Marketing Accountability: Full Written Transcript

MATT: Hello and welcome back to Midwest Mindset, the podcast that gives small business owners the big agency secrets to marketing. I’m Matt Tompkins of two Brothers Creative, where we believe every business deserves affordable and effective marketing. The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary. Great companies have high cultures of accountability. When people feel accountable and included, work is more fun, it’s more productive and more profitable. And your marketing is no exception.

Accountability is the key to success in marketing, and when marketers are held accountable for their actions, they’re more likely to make decisions that are in the best interests of their company. This leads to increased sales, improve customer satisfaction, and a stronger brand overall. Accountability is not always easy, but it is essential for success in marketing.

Every overnight success story is 15 years in the making. That’s one of my favorite quotes, and I don’t even know who’s who it’s credited to anymore. I think Bezos tried to hijack the credibility of that quote at some point. It’s been said over and over again, but it’s so true. As entrepreneurs, business owners, we. We work hard. But that doesn’t necessarily mean we’re putting in the work. You know, we’re working these long hours, seven days a week. It’s stressful, high anxiety. But when it comes to the actual work that’s being done, unfortunately a reason many most businesses fail after just 3 to 5 years is because they didn’t put in the right work. And that’s what we’re going to talk about today. And today is all about accountability. It is all about having a plan and the follow through with that plan. We’re talking about it specifically in regards to your marketing. But really, this applies to your business as a whole. And Tracy Winkler is Well, you I mean, you have experience many years working in marketing and you are now a certified implementer, so you’re like a BFD, I think is what those that’s the acronym you should be using for yourself. Right?

TRACY: Oh, how funny. And and thank you, Matt, for having me on. And actually, it’s professional implementer. Oh, I am certified, but I’m a professional implementer. Just to set the, you know, set the record straight there.

MATT: My wife will say that I’m certified in other areas or certifiable. I think that’s the that’s the term she throws around with me.

TRACY: That’s a good one.

MATT: So when I when we look at like, what makes a successful business, it is the boring shit. It’s the things that nobody wants to do. It’s not you think about a success story in business and we think about the money and the the ego and all the credit and the the legitimacy and how we’re revered in our industry. You know, the wealth, the success, the cars. Those are the fun, sexy things. But what gets you to that point, that is the that’s really the part most people ignore or don’t want to think about. And it’s the boring shit, you know, it’s I sum it up as you have to be a professional business person. If you want to be a successful business person.

And professional just means having a plan following through with that plan and iOS, which I’ll let you explain because you can do a much better job. It’s something that we have started to self implement here over the last few years. You’re working with us here at Two Brothers Creative to take it the to the next stage. But it really is a it’s a it’s a it’s a roadmap for how to be a professional business person. So walk us through what actually is. Okay.

TRACY: Fantastic. And you did really well on that. So. Well. Thank you. Thank you. You know, like my job.

MATT: Because I’m a professional business person, that’s why.

TRACY: Now I get it. I get it. Okay. So basically, it is it’s tools and concepts that are great organizational system to put into place. So what happens? So the book there’s the book, Traction by Gino Wickman. So you’re familiar with that? Yeah, that is where it all started. That is where Gino Wickman, he’s been an entrepreneur for life, and he actually took and cobbled together concepts that have been around for years to create simple tools, simple meaning that they are really simple to use but not easy to do. And yes, it is not the fun shit that you get to do in the day to day, and we make people make it look like it’s way more than that.

But where the consistency really comes in is from the stuff that isn’t that isn’t sexy, right? And so those are the things that you have to once you lay them down and you lay them down in a format like we do with iOS, you we do give you that roadmap. So for those that are struggling with that, this is where we come in and make it easy.

MATT: And as I mentioned in the opening with marketing, marketing is treated differently than every other part of most businesses, and I’ve never really understood why that is, especially considering that marketing is literally the most important part of your business. And you could say, Well, what about the products services? Nobody’s going to know about your products or services or that your business exists unless you’re telling people. So word of mouth is marketing your grandma telling her friends at bingo night about your business. That’s marketing. And so the fact that we put marketing in this special category and we say, okay, we’re not going to hold it accountable, we’re not going to be metrics based, we’re not going to have key performing indicators, we’re not going to have any sort of goals. We’re just going to come up with a fun creative idea, throw it at the wall, hope it sticks.

That’s marketing. And that’s that’s the that is a horrible approach that is setting yourself up for failure more times than not. And so I’ve never understood that that separation when people ask me that, like what do you recommend for my marketing? What’s the the top tip? And I say, treat your marketing like any other part of your business. And that all starts with accountability. So what we’re talking about here today applies to your business, it applies to your marketing, it applies to every department of your business equally. This was fascinating, Tracy, because I wanted to I was curious, like what the top weaknesses for most business leaders are and all of these are are basically solved by by traction. So at the top of the list, the number one weakness for business leaders is holding people accountable.

TRACY: Absolutely it is. Yeah. Right. People, right seats. And it’s something that people get when they say holding them accountable. It’s either it’s you’re managing human energy. And so that is the biggest thing that’s happening. And so keeping them accountable takes that leader to be really thoughtful in what they’re doing. And we can kind of expound on that later. So you got you got a big list. Yeah.

MATT: Going holding people accountable is number one for the top weakness, followed by getting rid of underperformers which traction does. Because when you are a metrics based company, you’re able to see, okay, this isn’t I just really like Bob. He’s got a great personality. It’s is Bob delivering? Is Bob actually performing well?

TRACY: And can I expound on that? When you were talking marketing, it goes back to part of marketing is your true core values that you’re building out. And so the simple thing is hiring and firing for those core values and that all it takes part of your whole marketing strategy that you’re building.

MATT: I never done goal setting. I’d always looked at goal setting as this like, you know, wishy washy type thing. I’m like, I’m not going to be one of those people. And what I found, though, is that, I mean, you really can’t track any sort of progress or know if you’re doing something right or wrong, if you’re not setting goals and then measuring them. And so what I would suggest to you, if you’re if you’re just starting out and you’re like, listen, this seems daunting. I don’t know if I can do this. I’m barely keeping my head above water. Keep in mind two things.

One, simple steps. It’s a simple step by step thing. You don’t have to do the whole entire thing all at once. I mean, if you can hire an implementer like Tracy, that that’s fantastic. But if you can’t, but if you can’t read the book and then implement something as simple as this vision traction organizer and at least you can lay out, okay, what’s my one year, three year and ten year goals like where do I want to be? What I found is in I set my goals in October of 2020 was when I left, didn’t renew my radio contract. I said, I’m going to do this full time again. Give it a second, a second whirl. And I set these goals by the end of the year, I want to be here. And it was like or I set my annual goals and by the end of the year I had already hit my annual goals.

MATT: And I’m like, okay, wow. I’m really like under estimating here what I’m capable of. And then I was able to adjust, and then you start to see what’s actually possible. And that’s for a business owner, that’s a really it’s an incredibly motivating thing, but it also opens your eyes to like, okay, wow, like this could actually be something here. This is an actual company. It’s not just a hobby or some freelance work I’m doing on the side. So I think having having just taking the approach of like, I’m going to do one thing at a time, get that one thing down and then move on to the next and, you know, and then giving yourself some grace over time here, that’s we want to be so hard on ourselves as business owners. We don’t want to give ourselves any sort of grace.

