Ever wondered how the most successful companies develop marketing strategies that stand the test of time? In this episode of "Seek Go Create - The Leadership Journey," join host Tim Winders as he delves into the mind of Ryan Chute, an expert from Wizard of Ads, who reveals the secrets behind aligning business vision with principled marketing to build lasting customer relationships. From the strategic importance of understanding your “why” to leveraging both traditional and modern marketing tactics, this conversation is packed with insights that will elevate any business. Tune in to discover how your business can achieve sustainable growth and stand out in a competitive market!
"Transforming from transactional sales to inspiring business relationships is key to long-term growth." - Ryan Chute
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Ryan Chute is a renowned strategic marketing expert and partner at Wizard of Ads, where he excels in transforming small businesses into major brands by eliminating growth obstacles. With a wealth of experience in high-ticket sales and the home services sector, Ryan is celebrated for his ability to blend customer relationship building with effective sales activation. He has a deep understanding of aligning marketing strategies with a company's long-term vision, purpose, and values. Ryan's innovative approach and principled leadership mark him as a pivotal figure in the field of marketing and business transformation. He is also the author of the forthcoming book "Frictionless," which delves into improving business culture and profitability.
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00:00 Building Bonds and Activating Sales
00:38 Meet Ryan Chute: Transforming Small Businesses
01:30 Ryan's Personal Journey and Principles
04:25 The Importance of Values and Beliefs
09:49 Early Life and Entrepreneurial Beginnings
11:19 Discovering the Wizard Academy
15:09 The Role of Culture in Business
21:30 Trends and Timeless Principles in Marketing
25:02 The Impact of AI on Marketing
31:09 Home Services Industry Insights
37:11 Understanding Customer Needs
37:48 Diving into Client Vision and Values
39:40 Creating Campaignable Ideas
40:08 Tactics vs. Strategy
41:19 The Magic of Marketing
45:44 Navigating Marketing Channels
56:16 The Power of Branding
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We're trying to build a bond with our customer, or are we
Speaker:trying to activate a sale? We need to do both,
Speaker:and we need to do both in protection of the brand's reputation.
Speaker:And when we do that, holistically as a single
Speaker:solution, we build a business that goes from
Speaker:name recognition to a household name.
Speaker:What if you can eliminate just one obstacle to unlock exponential
Speaker:growth in your business? Meet Ryan Shute, a strategic marketing
Speaker:expert at Wizard of Ads who specializes in transforming
Speaker:small businesses into major brands by removing the
Speaker:friction that stifles growth. Ryan's upcoming book,
Speaker:frictionless, encapsulates his journey from a high friction retail
Speaker:environment to leading an 8 figure creative consulting
Speaker:agency. Join us as Ryan shares how cutting through common
Speaker:setbacks can pave the way for smoother,
Speaker:more profitable business operations. Ryan,
Speaker:welcome to SeatGo Create. Hey. Thank you so much. I appreciate
Speaker:it. Glad that you're here, Ryan. We're gonna have a fun conversation. Let's
Speaker:go big. Let's start off big here. Gonna give you the choice.
Speaker:Which question do you wanna answer? What do you
Speaker:do, or who are you? Just go ahead and choose
Speaker:and start answering. I I rarely get the
Speaker:chance of, answering the question who I am, so I'll, I'll I'll take the path,
Speaker:less trodden. And who I am is a is a man of
Speaker:principle, a person who grew up in a high friction environment.
Speaker:Mhmm. There's there's past traumas. There's past
Speaker:challenges that have shaped the person that I am today, and
Speaker:and in more recent years, have have come to realize that I need
Speaker:to work on myself, and I need to work on the inner
Speaker:leadership and the inner leader, for me to be the the
Speaker:leader, the the tribe leader, and the individual leader, not
Speaker:only as a boss, as a person who contributes to a
Speaker:large organization, but as a dad, and as a
Speaker:husband, and as a person in my communities,
Speaker:that that I also associate and and appreciate deeply.
Speaker:You know, when I when I think about what I'm trying to achieve, I'm trying
Speaker:to achieve something bigger than myself that is going to
Speaker:give back significantly to this universe. And I've chosen a
Speaker:tribe of people that I really, really appreciate in the in the services
Speaker:space. People who are often underappreciated in
Speaker:what some feel is an ugly duckling business, and,
Speaker:it's not a sexy thing to sell or or market for.
Speaker:And I and I really love the challenge of that, and and and I've
Speaker:gotten very good at cracking that code.
Speaker:To be able to serve people really well from the top of the funnel
Speaker:straight down to to the things that matter in our lives that
Speaker:aren't associated to business. So one of the words you led off
Speaker:with is the word principles, and I'm
Speaker:always intrigued. That's one of these big words. I I believe in
Speaker:the world we're in today, and I know you're we'll we'll be talking about
Speaker:some techniques, tactics, and things like that in in the area of
Speaker:ads and marketing that you specialize in as we move along.
Speaker:But I I think a lot of people I don't wanna say they're lacking
Speaker:principles. That's not I don't think the thing I want to say,
Speaker:but I think it takes a certain person to add that into the
Speaker:their vocabulary. Mhmm. Mhmm.
Speaker:Have you always had that in your vocabulary of who you
Speaker:are, or did that arrive at some point along the way?
Speaker:And if so, when? I've always been
Speaker:a person of high principle. You know, I see what's just and
Speaker:unjust in this world and pick a side. So, ultimately,
Speaker:I have hills that I die on, and usually to my detriment,
Speaker:because I'm operating off of a fairly high level of
Speaker:of honesty and integrity. I'm I'm trying
Speaker:hard not just to serve myself, and it's not that people, lack
Speaker:principles. It's that they lack conviction of those principles, and
Speaker:that comes down to a fundamental understanding that I have. Let's
Speaker:get deep real quick here and and talk about values and
Speaker:beliefs. You know, Niels Bohr, the the Nobel
Speaker:Prize winning, physicist, once said that the
Speaker:opposite of a profound truth can very often be an equally profound truth. And,
Speaker:Wizard Academy, where I learned the the the
Speaker:the principles of communication, branding, and and
Speaker:doing marketing in a different way than I had been used to, which
Speaker:was deeply transactional. Right?
Speaker:Effective, profitable, willing to work,
Speaker:transactional. Ever changing, ever having to adjust and
Speaker:adapt to the situation. Circling back down to
Speaker:this last year, the year before last, Roy and
Speaker:Manley and I, Manley is another partner of ours. He's a pastor at a church
Speaker:in in New Orleans. And he he said, Ryan,
Speaker:it's, it's interesting. You know, your your beliefs are
Speaker:worthless. And I said, Manley, that's a great way to start a conversation. Where are
Speaker:we going with this? And, you know,
Speaker:justice and mercy are both profoundly
Speaker:true truths, But they can't live in the same space.
Speaker:It depends on which side of the table you're sitting on. The accused
Speaker:murderer wants to get mercy, and the victim's
Speaker:family wants to get justice. But what happens when the
Speaker:victim's family murders the murderer? Now what?
Speaker:Right? A belief is easily
Speaker:interchangeable. It's convenient to
Speaker:change based on the situation. And it's the world that we
Speaker:live in today is that we change our beliefs to suit ourselves,
Speaker:but that's not where value lives. Value lives in a
Speaker:place where you do something inconvenient
Speaker:for yourself to convenience another person,
Speaker:to elevate another person in other situations.
Speaker:And that value is what people value,
Speaker:and that's why we call it value. Right?
Speaker:Because it's valuable. You're doing something that's worth something because it
Speaker:had an actual cost. Right? And when
Speaker:we have an actual cost, now we have something that we can
Speaker:do that's better than. That's the thing that can bring us
Speaker:above what our competition is doing in whatever
Speaker:perception of competition you are. Sometimes it's yourself.
