How Public Failure Fuels Success

This is a written Transcription for the episode Midwest Mindset: How Public Failure Fuels Future Success.

Transcript

Full Written Transcript of The Episode

How Public Failure Fuels Future Success

MATT: Dealing with setbacks, challenges, even tragedies is something that I think most entrepreneurs and business owners will have to face someday.

And when it happens, we are usually not prepared. Failure is a part of the deal. It just comes with being an entrepreneur and a business owner.

We’re all going to have failures and setbacks, but the key is knowing how to keep calm, carry on and do the right thing for both you and your business.

Our guest today is Gwen Aspen, co-founder and CEO of Antiquum.

Gwen has had to deal with public failure on a gigantic stage when she ran for political office. And then an incredibly difficult situation where an employee tragically lost their life. And it all played out on the local news.

Today we’re going to learn how to handle public failure, loss and setbacks and how that can fuel your future success. Hello and welcome back to the Midwest Mindset, the podcast that makes marketing easy to understand and simple to do.

I’m Matt Tompkins of two Brothers Creative, where we believe every business deserves affordable and effective marketing. Public failure is something that not a lot of people associate with marketing, but it is.

You’re talking about PR, public relations. How are you going to handle public failure, setbacks, even tragedies and losses? As a business owner, this is something not a lot of people prep for. I would say most people don’t even do any sort of preparation or or even think about this. We don’t want to think about it. Right. We hope that this is never going to happen to me and it is going to happen to us now.

Gwen Aspen is going to share a couple stories with us here today that your setbacks, failures and losses may not be on such a big stage as what Gwen faced when she ran for political office and lost. And then when she tragically lost the life of one of her employees and it was splashed all over the local news, we.

GWENN: Did have a tragic loss at a property management company, and it was tragic because a beautiful, beautiful person who was a mother and a wife lost her life and kind of a freak accident. But I feel like the story is important to tell because as business owners, we are responsible for our employees safety.

And I’m lucky that I can move on from the tragic loss of this wonderful person. I mean, I do think about I mean, moving on is a weird term because there’s still I think about her every summer around the season. When the loss happened, I went through a tremendous amount of therapy over this.

But I was glad that this is really Jeremy’s credit and the team that we had at CPM. We had some really great safety, safety precautions in place. We had a quality control team, we had the processes and procedures.

And even so, even when you’re fully prepared for bad things to happen and you have plans in place to protect, the losses can still happen. So what happened was there was a terrible gas leak and she was the inspector went into an apartment and the whole city block blew up. Now, right after the explosion, we didn’t know if it was our fault or not. I mean, my husband and I had looked at each other and we said, if this is our fault, we deserve to lose everything.

And, you know, we’ll take full responsibility. So we opted to not get an attorney right away, even though everybody advised us to do so.

And we said the way that we are personally going to be able to move on from this is by honoring the life of Clara Bender and making sure everybody who’s listening knows what an amazing human she was. And we’re going to just take care of her family.

We’re going to make sure we do right by her and we’re going to make sure that we promote her legacy and everything else can wait and can be handled later. And I’m super grateful that that was our decision because it gives me peace.

MATT: But Gwen managed to get through this because she was prepared. She was prepared as a leader. The company was prepared and they learned a great deal from both of these these stories, both of these situations. And she turned this into fuel for her future success.

And that’s the goal here today. Public relations. Pr is a part of your marketing and you need to be able to anticipate what you’re going to do, be prepared for any type of setback or failure. I will tell you this firsthand. I think the true secret of having a successful business is being able to take the blows and just carry on forward.

You know, there are so many things we get hit with. I mean, even for me recently, you know, I’ve been hit with all these different blows you have. You’re going to have clients that, you know, for reasons you can’t control, they’re going to drop. You’re going to have that natural churn.

You’re going to get hit with tax bills. You’re going to get hit with expenses you didn’t expect. You’re going to get hit with major blows. And I think the real key to success in business is to be able to take those blows, compartmentalize them and carry on. You have to be able to keep your focus on the end goal.

MATT: And that’s the problem. I think most people, if they got hit with the blows that US business owners get hit with, they would just collapse.

They would just collapse. They’d be in a balled up in a corner crying because we get hit with a lot. That’s the truth. You know, we get hit with a lot of curveballs that we just have to take. We have to manage. We have to keep our focus on what is best for. For the business and for ourselves.

We have to keep that focus, no matter how many people tell us no, no matter how many things hit us, no matter how many blows, try to take us down. If you keep your focus on what you know you need to do. And you’re able to manage these blows. That, to me, is the true secret to success in business. You have to manage them, though. You can’t just set them aside and never deal with them again.

For Gwen Aspen, we talk about her run for office here first. Taking those failures that are going to happen, learning from those failures, and then using them to inform your future strategies for your business, or even, in her case, for creating a new business. Antiquum That is the key.

GWENN: I much prefer entrepreneurship because if I am wrong or I want to iterate and change tact or I learn new information, I want to be able to change my mind and go a different direction.

And that’s seen as flip flopping in politics. So so anyway, you know, failure is information that you either push too hard or went too far or you did something wrong. And taking accountability for that, like I made decisions in my campaign.

I’m not proud of. I think I did lose who I am as a person in that campaign. And what that did was inform my strategies for my new business, for the new business, to be totally values driven so that I don’t lose myself. And I always go back to my values when we make tough decisions so that I stay true to who I am and don’t get lost in the process. If I hadn’t learned those things through the failure, then the business that I have now as.

MATT: A business owner, we have to give ourselves grace. We have to give ourselves time to grieve. You know, we can’t just bottle it up and never deal with it. And you’re going to have things that are going to knock you off your pedestal. They’re going to be a major blow that are just tough to deal with.

And you have to give yourself time to process it, to deal with it, to grieve, if that’s the case. But the point is you have to give yourself time and you have to face these things head on.

We can’t just numb ourselves from having to deal with it. We’re all failures at something. I mean, there’s nobody who’s perfect, you know, It’s just it doesn’t it doesn’t Perfection is perfection isn’t even attractive. I think we think it is. We think we want that.

But in reality, that’s not what we really want. We want substance and we want experience and wisdom. And those are the qualities only come from failing, from trying and failing. And you can’t succeed if you’re not trying. And I would say you can’t succeed if you’re not failing. What I’ve heard you say so far is is a good lesson there. Like so when it happens, when you fail publicly, you’re humiliated. First thing is give yourself time to grieve.

MATT: You know, I mean, a lot of business coaches suggest that set a time limit, though. But just say, okay, two weeks, I can mope around, I can binge watch, you know, Ozark, four seasons, five seasons, whatever, on Netflix.