You have to keep your focus on the long game, like see the forest through the trees, step back for a second and say, okay, yes, I’m barely keeping my head above water right now, but I don’t want to be this way forever because that’s how businesses fail. So if I’m thinking a year from now, two years from now, I don’t want to be treading water, then you need to put an hour a day or whatever that little amount of time you can spare towards this so that you can get to that point where you are not working in your business, you’re working on your business.

TRACY: You are saying it all, this is perfect.

MATT: I need to come with you and be your pitch person.

TRACY: Have you noticed? I haven’t. I didn’t have to speak much and I’m usually the one speaking a lot. So no. You know, since you’ve done that and that vision traction organizer that we’re going to talk about and setting those goals that also works for you personally. So as the business owner, you can use that same format for your own life and for your own family. So it works both ways.

So any of the business owners out here you can use it for and equate it to the business or you can equate it to your personal life and family as well. So we’ll keep it as simple as you want. So getting that goal and writing it down and having that plan so you can actually ten x what you’re doing because most people do this. It’s a Dan Sullivan thing right now. There’s a great book out and it’s it’s about ten Xingu or two. Xingu two Xingu is you’re basically not changing a lot of what you’re doing. You’re basically 80% of your tasks that you’re doing to get to your goal. It really doesn’t. You don’t have to change much, but to ten things, you really have to cut things out and make a difference. So basically when you’re planning, you get to make the choice, you know, when you’re planning this and where you want to be in your goals, in your one year, your three year and your ten year goals and.

MATT: You’re so spot on with. Especially the core values. Yeah, I was really surprised when I set my picked out my core values, and then I found, wow, these are like a direct reflection of my personal values. And then you start looking at the goals and things in your life that you want and the reasons why you want these things. Like, I want to make more money. Okay, Why? So I can have more experiences in my life with my family or friends or whatever it is that that drives you individually. And none of that is possible without, you know, having these these these kind of core elements, if you will, that that iOS provides. And when it comes to your marketing, you know, being accountable with your marketing is something that is seems a little, um, maybe it’s like this unattainable or kind of a gray area because I will tell you this as far as like do’s and don’ts for, for measuring your marketing.

And you could tell me from your experience working in marketing and with iOS here if this is accurate, but don’t focus on the wrong metrics. You know, you want to focus on things that actually matter and drive your business forward. So leads, qualified leads, sales. Yep. We get caught up a lot of the times, and I’ve seen this unfortunately from other marketing agencies where it’s easy to spin the analytics, you know, and they’ll be like, Oh, you’ve got a 10,000 views on your video, you’ve got a bunch of heart emojis, you got a bunch of likes, you got a bunch of shares. Well, what is that actually doing for your business though?

TRACY: You just nailed it right there. And so in every company is going to have a different metric. So and really, when we call it a scorecard, so KPIs, your scorecards, your metrics that you’re looking at every week, but it’s what is an action that’s going to move you forward. So every week when you’re measuring that and looking at that, it’s it’s not just your measurables that are lagging, but what is going to be the next step to get you where you want to go. So if you’re on an island, let’s say you and all the gentlemen here at two brothers, you guys are all on an island drinking libations.

MATT: Scary thought, dipping your to be trapped on an island with these.

TRACY: Guys and dipping your toes in the sand and you have your team back here and you have a sheet of paper that you can look at what’s happening, maybe how many prospect calls, how many leads have you got? You know, what is it that’s going to move the needle for you that, you know, you can stay on the island or that you have to get your rear end back here to take care of business. So those are some of the metrics that are simple that we’re measuring. Now. You as a marketing department or different departmental can have your own scorecard metrics that even go deeper because you are going to be measuring things at a different level than actually the whole leadership team, but still keeping it as simple as you can without overthinking it.

MATT: And you have with us, you have teams and so we use 92 IO, which is a great online platform that it works hand in hand with your your traction for your US. And so we’ll have, you know, we have our marketing team and we have our marketing team has, you know, we have daily huddles, we have our weekly level 10 or 10 meeting. And then you have your maybe operations, you have your leadership team is another big one for your company. And you know, early on you’re going to have a lot of people in all these different members of many different teams.

But it’s important to distinguish those teams because you’re right, you know, setting your marketing goals there, it’s going to align with your overall company goals, but your marketing goals are going to be different measurables and metrics than, say, your leadership team goals, right? I mean, so you want to like having different sets of goals is important and you’ll, you’ll find this as important for you as the owner of the business to make the business more profitable, your life less stressful, streamlining everything. But your employees are going to love having accountability too, because they know what they need to do. They know when they’re performing well. And it’s just it really is this like overwhelming sigh of relief from everybody individually to company wide. Like, okay, all right. We’re all on the same page now.

TRACY: So you said same page. So do you care if I unpack something so that they understand because we’ve been throwing out some terms like the L ten meeting and we’ve been throwing out scorecards. And so basically iOS has six key components. Okay, so it starts number one with Vision Visions at the top, the second components people, third components data, the fourth components issues, the fifth components process.

And the last component of all is traction. So vision without traction is hallucination. So seriously, right? So where I wanted to unpack that is we start up at the top with the vision where we ask the eight questions and we go into this vision traction organizer that we’re going to give the your listeners this actual tool so that they can use it. But the second tool that we use is shared by all. So first, when I’m working with clients, I’m working with the leadership team only and we go through in my core processes and what I take you through. We start with the 90 minute meeting. So that’s making sure that iOS is right for you. You like me and I like you. Yeah, obviously we determined we kind of like each other. You know, we you know, the verdict.

MATT: Is still out, but. You know, we’ll we’ll we’ll muscle through it. We’ll muscle through it. That’s right. Muscle through it.

TRACY: So then we start off with a focus day, and that’s about an eight hours of an high level working on the business. 30 days later, we’re going into a vision building day one, which is really taking the marketing and then vision building Day two is 30 days later. After that, it’s time for you to share by all. So you after the leadership team, we develop the accountability charts. We we put all this together.

Then you’re sharing it out with your teams and you were talking marketing teams then they’re starting to build the same thing after that. And then I work with you guys on a quarterly basis and then an annual basis. I’m not digging too deep in the business. I’m just keeping you accountable and running everything. So those are kind of the six key components and high level what we’re doing and where we start. So where we’re starting today is vision. Yeah. And people and.

MATT: With vision traction organizer here, which you can download for free. The link is in the show notes. Yep. It really is. It’s kind of just the, I don’t know, the first draft, if you will, of your, your traction of your entrepreneurial organizational system. So, you know, Tracy’s got one here. She just pulled out. And like your core values, what are your five core values?

TRACY: I mean, we answer eight questions. That’s what we do.

MATT: Yeah, that’s all it is.

TRACY: So we start off with core values. What are your core values? Okay, so you can have as little as three to up to seven at the max. What are your core values?

MATT: So our core values would be honesty, quality, collaboration, creativity and growth.

TRACY: Okay, so core focus, core focus. That is really what is the sweet spot. So really what is the reason and the core focus I want to talk about again, that is really simply put, that’s why you hire and fire people. That is what you stand for. That is what And if you had an employee, for instance, your core values and it’s like, did you align with them? Yeah. And if they don’t align with them, I mean, you know, that that shows a lot.

