Full Written Transcript of The Episode

Matt: To use AI or not to use AI. That is the question. Artificial intelligence feels like the easy button right now, right? But there are important do’s and don’ts when it comes to using AI for your business. On this episode of Midwest Mindset, we are joined by an AI expert, Shawn Quintero.

Shawn is the chief AI officer for Elite Real Estate Systems, and he runs his own business that coaches business owners to success with product launches and growth programs. Hello and welcome back to Midwest Mindset, the podcast that makes marketing easy and simple to do for any business.

Today we’re joined by Sean Quintero, who is going to give you the do’s and don’ts of using AI. Let’s talk about all things. I, um, I love AI. I also know that AI it has its limitations. It’s a tool.

There’s a place for it. We did a whole episode about. It is foolish to not use it. It is equally foolish to overuse it and lean on it too much. And I was excited when we first met.

Because you are a an AI expert, I think you’re the only AI expert I know. Everybody thinks they’re an expert on AI. You are truly an expert. In fact, you work with and talk with in regular conversations with the leading CEOs and owners of all these different AI companies.

We hear about Jasper ChatGPT and all these, you know, um, Bard and you’re in the know.

So I was thrilled to have you on the podcast here to talk about some of the basics that I think get overlooked in this very radically evolving conversation about artificial intelligence, machine learning, and the practical uses of it. So thank you first and foremost for for coming out and nerding out with us here on the show.

Shawn: Well, I’m super excited to be here, Matt. Um, and I think what a lot of people don’t recognize is that AI is actually been here since the 50s. Yeah. So it’s not something that’s new. It’s something that’s new to the masses. Uh, in 1950, uh, AI artificial intelligence was coined.

And in 1960 we had the very first chat bot. So we think about like, Manny chat and some other things where there’s an auto responder happening that was happening in the 1960s.

There was a chatbot called Eliza, and Eliza was a trained to be a psychotherapist. And so somebody could use Eliza to get therapy from this robot. Right. Which is pretty incredible.

Matt: I feel like I need the I need Eliza today more than, more than ever. Yeah.

Shawn: Um, so so Eliza came around and then we had, um, uh, an AI robot that came about in 1990, uh, which was named Kismet. Um, Kismet was facial.

So there was expression and emotional expression that was taking place with this robot. And this AI, embodied AI is what they call it. And then in 2008, we had Facebook and Facebook, uh, did something massive in 2009, which was, do you remember if if you were an early adopter of Facebook, you would log in and you’d see what was posted most recently. Now you log in, you see things from like five days ago. Yeah, seven days ago, engagement.

Matt: Based.

Shawn: All about engagement. And they made that big shift to an algorithm based feed. In other words, what they really wanted was to see what is going to get the most engagement, because we want to keep people on our platform, because if we keep people on our platform, they see more ads and we make more money from the ad spend.

And so 2009, Facebook changed the game. Essentially.

They said, we’re going to have a computer determine what you see on your on your computer when you log in. And everybody began to kind of adopt that over the last 20 years. Netflix. You log into my Netflix, it’s going to be very different than what you see when you log into yours. Even a basic.

Matt: Google, you open up Google, you go to the website. It’s going to be totally different based on your location and your Google account you’re logged into.

Shawn: So there’s an AI algorithm, right? There’s an algorithm that’s essentially determining what is curated on your feed. So for the last 20 years we’ve seen curated AI. Uh, we haven’t had access to it though. Right. It’s if I log in to Facebook, Facebook makes the determining factor or the determining decision in 2000, uh, just last year, November, October, November of last year, uh,

OpenAI decided we’re going to rush this and we’re going to make open AI available to everybody through ChatGPT. And it was the fastest growing platform in all of human history until like Facebook just released threads and now threads is the fastest growing technically.

Um, but it was the fastest growing piece of piece of technology that was the most adapted in all of human history. And people started using it and they were wowed. Like I could put some input in. I could put a prompt in and get information out. But what has happened is nobody read the terms and conditions, nobody read the privacy policy, and there are.

Matt: Some serious risks with with that. You enlighten me on that. I didn’t even I mean ChatGPT was not my my go to. I was resistant, I was using Jasper, which also has some some privacy concerns as well, maybe not quite as severe as as what ChatGPT is currently facing with literal lawsuits from, what, 50 different companies? You said.

Shawn: It’s wild. So OpenAI is, um, essentially the input that you give, it is used as data that can then be accessed by somebody else’s prompt.

So in other words, if I’m putting in proprietary information, well, somebody can have the right prompt and access that proprietary information, which is wild.

So what happened was all these employees started using ChatGPT started. All of this inputting all of this data in. And now OpenAI can leverage that data and use that data to teach their AI and then be able to answer other people’s prompts. So like, let’s say.

Matt: You have McDonald’s and Burger King. All right. So you see, you have the two chefs that I’m simplifying this, but McDonald’s and Burger King and they’re like, okay, I need to type up a, an email campaign about this burger recipe at, uh, McDonald’s.

And everybody wants to know what the secret sauce is. Well, I’m going to input what that secret sauce ingredients are. Well, then somebody over at Burger King, because it’s a shared platform.

It’s open AI, it’s open to anybody. Now, if they enter the right prompts, somebody of a Burger King could be like, hey, I got your secret sauce. Now, finally. And there’s nothing you can do about it. Well, McDonald’s of course, suing then and Burger King would then see everybody suing. It’s a very.

Shawn: Simplified example.

Matt: Very simplified example. But that’s what I that’s how I do. I like to keep it simple, but in essence that’s what’s happening.

Shawn: Rumors that OpenAI is going to release two more, um, paid services. So right now you have the free version, which is 3.5, and you have the Pro version, which is GPT four.

There’s rumors that they’re going to release a GPT four upgraded option for like enterprise level corporations, because that’s their solution to privacy concerns. Um, here’s what’s wild is ChatGPT is just the beginning. There is just last month, over 3000 AI softwares that were released to the public, 3000 new ChatGPT type things, uh, AI generating software.