Speaker:Sometimes it's it's, you know, that guy who's who's hitting on your wife, and
Speaker:sometimes it's that that other thing that's pulling your child's
Speaker:attention or affecting your business in some way, or your
Speaker:customer base as as to whether they choose to buy from you or not.
Speaker:The employee who decides to work for you or go work for somebody else. All
Speaker:of these things fall into the same bucket. What are
Speaker:you doing that is actually valuable, and
Speaker:what are you doing that is just serving you conveniently?
Speaker:And that's why principles and value matters so much in
Speaker:this world, because we're missing that part of our
Speaker:life of actually putting ourselves into a position of struggle
Speaker:or sacrifice. And until we do, are we
Speaker:really serving at the highest level? Yeah. And I think there's so much
Speaker:I don't know. Conflict is the right word, but maybe it is
Speaker:that there's the tension. We're gonna talk about friction in a little while, but there's
Speaker:that tension between the 2. To me, kind of from
Speaker:the seat that I'm in, it seems like
Speaker:people are picking their sides more and more. And and there's still some people that
Speaker:are waffling between the 2, and I believe it probably
Speaker:really comes into play when you begin working with some
Speaker:leaders and owners of businesses and companies because you probably know really
Speaker:quickly if there are people of principle, value,
Speaker:what their culture is, all that type stuff. I wanna get into that in just
Speaker:a little while because what I'd love to do first, you
Speaker:mentioned a time frame of 2,000 15 seems to be a significant
Speaker:time for you. And I know from doing a little bit of research, you grew
Speaker:up. There was family business. You're up in Canada. There's some things
Speaker:with the way you grew up. And then I'm gonna go back to
Speaker:the introduction that you had. You said that you are currently
Speaker:working on becoming the leader, the person,
Speaker:and things like that. I'm maybe not wording it exactly the way you
Speaker:did, but maybe just working on yourself. I I guess
Speaker:I wanted to backtrack a little bit and and give a little bit of
Speaker:background and maybe find out from
Speaker:you what did some of the early experiences in your life, how
Speaker:did it how did it play into what you're doing now? You know, growing up
Speaker:around a family business, it was a furniture company, different things like that.
Speaker:And then when did you become aware? Was it 2015?
Speaker:Was it earlier that you needed to start working on yourself? We've got a lot
Speaker:of leaders listening in. And these leaders, if they're listening to this
Speaker:podcast, they're probably already they've crossed over that threshold
Speaker:of I need to go deeper. I need to think in a different way,
Speaker:values, and all that. However, I love to hear people's stories in their journey.
Speaker:So give me some of the high points and low points of, you know, Ryan,
Speaker:the early years. Yeah. The early
Speaker:years growing up, we didn't have a lot of money. We were certainly
Speaker:were low middle lower middle class. My
Speaker:grandfather was upper middle class in his family, so
Speaker:we knew that there was kind of this this,
Speaker:better world that we should be aspiring to and and lived in an
Speaker:environment, a really, entrepreneurial space. My grandfather,
Speaker:my grandmother, my both my parents, all entrepreneurs. I
Speaker:I became an entrepreneur early on. I started in sales, which is an
Speaker:entrepreneurial journey into itself, and really wanted to go out there and
Speaker:and help consult people. So I started off as some low level training, and then
Speaker:evolved from there as I went to university and all those things.
Speaker:I dropped out of high school, found out this
Speaker:August of 2024 that I have ADHD, and and
Speaker:that that's really been something that's affected my life and often affects the
Speaker:life of entrepreneurs who are typically on a, you
Speaker:know, a pursuit of the dopamine dragon. And
Speaker:ultimately, I'd I'd come to
Speaker:this loggerhead, you know, from 2013 to 15
Speaker:that I wasn't accelerating and being
Speaker:where I wanted to be in my life. I was doing things that I wanted
Speaker:to do. I felt like I was on this path, but it was such a
Speaker:struggle. It was such a grind. It was such,
Speaker:a a frustrating part
Speaker:of my life where I knew that I had more in me that I wasn't
Speaker:putting out there. So I I went to the Wizard Academy. I had been reading
Speaker:the Monday morning memo at Monday morning memo.com for the last 15
Speaker:years thereabout. What I'd read in the rabbit
Speaker:hole as you click through the pictures, you start to get these other little bits
Speaker:of information from Roy. And he says, I'm thinking about stepping back and doing a
Speaker:thing. I said, well, I gotta see this guy in action. He's been kind of
Speaker:a, a figure in my life for for 15 years. I'd bought his
Speaker:books, the the New York Times best selling trilogy, Wizard of Ads.
Speaker:And they formed beliefs that I
Speaker:resonated with. But I always thought it was almost aspirational, not real.
Speaker:And there was elements that were pulled from it throughout my life, but
Speaker:never locked in the big play. So I go to a class.
Speaker:Magical worlds of the wizard aca of the wizard of ads, and it's it's
Speaker:it's at the wizard academy, and and in Austin, Texas.
Speaker:And and we we get transformed over 3 days where
Speaker:you're you're just buzzing with information and and ideas,
Speaker:and the laws of the universe, and the impact of
Speaker:fine art, and third gravitating bodies, and all of these magical
Speaker:ideas that have you thinking about business in a different way. And I'm
Speaker:thinking as I'm sitting there as a as a well paid, highly
Speaker:paid, sales and and, marketing
Speaker:consultant that I was all I was traveling all around the world doing these things.
Speaker:And and realized, wow, there is a this is the universe that I've
Speaker:been aspiring to and then thinking about. So I keep on
Speaker:taking classes and classes and classes. Roy starts to get to know me,
Speaker:quite well, and and in 2017, I become a partner after many, many
Speaker:conversations on the phone and and whatnot. That's the pass into The Wizard
Speaker:of Oz. There is no resume processed. And?
Speaker:Ultimately what it boiled down to was there had
Speaker:to be a better way, and the better way was putting more effort into the
Speaker:right things than to put all of your eggs into the transactional
Speaker:bucket of cooks and cajoling people into a business
Speaker:proposition rather than, inspiring
Speaker:them. And as that hit me,
Speaker:I came to realize that's been my whole life. Right? I've been in sales.
Speaker:I've been in this transactional grind, this retail gulag, this
Speaker:this this automotive space where I was good. Really,
Speaker:really good. Operationally good. Sales good. I I knew
Speaker:how to crush this. But only
Speaker:on the transactional side. So I had to see this change.
Speaker:I had to see this change about myself because I knew that there was
Speaker:more that I was not I was gonna have to do something different than I
Speaker:was doing right now. And it it all spurred from that
Speaker:moment where I was feeling like I hadn't made it where I thought I could
Speaker:make it. And I knew that there was more in me. So these were the
Speaker:signals that I picked up. As I as I started getting deeper and deeper and
Speaker:deeper, I realized that all this advertising stuff was all the same information that you'd
Speaker:say in training stuff. And all this training stuff is really what we'd say in
Speaker:culture stuff. And my goodness, all of this stuff was the same stuff that you'd
Speaker:apply to your wife and kids in your house, or or at your church, or
Speaker:or any of these other places where you're interacting
Speaker:with, lo and behold, people. Right? That salespeople are
Speaker:people, and bosses are people, and your wife is a person. Holy cow. Who
Speaker:would have thought, but it all ends up being the same same
Speaker:core group of things, and that put me on a path. In 2019,
Speaker:I really started thinking about this from perspective
Speaker:that Ray Sager, another one of our partners, had had come up with. I thought
Speaker:it was one of the most brilliant things. It was really the linchpin of what
Speaker:we had going down the rabbit hole of I could be a part of Wizard
Speaker:Vast. And that's that your brand, your culture,
Speaker:and the experience that you deliver are all intermingled
Speaker:For all the the the 3 culminating
Speaker:self referential parts that build a business
Speaker:and grow a business. Well, I believe today
Speaker:that your business is your culture. That your
Speaker:culture is the culmination of communication in
Speaker:your business that communicates with your employees how you
Speaker:intend to do business and serve people. And they're picking up the
Speaker:subconscious and subtle cues, the the things that you're not saying, but are
Speaker:showing, straight through to the things that you that you do. And that
Speaker:all reflects in the buying experience. And your employee and buying experience
Speaker:are what make up the stories that we tell in the advertising of your brand.