And the same thing with your customers as well. Those are the people you want to have fun. You want to, you know, you want to work with people that every day that you guys are doing something fun, making a difference out there and that people align. And if they don’t align, they will know because you’re either holding them back and there’s a better option for them. Right? We’re going to the next the ten year target now, ten years. Gosh, what the heck is ten years? Am I still going to be in the workforce? I don’t know.

MATT: All I can say here is dream big, like in traction in the book, he calls them, you know, big, hairy, audacious goals like Think Big because we do limit ourselves. We have this it’s like a scarcity mindset almost of like, oh, geez, I don’t know if I can say that I’m a $10 million annual revenue company or not. I don’t. This is for you. Like just dream big because dream big. I mean, I went through this early on with my mentor. She’s looking at this going, uh, why? This is a why are you limiting the potential growth of what this company can be? You know, and I just couldn’t wrap my head around it early on of, you know, this this actually could be that big of a success, you know, And so don’t limit yourself and and really just dream as big as is possible. Right. And that’s where it starts.

TRACY: It is. And now some people went 5 to 30 years. So whatever, you know, even though we have ten year but dream big and that’s where I was kind of going with the ten X thing because if you don’t set those goals that high because you might hit down at two X, but if you hit them at two x, where are you going? You’re way below. Yeah, right. So ten year target. Next thing we do is what you love. Marketing strategy we both used to do. I used to do a lot of strategy. So there’s a difference between a plan and a strategy. You can imagine that.

MATT: Yeah. So and this is we’ve talked a lot about this on the podcast, having a strategy, having a plan with processes and procedures, having a checklist to accomplish tasks along the journey of what that strategy is. These are seem like very simple things, but they are the most overlooked aspects of especially marketing, because we think marketing, like I said, we think is just this creative, fun idea. You come up with a name of a clever mascot and something funny and he’s got a catchphrase and I got a jingle and then boom, it’s a success story, right? That’s all marketing is.

Marketing is a science first. It is formula first and then creative. And that is that is hard for people to kind of wrap their heads around because it seems like it’s the it’s the funnest part of the whole company. Right. Coming up with silly, goofy ideas. But without a strategy, you don’t have anything, right?

TRACY: You’re doing the tactical things and everybody wants to do tactical first. So the strategy is big picture, and that’s actually putting a plan together, a plan to see where we’re going to go, that it matches your core values and that you can actually then put that plan together and then follow through on it and execute on it. Now, what we do with strategy, that’s pretty high level. So when what this sets it up for is really nice for marketing agencies, because when any marketing agencies have worked with the company that is run on iOS, they’re like, Oh my gosh, because they get it. So this is really top level. Like working with you then takes that marketing strategy to a deeper level and gets more. You bring on the tactical with the strategy or you’re able to do the tactical right.

So after we do the marketing strategy, we go into one year planning. Okay. Or excuse me, your three year picture, and then you go into your one year planning and then we start creating rocks or which are 90 day quarterly goals, 3 to 7 for the company. No more than that because, you know, it’s it’s hard to accomplish. And then later each person has their own rocks and then we create an issues list and issues. And that’s basically that’s throwing up every issue you’ve got.

MATT: And it’s not necessarily personal issues you have with people. It can’t be, but it’s like, okay, hey, our, our, our in intake system for new clients is flawed and here’s why. And like here’s you know, it’s figuring it’s problem solving, right?

TRACY: It is problem solving and critical thinking and also getting going deeper because sometimes some of the issues can be symptoms and you’ve got to keep digging, digging, digging for the root cause, which can smoke out a couple of different issues. The idea that what we when we’re working together and build more out and we’re not talking about that all today because we do not want to confuse them all, but on the issues list is basically we want to take those issues and we want to solve them for good.

And that’s either by giving them on a to do list for something weekly or on a rock for a quarterly goal, but making sure to get it off forever, not just that reoccurring issue that never goes away, that pain in the you know what that sticks with us. We want that gone.

MATT: All of this is like Big Sky view with a lot of things we covered here today. However, again, just to reiterate, it starts with the Vision Traction Organizer. So download the free PDF in the show notes. We also have Tracy’s contact information because you do a lot of consults and initial conversations with people that where there is no there’s no financial risk, you’re not on the hook and you can get a lot of valuable, very valuable information and resources suggestions from Tracy herself to help you move your business and your marketing forward. So Tracy, thanks so much for coming on as a professional implementer here on the show.

TRACY: Well, thank you. And I had a great time and help first. That’s what we do.

MATT: Thanks once again for joining us here today on Midwest Mindset. Don’t forget to download that free vision traction organizer. The link is in the show notes. We’ll see you on the next episode.

Full Written Transcript of The Episode

MATT: If I was building a house, I could use a traditional hammer and nail, framing each wall by hand, pounding each nail into each individual board. Or I could use a pneumatic air gun. Now, this nail gun would streamline the process, building my house much faster with better quality, and allow me to do some cool, innovative things that I couldn’t do with a manual hammer and nail. However, that pneumatic air gun cannot build the house for me. Artificial intelligence is just the latest advancement in tools that you have in your arsenal.

Choosing not to use these tools is a mistake, but so is depending entirely on these new tools. In this episode, we’re going to break down how you should and should not be using AI with your marketing. Hello and welcome back to Midwest Mindset, the podcast that gives you the small business owner, the big agency Secrets to Marketing. I’m your host, Matt Tompkins, alongside my brother Ben, who’s here today. Hello.

The other brother. Finally. It’s about time there is another brother at two brothers Creative, where we believe that every business deserves affordable and effective marketing. I wanted to bring Ben on the podcast today because Ben is actually a robot and we’re talking about artificial intelligence today, so I’m.

BEN: Happy that you actually think I have intelligence that makes me happy.

MATT: It’s artificial, so. Oh, so yeah. So we’re talking about artificial intelligence today. Now there’s there’s traditionally been just one camp on this. It’s the end of the world. Yeah, right. Terminator two Judgment day. Ai is going to take over. It’s going to destroy mankind. But nobody talks about the other side, the benefits of AI taking over. Let’s be honest here. Human beings, we have not done a very good job of living over the millennia.

Right. Right. I mean, you look at the wars, the slaughters, the brutality, you look at pollution. There are so many things we could solve, so many problems we could solve. We’ve chosen not to do anything. So there is a flip side that could happen with AI, where I actually solves all these problems that human beings have created. Either way, it’s out of our hands. We have passed the point of no return. So AI is either going to it’s going to evolve to a place where I can write other AI like spawn itself and at that point better than humans. And then at that point it’s either going to be for good or bad. So we just got to enjoy the ride while we’re here, Right?

BEN: And you’re saying these are the benefits. That’s what you’re starting off with, So. Okay. I wanted to like it.

MATT: I wanted to terrify. Yes. Terrified people first.

BEN: Some good benefits.

MATT: Okay. So artificial intelligence can do some pretty incredible things. Point proven. Just this morning, a friend sent me this Instagram video and they took every conservative politician they had Donald Trump, Lindsey Graham, Mitch McConnell, and a whole slew of others. And they not only had I recreate, they did like facial recreation, like the deepfake deepfake of their face, but they put them in full drag and then recreated their voices saying all of these very supportive things about being in drag. It’s hilarious. We have the clip here for you.

Speaker3: Let’s make America glam again.

Speaker4: I’m the elephant in the room and I’m not afraid to sparkle.

BEN: They call it trickle-down fabulousness.

Speaker5: I believe in limited government, but unlimited glamour.