Matt: Companies I’m seeing just built off of ChatGPT. It’s wild popping up overnight, and a lot of them are very innovative, practical solutions. Uh, and we’ll get into that here in a bit because they’re some of the best practices I think we agree on as far as how you should use it, how you should implement this, because it’s amazing, it’s incredible, and it’s happening. It’s been here, like you said, since the 1950s.

Shawn: It’s been here for a while. It’s not something that’s new. It’s simply that’s something that’s accessible. We went from a curation AI to now a creation AI. I can go on to ChatGPT or any other of the alternatives and create seven days of content in seconds, which is wild.

Yeah. So we now have access to creation AI with curation. I though there were a lot of really good things that were mentioned, right? A lot of really great things that were mentioned when Facebook democratized information. Everybody has a voice, right?

Which is a great thing. People who have been systemically oppressed, people who have typically not had a voice, they now have access to everybody where they can share what they’ve experienced. So everybody has a voice, which is awesome. The downside is everybody has a voice.

And so what happens is there’s information overload, there’s analysis paralysis. There’s um, all of these really weird, creepy people who are leveraging access to minors. Right. There’s this access that now everybody has it, but also everybody has it. So same thing with creation.

Ai is there are some really positive things, but there’s also some really, um, major yellow and red flags that a lot of people are ignoring. Number one is just trust.

How do I trust? If somebody can take three seconds of my voice and then replicate it, to say anything in any, you know, um, tone of my voice, if somebody can take just three seconds, what’s to stop them from calling my parents and asking them for my Social Security number? Because I forgot, which is something that has happened.

Matt: Thank God that this did not this technology voice cloning was not around when I was in high school, because in high school, I remember we used to take cassette players and we would I would talk really slow and then we would play it back high speed and I would sound like a chipmunk and I would sing songs.

That’s how we would like prank girls in our class. Like that’s the level where we were. Imagine if I had voice cloning technology. I mean, how many I mean, I, I this is joking, but I this is bound to happen. You have revenge porn. Yeah. I mean, we take somebody’s voice because there’s.

Shawn: Not just voice, but there’s video generation as well. There’s deepfakes. Yes. Now it’s so easy to create. So somebody could take you. They can have you dancing naked in like, a square.

Matt: Well, that already exists for real, but so.

Shawn: But nobody would know the difference because it looks so real. It sounds so real.

Matt: And you don’t even have to go so far as to clone me, or my voice or my body. You could just be somebody else and ruin somebody’s life.

You could say, uh, hey, this is just a random AI generated voice saying, yeah, I just want to let you know I’m having an affair with your husband. It’s been going on for two years. Just because you’re jealous or whatever, you know, you’re outside of that relationship. You want to ruin somebody’s life.

I mean, that’s how. That’s how powerful these tools are. And I feel like that’s the unregulated territory or area that is live in right now. We are in right now that is could cause the most harm. Yes. Am I worried about Terminator two? No, I’m not worried about Judgment Day in that extreme. Listen, AI is eventually going to surpass human beings in in evolution. It already has it.

Shawn: In so many different ways, right? It’s passing the bar in five minutes, which is wild. It’s. It’s, um, and what it’s doing is it’s able to create things. So right now there is an AI that generated a bacteria, um, a plastic eating bacteria, which is fantastic to be able to put into the ocean and eat up all the plastic that’s there.

Yeah. And so it’s, it’s solving nearly scientifically, almost scientifically impossible and challenges, which is positive things. Right. There’s an AI that is cellular level, um, an embodied AI, a robot that’s being trained to be injected and it looks like liquid.

So it’ll inject it into your body, it’ll go through your entire body and identify all the things that are wrong, and then start fixing it. Start regenerating the parts of your body that are poor. And so that’s there’s some good things and there’s some really dangerous things.

Matt: Because like my point though, it was exactly that. It’s out of our hands either way. Okay. So let’s say AI takes over ten years, 50 years, 100 years from now. It’s either going to destroy mankind as everybody thinks a Terminator two, or it could save mankind.

Because let’s be honest here, mankind, we’ve done a pretty crappy job of saving ourselves. I mean, you know, we talk about, like, driverless cars as an example of, like, well, freak out when there’s one driverless car accident, but how many humans are in accidents because we’re looking at our phones and stuff. So I think we tend to overreact in the pendulum swing. So let’s get into some of the best practices. Yeah.

Shawn: So principles principles of understanding and playing with AI. Number one, I think everyone should play with AI. Ai is integrating into literally every single area of our life.

There was an AI or an embodied AI that just successfully did a liver transplant, which is wild. There was no doctor’s hands on this operation. It was purely robotic AI. So there are some really good things about it. Um, it’s integrating into every part of our life, so go play with it. If it’s ChatGPT, go play with ChatGPT. Just don’t put like your Social Security number in it or anything like that. Go play with it.

Matt: Don’t clone my.

Shawn: Voice. Ask it to create a poem about dogs and pizza. Ask it to create a, um, a, you know, a summary of your favorite book. Just go play with it. The more you can interact with it, the easier it is. Like my parents, right? They first got into Facebook and they didn’t know anything.

They were like, what do I do? And now my mom’s like an expert on Facebook. And I was like, blowing up. So, so just go play with it. The more comfortable you get with it, the the easier it is to integrate it.

Um, what’s so important is you have to be an informed user, though I, I believe the more informed you are, the better decision you can make for yourself. Uh, ignorance is not bliss in this situation. So go get informed, understand what it is, how it’s being used. Because I don’t believe I will replace humans, but I do. I, I believe humans who use AI will replace humans. Yes, because of the just accelerated, rapid, um, creation you can do with it.