Speaker:And that we can really elevate those brands that do a
Speaker:wonderful job at serving their people at both the employee and
Speaker:customer level. Those have the the
Speaker:the ingredients of a great brand, and those are the people that we
Speaker:look for when we look to to, partner with a with a client
Speaker:because we're in it for the long term. And and ultimately, this game
Speaker:only works when you're playing the long term game. Otherwise, just keep doing
Speaker:the transactional stuff, but more of it, and you you'll be just
Speaker:fine. You'll be exhausted, but
Speaker:you you'll get it done. Right? So I I think
Speaker:the thing that's really good, I've come to terms with, it seems
Speaker:to be exhausting is when you're
Speaker:attempting to do things that
Speaker:do not appear to fit with who you really are. That's
Speaker:one of the reasons why I like that question we talked about at the beginning,
Speaker:and it sounds like that's where you were in your role before
Speaker:you discovered maybe this, air quotes here, different way of doing
Speaker:business because and I'll say this, and I'll let
Speaker:you respond to this. I actually think some of the tactics
Speaker:will work in a lot of different situations. It's just
Speaker:a matter of getting cohesive or congruent, whatever the right
Speaker:word is, with who you really are, that brand, that culture, and
Speaker:things like that. And I think culture spills out. I I work with leadership
Speaker:teams, so I see this quite a bit. I go in, and I spend time
Speaker:with companies' leadership teams. And I could
Speaker:talk about us building a culture within a
Speaker:company, but, truthfully, the culture becomes the
Speaker:leaders and the leadership of the people that are there. I
Speaker:could come up with all types of things, but really what I
Speaker:wanna do is I wanna identify kind of that first question I asked. I wanna
Speaker:identify who Ryan really is so that
Speaker:I could then we could work that culture. We could we could make sure that
Speaker:we're in alignment with what we're doing, and it kinda
Speaker:we can kinda make all that match up. To me, I'll say
Speaker:it this way, and then I'll pose it as a question. To me, it seems
Speaker:like what most of us need to do as leaders, people that are running companies
Speaker:or organizations, we need to identify who we are
Speaker:so that we could then project that when we spread the nets of our advertising
Speaker:and marketing and all out into the world.
Speaker:Question mark. Right. Well, look. You know?
Speaker:So a lot to unpack there. A a leader, a culture
Speaker:is is what a leader will tolerate and what a leader
Speaker:stands for, and those two things
Speaker:are inextricably intertwined. You can't, disconnect
Speaker:those those things. But your leader doesn't get to
Speaker:control the culture. Right? At the end of the day, the leader gets
Speaker:to, direct and and lead the culture and point people in
Speaker:the right direction. Think of it this way. We have we have
Speaker:4 people on the ocean of life. We have surfers. We
Speaker:have navigators. We have drifters, and we have drowners. The
Speaker:surfers are are taking the the waves of, of
Speaker:opportunity as they come. When the waves, isn't as as
Speaker:delightful as it could have been, they blame the wave. The the drifters are
Speaker:just bobbing around hoping for somebody to show up and and
Speaker:do it for them, while the drowners have a problem for every solution.
Speaker:Now, I'm not talking about the occasional drowning that we've all done,
Speaker:in our faith, medically, chemically, financially. I'm
Speaker:talking about the professionals, the ones who are really good at at just
Speaker:like, oh, you saved me. Oh, I'm dying again. Right? There's always
Speaker:this ongoing pressure of of failure. Right?
Speaker:Then there's the navigators, and navigators know one thing
Speaker:that no one else knows. They know that the north star doesn't move in the
Speaker:sky. And that north star, because it doesn't move, allows
Speaker:them to pitch the sails
Speaker:towards where they want to go. They can follow the winds and
Speaker:waves of life. That are thrashing at
Speaker:your hull, but they allow you to continue moving forward.
Speaker:Let's face it. No. Nobody follows somebody who isn't going anywhere.
Speaker:So until you have a north star, there is nowhere for
Speaker:you to go. And that's why having principle
Speaker:matters so much, because there's no way you can be a leader
Speaker:without it. It's impossible. And you can't have
Speaker:followers if you're not a leader, and you can't be a leader if you have
Speaker:no north star, because you can't navigate. Right? You
Speaker:have nothing to navigate with. All the other constellations and everything
Speaker:else, all the distractions that are in our businesses and lives
Speaker:are these wonderful things that tell us things about the sky and have
Speaker:us understand things about the universe,
Speaker:but they don't actually get you anywhere.
Speaker:And the interesting thing, I mean, we're getting quite
Speaker:existential here, which I love. We're we're about to we're about to head towards the
Speaker:practical. It's where we're about to go. The interesting thing is that
Speaker:self awareness is something that I'm just becoming more and more
Speaker:aware of that just to to give a
Speaker:double, nod to the word awareness there.
Speaker:And I believe that everyone has principles and values.
Speaker:I just think some people are more aware of what theirs are
Speaker:versus other people. And
Speaker:and in just a little while, I'm gonna ask you kind of a process of
Speaker:what you do when you step into a business and how you begin identifying
Speaker:that and see if it's a match and then how you start leading and guiding
Speaker:towards how to do some marketing advertising and all that. But
Speaker:I've got one I think it's just one. Let's go macro
Speaker:question in the industry that you're in because I think you've got the expertise to
Speaker:answer this. This episode, sometimes I don't like putting time stamps, but
Speaker:this is gonna be releasing in early 2025. We're recording right at the
Speaker:tail end of 24. And what I would love for you to do, I'd love
Speaker:your insight on this. What I would love, Ryan, is
Speaker:give some things that you're observing that are trends,
Speaker:things that are moving in your industry and what we're
Speaker:seeing. And I'm gonna go ahead and give you my second part of the question
Speaker:so you could just go. And then I also want you to share
Speaker:timeless principles that aren't going anywhere
Speaker:because I have a there are many people, they wanna just ride trends
Speaker:and ignore timeless principles. Some people wanna stay with tradition
Speaker:and never look at trends. And so I think with this question, I
Speaker:would love for you to hit a little bit of both. Is that okay? What
Speaker:are some trends you're seeing here in 2025, and then what are some timeless
Speaker:principles that we do not need to ignore? I think starting off with
Speaker:with what we should recognize
Speaker:aren't going to change. The psychology and biology,
Speaker:particularly the biology and neuroscience of people, is not going to
Speaker:change. Right now, we understand, that in a
Speaker:foundational way, but there is a world of of understanding that
Speaker:we do not have as human beings.
Speaker:What we do know is that they're often directly
Speaker:associated with the laws of nature. Right? So we can draw a deep
Speaker:and real correlation to those laws of natures. Those truths that be
Speaker:so profoundly true, they could not be not true. And I'm
Speaker:I'm thinking about this scientifically in the sense of, we should
Speaker:always be questioning science. That is the point of science. But
Speaker:equally as much, we can we can, trust
Speaker:that certain things are going to be a certain way.
Speaker:For example, in business, customers are going to continue to
Speaker:want, the best price for their money. Right? And it
Speaker:their their money, the customer's money has to be worse less than
Speaker:the value that you delivered. Right? Whatever that is. The the second thing
Speaker:they want is choice. They want the autonomy of choice. Right?