Speaker6: Don’t tread on me unless you’re wearing fabulous heels.

Speaker7: Gop stands for Glamour on Point.

Speaker8: I’m a fiscal conservative, but I’ll never skimp on style.

Speaker6: I’m here to cut taxes and sashay away.

Speaker9: Stars, stripes and stilettos. Now, that’s what I call liberty.

Speaker6: I’m here to filibuster with flair. Queen.

Speaker10: In God we trust. And in glam we must.

BEN: Good job, producer. Well done.

MATT: Now, if you’re listening to the podcast, you couldn’t see the hilarity. You can check it out. The link is in the show notes for you. Now, while that is hilarious marketing on the behalf of Brita Water Filter, put that out. Brita filter always on the cutting edge of their marketing. It is also, I guess, terrifying to those people featured in these videos. There are some real scary things. I could definitely do a lot of harm, but there are so many benefits too.

I mean, yes, there’s the extremes, but as a small business owner, you need to know what tools are available so that you can level the playing field. We don’t have these massive billion dollar budgets and we have to increase sales. We have to bring in new leads, qualified leads and sales. So today we’re going to give you some very practical things you can use AI tools for. I asked AI So everybody has their AI platform of choice. Mine is Brad. It’s Bard. Google has Bard and it’s their version of Chatgpt basically. And I call him Brad because Bard is a horrible name. It’s a great name.

BEN: Why? It means it means poet. Like Shakespeare was known as the Great Bard.

MATT: Sounds like barf. That’s what I think. So I asked Bard, I said, Hey, give me the benefits and the potential risks of AI. So here’s what the AI gave me. At least the AI was honest with us. I can help us solve complex problems that are beyond the capabilities of humans.

There are so many menial, tedious tasks that we do as small business owners. And I mean, I think everybody, every small business owner wants another 24 hours in the day. There’s just not enough time. So this is a way you can really streamline your process. And we’re going to get to some specifics on how to do that and how to use platforms here in this episode specifically for your marketing. But everything from accounting, reconciling your books, you know, doing your taxes, just I mean, all these things, organizing projects. I mean, there are AI platforms for like one is motion that I use that will reshuffle my schedule as the day goes on. And I’ll just tell it, Hey, here’s all the tasks I need to get done this week and it’ll fit it into my schedule so that I, being the, you know, knucklehead distraction.

MATT: King Over here, Don’t forget to get something done right. I can automate tasks. That’s another thing. Free up our time for more creative and productive activities. Ai can help us make better decisions, provides us with more information. It can do research insights, I mean social media, analytics and things like that. That can take a lot of time for us to go through and process as humans. I can do that for us. There are some potential risks. You know, I obviously can job displacement is probably a big one.

Ai is going to sound kind of harsh, but I feel like the jobs that are always displaced by the latest form of technology, like did you really like deserve that? Is it really a job worth keeping if a robot can place you? You know, I mean, and I don’t mean that as an insult at all to anybody. Most of these jobs that are going to be replaced are going to be like, you know, tax people, insurance people, lawyers, attorneys.

BEN: There goes our tax accountant, listener base.

MATT: I mean, but the same thing was said with automation in, you know, when we had robots on on the floor of factories and we had all had these industrial revolutions come and come and come again. If there’s one thing that human beings are best at, it’s adapting. So I, I, yes, I agree. It sucks with the job displacement that will happen in certain areas. But the artificial intelligence robots can’t replace human beings in the in the in the the area of being a human being can come close can pull from data points through history. But I just feel like that’s often this big drum that’s beated and I don’t know how much. How is that different than in the 1920s, 30s, 40s, 50s and so on. We’ve heard this over and over again. I could be used to create autonomous weapons that could kill without human intervention. Now we’re.

BEN: Talking.

MATT: I mean, aren’t humans doing this already though? I mean, we’ve created drones. I mean, how many people have human beings killed? This is like the argument of driverless cars versus human beings driving cars. There’s like one Tesla that gets totaled with a guy who is using the driverless feature longer than he should have been using. It gets totaled. It’s a sad, tragic story. And then everybody says, Oh my God, we can never have driverless cars.

How many people are killed in accidents by human beings in their cars every year? And then I could be used to manipulate people and spread disinformation. Now, I mentioned that video that we played at the front of this. It’s obviously it’s done. I think it works for marketing, even though it’s random that Britta put this out there. I mean, when I say Britta, I don’t think political.

BEN: Jerry You’re filtering out all the trash. Jerry.

MATT: There you go. They’re filtering out. Yeah, but I don’t think they didn’t really take a side. They made something that was just hilarious. It was such an exaggeration. Everybody knows that’s not really them. And so that’s what makes it funny. And it’s there’s so much irony and juxtaposition that it makes it hilarious and it works. But there are some real dangers. I mean, what happens when the next, you know, presidential election and you have deepfakes of a president saying something that he didn’t actually say. So those are the real risks that are out there. But do those really affect our day to day as business owners? I mean, other than global nuclear war.

BEN: Right. That’s you know, we’ll deal with that one.

MATT: We’ll deal with We dealt with that one in the 80s. All right. It was a movie about it and everything worked out. Got to have it play tic tac toe. You know, that’s the solution. So let’s get into the good. All right.

BEN: Because you’re really just winning me over with this whole conversation so far. Yeah.

MATT: So Ben is a creative person. He’s a great writer. He’s a teacher. He’s. I mean, not to humble brag, but he’s working on his mother here right now. Yeah. And so I don’t know.

BEN: What I’m going to do with it, but.

MATT: But you taught English. You taught creative writing. And, you know, when it comes to using AI for things that are in the creative realm, which is kind of where marketing marketing is, you know, formula plus creative, that’s where things get kind of murky. And so there are some good uses of AI specifically with your marketing that I want to hit on. You know, I can handle some of those tedious parts of putting things together within your marketing strategy, your plan, automating posting. I mean, everybody uses Hootsuite, you’re using AI, that’s all these are.

I mean, AI has been around forever. Ai is in your stoplights, it’s in your smartwatch, it’s in your phone. All it is is math. It’s just math that can learn and progress and get better over time. So that’s all that it is. So I think that this is the first good thing that I want to hit on today that people should use AI platforms and tools for because we spend too much time focusing on the formula and not enough time focusing on the message. And we’ve asked Jasper, which is an AI platform to write comedy jokes, and they are horrible. They are not remotely funny, right?

BEN: I also have a test for if you’re a good songwriter like Willie Nelson, if you say write me a song in the style of Willie Nelson and it sounds like the the songwriter that you’re trying to mimic, then that person is not a good songwriter. So if you type that into Bard or Jasper or Chatgpt.

Willie Nelson songs are really, really hard for AI to write because they’re very poetic. They have these very kind of abstract, poetic images. Typically, AI pulls just generic rhymes, A, B, B rhyme schemes, and they use certain words that are synonyms. So like for head, it would use the word dome for a head. But Willie Nelson would never use that word. But if you ask Chatgpt or AI to write a song in the style of like Luke Bryan, then it typically writes a song in the exact formula that Luke Bryan writes, because those songs are very formulated, very easy to write when it comes to poetry and creative writing. I don’t think that AI is anywhere close to being able to actually create something that a human can create. And I think it’s important to understand.