Matt: It’s the it’s a tool like I when we did, Ben and I talked about this initially on an episode of the podcast, and I used the analogy of a pneumatic nail gun like it’s connected to an air compressor. You know, you could go build a house with a hammer and a nail. It would take you a lot longer. This pneumatic air gun, this nail gun, you can build a house faster. You can do a lot more cool things with it. It’s just streamlined.

But it’s still a tool. It can’t build the house for you. And I think when it comes to anything, we work in the world of marketing. And I know you come from an extensive marketing background yourself. Um, we work in this world where we have to understand and know how to connect emotionally. And I think we underestimate, maybe overestimate AI, or we underestimate just how important that feeling brain versus the thinking brain, uh, impacts our decisions. And I think that’s that’s the risky territory when it comes to content creation.

And and some of these, you know, you talk about principles to me, understanding just the baseline principle, like why do humans decide to do one thing versus another? Well, it has to do with emotions. And AI is not at a point where it can have emotions or understand or comprehend. It can try and simulate pretty closely, but it isn’t quite there. So what do you recommend for? It’s not there yet.

Shawn: I will say probably over the next six months you will have AI that’s indistinguishable from human interaction. What I will say, though, is that humans will always still be a necessary ingredient, that you’re still a necessary ingredient when it comes to copy, because you have to edit it. You have to make sure it’s doing everything you want it to, to strategically. It’s a tool. And so there are certain ways which we’ll get into on the practical tacticals that you can make your AI sound exactly like you.

I have my AI, I can ask it to write an email and it’ll sound exactly like I write emails. I write emails with exclamation points. I put smiley faces. I say, OMG, it’ll create content just like me, but you have to train your AI to do it. So we’ll call it.

Matt: Onboarding, which I like.

Shawn: We call it onboarding your AI to to your kind of in integrating it into you. But principle number one is go be an informed user, go play with it and be informed about what it is. Principle number two is your necessary ingredient. It cannot replace you, your human.

You have this consciousness and this experience. Uh, maybe I write will become what’s called general, um, general AI, which is a conscious being and creation, maybe. Who knows? Uh, but right now, you’re a necessary ingredient. That’s principle number two. And principle number three is the better your input is, the greater your output will be. If I go ask and simply ask it to write an e-mail, if I come to you and say, write me an email. And that’s all I say. Yeah. How good is that email going to be?

Matt: Not gonna be very good.

Shawn: You don’t know what the topic is. You don’t know who it’s going out, though. You don’t know anything.

Matt: I would have a lot of exclamation points as well. And smiley faces I do that. I feel like every email deserves at least one smiley face, but that’s just me. Smiley face.

Shawn: I mean, yeah, um, so. So you wouldn’t have any idea. But if I told you. Hey, I like to put a lot of exclamation points. I put, um, happy faces. I am on the Myers-Briggs. I’m an INFP. Uh, my personality. I am also an Enneagram three, so I’m very accomplishment driven.

Uh, I also like to help people because I’m a wing two on disc. I’m a high, I high s. Uh, and so if I gave you all that information, I said, can you write something that kind of sounds like me? Now you have more information to build your email off of. So what we do is we do something called onboarding.

We onboard your AI. We have a very specific prompt where we go over personality, we go over accomplishments. We go over past copy and language that you’ve written yourself.

So I’ll give my AI all this information and then I’ll say, can you analyze this and, um, write in my voice and then it’ll start saying, yeah, of course. What do you want me to write? And now I can ask it. So the more again, the better the input, the better the output.

Matt: Even then, even as close as accurate, because most, most people are going to be hearing like, I haven’t done a single one of those personality tests, so I don’t even know what to tell it. Well, even with.

Shawn: Go take those personality assessments, they’re free. They’re so good.

Matt: However, even with all of those, you still we’re not just handing this the baton off and saying you do all the work from now on, I’m just going to sit back and drink Mai tais, like you’re still the reason you’re you’re necessary is because you’re necessary. You’re part of this equation.

So for a business owner, for anybody using AI, whether it’s writing a property listing, you’re selling a motorcycle or a, a home or, or maybe something more complex, you’re writing a blog article for your website you’re trying to, or social media content you’re trying to post that you still have to, uh, or Chad, uh, use this analogy, which I like. You’re the pilot. Uh, AI is the co-pilot, you know, and I feel like that’s pretty accurate and true. You can’t just say do it all for me. Um, it may do a good job. It made you a poor job, but that that, I feel, is that. Do you see that too much today? Are people swinging that pendulum too far?

Shawn: Here’s what I would say. I would say it’s like a teenager if I. If you ask a teenager to go clean their room, they’ll do a little bit of a good job. But then you walk in and you’re like, okay, wait a minute, there’s clothes under the bed. Let’s actually put those in the laundry, right. So it’ll it’ll do a okay job.

Yeah. You, it’ll give you. So with a poor input. Right. Not not really good prompts, not really onboarding. And like we talked about it’ll give you a two out of ten. They’ll write an email but it won’t be very good with the prompts. It’ll um and the onboarding process that we encourage people to do, it’ll then give you a seven or an eight out of ten, but it’s still not a ten out of ten. And that’s where you come in and you take that eight out of ten and make it a ten out of ten. Now here’s what has been really good.

Like just on the practical side is what would traditionally take me personally, um, if I’m writing like a seven day email drip to someone, um, every single day I want an email to go out that would take me like three days to really, like, go in, write it, get it. Perfect. Now it takes me like an hour. Yeah, because I gives me something to start with, gives me an eight out of ten for all those emails. And I just go in now. Okay. Let me adjust this a little bit.

Matt: That is the secret. That’s the the the big win I feel like we overlook um or don’t maybe don’t give credit where credit is due. And that’s just how this tool is probably one of the most revolutionary and incredible tools at our disposal.

And we have it today. It’s right there. It’s free or next to it, right? It’s pretty affordable, even if you’re paying for a subscription models and we have it, but it’s knowing how to use that tool and I think you’re hitting on that perfectly. What do you get out of it? How much time are you saving a blog article?

