definitions of leadership, if you ask a room full of 20 people to define the word you will probably get 20 different answers. But Gary says we have been defining it all wrong. Over the last few decades the words leader and manager have been used interchangeably. And usually when we think of leaders we think of the top 20 people inside a company who make all the decisions.  How does Gary think we should define leadership? He says “Ask yourself, if you had no budget at work, if you had no title after your name, what can you get done? And so people who need the stick of bureaucratic authority to get something done, I don't think most of those people are leaders, maybe very good administrators, they're not leaders. Leaders are people who know how to mobilize the people around them, know how to get folks to move forward together, and can be catalysts in making that happen. But they're not necessarily defined by a particular place in the organization. So probably, since Drucker was writing, we really know how to train managers, I don't think then or now we really know how to train leaders. But we kind of gave everybody a battlefield promotion when we started referring to managers and leaders. My argument is there are not a lot of managers who are leaders, anybody can be a leader. It has nothing to do with credentials. It has nothing to do with hierarchy, whether you have the courage, the compassion, the sense of community to step up and make something happen, even when you lack that positional authority.” So should we get rid of the concept of management altogether? Gary says, we may need to change our language when it comes to management, as it does not refer to a layer of the company or a certain elite group of people. Management is really anything that helps us combine our efforts, do something consistently with purpose effectively multiplying our individual work. Gary believes most people and most teams today are capable of managing themselves. So we need systems and processes of managing together, but we don’t need multiple ranks of managers who see their primary role as control and oversight.  How Adidas got rid of bureaucracy Gary worked with Adidas and they brought him in to help them get rid of bureaucracy and to build a more innovative culture. They were lagging behind Nike and Under Armour in North America and they wanted to fix that. Gary says that in this instance he was able to train a couple thousand employees on how to think like business innovators. These employees were frontline, retail people who were now trained in innovating and then the company opened up the conversation to get ideas from these employees. Thousands of ideas were created in these open meetings and it got the employees excited and inspired for the first time in their careers. This was so successful they had a second round, but this time they focused on their manager model. They opened up the conversation about the business and the manager model to thousands of employees, which took a lot of courage on the part of the CEO. But that courage paid off big time.  A lot of times it is the CEO standing in front of the organization giving their perspective on problems and issues. They are the ones giving the roadmap for how to move forward. But what if any individual inside the company could give an opinion, could have their voice heard, could help solve problems.  Gary says, “ If you look back at all the people who changed our world, that's what they do, they're not waiting to be asked. They do not assume they're helpless because they don't have a title after their name. They see a problem. They build a community. They go, they build. They try something and they go from there. So these are the hackers. These are the activists who've changed things. And it's kind of amazing to me that, you know, I hear all these CEOs that say, “Gary, our organization needs to change faster”. So I ask them a question, “have you trained every employee to think like an activist? Do they know how to build a prototype? They know how to build a community around them to go try something.” “No,we've never done that.” So how can you complain that your organization can't change fast enough? Well, you haven't taught every single person how to be an agent of change in your organization.” The 7 Principles of Humanocracy In his book, Gary shares seven principles of humanocracy that define the DNA of a Human-Centric organization. They are:    The Power of Ownership--Companies have a wealth of talented employees, but they aren’t given ownership of their work. Which means their ideas never see the light of day. Employees want to be passionate, engaged, and inspired. So give them the power to do so.  The Power of Markets--While markets can’t function in the absence of appropriate regulatory structures, they are unmatched in their capacity to harness human wisdom and initiative.  The Power of Meritocracy--If you want a human-centric organization you can’t have rigid hierarchies that make executives king-like and employees like underlings. Hierarchies should be natural and dynamic, based on an individual’s performance, not title or tenure.  The Power of Community--As human beings we are programmed for community. We need to feel like we belong and that we are part of something bigger than ourselves. Leaders need to strengthen the bonds of community within the organization.  The Power of Openness--It is important for everyone in the organization to feel that they can voice their opinions. And people should be encouraged to voice different opinions and not feel they have to agree with the boss. Diversity of thought, background, culture, etc…is extremely important to the success of an organization.  The Power of Experimentation--The pace at which any organization evolves is determined in large part by how many experiments it runs. You shouldn’t let your organization sit still and wait for a crisis to change. In good times and in bad, you must go try something new.  The Power of Paradox--Conundrums are what make life interesting. You have to help your organization become a master of paradox. When you can master it, work will become more interesting and the organization will be more capable If we want to see change inside our organizations, we can’t keep defaulting to the old way of work. As Gary shares in his book, “We need to embed new human-centric principles in every structure, system, process, and practice. If we’re serious about creating organizations that are fit for human beings and fit for the future, nothing less will do”

Gary VaynerChuk was the son of a immigrant Liquor store worker. So Gary had the fire to get rich. He later started Wine Library TV and other businesses and eventually became a multi- millionaire. Holy Vanilla Ice cream!, Let us see how he did it.

In this episode, Gary and Naren discuss 6 important factors for your dental practice that should be included in your readiness checklist before you decide to go out of network and how to utilize them along with must-do tactics. Listen to this insightful podcast episode to help make your practice the best it can be as you transition towards a thriving fee-for-service practice. Highlights: Introduction to today’s episode > 00:52 How to avoid the common reaction of impatience > 04:54 Step 1: Develop a Done-For-You Marketing Plan > 06:07 Step 2: Strengthen the Relationship-Driven component of Your Practice > 09:47 Start doing evening “We Care” contact Make sure you have personal digital notes about your patients Make sure you do a Morning huddle and prep doctor and team members on the patients you will be seeing that day using those digital notes Step 3: Add an in-office membership plan so that you can attract people in your community who don’t have insurance > 11:44 Step 4: Do verbal skills training for team members that answer the phone to be able to answer the question “Do you take my insurance?” > 12:39 Step 5: Do verbal skills training for ALL team members to answer the question “How come you're not taking my insurance anymore?” > 16:52 Step 6: Ten Reasons why a patient should choose your practice > 20:34 Resources: DOWNLOAD REGISTER NOW SUBSCRIBE GRAB THE FREEBIE! × Fill out my Wufoo form! No spam. We promise Podcast Transcript N: This is the less insurance dependent podcast with my good friend Gary Takacs and myself Naren Arulrajah. G: We appreciate your listenership, we appreciate your time, we appreciate your intention to reduce insurance dependence in your practice. Our goal is to provide information to you that will allow you to successfully reduce dependency on insurance and make this your best year yet. Thank you. N: Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Less Insurance Dependence podcast show. Today’s episode is a very powerful episode – it’s called the ‘Your readiness checklist’ but before I talk about that I want to kind of share my thoughts on why this is a powerful episode. See people are either choosing you because you are on their insurance, or people are either choosing you because you are ready to care of them at a level in which that accompany their pay out of their pocket – is ready to take care of them. So your readiness checklist came out of Gary’s time spent over the last 40 years working with private practices to get them ready. So there are lots and lots of different reasons why people chose those practices and why people chose to stay with those practices. For example – 80% of Gary’s patients toady are not on insurance vs in 2007 80% of them were on insurance. So how did all these other people who don’t have insurance plus the people who do have insurance decide to go to Gary even though they are not in the network? So it is a great episode and if you want to get a crash course on how this happens and you are not one of Gary’s coaching clients I would recommend you take the MBA. There’s one coming up in July – go to the ThrivingDentist.com/MBA. Its 2 evenings, 2 Friday evenings – check it out. There are also other dates and formats – pick the one you like. So Gary lets jump into today’s topic ‘Your readiness checklist’. G: You know Naren I wish that I would have had this readiness checklist when we started to go out of network in 2007. I wish I would have had this because it’s almost like a- imagine you are building a house and you don’t have a blueprint. How would that go? *laughs* Not really well. Why do you need the blueprint? Because you need all the details - I wish I could have this when we were out of the network I 2007 – we didn’t have that – I discovered this after the fact but the great news is our listeners can jump in on our shoulders because we now know what this checklist is – we’ve done this many times and we’ve refined it – we’ve continually refined it and it’s all about being ready. I’ll use another analogy so that our listeners know that I’m a long-distance runner. Imagine Naren that someone decides they want to run a long-distance marathon – now a marathon is 26.2 miles N: Right. G: Imagine they don’t prepare for it – now they really want to run, they’ve always wanted to run a marathon – bucket list kind of thing and they decide I’m going to run for a marathon and they have good intentions for it but life gets in the way and they don’t prepare for it. How do you think that would go on race day? If they go without preparation – 26.2 miles – how do you think that would go? N: it going to be a disaster *laughs* G: They might make it to the first water stop *laughs* and that’s just a mile. N: Exactly. G: You know there are book out there – where you can sign up for 16-week preparation to successfully run a marathon – a 24-week program to successfully run a marathon or whatever it is – plug in whatever time frame and if you follow it guess what your success rate is going to be? It’s going to be much more likely, isn’t it? N: Yeah G: Imagine - I happen to have one I’m looking over at it in my bookshelf and it’s called the ‘Hansen Method’ – the coach’s last name is Hansen and its literally a 16 week programmed with prescribed training for every week to successfully run your first marathon and I did that, and I was prepared. So we are going to do the same thing for our listeners in the form of a readiness checklist. One thing I want to help our listeners evade is the common reaction of impatience. Dentists can get impatient – we all are people and let’s just say people can be impatient – and I get it it’s like Naren I have this conversation with dentists weekly – I just had it and I’m going to resign I’m going to pull the plug from all these plans and just let the cards fall where they fall. Don’t do that – don’t do it because we can do it in a relatively short period of time but when you have successfully passed each benchmark you have enhanced your success and what I mean by that is that you are going to retain more of your existing patients when you go out of network by following this readiness checklist and Naren I have 6 specific steps – can I dive into those 6 parts of the checklist? N: Absolutely Gary. G: and I’m going to number these because in this case they aren’t numbered in order. No.1 – develop a done for you marketing plan that consistently provides X number of new patients constantly each month – X number of new patients each month. Now I’m using the generic term X for the podcast interview because I don’t know enough about each one of your listeners’ practice to actually plug in a number but Coaching work – we actually define that number. Let me tell you how we define it – we define it by the number of new patients that come into that practice historically because you are in that network so for example let me just use an example taken from our client base today. This was a solo doctor’s office – one doc and 30 new patients a month came into his practice because he was in-network – collectively in all the different plans. Delta travelers – this was a dentist with 14 PPO plans and historically over time 30 new patients came in a month because it was on network – so the number we out in on his marketing plan was 30 and here’s why that’s so important – because he or she has already replaced the course of new patients with marketing – you’ve already replaced it. So if he/she was seeing 30 new patients a month from the 14 different plans as soon as they have 30 new patients a month from digital marketing where they are choosing him for reasons because he is influencing them. He’s independent of the insurance because he has replaced them already. Now he still wants to maintain as many existing patients as possible but he’s already replaced the flow N: Right. G: That’s how you calculate it – go back and calculate historically how may a month and that becomes your number to replace the done for you digital marketing plan so that’s No.1 And you want to replace it ahead of time so that you are operating from a position of strength and not a position of weakness. N: Makes total sense Gary G: And Naren let me just ask for your comment on that because you are the marketing wizard on this. Am I thinking in the right way or is it the right priority to lead with this? N: Absolutely it is. The only comment I will make is that I think you added a buffer. AN insured patient is only paying 40% less right so 30 insured patients are equal to If I were to do the math – 18 noninsured patients – assuming they are all paying full price and insurance guys are paying 40% less. Yeah, so I think if you are getting paid in new patients who are not choosing you because you are not of their insurance it’s like time and a half what you would if you were to get 30 non-insurance patients – again it’s a great place to start. G: Naren I’m so happy that you did the math because you are absolutely right. You know if you are writing off 40% you can see 20 new patients and be better off but you out a buffer in there to sort of propel the practice to new levels of success and leave it to the math guy to figure that out, thank you Naren! N: *Laughs* G: No.2 component is to strengthen the relationship-driven component of your practice. Strengthen that - because that’s why they will stay with you. N: Right. G: and I will give you three specific things to do within those checklist items – 3 sub-points number 1 – start doing the evening we care contact for any patient who got an injection that day – any of your new patients, and any patient that got an injection to make an evening we care contact – could be a call could be a text message depending on what effective communication your patient likes. Number 2 – make sure you have a section in your computer for personal digital notes about your patients and that’s where you put spouse’s names, kid’s names, hobbies interest and events in their life, and so on. Don’t count on your memory is the system for that because ultimately that will break down somewhere plus the other reason why you are having this computer is that you invite your team members whenever they learn something about your patient have them supplement your notes so it becomes part of your records. And number 3 – in the morning huddle, now make sure you do a morning huddle; prep doctors and team members on all the patients you are seeing today from those digital notes. Remember, ‘Oh yeah Gary has an anniversary coming up – be sure to mention that when you see him today’ So those three sub-points strengthen the relationship part of your practice. Number 1 – start doing the evening we care contact for any patient who gets a shot Number 2 - make sure you have a place in your computer where you can put digital notes and Number 3 – consult those digital notes in the morning to prep the team for the patients you are seeing that day. Number 3 – add and in-office membership plan as part of your practice so that you can figuratively roll the red carpet out for patients from your community who don’t have insurance. So add an in-office membership plan so that you can literally attract people in your community that doesn’t have insurance and I’m going to suggest a goal – a goal of 10 new patients a month. New patients coming from your membership plan so now add the number from step 1 on our digital marketing add 10 more that are coming from digital marketing and you have a robust flow of new patients coming in – none of which are tied to your insurance. Makes sense Naren? N: Absolutely. G: Number 4 - do verbal skills training to any of the members who would answer the phone on how to answer new callers on ‘do you take my insurance’ – we’ve done entire episodes on this Naren – but I want to emphasize this – if you skip that step and they start getting calls from people ‘do you take my insurance’ and the team hasn’t been trained what will 99% of team members, how will they respond when they haven’t had training, ‘do you take my insurance’ N: ‘Nope’ G: ‘Nope’ – now your marketing worked but your conversion didn’t work. So we’ve done episodes on those go back and revisit those on less dependency insurance, but let me go ahead and wordplay that – here’s how that should go: ‘I’m so glad you called, we love seeing new patients, my name is Carly – who am I speaking with?’ ‘Naren it’s great to meet you – I look forward to meeting you face to face. Naren let me answer your question; although we are not contracted with Delta you can absolutely use your insurance at LifeSmiles Dental Care. Not only can you use it but you are going to meet Meg when you come in. Meg is our insurance coordinator and she is going to do everything possible to help you get every dollar of benefit that you have from your dental insurance. Think of her as your advocate towards the insurance company to get every dollar of benefit that you have. Naren we actually have many patients who have the same Delta insurance that you have. Do you like mornings or afternoons?’ There’s the script here’s the guideline for that verbal skill training. N: This is really really important Gary see because there are the emergency patients who give them reasons not to come in. hey are going to come in regardless they have already decided. Then there are other patients who are non-emergency who have done a lot of research and who have decided. But then there is a majority of patients who have decided that maybe 70% -they are not 100% yet. They are picking up the phone and calling to get over that hump and they are saying, ‘yeah let’s book an appointment’. If your team is not trained unfortunately I would say 80% of the teams are not trained – not at the level at which LifeSmiles is trained, I would say even 90% of the teams even - G: I think you might be understating it at 80 - N: Yeah at least 90%, so think of it like this – I remember you used an analogy when you first purchased this practice that was insurance dependent, you said certain types of providers you are better off telling the patient to go away and also giving them a 50 dollar or a 100 dollar bill because you end up saving money by not treating them. G: The worst one for us Naren was MetLife. Now that may or may not be the worst one for you because it depends on the fees and states and so on, but every time we did a crown on a MetLife patient it cost Paul and I a 138 dollars. Now I’m not saying an opportunity cost Naren – it cost us 138 dollars out of pocket to do a crown for that patient. N: Right G: We would have been better of handing them a 100 dollar bill and say, ‘Hey Naren please go somewhere else’ *laughs* N: Exactly G: Here’s a 100 bucks! Not that’s silly but it would have cost us less money we would have lost less money if we did that. N: Yeah so the point that I’m trying to make is if this part of your business is not fine-tuned it’s like you’re taking a 100 dollar note and burning it because the phone is ringing, marketing is ringing but the majority of people who are not totally convinced yet – they are not booking and I have done the analysis – we listen to calls and provide feedback. Analysis on many many clients and many of them a literally leaving like 500 extra clients on the table every year. Some are 100 some are 200, but it is unreal the number of clients that have been left on the table. G: Yeah that so true. Why don’t we go to the next verbal skill training? That was number 4 on the checklist, let’s go to number 5. Now I want you to do verbal skill training for all team members. 4 was about training your team members on the phone, handling inbound calls – the next one 5 has to do with verbal skill training for every team member to answer the question, ‘How come you are not taking my insurance anymore?’ Now I asked in a very blunt way but I want every team member to be able to have some level of conversation with a patient with that question. Now they don’t have to be the expert at it but I want them to have some level of communication because patients do not discriminate who they asked the question to. They will ask that question from whoever happens to be next to them. Now I don’t want any team member just folding their tent, ‘I don’t know I’m an assistant’ because hat message does that communicate to the patient? It wasn’t a confident message! So I want any team member to be able to say Naren I’m so glad you asked that question. You know let me show you – first of all every patient in our practice is important Naren to our Doctor and the team – you are important to us. Now remember if you have been working on the relationship side of your practice – that’s a true statement. You will feel that – would you agree Naren? We’ve done the things that make a relationship practice when I say you are important to us, in your mind you are thinking, ‘yeah I get that I get it’ and if you haven’t done that then that’s an issue. N: Absolutely. G: Naren you are important to us and we have determined – now I’m going to put those in Covid19 context. ‘You see all the things we are doing to make this a safe environment for you Naren. You see all the additional PP, all the additional steps that we take to make this a safe environment and you have to understand that the Doctor – his number 1 priority is your safety. We would ever compromise that in any way. This is a safe environment for you, for the doctor, and for the team members. The doctor determines that if he was to continue to be in-network with Delta we couldn’t do that and that was not acceptable to him. So he made the difficult decision to gout of the network to deliver on the promise to always make this a safe environment. Now Naren here’s the great news, even though we are out of network you can still use your benefits in our practice not only can you use them, Meg’s going to continue to file your insurance like she always has – she’s going to be your advocate to help you get every dollar of benefit that you have, and it is our fondest hope that you appreciate our priority of your safety. We hope you appreciate the way we invest in technology, for your benefit. We hope you appreciate the individual benefit you get from the doctor and the team. Appreciate the way we treat you as if you were a family member and our fondest hope is that you continue to come here for your care. Now I want every team member to be able to have that level of discussion. Now if it does get deeper and they want to know exactly what goes on and so on then we can say, ‘You know what you are asking the right questions – here let’s go over and talk to Linda. Linda is our insurance coordinator, Meg is our insurance coordinator – I want to make sure that you get all the right answers, let’s go talk to Meg.’ I want that first level of discussion to come from every team member. In training, in practice, in role-play – that’s step number 5. And finally step number 6 – are you ready for step number 6? Are you ready for this Naren? N: Yes. G: Doctor I want you to rattle off improvisationally- its right off the tip of your head, 10 reasons why a patient should choose your practice. Give me 10 reasons right now and I want every team member to be able to rattle off 10 reasons why. If you can’t give them 10 reasons why – you aren’t ready. It’s just like – I’m going to skip week 12 to 16 for the training of my marathon, I’m ready to just run it I’m done with training. I’m going to go run it. What’s going to happen? *laughs* you are not going to be prepared! Naren what are the reasons, let’s try a role play – why don’t you come up with 5 and I’ll give you 5. Give me 10 off the tops of your head reasons why you would choose a fictitious office we are just thinking in our head. N: I’ll think of LifeSmiles *laughs* G: Think about Life N: I mean I don’t live in Phoenix but I’ve read the reviews so I think the number one reason people chose you guys is both Paul and Tim treat every patient like it’s one of their family members. Number 2 reasons I believe they chose your practice is it’s not Paul and Tim but it’s the person answering the phone – it’s the patient care coordinator, it’s the insurance coordinator who’s going to get everything- so these are multiple reasons right G: So you just named a third. N: Yes – the insurance coordinator who’s trying to get every penny from the insurance company for you. When I walk in here I see those beautiful smiles of after pictures though out where I can start visualizing myself or my husband looking like that 65-year-old instead of who he actually looks like *laughs* G: Give me one more you’ve got all 4, give me one more and then ill roll more from there. N: Yes I think the other reason why people choose you is because I think the care calls you guys make – I think even today I think you are like 6 7 ties bigger than what you used to be still every single day Paul and Tim call those patients they want to call that evening so that’s fine. G: Let me keep rolling – we offer hours aside from normal work hours. We are open from 7 am to 4 pm, and many of our patients love the 7 and 8 am appointments because they can come in and not take time from work. It’s an absolute state of the art office; we have every piece of technology known to mankind in dentistry because that’s what we would want if we were a patient. We use the highest quality of material. We wouldn’t put anything in the patient’s mouth that we would not put in our own mouths. Number 4 – we stand behind our work. If something isn’t right, we redo it and we redo it at no charge and number 5 – my hygienists are not only thorough but gentle at the same time. There are 10 reasons. Now Naren – true confessions. N: Yes G: I didn’t prep you ahead of time now did I? N: No and I didn’t think of LifeSmiles until I thought ‘who do I think of’ *laughs* so anyways G: So doctor I want you to be able to rattle off ‘Give me 10 reasons why I should want to come to your practice’ and I want your team members to repeat yours and they can come up with roughly as you go around the room you should actually end up with 30 or 40 or 50 reasons why they should come to you. N: Now one point I want to add is- I know Gary’s modest so he will never say this but this is not stuff he makes up. Go and read the reviews, just type in LifeSmiles Dental Care – Phoenix Arizona. This is what the patients say about the practice. 530 5 star love letter reviews. G: There could be some other ones – Doctor and team members listen to me. They take the time to listen to me. You know that could be another one. We offer services that pretty much for the most part that they can have all their dental care taken care of within our dental practice. N: Now there are a few things- G: Say that again Naren... N: You didn’t mention sedation G: So we offer all kinds of sedation and other benefits. We are totally synced into the oral systematic link – so we are helping our patients improve their health. So let’s go back over those 6 items on the checklist and again ill number them and just repeat them summarized here. Number 1 – Develop a done for you marketing system that provides X number of new patients each month. You can peel your own net – X based on the current number that you are seeing from being n network. Number 2 – you strengthen the relationship component of your practice and you do that by your evening we care contact, by your personal notes in the computer that are updated by both you and the team members that you consult before you prepare for your patients every day. Number 3 – have an in-office membership plan to figuratively roll the red carpet out, to attract new patients that do have insurance, and as part of that have a goal of attracting 10 new patients every month from your in-office membership plan. Now Number 4 - you have verbal skills training for your team members on the phone when a new patient calls and says, ‘Do you take my insurance’ do you know how to answer that. Number 5 – you have full verbal skills training for the entire team to answer a question from the patient, ‘Hey how come you are not taking my insurance anymore?’ and Number 6 – you and your team members can quickly rattle off 10 reasons why a patient should choose your office. It’s almost like you’ve now completed the 16-week training program to successfully run your marathon. You are ready for that starting gun. You’ve done those, you are ready. So how long does it take? Well, you are going to answer that yourself. How long – answer that yourself, this readiness checklist can be done fairly quickly if you stay on task. N: Right. G: But pass the litmus test, make sure you are not skipping steps because it’ll result in more attrition than what we’d like. You want to keep as many of the existing patients as possible. Naren why don’t we do him – could we put this checklist in the form of a PDF for our listeners so that their team members could be in a team meeting and that they could really make this episode come alive in the practice, could we do that? N: Absolutely Gary Absolutely. G: As we kind of come to the finish line here on the day that we are publishing this – July 2nd some of you may have some trips coming up and if you do you may not have had the chance to listen to the entire library of our less insurance dependency podcast. You can download all of the episodes going back to the episode Number 1 and they are all free and they can be downloaded on iTunes, they can be downloaded on Google play, or they can be downloaded on the Less Insurance Dependency podcast. SO if you have some travel coming up this might be a good way to spend your travel time getting caught up on some episodes to further strengthen your strategies as you further go out of network. Ok, thank you, thanks in advance for those of you who have written good reviews. If you haven’t the jump on iTunes and write us a review on the Thriving Dentist and we appreciate each and every one of you as a listener. Thanks for listening and giving us a chance. Thank you bye.