BEN: You have to categorize. We look at I like we look at socialism in the same way that everyone jumps to this idea of socialism. So bad dreams. But we have socialism in our lives every single day. We take advantage of socialist programs in our own government all the time, but we don’t even know about it When it comes to AI. We have to separate the social aspect of this doomsday scenario.

And then I think that’s a question that a lot of business owners would have, is how do you separate it? So you have this societal aspect of AI and how it affects relationships and us working with one another and communicating with one another. But then that’s different from how AI can benefit your business and how it can help a business. And I think clarifying that to business owners is something that needs to be done because right now when you hear AI, the first thing you think of are all those doomsday things that you just said. Yeah, and it’s important to separate those pretty immediately if you want to use it effectively. And there.

MATT: Are extremes. We see this with other marketing firms and agencies and individuals with business owners who they take the extreme position and say, I can do everything just as good as a human, therefore I’m going to have it do all of my stuff. So all of my social media posts, all of my copywriting for my ads, my Google ads, Facebook, Instagram ads, it’s going to write all the copy on my website. In fact, you know what? I’m just going to use a cheap AI platform to build my website in just a few minutes.

And that is that is an extreme in the business world. That is a major mistake to make. It is a huge mistake because it’s just like with the extremes socially. And these cultural discussions we have is at the end of the world or is it going to save mankind? Like those are extremes. That is an extreme In the business world. It’s a little bit smaller scale. You have to look at I like a tool because that’s what it is. It’s just a tool now. It is a very advanced tool, but you can do some incredible things if you’re using this tool correctly, if you’re just avoiding this tool because it’s scary, intimidating or for nostalgic reasons, there’s a lot of people who just I’m not going to let it help me with my writing or research like I’m going to do it all myself. Okay. Well, that’s just a that’s an equal mistake because now you’re letting your own ego get in the way of a tool that can help you create and write something better.

You know, the human still has to be involved in it. And that’s like the big thing. The next thing I wanted to hit on is why marketing is unique and marketing, creative writing songs, music. I mean, no offense to Luke Bryan. I know he listens to this podcast. He’s going to be crushed by your analysis. I’ve talked to him about it already. Yeah, he knows. Yeah. I mean, there are so many, only so many words you can rhyme with, you know, truck and dog, right? And country Road come up.

BEN: With a new country.

MATT: Song. Yeah. So the thing is, is marketing. Marketing boils down to feelings. Marketing is all about the feeling brain and not the thinking brain. We use the thinking brain after we’ve already made our decision based on the emotions. It’s all about an emotional connection. And I don’t care how much you want to argue, it’s about the facts. It’s just the facts, ma’am. It’s the specs.

You’re. You’re kidding yourself. You know, we use the facts to justify the emotional decision we’ve already made based on feelings. And so how this is a this is a bad area, a bad way to use AI. How can you expect AI to connect with and resonate with other humans, with your message, with your marketing, if it doesn’t know what feelings are, let alone how to feel them in the first place? If marketing is all about connecting on that emotional level and I cannot feel so, how does it know? That’s why it can’t write jokes. It doesn’t have a sense of humor.

All it can do is pull from things that it’s found online and say these are things that other people are saying are emotional or sensitive or comical, but it can’t connect in a genuine, real way. So if you are using AI ChatGPT, whatever your platform of choice is, then you’re having to do all your stuff. That’s a mistake. That is just a major mistake that you can make. Now look, in just a second here, I want to kind of go through a couple of ways business. Small business owners can use this platforms in very specific real ways as a tool. That’s smart, that’s a smart use of this new technology, I think.

BEN: Yeah, the growing pains of you just don’t know how to use it. Similarly with social media, and that’s a problem. I’m sure a lot of businesses are at risk for, especially businesses that maybe aren’t that savvy when it comes to technology is that there’s a tremendous opportunity for people to take advantage of businesses when it comes to things like AI, because it’s a surface level thing you can have, it can write you a very surface level. This looks like a great script or a great blog or a great whatever, but there is no depth to it.

And that’s where the human aspect comes into play. When you have those some businesses that just don’t understand that it’s easy for them to get taken advantage of and be manipulated by whoever’s using this AI. So I think that’s a big concern that I think a lot of businesses should have. And knowing that what they’re getting when they’re getting AI and knowing that it is, it’s not a one stop shop when it comes to whatever you’re having it create. The human aspect still has to be involved in the process.

MATT: And there are there are so many different ways to use and misuse tools. And like I said, AI is no different than any other tool. I mean, I could use I use the analogy in the beginning of this episode of a hammer versus a pneumatic air gun, a nail gun for framing a house. I mean, yeah, you could use a pneumatic air gun too much and it could cause issues. It’s not going to build the house for you. But to just overlook it is, is just I think it seems to me it’s more out of fear. Ego seems to be the reasons people aren’t using these tools. But like with any other tool, though, you need to research how to use the tool, you need to read the manual.

And I don’t think many business owners are. They’re just following what other people are saying on Twitter and social media channels, and they’re hearing this national discussion of Chatgpt is replacing everything and they don’t really know what it’s capable of. So I wanted to spend the last few minutes here in this episode literally walking you through a very specific example of how you as a small business owner can use AI platforms to level the playing field. Now we’re going to use the example of SEO because a lot of companies, SEO is one of those things. We’ve done episodes on this in the past. It’s it seems like it’s very complicated. It can get very complicated, but the basic premise is that you want to show up in Google searches for certain words.

MATT: If you’re a cupcake factory in Omaha and you’re selling cupcakes and you have a counter and deli or whatever, then you want to show up for searches that are related to your business locally especially. But if you’re a national vendor, then you. Want to rank for those specific keywords. So that’s really all it’s about. I mean, it is the power of the written language. It’s the power of words.

Just changing a couple of words can have a huge difference. So how can you use ChatGPT and barred Chatgpt and barred? Ah, I would say Chatgpt is more advanced than barred from what? At least from my personal experience. But if I’m going to side with any AI platform when it comes to SEO, I’m going to use Google’s because Google is what, 85% of the search engine market. So you want to do what Google tells you to do. And for those right now who have heard like, well, I’ve heard that Google’s suppressing AI, creating content, you’re right.

You have heard that they haven’t specifically told us how they I don’t know how I don’t really know how they are suppressing it. A lot of people have said that it’s just a bluff of we’re telling people we’re suppressing it. Other people, they’re telling us they’re suppressing like Chatgpt and others, and then they release their own AI platform, basically giving it a big endorsement for AI.

BEN: Oh, sneaky guys.

MATT: So a number of different maneuvers here by Google. I don’t think the way that they describe it, they don’t say I created content. The way to describe it is they are going to reward quality content. In other words, if your blog article or your website reads like a robot wrote it, that’s not going to be the best quality, right? And so that’s really what you need to focus on. Is this relevant to other people with SEO? And this is where using AI as a tool comes into play. Seo is all about getting picked up by the sensors, the AI in the algorithms for. I mean, really what you’re doing is like you’re writing content so that AI will see it and then place it in front of humans, right? So it’s like the AI on for search engines. It’s like a gatekeeper in a way. Um, the gate, it’s like.

BEN: Those big sphinxes and never ending story.

MATT: Yes, the topless ones.

BEN: The topless ones. Yes, exactly.

MATT: That always freaked me out that.

BEN: A picture of those on.