We’ve we went through this on on that episode where we talked about, here’s the process you can use to get your first draft written based off of a transcript of a voice message you leave yourself on your way home, or a podcast or wherever you pull it from, but that’s still only going to get you like a 5 or 6 out of a ten for your SEO performance.

So you still have to know, what do I have to check off on this list? And then what? Am I going to add those requirements? Google wants for that to make you an authority and show expertise and all those things.

Shawn: Here’s the thing about AI. And with all of the analogies that we’re we’re sharing, you know, the nail gun, I think is an analogy. The thing with AI is the AI is like a nail gun that gets smarter, right?

It’s consistently. And learning right now. So I’ll give you an example. And it’s kind of a wild example is uh, there was a research company that was training an AI learning, um, platform, uh, English, the English language. Um, after about three months, it started responding in Spanish and the engineers didn’t give it Spanish. Oh, wow.

They have no idea how it acquired a new language. Um, and then three weeks later, it learned Portuguese, and then it learned French. And then, like, there is no the the AI machine is learning at a faster rate than the engineers can identify how it’s learning. So it’s learning at a rapid pace. Openai has so much data on us, so much information. Their machine has learned so much and it’s only getting smarter. So that’s why I mentioned like being an informed user, because right now, with the right prompts, it’s an eight out of ten. I suspect in about a year it’ll start giving us ten out of ten content, 12 out of ten even better things than we can imagine, because now it can create an output, but in a way where it’s also analyzing in seconds psychology, human behavior, human emotion, the history or the, you know, a person’s purchasing behavior, all of this information that it can then input into this email.

Matt: So even then, even then, though, even we get to a couple of years from now, things are like super advanced. Even then, you’re still required because I can’t go out and live your life for you. It can’t go out and have your life experiences. And here’s the thing.

Shawn: I think with AI specifically to that is what I’m encouraging a lot of people to do is imagine if if who wants to spend seven days writing a seven day email drip, nobody wants. I don’t want to do that if I can. Do, you know, in in seven days the work in seven days, but within two hours, that means I have all this extra time to go live life to spend time with my, my, my, my daughter who’s nine months and my wife to to go do life.

Nobody actually wants to be behind a computer and write the emails. Unless that brings you joy. Um, and you actually want to do it? The majority of us don’t. I don’t at least. But you have so much time to go do what you do want. Nobody can write the book for you. Nobody can, you know, create that piece of art that’s from your hands. Ai is going to enable you to have more time to go do the things you want to do.

Matt: Like our podcast is a great example, and that’s kind of why we coach people. Like, okay, there’s a lot of AI platforms and tools for a podcast, specifically for blog writing, all these other elements. And when you start to remove all these things that are tedious, right, monotonous, they aren’t the fun part.

What that actually ends up doing is now you freed up an extra hour or two, which can make a world of difference for you to focus on what you actually love, which is hosting the podcast, which is coming up with creative ideas on stories. And how are you going to what guests are you going to talk to and how are you?

What networking event are you going to go to promote it? Or I mean, there’s so much you could do that’s just a better use of your time. And that’s where I feel like AI is, is you are missing the boat entirely if you’re avoiding it for ego, for nostalgia, for fear, or just a general misunderstanding of what it is.

Um, you are missing the boat big time. Because that that to me is that’s the opportunity, especially for business owners who need that help with the budget. One last thing I want to ask you is, like what? If you because I know there’s a lot of different platforms you could recommend, but what what nudge or supportive direction would you, would you push our, our our business owner who’s like, okay, I admit maybe I’ve been reluctant. I want to try it. How where should a business owner start utilizing? I, I don’t know if that’s a platform or a process or a certain area of their business, but where would you what’s a safe, comfortable place for them to start?

Shawn: Yes. So the very first thing I would recommend is just go play with it. There are so many free platforms to start with. Chatgpt right. It’s free. Go play with it. Everyone’s using it. Just have fun with it. That’s to get yourself normalized to it. But if you want to use it in a very strategic way, um, we have a platform that we recommend to everybody that’s a big alternative to ChatGPT, and it’s called Magi. You can find it if you. I’m sure there’s going to be a link somewhere. Yeah, we.

Matt: Use it as well. You’ve turned us on to it. It’s fantastic.

Shawn: So um, or you can go to our website HSN.com forward slash I um, but it, it is really powerful in the way that it organizes your information. It’s protects your information.

So the thing with Magi is it leverages GPT four. It’s built on the API, um, OpenAI’s API, but you also have other learning platforms that you can use. So there’s cloud, there’s Leonardo for image generation. There’s so many other things. Um, they don’t save your data, so they don’t allow other people to have access to your data when asking prompts like a buffer. So there’s a proprietary security there, which is really key.

So, um, you can build brands out. So you know how I was saying, like, here’s my personality, here’s my information. You can have that saved in as a brand voice. Um, you can add team members to it.

So if you have Vas or any type of like marketing assistance or anything like that, you can give your chats, access, um, your vas access to your chats. Um, and I really like that because you only have to do the work once. You don’t have to have a VA redo the work of seasoning an AI. It’s here’s my AI.

Now go ask it questions because I’ve already seasoned it. And then you can create custom personas. So we’ve created custom service reps where we give all our SOPs, all of our, um, responses to emails, etc. and now instead of people emailing us for like support at our email, they’re speaking to this AI chatbot who has all of the information anyway. So there’s some really cool things that are, um, that you can leverage with Magi that I recommend. Just go to hasten Q, h, e s and q.com/ai.

Matt: And we’ll have the link in the show notes as well. Sean thank you so much man I, I love nerding out. My wife is she is hardcore I mean hardcore into crafting. Um, and so that’s that’s her jam. She’s crafting crafting crafting. And one day she came downstairs. She’s like, are you ever going to get up off your off the couch? It’s been like two, two, three days. You’ve been sitting there on your laptop.