Speaker:The the the third thing that they're gonna want, is is convenience.
Speaker:They're going to absolutely want to be convenience,
Speaker:regardless of how that looks in your in your business. And there's there's a number
Speaker:of very, very specific modeling ways to do that.
Speaker:But those are things that are true that are not going to change.
Speaker:There's there's communication elements that are not going to change. The
Speaker:the 10 things that I talk about in in my book coming up in
Speaker:frictionless is around motivation are not going to
Speaker:change. There's way more nonsense that you can learn about motivation, but
Speaker:these first ten things are the 10 things that are going to get you
Speaker:80% of the way there. Right? And if we can
Speaker:just get the basics right, we're going to have an awful lot
Speaker:more success in growing from there after
Speaker:we've got a good solid foundation. Right?
Speaker:So those aren't gonna change. That's the psychology. Right? Which
Speaker:is driven by the biology, like dopamine, like oxytocin,
Speaker:the things that have us do the things that we do.
Speaker:Now, the trends that are going to affect us are going to be
Speaker:things like social media, which has already affected us and will
Speaker:continue to affect us. The trends are
Speaker:AI, and the,
Speaker:ability to either allow AI to replace
Speaker:our novel thoughts, right, because AI cannot
Speaker:produce a novel thought, it can only produce a reductionary thought,
Speaker:or we can use it to augment our iterative
Speaker:and innovative thoughts as human beings.
Speaker:Content is going to explode on the
Speaker:Internet. Most of it is going to be absolute
Speaker:garbage. Not because it's
Speaker:generally bad content, but it's reductionary
Speaker:content. It is content that does not propel us forward.
Speaker:It only keeps us and satisfies our cognitive biases,
Speaker:our our not confirms our existing
Speaker:beliefs, because we can we can literally get
Speaker:anything to confirm our existing beliefs. When
Speaker:you start to realize that for every proverb,
Speaker:there was an equal and opposite proverb, you start to
Speaker:realize this is not new. The former
Speaker:babes. Anything that you want to believe, you can believe, and now
Speaker:you can believe it with the force of AI to
Speaker:reinforce everything that you want. Right? The
Speaker:reality is, you have to start thinking for yourself, and you will
Speaker:have to start standing for something, which is going to come
Speaker:with compromise. It's going to come with sacrifice. It's going to come
Speaker:with some level of struggle, and that's where your real
Speaker:worth lies as a human being. I'm I'm glad you brought up
Speaker:AI because that's obviously a a hot topic.
Speaker:And I agree with you that the quantity
Speaker:of stuff I'm gonna send, the quantity of stuff,
Speaker:post ads, things like that. I mean, I'm seeing on my feeds
Speaker:now, You know, I turned my advertising over to AI,
Speaker:and, you know, I'm just sitting here in Arizona doing
Speaker:nothing and all of are are you excited about
Speaker:AI? Concerned? Cautious? What
Speaker:is your personal, take on what we're seeing
Speaker:with this technology? I am absolutely
Speaker:so excited. I am so excited for 2 very
Speaker:weird reasons. I'm excited because it allows us
Speaker:to spark a creative
Speaker:constraint. Right? There's going to
Speaker:be so many people that are going to use it, and
Speaker:feel like they're done once they've got it done, that they don't
Speaker:even have to get involved, that they're going to put out
Speaker:such pedestrian content that it's going
Speaker:to be so easy to stand out amongst that crowd.
Speaker:So easy. They're going to be absolutely tragically
Speaker:bad that we're going to win the game
Speaker:by just being distinctive in a different
Speaker:world. Right? The the second thing is is that
Speaker:it does spark this this this idea. The content for
Speaker:those people who take that foundation and then put their
Speaker:spin, their truths, their values, and their principles,
Speaker:their beliefs, their true consequence on
Speaker:it are going to be so much more
Speaker:potent than the people who are
Speaker:phoning it in with AI. AI is not gonna take anyone's job,
Speaker:but somebody using AI is absolutely going to take
Speaker:your job. So so good.
Speaker:I'm I'm glad to hear that. I mean, I'm very excited about it too. I
Speaker:mean, I think it's a valuable tool
Speaker:and emphasize the word tool because
Speaker:that's what it's been for me and us. Even with some things that we're doing
Speaker:with this podcast and things like that, it doesn't replace what we're doing right
Speaker:here. It doesn't replace it's fascinating what
Speaker:you said that conviction because I have noticed. I'm actually
Speaker:preparing to do something kinda weird. It'll be right around our 300th
Speaker:episode. I'm actually going to interview
Speaker:chat GPT. I'm I'm gonna do a full on interview. One of the things
Speaker:I've noticed is that it doesn't have any conviction.
Speaker:I can sway it with my question to be
Speaker:agreeable or disagreeable. If I ask it to disagree with me, I can do that
Speaker:if I ask it to agree. So that conviction is so
Speaker:important. So here's my question, Ryan. How
Speaker:can we tell when people have convictions
Speaker:or not? Because there's a lot of people that are just going with the flow
Speaker:of whatever this technology, this tool is doing.
Speaker:So and this is kinda starting to get into how do you know who to
Speaker:work with. So how can we tell who has
Speaker:convictions and who does not? We're
Speaker:going to we're gonna know who has conviction and who doesn't by the
Speaker:feedback loop that comes from it. And that's the
Speaker:Google reviews, the Yelp reviews where the people specifically
Speaker:say, they said they would do this, and they did
Speaker:it. Right. They said that they were going to inflict this
Speaker:self imposed pain on themselves, and they did. Right?
Speaker:It's not about that nobody cares about a 5 star
Speaker:review in 2025. Everyone cares about
Speaker:a one star review, and how that company responded to
Speaker:the the problem when a problem arose, because there's
Speaker:no infallibility in humans, just like there's no
Speaker:infallibility in chat g p t. Right?
Speaker:There's there's flaw in existence. It's how
Speaker:you handle that and how you respect that that person. How
Speaker:do you keep it human, and how do you serve at the
Speaker:highest level? And that's going to come back from
Speaker:other people because you can't toot your own horn. You can just
Speaker:you can just do the right things and then a little bit
Speaker:more. So I believe you work quite a bit in
Speaker:the home services industry. Tell
Speaker:tell me and the listener, define that industry,
Speaker:and then and then tell us kinda what you can learn in
Speaker:that industry that is applicable to
Speaker:someone that might be outside of it because I think that's gonna frame the remainder
Speaker:of our conversation as we talk about some techniques and tactics and strategies.
Speaker:So Yeah. Home services industry, tell us more about that.
Speaker:Well and I'll I'll put a little qualifier out there in so much as I
Speaker:love home services. That's typically where I hang my hat, but I I
Speaker:serve the services industry that are typically higher
Speaker:average ticket sales, longer purchase cycles. That's my sweet
Speaker:spot from a from a a place where I want to work.
Speaker:The Wizard of Ads now services basically higher ticket
Speaker:items, longer purchase cycles in any industry, be it b to
Speaker:b, b to c, direct to consumer, online, offline, all that jazz.
Speaker:So we have solutions across the board. I love home services,
Speaker:and I love it because of their fantastic attitudes, their
Speaker:really, shelter mentalities that they
Speaker:have, these these servant,
Speaker:mindsets that that have a desire to do something more
Speaker:complicated than, the the
Speaker:basics. Right? It's when you're solving a little bit harder problem,
Speaker:you very quickly get in the weeds of trying to overeducate
Speaker:the client, which is a space that I struggled in in the retail world
Speaker:of of how much do you need to sell here, and how much do
Speaker:you just need to communicate? There's there's
Speaker:different paths. So to that end, what does that look
Speaker:like? The reason why home services is interesting is
Speaker:because it's it's 2 things. 1, it's externally
Speaker:triggered. Right? Something outside of the person has happened for
Speaker:you them to have to call you. Right? Something broke.