MATT: The screen? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I don’t know if it can anymore. I don’t think we can get away. Oh, I wonder who pitched that idea in that movie. You know what we need on these giant sphinxes? Okay, let’s get back on point. All right, so we’re using Chatgpt as an example. You’re using Bard. You know, Jasper. There are others. So here’s how you can use it. So SEO. So you want your website to rank for content, you need to be putting out content.

Blogs are your super secret weapon highly effective. But let’s say you don’t have a lot of time to write these blogs. Okay, let’s say maybe if you’re doing a podcast, you want to take the transcript, you can just copy the transcript, paste it into Bard and say, Bard, this is called a prompt. You give it a prompt. You are now Matt Tompkins. You are an expert on content marketing. You own two brothers, Creative, a content marketing company and podcast production studio in Omaha, Nebraska.

BEN: Sounds like the beginning of a terrible sci fi movie.

MATT: It does. In Chatgpt and Bard. You can paste like, I want you to scan my website and consume all of the content on this website so that you have an understanding of my past writing style, who I am and what we do, and then say, you know, let me know when you’re ready. Now that prompt you create that once and just save it in a Google doc saved in a word, doc. And then every time you’re writing content for yourself, you start off your chat with that prompt. So that prompt you start off with, okay, put the prompt in.

Now it’s going to write as you. Now the more input, the more information you give it in that prompt, the more accurate it’s going to be related specifically to you. But then let’s say you take like this episode of this podcast, we could take the transcript from this, which is just just an AI is going to create a written transcript of every word we’ve said. And you paste that in a bar and say, I want you to summarize this transcript into an 800-word blog article, and we want to rank highly for SEO for the following keywords.

And those keywords would be artificial intelligence, AI artificial intelligence for marketing. Ai for marketing. Ai for content creation. Ai for content marketing. And you say go boom in seconds. It’s going to create the first draft and that is important. It is not the final draft, but it’s the first draft.

MATT: And it is based on unique content that we’ve created. So it has a human perspective, human insight, those feelings that that Chatgpt can’t emulate on its own. And it has that. But it’s going to just quickly structure this and lay this out. Now you can take that blog rough draft and you can use the blog writing SEO checklist that we have. You can download it for free today. The link is in the show notes and you just run through it.

You add your external links, your internal links, you add some photos, you just do the little things that you need to do, your H1 title tag, H2, your metadata, and you’re good. You have a blog article now that’s going to as long as it lives on the Internet for the rest of its life, it is going to pay off. It’s like real estate to your investment portfolio. It’s just going to keep on paying. And how much did it cost you? It cost you a few minutes, a few minutes of your time, a half hour, maybe. Most. I mean, I did this. I was. Just messing around with Bart. In two hours, I wrote 17 blog articles, 17 blog articles, and then I spent the next two hours going through. We used some website called Semrush and it has a writing assistant so we can really dial in the SEO, get a highest score as possible in four hours time.

MATT: We had I think eight of those 17 were ready to be posted ranked high and are currently ranking in searches right now. So I’m just saying as far as using it as a tool, it is a major mistake to just say, No, I’m not going to use it, I’m not going to learn about it. I’m just going to you know, if I ignore it, it’s going to go away. It’s a passing fad or whatever. All right. This isn’t my space. It’s going to be here forever. It has been here forever. So use the checklist we have in the show notes. If you have questions about AI, you have questions about your marketing. Obviously you can hit us up all the contact information in the show notes as well.

But I think the important lesson today would be the takeaways don’t go to the extremes. Don’t ignore the tools that are at your disposal right now because those tools I’m telling you, you get 20 blog articles up on your website. You’re going to start leveling the playing field in the area of SEO for your company, you know? And how much did it cost you? It cost you reading, learning and some time. I mean, that’s that’s really that is such a minimal investment for us to commit for a major, major reward that we could that we can reap the benefits from.

BEN: And I think separating the societal impact of AI and the future of AI and those initial growing pains that people will take advantage of it and people will abuse it. As we learn more and more about this, just like in any new age, but then separating that from the business side, you can’t because it’s such a dramatic issue and scary issue and fun issue to talk about. It’s easy to lump it in and just get scared and back away from it. But there is a clear separation from the benefits AI has on a business side and a marketing side, and then the benefits and disadvantages it presents to a society as a whole. They are they are separate things. So that’s important to keep in mind.

MATT: Yeah, it is. I mean, it’s hard to separate those two, but you have to think about what’s best for your business. I mean, if they came out with a new product, a new tool of any kind, they came out with a new mop and this mop is going to clean your forest floors. I mean, the new the little electric electric Roombas, the vacuums. I mean, would you say, you know, you know what? No, it’s that that Roomba may try and kill me and take over the planet someday. I’m just going to steer away from that that seen.

BEN: Some of these Roombas Matt Vicious.

MATT: Just you have to be you have to learn. You have to you have to evolve along with the technology. Otherwise, as a business owner, you’re just going to be missing out on major opportunities. And so we use AI as a tool, just like you should be using AI as a tool. Don’t over use it. You have to be smart and you have to kind of wait on a case by case basis. All right. Thanks once again for joining us today on Midwest Mindset. Don’t forget, in the show notes here, there is a link. You can download that checklist for writing the perfect SEO focused blog article. We’ll have more resources for you if you want. If you want to read up on AI in the show notes for you as well. And we’ll see you on the next episode.

Full Written Transcript of The Episode

Matt Tompkins: What does street marketing look like today in the era of all things digital? Well, it turns out that the same basic principles to physical flyers, in-person events and networking apply just as much to today’s digital marketing as it did 20, 30 years ago.

In this episode of the podcast, we’re joined once again by Todd and Tyler Radio Empire Zone Mike Tyler, who shares the old school street marketing tactics that they used that you can utilize today to market your business online. Hello and welcome back to Midwest Mindset, the podcast that gives you the small business owner, the big Agency Secrets to Marketing.

I’m Matt Tompkins of two Brothers Creative, where we believe every business deserves affordable and effective marketing. I remember when my brother Ben and I, we played in a band. We were trying to be rock stars. Spoiler alert, it didn’t pan out. We did okay. You know, we played for a number of years around the Midwest here and every show, especially local shows here in Omaha.

I remember handing out I don’t know how many flyers we would make up these flyers and we would make up outrageous posters and even take out ads in the the local newspapers like Shout and The Reader. And we would have these flyers. We took so much pride in these posters and these flyers, and we would literally hand them out by the thousands. My girlfriend at the time, now wife Wendy, she worked at Cox Communications. She had access to a printer so she could just print endless amounts of flyers for us. And we would literally take these by the thousands by the thousand and go out and stick them in the under the windshield wiper of vehicles in every parking lot we could get access to.

Matt Tompkins: It was a old school street marketing tactic. And yes, we were the guys that annoyed you with things stuck underneath your windshield wiper when you came to your car the next day, that soggy wet flyer that because it had rained or snowed the night before. Those are old school street marketing tactics, and I think we’re all familiar with some form of street marketing. But it is interesting to look back at what worked. You know, that was just 15 years ago. It’s interesting to look back at 15 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago at these old school street marketing tactics for marketing, how they worked and what we can learn from them and actually apply directly to marketing your business today. A perfect example of this is the Todd and Tyler radio empire.