And I said, uh, I said, Wendy, you have crafting, I have nerding. That’s what this is. This is nerding. And I feel like it should be. It’s, you know, probably a national pastime, I think, for you and I. It definitely is.

Very much so. Um, I love talking about this nerding out about it, whatever you want to call it. And I feel like it definitely inspires me doing what we do. Um, sharing this information, the things we learned with business owners, because it really is a game changer. You know, 51% of businesses go out of business their first 3 to 5 years.

I think that would be a dramatically different number if people took advantage of some of the free tools that they can use that are not hard to use, and they’re actually pretty fun and pretty cool once you get into using them.

Shawn: So and thank you for sharing that with this case study. There’s a company that was just started this year. They’ve surpassed $2 million and it’s two people. But all they’re doing is AI. Their AI is doing all the work. So if you can leverage the heck out of AI, there’s.

So much opportunity.

Full Written Transcript of The Episode

MAtt: Every social media channel is now a video platform. Video is dominant and it’s not going anywhere. If you’re not doing video, then you are not growing your business like you could. On this episode of Midwest Mindset, we’re going to give you the three keys to a marketing video.

That actually works. Hello and welcome back to.

MAtt: Midwest Mindset, the podcast that makes marketing simple and easy to do for any business. I’m Matt Tompkins of Two Brothers Creative, where we believe that every business deserves affordable and effective marketing.

Yeah, that’s just what we believe. It’s what we stand for. It’s our code. It’s our code motto. Yeah. Creed, Creed. It’s our creed. Yes. You were a big Creed fan. Ah, yeah, I love Creed. I mean, Creed is great. Creed is great. I don’t know why people criticize Creed. Why? I don’t get it. Yeah, neither do I.

Austin: His voice is incredible. Yeah.

MAtt: It’s like. It’s like Pearl jam part two. Who? What? Why are we judging you?

Austin: No. Yeah, yeah, I’m with you.

MAtt: Yes. Things got weird when you, like, fell off a building and China or wherever he was. And then the whole religious thing kind of got mixed in there.

And I don’t know what’s going on with that. I don’t care. People who I don’t get, people still say.

Ben: They’re like a Christian rock band.

Austin: You know that one of the.

MAtt: No.

Austin: He left he. No, he never was. That was like all.

MAtt: His dad was like a pastor or something. And he, like, rebelled against that by not doing the opposite of that. And then I think eventually he returned to his faith.

Austin: But like the last time I saw him, he was like a mug shot and he was like poor and basically homeless in Florida.

MAtt: I got to meet Scott Stapp.

Ben: I’ve met him. Great.

MAtt: You did? Yeah, I’ve met Scott Stapp. So when I used to do, I was the voice of Sturckow for like seven, eight years. So I introduced all the bands on stage, right.

Read announcements. So people hated me when I’d be like, hey, sorry, but there’s a rain delay. You know, uh, that guy was that guy. Um, and I’m standing there one day, and so a friend of mine, she loves Creed. So I got her tickets, and we’re standing in, like, backstage right next to the stage. She smokes, so she pulls out a cigarette.

She doesn’t have a lighter, and I’m like, well, shoot, I don’t have a lighter either. And then all of a sudden this hand pops in. He’s like, hey, here you go, lighter. And then lights a cigarette.

We turn around, it’s Scott Stapp, and we start talking to him. He’s literally probably top three most nicest celebrities I’ve ever met. Like Bob Saget was one. He’s the nicest. Like, Bob Saget was just incredibly nice. And I would put Scott Stapp up there at number two. Incredibly nice dude.

Austin: He still went to the bar and had a beer with Bob Saget. Yeah.

Ben: Um, Scott Stapp still has a great voice. Still singing really well, dude. Yeah.

MAtt: There for that album that came out, that broke. That album is great. Oh yeah.

Ben: They had the first.

Austin: Real quick though.

Ben: Have you the Creed podcast?

Austin: Because I got a, I got a welcome to Creed.

MAtt: Welcome to the Creed fan club podcast.

Austin: One of the best sketches, um, in my opinion ever is MADtv, the Creed sketch. And they changed the song to My shirt’s wide open and he’s on a cliff. And the guy, like, playing him. It’s his shirt’s wide open. Blowing in the wind. Yeah, it’s it’s hilarious.

MAtt: All right, so it’s time to introduce everybody and then get into today’s episode. Uh, up first we have, uh, Ben Tompkins. Ben looks like the kind of guy who owns a bowling jacket and bowling shoes. He wears them all the time, but never goes bowling.

Ben: I think bowling shoes are an underrated shoe. They are very comfortable. And I can just slide. You can.

MAtt: Slide? Yeah, I just.

Ben: Get a good momentum going. And I run down the hall and slide the rest of the way.

MAtt: Slide saves you a lot of time when you’re sliding because you have to walk. It’s nice. Exactly. Yeah. Uh, bowling shoes are weird. That’s weird that we share shoes.

That’s just kind of an odd thing. And then the bowling balls, too. I, you know, you’re eating. You’re eating fingers.

Fingers sticking in a random three holes and then keep eating, eating, eating. It’s just kind of what were we thinking?

Ben: Think about when.

Austin: You used to be able to smoke, too. Oh, yeah. So then you’re adding the cigarette smoke on top of it.

Ben: Yeah. Bowling alleys.

MAtt: Like I think back to bowling we did because we were on the radio show. We hosted a weekly bowling league. I look back at it and I’m like, how did I not die? Like, yeah, you know, I mean, that’s just all right. So up next we.

Austin: Have Covid started.

MAtt: Up. Next we have our producer extraordinaire, uh, Myron McHugh. Myron, he looks like the kind of guy who hums Britney Spears songs annoyingly loud at work every day.

Ben: But then when you call him out on it, he’s like, no, I wasn’t. Yeah, he denies it.

Austin: Denies denies it. Yeah. He gaslights.

MAtt: Mm hmm hmm hmm hmm.