Isaac John aka Ice is an ex professional NRL rugby league player turned entrepreneur, podcaster, vlogger and card collector. He is the founder of clothing brand YKTR (you know the rules). Since following him I have seen him leverage the power of social media, authenticity and storytelling to grow his business. Today we dive into his thought process, what is working right now for him, how it can work for you and the biggest challenges he faces with growing his business and personal brand. Connect with Isaac John Instagram Youtube Itunes Victor Ahipene: Speaking nation, what’s happening? Welcome to another episode of public speaking secrets. Super stoked to have you listening and tuning in today. I’ve got Isaac John aka Ice, who is a founder of a clothing company, and I want to talk to you as his clothing company called YKTR. Check it out. It’s a, you know, the rules, and he’s also done a lot for getting his company off the ground, which I want to delve into and some, uh, some insights that he’s gained in a bit of the behind the scenes in that aspect. Because I know a lot of you, I know I’ve watched what he’s been doing and I know this works just not for clothing companies and it can work for you out there. So we’ll get another aspect of that public speaking, which is the digital side. So with all that being said, welcome to this show, my man. Isaac John: Thanks Bro. Thanks for having me on. Victor Ahipene : So give us a quick background of, you, how did you get to kind of be doing the clothing side of things and then we’ll delve into kind of the aspects that you’ve used to I guess, leverage social media to grow. Isaac John : Short or long version? Victor Ahipene: Just go, the medium. Isaac John: Nah, so just, I grew up in a small town, um, had ambitious to play sort of rugby league play for the play in the NRL and sort of was able to do that, uh, through my NRL career, very average player through, um, had a lot of injuries and stuff like that. So through injuries I was actually, um, through injuries actually started reading up on books and had outside interests and from there sort of dived into business once I finished football. Kind of just wanted to really pursue business and YKTR, was one of those things and been lucky enough so far for it to eight. Victor Ahipene: Cool. And I mean, I guess, guess part of that, and I know, I see with the questions that people ask on your Instagram who will like oh, how do you do it if you’re not an ex NRL player. And I’m like, I mean, I’ve, I’ve, um, myself, I’ve physio for the magpies I know quite a lot of like sports, like all blacks and whatnot ends. I mean, you know, outside of them getting sponsorships from external companies, they wouldn’t know how to leverage any of that anyway. So it’s like, yeah, I feel like it may be a little bit of a fire onto the flame, but it’s like if you don’t have the, um, the kindling or the water or whatever, it’s just going to die out anyway. So, yeah. How did you initially leverage that? Like, did it help for your initial growth or was it the kind of the stuff that you threw out and tried that you felt kind of grew the brand? Um, yeah, like, um, obviously I understand like it’s just, it’s just where I’ve come from. I can’t really change my career or my previous past. It’s kind of a weird scenario cause a lot of people would think that they’re like, Oh cause you’re friends with chicko and Cory. That’s what made your brand grow. But obviously anyone that’s sort of been in business understands, that’s probably not the case or anyone that actually knows those two boys. That’s not the case as well. So to say, it didn’t help would be fucking ignorant of me, which I’d never say that, but to say that’s the only reason we’ve succeeded. I wouldn’t say that as well. So I understand why people say it and it does make sense from I find that know anything about business or didn’t, understand my journey. And I just saw me personally just fringe off in all these innerL players and I think a business society from that, I understand that narrative a hundred percent as well. Isaac John: But um, I used to frustrate me a little bit, but no, not too much anymore. I just is what it is that people that don’t know me people I know the work that’s gone behind the scenes, people don’t know that almost ended up broke trying to pursue this dream as well. So people just see what they want to see. And we’re guilty of headline reading here in Australia and New Zealand and it’s just the same thing. They only see the result that I sort of see everything has that’s gone behind it. So I do understand that it is what it is. Victor Ahipene: So speak on, speak on that. Like they don’t see the behind the scenes side of things. When you were, I know you’ve, you’ve tried other businesses prior to this and then there’s obviously the trials and tribulations that come with, you know, particularly the clothing industry. What has, like what were the things that when you were first starting out that the mud that you’re throwing on the wall, was there any like, and seeing what sticks? Was there any systematic like I’m going to look at how I can leverage Facebook or Instagram or YouTube or podcasting to help grow my brand. Or like how did, did you have any plan or process to that? Cause I’ve obviously seen it’s a fairly decent aspect of, of what your business is, is the content that you put out to get exposure. Isaac John: Um, to be honest, I just sort of went into a blind, took a few online courses about Facebook advertising in that and like those that kind of helped me out. But um, I seen Nevara Vercon sorta talk about the best thing I learned from, um, the best thing I learned. Ah, someone asks her what’s the best business books or what was this book should I read? And he goes, I’ll just, if you, if you rely on business books given to your competitors cause it’s going to help you succeed. And I love the education that I’ve learned from businesses actually from being in it. But the sort of turning point for us was probably about four or five months in obviously ran into a guy called Gary V if you follow my content, I preach him and everything. He sort of done everything he was preaching at that time. Isaac John: I just started to implement them. And see the little bit of success. Probably the first one was vlogging and we started to vlog. I’ve seen our sales sort of drive up and then um, obviously learned how to edit and stuff like that and just build brand based off his philosophies of humanizing it. When people see YKTR they usually know our story, usually know who I am as well. And off the back of that then that sort of moved into blogging, which is writing articles and documenting the journey moved into podcasting in that sort of unintentionally personally branded myself. So that was just the method that he taught and that’s the one I followed. So, and it’s just worked for us Victor Ahipene: and from like, not necessarily the dollar figures or anything, but from a percentage of breakdown of sales, how much would you attribute to say vlogging blogging, uh, podcasting, like not each one, but as in compared to say your paid marketing or SEO or anything like that? Isaac John: I dunno, cause if you look at the way we use vlogs purely top of funnel, so if you understand the funneling system, like we don’t try and really try and monetize off it. Um, sometimes when we put paid ads behind it, I’ll test it. Like 80% of our Facebook ad spend goes toward top of funnel at the moment where all the rest is bottom of the funnel, which is automated through dynamic product ads and retargeting and stuff like that, which is almost automated. Your bottom of the funnel shouldn’t change. So we use vlogging, not so much for sales but purely for branding. So I don’t think people understand the difference between branding and sales. A branding sort of long term, branding sort of the difference between people buying, um, a handbag for fucking $2,000 versus $100. You know what I mean? So vlogging is about building brand. It’s not so much for sales, but that just ends up working, turning into sales eventually. So it’s kind of playing the long game and long tail of it. Victor Ahipene : And I mean I think there’s what you’ve done really well is like, yeah, I choose whose stories I watch not to, not to be necessarily a consumer of like, Oh, what’s ice got to say today? Cause a lot of the stuff is great but it’s, yeah, you’ve got a certain clientele that are asking you these questions that are maybe at the entry level wanting to get started or find out about certain things. It’s more the, it’s just understanding different markets and how people are communicating to them. If we were to say start with your, with your vlogging, what have you found has, like if people going out there and looking to leverage their brand with vlogging, what are some of your tips on yeah, anything for them to get started in there, in that realm. Um, make sure you make sure you just being real, make sure you’re not trying to fabricate anything. I think a lot of my, um, what I’ve been able to garnish such a loyal following with the brand and myself is I’ve been transparent the whole way and we’re going into pretty testing times coming forward from this corona virus i’ve got friends going out of business, got people within our building, going out of business already and it’s only been like a couple of weeks, you know what I mean? So, um, I think even when I was struggling I was sort of saying like, Oh fuck, but we’re not going that well here or whenever I make mistake, I was the first to put my hand up and document the journey. So I think the trap about social media is, um, everyone tries to put the best version of themselves out there, which is understandable. Isaac John: So if you were to take 20 photos of yourself, which one would you put up? You’d obviously put up the best one when you are. So I feel like people’s, um, vlog style becomes like that. They just want to put out this real super polished version. Like, like everything’s good all the time. Where if you look at my Instagram now, like I use to, only want to put good photos up. If you look at it now, it’s just screenshots of Twitter and stuff like that. So I feel like real, real is, super important. And it’s just quicker. I could put out a vlog in a day because I’m just being myself. I’m not trying to fabricate anything that I wouldn’t do. I’m not trying to live this life that I’m, I don’t live, um, like at the moment I’m just collecting like sports cards and shit and I’m just documenting and stuff like that as well. So I feel like it’s hard for a lot of people, cause a lot of people insecure about who they are, especially our public opinions. So I’ve been able to build these walls up through just being myself. Like I get paid out well through DMS and stuff all the time saying all that you’re faking or the sort of stuff like that, which, which just comes with the territory as well. So if you want to start vlogging, just make sure, make sure you’ve been yourself because you can’t get caught. Victor Ahipene: Yeah. Yeah. I think, um, it’s interesting. I just finished Russell Brunson’s latest book cause traffic secrets one, and he was talking about, um, it’s funny, like a lot of the people that I deliberately follow, uh, he talks about this like I think it’s five F’s or something can, uh, when putting out content and it’s like having five different kind of topic streams. So like for example, basketball cards, uh, league podcasts, clothing, uh, whatever. So that, you know, yes, you’re not just continually pitching the same thing or putting out the same content, but then later on down the track you can, um, yeah, potentially branch off into other aspects. Like, I know, you know, having watched your stuff up and I’d love to hear your side of the, was it deliberate? Like, ah, yeah, I see your recording some courses and stuff now and you’ve highlighted to a lot of people who may be in jobs are, Hey, look, yeah, there’s different opportunities that you can have with business. Um, and then that’s kind of just his there organically lead to, Hey, I might put something together that can help people. Or was that kind of, yeah. Was that part of a plan? Isaac John: Um, not really a plan and just sort of come off the back of sort of answering all the same questions all the time and sort of just trying to speed it out. The reason I started writing blogs of skip around, it’s like what equipment do you use or how do you start a cleaning company or how do you podcast? So the reason I read those blogs in the initial phase was just to speed, speed the process up of replying to people and not just giving them short answers, actually try and give them some value. So that ended up saving me time. And the online course such as talk about trying to build multiple streams of income and building a personal brand is probably the best thing you can do right now. You look at it a lot. The biggest people in the world, like Kanye West for example, love more Hayden, but his brand like is these were fucking billion dollars right now. You know what I mean? Like Kim Kardashian, that’s a personal brand. Even Donald Trump being able to be the president is because he is a personal brand. So I feel like that’s the way to moving forward and like say please come in months and YKTR flowers? I think I’ve built up enough of a personal brand that I could potentially pivot in a different direction, whether that be with myself or potentially someone hire me. It’s been super important. So fuck, what was the original question? Victor Ahipene : No, no, that was, that was it. Pretty much. Pretty much it. It was like how did you, how did you go towards the online coaching or like, yeah, those different types of content that you’ve like, you’ve just Victor Ahipene : I’ll tell you why I did it because I’m, everyone was going, Oh, can I come pick your brain for two hours and I’ll buy your coffee. I seen someone else do it and that on their website they’ve priced their coffee at 500 bucks. If you want to pick my brain, it’s going to cost 500 bucks and we can do it on Skype. I’ll get my own coffee. So, um, I heard someone say price your time. At a point where they can’t say no to. So I started doing consulting and priced myself at 500 bucks-nd I’d just done it cause I didn’t want to do it. But then people were starting to pay it and a lot of the conversations were only going for like 2040 minutes. So I was like, yeah, fuck it. Let’s go. Yeah. And it’s, it’s funny man, cause I think I heard Tim Ferriss or something, he got in that kind of conundrum with friends when he was first kicking off and I think he said like, all right, cool, it’s free. You just got to give me $1,000 and if you don’t take action on the advice I give you, I keep your 1000 bucks. If you haven’t done everything I sit in two weeks, if you’ve done everything in two weeks, I give you a thousand bucks back. And it was like, yeah, cause there’s always the mate that you’re like, Aw man. Like, I’d love to give you a time, but I know, I know that all of you aren’t going to read that book that I told you to read or post that blog or start their podcast or whatever. And um, yeah, so I found that an interesting one cause then it says, Oh, you really want to pick my brain. Cool. Put a thousand dollars deposit down and then let’s see what’s up.  Isaac John: So yeah, I think a lot of people would just get obsessed with knowledge as well. And I was guilty of that. Like there was a time in my life where I’ve read about a hundred books and um, I was just like, ah, I say this all the time. You know, when you have a bear in his, those bunch of useless facts underneath the cap, just like that guy. Like I could tell your fucking bunch of letters, shit, that didn’t mean nothing. You know what I mean? And I was just a bit of a nodal and likes to go to coffees with the boys and the boys are just going to shut the fuck up. So it got to that point where I just go, fuck, I’m just full of shit. I’m just like a bunch of useless knowledge and I just wanted to apply some way. But it’s been a great foundation, obviously reading because these, I’ve got a photographic memory life. He asked me something right now. Oh, couldn’t remember my off the cuff. But when I’m in a conversation I can relate examples back to books like top of my brain like that. So it’s kind of a weird, like I say, I’ve got a photographic memory, but if you say something, I remember that part of chapter three of this book. I can’t remember. Yeah. But then if you’re like, if I’m in a scenario, Oh there’s like this timeline, but ABC. So it’s sort of being great in that sort of sense. Victor Ahipene: Um, run us through, and this is, this is the thing that I’m interested in and I’ve been watching of your journey as your YKTR media. So how did that kind of come about and where do you see it in the, in the future? Cause I think this is a huge part of like stepping away from you being the personal brand for part of your company. I don’t know, like that’s just the way kind of, I see it’s something bigger than you. Isaac John: Yeah. Um, just from a pain point to be honest, I just kinda got over modern day journalism just so listeners. So we’ve actually changed just it to YKTR sports. It’s actually a pretty dodgy place right now cause there’s no fucking sports going on. So, what, YKTR sports is, is just trying to go to an alternative that connects players to fans and fans, to players. And I just sort of saw rugby league media besides the Matty Johns show, which is kind of fun. It was just actually really funny. Everything else besides that, I was just old school players just with the younger generation like our back in my day. And then you open up newspapers, they’re just negative, negative, negative all the time. And none of the sources actually ever come from the player. So that was sort of the pain point from it. Um, we have got massive ideas from it, but it’s just an execution point. Obviously media costs money and if we were to film shows and stuff like that, but the basis of it was we essentially flipped Corey Norman’s narrative around where he was nominated for Kim Steven Medal last year, which is then like spending your time with the community and stuff like that where two, three years ago his perceived to be like this bad boy and he’s just a regular bike and I’ve seen his name get dragged through the mud through YKTR and vlogging really flipped the narrative and people that meant him be like, Oh he wasn’t like the person I thought he was probably the best example I’ve had that and probably Quade Cooper. Yeah. So like, I’ve known Quade since I was three or four and um, I just, the way he’s portrayed in media was never the way. Like I knew him as a friend and um, talking to him behind the scenes and stuff, it was very, very different. So, um, that was probably probably this the moment we’re like, fuck we got some here But in saying that like everything’s sort of pulled back as well. Like, you know what I mean? Like Fox sports are in trouble. Um, it’s the whole rugby leagues in trouble. So really wanted it to build a like American style. A media format where not just talking to 40 plays about footy, but talking to them about say sports cards for example, or bro where does Jason Taumololo eat on a Wednesday, what’s his cheat meal like? I feel that stuff’s done get a lot more important than the actual 80 minutes of the game. You’re always going to get people that stat nerds and love all the stats and that type of platform is good for like someone like Denan Kemp were very big on stats and like, Oh he made an 80 meters post contact meters today. Like for me, I don’t really care about that stuff. I what’s, what’s, what’s Cameron Munster doing on Tuesday night? Like what’s he watching that stuff. That stuff seems more interesting to me. So that was the, that’s what we wanted to put the narrative around. But also I’ve done a podcast with Mark Boris in his office and after the, after the podcast, he sort of goes we want to do is run a clothing company and he just, he sort of just at the time I thought I was killing it. Fuck how good am I going, like running this business like ABC. And um, and I sort of just got my mind thinking, I was like, Oh far even I’m running a clothing company, it’s cool and all this sort of shit. Like, am I actually making an impact? And a sort of a question of wrestle with myself a lot of the time and just started like just obviously through media and that just kind of got over it. But there’s also been the backlash of it as well because when you see the word media, people think also so they’re like, Oh, why aren’t you reporting on this or that? We’re not reporters, we don’t report on stuff. We just want to tell stories in a different way. And it’s still been a backlash from it. And I’ve had people turn off like YKTR, not stop buying from like YKTR because of it. Um, few guys are getting really personal with me because they’ve got a difference of opinion. So there’s been real interesting transition where it goes forward. I don’t know because obviously there’s no, sports on at the moment it hasn’t made any money. We’re kind of just be doing it for fun as well just as a side hobby. So it’s been a different narratives to be the guy that people laughed and you’re the guy that’s selling clothes and then you try to tell all these different stories. But it’s different what they heard in the media. So we must be lying. He to respect you as an entrepreneur and support your brand. Now you’re doing this and yes, it’s been interesting but I’ve kind of really enjoyed it at the same time as well. Victor Ahipene: Yeah, I mean from me personally, I see it like I love Denan’s podcast when he’s given a bit more of a, an insight into the players and then you know, yours as well. And in that space because I think, yeah, I follow a lot of the NBA. I follow a lot of the the NBA players or ex players, podcasts and stuff like this where they’re actually like talking to the players. Yeah. How good is that? You lie, you lie. I freaking love this slide. The next thing I want man is I want you or someone else to start doing 30 for 30 type docos of the Australian and New Zealand sports like Isaac John: yeah, that was, that was sort of like those other sort of big dream and big picture and we’re obviously going to start with blogs first. Like we got a few blog ideas. Even just boys going out and having like eating. Like Hey Adam Reynolds, where do we go on a cheat day? Victor Ahipene: Yeah. It’s like a carpool karaoke and comedians and cars and that sort of stuff. Like they, they go off for a reason is because you actually get to see the not the Boofhead league player given that year now a game of two halves rural, 110% all credit to everyone. We’ll go back to the drawing board stuff yet you go, Oh that guy seems like an idiot. And then they actually get on to a platform and it’s like, Oh man, all right. They are actually a human being, which a lot of people forget. Isaac John: Oh that’s the, that’s the biggest thing. Cause I see, cause we put sports players on the pedestal as well. So when we see them on a TV, we think these fucking mystical type beings and they are ungrateful and they’re overpaid and all this sort of stuff. But we going to realize this is just normal people just like everyone else. And a lot of the times, like my friends that I’ve grown up with and they knock about my footy players now I’m like, Oh fuck. It’s just normal. And that’s what a lot of people don’t realize that everyone is just normal. But I say this a lot, like if you want to hang around football players don’t talk football. That’s like number one rule. So and and being a football player in the past and hanging around them and having some of the biggest names in the game is like my close friends. Like the amount of football that we actually talk compared to other things. It’s probably about 90 to 10 by percent football. I haven’t seen another route. Isaac John: Other people talk about horse racing, like having to beat or what to watch it on Netflix or like sports cards is a big one right now. We’ve got a crew I’ve only in NRL players and all black players. We call it card gang. I would go one out of the guy in there and it’s about 10 of us in there. Like Kalyn Ponga, Connor Watson, Andrew Fafita, Ardia Savea, Aaron Smith. Like some of the biggest names in sports right now what we do is talk sports cards or what are you trying to collect and like you feel like a little kid again, you do realize that people were just normal people. Yeah. And I just want to show that side of players cause I’m sick of him getting bagged for like, I don’t know, just for doing shit that anyone else would be doing it. 21 and 22 having to bury or pissing on the street. Victor Ahipene: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that’s what I, that’s what I love. And that’s what I think everyone listening to this should, should take away from this. As you can tell from it. It’s just an authentic conversation they were having and I’m sure a lot of you enjoyed it, but when you’re going out there and putting your content on YouTube, on Instagram, on whatever, to start building your personal brand, uh, you know, try and be the person. If you’re speaking on stage, you’re the same person when you’re off stage, you’re the same person when you go home and like, you know Gary V yeah. He’s a example. I’d say most people listening to this podcast know and yeah, he’s, if you meet him in the street, he’s not the dude go. And you know, I’ve heard stories about other guys like Kiyosaki and stuff like you know, back in the room, they won’t, they won’t talk to you. And this, you know, it’s not like a, it’s not, you haven’t paid him 10 grand, he’s not going to say hello to you and tell you to piss off stuff like that. Isaac John: And do you know what, like I’m, a lot of people have sort of come up to me like when I’ve been out and that, like you’re exactly the same as on Instagram, which is true. But then you’ll see a lot of people that like have spent time with me over a, um, maybe a couple of days that are come stay and you’re like, Oh bro, you’re completely different. Like it looks like you’re always on the go all the time. But when I get home I’m fucked. I just, I really enjoy my space as well and people gotta realize like a lot of my content comes from me just being on my own. Like it looks like I’m out there and outgoing and I can be when I want to be. But then also like just being on my own as well. So, um, just got to realize that there’s a balance there somewhere. Victor Ahipene: Yeah. Cool. And uh, finally just give us a bit of a breakdown. What’s your, what’s your number one tip obviously apart from the authenticity to getting lots of content out of your day, like solo preneur or you’re that speaker out there, what would you say like the best way to start building that personal brand? Um, find. What your medium is. So are you a writer? Are you comfortable in front of a camera? Are you better speaking to someone as well? So find out what your medium is and just try and make ’em. So Gary, based on their content pillar strategy, I find podcasts the best cause when you can video them too, you can record them and then three you can turn them into written and stuff as well. So I feel like podcasts are the way forward. That’s why I’ve been super aggressive and trying to be, I open this hour and a bit the best podcast there in Australia when people come to share that with them to jump on my podcast because the amount of content that you just stripe from that is huge. So this podcast right here, I might have said 10 things that can be turned into quote cards on Instagram. This could be turned into six one minute clips as well. If we recording opportunities into videos. Then of course you’ve got the long form content you can put on a Spotify, they can put on podcasts if you put it on YouTube. So I gravitate towards content that’s moving forward. I feel like vlogging, like our views, they get nowhere near as much. But I still enjoy making vlogs because always I looking back when like a year from like a year ago, like where it was a year ago. So document and journey is always important from that sort of standpoint. But understanding where you speak your, where your brand or your personal brands voice is best documented. So I enjoy riding as well. So I try and I can cover across all three bases, which are pretty lucky to do and I’m confident in doing and don’t care if I can fuck up as well. So I think that’s a big part of it as well. I see, I see a lot of people trying to vlog and like they’re not, they will look awkward in front of the camera or they start a podcast and they can’t really speak or their tone of voice has kind of weird. So finally find what suits you and just roll with that. Well, we’ll do a hundred podcasts and get better at it. Do a hundred podcasts, real quick ratio. You jump in. Oh man, it was rural last minute. And I’m sure there’s a ton of, a ton of knowledge that. We can strip into one minute videos and repurpose into wave audios and have them all over the net. But if people want to follow you, find out, more about either you, your clothes or you know, what you’re doing on social. We can they go, what can they do? Isaac John: Uh, hit me up on, um, Instagram at iice_ for their Instagram name for ages. Probably not the best one, but as we can find me YKRR_ can find us on Instagram as well. You can find me on YouTube, the ice project like YKTR and YouTube, but probably podcasts. I think the last project find me on Spotify and Itunes. Yeah. So they’re going on there. Victor Ahipene: Well, we’ll link all of that in the show notes at public speaking, blueprint.com. Man, it’s been a pleasure. I am. I enjoy jumping on and I hope everything with this Corona virus doesn’t affect you too much, but we’ll see you on the other side anyway. Isaac John: It definitely will affect us. To what extent? Who knows? So it’d be all the on camera anyway. Victor Ahipene: Cheers man. Isaac John: Alright. Brother see you later.