Speaker:Mhmm. The second thing is that it's a grudge purchase. No one's
Speaker:doing it to fulfill their identity as a human being,
Speaker:right, for not taking the people out back and saying, hey, come check out my
Speaker:new air compressor. This thing is amazing. Look at my hot water tank. This
Speaker:this thing is the, you know, the Bath Splasher 6,000. Everyone's
Speaker:gotta have one of these things. It doesn't happen. Now I'm trying really hard to
Speaker:make it happen, but, we I have an idea around a
Speaker:Toto toilet, the G400. We're gonna rename it to the
Speaker:Marriage Saver 6,000 for a variety of reasons that we can go on to
Speaker:another episode. But at the end of the day,
Speaker:what we're talking about here is finding a space where we
Speaker:can tell an ugly duckling business story
Speaker:in a way that has people go, they're my boys. I want those
Speaker:people in my house. Boys, girls, I'm being, gender neutral
Speaker:here. What matters is is that they're identified as
Speaker:their guy in the business. And that's not easy to
Speaker:do because one, something has to break, 2, no one wants to think about their,
Speaker:home service stuff, plumbing electric, or
Speaker:HVAC, or or doors. They don't wanna think about that stuff. They want them to
Speaker:just exist invisibly, and do the things.
Speaker:And not only to have a positive
Speaker:anchor associated to a negative
Speaker:trigger, but then to be the first people that they call
Speaker:and trust to do the work when they show up because we have already
Speaker:established a relationship before the customer showed up at Google.
Speaker:Mhmm. You heard it here, foe at first, folks, that
Speaker:Ryan could be disrupting the toilet industry in the not too dis toilets industry. So
Speaker:we'll be looking forward to that. That'll be exciting. That's probably an industry that
Speaker:needs addressing, but one of the things I love about home services is that
Speaker:it is very clear that they solve a problem.
Speaker:Mhmm. And one of the things I even struggle with with what I
Speaker:do I mean, I work with leaders and leadership teams. I help
Speaker:them with strategy. I work with them to, be more
Speaker:proactive instead of reactive, etcetera, etcetera. But you know what?
Speaker:I can't help the temperature go from 85 degrees in the
Speaker:house down to 68 in the middle of summer in
Speaker:Arizona or or whatever. How important is
Speaker:it in your industry for a problem to
Speaker:be solved? Well, this is why I
Speaker:focus predominantly in the essential services
Speaker:space. There's more plumbers that have saved lives than
Speaker:doctors. HVAC, heating,
Speaker:ventilation, and air conditioning, is no longer a
Speaker:luxury service. It is absolutely a life
Speaker:saving service when you're sitting in Arizona in a 109
Speaker:degrees heat. That's a dry heat, but it's a heat nonetheless.
Speaker:Right? And then you have electricians. Now if
Speaker:you don't have electricity to your HVAC system, it's the life support system of your
Speaker:life support system. Right? There there's electronics
Speaker:on heat heat pumps nowadays and and water, tanks
Speaker:and all of these things that service us at the highest level.
Speaker:Our communication devices need electricity. These are the essential
Speaker:services of the, of the, certainly of the planet.
Speaker:Ultimately, what it boils down to is it is absolutely crucial
Speaker:that these that these companies thrive. I have
Speaker:strong feelings about how this industry is right now, and industry is right
Speaker:now, and and I'm concerned about it in a in a lot of ways. But
Speaker:I'm also serving it where I can at the highest
Speaker:levels and intend to serve it at the highest levels as well.
Speaker:My job is to get that particular company that I've chosen to
Speaker:align myself with or that I have brought in for other
Speaker:partners to align themselves with as a wizard of ads,
Speaker:partner, and serve at the highest level so that
Speaker:they get noticed and stand out above the crowd so that they can run a
Speaker:profitable, healthy company. When you said
Speaker:that customers are are looking for, you know, how do I sell this stuff?
Speaker:Well, they're not just looking for you to solve a problem. They're looking for you
Speaker:to solve the problem first, empathetically,
Speaker:second, competently, and third, conveniently.
Speaker:Those are the 3 building blocks of any service industry,
Speaker:but fundamentally of the essential services industries. Let's
Speaker:go ahead and dive in a little bit. Let's just say that
Speaker:Super Cool Joe's HVAC gives you a call,
Speaker:and they and they want you to step in. What are some of the
Speaker:first things that you wanna know about, super cool Joe, which I
Speaker:just came up with that name, so that might be a clue for you. But,
Speaker:you got super cool Joe HVAC that's somewhere in
Speaker:Arizona, which is where I'm parked right now here for the winter, and he
Speaker:gives you a call. You know, we've talked about principle. We've talked about how
Speaker:important conviction is, things like that. What are you
Speaker:wanting to know when you first start interacting
Speaker:with Joe? Yeah. I I wanna know Joe, you know,
Speaker:or the the epitome of Joe, you know, who is representing the the,
Speaker:alter ego of Joe. I I wanna know first what their vision is.
Speaker:Where are they going with this company? Is this a 3 year play, a 10
Speaker:year play? Is this a pass to my kids play? Is this what is that
Speaker:situation? Because that's going to inform how we deliver the creative. The
Speaker:the second thing I wanna know is is where their purpose
Speaker:and mission is in life. And I'm not talking about the
Speaker:pedestrian, knowledge that so many people have have brought
Speaker:forth about, you know, purpose and and missions these days. I
Speaker:have a very specific terminology based off of a
Speaker:lot of research that I believe to be true based off of historical information
Speaker:and data that we we share. Ultimately, that is
Speaker:going to tell me what their beliefs are, what their what they believe to
Speaker:be true, and they're both, you know,
Speaker:profoundly true things, good and bad, both
Speaker:dualistic. Right. But what are their values? What are the thing that they're willing to
Speaker:do? What hills will they die on? What things will they do to
Speaker:punish themselves? And then what can we do to symbolize
Speaker:that into what the customer cares about most
Speaker:in air conditioning in in Phoenix? Mhmm. Right?
Speaker:When we get the symbolic concept of that right,
Speaker:then we can put that to market in a much bunch of different ways. Now,
Speaker:some some ideas are cute and clever. Other ideas
Speaker:are campaignable. They can last 5, 10, 15 years.
Speaker:And we're looking for campaignable ideas. We need something with legs.
Speaker:Otherwise, it just becomes cute and clever, which ultimately turns
Speaker:into unmemorable. Right? It it it can't hold
Speaker:their interest. Getting anyone's attention is easy. Keeping it
Speaker:is really hard. Right. And then embedding it
Speaker:is the secret sauce. Right. One of the things that I run
Speaker:across with a lot of business owners is
Speaker:they're way in deep with tactics, and they're very
Speaker:short on strategy. That's one of the things I attempt to work with them
Speaker:on. How did tactics versus strategy relate
Speaker:to when you step in the door? I think you just addressed some
Speaker:of that, but let's say someone picks up the phone. Let's say, super
Speaker:cool Joe calls you and says, listen. I really want
Speaker:you to come in and run a bunch of Facebook ads for me so we
Speaker:could get some more revenue coming in. How do you respond
Speaker:to super cool Joe when he says a
Speaker:tactical something tactical versus
Speaker:what you know needs to be more of a campaignable or
Speaker:strategic is the way I would word it approach?
Speaker:With with compassion and empathy, Jim, you know, at
Speaker:the end of the day, they all come to us like that. Without saying, Joe,
Speaker:you're wrong. Right. Well, and it's because they are
Speaker:wrong, and it's factually wrong, not opinion wrong.