Ben: That’s oops. I did it again.

Austin: That was.

MAtt: Oops. I did it again. And, uh, last but not least, we have Austin Anderson.

Austin, uh, he’s the kind of guy looks like the kind of guy who he can, knows what type of wood it is simply by smelling it. Yeah. You do, I love that. Yeah.

Ben: Yeah. You definitely.

Austin: Look, I’m gonna start pretending I have that power. Just that you start smelling wood.

MAtt: Unintelligible.

Ben: That’s an oak, you know?

MAtt: Yeah. People will believe anything you tell them. I’ve told people a lot of fables.

Austin: Just to see when.

Ben: You call them fables and you call them fables, it’s not as bad as if you’re like, say, they’re.

MAtt: Not lying. It’s just a fable.

Ben: It’s a fable.

Austin: Fable sounds pleasant. Thank you.

MAtt: Yeah, well, thank you for lying to me. All right, so today we’re talking about the three keys to a marketing video that works. Now, guys like marketing, uh, on social media, every social media platform, as I mentioned in the intro, is a video platform.

Now, um, I want your take on, like, how you see video. Uh, just it’s everywhere. I mean, you talk about reels on Facebook and Instagram Reels or, you know, vertical shorts on TikTok, which is just a dominant video channel. You have YouTube with, you know, the regular videos and the YouTube shorts, uh, just blown up in the last three, four years.

Covet especially was like a, uh, accelerant added to this because I already needed video because you couldn’t meet in person and do all that. We do have our meetings by video now, you know, on zoom, uh, probably most of our meetings.

So video on social media, though, with marketing in particular, uh, what are you guys seeing as like the fails and the successes.

Ben: I think I mean, it’s a it’s a personal connection. I mean, you have this a way that it’s almost like you’re talking directly. To the customer, or the customer is talking directly to the business or whatever.

So it’s an opportunity to build that unique personal connection, probably more so than any other form. But I would say the oversaturation and just not going into it with a good strategy, it’s so easy to say, well, it’s just a simple video. I’ll pull up my phone and just and record something.

And if you have bad lighting, bad angles, bad messaging, um, it needs just as much practice and rehearsal as other things. And we’re going to get.

MAtt: Into that today. A lot of.

Ben: Businesses don’t put that time into it.

Austin: I don’t think that people like everyone’s making videos. Right. So it’s oversaturated. Um, but a lot of people don’t realize how much work goes into making really good videos with the lighting, with the camera, with the editing. Um, you know, I think a lot of people don’t have an understanding of, um, how long it really takes to edit something that’s really good. If you want something long, it’s the.

MAtt: Time and intent and effort to make something good that’s going to actually work, to do it right, right, right. To do it right. It takes work. So let’s get into some of the things like the statistics on video are crazy. I don’t have them pulled up in front of me right now.

But like I mean, it’s like something like, you know, 76% of consumers watch a video over reading, like people only read for 26 seconds and then they start scrolling, you know, and videos are I think it’s like 70 or 80% more likely to buy your product if you have a video. And if you don’t have a video for your product, most people will just skip. It’s like 77% will just skip the product entirely. If you don’t have a video for.

Ben: It, I would say. I mean, that’s 100% true and video is definitely the dominant form here. But that doesn’t mean to just nix the written word.

MAtt: No, we’re not because.

Ben: You need it. You need to know, I mean, your ideal customer is they might prefer that reading aspect. You need more than video. But yeah, you do need both. I look at that.

For me personally, Twitter is just a gold mine of entertainment and hilarity and all these things, and I much prefer reading those things than just watching a video personally. But that’s me, who I am, and there are a lot of other people.

So identifying who your customer is is the first step in knowing like what types of videos, what should I do with the written word, that kind of thing. Well, you have to.

MAtt: Yeah, you have to have both. So the written word and video both are scanned by Google. So search engine optimization, let’s say you type in a search for like cupcakes and you’re based out of here where we are Omaha, Nebraska. So you need written content for cupcakes and you need video content for cupcakes. And you know, we’ve talked about how podcast is like the most affordable and effective marketing tool.

That’s because if you do a video podcast, you get a video, you get audio, which is also search accounts for your your search engine results on on Google. And you get you can pull it into a transcript.

So you’ve got a blog and you can create all these video shorts from it. I mean, that’s what we do here for for our clients at Two Brothers Creative. Um, but it is you can get so much like ten x value out of just one 20 minute podcast episode, you know, um, so that’s why it’s super effective.

But you do need both. You have to have the written. You have to have the video. Yeah.

Austin: Um, I just think that with, uh, you choose video over the written word, if you really want to convey a certain tone, you know, because a lot of times, uh, if you read it, people will put their own tone to it. So I think if it’s really important with, like, how you want it to sound.

Ben: And I just think that today with AI and how AI is incorporating now into video production and with written the written word, there’s just such a tremendous opportunity. When you have a good writer, that good writer can just well, do be so effective. And same with a good video editor.

So you have like I who’s editing videos now, that’s going to be a very basic fundamental edit as opposed to if you have an actual video production guy or person, woman, uh, animal, anything, uh.

MAtt: Magical beast.

Ben: Um, who can actually put in the, the flair and the things that are going to attract and create that tone, then it’s going to be so much more effective.

MAtt: So like the template for us is like, okay, let’s say you want to do something for content, right? Write it out. Right. Write it out. Boom. You’ve got a script and you’ve got that. You can turn into a blog, right? You can take that script. You can use AI as a tool. Say, hey, I want you to incorporate these keywords into what I’ve written. That way it has your voice as your perspective, your unique everything, right?

But it also is going to be factored in for SEO. Uh, then you have that script, right? It’s prepped. It’s ready to go for SEO. It’s a blog post. Take that, throw it in your phone teleprompter script, and you do that as a video. And then the video, you take that, that the script and you paste the script, you copy and paste it into the description on YouTube.