But after two weeks, I got to do something dealing with tragedies like Gwen Aspen and her company had to had to face head on is really something I don’t think I know I haven’t thought about as a business owner, as an entrepreneur, I’ve dealt with my own long list of failures and setbacks and blows, and I’ve taken them and I moved forward.

You know, you manage them as best you can. But a tragedy, a true tragedy is something I don’t think we ever imagine facing because we don’t want to face it. We don’t want it to become reality.

But when that becomes the situation that you’re in, you have to face it on. And I think the key is really knowing who you are and knowing the right thing to do for both the situation, your company and yourself. Core values are something that I believe should be the foundation of your business. Here are the things you need. If you are a business owner and you want to find success, here’s where you need to start.

MATT: Even if you’re already in business, you need to do these things. You need to know your mission. You need to know your vision, and you need to know your core values.

So when I was told by Gwen that I needed to establish my core values for my company, I, like many people, thought it was just some cliche, cheesy exercise, right? But I did it and I did the work. I put it in there, got my five core values.

And what I have found is that that is the foundation for everything you do, Every decision you make, you can turn to your core values and say, Hey, does this align with my core values? If you have an employee that’s not carrying their weight and you don’t know if they belong on your team,

well turn to your core values. Are they living up to your core values? If you have a client, if you have a customer who is difficult, you don’t know you maybe you don’t want to do business with them. Well, look at your core values. Do they align with your core values? And if they don’t, that needs to be cut. That needs to be removed. So core values are, I think, are essential to any business, no matter what stage you’re in, in business.

GWENN: I do want to just say this one thing, like when you’re starting a new business, when we start our property management company, all the gurus would be like,

Start with your mission, vision and values. I’m like, I don’t know. I just manage properties and don’t screw people over. Like, is that a mission vision value?

MATT: For me it is. You know, you know me. I’m like, the potter was the guy in It’s a Wonderful Life. It’s like Pottersville. That’s me. That’s an old reference, but no reference.

GWENN: But it seemed like cheesy and like, we’re just doing this simple thing, like, do I really need to have this values moment with your team? But I totally with some, you know, some space from that, that moment when we were starting our business, I totally see the value and really going through that exercise with your yourself or your leadership team, because whenever there’s a setback, you know the next right thing to do. It’s super clear and you never look back and you’ll have peace no matter what tragedy you may face or what setback you may have.

MATT: Leadership is something that takes a lot of work and responsibility. I would say accountability is another aspect of leadership that is often pushed to the side. You know, as leaders, it’s it’s important that we are held accountable, just like our employees. But a lot of us leaders don’t want to be held accountable. You know, this is my company. I’m going to do things my way and I’m not going to be criticized. Everything stems from the top, every decision, every failure. If your employee screws something up, well, did you give them the proper checklist?

Did you give them a proper procedure? Did you give them the full description in details and expectations of what they were supposed to do? Having metrics, having measurables, having procedures, processes and procedures in place. That is how you determine this. And it’s also how you keep yourself accountable as a leader, because people are looking for these qualities in their leaders. And every company, every company’s success hinges on leadership.

GWENN: And as a leader, I mean, if you’re really clear on who you are, what you stand for, I mean, that that’s the leadership quality people are looking for. And we frankly, we need more leaders who are really clear on what they stand for and what they who they are and what they can contribute to the world.

And that’s the best way if everybody could do that. I mean, and you’re starting a business and you really that’s where you start with true leadership and everything will kind of fall into place from there.

MATT: You can’t move on and you can’t grieve. You can’t properly process if you don’t own your own failures. Owning your failures is Gwen talks about here is essential because that’s how you learn from your failures. I don’t steer away from failures. I don’t steer away from setbacks.

You’re going to try things and they’re not going to work. You can call it a failure. You can give it a better name if you want. Failure seems harsh, but you have to own your failure.

I love this analogy here. When you go to the gym and you work out, you’re literally pushing your muscles to fail every single time you’re pushing your muscles till they literally tear apart so that they can rebuild and be stronger. So if you’re not tearing your business muscles apart, if you’re not pushing yourself to failure, learning from that and growing, becoming stronger from it, you’re not going to move on.

That’s the only way to move on.

GWENN: Name your failure. Was it weakness? Were you a weak person? Like once you name it, you’re like, okay, I can accept that I was weak or I lost my way.

Okay, I lost my way once you just accept that the thing that seems like so self-loathing or the most embarrassing or I lost courage. You know, I was a coward. Just. Just say it to yourself, Own it, and then you can move on from it.

MATT: If you’re not uncomfortable, then you’re not doing it right. You need to feel uncomfortable with things you do with your company. You know, getting on social media, doing videos.

A lot of business owners get uncomfortable. They don’t want to have their face out there. They feel this is going to be embarrassing. I’m going to look like a schmuck. If you feel uncomfortable, you’re doing something right. You need to get comfortable with feeling uncomfortable.

GWENN: All growth is uncomfortable. So a lot of people say that, um, that if I’m feeling uncomfortable, I shouldn’t move forward. But you should move forward anyway. Like, grow anyway.

Do that hard thing anyway. And if you fail, you will survive. You can pick yourself up. Don’t be afraid of failure where you don’t do the thing that will make your life the best life ever.

MATT: Thank you so much to Gwen Aspen of Antiquum for joining us here today on the podcast and sharing those deeply personal stories. I know that’s not easy to do, but I appreciate that greatly because I learned a lot from those stories. I hope you took away a lot as well.

Gwen is I think she is the epitome of the entrepreneur that we aspire to be. So appreciate her coming on the show here today and thank you so much for listening to this episode of Midwest Mindset. If you’re struggling with your marketing and you need some direction, we’re going to help you out.

Right now. In the show notes, you can click on the link and download our free six Step marketing plan. It’s a six step marketing plan to get your marketing realigned, help you get things in order so that you can grow your business. The link is in the show notes. The free six-step marketing plan is yours.

How Do You Make Money from Your Podcast

This is a written Transcription for the episode: How Do You Make Money from Your Podcast

Transcript

Full Written Transcript of The Episode

How Do You Make Money from Your Podcast

MATT: How do you make money from a podcast? The truth is that it’s not through advertising or sponsors, at least for the most part. Only about 3% of all podcasts have enough listeners to even qualify for third party monetization. Advertisers and sponsors. So downloads and listens are not really the factor in how you make money from a podcast.

So how do they make money and how can you use a podcast to grow your business and increase revenue and results? In today’s episode, we’re joined once again by Eric Johnson. He is the podcast talent coach and Senior VP of programming for iHeartMedia. Eric is going to give us the secrets on how to make money from a podcast.

Welcome back to Midwest Mindset, the podcast that makes marketing easy to understand and simple to do. I’m Matt Tompkins of two Brothers Creative, where we believe every business deserves affordable and effective marketing. We are always just a mindset shift away from success. Oftentimes we get hung up.