As many of us are going virtual and working from home, we could use some expertise to help with better web meetings and conferences. So Gary and Cyndi present some tech and social tips to make everyone look and sound their best.LINKS:This episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/vhx4amuAdbUTTS Web site: https://TriangleTalkShow.com

Hello, and welcome back to the lead generation for financial services podcast. This week we have got an old friend, Jodie Stevenson. Almost a year ago when we had our first podcast interview and that went to be the number one downloaded episode of last year.For every enquiry, she gets the leads, CRM, check for notifications and will schedule a chat with her client. And to make sure that she's on top of everything she uses a blank sheet of paper and knows exactly the template and just writes everything and gets it organised. She does that for every client until she runs out of paper. Recently she bought a notepad by Rocket Book. It is reusable, can automatically scan, upload to dropbox, digitally file, and then wipe clean and use again. And again.And if you happen to look for something like a file created 6 months ago, Rocket Book can easily find it for you and locates it in your dropbox file.Cost is £34.99. They've done microwavable one as well where you write in it and put it in the microwave and it will erase everything. It's a huge impact environmentally and it helps save a lot of waste.Transcription:Alex: Hello there, welcome back. And we've got an old friend with us. This week, we're catching up with Jodie Stevenson and it was pretty much a year to the date that we had our first podcast interview. And it went on to be the number one downloaded episode of last year, and of all time, so people talk about her a lot, actually, when they've, I think it's one of the kind of the earlier episodes that people sort of pick up on because it's one of the first mortgage brokers that we interviewed, and they've come on to become the most popular episodes. So I really enjoyed catching up with Jodie. So let's dive straight in. Hello, and welcome back to the lead generation for financial services podcast and I can't quite believe it's been a whole year since we last caught up with the one and only Jodie Stevenson. How's it going?Jodie: Thank God it's one and only. I can hear my mom saying that, thank God.Alex: We were just saying, how was it? You were like, no, it's nobody You know, it could have been a year but it has.Jodie: But then we were talking about things like, what things have had like you're like, a quarter of a person that you were then you were last year.Alex: We haven't got a video either away. But yeah.Jodie: Now you're super skinny. Don't worry, though. I'm still fat and consistent for the world. got consistent and but yeah, no, it's, that's great. There's actually been a lot of things that have really happened. So if you actually like, pile up the achievements that both of us have had in the last year. Actually, that makes sense. It's probably like a decade's worth of achievement. So yeah.Alex: It's funny, isn't it? Because you like them day by day, week or week, month or month thing you know, I haven't really done a lot. I've really improved a lot if anyone needs to literally think about doing a 360 and see Oh, this time last year I was doing this, you know, what.Jodie: Yeah, exactly. Well, I mean, I taught a human to walk this year, which is, technically he taught himself. I'm taking the credit. And if he was walking funny, I wouldn't be taking any other credit for it. But like, yeah, like he's actually like, he's doing the real things. Like he's really doing things this year. Like he's, he's learning words. And oddly, he's learned the word jacket. It's one of his jackets, he calls me Jodie instead of mom, which is awesome. Yeah, so shouts Daddy, and Jodie, I'm like, thank you very much.Alex: Excellent, excellent show you love that. Because I remember obviously we had theWow, it's just a sad thing. Obviously, we had the dogs barking.Jodie: Oh yeah, Thrasher and Baker. Oh yeah, yeah. Oh, that happened in a bowl we got em. So they went to live with another Basset and Mum, basically, because we were part of a really good dog network. And so they went to live with this lady who's got like four others and they are just they are so happy. I don't even think the fact they're like maybe because yeah, they live on a farm now and there are loads of dogs there and they absolutely love it. And so yeah, that was a yeah, that was sad but i think i think we could be kind of at the point with you could hear how chaotic it was in the background. They were just like, they were just like, let's go for a walk. Let's go here and I was like no. And so yeah,Alex: It is. Yeah, having a child, a human is a lot I wouldn't have been able to do with pets.Jodie: Yeah, but pets that I had created my own problem with the pets because it was too small of a house, too big of dogs, and not enough boundaries between anyone you know, the dog slept in bed with me and it just wasn't, you know, it was a recipe for disaster. And luckily they've gone somewhere where they are even further mollycoddled than they were with me. So they're there, they're even better off now. I think that's really it's a really big lesson as an adult when you make a decision that's going to hurt you and only hurt you, but it's going to help someone else. So the dogs were going to be better off. I was going to be sad. And I had to make that decision and be like, Okay, well, I guess I'll just be sad then because they're gonna be happier. Real adult learning. So yeah, it was super sad like I was gutted about it, but I think it was the right thing for them.Alex: I know, absolutely. Do you know what I was just looking up while you're telling me that, so I thought I better just check because I knew yours was a very popular sewed for a while it was the second most downloaded? But you want to know something quite exciting that it was the number one downloaded episode of all time.Jodie: Really? That's amazing. That's awesome. Yeah, you know, it's my dulcet tones. It's my lovely calming accent that ASMR of mortgage advisers.Alex: Say well, I would like to say part of the credit of doing something super exciting with the title of like a mortgage broker generating their own leads doing blah, blah, blah, blah. So I'd like to take a little bit of credit for that.Jodie: That's okay. You can.Alex: I'll take 30% of the credit. Jodie: Yeah. Alex: That's the number one so you'd be there. So David Thompson. So Gary was seventh, and then you don't talk to a second, Me and Tom doing an episode were third. We should have been first you know, that's an absolute disgrace. You got ash, Ash ball and fourth. So what was interesting actually the top, the top five are not if you take out me and Tom, the top five are all brokers. Jodie: Okay, cool. Alex: So now, you know we've had a lot of marketing experts on dishing out marketing advice. One thing I've learned over this year is that actually getting people like yourself and hearing your stories is what people are interested in. Jodie: Yeah, what do you know what though it's something that I found throughout my life and we had at the bank, we have people who would come and work for us. And you were like, university graduates and they'd come in on a graduate course or something, they'd come straight into management. And the rest of the bank was just like, nope, don't I don't want to know anything this person's got to say because you haven't lived this life. You haven't come from the ground up. And this, you know, it puts there's a lot in it. There really is I can sit there and say, Look, I know how to market for mortgage advisers because I am a mortgage advisor. Alex: Yeah.Jodie: I'm marking all myself. And this works rather than someone you know, just coming in and saying, This is what and we could probably be doing exactly the same thing. Alex: Yeah., no, absolutely, absolutely. I think it's, it's being it's easy to put someone to be like, um, you know, Jodie is a broker she's doing that what you know, why can't I and then maybe they think if there's someone who's not worked in it, and it's easy for them? Yeah. It's just easier to make a connection with people that are like you. So. Yeah, that's awesome. And then you had you, as supposed you are the only one as well that we got on that was doing Google Ads themselves. I don't think I spoke to any of the brokers that have been doing Google Ads themselves so are you still on your radar? He's still doing that. Is that anything else overtaking it, or Is that still the number one.Jodie: Now, I mean, I obviously had a baby. So there was a period of time where I wound it down. And I've continued to supply leads. So I still had a handful of loyal clients who just kind of kept buying from me over that period, but I stopped taking any of my leads. And so for about six months, I kind of just backed off from it, and then came back in sort of the back end of last year, I think a little one's gone to nursery now. So yeah, I'm kind of back in it now. And, and it's, it's a blend again. So obviously the network that I'm with b2b, they provide me with leads. And, and I also have my Google AdWords, which, and they're just two very different types of leads. And they all have different conversion rates, and they all work but I don't think you should ever turn a lead source away and you know, if If you can, as long as you are meticulously recording how many times you did everything to in that lead, you know, did I pick the phone up and dial them? How many times did I literally put my hand to my phone? And because then you can figure out how much putting your hand on a phone makes you might be 74 P. But, we can take it right back to that.Alex: Absolutely. I think I saw there was someone a broker showing me their screen and it was like one of their self-employed brokers had only logged two calls. They were saying that this I've not been able to get out as person but it was like two calls a week apart both before 5 pm. And it was like they were I can't remember how long after it was the lead initially dropped. But it was they were reporting it but not doing enough. And I think there's a case of people not being as meticulous as you are with that. I'm not chasing it enough.Jodie: Wow. I would as always, I'm going to be going against the grain here. No, I don't have the needs. I didn't do it, man, I don't do it. Look, if you want a mortgage, I'm going to touch. Here's my number. I if they put in an inquiry, I mean I would the b2b, b2b have their own structure, which is you know that you make an X number of calls, and we have a system that sends them texts, etc. And those ones, you know, that's, that's James's method, and I use that. But for my own needs I when the lead lands, I try within 10 minutes and firing them it's straight off the bat. So I go straight in and I call him because speed stones and it always will and a lot of the times they answer the phone and go oh, oh, didn't expect you to ring me that fast. And I'm like, exactly. I give them a ring straight away. And the chances are they are still sat by the computer. And so they get that one call and then and then I'm never in the zone. And then if they don't answer, I send them a text and I say, Hey, it's me from this company. I'm bringing about your mortgage when good, that's all I do. That's it. I can't find them again. Nope, I bring them at the moment and then I send them a text and that's it.Alex: Do you mind sharing what percentage of contact right there is like what percentage of like, no contact is that you know.Jodie: my contact rate is I have this down the other day I've actually I'm mentoring someone at the moment. So I'm more in my own KPIs than I ever have.Alex: While you're looking at apps are gonna it's like two very different things going on because If you are buying leads or if you're marketing in a way that you're not building any rapport you've you've only got that quick window because they'll forget about you. But if you're marketing and people know you quite well and they've bought into already then you can wait. So I don't think everyone I always think older minute coders are always like you say within 10 minutes.Jodie: Oh, I love that.Alex: Yeah, well little phrase for you.Jodie: YeahAlex: While you're looking at apps are gonna it's like two very different things going on because If you are buying leads or if you're marketing in a way that you're not building any rapport you've you've only got that quick window because they'll forget about you. But if you're marketing and people know you quite well and they've bought into already then you can wait. So I don't think everyone I always think minute older minute coders are always like you say within 10 minutes so I love that. Well, little phrase for you. Yeah. It because it literally is because they'll because if they because there's a lot of things that are important to people at that moment, like mortgages, especially protection that is important at the minute and then once the laptop gets close, I will it was important 10 minutes ago it's not important now because this is happening. So you miss if you miss that window, I think you're missing out. A big one. But it just depends on a case by a case like how well are you have you? Like, do people know you for that one thing and they've already decided that only gonna deal with you.Jodie: No, my leads have no idea who I am mainly, my leads are very much advertised on an in a cold no company we are a company, we can find you the things you would like as your details to have a call and, and so yeah, just give them a ring or give them a quick call. And then I'll send them a text and send them an email. So send them a text and an email. And if they don't come back to me, you didn't want it that much.Alex: Yeah, I wonder though, I'd be so interested to see the numbers like because you're you've got personality, definitely. If people got to know you a little bit beforeJodie: I leave a voicemail, I do leave a voicemail. So maybe that's why I get a lot of callbacks and I get a lot of texts back.Alex: And I think people prefer to communicate in the text.Jodie: 100% of the day. I do.Alex: Yeah, I think my big thing for us this year is to give the end-user the person that wants the mortgage, give them as wide of options as possible to communicate. And not just say, it's only a callback, you have to have a goal, but it's like, how do you prefer to us to get back to that email? Whatsapp? Facebook Messenger? Jodie: Yeah.Alex: Text, phone, and then let them just I think there's a lot of leads being missed, because people are going through and there, and there, yeah, I need a mortgage or I need advice. I've got this situation, and then the only they'll fill all the details out, and the only option is a callback and they'll sort of agree to it and then they'll think but whereas if it's something like WhatsApp, then they don't have to set that timeout to have a call because no one wants to be sold to and the broker can go away if they've done a fact find on the website. If you've collected all that information, why maybe go back to them with something and then build-up to the call.Alex: Yeah, exactly. I something like I think it's a month ago. And I needed to do something with my energy supplier. And I logged in and there was like to write live chat or like live chat, but I always forget it's open. You know, when you open it, and then you just walk off, just forget you have live chat open.Jodie: I’m so confident. I'm terrible with it. So, it clicks on this live chat thing. And it was like, Oh, do you want to just Whatsapp? I was like, Oh, yeah. So Whatsapp. And it just opened a WhatsApp chat with my provider. And then they just kind of got back to me throughout the day. Alex: Yeah. So as a broker, like whether you've got advisors working for you or not, and some people don't want to give them Oh, by the way, you can get a prepaid SIM and you can have WhatsApp away. So you can have all your WhatsApp communications open on a browser window to the on as you and it's so much more organized than email as well when I'm doing a whole sort of project on facilitating WhatsApp Web for clients. We've been looking at WhatsApp chatbot as well, which is not as good as the Facebook Messenger stuff. But again, if people want to do it, we're on it because if we can get as much info on if someone and then the only thing is one, someone said their network won't allow WhatsApp communication despite it being the safest. And I could say I covered which network it was where they were like they ban any communication whatsoever knowing that WhatsApp is more secure than email. That's bonkers. But either way Yeah, that's definitely on our mind because I think a lot of people just don't want to have a phone call.Alex: See, very I'm sort of taking over this episode. So what so what else? So are you doing more of the commercial stuff on your ads before? Exactly it was commercial mortgages pretty much that you were doing last year my rightJodie: Yeah, yup. So my advert saw more commercials but I do get a lot of isolettes through it as well. And yeah, but mostly it's battleaxe for so it's a limited company and Alex: That does seem to be a very popular minute obviously with all the sort of tax changes and stuff. Yeah. How are you finding it like demand this from this time last year to now the B-word is kind of semi sorted is that affected anything or our market like?Jodie: I would say that pre-Christmas which normally December is my salon and the month where I don't do anything, and January is just like I'm continuing to not do much. Outrageous this December was, I mean, right up until Christmas Eve I was still dealing with clients and taking and taking upset on Christmas Eve. Crazy.Alex: We saw one on Christmas Day.Jodie: No..Alex: One every Christmas Day, there’s always one.Jodie: I don't even think I'll pick my phone up on Christmas day it's just yeahAlex: Yeah everyone's different so people get bored and they're like but yeah I mean I was cooking on Christmas Day literally in a second but yeah that that did happen.Jodie: yeah now I've been really busy and really really busy and very much and that's kind of what my year is about this year is understanding how to manage the famine and the feast know get tons of leads in and when you're very quiet and then you know talking to me building it all up and then they kind of all slowly come back in and then you end up with like if anything you end up with too many inquiries because then you've gone too many people coming back and it's kind of I'm trying to figure out what that nice even let's take this many leads a day constantly rather than taking you to know 40 leads a day for two weeks, nothing for another three weeks. So that's what my plan is this year is to find my sweet spot.Alex: of literally the number of leads per week per day. Jodie: Yeah, yeah.Alex: And what was taking the most time for you, when you're sort of dealing with inquiries? Where could it like, Is it like,Jodie: what's that? Sorry, packaging cases? And okay, so that's always the most time-consuming part. And in any mortgage, getting the leads is fine, cuz everything's automatic. And it's also CRM, and it's perfect. And the notification comes through on my phone, I click a button and get it's great. And, but then once and I have a chat with a client, and that's fine, and I don't. Do you follow me on Instagram? Alex: Yeah. Jodie: And did you see the space paper that I got delivered yesterday?Alex: Oh, God doesn't know if I've been on the last couple of days.Jodie: So whenever I get an inquiry, I have a blank sheet of paper. And I know exactly the template of my fact find a blank sheet of paper and I just write, write all and it's all organized, you know, left side for Mr Right side to miss it, and it kind of all ends up looking like a fact find. And so I do that sheet of paper for every client, and then I write on that until really, I've run out of paper and it becomes a client file. And then I take paper, clip it in, and then they become a file. And yeah, well, that is pretty, you can imagine I've got like 60 notebooks piled up next, which is crazy. And so I've actually bought a notepad by rocket book. And it's a reusable notepad. Alex: What. Jodie: Yeah, so you write in it. And then you get your phone, you get the rocket dog app, you scan it over, and it uploads it into Dropbox into a file, wherever you can put file names on it, and everything, and then just wipe the page clean and start again.Alex: Oh my God.Jodie: It's like actual paper and so yeah, that I'm hoping that's gonna save me a bunch of time because now it's got handwriting detection as well. So all my notes now get uploaded into a file. So when a client rings me back in six months time and says hey you know Mr Donovan, I can just open my rocket dog file and go Donovan and it will find that note pad that page of my notepad and go that's that client it might just say Donovan, ah avoid you know, but it will be and that'll be on the new anywhere I am. I can just click it'll be in my Dropbox and I can just search for that name anywhere I don't need my notepads anymore. And because it will all be on this. This Dropbox so I thinkAlex: Then 34.99 I'm just on the road getting a rocket book. Why not? Not mega expensive.Jodie: Yeah, and the efforts are hilarious. I mean, you'll really enjoy him. It's just two guys in there like, they're just having a blast making these books clearly they've done a microwavable one as well where you write in it and then put it in the microwave, and it just erases everything. And but that has a shelf life. And, and something I'm really conscious of at the minute is the impact that I'm having, you know, environmentally. There's a lot of paper in my job. So I'm kind of wherever I can, I'm avoiding a paper. Because everything else in my life pretty much I know I doesn't really have minimal impact with most of the things I use are usable things in most of my life but then in this just reams and reams of paper that I'm printing, I feel terrible.Alex: It's literally my desk at the minute. I've got these A3 papers where we spent sort of between Christmas and New Year like coming up with different ideas days for campaigns and what can be doing better and I've literally got a flood of these A3 bits of paper that I could have done in this. If they do an A3 version. I'm all over, I might get the small one anyway because I do use it like my notebooks.Jodie: What size is a4? So A3 is quite bigger than A4Alex: Yeah.Jodie: I think A4 is probably the biggest that they do but you could open both pages because it's 32 pages.Alex: YeahJodie: Maybe you could open both and just have it on there but you know if you do it small and then just blow it up.Alex: Yeah, well, it's my birthday coming up and the misses were like, what can I want I can kind of get you sort of you never want anything and anything you want you but I could just send you this thing.Jodie: Do it because honestly, I was saying that is such a good present for people. And it's the last one is the one I got and it when it gets delivered. It looks like a bag of space food because it comes in the old space bag. I feel very modern, very.Alex: Yeah. I love it with these things I always get annoyed that I didn't invent it myself.Jodie: Yeah, my dad, my dad has invented everything before anyone else did. And, every time a product comes out, he'll remind me of the conversation we've had four years ago where he invented that and he's right, you know, we have and I say, well, maybe it should actually do one of those.Alex: Yeah. Oh well, I used to work at an agency and this guy called Kazu came like a freelance designer and he just comes in, he sort of lives in our office. We used to work together and our old boss used to say that he invented Facebook before Facebook Like all the time.Jodie: Oh, I bet he didAlex: It’s in his head, but then never did the difference. Zuckerberg did something about it. That's the…Jodie: I think I invented iPhones and I definitely think I did. I had all the passion for an iPhone, in my mind. Alex: Yeah. Jodie: But it just was the translation that I just, you know, probably by the time they came, you know, when I'm thinking of and they were probably 10 years in development anyway. Alex: Yeah, exactly. Jodie: So though they'll be imprinted in our fingers soon.Alex: Really? Exactly. Yeah, exactly. So, other than digital notebooks, what else is new?Jodie: So yeah, my digital notebook is very new. I'm mentoring somebody.Alex: I was gonna say you mentioned it earlier. Yeah.Jodie: I believe she found me on your podcast.Alex: Well, do you know that happens a lot. This podcast doesn't cost me a lot of money. It cost me time. I don't make anything from it. But I seem to have made like other people. Like some really good so there's like, lots of like, pretty much every guest I've had on saying so and got in touch. We'd like to do this. Amazing. That's great. It's brilliant that I always find it bonkers that people actually listen. And they still listen. And people actually do stuff out of it. So that is.Jodie: I probably get one or two messages a month that say, Hey, I heard your podcast episode. And I'd love to have a chat with you about what you do. I'd love to buy some leads off. Alex: Amazing. Jodie: Yeah. One or two a month at least.Alex: Well, I was just looking at when I looked at your episode stats, I was like, Oh, this has had eight downloads in the last week. And I was like, well, that's like one at one a, obviously, more than one a day and it was over a year old. Least not being advertised. People are picking it out. So yeah, I mean, that is amazing. Amazing to hear. And then I say I didn't get anything out of it. I mean, we get inquiries all the time. I don't ask everyone where they come from. But that's cool. So how's that mentoring? Say what's in terms of the minute you mentoring them on, are they on like everything or just marketing? Just Google Or literally the whole, the whole.Jodie: So initially it was a marketing job really, that she just wanted something to learn. And as we kind of got talking, it just kind of organically became, we were both in a really similar position actually in our lives and her kind of wants to be in the same sustainable situation that I'm in where we can have our children and be the mums that we want to be and run a business that we want to run without having to sell Aloe Vera. Or, you know, these ridiculous shapes that people sell or anything like that. It's just a true Korea and true business. Alex: Yeah. Jodie: And which is lovely to see that people look at me and think, you know, that that's an aspirational and Korea, which is, you know, it's great. So she approached me and I said, Look, you know, I'd love to expand outwards and as well not just physically but potentially for my business. Well, but yeah, let's, you know, let's, let's do it and let's just kind of cobble through it together. And so that's kind of where we're at. She's taken a leap of faith on me and I have to leap of faith on her and we're just trying to figure out how that works. And so that's where we're at. I'm kind of guiding her through how I set up myself. And then we would slowly integrate her into her own being our own broker. And eventually, she's just been doing it a few months now. We've had Christmas, so it's been a little, you know, nonstarter over Christmas, but she's doing amazing, she's got 10s of thousands of pounds in the pipeline, which is crazy. And you know, not all of that is going to go anywhere. But you know, even if I think we've said like, you know, roughly she probably roughly banks to bank seven grand. And I would say, out of everything that she's had through, which is just gorgeous in it, you know, take this leap into like a totally new field and then get in a big pipeline like that. AndAlex: What I love about 99% of the brokers 99.99% brokers I know and speak to also just get as much satisfaction out of like, genuinely helping people as well and they and they and they get rewarded for it. It's like what it's like, I'm almost jealous of the rewards that you guys get from helping people as well as what you get in return. It feels quite a unique kind of job that it's kind of a must to be satisfying.Jodie: Yeah, it really is and do they want and I needed it as well. I really needed it because I started to doubt my own hipe last year and you know, when you have a kid you lose your identity completely for a period of time. And I came back and was like, right i mean obviously I have my group that was on your podcast which is still it still exists but it's just because I didn't know how to help these people and you know they were all asking me and I was like I don't know just how do I do this I'm a parent and how do I do it? How do I do it? And I know me and you know conversations about that and definitely minute old minute cold is, you know, plays on my mind with these people. And so when this really naturally just progressed into something and mentor wise, I was really happy because I was like, Okay, I can do this. And, and I can help and even if all I do is just give her the tools and then send her on her way and Alex: Yeah.Jodie: Because it is, I'm growing as a person, whilst I'm helping her grow as a person. And, and it might be that she goes off and does it without, you know without me in the future and that's, that's fine. And it's just something that I think I've, I've needed to do and it's a big learning for me as well.Alex: I think as well as you learn from teaching as well, she always won't feel giving advice to someone else to do something you sort of like, I find that when we're trying to I always feel like I'm looking at stuff more. So I'm not trying to help myself, I'm trying to help other people as well. So it gives me that extra edge so we've obviously got we've got the pressure of clients that pay us and we've got we've got to deliver for them otherwise we lose them and you know, lose house and family can't eat and things like that, but also that extra edge of wanting to help other people that what they do well or not And affect me, but it always finds, since doing the podcast and doing videos and things like that, that it gives it I've probably pushed myself to learn more to help share that kind of accent.Jodie: Yeah, exactly, exactly. I mean, I, I would have, I would have said I was very, you know, very efficient at my job. And I knew I knew exactly what to do, but actually, I just knew exactly what to not do. I knew what to avoid. I knew what I knew. And I knew I knew how to avoid the stuff I didn't know. And with this new, new starter, she's kind of expanded and been like, Oh, well, I'm looking at loads of stuff over here. And I'm like, Oh, no, I don't play in that court. But what I have to do now, so I've, you know, started doing that as well and funnily and, you know, growth, growth is, it's up and down and sideways. It's everywhere because I've had a really great opportunity as well as my father in law and my mother in law and Actually, I've started on the path to working for me as well. And right, so they're going to become mortgage brokers and buy their own rights, which is lovely. But also my dad is coming to work for me as well. And he's had a background like you had a family that had worked in. He's got some experience in it. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Right. Yes. So he was a senior financial adviser for the bank that I worked for. And my sister was an advisor as well. And she's had a baby and she's going back to work in January, self-employed as well, which is lovely. And so we're all kind of doing it self employed. But yeah, my dad's come in to work with me as well. Which is great because he's the guy who kind of coached me and made me the person that I am. And now I kind of get to give a little bit back to him, but he loves me and he's going to help me from above and you No, it's going to, it's going to go everywhere. And it's going to be really nice. And it's going to build a really nice little company.Alex: Family literally a family business literallyJodie: Literally a family business. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, my partner Matt, and he's always been like a rock in my company anyway. And when I have these, you know, packaging nightmares where I've got just, you know, reams and reams and reams of applications that I've got to fill in. He's just incredible. You just get straight on the computer and he's like, scans him in and, and does it all for me anyway, so I've always had him helping me. And even if sometimes it's just he just goes out with our thoughts. Leave Hello. Yeah.Alex: Yeah. Jodie: And so it's always been great and hands-on, but it's so nice that we're getting everyone else is kind of getting involved in it as well. And it's fantastic. Yes, it's lovely. It's quite a nice little family that we've got now. Really a family.Alex: Really Yeah. And I think just going back to what you said about Like growth being up down sideways my business mental talks about competitive with like climbing Everest is like the night before they go to sleep they climb up and then they have to climb back down again to like a climatized so it's always talking about the growth of that you're up and then you've got sometimes you've got to go back down to be able to push forwards again parallel so it's nobody can build a business with cute like continued growth will kill you.Jodie: Yeah absolutely. Isn't linear it's not you know.Alex: Yeah it's a graph, this graph should have these peaks where you drop down and then you that gives you the ability to then push back up again. So yes one thing is you always want like a month I always want growth, growth, growth, but the one thing he thought he taught me about was that it is normal and healthy to have no backs and I'm pushing on from there.Jodie: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And it's amazing what you can really beat yourself up on mean on AdWords I can, I can have a week where I look at my fingers and you know, they're costing me three times as much as they did on, you know, the month before and I will really panic. And I'll go Stop, stop the ads. And you know, it's just your instinct is to stop at that point but no, no, you need to stop because there's a reason why they're coming through at this. You know, it's because people really really want it or people you know, there's a lot of competition or whatever, but it always evens out. It always evens out over the course of a year and you always end up at the same cost per click. So there's a reason it's an average, you know, you're gonna have some weeks where it's half of your normal one that you just can't look in like that you've got to set boundaries and be like, I'm only gonna, I'm only gonna worry about it. If over the course of three months, my average cost is going up and then I'll worry andAlex: Yeah.Jodie: But even then don't leave it another three months.Alex: Yeah, exactly. Is that easy? Again, because when we do it like that with Google Ads absolute minefield in terms of like, we've got one company where the cost per click can range from like quid to four quid depending on the time of day and when other people are bidding and things like that. Jodie: Yeah.Alex: There are so many sorts of and it's difficult when if there are brokers with a small budget as well, those impacts will be felt bigger than one whether someone's spending like 50 grand a month compared some of the spending 500 pounds those ups and downs have felt much bigger with the smaller budgets definitely.Jodie: Absolutely.Alex: Have you ever kind of looked at the thought about SEO being on page one top of page one for those keywords bidding on.Jodie: You mean organically?Alex: Yeah, organically. Yeah. Is it ever like, do you have SEO remorse as in like this time last year, if there was an if you knew what to do, there was a plan in place, and you could have executed it and by now a year later, you could have been position one.Jodie: I don't know, I've never really, I've never really seen the benefit of you know what, I am the person who scrolls past the ads and goes to the organic number one result, but I feel like that's the same as buying an ad anyway now, because people just strategically do things to make themselves the number one result, but it's not. It's not really, you know when you go shopping online, and it organizes things, you know, and you can do it from price low to high or whatever, whatever the default is never price low to high, its price, whatever is gonna make me the company more money. And they do it that way. So it's, you know, I don't necessarily believe personally, that the value of being number one, organically has the value that it used to. I think it just means that you're very good at SEO.Alex: Oh, yeah. Jodie: Just means you're good at getting number one on Google. Alex: Yeah, absolutely. What we find with a lot of our clients, the reduction in the cost to acquire a new client if they're getting free traffic from Google is is is the biggest one the biggest factors inJodie: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. In that sense, yes, definitely that it would be a cheaper option. But just for me, I feel like I didn't know that my audience is ready.Alex: What you’re doing now is work and I don't want your eye off the ball. So there's a lot of things in life like, don't if you've got something that is working, that's profitable unless you're obviously like, where you were their way or now. You don't want to change it. Yeah, I was just kind of interesting. If we're, if because you're getting those leads from Google, whether that was on your mind.Jodie: It is nice to know, it would definitely be nice to know. And, and, and I certainly, I certainly would be open to looking at it and seeing But I'm still in the same position that I was in before, which I know is always your favourite thing to hear from me. I don't need any more leads at the minute. I have to turn the machine off frequently. Alex: If you if we were to talk this time next year, and you didn't have to have the machine on at all, and they were all just coming in.Jodie: Oh, yeah. Yeah. be great.Alex: Yeah. So that was my I have a question. I should have asked that beginning. But ya know, it's interesting. And that's where a lot of we have all kinds of ads running literally, bar, no bar, none. All of them but they were the ones that are getting those. We work on SEO for all of our clients because of getting that free trial. And Google's great because it's people are like, well, like we said earlier about catching them within that 10 minutes. They're in the zone. Jodie: Yeah.Alex: Like Facebook, LinkedIn once you're there when they are in the zone and it's They haven't made the decision to go out and look for something. Yes. You've got to be even quicker with the social ads to get them But yeah, I think we're finding Google gives the best quality and if you can get it free so obviously it reduced like the possibilities cray LAUGHINGJodie: You had a podcast with Joe Mani.Alex: The thing I haven't asked because it's we have your name is coming up on my thing is Joe Mani but Joe Mani is that a self-inflicted?Jodie: Yeah hundred per cent you know what? funny because it's difficult to nickname my name because it isn't really you can't really other than Steve Oh, yeah, all coffee bit. Oh calling me like, which I don't like Joe Go. Yeah, exactly. So it has to be something. So after a while, it just became, I just used to put myself on board, you know, couldn't fit Jody on it. So I'd write j and then we'll do like $1 sign. So I was. So yeah, it's definitely a self-made Monica and that does not need to stick. Nobody knew that nickname mom. But just to go back to what you said about LinkedIn, and LinkedIn, such a funny little place at the minute. And I mean, I've turned my notifications off because it's too much, people, I don't know who in their right mind thinks that anyone is going to read a near eight paragraph-long message from a brand new connection. Either like, Hey, how are you insert name here, comma, I would really like to talk to you about insert profession here. Let me tell you a little bit about what it is that I do. It was 25 paragraphs about it and I'm like Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I just never read it.Alex: I agreed at the no who's speaking to a guy the other day. And they're kind of like an agency that does that can't that I outreach but in a very different way. And he was like talking about getting them to strike up a conversation like asking a question or something to start a conversation rather than just doing a whole sales blurb is like running up to someone in the street and just shouting about your business for like, 10 minutes.Jodie: Yeah, exactly. And I way prefer, like, I've had a lot of impact on a lot of my favourite messages on LinkedIn, or people who've listened to your podcast, and they will message me with something. And, and I'll, it always makes me laugh. It'll always be something funny in the message. It'll be like, Hey, I heard you on the podcast. And then they'll just say something hilarious. Along the lines, I think because I give a sense of like and look for a laugh. And they'll always always have a laugh. And even if all we do is just say, uh, you know, I'll say thank you very much. And I'll see Say that I mean, uh, you know, I mean a deadly baffle for number one. So please be free to download it 400 times.Alex: As much as we've done it. Jodie: Yeah, exactly, exactly. I'll send you all your five pounds in a minute. So we're at and, but well, you know, we'll have a laugh and we'll have fun and that's what I think that's what LinkedIn should be is a place to find like-minded business people to do business with. And to Hulu, and not to get too caught up on being everyone's cup of tea. Alex: Exactly, that's Yeah, if you're vanilla, like the, someone was asking me about, Tony, have you seen Gary Vaynerchuk?Jodie: Yeah, I love Gary Vaynerchuk.Alex: Yeah, but he is Marmite, you know. That's why if he was vanilla and trying to get everyone to like him, he wouldn't have the following that he has. So Jodie: Yeah.Alex: Pretty extreme example, obviously. But yeah. Like being yourself is.Jodie: Yeah, I'm a marmite well, hundred percent a marmite. And people literally do like me or they do not like me. And it's and you know what, I used to really struggle with that but now I'm just like, that's fine. There are plenty more people in the world and I like to be alone. I like to warm people up a bit I am a little bit of a troll by nature and I do like to sort of tickle people a bit, particularly on LinkedIn. And somebody put something at Christmas. I hate the boastful nature of Christmas. And I don't think people talk about the presence that golfing kids run said. And so I was on LinkedIn at some point. And this guy was like, What do you get the guy who has everything, and I think I responded with haemorrhoid cream. And if you say you've got everything, have you got a spare tenner?Alex: Yeah, brilliant.Jodie: Yeah. You know, I like to sort of make fun of people a bit but I think Yeah, LinkedIn has got to change to become a bit more. I think you've got to be aggressive with who you let in your circle on LinkedIn.Alex: Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I've really filtered.Jodie: Yeah, remove connections, remove connections. Yeah. Are you within a geographical distance of me that we can do business if not remove connection?Alex: Absolutely. I think it is a great platform and I'm slowly being marmite like I don't I put a photo on I think was yesterday and I've got I got bought two notepads for Christmas one says the Archbishop of Canterbury and the other thought of this as a warning Bantam merchant, proper cringe but I just took a photo and said I've got a really important meeting with a top dog Fs company but which notepad I never would have done that before because it's like, oh, I should be professional or not have a but then I think I've made more a double business got more friends out of LinkedIn and connections from being myself and not worrying about not being too professional or worrying about or not worried about anything actually other than just being sad.Jodie: Just don't do it. It's, you've got to you've just got to be yourself. I mean, you really have to just be yourself. My favourite people in the financial industry are you. I can smell I can sniff out a metalhead in a crowded room. I just know him. I know the people who you know they've got like a slipknot tattoo, I just know it. And I like a Rolodex of metal you know metal aficionados who are in the financial industry, and that's one that they're my people. So I love those people. And but then also people who, who have a criminally, you know, offensive sense of humour. That's, that's Matt der max. People so if I find a particularly funny person who also listens to, you know the same sort of music as me, you know that's a relationship for us. So if you're out there and you want to be my BDM please message me on LinkedIn and if you want to talk slipknot and deals let's do it let's I'm in the market for it.Alex: I'm really looking forward to someone opening a message or connection requests or doing some sort of reference or, or something like if you get that please do a screenshot and send.Jodie: I will put it on a T-shirt. Promise. Alex: Yeah, brilliant. We have been chatting for 50 of your English minutes Wow. Wow, it was like three.Jodie: It really does. Alex: What have we not discussed?Jodie: I think pretty much it and we've done exactly what I've been taught not to do there with it. We haven't done politics or what is it politics and religion not covered? That's good.Alex: We could do that next year. Yeah. Jodie: Okay. Yeah, definitely.Alex: It's so good to catch up with you. I can't believe it's been a year. It. It's absolutely bonkers. Yeah. And it's great that people are still listening to your original one. Still getting in touch with you. I can't believe I've been involved in something that makes that happen. I find that bonkers.Jodie: It's not the first situation that's gone viral for me. And I'm sure it won't be the last. Alex: Yeah, what was, go on spill it.Jodie: I'm not going to give you my medical records. No, I'm joking. And no, I put a few in. I often go viral actually. And I did it. I did a bit of a famous post about mediums A while ago and my disdain for the role of BDM. Right. I've always said, I stand by it. I don't think it's a role that that is relevant. I don't think it's a helpful role. For mortgage advisors when it's one person I think it's unfair on the person. I used to hate BDM but now I hate whoever makes a BDM do their job. I hate them. It's and it's not sustainable. It's not sustainable. You just need a call center that deals with those. But yeah, I did them almost like an X factor of BDMs. Once I put up that I don't like BDMsms and I refuse to use them. I actually completely refuse to use them now. I did have a few people who were like, let me prove you wrong Let me prove you right like so and so and a few of them did. Yeah, pretty much funny Penny Paul. But yeah, I got I ended up with quite a few connections through that who appreciated my angle which is Look, I want to know now the answer to my question, not seven o'clock at night when you've got home from I've been 16 coffees all day when you finally Got to read your emails. Like, the deal is with someone else at that point. It's, you know, it's crazy. But yeah, that was another thing that went a bit viral as well.Alex: Fantastic. So, if people haven't heard the first episode I'm following you know, I'm following you on Instagram. Jodie: Yeah.Alex: Where? Where? Where is that? Where's the BDM slugging going on?Jodie: Oh, it's on LinkedIn. Oh yeah, LinkedIn it's a really old post now I think and what it did it did get some traction and but yeah, you can find it on LinkedIn my Instagram is not a professional arena in any capacity it's just me but maybe yeah, maybe that's what I should do. Maybe I should start an Instagram for work. ItAlex: It should be one on one in one on the same.Jodie: Do you think?Alex: I think people buy from people.Jodie: I still talk a lot as a business on my Instagram, I just it's not like a business Instagram.Alex: I do not use my company Facebook page, my company LinkedIn, my company anything is all via me. And I get more out of it.Jodie: Yeah, I think I think that's the I think it's the way to go. And I do definitely talk about I always throw, you know, one or two posts a month up on my stories. Just saying no, don't forget, don't get life insurance. Don't forget mortgages don't get addressed. And, and I always get a couple of leads off of that. And even sometimes it's just people saying, Oh, I'm really interested. And we just have a chat. And then I'll come back to me a little later and we'll talk about it but yeah, yeah, I think you're right. I think you should keep it all as one brand.Alex: Nice. Love it. Awesome. I can't believe we're with them. I think we need to do it closer than a year. We need to catch up when I need to kind of get you drunk. You belong to one of our events as well so people can meet you in real life.Jodie: Wow definitely, definitely. I would love to do that and get the winter over with so I can come out as my winter cocoon. And yeah, but definitely Yeah, just invite me along I think you went to Did you go to u printer?Alex: Yeah, yeah it didn't just go It was on the stage.Jodie: Exactly. I think I need to go.Alex: It is an amazing event.Jodie: Yeah.Alex: Really good. Jodie: I should definitely make it to some sort of physical social interaction at some point in my life and stop the piano. Avoid at the end of the phone.Alex: We've got our events in March there's gonna be a load of brokers there in the lovely Peterborough March the 26th. I will send you a link.Jodie: March is pretty clear for me. So where I could probably squeeze you in. I’ll try my best.Alex: I will. Fantastic, awesome. All right, cool. Well, let's do that let's meet properly in March.Jodie: Yeah. Alex: Let's speak again soon. And I'm loving that you get in the family involved and things are growing and I like your partner helping you out with every I was like visualizing oh no exactly what it's like having a kid ourselves. But yeah sounds like it sounds amazing and I'm glad everything's still going really well for you.Jodie: Yes Yeah it's great. It's all a learning curve and to sayAlex: Oh god yeah Jodie: We’ll see, you never know listen if you know God but this is me on record now all of you all my family members are as fireable as anyone else and I like my coffee with sugar in it.Alex: I'm going to use that clip to promote this episode.Jodie: I love it.Alex: Fantastic. What an amazing note to leave on. Thank you so much for spending your time with us again, as amazing. And let's see if you can be the number one episode of 2020 as well. That'd be pretty cool. All right, thanks very much. Bye-bye.Jodie: See you later. Bye.Alex: And there we have it. There's my chat with Jody Stevenson. It is so good. catching up with her. And it sounds like businesses growing was great that she's kind of getting people involved now it's becoming a proper family business. So that is awesome. So she's got a lot of work to do to see if we can get her as the number one download episode of 2020. We'll see we've had a lot of amazing ones. some incredible ones coming up too as well. So don't forget our event, March 26. Only a few weeks away now I literally got a couple of tickets left. It'd be great to see you there. If you need any more information, go to the lead engineer, click on the conference tab, or details, their agendas all kind of finalize all speakers are on there. We've got loads going on. I will see you next time.