You add all the keywords in your tags, and now you’ve got a video and you’ve got a blog post, right? You’ve got written content. Then you can take an AI platform and you can take that blog and say, I want you to chop this up into seven Twitter posts, uh, one LinkedIn post, uh, one Facebook post, and boom, boom, boom. It’ll do it.

Now, those are rough drafts. You don’t actually use those rough drafts.

Austin: Very important.

MAtt: You have to go through them and edit them and add your perspective and make sure, because you don’t want to use AI for the final version of anything.

Austin: They love the word delve.

MAtt: Delve. Yes.

Austin: My God.

MAtt: So you have to go through, you have to edit it. But that is an efficient way for any business owner to get a bunch of content. Right.

Austin: And then remarkable how it. How everything weaves together. You can take.

MAtt: That video and then you can use it. There’s one, uh, a platform. It’s called opus. And you just upload the video and say, I want you to chop this into ten video shorts, vertical format so I can post them as Facebook Reels, Instagram, blah blah blah, boom boom boom. It’s going to edit it for you. It’s going to add the animated titles, and it’s going to rank the videos on how they would perform for SEO, for search engine optimization.

So there are ways you can I mean, what how much time is that going to take you an hour maybe. And now you’ve got an entire week or week’s worth of content. I mean, an hour or two for an entire marketing plan of content marketing plan for a week seems like a pretty good deal, you know?

So that’s kind of just a, you know, a format, a template that you can follow as a business owner. But let’s get to the three keys to making a marketing video that actually works. First up would be the quality of the look. So videos now are your first impression.

Um, one of my like pet peeves is how people, uh, don’t take into consideration how they look on zoom, you know, like there’ll be a, you know, from home and it’s just a crappy background. Um, you know, I’ve, I don’t have, uh, maybe we can post the food.

Austin: What about when they change the background? But it doesn’t work, so they’re just going in and out of.

MAtt: Yeah. And, like, don’t blur the background. Just just set yourself up so it looks professional and don’t use any background filter, any of that stuff, because that doesn’t look good. It never looks good unless you’ve got a green screen behind you that’s lit properly so it can key it in, and there’s no fuzz and all that stuff. It’s it’s not going to look good. Now that’s your first impression in every zoom meeting right.

So think of that. If you walked into an in-person meeting and it was just a shit show going on behind you, that’s the impression they’re going to have. So like my office and we could probably pull a picture for the video and throw it in here for this episode and if you want to see it. But like my office, I literally designed based on how it looks on zoom, because that’s where all my meetings take place and it works.

So I have a high quality background. I’ve invested time and effort and money into making this look professional and legit. So then when I’m going to a customer saying, hey, this is the quality of services we’re going to provide. I’m also reflecting that quality in the video.

The same premise is true for any video that you post on social media, right? So Ben mentioned, like, I’m going to grab my phone and do a quick little video. Now, you know, maybe behind the scenes stuff on TikTok works and performs. But like overall you want to look professional, right?

You don’t want to look, um. Too cold and, like, too polished, right? You want it to look real and reflect you, but get a ring light. It’s like 15 bucks. Yeah. Uh, shocking.

Austin: How inexpensive they are.

MAtt: It is. And they’re easy. I mean, in fact, I recommend getting two ring lights. You can do actual proper lighting. So it’s called the triangle. So you have like your key light in the front and you have your fill light over there.

So you have two lights lighting both sides of your face evenly. And then you have a backlight that’s going to light your hairline in the back. That’s proper lighting. And I mean, even if you did three ring lights, it’s what, 30 bucks now? 45 bucks, you know, so you need to light it. Well, pay attention to your background and what you’re doing now.

Phones today. Uh, the sensors have passed dSLR cameras like standard cameras. So if you have a new phone, you can use your phone. It’s just you need to set it up properly so it looks good in the back. It looks good in the front. You look good. It reflect yourself. Because this is the opinion.

This is the first impression people are going to have from you and it’s going to stick forever.

So if you want that first impression to be shitty, yeah, go out in the garage where you got freaking bunch of crap behind you and you’re walking around moving your camera. If not, then maybe, uh, maybe go for the professional look.

Austin: Or like the upshot, the classic upshot up the nostrils and everything. You’re like, my favorite is the 30 minutes.

MAtt: People who don’t know how to take a selfie, and they hold it way up high, and then they go, yeah, smile. And like, they’re cut off, like here and there at the bottom. I’m like, dude, what are you doing?

Austin: Yes. And stop taking headshots in the car and the bathroom.

Ben: I just throw.

Austin: Headshots in the car, like everyone, like for social media, their profile pic, there’s so many people. It’s just them doing a selfie in their car.

Ben: Oh, and the bathroom. I’ve seen a lot of bathrooms. Yeah, I.

Austin: Just don’t get it.

Ben: I don’t want to see yourself. There’s a toilet in the back.

MAtt: Yeah, I’ve never seen that. That’s new for me now.

Austin: That you know.

MAtt: Okay. So first tip, first key for a marketing video that works is the quality of the look. How does it look that first impression number two is quality of the content. What is in the video. Right. What is in the video. Is it substance that people want? I preach this regularly with clients and everybody because it’s true.

Um, you want to deliver something of true value, right? So let’s say you’re doing a podcast and an episode of a podcast deliver something of true value. Let’s say you’re doing a video for YouTube.

Are you delivering something of true value? That’s how you’re going to build trust with your customer, because your customer is going to say, wow, they gave me something that’s actually useful that I can actually apply to my life for free.

So that’s going to make them trust you. So then when they need to hire you for services, they’re going to think of you. They’re going to trust you. Right? So the quality of the content I think this is a big one, Ben, that like people skip right over. They don’t plan. They don’t think they just hit record and go.

Ben: Well, it’s like so many things in entertainment, acting, comedy. You see it on TV and you think, I can do that?