We get caught up with the things behind the scenes. We get lost in the weeds, as they say, with the things that don’t really matter to everybody else. We think they matter because we see them day in and day out and we obsess over them and egos involved. But the reality is that a lot of things when it comes to running a business and hosting a podcast don’t matter as much as we think they do to everybody else, to our listeners, to our customers.

Podcast downloads and how you make money from a podcast is a perfect example of this. I want to ask you this When was the last time you based your decision on which late night television show talk show you watched based on how many listeners or viewers they had in the ratings the week before? I don’t think I’ve ever said, you know what, I’m going to watch Stephen Colbert because he had 4.6 million viewers last night.

MATT:: And Jim, Jimmy Fallon only had 3.8. No, you’re going to watch the ones that you like. Do you have an emotional connection with? We make those decisions based off of emotions.

Nobody really cares about the ratings. They’re more of an industry insider. Thing of value that matters because that’s what all the sales and advertising dollars are based off of. Podcast downloads are different in that because podcast downloads aren’t even made public, you have to get an obscene number of downloads just to qualify for third party monetization. I believe it’s like 5000 downloads per episode.

And so people oftentimes in the podcast world and this happens in business too, or people in business, you know, we obsess over the things that nobody about us is obsessing over. It’s a hard pill to swallow when we say nobody cares about our business but us. All the customers care about is what our business can do for them. How can it improve their lives? And a podcast is the same, same thing. It’s no different.

People don’t care how many downloads you have. They care about what your podcast can do for them. So when we get hung up on like ratings and how many downloads a podcast has, it’s just a distraction. It’s an ego driven distraction.

And considering that only about 3% of all podcasts even qualify for that, that threshold for third party monetization and a small percentage outside of that will sell their own ads and sponsorships.

MATT:: That is not how podcasts make money, and that’s not how you can leverage your podcast today, because podcast ratings and downloads are not shared publicly because it’s all based off of perception.

People see you hosting a show just like every other famous podcaster out there. It is an incredible opportunity for you and your business because people aren’t going to distinguish between you and Joe Rogan or whoever else that they follow. Nobody cares about how many downloads you have, and downloads are not how you’re going to make money for your podcast. Eric Johnson has spent over 30 years as a radio coach. As a podcast coach. He is the podcast talent coach at podcast talent coach.com. My brother Ben and I, we worked underneath Eric for a number of years in radio.

He’s our program director and he is still the VP of programming for iHeart Media. So he’s got a little bit of experience here and focusing in on what matters and what matters to any business is how do I make money from this? How do I generate money from this? It is not from downloads, it’s not from ratings, not with podcasts and with your business. It’s a very, very similar through line. We focused.

We need to focus on the things that actually make our business money. Now there are a lot of different ways you can make money from a podcast. A lot of ways you can leverage a podcast to grow your business. So we’re going to talk about those in today’s episode. There are actually nine different ways you can make money from a podcast today.

ERIK:: Podcast allows you an opportunity to really connect with your prospect and bring them into whatever it is you’re selling. Now. I say there are nine great ways to to generate revenue with a podcast. There are so many more than that. There are just nine that I really, really enjoy.

So many people think the only way to make money with a podcast is through advertising, advertising and sponsors.

So many podcasters, coaches, entrepreneurs, information experts, they come to me and they say, I say, What’s your biggest challenge? And they say, I’m having a tough time growing the audience and landing a sponsor for my podcast. I want to get a big audience so I can get sponsors.

And I said, Why? Why would you ever do that? Why would you want to get sponsors and advertisers for your show? That’s probably the worst way to make money.

MATT:: This is an important distinction to make. People are not seeking out advertisements. They are not seeking out ads. So if you’re putting out something, whether it’s a graphic, a video, an audio commercial, whatever it is, any form of content, and it comes across as an as an ad, if it looks like an advertisement, it’s likely going to fall short because people are not seeking out more advertisements. We are bombarded by thousands of ads every single day.

I think it’s around 3000 ad impressions made on the average person every day. This just an insane amount of stuff, noise just being thrown at us. What people are seeking out is great original content and that’s why there are so many streaming platforms and choices today.

People are turning to podcasting because podcasting doesn’t have commercials, it doesn’t have advertisements, at least not in the traditional sense.

ERIK:: People are fleeing traditional media to get away from ads and sponsors. They don’t want to listen to that. That’s why they’re subscribing to Hulu and that’s why they’re subscribing to Netflix so they don’t have to put up with the commercials. They’re going to podcasting because podcasting doesn’t have commercials.

MATT:: There are a lot of creative ways that you can make money from a podcast that are close to advertisers and sponsorships but don’t require the massive number of downloads. And one of those is through affiliate partnerships.

ERIK:: If you’re marketing something on your podcast that is right in line with your audience, it’s an inch wide and a mile deep, right? Everybody that is listening to the show wants what you’re offering. So it’s a much stronger relationship with that audience.

But advertising agencies want to treat every audience the same, and that’s the CPM model for podcasting is the exact same as the CPM model for radio. And the fact of the matter is the audiences are not the same. The audience between two podcasts aren’t the same.

MATT:: I think interviews are probably the number one secret weapon when it comes to podcasting that and guesting on other podcasts. So guesting on the podcast is actually the number one way to grow any podcast. I believe guesting on other podcasts is the number one way to grow your business.

Here’s the thing when you host a podcast, you are given a license to go pitch yourself and topics to other podcasts and they will consider you. They will have you on because you have a podcast. If you’re just a business pitching your services, they’re going to say, No, listen, we’re not an infomercial unless you want to pay to be on our podcast. No, but if you say I’m also a podcaster, let’s collaborate, let’s partner. Do an interview.

Let’s have a conversation. Let’s talk about this topic X, Y, Z topic. They are much more likely to say yes. When they do say yes, you are now cherry picking the audience you want to speak to.

Each podcast is a niche. There are riches in the niches podcasts. There are so many niches that you can you can go down rabbit hole after rabbit hole with these niches, but you find the niche. So instead of just a shotgun approach where you’re on social media hoping that you hit your target audience, it’s a mile wide and an inch deep approach. Now it’s an inch wide and a mile deep. It’s an audience that just keeps on giving.

You know, every single person who’s listening is a podcast listener because they’re listening to you on a podcast and you know they’re interested in your subject matter because you pick a podcast about your subject matter to be. On the other side of that is having people on your podcast and doing interviews.

MATT:: Think of it this way like if you wanted to land that ideal client, let’s say you have a dream client, you have no other way. You would know no other way. You would have any sort of introduction to them.