Speaker:And that matters, and it's not because I don't
Speaker:care. It's because I do. Right? Ultimately, when you have a
Speaker:situation where a person's coming in based on a channel, that is
Speaker:super normal because people are equating the outcomes
Speaker:to have results when what they didn't catch was the whole
Speaker:set up for the magic trick. Right. What did we have to do
Speaker:to get that elephant to appear on stage and astonish everyone?
Speaker:Well, David Copperfield has an answer for that. I wish I knew the answer.
Speaker:I'm sure somebody has ruined that, magic trick for somebody, and I'm not gonna go
Speaker:looking for it because I wanna be astonished next time.
Speaker:What it boils down to is we're trying to figure
Speaker:out the magic trick, and that requires
Speaker:infinitely more setup strategy, right, than
Speaker:the ta da moment of the Facebook ads showing up. Great.
Speaker:Running Facebook ads may be the right solution for
Speaker:super, cool Joe's HVAC company. But it
Speaker:also may be a hyper inefficient path
Speaker:forward that's just going to spend money for the sake of spending money and not
Speaker:getting any short or long term result. So
Speaker:to serve Joe at the highest level, I would say, tell me a bit about
Speaker:what you wanna do. Where do you wanna go with this thing? How long are
Speaker:you keeping it? What is the game that we're playing?
Speaker:And what are the rules to that game so that we can play within the
Speaker:rules and then figure out all the ways that we can step outside to win.
Speaker:Right. Ethically, morally, legally. You know?
Speaker:But equally as much in a
Speaker:distinct way, we're not going to win this game. Can you market your
Speaker:company and grow your business and make money, doing things that we
Speaker:don't do? Yep. Will you grow and hit a ceiling
Speaker:doing it? Yep. That's just pure math. Right? There's only so
Speaker:many human beings in the population. Only so many of them are going to buy,
Speaker:and you can either grind them into the into paste to to to buy your
Speaker:stuff, or you can or you can get more of a
Speaker:pie. You can also get a bigger pie by going into another market.
Speaker:But you're still getting your piece of the pie. We're we're
Speaker:basically taking an extra share of the same pie
Speaker:because more people want our piece than the other piece, which
Speaker:gives us the larger piece. Mhmm. That takes time because
Speaker:people have to have something break in our world. Right?
Speaker:They have to have had their guy that they already have, the devil they
Speaker:know, let them down. Right? And then they have to be
Speaker:willing to know, like, and trust us over the swath of other
Speaker:2,000 operators in Phoenix, Arizona right
Speaker:now that would be happy to do it. Half of them that would
Speaker:be happy to do it for less than any price that you're willing to quote
Speaker:ever. So we have all of these slogger heads that
Speaker:we have to figure out to do something that is going to be
Speaker:valuable to people. This doesn't change whether you're running a church,
Speaker:or a or an HVAC company, or a restaurant. All
Speaker:of these things hold true because those principles
Speaker:don't change. And that's why Facebook
Speaker:matters at the very end of this conversation. The very first thing
Speaker:that matters is, what are we trying to achieve?
Speaker:How are we going to achieve it is the last thing. But why are we
Speaker:trying to achieve it? And what are we going to do? Right?
Speaker:Just like Simon Sinek's Golden Circle. It's it's this
Speaker:why. People buy the why. Mhmm. Let's find the why,
Speaker:and let's represent symbolically the why in the
Speaker:in the message that we put out there. And let's leverage things like
Speaker:entertainment until such time as they need your thing. Right? Because when they
Speaker:hear your ad, they're not going buy it. Right? If you if you have a
Speaker:Lululemon ad, sure. They could go, oh, I need to have my ass
Speaker:look fabulous. Let's put it on. I wanna add and
Speaker:inspire people to have fabulous keisters, and and and here we
Speaker:are. We're not doing that. We're we're selling air conditioners.
Speaker:The air conditioner is like, it's not broke. I'm not fixing something that's not broke.
Speaker:I want my thing to be invisible, and that's not
Speaker:that's not going to be a win in this strategy. So, knowing the industry,
Speaker:understanding the landscape, and then taking the path of least resistance
Speaker:until such time as they're ready to buy, and then showing up in their
Speaker:heart for them to make the decision to click on us,
Speaker:pick up that phone, book that appointment with us over somebody
Speaker:else. Yeah. One of the things interesting
Speaker:that I I think I heard it on your advertising in America podcast
Speaker:episode. I listened to one where y'all were talking about
Speaker:what has become a little bit more of an old
Speaker:school advertising, which is radio and TV. And
Speaker:it was odd when you were just talking. I was thinking about how, you know,
Speaker:our real estate companies years ago, we used to do door knocking, you know, and
Speaker:hanging flyers on people's doors and, you know, just put them in their
Speaker:mailbox, which you're not supposed to do, by the way. And I and it got
Speaker:me thinking about analog versus digital or or really what it got me
Speaker:thinking about, Ryan, was all the choices
Speaker:that Joe has. Right. And which also
Speaker:means all the choices that you have as someone
Speaker:who's advising Joe on the best route to take.
Speaker:And and I I think one of the things I I tell
Speaker:my wife this all the time. This is probably showing my age. I'm 61 years
Speaker:old now, and it's like, you know what? I'd like to have 3 choices.
Speaker:I don't want a 103, but we've got a lot of
Speaker:choices right now for spreading the nets or getting the word out
Speaker:about Joe's business. Correct? And just
Speaker:whatever you wanna respond to with that. I mean, do we have too many choices?
Speaker:Maybe we have more options. I mean, I guess that's good, but it
Speaker:also confuses Joe. It it does confuse Joe
Speaker:because everyone who's selling a channel
Speaker:is pretending to be a marketer when what they actually are
Speaker:is a salesperson selling a channel. And it's
Speaker:it's it's it's excruciating because there is literally
Speaker:millions of those people to me, and
Speaker:to my other 80 partners that are that are my equals and peers in this
Speaker:in this adventure that we're on. And there is certainly other
Speaker:organizations that stand for the same things that we stand for because
Speaker:they seem to be these lost fables
Speaker:of of of marketing, when in fact, they're the first
Speaker:principles of communication. Right? They are the biology
Speaker:and psychology, the neuroscience of
Speaker:communication that we're working from. So
Speaker:we monitor radio every day of every year.
Speaker:And at the end of the day, what
Speaker:we're trying to do we're we're media agnostic for for for starters.
Speaker:We we love radio because it's efficient, but radio is not
Speaker:always the solution. Right? We love TV, because
Speaker:it's it's, provocative, and we can leverage multiple
Speaker:stimulants of the human brain, at one time.
Speaker:But it's not always the answer. There's a production cost to that that that
Speaker:pulls it, the cost. And certainly to a $3,000,000 operation,
Speaker:we're not selling to Apple here. Apple's not our client.
Speaker:Ultimately, what it boils down to is
Speaker:picking the channels like radio, like television, there really is
Speaker:only a few options. There's written word,
Speaker:right, where you can read a thing. There is visuals.
Speaker:Right? Those could be video or static image, or there
Speaker:could be spoken word. Right? The spoken
Speaker:word has the most powerful impact from a
Speaker:retention and recall standpoint. It has a 5 times
Speaker:longer durability in the brain than a visual
Speaker:stimulant. A visual and a written, or a spoken together
Speaker:are going to give you a 6 times, and a written, spoken, and and,
Speaker:audio combination is going to give you a 7 times combination.
Speaker:So that's why TV ads can be powerful, because
Speaker:you now have written words on screen while you're also doing
Speaker:another thing that you can you can embed, embed, embed.