Episode #3 is brought to you by these Rad Ass Chevy Truck Sponsors.  www.accuair.com - The best in automotive air management and performance. AccuAir! www.classicperform.com - Use "C10 Talk' at check out and save 10% off your entire order.  www.VintageAir.com - When your AC system needs to be brought back to life. Vintage Air! www.azproperformance.com - When you're ready to upgrade from stock.    Stylin Concepts was founded by Mr and Mrs Gary Case in 1987, and from there they didn't look back, because they couldn't  - they were so damn busy slingin them parts.  Gary attributes his vision and "stylin" from his Street Rod days.  The company was a huge success, making all era's of American Trucks look great and stylish.  The trucks were so stylish that they needed a truck show to showcase these rad ass trucks and all the "Stylin Concepts" parts. So Gary started the Sport Truck Nationals, during the 4th of July weekend every year.  The show like his company was a hit!  Thanks Gary and Boris for the kick ass class in OBS history's past!  

Episode #152 is brought to you by these Rad Ass Chevy Truck Sponsors.  www.accuair.com - The best in automotive air management and performance. AccuAir! www.classicperform.com - Use "C10 Talk' at check out and save 10% off your entire order.  www.VintageAir.com - When your AC system needs to be brought back to life. Vintage Air! www.azproperformance.com - When you're ready to upgrade from stock.    Stylin Concepts was founded by Mr and Mrs Gary Case in 1987, and from there they didn't look back, because they couldn't  - they were so damn busy slingin them parts.  Gary attributes his vision and "stylin" from his Street Rod days.  The company was a huge success, making all era's of American Trucks look great and stylish.  The trucks were so stylish that they needed a truck show to showcase these rad ass trucks and all the "Stylin Concepts" parts. So Gary started the Sport Truck Nationals, during the 4th of July weekend every year.  The show like his company was a hit!  Thanks Gary and Boris for the kick ass class in OBS history's past!  

Mark Bland and Gary Weed are both fans of Pro-wrestling. Mark has been a prowrestler in his life and had a career that took him all over the country. Gary is a lifelong fan and someone that understands the business in a solid way. With this being the basis....The Q presents....WRESTLETALK 35! Wrestlemania 35 happened and Mark/Gary have a ton to discuss about it.  First up...Mark tells Gary he can ask him any question about the business and Mark will be very fair and openly answer the question. So Gary pulls the trigger and Mark attacks the answer like a someone giving a Stone cold Stunner in the middle of the ring! Next Mark discusses his career and how he comes to becoming a prowrestler. How the job formed in his mind before he becomes a prowrestler. He specifically talks about 1996-1997 in his life and what he decided to try and get into professional wrestling. Mark discusses how the business was different back then and more picky and finicky about who they would let be a professional wrestler. Now days anyone can apply and get work wrestling in front of crowds.  Then Mark and Gary into discussing Wrestlemania 35 and how the show took forever to happen.  After almost 7 straight hours of wrestling, Beck Lynch's hands were raised and barely anyone cheered because they were so tired and spent from the 7 hours of show. Plus how did Ronda's match play out? Who's matches went which way? And what was the best moments? All this and much more on this episode of the Q! 