They don’t know you. They don’t care to know you. Nothing to do with. There’s no mutual friends. You don’t play, you know, badminton or pickleball together and so you don’t have a way in, you know, sending them a cold call email or making a cold phone call is probably not going to be that impactful. Inviting them to be a guest on your podcast is extremely effective. We’re playing to people’s egos and think of it this way

You can set up as many as 5 or 6 touchpoint conversations from when you reach out and you initiate the invite to be on your podcast to when the episode premieres.

At the end of that period, you have nurtured a real, genuine relationship. So then when you go to make the sale or when they need it, they have this relationship built much easier for you to land the deal, for to close the sale, to get that ideal dream client. And so having them on your podcast, they will say yes. Most of all, I would say 80 to 90% of people say yes. People love to be the center of attention.

You’re going to wow them. You’re going to impress them. You’re going to demonstrate that you are an authority and expert in your field, that you have credibility, that you’re legitimate. I mean, that is an impression that is worth it alone because that impression is going to last for ever.

ERIK:: I think the number one way that many people forget and overlook are podcast interviews. A lot of people think we’re going to interview somebody on the show to create some great content for our listeners, right? We’re going to entertain them. Your podcast entertainment value of the Interview is probably third on the list because you should be interviewing that person for for a specific reason. They should even either be a prospective client. So if they’re a prospective client and you’re interviewing them, it should be with the goal to help them overcome a challenge and show them what’s possible by working with you. If you’re a bookkeeper, partner with a tax accountant. So you you’re both reaching the same people, but you’re doing different things for them and a complementary way. That’s the number one way to grow your audience.

MATT:: Thank you so much to Eric Johnson for joining us here today on the podcast, and thank you for listening to this episode of Midwest Mindset As a token of our appreciation, we would like to offer you a free download of our seven step checklist to get yourself booked as a podcast guest.

We talked about guesting on other podcasts. Here’s here’s a big secret Don’t pitch yourself. Nobody knows who you are.

Don’t even pitch myself. Nobody knows who I am and nobody cares and I don’t blame them. You want to pitch something else? So we’re going to tell you what that is. We have the seven step checklist to get yourself booked on other podcasts because, as we talked about today, guesting another podcast is the number one way to grow your business. And it is the biggest secret weapon to grow your podcast and your audience as well. You can find the link to download this free checklist in the show notes and we’ll see you on the next episode.

How to Survive Blackmail by Dick Pic

This is a written Transcription for the episode: How to Survive Blackmail by Dick Pic

Transcript

Full Written Transcript of The Episode

How to Survive Blackmail by Dick Pic

MATT: How would you handle humiliation and embarrassment on a public stage? What would you do if your business was suddenly on the local news but for all the wrong reasons? How should you handle or manage hundreds of hate-filled internet trolls attacking your reputation?

Negative publicity is simply not something that most entrepreneurs are trained or prepared for, but it can quickly become a company killer if we aren’t equipped to handle it.

Publicity is a part of marketing that often gets overlooked. So today we’ll be featuring the first of a series of episodes throughout the season that will equip you with the publicity skill sets you hope you’ll never need, but will be very thankful for if you ever do. In today’s episode, I’m going to share my own painfully embarrassing story of public humiliation on a gigantic stage. It’s a story that involves blackmail, a heritage morning radio show, and unfortunately, a dick pic.

From the past.

MATT: Hello and welcome back to Midwest Mindset, the podcast that makes marketing simple. The Midwest mindset is helping others without expecting anything in return.

And this is what fuels our passion in every episode. To give you the marketing tips, techniques, and insights that your business needs not just to survive, but thrive. We believe every business deserves affordable and effective marketing because marketing is the only way to get more customers, make more money and see your business succeed. I’m your host, Matt Tompkins of two Brothers Creative, and on today’s episode I am Oh, I’m really not looking forward to this, but I’m going to share my own painfully embarrassing story of public humiliation.

Now, there was a time that national celebrities were the only ones who had to worry about public humiliation, tabloid shame, online haters. But today, social media is the nation’s mainstream tabloid magazine. This means that each and every one of us can quickly and easily fall victim with the odds increasing with every post that we make.

As business owners, no one really prepares us for these moments of public humiliation, embarrassment, which is why most of us work so hard to maintain the facade, if you will. Our avatar is on on Instagram and Facebook. Everything is great. Yes. Don’t look behind the curtain to see how things really are. You know, hosting a popular morning radio show with tens of thousands of listeners every morning is a very bizarre experience for the uninitiated. I spent a little over 17 years in radio and television, so for me it was a weird life.

MATT: Guess that just kind of felt normal. It really did. From day one, it just felt like home. It fit. But I know it’s pretty weird to the outside world. I mean, you’re literally sitting in a room by yourself talking to yourself. That’s your job. But loved it. One morning, though, it all came crashing down and probably the most embarrassing way possible.

So I was hosting the morning show on a heritage radio station in Omaha on Sweet 98 five at the time, and I was also still hosting and producing what was the final season of Omaha Live, which was at the time, number one in its time slot, had a sizable viewership on its own as well.

So it all sounds like fun and games, right? Until you get blackmailed in the most humiliating way possible. There was a time. When my phone was hacked and I was blackmailed. For $15,000 over a photo of my privates that I don’t even remember taking. I know that sounds like a cop out, but it’s true. I don’t to this day know or remember. So what’s this have to do with business?

Well, like it or not, as business owners, we are putting ourselves out there in the public eye to a degree. And this makes the fear of public embarrassment and failure terrifying. It is enhanced. I think this is why most people work so hard to maintain those those online avatars I mentioned, you know, with perfectly crafted photos and the right poses to control how we want to be portrayed or seen.

MATT: We try and maintain the perception, which often times probably most of the time does not align with the reality behind the scenes. Even something like the nightmare of simply going out of business, which we know over half of all businesses will fail, they will go out of business in their first five years. That is pretty embarrassing. It’s pretty devastating when it all plays out across social media channels as if it was, you know, reality TV. The people who always had something against you, they they bask in your humiliation.

You know, the rumors go around. Can you believe it? I can’t. I mean, it’s sucks. The righteous people remind you that they told you this wouldn’t work. You know, sometimes even our family and closest friends can fail to support us as the burden of public loss and failure. It really it does become a bit too much for us to carry forward. And I think unfortunately for myself and a lot of people, we internalize that it affects our long term mental health. And too many people, myself included, turn to.

Ways to numb the pain and the suffering. By that I mean we turn to drinking and alcohol and drugs and other substances or eating, binge eating or binge watching TV. How many entrepreneurs, how many business owners are drinking heavily every single night? Why is that? But here’s the craziest thing that happens when we embrace our failures and we face down our greatest fears, our greatest humiliations.