Now for those that don’t know, Todd and Tyler are Omaha Nebraska’s Howard Stern, right? They came here in the early 90s and they have since been the number one top ranked radio show in our market. They have dominated for decades. They’re in the Nebraska Broadcasting Association’s Hall of Fame, and they are now syndicated all over the country. When they first moved here, though, they had a daunting task. It was just as daunting of a task as you face with marketing your business, especially if it’s a new business. And that daunting task for Todd and Tyler was ingratiating themselves to a new city, brand new city, new listeners, new people. And they took things to new territories, new places that radio shows in Omaha hadn’t taken things to up to that point because we had to.

Mike Tyler: Do a lot of stuff to to be known. We were out every night, either either socially or for the station and meeting and greeting people and hanging out and being part of that situation. We were also younger. We could do that more often and still wake up early. But yeah, they got us here. They put us on TV, a couple commercials. They did, Uh, I know, I know that to get us known.

Matt Tompkins: I remember the one commercial we had the women talking and like, it was your voice, but it was other people talking. They did that.

Mike Tyler: I’ll tell you the funniest one. This is if somebody could find this out, they they try just ingratiate us right away with Omaha, even though we weren’t from here. And we’re going to be on the air the next day saying we weren’t from here. They put Todd in the Huskers shirt and they put me in a Creighton jersey, okay? And they had us on TV saying, Hey, join us Monday. I’m thinking I look back at that commercial. I said, What the hell? I just found out where Creighton was like a month ago. So but that was that still got us out there.

But then they started realizing when they can’t phony that stuff up and then they I think one of the best campaigns they did early on was about 96. Yeah, 96 or so. Our boss, Jim McKernan, at the time did this. He he put up a couple of billboards in town. And one of the billboards was was me and Todd as like, uh, first grade pictures, something like that. And on the billboard it said innocent or something like that. And then about two months later, they changed it and it showed us our high school senior photos, which are hilarious. And it said, uh, I forget what the word was something like going because the final one was disturbed and it was our pictures.

Now I said, now they’re disturbed. And it caused a lot of talk. And we were driving down the highway, you’d see it and it was just it just showed. Well, it just showed the progression of what people thought of us. So that helped a lot. Uh, marketing wise. They used to, they did the early stuff, the t shirts, but they’re so funny. People sent me all kinds of stuff. Now these photos and stuff about some of the other stuff we did. Urinal screens.

Matt Tompkins: Urinals is a good place to advertise. It was a great place to advertise. You’re right. You know, especially for your audience, if your target audience is dudes. I mean, bars in town.

Mike Tyler: Had your screens in all the time, you know, and pitched on you last night. Sorry, we’re not on the air. I can say that I’d say it on here anyway, but yeah, so the urinal screens were big. I think we made condoms at one point. The company did the condoms.

Matt Tompkins: I don’t know. I’d feel weird. I remember when I was starting out because I worked for a news talk station. My producer was my role there. And I remember I had a a woman emailed me a picture of herself, a very large woman, and she told me in the email that she they we had like our staff photos on the website that she would pull up my staff photo while her and her husband made love in their bedroom.

And I’m like 26 at the time. And I’m like, What? Like, I mean, probably like, you know, I’d be the the woman in the photo that she revealed. It was like, you know, okay, I’m sure she’s beautiful to somebody else, but not it was just kind of it was a lot it was like, you know, a lot a lot very older woman. And I’m like, that’s a little intense for me. I’m like, crazy. I’m like six months into my, you know, radio job here and you got this.

Mike Tyler: Old, hey, hey, Sonny.

Matt Tompkins: Before you even get to step one, two and three of the laws of marketing, the introduction to this book, if you will, is understanding this basic truth.

And that is that marketing is not about facts. It’s about feelings. And we did a whole episode about this facts versus feelings. We’ll put a link in the show notes for you to check it out if you haven’t listened to it yet. But we have to set aside the thinking brain. We have to set aside our thinking brain as hard as that is, and we have to understand and relate to the feeling brain of your customers because perception. Chin is everything.

Perception is all that marketing really is. Understanding who your target audience is is the first and the only way to understand what drives them emotionally.

And there are a lot of easy free ways that you can accomplish this from engaging on social media and Facebook groups or even just posting questions on Quora in the radio back in the day. And today they do these study groups where they actually get people in a room to find out what drives them emotionally.

Mike Tyler: It does work, too, because we have perceptual studies. Our company has perceptual studies all the time about the music or or me and Todd or the show, I should say the whole show together. And they’ll you’ll see, Well, we like this. We don’t like that, you know, So we’ll listen to that. And most of the time we know what what they might not like or what they did. It it filters you in and out. So but you’re right. With marketing, you have to market. I mean, there’s a whole business around it anyway. The whole world runs around marketing.

Matt Tompkins: When it comes to your marketing. If you’re starting out, try and identify two key components. First, who is your specific target market? Who is your ideal customer? That’s first. Number two, what are your unique qualities? In other words, why you why should they choose you and your business? This is why being authentic is so important. It’s so crucial to your marketing.

You want to be yourself and you don’t want to just do things to follow the trends. That’s being inauthentic. And we’ve seen this time and time again where companies will jump on a bandwagon in the moment and they’ll change their Facebook profile, a certain color or a flag, or they’ll represent something just to jump on what’s trending online. And we’ve also seen that backfire big time for a lot of companies.

Mike Tyler: There was a after 911, there was a lot of I think our company had America, America Rocks, billboards and stuff like that. And they which at the time I thought was probably shouldn’t have been done, but I wasn’t in charge. It was long 20 some years ago. And but at the time I said what? I said, Well, I don’t want our names on the billboard. But then I thought, we have one of our names in the billboard.

They’re always in the billboards with the with the z92. But then it didn’t there wasn’t a backlash. I think everybody was still rah rah about, but it wasn’t so much. I was afraid of it being jingoistic because we were all jingoistic. We were all USA, USA in 2001 when 9/11 happened. But it also I felt that way. I felt like a is it a piggyback? But it wasn’t a backlash. And I thought it could have been. Now nationally, it could have been, you know. Yeah. But there was so much of that at the time.

Matt Tompkins: In radio, we call them stunts, but a stunt is basically just a way to stand out and get people’s attention. In today’s digital landscape, where we are bombarded with thousands of ads every day, it has never been more important for you to stand out. You can call it a stunt. You can call it making the news. The bottom line is that you need to be discovered. And to be discovered, you have to first be seen.

Mike Tyler: We did a lot of street stuff back in the day. We’d send people out in the street a lot during the show. Beast, our original guy, the original producer back in the day, or Donny or people like we would send them out and do crazy stuff on the street corner. And that just caused a lot of I mean, it caused a lot of commotion. Sometimes we did it with our bosses at the time, our bosses. We didn’t get permission because we figured getting you were in radio, getting yelled at is better than getting permission.

Matt Tompkins: It’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission. And that’s basically the.

Mike Tyler: 90s was asking for forgiveness for sure because we would do a lot of stuff. And even sometimes I remember one time somebody reminded me of something recently we did, uh, we took our producer beast and put a bunch of dollar bills or stuff all over his body, like tens and 20s and had them hang out on a just a less than desirable street corner. And just with the phone, I was like, Yeah, I’m thinking, you know what? And it caused some commotion. I got some press, but it was also like, Yeah, someone could have been killed.