Speaker:The trick here is frequency, how
Speaker:repetitious you show up in the customer's
Speaker:purview. The impression count matters. And I'm not talking about
Speaker:the doom scroll impression that you don't actually even get
Speaker:seen on. I'm talking about the impression from the billboard,
Speaker:from the truck driving by, from the, from the, radio
Speaker:ad that you heard, from the television ad that you saw twice that
Speaker:week. When we get the math right to the neuroscience
Speaker:that has already been researched for 30 years on how
Speaker:much it takes to get retention and recall to move from the initial
Speaker:part of the brain that holds things for about 7 seconds like a ram of
Speaker:a computer to about 7 days, which is erased
Speaker:with sleep, like defragging an old PC to clean up that brain a
Speaker:little bit, Back to the chemical part of the brain
Speaker:where people sit there and remember your thing 30 years
Speaker:later. These are the songs that you know 2,000
Speaker:sets of lyrics to to 2,000 songs that you never wanted to
Speaker:know the lyrics to. Right? They get in there,
Speaker:and they stay there. Whether you like it or not, I bet you you know
Speaker:of cab company's, jingle from 1985
Speaker:that you can't get rid of, but that cab company is probably not even in
Speaker:existence anymore. Right? These are the things that we have to
Speaker:consider when we're actually building
Speaker:the thing that we're building. That's what's going to inform which channel we
Speaker:put it on because the channel will dictate what the frequency that they'll see it
Speaker:at is. It'll dictate how impactful it
Speaker:needs to be to do the thing. And what duty are we trying to serve?
Speaker:Are we trying to build a bond with our customer, or are we
Speaker:trying to activate a sale? We need to do both,
Speaker:and we need to do both in protection of the brand's reputation.
Speaker:And when we do that, holistically as a single
Speaker:solution, we build a business that goes from
Speaker:name recognition to a household name. Now the difference is
Speaker:people knowing your name is great. But when they know your
Speaker:name and care about it, you have a household
Speaker:name. Is the is the chemistry think of it like
Speaker:think of it like bricks and mortar. Every impression is a
Speaker:brick. The emotion is the mortar.
Speaker:If you want to build a big house, you're going to need mortar.
Speaker:You know, you you would absolutely have bricks. Right? But
Speaker:what's more impressive, the pile of bricks sitting on an empty lot or a
Speaker:McMansion that everyone goes by and looks at, right, and
Speaker:and and wants to go into.
Speaker:Right? And when they actually step into that house, the inside of the house
Speaker:has to be just as nice as the outside of the house because if it's
Speaker:disappointing on the inside, guess what? They're not coming back.
Speaker:Doesn't matter how pretty it is on the outside. You have to deliver
Speaker:on the thing, and even better when you put something that's in that house that
Speaker:kinda surprises and delights them a little bit and goes, oh, I want a little
Speaker:bit more of that eyes. Have you seen the thing? That's
Speaker:delight. Now delight is is a driver of oxytocin, not
Speaker:dopamine. Dopamine's never going to win this game for you. When you
Speaker:get people feeling the oxytocin of your brand because they've
Speaker:been inside of it, now you've got repeat business,
Speaker:5 star reviews, unsolicited referrals.
Speaker:You've gotta go see this house. You've gotta go inside and check it out. You've
Speaker:gotta see what they've got. You're gonna love it. Right?
Speaker:These are the foundational things that don't
Speaker:change. The channels are gonna change. AI is gonna mess with
Speaker:channels, and and YouTubes, and and Chat GbTs,
Speaker:and search on Chat GbT. All this all this could change.
Speaker:And that's okay. There's really smart people that we talk to that help change the
Speaker:change. Right? To get it on and and give you the present. But
Speaker:there's all this stuff that's not. Door hangers, love them. Right?
Speaker:Truck grabs, amazing. A a plane that's got
Speaker:a thing towed behind it, we've done that before. We'll do it again. A guy
Speaker:in a gorilla suit holding a sign, absolutely in the
Speaker:right strategy as a whole. So one
Speaker:of the challenges that most business owners have
Speaker:is they're fighting for attention. Not their attention,
Speaker:for getting the attention. There's so much noise, and you said it earlier. AI is
Speaker:going to add more noise out there. I
Speaker:may have heard you talk about or may have seen it, but let's let's just
Speaker:say Joe goes down the gimmick route to cut through the
Speaker:attention, and he says, I want a
Speaker:busty woman that's sort of sweating and looking
Speaker:wet with a low cut shirt on a billboard and
Speaker:says, hot wife. You know? I've seen that all over. We travel a good bit.
Speaker:Those are all over, by the way. Mhmm. And
Speaker:maybe they work. Maybe someone's selling it. Where do gimmicks
Speaker:fit into this? Because they really kinda bother me,
Speaker:but is when does something become a gimmick versus
Speaker:strategy? And then I wanna ask about frictionless before we finish up
Speaker:here. Right. Well, at the end of the day, you know, there's a
Speaker:couple questions you gotta ask. Could I take, a a picture of a
Speaker:beautiful woman and and say, hot wife, keep her cool at
Speaker:Joe? Could we take Joe's could we take Joe's logo off
Speaker:of that, put somebody else's on it? So how how
Speaker:did how did it work? Right? Did Joe get any more business from it, or
Speaker:did Joe just startle someone? Now the very first time that that was
Speaker:put out there, it probably got a few phone calls,
Speaker:and it possibly got a whole bunch of phone calls, and some of
Speaker:them may have had to do with service and a bunch about,
Speaker:maybe checking the moral standings of the people making those
Speaker:decisions. It's hard to say. We don't know.
Speaker:But what I do know is that gimmicks work until they don't.
Speaker:Right? Anything that works fast is
Speaker:certain to not work long. Things that take
Speaker:longer to work tend to last longer.
Speaker:This is the difference between a 1 night stand and a marriage. What do
Speaker:you want from your customer? Well, you know,
Speaker:that's the question you've gotta ask yourself. And then that's why
Speaker:we tend to focus on higher ticket, longer average ticket, longer average sale
Speaker:products, that have a bit of complexity to them because
Speaker:there is a large buy cycle and a large,
Speaker:lifetime value of customer there that can justify the endurance
Speaker:needed to grow this business, and the spend that goes
Speaker:along with it too in gross stages. So
Speaker:gimmicks, you know, if we were to pull back from the word gimmick and
Speaker:just say sales activation as a whole, if sales
Speaker:activation is all you do, there is a a profoundly important
Speaker:graph that, exists in the marketing world from Binet and Fields that shows
Speaker:the sawtooth that hits the natural demand ceiling of any
Speaker:marketplace, and it's consistent. It'll stay flat
Speaker:all the way along, and it'll work and then stop, work and stop. And you
Speaker:just have to keep working. This is the transactional world we're in.
Speaker:That's the hard part. If we do that in conjunction with
Speaker:branding, the branding is going to be a set of stairs that eventually
Speaker:oversteps and supersedes and goes beyond
Speaker:the sales activation. The sales activation feed the beast.
Speaker:The branding compounds. This is some cost.
Speaker:You're not going to get anything more than what you get. The
Speaker:branding is going to go past that and give you your disproportionate
Speaker:share of market. It's gonna take 3 to 5 years to do
Speaker:that. Anybody who tells you that it's gonna happen in 6 months, you're
Speaker:going to notice it in 6 months of a branding campaign. In the first
Speaker:6 months, it's going to be torture, and you're gonna spend a bunch of money
Speaker:and not get anything for it. But though that and that's
Speaker:why people don't brand very often is because there is this duration that they
Speaker:have to go through, but the real meat here happens in years 3, 4, and
Speaker:5. It pays for itself in year 2 and and forward as
Speaker:a rule depending on, of course, some uncontrollables that nobody
Speaker:can can can can manage to to effect.
Speaker:Ultimately, what we're talking about here is what do you want
Speaker:out of the business? Now, if Joe has a business that he's gonna sell in
Speaker:3 years, don't bother wasting your money on a brand.