MATT: We find out that there is really nothing to be afraid of in the first place. And that’s why I think I’m able to share this story today. While it’s I mean, it’s not like the episode I really wanted to do or was looking forward to doing here, but I’m sharing it with you because the experience and other experiences that I’ve had, you know, my recovery from addiction and all these different things, it it really shapes who you are. And it does. I hope it does help you in some way to not be afraid to embrace the pain. Right? So I’ll never forget.

The morning that this happened. So I started out I got a message on Facebook from some random account. I didn’t know him, and they told me that they had a picture of my privates, which they didn’t put it that eloquently. Yes, it’s commonly referred to as a dick pic. All right. That makes this sound like so just. I get it right. I didn’t want to have to talk about this because of that. Just the name alone.

But, you know, hey, if it happens to Brett Favre, it can happen to any of us, right? So anyhow, this anonymous sender alleged that they had more than just my embarrassing photo from my phone.

MATT: They said they had downloaded all of my contacts. They said they had hacked my email. They had the phone numbers of my friends and family, and they threatened that they would send out this humiliating, career ending photo to all of them, to everyone I know, unless I pay them $15,000. I panicked at first.

Obviously they sent me the photo, but I didn’t see everything. In other words, I didn’t see the, you know, the goods. But it was obvious that they were in the full photo. Um, and I panicked. I was still working at radio at the time, you know, in fact, we were still on the air. We were in the final hour of the morning show on Sweet 95 when I got this message. So at first I ignored them. I’m like, okay, I’m not even going to respond. Maybe they’ll go away.

But they were pretty relentless. I changed my passwords on my social media accounts. I blocked them on Facebook, but then they started texting me. And not just from one number, but from multiple numbers. So I don’t know if I was in denial. I honestly couldn’t even remember taking a nude pic like this in the first place. I never really understood the point behind taking and sending out naked selfies. I’ve never been that just person. No judgment on those people who like to do that in their relationships. I just never got it, you know? I mean, the way I looked at it, who on earth would want to see that in the first place? All right.

MATT: If I don’t and my wife doesn’t, I guess I don’t know if anybody else would either want to see that. So in my mind, I’m like brushing this off. I’m trying to at least. But again, they had sent me that image and it was like now they sent me the second time. It was like a blurred close up with the goods. They’re pixelated.

And I was like, Yes, that’s definitely me in the photo. And yes, it was the top half of the photo. I was standing in a random basement with a ridiculously bright yellow puffy winter vest. It was like I mean, I looked like a complete idiot in this picture. It was like this giant, like Marty McFly, yellow puffy vest. And I’m revealing my, you know. Yeah. So I did indeed, at some point take a nude self-portrait of myself.

Now, before you judge my momentary lack of, I don’t know, cell phone etiquette, I think it’s important to remember that, you know, I have battled severe addiction to opiates for for eight long years. And I mean, when I started this, I mean, I was just a couple of years into my sobriety. I was still in the early years of recovery, which is just a whole nother step. You know, you get sober, you’re not in recovery. It takes years. I’m still working on it today.

MATT: So my memory of that time period, though, when I was taking opiates, it was very it gets very foggy. It’s very difficult to look back because there are so many cherished memories. I mean, memories would be cherished if I could remember them. There are events I can, you know, barely piece together memories of.

We we actually held a second wedding ceremony for Wendy and I in 2018 because. I couldn’t remember much of our original wedding day. And that’s very, very sad. You know, today, as I look back, I don’t remember my brother’s best man speech. That’s part of the that’s the cost of living high. Now, I’m grateful that I survived, obviously, because it could have been far worse. I’m thankful that I was able to get sober. I’m thrilled to be working on eight years in recovery.

It’s still work every every single day. It still is work. You know, But to simply be alive, to share this awkwardly embarrassing story with you today. I’m, you know, begrudgingly grateful. So even though I couldn’t remember taking it, it was on that fateful morning when I. I guess my past finally caught up with me. I did something stupid when I was high.

I don’t remember doing it. And I don’t. Here’s the weird part. I don’t. I didn’t send it to anybody, so I don’t know. I must have been out of my mind. Took this thing to do what? I don’t know. Maybe it was for myself to.

MATT: But I didn’t send it to anybody, so I responded to their messages finally. I mean, I felt completely defeated. The blackmailers, they demanded 15 grand. I told them I didn’t have anywhere close to $15,000. I told them I work in radio. No one in radio has 15 grand just lying around. So then they dropped it down. They’re like, oh, 1500, which I think was a. They’re not very good at negotiating, but. All right, 1500. I’m like, that seems great, but I don’t have $1,500 either. Again, I worked in radio. I had no money. So at this point, they got angry. They threatened to leak this photo to everyone, my family, my friends, work colleagues at 2:00 pm that afternoon, unless I paid up. So I did at this point what I think anybody would do, and I Googled, what do you do if you’re being blackmailed? And I read about the horrors of revenge porn, which at the time I didn’t know that’s what this was. I don’t know.

I read about cyberbullying. I bet I read about how online blackmail is commonly used to terrorize people. And most people do not ever say anything about it. That’s why we don’t hear about it. Because it’s humiliating.

It’s embarrassing. I mean, I’m talking about it now. I mean, who else have you ever heard that admits to being bamboozled, hoodwinked, blackmailed, let alone let alone over something like this? It’s like the ultimate embarrassing form of blackmail.

MATT: So anyhow, I did find a company online that actually negotiates blackmail situations just like this. So I drove around town. I don’t remember where I was. I parked in like a it was like a park somewhere. I just pulled over and I’m talking to this guy on the phone. After an hour on the phone with him, he says they would handle the entire thing.

They would make it go away entirely. I’m like, whew, Thank God. Yes. For 1000 hundred dollars. Yes. They’re trying to charge me the same rate. I’m like, I don’t have $1,500. So he ended the call and I’ll never forget this. He reminded me, he said, Listen, I just want to be clear. They are going to send that photo out. They are going to do what they say. I’m like, great. Fantastic. So I went home and at this point, I had to tell my wife, Wendy, everything that was happening. So I started by first I started by asking if she had $5,000, we could hire this company and make it go away.

But she literally laughed out loud at that situation. Um, I apologized. I remember I felt as if I had done something wrong that, you know, because I thought I was going to impact her and I didn’t want to humiliate her. And just I felt horrible. But she was eerily calm and unmoved by this whole situation. Now, she had worked in publicity herself. She wrote her graduate paper about reporters managing crisis situations like, you know, the Von Marshall shooting here in Omaha.

MATT: And so maybe I thought, well, maybe it’s because she’s more familiar with this than me. So I said, listen, I don’t get it. Like, how are you not pissed off about this? Her response was, What do I have to worry about?

It’s not my dick in the photo. This is your problem to deal with, not mine. So, like. Okay. I mean, I guess it was kind of a small win because I’m like, at least, you know, it’s not going to impact her like I thought it was. It’s just me going down on this, you know, flaming dumpster fire.