In this podcast, Stan and Mike talk with Gary Eastridge, Critical Response Coordinator and Affiliate manager for CCW Safe.   Gary is a retired law enforcement officer. He started with the Oklahoma City Police Department in February 1979 retiring in 2000 as an Inspector in the Homicide Unit. Gary also served as a department firearms instructor after receiving his CLEET certification in 1986. After retirement he worked as a police officer with the International Police Task Force (IPTF) in support of the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK). Gary worked homicides with counterparts from 53 nations as well as mentoring local Police officers. Gary was named Chief Investigator for the Oklahoma County District Attorney’s office in January of 2007 where he served until his retirement in April of 2017 to accept his position with CCW Safe. He reviewed all officer involved shootings occurring in Oklahoma County as well as in custody deaths and other significant and high profile investigations / prosecutions. Gary is helping head up our new HR218 plans, along with Mike and Stan.  Full transcription: Speaker 1: 00:01 Welcome to the inside. CCWSAFE podcast with founders, Stan Campbell and Mike Darter. If you're forced to fight the battle for your life, CCWCSAFE will fight the battle for your future. Mike Darter: 00:22 Welcome to the inside CCWSAFE podcast, I'm Mike Darter in Oklahoma City. Stan Campbell: 00:27 I'm Stan Campbell in California right now. Mike Darter: 00:31 And we got Gary. Gary: 00:33 Hey guys. Mike Darter: 00:34 Gary's also in Oklahoma City. Stan Campbell: 00:37 That's right. Mike Darter: 00:38 So we normally do a weather report. I want to hear this, Stan? Is it nice out there? Stan Campbell: 00:42 It really is kind of nice today. Mike Darter: 00:45 You suck. Stan Campbell: 00:46 It's like, it's like 68 degrees. It's kind of beautiful. Mike Darter: 00:49 It's such a ... It's not bad here. Stan Campbell: 00:52 Yeah. You know how it is though, but you know. Mike Darter: 00:55 Yeah, yeah. Stan Campbell: 00:56 Yeah. Mike Darter: 00:59 What's been going on with you two, anything new on the CCWSAFE front, you guys? Stan Campbell: 01:06 Well, we are, I mean, we're just all over the place. You know, we've been dealing with our awesome new clients over there in New York. Gary and I had been helping the NYPD retire guys in joining and welcoming them to the family. So we're real happy about that. And we have ladies day is coming up, right Gary? Ladies days coming up this next month. And that's in Orlando- Gary: 01:37 A little over two weeks. Stan Campbell: 01:39 That's right in Orlando, so if you guys are in Orlando area, make sure you stop by and see me at Gary because we'll be there with the ladies. We always sponsored that event, it's an awesome event there. And so I think something about 500 women show up. Mike Darter: 01:53 Wow. Stan Campbell: 01:54 You know, for safety and concealed carry classes, a little bit of everything, right Gary? Gary: 01:59 Yeah. Mike Darter: 02:00 Now, where is that at? Gary: 02:03 It's at the Central Florida Rifle Pistol Club in Orlando. Just outside of Orlando, Florida. Good group. This is what, the fourth year I've think you've, we've been going down there. Stan Campbell: 02:14 Yeah. We're pretty much their main sponsors and we understand the importance of supporting women in the industry. You know, female carriers, the numbers are going up and we welcome them with open arms so we make sure we get down there and support all of our affiliates down there. Mike Darter: 02:36 That's cool. Then we also have the police week coming up as well in May. Stan Campbell: 02:42 Yeah, police week. Yep. Mike Darter: 02:44 What date is that? Stan Campbell: 02:45 What's the dates, Gary? Gary: 02:46 May 12th through May 16th. I just worked out my calendar up there on the white board, which is now full. The next about six weeks we're going to be really busy. Stan Campbell: 03:00 That's right. Mike Darter: 03:02 All right. So if you're going to be out in a police would come by and see us. We're going to have some pretty, some kind of cool stuff to give out there. Stan Campbell: 03:09 That's correct. And then also myself, you, and Gary, we're going to be in California supporting Unite Inland Empire 2019 Conservative Conference. So we'll be out there. There's about thousand in attendance out there. It's being sponsored by AM590, The Answer. Those guys, they, we really help them out. They help us out. You know, we partner a lot. You got Phil with Firing Line radio show. I've been on there several times myself, Mike, our entire crew, I've had the opportunity to cohost, I have the opportunity to stand in as a host there on the radio show, and I mean they really take care of us. It's just, they're part of our family. So we're going out to support them with the United Inland Empire Conservative Conference 2019, so we'll be there also. That it's April 28th, so if you guys are in that area, believe it or not California is our number two state in reference to a membership base. So if you there in that area come through and see is there as well. Mike Darter: 04:14 Yeah, it's going to be good time, man. I forgot about that. Stan Campbell: 04:16 That's right. Mike Darter: 04:17 That's coming up pretty quick too. Stan Campbell: 04:18 Yeah, a lot going on. Mike Darter: 04:20 So what are we talking about today? Stan Campbell: 04:22 Well today we brought on Gary, because we want to kind of talk about, we've been going a lot of calls from retired policemen mostly, not truly having a good grasp on HR 218, the rules that apply, any changes that are being made there. So I wanted to bring Gary on to kind of talk about HR 218 and kind of break it down for folks, some myths, some problems, some things to watch out for. So it's really important that all three of us carry under that realm as well and it's important to know the do's and don'ts. So I wanted to bring Gary on for that reason. Mike Darter: 05:08 Cool. So Gary, so what, do you have any specific questions we could like start out with that you've got, or do you just want to start going over what it is? Gary: 05:20 Well, I think the important thing for everybody ... I think most officers have a general understanding of what's commonly referred to as HR 218 it's actually the law enforcement officers safety act. It was signed into law in 2004 by President Bush. It's been amended a couple of times over the last what, 15 years that it's been in existence. But it's really a pretty simple law. The HR 218 was the house resolution ... (silence) ... forces that I use myself of the NRA ... (silence) ... They're not fully on board with LEOSA because they don't have a whole lot of input with it. And that was, that's actually by design that ... (silence) ... offices they let her stay ... (silence) ... know the extended coverage for a corrections officers and ... (silence) ... to be able to carry a gun anywhere in the US ... (silence). Mike Darter: 19:32 ... often. Thank God I got a couple of family members that are policemen there. But ... (silence). Gary: 21:03 ... it multiplies your force. But I'm thinking, so what happens is if you have a jurisdiction that may not be pro gun, that wants more gun control, they see this as an extension of that. And this is one way they want to limit LEOSAs. Stan Campbell: 21:29 Got You. Now and I'm just asking your opinion now, Gary, but what's your thoughts on, if it's not too big of a deal to back up with a concealed carry in a specific state that you visited a lot. Like you go to Virginia a lot, you and I go to Orlando, we all go to Vegas, you know, so Nevada and stuff like that. What's your thoughts on that? Gary: 21:53 I have an Oklahoma permit. I don't see a downside to having the state permit. In reality it should not be necessary with LEOSA. If this bill passes, I'm not sure I will re-up my state permit, but I don't see a downside to having multiple permits. Stan Campbell: 22:15 Yeah. Yeah. I wanted to get your opinion because I'm an advocate of getting the multiple permits as a backup. I mean it doesn't take much to do so. And if you do run into that green officer, somebody who's brand new and has no idea what LEOSA is, they, normally they know what concealed carry permit is. So that way you do have some type of backup as well. You have to think about how you engage, because no matter what, when we retire, it's a culture. So when you retire, I mean once a policeman, usually always a policeman, it's just in you. And you see something that goes wrong, you feel like you need to just jump in. So, you really have to be careful, and remember that hey I'm retired now. One of the things I might need to do before I just jump on into somebody's domestic or whatever the case may be, or try to make a citizen's arrest, because that's what's going to end up being, you might want to make sure you call 911 first too as an officer. Because we kind of move and think that we can handle something and then at times we'll get in over our heads as well. It doesn't take much. Gary: 23:26 Yeah, absolutely. And then when the cops do show up, they're not going to know you from anybody. Mike Darter: 23:33 No, that's right. Gary: 23:34 I'm a firm believer as someone who carries under LEOSA and under a state permit, that before I'm going to intervene in a situation, someone has to be being hurt physically. I'm not going to try to stop a theft, I'm not going to try to stop an argument. I may watch it, call 911, tell them, hey this is getting ready to, this has potential to become violent. But I'm not gonna interject unless it becomes a, it's a matter of significant injury to somebody. Stan Campbell: 24:15 Yeah, absolutely. And you know, I mean I think of it the same way, you know, any more because of politics and because of the gray areas, you have got to absolutely think about taking care of yourselves out there. Take a extra moment. You know, if it's not a Isis, al Qaeda situation, you're not talking about somebody gunning down people in the church, of course you have to just react to that. But if it is like something simple arguments, the domestics, you know it's not some serious violence going on, somebody steals a bag of Skittles, don't think that you have to be the hero on that. So yeah. So that's kind of where we are there. But anything else on that Gary, on any LEOSA issues? Gary: 25:09 Well, I'm not being specific. I think it's incumbent on any officer who is eligible for LEOSA to carry under LEOSA, to research and know the law. Because you remember how it was when we were on the streets, Stan. We had a thumbnail idea of a lot of laws. We had a not a real good understanding of maybe other than the handful that we routinely enforce. As an officer, I think it's incumbent on you to learn LEOSA, plan ahead on how to respond to an officer who may not understand LEOSA. Research. When I started writing an article late last year only I was amazed at how much information is available on the Internet. And really even though it's not as simple as it seems, it's a pretty simple law. Stan Campbell: 26:14 Yeah. Yeah. I mean- Mike Darter: 26:19 One of the things I was going to say was one of the things we're creating for this, for our members that are going to be HR 218 is a membership card that will have information on that card for law enforcement should you have to display it. And it's going to be a card that states, the person carrying this card meets the requirements by LEOSA. You'll have to carry it with ... Gary, kind of talk about just right quick, the requirements, the things you have to have with that card. Gary: 27:06 Yeah. The law requires you to have two things. It requires you to have a photo ID from the agency that you are or were a police officer at, excuse me, and proof of qualification within the last 12 months. So what I carry is my retired card and on the back of it I put on my qualification card. And every year, as long as it's, here in Oklahoma, it's CLEET, as long as a CLEET authorized instructor signs off and qualifies me, I update my card. That's the only two things that are required by the law for an officer to carry. Now if I were in a situation like with you, I would probably take a snapshot of that letter showing my 10 years plus service to just to confirm my eligibility under LEOSA. Mike Darter: 28:11 Right. Yeah. So that's- Gary: 28:14 Nowadays with smart phones it's so easy to carry all that with you that you can produce that and for that matter you can show them the actual law for those that don't understand. Mike Darter: 28:27 Right. So that's what I carry now is I have another card that I have that I carry with my card that you signed on my qualification that's dated. And then I do have my police ID, or a copy of my police ID and I have a copy of that letter. So, and I'm actually looking forward to these cards cause they look awesome. Justin's done them. Gary: 28:58 I was gonna say, our content guy is pretty good at that kind of thing. Mike Darter: 29:01 Oh yeah, yeah. He's been killing it so. So I'm excited about this new plan coming out. I think it's going to be one thing with, generally with law enforcement officers, retired and former officers, we all know the possibilities of what can happen and it's going to be a good deal. The everything wrapped into it with the civil liability coverage and the extended bail and all that. So yeah, I'm excited to get it out. Gary: 29:39 It's going to be a good product. Mike Darter: 29:42 I've got, I've found one email that I'd like to, while I've got you guys on here, from Matt [Bell, 00:29:53] he sent in a copy of his umbrella plan document from his, and he said, "I listen to your podcast, episode number 26 I checked my umbrella policy, which I hoped would cover us in a self-defense situation. It appears that it does, but I would appreciate if you would confirm this. I," and he attached a document of his plan. And you know this is one thing that has kind of come up recently more and more and it's one thing that really for us to confirm it, we're not the ones that need to confirm it. Your insurance company is the one that's going to have to confirm this and here's what my take is on it for Mark and whoever else, or Matt and whoever else has this question, because it comes up a lot. Mike Darter: 30:51 You have to remember that your insurance company, first of all, have you guys, I know you three have dealt with insurance in the past, correct? Stan Campbell: 30:59 Mm-hmm (affirmative). Gary: 30:59 Yes. Mike Darter: 31:01 And when you're making a claim, they, whether it be a car or roof or whatever, they send adjusters out, they send people to come out and especially if it's a use of force situation, there will be attorneys involved for that insurance company. And here's my fear with anything that goes through an insurance company. I don't know about you guys, but my experience with insurance companies has not been, I mean it's been okay, I guess. I mean, I've been covered on things, but it's always not what you think you're gonna get back. There's always some, well, it was this, so that gets deducted, it isn't. Gary: 31:58 And those attorneys are working with the interest of the insurance company, not the insured. Mike Darter: 32:04 Right, and this is one thing when we created our service, when we first started this back in 2012 we said, we don't want to be grouped or seen as an insurance company because most states, if not all states, it's illegal to cover an intentional act or an illegal act with an insurance policy or coverage. So any attorney working on the behalf of an insurance company, I think it easily argue, even if your homeowner guy says, "Oh yeah, we're going to cover you," well, he's not the one that's going to be going to bat for you when that time comes, if you have to try to make a claim. The person who is going to be going to bat is going to be going to bat for the insurance company trying to deny that claim. Gary: 33:08 Mike have, I've had several members asked that exact question and I told each of them to call their broker and get them to put it in writing. Of the ones that responded, 100% have told me that their agents said they would not cover a self-defense situation. Mike Darter: 33:27 Yeah. So I just, I saw that come in and I just wanted to address that because I know we have that topic discussed a lot with you guys, especially with David, but you guys who are answering the calls and and all that. So- Gary: 33:48 I think it gets down to that issue. Just like in New York and Washington state. Insuring for intentional acts. Mike Darter: 33:56 Yup. Yup. So Matt, I would definitely say to check, Like Gary said, like Gary tells everybody, get it in writing. Call your insurance agent, get it in writing. I don't think they're going to put that in writing. So I didn't see any others. I thought I had some others that I had set aside on the, in reference to the podcast, but I can't find them now. Stan Campbell: 34:25 So well, what would we do Mike, is being that we're not interviewing anybody on the next one. If we do one by ourselves, we'll make sure we'll have a list and we'll go through them as well. Mike Darter: 34:36 Okay? Cool. All right guys. Well, Gary, thanks for your time, man. Gary: 34:42 Enjoyed it. Stan Campbell: 34:42 Thanks Gary. Mike Darter: 34:42 Stan, good to see you again. Stan Campbell: 34:46 I'll see you soon. Mike Darter: 34:47 All right, man. Take care, bye-bye. Stan Campbell: 34:47 All right, bye.