Speaker:Just dump all of your money as aggressively as you can
Speaker:into Thales activation, gimmick driven, paying as much as you
Speaker:can for a paid lead, all of this stuff that you like,
Speaker:because let me qualify that. You're gonna pay as much as you can. You're
Speaker:gonna pay as much as you can because these are bidding systems, and people
Speaker:pay top dollar for that lead and position. Right? If
Speaker:you hope to get the click, you have to pay the most. Right? Our
Speaker:strategy is a combination of doing that where you have to,
Speaker:reducing that as we go, and spending more
Speaker:or as much up until we hit a diminishing returns threshold
Speaker:on your brand, and then stop spending. The 2 in conjunction
Speaker:take a business at $9,000,000 at 12% marketing budget
Speaker:down to 4% marketing budget at $50,000,000
Speaker:spending all the money they can spend. Now, 4% of $50,000,000 is
Speaker:still a whole bunch of money, but it's only 4% of your total advertising
Speaker:cost, right, of your total revenue. The word frictionless,
Speaker:I keep seeing that in your stuff. So you've got a
Speaker:project that is talking about friction within business
Speaker:and becoming a frictionless business. Tell me a little bit
Speaker:more about that, and what are you working on there?
Speaker:Hewlett Packard the David Packard of Hewlett Packard said,
Speaker:there's nothing more dangerous than leaving marketing to the marketing
Speaker:department. And and I'm a big believer in that, so much so
Speaker:that I I started investigating what will help our customers,
Speaker:our clients grow, disproportionately faster
Speaker:and more profitably. So I started studying the elements that come along
Speaker:with that, and there's 12 major things that are all oriented towards
Speaker:how you're communicating things in your business consciously and subconsciously
Speaker:to your employees and customers that that determine
Speaker:whether or not you've got a healthy culture, a thriving culture, or a
Speaker:survival culture, or a toxic culture,
Speaker:and a fixed culture versus a growth culture, a creative culture
Speaker:versus a, pedestrian culture. All of the things
Speaker:that we look at from a thriving and surviving standpoint,
Speaker:and this the relational and
Speaker:transactional as well all fit into these worlds. Well, all
Speaker:of this stuff, when we start to analyze, it goes, hey, if we just make
Speaker:adjustments along the way in all of these 12 different components
Speaker:affecting your business, marketing sales, curation of product and
Speaker:pricing, how you help people empower people in your
Speaker:in your, business, how you help them master their craft, all of
Speaker:the things that we're talking around motivation of not only the customer, but the
Speaker:employee, and frankly, yourself. All of these things are the
Speaker:things that are affecting mindset,
Speaker:efficiency, productivity, growth, and profitability.
Speaker:What if we just talked about those things, and started
Speaker:giving our clients a pathway forward
Speaker:to getting out of their own way, and growing
Speaker:past the length of their shadow so they can be tall enough to ride the
Speaker:next ride? And and that's where growth comes from. So many
Speaker:companies get into this $3,000,000, $5,000,000 ceiling, this
Speaker:$10,000,000 ceiling, and that's it for them. They can't grow because
Speaker:they haven't realized the the more subliminal,
Speaker:less obvious things that are actually slowing their growth,
Speaker:not propelling it forward. And that's been my path for the
Speaker:last 7 years is if we're going to market well, and if marketing,
Speaker:and branding is the culture, and the culture is going to drive
Speaker:the buying experience, well, what if we helped our clients improve their
Speaker:culture and buying experience so that our branding got better?
Speaker:Now, we're the secret sauce that everyone needs to be
Speaker:able to propel themselves forward whether we are able to directly service
Speaker:their account or not. We can be a beacon of virtue and
Speaker:value in the industries that we serve. But it just
Speaker:it doesn't stop there. Because all those same things that I learned
Speaker:about advertising that were true to sales and sales training are
Speaker:equally as true to our family relationships and our and our
Speaker:community relationships. And that kind of
Speaker:information just needs to be in the universe in a
Speaker:way. So, I'm trying to distill it down into something where people can
Speaker:just get the basics right. Go back to the ABCs.
Speaker:And, and build the foundation from something solid and stable
Speaker:no matter where you are in your business or or personal journey. So
Speaker:you're you're obviously putting it in book form. When will the book I
Speaker:don't know. Do do you have any definitive dates, or are you still
Speaker:still in the creation process? We're we're on chapter
Speaker:9. We know that there's about 14 chapters. We've already mapped
Speaker:everything out, and and the path is is consistently moving
Speaker:forward. We anticipate the end of q one, is is when we're gonna do
Speaker:it. As to when we officially launch, the book
Speaker:is is still in question, of course, because publicists and and,
Speaker:all those things have have opinions about best times to do
Speaker:things. So Alright. You we've talked about a lot of cool things.
Speaker:If someone wants to connect with you,
Speaker:either be on a wait list or whatever for the book or reach out
Speaker:to, you know, the wizard or, you know, whatever, Tell
Speaker:people where they could find you, and then I've got one more question, and we'll
Speaker:wrap up. You got it. Four places to find me, wizardofads.com,
Speaker:of course, for the the the main site for Wizard of Ads. The wizard of
Speaker:ads dot services website is, specifically to
Speaker:my clients and and how I am handling things within the Wizard of
Speaker:Ad agency. My personal page is ryan schuett.com.
Speaker:And finally, on all of my social medias, you can find me
Speaker:pretty much anywhere at, wizard Ryan Schuett.
Speaker:Ryan, we're seek, go create. Those three words, seek, go
Speaker:create. I'm going to allow you to choose one of those words or
Speaker:force you if that's the way you wanna look at it. Choose 1. You know,
Speaker:it just means more to you. It's like, oh, I like that word better
Speaker:than the other 2. Seek, go, or create, and why?
Speaker:Golly. Well, I can say that I am a
Speaker:seeker by nature. I I'm an asker by by
Speaker:nature. I am
Speaker:highly adaptable. I believe in Darwin's philosophy around it's
Speaker:not the strongest or smartest that survive, but those most able to
Speaker:adapt. So I am I am looking for that
Speaker:innovation and iteration all the time, but I
Speaker:really have no problem in just, implementation. Right?
Speaker:I I like to build the plane while I'm I'm, flying
Speaker:it. And and by
Speaker:nature, it it is a creative process. It is it is absolutely
Speaker:not about, accept the
Speaker:norm. Right? That that idea of authentic
Speaker:creation. So do I have a
Speaker:good answer for you? It's like, yes. The answer is yes. All 3.
Speaker:What's 3 absolutely astoundingly fantastic words,
Speaker:to tickle the fancy. Well, very good. You know, the thing that I love about
Speaker:it is that, you know, it's not as if we just talked about the tactic.
Speaker:Obviously, you're such a great deep thinker. I mean, some of these
Speaker:responses have been, like, just had such depth to them,
Speaker:and I appreciate that. I highly recommend if you've been listening in,
Speaker:go connect with Ryan. Obviously, his personal side, I'm
Speaker:guessing, is where his book's going to be mentioned as it's
Speaker:getting close here. Again, this is probably being listened to in
Speaker:early 2025. Sounds like it's a few months out, but
Speaker:check that out. He is a wizard of ads. Go check him out
Speaker:there, and I appreciate I appreciate the
Speaker:deep and thoughtful answers to what could have
Speaker:been trivial and tactical type
Speaker:responses. So go check out Ryan. I appreciate you listening in here at SECO
Speaker:Create. New episodes on YouTube and all the platforms
Speaker:every Monday. Keep, making those comments and
Speaker:sharing and doing all the things you do. Keep actually
Speaker:man, we keep having people giving us tips over at cco
Speaker:create.comforward/support. I appreciate all of a sudden
Speaker:getting a message that someone gave us $50 just because
Speaker:they love what we're doing. So thank you for those people that keep doing
Speaker:that. That is awesome. Until next time. Just thanks for
Speaker:listening in. Until next time, continue being all that you were
Speaker:created to be.