So I called the Douglas County Sheriff’s Department, who humored me for about an hour on the phone, taking my report down. At the end, I asked, Well, what are you going to do about it? He chuckled out loud, too. He said, Oh, there’s nothing we can do, man. Sorry. Yeah, he’s going to have to deal with it.

By the way, they’re going to send the pic out. I’m like, Great. Now I got two people telling me it’s going to happen.

You’re going to go down in flames. So this is when it sunk in that the only way to fix this problem was to simply embrace it. Yeah, I decided I had to let go. I had to own up to it. I had to accept that I did not have control over the outcome.

MATT: I could only control how I reacted to it. And I think this is one of the major takeaways here, I hope from this episode is when negative publicity is happening to you, when you are being humiliated, when it’s your business in the public spotlight. And it doesn’t have to be something that is is odd and embarrassing is my particular story. But it could be anything, right? We have to embrace it. We can’t just deny it.

We can’t live in denial. We can’t pretend. We can’t ignore it. We have to embrace it. So that’s what I did. So first step was I had to call my general manager at the radio station to fill him in on every detail too, because this may affect the radio station in the show and everything.

So that was not fun to explain to him because then he said, All right, yeah, this is weird, this sucks. But you know, we’re going to have to get air on the phone here and you’re going to have to do this again.

So then I had to explain it again to our HR for the whole company. This woman is like an attorney for the company. Explain the whole thing to her with him again there. So now two times I’ve explained this, I then messaged everyone in my extended family to warn them not to look at any photos sent to them that day, that reference their nephew or their cousin Matt, which I’m sure piqued interest.

MATT: Like, what the hell did you do? I mean, there’s nothing like telling your grandma not to look at any messages that she has sent today or she’ll never view her grandson in the same way again.

So now my social media accounts were all deactivated. I took them down my work colleagues. I told them, along with my parents, my family, my friends. And I felt about as small as you could possibly be. I felt humiliated. I felt belittled. It was sucked, but I had to accept it. I finally, after all this reached a point, I think, where you have clarity because I simply didn’t care anymore. I knew I couldn’t stop them from sending out this photo.

Just like if you’re in a situation where you’re facing negative publicity, you can’t control it. You have to accept it. You can’t stop it.

You can only deal with it. Right? And it’s how you deal with it that is the deciding factor in how things unfold moving forward. So I decided I was going to take back control. I was going to, I don’t know, just try and respond in a way that if I’m going to go down, you know, I want to go down in style, I guess.

So I started calling these blackmailers back on the phone and surprisingly, they answered, but nervously hung up right away. So I kept calling them. I thought, Well, this is weird.

MATT: This is like some kid pranking me. What is going on here? So then they start texting me. They say, We’re going to send out the photo, we’re going to send it out Now. It was close to 2 p.m. and sure enough, at 2 p.m. after I told them, I’m not paying up, you’re going to have to send the photo out. They sent out the photo. They sent it to the social media accounts of every radio station in our building.

Now, fortunately for me, and I think this is another important takeaway, be prepared. So when tragedy, I guess it could have been maybe it’s not tragedy yet when public humiliation, embarrassment on a public scale like this happens, you know, be prepared. And I was prepared. I was managing all of these social media accounts. And so I told everybody, I’m going to manage these for the rest of the day. And I was able to remove the photo and block the sender’s accounts before any real damage was done.

So to this day, no one in my family has ever mentioned that they received the photo, although I do I do acknowledge that they probably wouldn’t want to say anything if they did receive it, you know, I think. For obvious reasons. Oh, hey, nephew. Matt. I’ve seen your. Your privates. When I finally had a moment because they sent the photo to the accounts and I remember like grabbing it, screenshot of it, I downloaded it and I had it on my phone.

MATT: I remember I got home and I was nervous to look at it, right, Because this was like the full the full Monty, if you will. And when I finally got a chance to look at it for the first time. This photo. I still have no recollection of ever taking the self portrait and I just sat and stared at it for a while.

And I’ll never forget how this concluded here. They sent me a text message again and they threatened that they were going to take this photo and now they were going to post it on social media and tag everyone that I know can up their game.

They were like, I guess maybe reveling in their victory. They asked me if it was worth the humiliation, if I was finally going to pay up. Staring at this picture, I told them, I said, If you want to send this photo out to anyone and everyone around, I’m totally fine with that.

And now this is going to sound vain and superficial. But I looked at my wife and she’s she’s like, why are you okay with them sending this out? And I said because it’s actually kind of a flattering photo. Now, I don’t know if it was the lighting or the angle or just pure dumb luck, but I was finally able to accept the one that good selfie I’ve ever taken at least. And I don’t remember it. I hope it’s the only one.

MATT: Now, that sounds funny, but they were kind of it put them off. They’re like, what? Really? Like? Yeah, go ahead. You know.

Humiliation and embarrassment. It will likely happen to each and every one of us at some point. And, you know, I had to accept that I would have to eat a lot of crow. You know, in the end, looking back, like I probably didn’t have to call my general manager or the HR lady or tell my whole family because it didn’t end up being as bad as I as I thought it was going to be. Right. But I think I intervened, You know, I kind of prevented a lot of that by simply just embracing it and confronting it. In my own way, but that’s what I did. And I feel like that’s what we have to do.

You know, we feel embarrassed. We feel humiliated. But on the other side of it, I realized how insignificant it all really was in the grand scheme of things, you know? We’re all going to have to deal with bad publicity, costly mistakes, bad calls, regrets, pure flukes of bad luck, none of which we can control. But we can survive it and how we get through these crucibles in life. We’ll define us as people, as leaders and as successful entrepreneurs.

So we have for you these five. Steps, this checklist for handling public humiliation and a crisis like this, because this these are the five things that I learned from this experience, aside from the obvious, which is don’t take photos like that one.

MATT: Accept the situation as soon as possible so you can work towards a solution without delay to be transparent and authentic to yourself.

Honesty leads to acceptance, forgiveness and repair. Three Be comprehensive and prepared. You know, a piecemeal approach. It’s only going to make the symptoms and the cause of the issue worse. Number four, determine if it’s even worth it to respond. This is good for social media.

You know, sometimes we get punched in the gut and our impulse is to respond immediately. Well, we don’t think it through. You know, I’ve made this mistake before, too. I think we all have with text messages to, you know, social media comments and posts. And number five, you want to review, edit and pause before you post. All right.

Don’t just throw out your long term strategy by being too reactive. So we want to help you with our five step checklist. To manage bad publicity, you can get this PDF. It is free to download. The link is in the show notes. Thanks so much for joining us here today on Midwest Mindset. I hope you don’t look at me differently from this point forward, but honestly, if you do, that’s okay. All right. I have to embrace my failures, just like we all do. Thanks so much for joining us, and we’ll see you on the next episode.