Matt Tompkins: Yeah, we had that when we were doing the TV show Omaha Live and we did a bit. We went down to I can’t even remember what it was. The, the Cubs or Cubs, Chubbies or Chubby. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it was down on, on, uh, I don’t remember what 16th Street it was in a neighborhood that was a Bloods neighborhood, a Bloods district. And we were doing a bit with some real they were former but real Crips gang members. Oh shit. The bit was that the we. I went out there to talk to them and found out that they’re actually they’re not this stereotype, these, you know, thugs. They’re actually really smart and really good at a lot of different things.

That was the whole premise of the bit. So and they they were on board. They thought it was hilarious. We’re doing this bit. And it literally at the end of it, they said they saw somebody drive by and they said, Oh, we better get out of here. I’m like, Oh, why? Like, because the they drove by once they drove by with the colors and they saw them, they’re going to come back around. And my friend Neil and I were sitting there going, Yeah, right. And we turn around and they’re gone. They just left. And we’re like, Oh, crap. So like we’re and sure enough that that suburb back around, back around. And it was, but it was weird too, because then like probably 3 or 4 years later, this video is up on YouTube and there’s this backlash from people who aren’t from. The community at all. Just, you know, angry over it. And it’s the same type of backlash I’m sure you saw with a bit like that where it’s like.

Mike Tyler: I’m glad there’s not I’m glad there’s actually not a lot of video. I mean, I’m glad we have a lot of the video. The phones had cameras everywhere in the 90s. Yeah, we probably there’d be backlash to this day about stuff we did back then because there’s no video evidence. We can talk about it, but it’s just no video evidence. And I think that’s made a big difference too.

But you got to push the envelope, too. I think, like you’re trying to get this to business. If you push the envelope to see where you can go. Now, we got in trouble with some of those events, uh, but and we pushed it. But we’re remembered for them. So if you’re not remembered and that helped us stay, you know, relevant. You’re right. And if we’d ever pushed, we could have faded away easily like zillion radio shows do.

Matt Tompkins: There is definitely a real risk of pushing that line too far to a point where you could put your business at risk. Having a strategy and a plan is the key ingredient here, because if you know what you’re doing, why you’re doing it and how you’re executing it in any aspect of your marketing, whether it’s a stunt, whether it’s something to get attention or whether it’s a a full ad campaign, you can avoid the rushed out of the gate ideas they can easily blow up in your face.

Mike Tyler: Yeah, and my business and our business, we get hate email, we get threats mean so that’s been happening. It’s happened in as much it used to I should say that we still get some crap, but nothing major. But yeah, you got to worry what you’re talking about because you forget you’re just you’ve done radio long enough yourself. You’re just in a room, you’re just in a room and you forget that everybody, at least hopefully a lot of people are listening and you’re saying stuff like, I can’t believe I just said that. But you’re just sitting around with your friends talking and you forget it’s out everywhere. And sometimes you go, Oh, I shouldn’t have said that, or, or, well, that was kind of crazy. But, you know, it just it, to me, it’s just to get people to laugh.

Matt Tompkins: Yeah. Now, Todd and Tyler on Z92 here, the local radio station where they started off their radio empire, they prove out a fundamental rule of marketing and that is to be known for one thing. If you look at any radio station, any success story in general, it doesn’t matter what line of business or industry it’s in. But if we take a look at radio as an example, this holds true. Think of the most popular stations here in Omaha, Nebraska, where we’re at or in your market where you’re listening right now.

They are all known for one thing. Here we have a sports talk station, 1620, the Zone. They’re known for sports talk. We have 1110 kfab. Politics. You have Z92, Todd and Tyler. Todd and Tyler are z92. One thing and this is important for you and your business because everybody tries to be many different things, multiple things all at once. That is a recipe for failure. Everybody started out as being known for just one thing, and then you build from that would just.

Mike Tyler: We’d never go in and just do a whole nother thing. The show is what the show is. You you get what people tune in, they expect to hear certain things and that’s what you give them.

Matt Tompkins: And it’s like any, any successful anything, any any person or business started off by being known for one thing, right? You look at like McDonald’s, they were just burgers. Right. And they started or like Dr. Drew, he was the sex phone call guy. Right. And now he does a show where he talks to everybody. You know, a lot of times we have people we’re we’re, you know, producing and kind of developing their podcast. They said, well, I want to appeal to everybody. And how do you reach everybody?

You can. It’s impossible. You can’t you’re going to end up resonating deeply with nobody. And you want that deep connection. You want that. So target one person and that’s the same strategy with a business of I’m going to market to one person, I’m going to target one person. And when I win them over and they feel like I’m like, this business was created just for them, or in your case, the radio show, they will help you. They tell other people, Yeah, that’ll turn into.

Mike Tyler: Oh yeah, word of mouth is what made our show what it is, is that when you even though there were some advertising in the beginning, if somebody else in the office heard it, somebody driving around, somebody at the worksite heard the show, you got to listen to these guys.

And especially happened when we were starting to be syndicated because they had no idea where we were at, which show had no idea who we were. And we went on a big rock station down there to 95. It’s like the Z 92 of Wichita, and they had an old show we took over for her and it was like, Oh, these guys.

And we do the exact same thing over and over again and not live there. So we couldn’t go out and about and meet the community, but we had to be known for something. So we were we said stuff down there that got us in trouble because nobody was saying that stuff in Wichita, but they stuck with us because, well, our company owned it, first of all. But they also the ratings were good and they ended up being really, really good after the year. So you have to be who you are or nobody is going to care.

Matt Tompkins: Yeah. I mean, and it’s it’s harder to it. It’s easier to say that than it is to live that of like, yes, be true. You’re risky. It’s risk.

Mike Tyler: It’s risk because you know, you’ve started a business here and it’s a risk because you could get you could get all of a sudden, then you’re out of work.

Matt Tompkins: The risk is real. And as the great poet Taylor Swift once said, the haters gonna hate, But the truth is that they really shouldn’t have any bearing on your success or the decisions, the pivots that you make with your marketing. Because they are not your ideal customer. They are not who you are trying to help and serve through your business. To close things out. Mike shared a great comment from behind the scenes of the radio show that I think is so relative to you and your business today. It doesn’t matter how much you say it or want to believe it, your business is not for everyone. My business is not for everyone. There is no business that is for everyone. And realizing that simple truth is going to put you ahead of your competition tenfold.

Mike Tyler: Craig, Our old news guy Craig always had a great line, he said, and he was off the air. He said, Everybody can’t listen to you. Everybody can’t watch you. Nope, not. Not one, not one radio. Everybody doesn’t listen to one show. They don’t watch one TV show. So to please everybody, it’s not ever going to happen. I mean, no, nobody gets all the ratings people. People find other shows better or like they like it different. So you have to find your niche and hopefully grow that in any business, like you mentioned, business because everybody can’t use your business. Yeah, even the main businesses in this country have competition.

Matt Tompkins: Thanks again to Mike Tyler of the Todd and Tyler Radio empire for joining us here today on Midwest Mindset. The first episode he was on last season, our season one of the Omaha podcast. He actually helped us win that episode, won a national award for best podcast in the country. So I guess that means this episode is going to win too, right? Right. A girl Can Dream.

Thank you so much for joining us here today on the podcast. You can find more info on Mike Tyler in the show notes. The links are there for you to click also in the show notes if you need help with your marketing. If you’d like to get started for free, we have free resources for you. We will do a free marketing assessment of your business to find out where you stand, where your opportunity, strengths, weaknesses lie to help you market your own business.

The link to get started is also in the show notes. Thanks so much for joining us. We’ll see you in the next episode.