On today’s episode we get to hear the final portion of Russell’s presentation at Dream 100 Con. Here are some of the awesome things in this final piece: Hear as Russell goes into detail on how to dream 100 several different platform choices. Find out why you need to pick just one platform to obsess over at first, instead of trying to do all of them. And Find out how Brian Dean at Backlinko.com does SEO using the dream 100 as well, even though that’s not what he calls it. So listen here to have everything you need to know about dream 100 from the final episode dedicated to Russell’s presentation at Dana Derricks Dream 100 Con. ---Transcript--- Hey everyone, this is Russell Brunson. Welcome to the third and final part of my presentation at Dream 100 Con. I hope you’ve been enjoying so far. If you’re just jumping in right now, go back and listen to episode one and two, this is all part of 90 minute presentation I gave at Dana Derricks Dream 100 Con where I was going into the Dream 100 and how it works inside of your business. It is the foundation for all traffic. It’s the foundation for how we grow and how we scale companies. It’s the foundation for everything. And it also happens to be the first two chapters of the new Traffic Secrets book. I hope you guys are getting some anticipation and excitement for the book that will be coming out next year. It’s going to go deep into this stuff, but this is a really good foundation to help you guys understand how the Dream 100 works, and how it fits in context with the other platforms and ad networks, and everything like that. Without any further ado, I’m going to jump into the third part of this presentation from Dana Derricks’ Dream 100 Con. I hope you enjoy it, and I’ll see you guys after the intro. Alright, so now that you kind of have that context, I want to talk about, I want to go into these channels here and talk about growing these different channels. Each channel, when you start going through these you have to understand each channel is a little bit different, the way that they all work. So the first one is Facebook, we’ll talk about that. So Facebook for me is closest to like a talk show. It’s interesting, when you look at when new movies come out…in fact, it’s going to be fun, as we go through all these I want you guys thinking about this. All of us see these things every single day, but if you start seeing what’s happening in the real world and see how it correlates with what we’re doing today, it should get you really, really excited. So when the Expert Secrets book was coming out we’re trying to figure out, how do we launch this thing? How do we get it out there to the whole world? And one night I was watching late night TV, I can’t remember what show it was or whatever, I can’t remember what actor. But basically there was a movie coming out and the actor was on the show, let’s say it’s Ben Affleck. So Ben Affleck was on Jimmy Kimmel talking about the movie, they show a little clip of it, and then boom. Then Ben Affleck went to the Today Show and then Good Morning America, and this does this circuit and hits all the different talk shows talking about the movie and then that Friday the film goes live and they sell a ton of tickets. So what does Hollywood do? They do the same thing. They go and find a distribution channel, they get this person in front of all of it, and they do two things, number one, they work their way in. They get Ben Affleck, or whoever the celebrity is in the movie, to get on the show and actually talk about the show, so they work their way in. But they also go and buy their way in, okay. During the break there’s all sorts of commercials for the show as well. So they’re buying their way in, they’re working their way in, in front of core audiences. They know we’re going to buy the movie to get all the hype and buzz. And then they go and people show up to the movie and hopefully it’s a big blockbuster. So I’m watching this and I see this whole thing happen, I watch the movie blow up in sales. And I’m like, gosh, I wish I could get on all these shows. I would love to be on the Today Show and Good Morning America and all these things, but unfortunately traditional media thinks I’m a big internet nerd and that I’m just trying to sell stuff and they don’t like people like me. At least that’s the story in my head, it’s probably not true. But that’s my belief right. So I’m like, I can’t get on these shows, that’s frustrating. Then I was like, wait a minute. Facebook is similar to talk shows. People have built these huge distribution channels, what if I went and just did what Ben Affleck just did, but I do it on everyone’s Facebook channels. So the first step we did, me and Dave sat down freaking out, Steven was there at the time too. We sat down and said, “Let’s build a Dream 100 of everyone on Facebook who’s got big huge Facebook following.” We sat down and built a huge dream 100 just….actually not true. This is a mistake I made that I want to teach you guys through too. We built our initial dream 100 and the first time it was like everybody and then the goal was to go do talk shows on all these people’s Facebook channels. What was interesting is that, we had some people who had huge email lists, and we did Facebook lives on their Facebook platform, and they got like 4 people to show up and it was a huge waste of time. One thing I want you to understand, this is like a really simple, but really powerful concept, people who listen to podcasts, they listen to podcasts. People who read emails, read emails. People who read blogs, read blogs. People who watch things on Facebook, watch things on Facebook. People kind of pick their platforms. I’m curious, just in this room alone, how many of you guys get the majority of your media through YouTube? How many of you guys get the majority of your media reading blogs or through like medium.com? How many get the majority of your media through podcasts, that’s what you like to consume? How many get the majority of your media through Facebook Lives? It’s really fascinating. So what we found, I was trying to this dream 100 strategy with someone with a big email list, but they had no people on Facebook, it was a huge waste of my time. So for you, if you come back down, it’s really figuring that out. Like, “I’m just going to do the Dream 100 on this platform because this is the platform where these people live. If I’m going to get people on Facebook to follow me on Facebook, that’s where they’re all going to be at. So again, we came back here with Facebook, we did our own Dream 100, built out a huge Dream 100 of everyone who had a big Facebook following and started calling them up and said, “Hey can Russell come on your Facebook page and do an interview with you?” It was like a virtual book tour. We had a ton of people say yes, which was really cool. So I was on all these different people’s channels doing Facebook Lives, “Hey this is Russell.” And I got interviewed by Tony Robbins, by Grant Cardone, by a bunch of you guys here in this room, we did a ton of them. I remember we were doing like 10 a day for like two weeks, it was really exhausting. But we did the whole circuit of that. So I worked my way into all of these different shows. The second thing we did, and this was kind of a cool, unique strategy. We got agreements from all the people doing Facebook Lives, for me to actually go into their ads account and buy ads. So then I started buying my way in. So Tony Robbins gave us access to their ad account, where I could plug in, and John on my team could actually take our interview and boost it. That’s how we got 3.2 million people to see the interview with Tony, because we were buying ads and growing it up. So I both worked my way in, and I bought my way in to grow that thing. I did the same thing with Grant Cardone, and every single person’s audience. And if you look at that effect from that whole thing, we sold tens of thousands of copies of the book, then my Facebook channel, because I’m being interviewed by Tony, by all these people, so in the thing you see my head and his head, my channel grew by over a hundred thousand subscribers during that time. So my channel started growing, my channel started getting bigger. So for each of these, I’m going to kind of go through some of the strategy behind each of these, but I want you guys to understand, most of you aren’t going to go and build a channel on all of these. I would pick just one right now. If you’re trying to do podcasting and Facebook lives and blogging and insta….all these things, it’s going to be like super diluted and this is going to be really hard for you guys to do it.  So pick like, and I would recommend whatever platform you’re the most obsessed with is the one you should plug into. If you love listening to podcasts all day, you should be a podcaster, because you’re going to understand that medium so much better. If you love Facebook Lives, you should be doing Facebook lives. Initially at least, pick the one medium that you like the best and start focusing on that. As you start growing you can pick the second one or the third one, but if you triple down on one, it’s going to be way better for you, I promise you that. So I’m going to go through the core ones here and then I want you guys to kind of think through it for yourself what you want to do. Okay, now each, in fact let me come back to the first image. For each of these different platforms, my goal again is the same thing from right here. I’m building my own podcast show, I’m building my own FAcebook following, I’m building my own instagram. Pick the platform you want to focus on, but just pick one right now. Then the question, the thought is, how do I buy my way in, how do I earn my way into that one. So if it’s Facebook Live, I build my Dream 100, okay can I get these people to interview me on their page? That’s going to build my platform, if not can I buy ads to their people, that’s going to build my platform? Can I buy my way in? Can I work my way in? Or can I do both? If I’m doing a podcast, same thing. In fact, how many of you guys have ever listened to the Art of the Charm podcast? The Art of the Charm Podcast. It was one of the top podcasts in all of iTunes and the dude who started it, his name was Jordan Harvenger, it’s interesting because for some reason him and his business partners got in a fight or something and he left that podcast and then he started his new podcast called the Jordan Harvenger show, and I’d never listened to that other podcast, but all the sudden I started hearing him. All my favorite podcasts I was listening to, he was popping up on the first one, and the second one and the third one. And everybody is interviewing this guy. I’m like, “I’m so confused.’ And on every one of them they’re like, “how did you build the biggest podcast out there, number one or two on all of iTunes?” and he said, “Well, we launched a show and then I went to every other podcaster and I did interviews with them, and then my call to action was if you like me, go listen to the Jordan Harvenger show. And what’s interesting is people who listen podcasts listen to podcasts. So I leveraged all the podcasts in my dream 100 listeners to go and fuel and build up my podcasts.” If you go listen, that’s all he’s doing. Interview after interview, after interview, just building these things up. You could do the same thing now, find out all the other big podcasts and buy ads to build a platform, but all he’s doing is try to build his platform for round two. So look at somebody who built one of the biggest podcasts in the world, how he builds his second one is the same thing we talked about. Build your platform and come back and earn your way in, work your way in, or buy your way in, or both. So whatever platform you’re picking, that’s kind of the process. So let me come back to here. So that’s the talk show. So again, if you’re going to do Facebook, you’re like, “Number one, I’m going to focus and double, triple down and build a huge Facebook following, that’s my goal.” Cool, so you build your page, come back and say okay, “I’m going to work my way in, I’m going to buy my way in. I’m going to Dream 100 all my people, who from these people can I work my way in? Who can IJ buy my way in?” and that’s how you start growing up the channel. Alright, number two direct mail and email. So old school, if you think of the old school method of this, and you can learn a lot looking at the old school as you’re looking at what’s new. So many of you guys obsessively study direct mail? Me and Dana probably, a couple of people. So I don’t know, I still love the old guys the best. When Dana was joking about me and him getting in bidding wars on EBay, that’s actually a true thing. Every Sunday night I sit on my bed in EBay and I have like 12 searches that are always preloaded, one’s Dan Kennedy, one’s Gary Halbert, all the old school people, I’m searching for the new thing to pop up and I buy everything. It’s really fun because I love the old stuff. It’s my favorite because there’s so much you can learn that relates back to what we’re doing today in our world. So direct mail is just like talk shows, if you look how Hollywood does the talk show circuits, it gives us the model of what we should be doing. The same thing is true with direct mail. So you look at direct mail back in the day, this is how the whole thing worked. Initially with direct mail, what you would do, this is you and direct mail is similar to the dream 100, there are lists out there. If you look at the history of direct mail, initially what people would do is they would go and just try to mail everybody right. They would try to get the phone book out, and just get a whole bunch of names and send them out stuff. How many think that is efficient or effective or anything? It’s really bad.  In fact, it’s funny when I was first learning about direct mail when I was 12 I remember them talking about this whole concept and it was similar to email where basically they’re like, “I get a list of 100 thousand people, you mail them out a letter and 3% of people respond, this is how the money works, and you make a bunch of money.” So as a 12 year old kid I got all excited. So I wrote a sales letter on blue paper because that’s all we had in the printer, my parents printer. For my birthday I asked for stamps, I’m such a nerd, so my parents gave me 36 stamps because that was the equivalent of what they were willing to spend on my birthday present. I took my 36 stamps, I wrote out a one page sales letter on the blue paper, because that’s all we had, then I folded it in half because I couldn’t afford envelopes, I put a sticker on it and I hand wrote out 36 addresses. And I didn’t know where to get a list, so I literally got my phone book and I opened it up and I was like, “That guys getting a letter.” And I wrote his name in, I flipped it over, “That guys getting a letter.” And I found 36 people randomly from the phone book in Salt Lake City, Utah and I took those letters and I mailed them. And I was just like, “Oh my gosh, this is going to be huge. If 1% buy…” I’d do the math and I was so excited. My sample size was 36 and I mailed these letters out and nothing happened. Not a single person responded, and it was really heartbreaking. But it was really hard to read, black ink on blue is really hard to read. And I was like, “I wish my parents had white paper.” But for some reason they didn’t. Who knows? So that was traditional, when direct mail first started, people just tried to mail the phone book. And there’s only one campaign in the history of the world that ever actually worked with the phone book, and it was a campaign that Gary Halbert did called the Coat of Arms Letter. Who has ever heard this story before? Ah, the old school stories are the best. So I actually had a chance to meet Gary Halbert, I interviewed him once before he passed away. But he is one of the most amazing people in our industry ever. In fact, if you go to the garyhalberletter.com you can still see all of his old newsletters that he’s published for the last decade before he passed away. They’re all there and you can read them. And just reading them, you’ll learn more about marketing than you will almost any other way. So the Gary Halbert letter, anyway, as I’m studying Gary’s stuff he tells this story about the Coat of Arms, it was actually an interview with him and my first mentor, Mark Joyner and he’s telling this story. So what he did is he tried a whole bunch of different things and he found this family crest, like a coat of arms thing, and it cost him like 30 cents to like photo copy it and like put it out to people. What he did is like, “This has got people’s names on it, I could actually use the phone book.” So he took all the Johnson’s in the phone book and mailed out this one page sales letter, have you read the letter? It’s so good. Anyway, it’s like a super personal like, “Hey, this is Gary or whatever, I have the same last name as you and I found the family coat of arms, it’s really cool. Check it out. I actually got a whole bunch of them printed for myself and my family and stuff. I saw that you have the same last name, you’re also Johnson, I’m Johnson. If you want I could send it to you for like $5. Just send me cash in the envelope and I’ll send you out your own coat of arms.” And what’s interesting, I won’t go too deep in this, but he found with the bigger names like Johnson or Smith it didn’t work, but with the smaller names like Brunson or Derricks, where it’s a more unique name, it killed it. And he was literally getting the phone book, ripping them out, a dude’s typing in all this stuff, and mail those out. They’d write the letter for the Derricks family, or the Brunson family. What’s funny, this is the coolest part of the story. I wish he was here to tell it. His dad at the time was kind of like most of our parents. I remember when I first got started in this business I was making like a quarter of a million bucks a year and my mom was like, because I was still in school at the time, and she’s like, “Well Russell, when you get done with school what’s your job going to be?” I’m like, “Mom, this is my job.” And she’s like, “No, no, no when you’re done with that, what are you going to do when you want to grow up.” I’m like, “Mom, this is a legit thing, this is real.” And it’s funny, if any of you guys know David Frye, David Frye is my second uncle or something like that, he’s also in our industry. I found out years later that he was doing the same thing I was doing. So I called my mom like, “uncle David, he’s doing what I’m doing.” And she’s like, “Oh, well he does really well. Okay, you can do that.” And that legitimized what we do because somebody else she knew was doing it. But Gary had the same thing with his dad where his dad was like, “When are you going to get a real job? When are you going to do this thing?” So Gary, what he told his dad, he’s like, “Dad, I want you to put on a nice shirt and tie and I’m going to pick you up tomorrow because I want to show you something.” And his dad is like, “Why?” he’s like, “Just please dress up nice, I’m going to take you out.” So he goes and picks up his dad the next morning, and he drives over to the bank, and they walk into the bank and there’s like the bank tellers there and stuff, and then there’s this stairway. He’s like, “Come here dad.” His dad is like, “What are you doing?” and he’s like, “Come over here.” He’s like, “We can’t go up there, that’s just for employees.” And he’s like, “No, come here dad.” So he takes this thing, and they walk up the stairs and go on the second level of the bank, and they walk around the bank and there’s like 60 full time people there, 60 people who are opening up envelopes and are pulling out 5 one dollar bills, putting them in a bank bag and cashing them. Boom, 60 full time people. And he tells his dad, “this is the people of the bank who work to put our cash into the bank full time.” And he’s like, “Those are the sales for the month?” “These are the sales for today.” That letter at its peak was getting like 10,000+ responses a day of people sending in $5 a time. And they had full time people just doing that, counting the cash. And his dad was like, “Okay, you can keep doing this.” It legitimized it for his father. So that’s kind of what direct mail is. For most people, the phone book concept does not work. Having a phone book doesn’t work, but for that one….there’s a picture of a phone book, I don’t know. Okay, that doesn’t work, but if you look at the progression, what happened then, people started here, they were testing all sorts of stuff. And what happened is people started getting buyers, and they started building buyer lists. So this person over here, this dude would be like, “Hey, I don’t have a phone book but I’ve got this list right here. These are a whole bunch of people on my list, let’s say there’s 30,000 people that have bought something from me, so you can mail the phone book of like a billion people and cross your fingers and hope or if you’re selling something similar, I sold 30,000 people garden hoses, if you have something that someone who bought the garden hoses would want, you can rent this list.” So people come and they rent this list and they would mail it out. And then somebody else over here would  have a list that was based on a business opportunity. And this guy would have a list based on health and weight loss. And soon people would build up huge directories, like here’s all the different lists that are out there. Have you ever heard of the SRDS, it’s this huge directory of every list known to man that people actually rent it. And in every market you can find here are a hundred or a thousand people that have buyer lists of people. So the first phase was like the phone book list, the second phase became buyer lists, then the third phase, people kept saying buyer lists are good, sometimes they’re better and sometimes they’re worse, and these buyer list people would be like, “well, here’s all my buyer lists in the last 10 years.” And in there you’ve got tons of people who have moved and all sorts of stuff. So they came up with this algorithm that figured out how to get the best possible people on the list. So the algorithm is this, RFM, any direct response nerds know what RFM stands for? I know Dave knows, anybody else? Recency, how recent have they bought something? Somebody who bought something yesterday is more valuable than somebody who bought something three years ago. So recency. The second one is frequency. How often did they buy? How many of you guys are hyper active buyers? How many of you guys have bought more than one thing from me about funnels? Guess what, you’re more likely to keep buying from me. “But Russell, I already bought everything on funnels.” No, it doesn’t matter. You’re obsessed. You’re obsessive compulsive like me, you buy the thing and then the next thing and next thing and you can’t stop. That’s better. I want people who buy frequently, that’s a better buyer. So if they bought recently they’re a better buyer, if they bought frequently they’re a better buyer, and what’s the M stand for? Monetary value. How much they spent? The dude who gave me $30,000 is worth more than the guy who gave me free plus shipping. So you start doing that, say, “I want to rent your list of 30,000 people, but I only want people who have bought in the last 30 days and bought at least 2 things from you and spent over $1000.” And now you get the cream of the crop, the gold and that’s who you would go out and you would mail from the list. So that’s kind of how the old school worked. Other cool things we learned from the old school as well, if you would go and let’s say I read this dude’s list, I get these people and if I would just send a letter to them randomly it would do good, but what would do better is the invention of this thing called the lift letter. So the lift letter is a one page paper from the person they know. They know, let’s say this is Lady Boss and they know Kaelin, so there would be a one page letter from Kaelin and it’d be like, “Hey, I just met Russell, he’s got this really cool weight loss program that works really, really good for dads. So you are one of my Lady Boss women and you want your husband to be a little skinnier, you should get Russell’s program, it’s amazing…..” a one page lift letter that would be on top of it, and then underneath the lift letter would be my entire sales letter selling my program. So we learned this, having lift letters is better. So how does that correlate to us today? Well it correlates today, understanding that if I’m going after someone with email, I want to find people who have email lists that are good. People that have, that are growing lists, recency, frequency, monetary value. I tell you what, if I can do a JV partnership with somebody who their potential buyers, all their customers have spent $1000 with them or $5000 with them, I’m going to spend more time on that dream 100 person because I know that their list is worth way more. If I know, man, this guy just did a product launch, he’s got $5000 new buyers, oh my gosh, that buyer list is hot. When we used to be in the product launch game, we’d launch a product and we’d sell 10,000 copies of it and for the next like 60 days our list was hot. Anything we promoted they would buy, because they were recent. So it’s like, you’re finding partnerships, looking for people who actually have lists that are these things. A lot of people who like, when we launched the Expert Secrets book, they had done really good on the Dotcom Secrets book launch, I was all excited for them to promote and sell and guess what? These people hadn’t added anyone to their list in like 3 years, and they didn’t email them very often, and they did horrible on the launch, the second one because they weren’t always doing these things. So when I’m looking for JV partners I’m looking for people who have recency, frequency, and monetary value inside their list. That’s a much more valuable partner for me than someone who isn’t. I also look at this, the lift letter right. The reason why JV’s do so good, if you get the Dream 100 and be like, “Dude, Dana wrote this book, it’s insane. It’s 400 bucks, it doesn’t make any sense, but this book is amazing. If you come on this webinar with me, he’s going to explain the whole thing, it’s going to be awesome.” That’s going to be way better than me running a cold Facebook ad to Dana’s audience. So if I can get him to do the lift letter, him to endorse it, promote it before  they come on, everything goes up. That’s why Dana when he did his Facebook ads made zero dollars in sales on his webinar. Did the same thing with the JV partner who did a lift letter and warmed him, $260,000 in sales. That’s the difference. So we learned so many good things from direct mail. Email is the same thing. The second phase in this for you guys, you need to go and sit down and be like, “who are the emailers in my business?” Because people who read emails, people who open and click on emails are people who open and click on emails. I’m going to find the emailers, I’m going to build a dream 100 list and then I’m going to do one or two things. I’m going to work my way in or I’m going to buy my way in. If I work my way in it means I’m going to try to dream 100 them, get them to promote my stuff as an affiliate, and they say no or whatever, I can see if I can buy my way in. I’m going to go and see if I can buy an ad in their newsletter, if I can pay them up front. This weekend in my secret illuminati meeting, I was hanging out with the guy that owns Tapping Point Solution, do any of you guys know….I probably shouldn’t tell the members of the illuminati I might get killed. Alex, Nick…do you guys know them at all? So they have a company called Tapping Point Solution which is like this really cool thing, but what they do when they do dream 100 stuff is they have, their entire business is based on affiliates promoting their stuff, but they don’t pay affiliates commissions at all. What they do is they pay affiliates $1.50 for every single click that they get, no matter what. So they’re able to go to the affiliates, and they’re not necessarily working their way in, “Hey, let’s split the money 50/50.” It’s like, “Okay, how many clicks can you send? I’ll give you this much per click. You guys in?” and they’re like, “sure.’ And that’s how they do it. They’re buying their way into every single one of their dream 100 list. So there’s different ways to structure this as you start learning about this. The reason why I’m kind of showing you guys this in detail on each platform is because one of the biggest things I want you to understand is I want you understand the concepts are the same for all of these. It’s picking the platform, building my channel, doing the dream 100, working my way in, buying my way to grow my platform. And it’s going to be similar on every one of these, and if you understand that, this is what makes your business bulletproof. Because someday Facebook is going to get squashed, or email might get banned. I had a bunch of friends who made a ton of money back when fax blasts were real, you could rent a fax list and you could queue it up and you’d have your sales letter printing on like 35,000 people’s stuff that night. And then the FTC came in and made Fax Blasting illegal and that dried up. So email could be illegal tomorrow, we have no idea. Blogs could like, who knows, things could be shut down, but if you understand these concepts it doesn’t matter. As new platforms come out, if you understand, “Hey I wanna go big in Twitter, or Twitch, or Pinterest, or whatever it is.” The same process, the same concepts are the same. So you build your channel, find the dream 100, work my way in, buy my way in, boom that’s it, direct mail. Number three radio podcasts, same thing I talked about. If you want to build a podcast channel, that’s it. Build the channel, build the platform, then you go dream 100, go to the iTunes directory, go to Stitcher, go to all the big directories, search your phrases, figure out who your people are, and go start dream 100ing them. Or go back in time, maybe if I come here to my customer journey, my best ones if I go sales funnel radio, everyone on Steven’s podcast probably wants sales funnels. So that’s an easy one to do. But if I can go backwards in time in the podcast directory and be like, “Okay well, there’s only like 3 funnel podcast, who else do I go?” I gotta go backward s in the customer journey. Who’s got a podcast on business growth? Who’s got a podcast to chiropractors? Who’s got a podcast on anyone else who may potentially be a customer going backwards. So don’t just do the obvious of, “Russell’s there’s only three people who have a funnel podcast.” Okay, that’s right here, now go backwards in the timeline. Who else needs a podcast. Go warmer to the traffic, then go to the colder traffic and go back and forth. But you should be able to get at least a hundred people from any podcast directory for what you’re in. So don’t tell me, “There’ sonly 3 people.” It’s because you’re being lazy. You gotta go backwards in time and think, hot traffic, warm traffic, all the way to cold. So that’s podcasting, the same thing. YouTube is like a sitcom. How many of you guys watch TV? Dave and I were talking about this last night. So YouTube is a little different beast right. It’s not like…I can buy my way in really easy, I can find here’s all of Tony Robbins videos and I can buy ads. I can go and find infusion Soft, they can be my Dream 100. How many of you guys have ever watched an Infusion Soft Tutorial on YouTube? What happens right before that? Right before the Infusion Soft Tutorial pops up is me being like, “Are you trying to figure out how to use Infusion Soft? It is confusing software, but guess what there’s this really cool tool called Clickfunnels, so before you watch this tutorial I’m going to show you something that’s way simpler than the crap you’re trying to figure out, click down below.” It’s really fun. Same thing with Lead Pages and Hubspot and Unbounce and all my competitors. So they’re my dream 100 in YouTube because I want to pop in front of everyone in their tutorial videos and explain to them why the software they’re using is the devil and why I am their savior. So it’s really, really fun. So I dream 100 my competitors there, but how do I work my way in on a YouTube channel? How do people do it through sitcoms? How do they do it through different TV shows? Well think about it, how many of you guys have ever seen a show, they call them a crossover show, where two different casts of different shows will be on a show together? Why do they do that? Hmmm, why would they do that? Maybe this show’s got a big following and this show’s got a big following, they’re all a bunch of attractive characters. People over here on ER love the ER staff, and over here they’re like the Simpsons and like the Simpson’s staff, whatever it is, they do a crossover show where somehow the characters connect. Then the people of this show see this, people love the show and all the sudden they cross pollinate, and now both channels get bigger. Dave was pulling this morning a bunch of different shows that did that. The Flash and Super Girl did a crossover show so that both audiences find out about the other shows. Fresh Prince and The Jefferson’s did it. Simpsons and 24, Law and Order and Homicide. Dozens and dozens of shows. This is how they cross pollinate TV shows. So for you, how do you do that? You dream 100 the crap out of YouTube and find out who are all the people you eventually would love to have their audiences, and then you do crossover shows. You do some kind of video together and you do the crossover. Now again, initially obviously I would love to find someone with a billion person YouTube following and do a crossover show, they’re probably not going to do it. So the only way a crossover show is going to work where you’ve got similar platforms. So if you’ve got 10,000 people on your YouTube, I’m going to Dream 100 everyone in my market that’s got 10,000 people , we’re going to do a crossover show, I’m going to get a bunch of their people, they’ll get a bunch of my people and now my show grows to 15,000. Then I’m going to go and say, “Who’s my next thing?” and do a crossover show over there and boom, keep doing that. And keep ascending myself up the dream 100 until eventually you got a hundred thousand, and then a million and you can keep growing from there. So doing videos together is how you do the crossover show. Same thing comes true with Instagram. Instagram happens, I dream 100 it. I can go buy swipe ups on the people that are on my dream 100. I can buy ads from the people on my dream 100, then I can also do partnerships with them. Like yesterday I was in, or two days ago I was in Jackson hole in a helicopter, and how many of you guys know who Dave Hollis is? Dave and his wife are amazing, and she’s got like a billion followers, he’s got less but growing fast. And he was in the helicopter and he was like, “Hey I’m in the helicopter back here with Russell Brunson!” And then he tagged me @Russellbrunson and I got a whole slew of thousand plus people from his following that then followed me. Just like that. Right now when Steven Larsen said, {inaudible}, I was filming him and I tagged Steven Larsen and gets what’s going to happen? He’s going to get a whole crap-ton of my people who are going to come over to his thing. I’m doing little mini crossover shows on Instagram. I did a whole bunch with Dana, like 3 or 4 with Dana. So invite people to go do cool things with you, then they’ll tag you and all the sudden I guarantee you will wake up with a whole bunch of new instagram followers if you even know how to log in to Instagram. Yeah, you don’t even know. I bet they’re there. It happened to Todd at Funnel Hacking Live. Guess what? I tagged Todd in something, he had like 3 followers, he woke up the next morning with like 700 followers and he’s like, “I should probably do some instagram now.” So you’re finding cool people and hanging out with them, that are already doing that, and then very quickly people will start sucking, and you’re doing that same kind of thing. So I’m working my way in and I’m buying my way in. In fact, all you guys should Instagram me right now and tag me, you have my permission. You need me to dance or something? Whatever you want to do, tag the crap out of me, because I want all your people to follow me as well. So I’m working my way in, I’m buying my way in and I’m working my channel. Same thing happens with blogs. In fact, how many of you guys want to know how SEO works? In like 2 minutes? SEO. How many of you are like, “I wish I could be number one in Google for my term.” Dream 100 is actually how you do SEO as well, which is fascinating. No one ever believes me until I tell them this, then I show them and they’re like, “What?” Boom, mind blown. The dude who I think is the best SEO coach right now, a guy named Brian Dean at Backlinko.com And if you look at Brian’s strategy it is literally dream 100. So this is what he does, he goes into the Google, and he figures out, “Man, it would be awesome to be ranked for….” He types in a phrase, “sales funnels.” And he clicks search, boom, and it’s like, “Dude number one, lady number two, person number three.” And here’s the top ten right. He’s like, “That would be my dream spot. I want to be number one.” And he’s like, “Who is the dude that is number one.” So he clicks on this thing and goes over to this page, and it’s like, “here’s the dude who’s number one for Sales Funnels.” And he’s like, “There’s an article, that would be awesome if that was mine instead.’ So there’s a couple of things you could do. There’s a couple levels of dream 100 here. One level is like, “I want to be right here. Let me contact this person and see if I can buy an ad on his page.’ So what I do is I build a dream 100 of every single person who is in the top ten in Google for the keywords I’m dreaming about, and I can buy my way in where I just go and buy an ad directly on their page. In the past, back when we were doing more Biz Op stuff, I found the top three people here, and literally paid them to throw a pop on their page that people opt in to my newsletter. And I was not, I didn’t work for this, but I was paying per opt in to get all the people who came to Google, searched for the thing, came for the thing, and they opt in. It was like the best leads ever. Let me step back, that’s one way to use Dream 100. But if you look at what Brian teaches at backlinko, which is super cool. He takes this page, and he’s like, “Why is this page ranked number one? Why does Google actually like it? There’s got to be a reason.” So he does some stuff, he’s like, “Okay, this page has got, let’s say it’s got a 3000 word article, in the article he said the world sales funnels like 6 times, used these keywords, and here’s some other keywords…” He kind of diagrams, what was that? Then what he does, he takes this and there’s different sites you can do to run a background thing, and he runs it through it and says, “How many people are linking to this site.” And it says, “This site has 682 links coming back to it. Here’s all the links coming back and pointing to this page.” So we know that Google’s algorithm is based on two things, what’s on the page, and then who are all the people pointing back to you. So what Brian does, what he teaches all his students, he says, “This is your dream 100.” He doesn’t say that, but that’s what it is. He then takes this list of dream 100 and he then emails every single person. He’s like, “Hey dude, your email or blog is amazing. I saw you’re linking to my buddy over here. I wrote an article as well. His is only 3000 words, mine is 6. If you’d like, I’d love for you to link over to mine as well.” And then he gets this dude now to link to his article, it’s even better, then this dude, and this lady, and this person, and this person. And soon all the people who are making this thing pop to number one start linking here. And within the week he’s number 10, and then 7, and then 3, and then 2 and then he’s just getting more links. That’s SEO, all dream 100. Does that make sense? This process you guys, it’s the same over and over and over and over again. And then the last one on here I just put other, because this is true with every platform. If you guys learn to Twitter, what do you do? Do the Dream 100 list. How do I work my way in, how do I buy my way in? That’s the game. I want to be big on twitch, I want to be big on Pinterest. Whatever platform you want to be in, whatever next new platform is coming out, this is the game. Building your own channel, figuring out how to work my way in, how to buy my way in, and growing your own platform. So that is it. What I recommend for all you guys, like I said 30 minutes ago, don’t do all of these right now. It will suffocate you and it will be really hard. Pick one, which platform do you want to be the best at. Do you want the biggest email list, do you want the biggest Facebook following, biggest YouTube…pick one, I don’t care which one it is, but pick one, the one you like the most, the one you want to geek out, the one you want to go deep on the most and start building there and that’s going to start building your own platform. Then as you start growing, then you move to the last phase. This is like where in our company we’re at, but we didn’t get here until 2 years ago, so don’t think you have to do this today, but long term the goal is to get what we call Conversation Domination. How do I do this on all the platforms? Start building your team out like, here’s our Facebook Dream 100, here’s our email dream 100, here’ sour podcast, here’s our YouTube, here’s our Instagram, here’s our blog. That’s what we’re doing out of our office. We got people in charge of all these things. Going deep, building dream 100 and then realizing we want to grow our Facebook following, people on Facebook like being on Facebook so let’s build our Facebook dream 100. How do we work our way in, how do we buy our way in, and let’s get them to come to our platform. Let’s say I want to build my podcast following. We know people who listen to podcasts, listen to podcasts, so let’s build our dream 100 in the podcast, let’s work our way in, let’s buy our way in and build our platform there. If you want to be big on email, on YouTube, it’s the same process over and over and over again. And it’s not that difficult. It’s pretty simple and a lot of fun. And I believe that is the last phase of it. So if we kind of scroll here, I’m going to go back to the beginning real quick and walk you guys through the 7 of these. So the foundation for this whole thing is this, it’s really understanding this. There’s three types of traffic. Traffic you control, traffic you earn, and traffic that you own. That’s the foundation. So after you figure that out, then come back and be like, “Who is my dream customer?” Then you become obsessed with them so I can figure out where they’re actually at, because I can’t go and buy that traffic or work my way in unless I can figure out exactly where they’re at in their life and how to communicate with them at that point. So we have our dream 100 customer journey. So now we have an idea, we love our customer, know exactly who they are, we’re obsessed with them, who’s got them already? Let’s go find those people and let’s go build a dream 100, and start building our well before we’re thirsty. Let’s build our ecosystem out there, then we’re going to start focusing on all these people. Where’s the traffic I control, traffic I don’t control, put it in those pages and then mush it back into traffic that we own, and from there it’s understanding the distribution channels, understanding the platforms, each of the channels. It’s going to be similar, with little tweaks, little differences, but do that to build it out. Then as we grow we move to full on conversation domination as we start growing across all the platforms. And that you guys is how we do the dream 100 in our company. Alright everyone that is it for the third and final part of my presentation for Dream  100 Con. I hope you guys enjoyed this presentation. I thank Dana for putting on the event and allowing me to come and speak at it. I’m glad that I was able to share with you guys because hopefully it gets you excited for the traffic secrets book. Now I have one favor, if you’ve enjoyed the last three episodes, I would love for you to take a screen shot on your phone and then go and post it on Facebook or Instagram, or any of the other networks you use. If you’re tweeting or pinning or whatever else, feel free to post it there. Be sure to tag me so I can see that you’re listening, that’s how I know you’re cool. And then after you’ve tagged me, then also use hashtag Marketing Secrets, and let other people know about this episode if you got value from it. Thanks so much you guys, appreciate you all, and we will talk to you all again soon. Bye everybody.