Why Do We Tip The Hotel Valet But Not The Housekeeper

This is a written Transcription for the episode: Why Do We Tip The Hotel Valet But Not The Housekeeper

Transcript

Full Written Transcript of The Episode

Why We Tip the Valet But Not the Housekeeper

MATT: Why do we tip the hotel valet but not the hotel housekeeper? The housekeeper does far more work for us and contributes much more to how enjoyable our stay is at the hotel compared to the valet.

The answer is simple, though. We see the hotel valet in person.

We see them face to face and we don’t usually see the housekeepers.

This illustrates the importance of in-person meetings, and on today’s episode, we’re going to jump into the reasons Face to face sales are far more effective than any other sales tactic.

Hello and welcome back to.

MATT: The Midwest Mindset, the podcast that makes marketing easy to understand and simple to do. I’m Matt Tompkins of two Brothers Creative, where we believe every business deserves affordable and effective marketing. We are always just a mindset shift away from success.

This is the Midwest mindset, and today’s episode is brought to you by Duke’s Worm house in Wahoo.

DUKE: I’m Duke, owner of Duke’s worm house in Wahoo.

When your line is dangling in the water like a hot dog in the wind, you know you ain’t got the right bait.

Well, slap on one of Duke’s worms at the end of your pole and you’ll be eating largemouth bass for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I know each and every one of the worms we got at Duke’s worm house in Wahoo because I caught him personally.

So I know they plump, they tasty. And the fish are going to love them. Right now, at Duke’s worm house, we have a special on all redhead and Louisiana mud worms mentioned the Prairie boys and get an extra ten worms per box.

Duke’s worm house where you can’t worm your way out of a good deal.

MATT: Thank you, Duke. Appreciate the sponsorship. So let’s talk about in person face to face meetings. I have always been baffled why we tip the hotel valet, but we don’t tip the housekeeper, the hotel cleaning maid, the hotel cleaning maid. She does far more work.

I mean, she cleans up and trust me, I mean, when I’m on a trip and I’m on vacation, I’m a messy, messy man. And they clean up after me.

They come in, they make your bed, they turn your towels into like, an elephant, you know, and they fluff your your your Kleenex into a rose. They bring you new soap and clean towels. Sometimes they accidentally walk in on you and you’re getting out of the shower. But, you know, that’s not their fault, right? The point is, they do a lot of work. A lot more work. What does the valet do? He stands there. He stands there. He waits.

And then he gives your keys and drives your car 20ft away and then comes back and stands. I mean, come on. But we tip the valet and the valets. They get big tips, right? Why is that?

It’s the power of seeing somebody in person. It really is. We don’t have to see the the housekeeper. We usually don’t unless she actually walks in on you, like I mentioned. But, hey, it was one time I learned my lesson.

MATT: Put the little do not disturb thing on the door handle.

We don’t see them, therefore we don’t make that extra tip. I’m going to be honest with you. I and this is something I would encourage you to do when you plan your vacation budget in an extra 100 bucks, a crisp $100 bill.

And I know that sounds like a lot, but really it’s not. When you think about it and we’re talking, you’re going to be there for a week. You know, they’re getting they’re cleaning up after you every day. Leave that $100 tip.

Leave it on the table with a thank you note. I do this every time, and I will be honest with you. I do it for half selfish reasons. I get so much enjoyment out of it. I just imagine this person who is ignored most of the time is not given the gratitude or the appreciation that they deserve.

They don’t get the tips like the valet does. To get that as a gift and make someone’s day. I am obsessed, to be honest with you. I’m obsessed with making someone’s day.

That is just a great feeling. I mean, try it. It’s 100 bucks budget. In an extra 100 bucks. 50 bucks. You’ll make someone’s day, you’ll make their week, and they deserve it. Another example of this is when we’re sitting at home and, you know, the Mormons come knocking or the local cable company, Cox Communication or whatever, they’re selling their their Internet, their Ethernet, their they’re fiber optic cables and they come to your door.

MATT: And what do we all do? We all hide. We pretend like we’re not home. I do this with kids trying to sell candy bars. I mean, I’m such a horrible person.

On one hand, I’m over here, you know, tipping cleaning maids because I want to make their day.

On the other hand, I’m hiding behind the refrigerator because a ten year old Boy Scout is trying to sell popcorn to me and I want nothing to do with it. The reason that we ignore it is because we know if we get face to face, it is so much harder to say no.

So much harder to say no. So now those experiences are a couple of examples in the real world of how face to face really works. Let’s apply that to sales because it is the same, has the same effect. We live in this digital world, the age of the algorithm. And yes, it is it is far too easy to just sit back anonymously.

And it’s the it’s our version of not answering the door when the kids are selling popcorn or candy bars. It really is. We sit back, we sit in our office and we decide, I’m not going to pick up the phone and do cold calls.

MATT: I’m not going to go do a face to face meeting. I’m not even going to do a zoom. I’m just going to fire off thousands of emails using whatever email marketing platform you’re using. I’m just going to do some meta ads. I’m just going to do some Google ads.

I’m just going to do some posts. I’m going to pay somebody else to do it. And we get. We compartmentalize ourselves. We put ourselves in this box, in this room where it’s like, I’m not going to interact with anybody.

And I don’t know if this is a side effect that was correlated with Covid and the pandemic and we were isolated, and maybe that shifted our mindset a little bit.

Maybe we’re just all becoming jerks. We just don’t want any human interaction in our lives. The bottom line is that that is nowhere near as effective as face to face. I will tell you, cold calls are effective.

Now, yes, you’re going to get 92% are not going to answer or they’ll say no. But you get the one. It’s a sale. And people hate cold calling, but cold calling works. I don’t care who you are. It works.

What works even better is face to face interactions. Stopping by that local business. We use our podcast and this is a great technique that you can you can you can deploy yourself and you have a podcast.

MATT: When you have a show, invite that potential client, that ideal client, that person you wouldn’t otherwise have an opportunity to even interact with, let alone build a relationship with. Invite them on your show as a guest. Trust me, they all say yes. Nobody knows if you have ten downloads or 10,000, right?

I mean, your downloads are like your bench press, only you know how much you can bench and only you care. Nobody else cares. Nobody else knows. All they see is the perception that you host a show, you invite them on, and now you have a face to face interaction. You can structure it where you have 3 to 5 Zoom meetings, you know, prepping for the show. What do you do when the show comes out, the actual interview in person, and then another

Zoom meeting when you’re releasing the show and how you’re going to promote it, you’ve developed a relationship and that’s what we’re after here. All right.

And that is my first tip today. I have five tips here, five reasons why in-person meetings trump anything else when it comes to sales. First is building stronger relationships, you know, in-person meetings.

They help establish a deeper a more personal connection with clients. You know, face to face conversations allow you as a sales person and, you know, salesperson doesn’t necessarily mean like what you’re imagining in your head, the used car salesman.

MATT: I mean, listen, I’m a salesman. We’re all selling our business. If you’re a business owner, you are a salesperson. You have to make sales, you know,

But this makes it has more of a personal impact. And it really is an opportunity for you to demonstrate your genuine interest in your client’s needs, in that prospect’s needs. That’s going to boost trust. It is going to strengthen client relationships. Number two, non-verbal signals.

Now you can pick these up in Zoom. I don’t let any of our any of our team members or I don’t do any calls typically with clients or prospects if they don’t have the video on, because nonverbal signals are important.

You have to pick up on these. You know, we had one where we had a team member and I could just tell something was off, something was wrong in our team meeting. So I asked her just to hang around afterwards. We talked and yeah, she was going through some very tough things. It was kind of in a dark place. And we’re not family.

We’re not her therapist or her doctor, but she is a part of our team. And I think it helped for her to know that we’re here to support her in any way that we can.

MATT: I think being able to talk about it helped. None of that would have happened, though. She didn’t have the video on. None of that happens if if it’s all done over email.

And think about this. How many times has an email been misread? You can read an email 20 different ways. And we do that right. People get and I’ve been guilty of this in the past, I will admit get passive aggressive with their with their emails because we interpret things different ways and somebody maybe doesn’t even interpret it. They’re not even intending it as you are reading it.

But you know, it’s like Brené Brown says, it’s the story that you’re telling yourself as you’re reading it. The third reason why face to face in person trumps any other form of communication or interaction is that you’re going to get better engagement. You’re going to get greater engagement one on one.

Meetings typically generate higher levels of engagement. The attendees are more focused. You don’t have distractions all around you. You know, with virtual meetings, they have advantages.

Don’t get me wrong, virtual meetings are there’s a lot of a lot of pros, you know, but there are some cons, you know, we can stack these meetings back to back to back to back to back. And they can lose their effectiveness.

MATT: They can lose. We can tire ourselves out. I’ve done this before where you have ten hours of just non-stop Zoom meetings and you’re just exhausted.

So your last three Zoom meetings, you’re not at your best self. So attendees in person, they’re more focused, you are more focused, you are both focused on each other much more than virtual meetings. As much as I love using Zoom and doing video meetings, it is this is a distinct advantage when you meet in person.

This engagement is going to increase the chances of effectively communicating your sales pitch, you know, understanding your client’s needs. Number four, Immediate feedback and resolutions. In-person meetings allow real time conversation and instant feedback.

You know, it can lead to quicker resolutions, objections, misconceptions that, you know, might otherwise stay hidden with online communications. I mentioned email and how we can misinterpret that. And man, there’s so many different platforms we use for communication. I’ve got one client and it’s all on Zoom chat.

We use Slack internally here for our internal communications at Two Brothers Creative. Another one is, Oh no, we’re on WhatsApp, the Nebraska group I’m in now, we’re on WhatsApp, and then we got another client. They’re over on Google meet. They’re using the Google Chat feature and after a while it’s like there are so many platforms here to keep track of. It’s kind of ridiculous.

MATT: But all of.

MATT: Those platforms, they’re all texts, they can all be misinterpreted very easily. In person is not the same. You can emote when you are in person.

You can show emotions and intent in a way that you can’t with with online digital communications. And the last thing here, the demonstrations and presentations you can do, I feel are far more effective in person as well. You know, when you’re doing a physical meeting, when you’re in person, you know you’re going to have the optimal environment, if you will, you know, to conduct these live demonstrations.

So showcase your products, services, examples, you know, showcasing your product in person, it leaves a stronger impression. It stimulates more senses, if you will, than digital presentation. That kind of sounded weird, but you know what I mean. Meeting in person. I just feel overall you’re much higher likelihood of getting them to say yes. It just is a higher likelihood, in-person meetings.

I know we can’t do every single meeting in person, Right. But I recommend making this a priority. All right. At the very least, make this a priority. Offer to meet in person.

Even just the offer is going to show your commitment. It’s going to show who you are as a person. I think other than just detracting to only digital, only email conversations. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love video chats. We use video chats all the time because half of our staff here, full time staff works remotely.

So we have to and there are distinct advantages of video meetings. You know, it’s going to it’s going to help push your communication to a new level because you have to do more meetings.

MATT: We do daily huddles twice a day. We do once a week team meetings, and we do one on ones every week with all of our staff, with all of our team members.

And then we do one on ones every month as well. That’s a lot of meetings. It sounds like a lot, but man, it is a game changer because you’re communicating and when you can see the person, you’re communicating with distinct advantage over an email, over a message, and if you can meet in person specifically with sales, you’re going to get more yeses, you’re going to get more deals closed.

You’re going to make more money. All right. You know, video meetings, distinct advantage. Yes, I would use video meetings. As your initial sales call, you shift your initial sales meetings from just an email or a text invite, do a video call with them, and then get to that in person.

You know, if you can do it in person right out of the gate, that’s awesome. But this is going to boost your efficiency. You’re going to get more sales prospects into your pipeline this way, going to increase your deal closures. It’s going to lower your prospect reluctance just due to the perceived lower time commitment that you have with a video meeting, with a video chat, and you’re going to reduce travel costs.

So use video chats. Yes, absolutely. But don’t discount in-person. You know, there’s a reason that we tip the valet at the hotel and we don’t tip the housekeeper. It’s because we see them face to face.

MATT: We feel guilty. It’s a guilt trip. I mean, the Catholic Church has been doing this for how long? I mean, that sounds ridiculous, but it’s true. It’s harder to say no to somebody in person. It. That means it’s easier for you to get a yes and a sale. Also, let’s change the.

Let’s flip the script, as they say. I don’t know if they still say that or not, but probably not. Either way, I sounded lame saying it. Let’s start tipping the housekeeper. Do it. Trust me. It’s going to make your day. It’s going to make their day. It’s going to be amazing.

Thank you so much for joining us here today on Midwest Mindset. You know, one of the things that I am bad at is planning out my day. And I changed it up and decided I’m going to start doing this the night before I plan out my next day. And it has increased my productivity and I think it’s going to help you too.

We put together this daily planner for you. It is free. You can download it right now.

The link is in the show notes. Plan out your day. Set those three big priority tasks that you’re going to get done and get them done instead of the list like I used to have. That’s like 30 things long and it just gives me anxiety looking at it. This free daily planner is in the show notes.

Click on the link, download it, It’s free. Thank you so much for joining us here today on Midwest Mindset.