Mighty Mike: What's up, Server Nation? My name is Michael Reid, the Podcast Server. You are listening to Process Server Daily. On this podcast, we interview the top legal support professionals and get the tips, tools and tactics that they use to get the job done and build a successful company. I'm a big fan of storytelling and I'm excited about today's guest. Mighty Mike: Before we get started, let's give a big shout out to my new sponsor, ServeManager. They have a special gift for all of my listeners at the end of today's episode. Mighty Mike: Okay, Server Nation. We are joined by the owner of On Time Process Services, located in Klamath Falls, Oregon. He specializes in skip trace investigation and serving hard to find individuals. Gary Clayton, welcome to the show. Gary Clayton: Thank you. Mighty Mike: It's good to have you on. Gary, tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got started in this industry. Gary Clayton: So I started in 2014, as kind of a just a side gig as I worked for Sears for approximately 10 years. I went through a divorce myself and during the processes of the divorce, I had to hire a process server to serve my ex-wife. It took him about five minutes, cost $125 that was the moment that said I was in the wrong industry. Mighty Mike: That's so funny, because that's exactly how I got started. Except for he got paid ... Actually, I'm the one who got served and he told me he got paid 50 bucks. How funny. It's crazy. Gary Clayton: Yeah. Mighty Mike: Some of the saddest moments in our lives end up giving us the greatest joys, so that's pretty cool. And so, how about now, you got a family? Gary Clayton: Yeah, so I got five kids, a wife. Being in this industry and being a business owner, sometimes it's got its ups and its downs, and I like the idea of being able to make my own schedule to be with the kids more or with the wife more. Mighty Mike: Yeah, family's definitely the most important and that's one of the reasons I started my own business because I didn't someone to tell me that my life would be turned upside down because I missed one day to go to my daughter's dance recital or something like that. I didn't want anyone to have that kind of control over me and so I'm with you there, brother. Mighty Mike: So Gary, there's a reason why you're on this show, as I always say, you know everybody's got different things going on, but I noticed you over the last doing a lot of really cool things, and so sometimes in the most tragic things come out the greatest triumphs, and so what is your worst experience working the field? Gary Clayton: So probably our worst experience was doing a serve for a divorce party kind of like that are what a majority of our serves are. And we were actually, there two of us servers out there, me and a colleague and we had actually gotten held at gunpoint by three individuals, two males and a female, for about two hours before we had actually gotten rescued. Gary Clayton: That was probably our worst experience as far as serving goes. Mighty Mike: Wow, so tell me more about that. And I don't wanna take you back to you know, much trauma, but take me back to the moment when they were ... did they just pull the gun out, you were at the door, knocking on the door? How did it happen? Gary Clayton: Yeah, so we walked up, we knew it was gonna be a difficult serve, and we were warned that the defendant actually had firearms and was hostile. So we went in a team. We knocked on the door, as soon as we knocked on the door, the defendant opened the door and had had a pistol in his hand right, both me and my colleague. Gary Clayton: We proceeded just to back out of the situation, but as soon as we backed out, two individuals come around the side of house, and both of them had pistols as well. So we were kinda trapped. I was able to reach down and hit real quick on my phone for dispatch, and I threw the phone into the bed of my truck and it took them a little while to get out there to us. Gary Clayton: But we were pretty well trapped, they had us go around to the back of that house and we were stuck there. Mighty Mike: Oh my gosh, what do you think they were gonna do? What were they saying? Gary Clayton: Well there's so many things that go through your head at that time. We were both confident that we were gonna get out safe, but when you're in the moment, five minutes turns into five hours in a couple of seconds. You know it's just crazy how fast it goes. Gary Clayton: When the sheriff's department pulled up there, and finally got us out of that situation, it felt like a ton of bricks off of your shoulders. Mighty Mike: Wow, so tell me about when the sheriff arrived. I mean, they had to have came out guns blazing, right? I mean, hey, "Put your guns down," this type of thing, or? Gary Clayton: Well, actually what happened was, because they didn't have any communication back and forth through the phone, it was just an open line, they didn't really know what was going on. So they came in being cautious, but they didn't bring nearly enough manpower with them. And so it was one officer that came out and once he kinda realized what was going on, he retreated back to his car and then that's when they just started coming in from every angle. Gary Clayton: The defendant and his team, the two individuals that was with him, they came to their senses fairly quick, put their guns down, and surrendered. Mighty Mike: Oh, okay, good. Yeah. That's a pretty ... man that's an intense situation. I've actually never had something that intense. Mighty Mike: You know, I gotta tell you, being able to have ... in the pre-show, we had a little conversation about, you know, being connected to dispatch and stuff. You guys have that privilege I guess you could call it, to be able to speak directly to dispatch, right? Gary Clayton: Yeah, so we all have radios here, where we had to go to actually a pretty extensive training class, each one of us, to be able to connect with dispatch. And when we're out in the areas where cell phones don't work, that's our only communication and so dispatch is pretty good at making sure we're checking in with them and they're checking in with us. Gary Clayton: And if we need backup, depending on what it is, they'll send a sheriff out. We had the incident last week that you had seen online about me following an individual down into California. We had actually radioed to dispatch to see if they would assist us in stopping the vehicle and they were like, "Nope, it's civil, follow them until he stops or you run out of gas." Mighty Mike: Wow, that's crazy. And then, in that story, you followed him down there and then the, what is it, CHP, the state police? Gary Clayton: Yeah, we were originally at the individual, the defendant's house, and as soon as we'd seen him pull in, we pulled in behind him and he was able to wedge his self around my car. And so I pulled out, followed him through town, he jumped on Highway 97, which a highway here, and he started heading towards south. Gary Clayton: A lot of the individuals here Klamath, since we're so close to California, they think that if they go into California, that they can't be served. So as soon as they get on 97 South, we automatically know that they're heading into California, so we contact the Department of Agriculture down there, 'cause they have the transfer station, the bus station we call 'em. Gary Clayton: And they'll typically assist us in stopping 'em, however this day, there was a CHP officer that was actually passing through about ten minutes before we were coming through, and the transfer station supervisor actually stopped CHP and asked him if he would hang out to assist with that. And they did, they were really good at helping us with it. Gary Clayton: However it ended up being a pretty serious situation, they did step in and help us. Mighty Mike: So, a couple things I want to say about your worst experience. First of all, do everything you can to be prepared, because when you think, "Oh, it's probably just one guy, and we got this handled. You know, I got my gun, if he has a gun then we'll handle it," right? Mighty Mike: I know that's a very simplified version, but you know, in this case there were multiple people and then if you did have a gun, now you're having a shootout with three guys. I mean, it's insane what can happen if you're trigger happy. That's one thing. Mighty Mike: It's insane, I mean, did anyone end up getting shot that day? Gary Clayton: No, there was no gunfire and actually we don't carry here. Each one of my process servers, I allow them to make the decision, however, I strongly discourage my individuals or my process servers from carrying, maybe keeping it in a vehicle or something like that. Gary Clayton: We've seen in the past with open carry or concealed carry if the defendant or the individual we're serving sees it, it brings a higher threat. And so we were seeing a lot of pushback from it, so without having a firearm ... Gary Clayton: And yeah, it's a dangerous industry, but we were able to eliminate a lot of problems just by taking the firearms out of the equation. Mighty Mike: Yeah that's, I mean, each business has to make the decision based on their area, based on their ability to handle different situations and I think that's commendable that you made that decision. Mighty Mike: I think maybe too, another way could be to have a concealed weapons permit so that ... I'm not familiar with Oregon's laws on that. Are you able to, is it a law where you can conceal carry? Gary Clayton: Yeah, you can conceal carry. And my process servers, they do conceal carry. We just try to keep the intensity between a firearm and open carry at a bay. Mighty Mike: Well what I get from your story most is be prepared, and be cool and calm and collected and then to be able to get your phone like that and hit it and throw it in the back of the truck the way that you did, I don't know that I could have or would've done, thought to do something like that. 'Cause had you not done that, you'd have been at their mercy for who knows how long. Gary Clayton: Right yeah, and so the idea was that when we went into this group, we were prepared because we had gotten word beforehand that the individual may act like this. So before we'd even gotten to the house, we had already had 911 dialed into our phones. 'Cause we didn't know what we were walking into. And you never know what you're walking into. You can walk in and they can have a conversation with you for 20 minutes about their day, or you can walk into guns. Mighty Mike: And sometimes you walk in to have a five-minute conversation, and then they find out you're there to serve them, and then they're pulling out guns. That can happen too. Mighty Mike: Well, that's great. So Gary, what do you want Server Nation to get from your story, your worst experience? Gary Clayton: Well, just to be safe and always be prepared. And the idea is to go home, if you have a family, to go home to your family every day, or if you don't have a family to go home alive every day. You know, stay safe and always be prepared for the worst. Mighty Mike: So Gary, that's awesome. Tell me your greatest experience working in the field? Gary Clayton: So this actually just happened not too long ago. We had a locate, a serve locate. It was kind of like a will, where an individual here in Klamath County was getting an inheritance from relatives out of Texas, and we were hired to do a locate and then to do the serve. Gary Clayton: And when we did the locate and found that this individual who was inheriting a large amount of money had to be notified of it, we were kind of intrigued that most of the time we're bringing bad news to people and this instance, it wasn't bad news, it was kind of a cool story where this guy has been living a mediocre life working 9 to 5, and now he no longer has to. Gary Clayton: So it was kind of a cool experience to have. Mighty Mike: That's a really cool experience. How much money was it? Gary Clayton: Oh, you know, I don't remember right off hand, but I think we're ... it was well over $2,000,000. Mighty Mike: Oh man, how much did you make on that one? Gary Clayton: Well, first we quoted it at 65 for this serve, and then at 65 an hour to do the locator, 125, whichever one we went to. Afterward we were like, wow, we don't think we charged enough for this one. Mighty Mike: Exactly. You were more like private security for that delivery. Gary Clayton: Yeah, you know the funny thing is, is that the individual when we were going to serve them, he avoided us. For several weeks he avoided us. We had a location form, we tried to explain to him what it was and he didn't believe it, he kinda blew us off. And then finally when we got him pinned down to actually get him served with the notice of what he needed to do next, it was ... he still didn't believe it. It took him several minutes to actually comprehend what was going on. Mighty Mike: Wow. And so you just never know, that's one of the other cool things that I love about this industry, is you never know what you're gonna get. You know one day, you know ... I don't know. You get some of the same things over and over, and I look at it like those keep the lights on. And then other days you get things you're like, yeah, this is cool. And I get to serve a pro-NBA player, you know? Or you know, Fergie or you know you go serve some celebrity that's always fun. Gary Clayton: And challenging. Mighty Mike: And challenging. We're up here in the sticks, you're further up in the sticks, but I'm up in Chico and it's still pretty far up here, so the best we get is I guess, Tom Hanks. He lives in Redding. Gary Clayton: That's always fun. Mighty Mike: Yeah, good deal. So that's great, that's what I get from your story. What do you want Server Nation to get from your greatest experience? Gary Clayton: Take everything positive. And enjoy what you're doing. If you don't enjoy what you're doing in a career, then you always should change things up. So even though we're typically, as I call doing this devil's work, or bearing bad news for people, you're just a messenger. It's all we are is we're messengers. We're just out here to do our job and be positive with it. Gary Clayton: If you're ... Most of the time if you go out, and you're negative when you're going out to do these serves, you're gonna get a negative reaction. If you go out and you be positive with these individuals or these defendants, they're only defendants to somebody else, they're not a defendant to you. So being positive can take you a long way. Mighty Mike: That's great. Gary, what are you working on right now that has you most excited? Gary Clayton: So we're actually expanding. Our biggest thing right now is that we want to move from just Klamath County or Oregon, we serve all of Oregon, but we wanna take this nationwide with the approach that what On Time Process Services has been doing for multiple years. You can go to our Facebook page or our Google page, and you can see our reviews that we've even had positive reviews from individuals that we've served. And we wanna be able to take that across the nation and open it up across the nation and we're working, doing our due diligence to make everything work right. Mighty Mike: What I take from what you're most excited about, you say you're growing nationwide. How does somebody even fathom that when they're just starting out. How do they go from just starting out to where you're at, where you're like, "Okay, we're getting ready to set off on a nationwide jaunt."? Gary Clayton: So I would say, starting out, definitely get used to your area, the law, the restrictions, and the way service is done before you even approach going nationwide. If you can't make your local customers happy, the chances of you going nationwide and making customers all across the country happy is probably gonna be slim. Gary Clayton: Know your area, know what you're doing, read, do a lot of research, reach out to mentors. NAPPS is a very good platform for new process servers to reach out to and get the education that they need. Gary Clayton: Your local associations is also huge, you know reaching out to your local associations. Mighty Mike: Yeah, Gary does Oregon have an association? Gary Clayton: Yeah, Oregon has the Oregon Association of Process Servers. I think the people that's been sitting on the board has been doing it for quite a long time, and we're not too involved with the association, we're members of the association, but we're working on our business, our [inaudible 00:16:32], our PR, to work with that, to start moving that in the direction we want it to. Mighty Mike: That's great, so if you're an Oregon process server, definitely go and check out the Oregon Association, the National Association of Process Servers. Mighty Mike: Server Nation, Gary has been dropping some major value bombs on us today, but prepare yourself because we're headed into the rapid fire round right after a word from our sponsors. Mighty Mike: Server Nation, imagine what you could do with another 25 minutes per job. This is how much time process servers who use ServeManager are saving. At just 100 jobs per month, that's over 40 hours that can be spent growing your business but doing more important things like spending time with your family. From job creation to affidavit generation, ServeManager is fully featured and hands down the most intuitive process serving software on the market. I use it for my business, I think you should use it too. Mighty Mike: In my firm it's important for me to be able to automate the systems that get things done. ServeManager has done just that with their API integration, where you can set up literally any app that integrates with Zapier will integrate with ServeManager. I love it. I have set my whole firm up. Mighty Mike: Go to ProcessServerDaily.com/ServeManager to get your free trial. If you like it after the 14 day free trial, they've offered to give you another 60 days for free as a thank you for being a Process Server Daily listener. That's ProcessServerDaily.com/ServeManager. Mighty Mike: Okay, welcome back to the show. Gary, are you ready for the rapid fire round? Gary Clayton: Absolutely. Mighty Mike: Awesome. What is your favorite skip trace tactic? Gary Clayton: I would definitely say that we use court records a lot. Most of the defendants that we're trying to locate at one point in time or another they've either had a traffic violation or some of type of a civil case. Gary Clayton: And you can pull a lot of information just from your local court records. I know Oregon is huge, we're set up with tailor hosting, which we get to pull all the records for that. And then of course we run plates. DMV's really good here, we can link [inaudible 00:18:46], we can run names and first and last name with a possible date of birth, and they give us a lotta information from that as well too. Mighty Mike: Yeah, California's got it pretty locked up unless you have a, I think there's maybe 500 certificates or something like that. It's very difficult to get that kind of information here. That's pretty cool that Oregon does that. Are you able to just be able to just search it right on the database or do you have to call 'em, or? Gary Clayton: There are multiple platforms so you can, for DMV we can call in, so if we're in the field and we have an individual who believes is there, we have a car in the driveway, we'll run the plate right there and if it comes back to that individual, we'll go up and confront him that. Gary Clayton: We can call in, we can fax it in, or they'll have an online access come 2020, they're gonna go online for DMV. Court documents, we can call or we can access it online for court documents. Mighty Mike: Wow, that's really cool. So you're the first person who's come on this show and mentioned the court documents, so I wanna dig a little ... I know this is rapid fire round but I want people to learn from it as well. Mighty Mike: So when it comes to a court document, do you go ... so you get Michael Reid, how do you use the court documents. Do you search for my name via the court record? Gary Clayton: Yeah, so we can pull up records with just a name, first and last name, and then we can kinda plug and play to see where it's at. It's not just putting in somebody's name, and then you get just that individual, 'cause there's a lot of Gary Claytons and there's a lot of Michaels out there. Gary Clayton: You have to pinpoint ... if we have a small claims document we're serving, we can see that they have this small claims, so we can link it to that individual and then we go back and ... We had a hard to find individual, the credit union, that we were looking for. They were trying to find this individual for almost a year, and then they contacted us. Gary Clayton: We put him into the court records, and come to find out, he had a restraining order put on him a couple weeks ago and so we were able to link the address to where he was served by the sheriff's department to link right back to him. So it was a very good tactic to be able to use that and the credit union didn't have that information. Mighty Mike: What is your favorite skip tracing tool? Gary Clayton: Favorite tool ... I like Delvepoint, I think it is? Or IDI, I like both of those programs. I really use, I try to go for what is inexpensive first. There's actually a program out there called SpyFly.com and it's very inexpensive, and it gives you pretty good record information. Gary Clayton: Sometimes you have to look through and go through different things, but SpyFly was our number one platform that we used for a long time. Mighty Mike: What is your favorite tool for defense? Gary Clayton: So, favorite tool for defense is for one, our dispatch. Being able to reach out to dispatch, that's huge for defense for us. Gary Clayton: I use ... I don't carry a firearm, but I do carry a baton or ASP. I carry a bear mace just in case. And also, my flashlight. I have a high powered flashlight and if I'm serving at night, ain't nobody gonna see me once that goes into their eyes. Mighty Mike: Is it like a spotlight? Gary Clayton: It's not really a spotlight, it's Bushnell, it's just a high powered, high Lumens Flashlight. Mighty Mike: What book would you recommend? Gary Clayton: The NAPPS book, that's what I would recommend. Mighty Mike: Yeah, that's a good one, no that's a good one. It's actually kind of shocking that those books are huge, and they ship 'em out to all the members. Mighty Mike: What is the greatest advice you have ever received? Gary Clayton: So, the greatest advice that I have ever received, I have a mentor that's been in the industry for about 35 years that retired out and I ended up purchasing his business from him just to basically let him out and take over the contracts that he had. And he said, "Always be pleasant. Always be pleasant to the person you're serving, don't ever come at 'em with judgment. If you're judging the individual, it's not your place to judge, whatever they're going through is their own deal, it's not your deal, so don't ever judge 'em." Mighty Mike: Yeah Gary, that's perfect. Being able to go out and to be able to handle yourself well around people and not judging them. Okay, that's great advice. Mighty Mike: Gary, what parting piece of advice do you have for the struggling server out there, where his business is circling the drain? What advice do you have for that server? Gary Clayton: Always pay, if you're outsourcing serves, always pay your outsource companies in advance or fairly quickly. Customer service is huge. If you're making your customers or your clients happy, they're gonna come back and use you every time. Gary Clayton: We're fairly expensive for our area, roughly $35 more than any other server in our area. So we have a majority of the business just because they can track our information online. We send them regularly updates, and they know that they can call and get one of us on the phone at any time of the day. Gary Clayton: I'm not saying answer your phone at ten o'clock at night, but customer service is huge and it's key for this industry. Mighty Mike: So Gary, what I take most from what you just said is that, 'cause you said to pay your servers on time and to pay them ahead of time, many times if you deal with these big process serving companies, many times how a lot of severs get started, right? They contact all these companies all over the country and say, "Hey, I can do your serves." Mighty Mike: But even though they're doing serves so inexpensive, they end up still being owed, you know, five thousand, seven thousand, some outrageous amount by this huge company that should be able to pay them on time. Gary Clayton: Yeah, definitely. You know, I have a philosophy about the big companies out there. It's different for different areas. My area is small, we don't have a lot of people, a lot of process servers to choose from here. But if you're in a secluded area where you don't have a lot of competition, if you are not using those big companies, then that serve's still gotta be done. And if they can't get that big company to do that serve, who are they gonna call? They're gonna call you, and you're gonna get that business, and you're not gonna be paying the middle person. Gary Clayton: I started out doing serves for ABC and a lot of other pro reps and other big companies, and then I slowly kind of backed out because I was paying them for what I was gonna do anyway. Mighty Mike: Hey brother, one man's failure is another man's success, you gotta capitalize on that stuff, so that's good Gary. I really feel Server Nation has gained a lot from this interview. Mighty Mike: Gary, what is the best that we can connect with you? And then we can say goodbye. Gary Clayton: You can go to www.ontimeproserv.com without the e at the end, or 541-810-3411. Look up process servers for Oregon, we come up typically #1. Or if you wanna get directly to me, call our office in Klamath Falls, 541-810-2172. Gary Clayton: I'd be more than happy to, if anybody's out there that's wanting to get into process serving, or has questions about it, give me a call, I'll sit down. I'm all about working for yourself and mentoring with the information that I have. Mighty Mike: Gary, I wanna personally thank you for being on the show today. I've been impressed with your story and I'm excited to share it with the world. Gary Clayton: Thank you Michael for having me on the show. It was a pleasure. Mighty Mike: Until next time Server Nation, you've been served up some awesomeness On Time Gary, and Mighty Mike, the Podcast Server. Mighty Mike: Don't forget to get your free 14 day free trial of ServeManager. If you like it, you get another 60 days for free, Server Nation. Even if you love your current software, you should at least check it out. ProcessServerDaily.com/ServeManager

A cool think I learned from Gary Vaynerchuk that radically shifted my social strategies. On this episode Russell talks about what cell phones have in common with 1950’s TV. He also quickly gives some stats from the book launch. Here are some of the awesome things you will hear in today’s episode: How searching for a pitch that he remembers from 2015 Russell came across some awesome words of wisdom from Gary Vaynerchuk. How you cell phone is similar to 1950’s TV. And how Russell plans to dominate every available channel the way he has dominated Facebook. So listen below to find out how you can benefit from looking at cell phones as if they were TV in the 50’s. ---Transcript--- Hey what’s up everybody? This is a sneaky late night, I’m sneaking out of my house to go grab something at the office, Marketing In Your Car. So this is cool, I don’t think I’ve talked about this with you guys before. If I have, humor me and pretend like you haven’t because I think it’s important. The other day, it was funny I was, an event I was at in 2015 and this guy did a pitch that was awesome from stage. So I tried to find that presentation so I could see, because I wanted to model part of the presentation for something I was doing. So yes, I’m always funnel hacking and I had these weird things in my memory where I can remember things from, I see a good pitch and it was in 2015, and I remember it. In fact, I remember a pitch from 2004, 2005 from John Childers that’s amazing too, that I went and found so I could listen to and hear him do his pitch again. Anyway, what I was doing, is basically I was trying to find this pitch. It was an event I was at in 2015. I remember the speaker, I remember the day, everything. I was trying to find it and I was searching everywhere. I had actually purchased the recordings of that event, but the link where the recordings I’d purchased had now expired. I contacted the company, they wouldn’t give it back to me or they didn’t have it anymore or whatever. So then I was trying to buy them on EBay, I couldn’t buy them on EBay. I tried everywhere. I spent way too long trying to search for this presentation, because it was literally like a 2 minute pitch that I wanted to find. It was probably like 8 hours, the time I wasted on this thing. But I knew that if I found that one little piece, I would know how to pitch this thing I’m trying to sell. I didn’t find it, but I did find some notes that somebody was there and there was a single sentence that gave me kind of, that reminded of what the hook was. So I am kind of re-building that pitch based on my memory and one sentence that I found after 8 hours of digging. In fact, I ended up finding the entire event, I had to pay some dude insane amounts of money to go and black market find it for me. I don’t feel guilty because I bought it before, but normally I wouldn’t do that. So he gets it to me, sends me the whole thing. I’m like, “Oh my gosh.” All the videos of everyone in the presentation is there except for the one I am looking for. I’m like, “Dude, where is this?” and he’s like, “How do you know it’s missing.” And I’m like, “I have the notes from somebody who was at the event. The same event that I was at. These are the notes, it says the name of the presentation. This is where between this one and this. You gave me the two other ones, but not the one I needed.” Anyway, I never got the video. So there’s the sad ending of that story. But there’s a happy ending. But while I was doing that, one of the videos I found during the thing was actually on YouTube, it was the keynote speaker at the event, it was Gary Vaynerchuk. Gary Vaynerchuk is obviously the keynote to almost every event ever, I think. I love the dude, but he’s probably not going to keynote ours, because he just keynotes too many places, so it’s not that special I think. But he’s awesome, I think he’s awesome. Anyway, I was listening to, sorry I’m at the office now. I was listening to, on YouTube while I was searching for it, I found his recording from that same event and I had missed his presentation because I was out in the hall doing whatever I was doing. So I was like, I’m going to watch this while I’m searching. So while I’m searching I was watching this presentation. What is cool, sorry my alarm’s going off here. Good, I gotta disarm the alarm, now we’re good to go. So I’m in there and I’m watching this presentation while I’m searching for this other video and I’m listening to it and Gary said something that was like, boom. And maybe that was the journey I got sent on to try and find this one ten minute video clip that I didn’t find. But in the journey is where I found this piece and it was this gold nugget that is so good. So Gary was talking and what he said that was profound, he said, “Our phones, the thing that’s in your hand right now probably, is the equivalent of the TV in the 1950’s.” And then I was like, what’s he talking about? And he went on to kind of explain it and he said, “In 1950’s if you turned on the TV, what was there? three channels. ABC, CBS, and NBC and that was it. So people turned on the TV and had to watch one of three channels.” In fact, that’s what Tony Robbins said to me. When I first met him he’s said, “You know when I got started there were three channels and I just advertized on those three channels and I was everywhere and we made insane amounts of money. And when media split, that’s when it became hard.” But he had a 20 year run. Every channel you turned on Tony was there, and everyone knew who he was all the time. And then, I’ve done a whole podcast before on how media splits and turns into more channels and cable and soon it gets really, really hard because it’s all fragmented. What’s interesting is that, he said, “Our phones are like TV in the 1950’s because that was the thing in 1950’s, three channels. Right now on your phone, there’s 3 or 4 channels that actually matter. There’s 2 or 4 channels that everybody goes to get all their entertainment and their information and those kind of things.” If you think about it, think about the typical app, there’s the app store or whatever you want to call it, it’s insane, there’s millions of apps. So you think it’s this huge flooded thing, but the reality is, think about your phone right now and your habits. How many apps do you go to every single day consistently? And probably like 5 or 6 times a day. I was thinking about that and thinking about myself and there’s definitely a pattern. When I’m bored I open up the social tab and I go to Facebook, Instagram, messenger, Snapchat, anyway there’s 4 or 5 things I go to. When I’m done, I close it down and get back to my work. When I get bored and get stuck or whatever, I come back and open up those 3 or 4 channels to see if anything interesting is happening on any of them and then I come back and I leave. And that’s what TV was, right. When he started saying that, he’s like, “If you understand that, everyone’s got these phones and there’s only 3, 4 or 5 stations everybody’s listening to.” So what are those channels. Facebook is a channel, Instagram is a channel, Snap chat is a Channel, YouTube is a channel. What are the channels that are there? There’s not that many, there really isn’t. There’s only a handful of them. And when he said that I was like, “Oh my gosh.” And I’m really good on one channel. We’re good on Zuckerberg. We dominate Facebook, but we haven’t been good at the other ones. So we started, if you’ve been watching, I’ve been really working hard at Instagram lately, it’s been growing and actually doing really well for us. If you’re not following my Instagram, please follow my Instagram. I think you just go to Instagram.com/russellbrunson, I think. But I’m not sure. So we’re starting to do stuff on Instagram and on YouTube we’re actually on Monday launching our big YouTube channel. On each channel we have a different strategy. For me, the ones we’re trying to dominate are Facebook, Instagram, I kind of gave up on Snapchat, if I’m completely honest. Instagram is just easier and better, I think. So we’re doing Instagram hard, Twitter, we ignored Twitter for our entire lives and then it turned out we’re getting insane amounts of traffic from Twitter. People are talking about us and we didn’t even know. So now we’re like, crap we should do something in Twitter. I’m going to go learn how to tweet. So I’m starting to get into that again. And then YouTube. So there’s the four or five channels. We’re not trying to be the biggest dude on YouTube, but I’m trying to get, so my audience when they pull out their phone and are searching the four or five channels, they’re going to see me on everyone of those channels. I started looking at that and I was like, holy crap. I always thought the internet was so big. We’re trying to advertize everywhere. But if you flip it like that, all the sudden it shrinks it down. This is your mobile experience. This is your phone, there are four channels your people are on. How do you get in front of your people on those four channels? That’s it, and it’s really not that hard. So that’s been, that’s my strategy and you’ll see that happening more and more over the next few weeks as we’re rolling out each channel more aggressively. And then we’re having a strategy and putting people in place to make it consistent and cool. And I’m not talking about, a lot of people go and make a video and then rip the audio and put it on 30 different places. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about understanding the intricacies of each channel and making unique, cool stuff for each one. Some of you guys are just beginners and you’re starting. And if you’re starting don’t do this yet. I’m in 14 years and I’m starting to do this kind of thing. But after you’ve mastered one channel, I think that everyone needs to be good at one channel if you’re going to grow. I met a friend earlier this year who is really good at Instagram, but he’s not good at any of the other channels. But he’s awesome there, making tons of money.  But again, I’m a big believer in first you have to spend, I’ve been smacked too many times by too many channels. But I think starting at one and mastering it and then after that’s in place, then going and mastering the second one, third one. With that said, we’re at the point now we’re kind of mastering the other ones and plugging things in. That’s what my goal was, to really be dominate in the 4 or 5 channels on everybody’s phone in my marketplace. So whenever they get bored they pull it out and I’ve got something interesting and unique in each one. Who’s doing this successfully right now? The only people I know who are really doing it successfully in all of the platforms…oh and speaking of, also podcasting. Podcasting is one of those ones as well. Gary Vaynerchuk is fantastic, he’s the best one I’m watching to model. He’s the one that kind of brought this idea up. He knows something and I’m impressed with that. I’m impressed with, he saw it, because I didn’t see that until he told me. Now I see it. He saw it, he gets it. So watch him close, watch what I’m doing closely. Go to each of these channels and not many people are on all of them, but find the people you connect with, who are good in each one and model those people, funnel hack them. That’s what we’re doing, we’re looking at what kind of images are other people doing in Instagram? What kind should we be doing? What kind of posts here? What we’re modeling in funnel hacking all the time. I hope you guys are funnel hacking and modeling me. You should be. I’m on a path trying to figure this stuff out. Not everything I do is right but if I do it consistently, it means it’s working. Know that, model it, funnel hack it. Anyway, so those are the channels and one other twist. And this is something that I am excited for. On top of that, we’re going to try to create our own channel. And I’ve got a play that’s halfway in play right now, I’m excited for it. I’m not going to ruin it or divulge too much yet. If it works, it’s gonna, for my community, for my tribe, for you guys, it’s going to add one more layer of awesomeness. It’s going to be this really cool tribe app thing that brings us all together into our own distribution channel. Our own media network. Our own TV show. Whatever you want to call it. It’s going to be cool. You’ll see it. Stay tuned and pay attention.  You’ll see the cool stuff that’s happening. Anyway, that’s what I want to share with you guys today. That mindset, I heard it from Gary, took me about a week to internalize it. Now you’re hearing it from me, I hope you guys think about it and internalize, because I think it’s something really good. Alright I’m walking out of the office. You guys want some updates on stats. I’ve got a big monitor in front of me showing me all the stats. So as of today, actually let me refresh this because it might be better than this. Unless it automatically refreshes on its own…as of right now, sorry this monitor is kind of weird, I’m trying to figure out how…there we go, reload. Okay, book sales, we’ve been live a little over two weeks so far. So there’s a couple of cool metrics I’ll share with you guys here. If I can get it to work. Alright, so as of right now we have sold 30,503 copies of the book, which is amazingly exciting. I think so. If I break that down, 23,834 people have taken the Expert Secrets book. 6,692 have taken the Black Box. Also have, if you want to know, lets see. Okay, so the….sorry, the metrics, I can’t…we shifted some of the funnels so some metrics aren’t perfect. But that’s okay. Upsell number one 7.84% of you guys are taking that, which is either the MP3 player or the audiobooks, of both the Expert Secrets and Dotcom Secret, which is cool. 3.22% are taking Expert Evolution upsell, which is new and we just rolled out last week, which is really, really cool. And then our average cart value right now, from the whole campaign, $32.40. Our total collected money is $989,095.30. So probably by tomorrow we’ll pass a million dollars collected on this funnel, which is cool and gets me excited. To have a new funnel inducted into the two comma club. I’m going to do one more thing. I’m going to reset the stats on here because I want to see…… Okay, so we’ve made some changes to the funnels, so I wanted to see a couple of other metrics, based on that. Sorry, you guys are geeking out with me in real time. Hopefully the suspense is killing you though and getting you excited and not annoying you. If it’s annoying you I’m sorry. You can skip to the next episode, but if you like suspense that’s good. So our actual cart value since we shifted the funnel over $33.29, which only seems like a small update, but it’s actually really big. Because when we first launched our average cart value was really high because all of you hyper active guys went and bought a ton of them. And it dropped dramatically afterwards. So it’s actually up 7 or 8 bucks from the normal traffic. So the order form bump is at 13.65%, which isn’t bad but it’s not….I wanted it to be closer to 20, so it’s not bad. And this is interesting, so if you, look upsell number one is the MP3 player, there’s three options on the page. You can either buy the physical MP3 player or the digital audiobook files or you can get both. And both for the same price as one, so it’s kind of a funny thing. But 81.56% took just the digital audiobooks, 15.64% took the digital and the physical. And then 2.79% took just the physical, even though it’s the same price. That was the decoy offer, yet they still took it, which is kind of funny. Anyway, those are the metrics, hopefully that’s kind of fun for you guys. Anyway, it’s been fun. I love this game, it’s a fun little game. So we are in the process right now of tonight actually at midnight, we switch over from our normal affiliate commissions to $20 CPA, so hopefully tomorrow everyone’s going to start promoting like crazy for the last 7 or 8 days of the launch, which is really fun and exciting. We’re going to sell some more books, our goal is to get that about double where we’re at right now and then we got one more fun thing that we’ll be executing at the end of the book launch which will make everybody, all the affiliates a lot of money. And it will serve all the people that bought books, help get them to where they want to be, so I’m excited for that. Setting the alarm, back in here, I’m going to head back home. My parents are actually coming to town tonight. Howard Berg, the world’s fastest reader is coming in town tonight. And then tomorrow we’re filming a bunch of videos with him. So we’ve got a fun journey happening in the next day or two and I’ll be sharing it with you guys. With that said, have an amazing night you guys. And I’ll check back in with you soon. Bye everybody.

Today's Guest: Gary Chaloner, comic book artist, "Will Eisner's John Law" (EDITOR'S NOTE: The following interview with comic book artist Gary Chaloner was recorded on August 25, 2006 to supplement my authorized biography of the late Will Eisner, Will Eisner: A Spirited Life. I recently rediscovered the audio file and decided to add it to the Mr. Media podcast archive. -- Bob Andelman) "Will Eisner's John Law" by Gary Chaloner Gary Chaloner is an award-winning artist and writer who is currently creating and publishing the new adventures of Will Eisner’s John Law. I interviewed Chaloner via email the first time around, for my biography of Will Eisner, A Spirited Life. But that was when John Law had yet to be published. Now that it’s out and building an audience for one of Eisner’s lesser known characters, I thought it would be fun to talk to him again. He suggested we do it via Skype, the free Internet phone service; being a new technology junkie, I had to say yes. So Gary has the dubious honor of being the first person interviewed in this series via podcast. The audio quality isn't perfect; the hum/buzz you'll hear in the background is from my computer. Sorry about that, audiophiles. This interview combines the stories behind Chaloner's Eisner-related work as well as a sneak peek (below) at his upcoming work. Eisner fans will also be excited to learn how many more characters from Eisner's early work are returning to action in Chaloner's John Law series. First, let me tell you a little more about Chaloner: He’s an Australian-born creator who began his career as a publisher of his own work and the work of other Australian creators through his own imprint Cyclone Comics. Cyclone published a range of popular comic books in the 1980s and 1990s with titles as diverse as The Jackaroo, The Southern Squadron, Dark Nebula, GI Joe Australia, Flash Damingo and CCQ (Cyclone Comics Quarterly). Gary's overseas work includes US editions of The Jackaroo and The Southern Squadron; a very odd issue of The Badger with Mike Baron; the award-winning Planet of the Apes: Urchak's Folly; The Olympians, a two-issue prestige series for Marvel/Epic Comics; editorial and creative duties on Dark Horse Down Under for Dark Horse Comics — this series featured the first US appearance of Gary's creation "Morton Stone, Undertaker." His current creator-owned projects include the black comedy of Morton Stone: Undertaker; Red Kelso, a pulp-inspired adventure series; and new adventures of The Jackaroo. Chaloner worked closely with Will Eisner in the development and relaunch of Will Eisner's John Law both online and in print through IDW Publishing. Gary Chaloner The online series recently left ModernTales.com and set up home at http://johnlaw.us.com. You can browse through the archives for free there and read more about Law and his new adventures. As a bonus, Chaloner is uploading original golden age stories featuring Lady Luck and Mr. Mystic. These stories first ran as backups in The Spirit Section and will be remastered and colored for online viewing. Hopefully, these classic stories will be collected for print at a later stage. In the 2005 Ledger Awards (Australian Comic Industry Awards), Will Eisner's John Law received several awards including "International Title of the Year" and "Single Issue or Story of the Year." Chaloner was also awarded the "Ledger of Honour" (a Hall of Fame award) and received industry awards for "Achievement of the Year," "Cover Artist of the Year" and "Inker of the Year." Chaloner also redesign and modernized the official Will Eisner web site. Gary Chaloner Website • Facebook • Twitter • Wikipedia • Goodreads BOB ANDELMAN: Gary, let’s jump in here. Tell us a little bit about John Law and how and when Will Eisner created it. GARY CHALONER: Well, hello to everyone. Hi, Bob. John Law was devised and created by Will back in the mid to late ‘40s. The Spirit was going very well, and Will wanted to expand his range of publications on the newsstand. He developed several titles, one of them being the John Law character, but the first one that he released I think was Baseball Comics, and it didn’t go as well as he would have liked, so the other ideas that he had were put on the shelf for a while. Will, being the frugal person that he was, utilized (inaudible) more artwork and converted it into Spirit stories. So all those stories didn’t see print as Spirit stories until about 1950. So the John Law material was a fully formed concept that he had been thinking about quite a while, for several years, and so that whole idea was a bit stillborn, so when the opportunity came along when I talked to Will and Denis Kitchen about developing the series wasn’t just a dead concept, it was a fully developed, ready-to-go set of characters in the universe that Will had already worked on and established, so that was irresistible. GARY CHALONER podcast excerpt: "If you learn a bit about The Spirit, you also learn about these aborted characters that Will tried to publish back in the ‘40s. The name 'John Law' keeps on popping up as this parallel Spirit character, so it was only through reading about Will’s past and the different things that he tried in the ‘40s that this recurring name 'John Law' and the characters surround him, like Nubbin, The Shoeshine Boy, and Melba, Girl Detective, and a few other characters, had always stuck in the back of my mind as something that, why doesn’t someone do something with these things." ANDELMAN: Was John Law ever published in the ‘50s or not? CHALONER: No, it was not. All of the work was adapted and absorbed into the Spirit universe. John Law in his own environment wasn’t published until the ‘80s in the Eclipse Comics edition. ANDELMAN: That was Dean Mullaney and Cat Yronwode. CHALONER: That’s correct. Yes. What I did there was, they stripped back a lot of the paste overs and art changes that Will had made to the original art to reveal the original John Law art underneath. Will Eisner's "The Spirit" as interopreted by Gary Chaloner ANDELMAN: How did you first hear of John Law? CHALONER: Well, being an Eisner reader for many years and bumping into a lot of the publications that Kitchen Sink first released and that other publications had written about Will Eisner, if you learn a bit about The Spirit, you also learn about these aborted characters that Will tried to publish back in the ‘40s. The name “John Law” keeps on popping up as this parallel Spirit character, so it was only through reading about Will’s past and the different things that he tried in the ‘40s that this recurring name “John Law” and the characters surround him, like Nubbin, The Shoeshine Boy, and Melba, Girl Detective, and a few other characters, had always stuck in the back of my mind as something that, why doesn’t someone do something with these things. A future John Law cover featuring Law and Melba, in a situation inspired by an earlier Eisner piece. ANDELMAN: Whose idea was it that you do this? Was it yours, or was it Denis’? Was it Will? CHALONER: It was pretty much my idea. I approached Denis about it. This is after The Spirit: The New Adventures was cancelled, and I had to produce a story for that, and this was also at a time when Kitchen Sink Press had gone belly up. Denis was going through a few hard times himself, and I had gotten in touch with him, and the relationship developed from there. Well, if The New Adventures had gone beyond issue No. 8, I had to do something else, and the John Law character was always at the back of my mind for me to develop. ANDELMAN: When you did work for The Spirit: The New Adventures, you completed a story that didn’t see print. CHALONER: That’s right. That was going to be in issue nine, and the series ended with issue No. 8. ANDELMAN: And, of course, one of the great ironies here is that, and you have kind of hinted at it, is that Will had done John Law in the late ‘40s or early ‘50s, I guess late ‘40s, and when that did not take off, he adapted the John Law story into The Spirit, because he never wasted anything, and then you, following that same thing many years later, you did a Spirit story, and you adapted it to John Law. CHALONER: I thought it was perfect. The planets were in alignment, really. ANDELMAN: How hard did you have to convince Will to let this happen? CHALONER: Not hard at all, really, not from the creative side. Interestingly, as a John Law project, it wasn’t always intended to initially be presented on the web, and that side of the project interested Will a lot. He was used to emailing and things like that, but he wasn’t really the full expert on web comics and how to deliver something on the Net, so it was all new technology to him. There was a steep learning curve for him as far as being part and parcel of the present Law stories. Another future John Law cover, this time featuring another Eisner creation, Lady Luck. Luck and Mystic feature in the new Law adventures. ANDELMAN: Will was not savvy as far as the Internet went. How did you explain to him the business model behind this? CHALONER: I did the best I could based on the business models that were around at the time, and at the time, Modern Tales was just starting and had been around for several months. It had the business model of the subscription base, where people paid “X” amount of dollars a month or a year to get access to the comics behind the subscriber wall. That kind of logic Will could understand quite easily, the whole idea of magazines having subscriber lists and things like that. It was quite easy for him to understand the logic behind the business of the Internet. The actual technical side of how to, of scanning artwork, color, you had to upload it to the site, that kind of stuff was initially probably a bit of a struggle for him, but he wasn’t a stupid man, so he caught on real quick. ANDELMAN: That’s interesting you mention that. So you are drawing by hand on paper as opposed to using, you are not drawing rig

Gary and Roscoe romp through a medley of miscellany, joined unexpectedly by friend-of-the-show Paul Stroili of Episode 43 fame. Paul was loitering outside an Edible Arrangements franchise near our studio, shamelessly advertising for his new hit Chicago show Tony n' Tina's Wedding. So Gary invited him in for a visit and a chat on the air. More about Edible Arrangements than you ever wanted to know... Roscoe reviews The Scivvies for our listeners - singer/actor/musicians Nick Cearly and Lauren Molina from New York, who perform in their underwear stripped down arrangements of eclectic covers and eccentric originals. Roscoe "charms" other patrons seated near him at the event, which featured guest appearances by musical artists from Hamilton and Wonderful Town. Roscoe's informed notice? Two big thumbs up! Gary finally sees Wonderful Town at the Goodman Theatre before closing and his take concurs with Roscoe's - a brilliant re-imagining that simply shows what a theatrical genius like Mary Zimmerman and a stellar cast can do with somewhat mediocre musical material. Marvelous performances all, especially by leads Bri Sudia and the aforementioned Lauren Molina. Bri Sudia gives a performance that Gary imagines is reminiscent of a young Fanny Brice or Ethel Merman in her heyday. We can't avoid discussing the unanimous stellar reviews that Paul and his production of Tony n' Tina's Wedding have received in all the Chicago media. The acting, the direction, the venue, the music and the original 1980's theme make this one of the must-see events in the city this season. Despite the Chicago Cubs' World Series run diverting audiences to their TV sets this October, T n' T is playing to large and repeat crowds, offering an actual church wedding ceremony, an interactive reception, loads of great 80's music, full Italian dinner, champagne toast and real wedding cake. Paul discusses the extraordinary work by the cast and their dedication to naturalism and honest improvisation. Go to www.tonylovestina.com for information and to order tickets. Hurry, though, as it only runs through January 14, 2017. Another shout out from Roscoe and Gary about their experience at the famous iO Theatre improvisation space, where they saw the Improvised Shakespeare Company. Smart, funny, sophisticated, inspiring and downright thrilling, this troupe of actors and improvisers create a full 2-hour Shakespearean-style play with just a single suggested title from the audience. Ours was called "Without Handlebars" and was hilarious from start to finish. From mistaken identities to rhyming couplets, from iambic pentameter to mismatched lovers, you'll swear you're watching a fully written and prepared script. But NO! It's being made up on the spot for the first - and last - time ever! This is the perfect date night event, and it's only $16. Worth at least twice that. Enough gushing....GO! Gary, Roscoe and Paul bandy about Broadway's The Cherry Orchard reviews, George Bernard Shaw, War Paint and actress Kate Shindle, appearing in the national tour of Fun Home. Then we revisit Roscoe's grandfather's scrapbooks in our new recurring segment, Remembering Roscoe. And have you heard about the Ruby Slippers at the Smithsonian Institution? Their home for nearly 40 years, the slippers are in dire need of repair and refurbishment. The Smithsonian is trying to raise $300,000 through a Kickstarter campaign for the year-long task. Seems to us like a lot of money...They're a mismatched pair but evidence proves that they were indeed worn by Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz. As of this recording, the Smithsonian was over half way to their monetary goal with nearly a month left to go, so it's safe to say they will achieve the necessary amount and we can look forward to seeing a pristine pair of Ruby Slippers on display in the not too distant future. Paul relates a story of finding a pair of shoes, with the heel designed like the Ferris Wheel at the 1893 World Columbian Exhibiti...

Please kick up your feet and just let it play. We have a short episode this week. It was a pretty light week. So Gary and Brent just kick back and chop it up. We talk Frank Ocean's new album and a few thoughts and opinions.  We talk memorable songs by Andre 3000. Our attitudes toward music at the moment. Olympics and how great it was this year. We talk our new favorite or cool events we saw this year. All this plus more Come join Gary, Brent, Jacob and Shayna on a journey with a group of friends just trying to make sense of it all. Won't you partake? Send any questions, comments, and feedback you have to Oafdiscussions@gmail.com Search Oaf Discussions Podcast on Facebook and join our group page. Find us on Twitter @Oafdiscussions Follow us individually: @KNKidSwift, @llcoolb22, @jake_688, @ShaynaNB

Well, now.We couldn't do a normal episode because Chris and I are jetting off to pummel some bastards at Glesgames. You should come!So, instead I managed to pull friend, podcaster and esteemed luxomancer Gareth Dutton of Chat Very Good and Making Games Is Fun fame into resurrecting a failed MGIF project for your entertainment.For those not aware, MGIF is Gary's project where he interviews game developers and photographs them, producing a written article, a podcast, and a photoshoot with each developer. It's cool and you should check it out.You can hear the full story in the show, but here's the gist: this episode contains the highlights of Gary's short interview with Peter Molyneux and Ryan Singh of 22Cans, recorded not long after that RPS interview. The plan was to revisit the studio and do some more photos and a longer interview, but logistical issues and unanswered e-mails put a stop to it. So Gary took the best bits of what he had, and we listened to it together whilst intermittently offering our stupid fucking opinions as we went.It was a lot of fun to record, and hopefully you mugs will appreciate having something slightly different to listen to this fortnight.Normal service will resume prrrrobably in a fortnight, unless me and Chris somehow record something at Glesgames. Which would be funny, but don't hold your breath. Seriously, you'll die.x