I tell funny stories with my friends, or I’m entertaining my my friends and I, we always have fun and, um, I’ll just get the phone out and just do the same thing. And as soon as you hit record, that all goes away because you don’t have the experience of the know how. You don’t didn’t plan, didn’t rehearse, didn’t practice.

Um, but it takes just as much work as doing any other profession. Yeah. You have to have that experience and know how before you do it. Or you have to find somebody who can help you and coach you and give you that experience.

MAtt: Yeah. And I think hiring a professional is what you need to do. And really you can hire people. It’s affordable. It’s not going to break the bank. But like just think about this.

This is an investment in your company that is probably one of the most important things you’re going to do. And if you go cheap or you try and do it yourself, I mean, we’re going to give you tips and resources in every episode of this podcast, but there is kind of a limit to what you can do, right?

Limit on time, limit on experience. You know, the limit on resources. So hiring somebody who’s a professional, who’s good at it, like, you know, I don’t know, two brothers creative and just tossing that out there.

But you know, you know, hey that’s us. I’m not biased at all. But you know, I mean, find it, find a marketing company or a production company that will help you with your budget, fit your budget, and help you do this. And then you can learn from them and maybe eventually start doing it yourself. Right.

So we’ve done that with a lot of clients or say, hey, we’ll do this for six months with you, get you all set up. But your foundation built at that point, you can decide, yeah, I want to continue with you guys doing it or I’ve learned enough and I want to do it myself, you know?

So, um, but the quality of the content matters. You have to put the work in on the front end, like, what are you going to talk about? What are you going to do? What are you going to deliver of true value? Um.

Austin: And I would say too, that with video, I think audio is more important than the actual quality of the video.

MAtt: I don’t know, the statistics may disagree with that. So 85% of people watch videos on their phone with the sound off. So the animated titles, you see, the captions are more important than anything you do. If you don’t have those, you’re going to they’re going to swipe on you. But it’s 85%. Yeah. So it’s crazy. Um, yeah. That blows.

Yeah. Audio does matter. Like people will forgive poor video quality. Sometimes they won’t forgive poor audio quality. If you’re doing a podcast, don’t just do it on your phone in your car. Because I’ve heard those and they sound terrible. Um, all right. Last key to a marketing video that works is the format hook story CTA. So what does that mean?

Okay, so you have a video, let’s say it’s 15 seconds. Well, in the first three seconds you have to grab their attention. You have to hook their attention. Right. So grab them a powerful statement, a question, something funny, something to grab their attention. And you have three seconds.

That’s the limit. Because if you don’t hook them they’re going to swipe. They’re going to go to the next video. Then you deliver the story. That’s the substance. That’s the content. Right.

MAtt: So it could be anything in the video. Here’s a tip. Here’s a technique, here’s a funny joke whatever. But that’s the story right? So you have the hook. You grab their attention, you drop the story in.

And then the last thing is a call to action or a CTA. What is your call to action? What do you want people to do after they’ve watched this video? You know, what is it? And it can be subtle. It could be kind of covert where it’s just maybe it’s your logo animation.

You just want to brand your company. We do that a lot with clients, or I just want you to remember and recall my company and that we gave you something to value in this video.

Or it could be, uh, you know, click on the link and do this, or go to my website or buy my, you know, new, uh, slippers that are made out of human hair. You know, I mean, it could be anything.

It could be anything. Uh, so hook story, call to action format. So those are the three keys to a marketing video that works. Guys, do you have any other bonus tips you want to share?

Ben: Um. Just I don’t trust creative people. I know we get we.

Speaker4: What what I.

Ben: What I mean by that. What I mean by that is when we give a hard time sometimes that you can’t all be creative, that sometimes we just rely too much on creativity and that’s not enough.

But in this day and age, when you find a truly good writer, a truly good video editor, a truly good person who can help create that content, that person is more valuable in the long run than just about anything else.

And the opposite of that what companies are doing now, there’s they’re relying on the quick and easy fix of AI and those things where if you find somebody that can write a good script, that good script could pay dividends for years and years and years. If you find somebody who can edit good videos, those quality videos.

So the relying on truly creative people, I know that’s a broad terms and category, but that, you know, putting investing in that is a very, very good investment.

Austin: Yeah, I would say that, you know, when you say truly creative people, it’s the people that have made that certain thing their craft and have worked on it for years and like, like their passion.

Because what I’ve seen from experience is big corporations hiring just, you know, some 20 year old kid basically who’s like, oh, I’ve seen a lot of movies. I want to be a video editor. Or and they can get him for like 14 bucks an hour, but he really has no idea about like audio and lighting.

Ben: He’s young, he’s on social media, so he must know.

MAtt: So many businesses make that mistake. And it drives me crazy where they hire somebody who’s like 23 and they’re like, oh, they’re on TikTok. They’re on social media, therefore they’re a social media expert.

No, they are not. I mean, we don’t do this with anything else. No, we don’t say, oh, yeah, I see how they constructed that house.

I’m going to go build my own, you know, or it’s like, oh, hey, uh, you’ve taken a poop on a toilet. Why don’t you come over and fix mine? Like using the service doesn’t mean you know how to create the service.

Ben: I guess I maybe an additional step to bring it back to video is trusting a person and finding a person who is a good video editor. A good writer that’s going to help you in the long run.

I mean, don’t time waste, don’t spend. If you can’t do it yourself like we’ve talked about before, you can’t do everything if you’ve never written scripts before, if you’ve never edited before, might not be the best idea for you to dive into it on your own.

MAtt: Yeah, no 100% agree with that. You have to put the time in the work in on the front end to make it work to do it right? Right. Uh, well, cool.

Thanks for joining us here today on this episode of Midwest Mindset. As always, we have free resources for you, something of true value as we were just talking about in the show notes. Just click on the link and download it for free.

Or you can find out more about us and two Brothers Creative at the Content box. Com

Toodaloo.

Full Written Transcript of The Episode

How Shane Harrington Built a Thriving Business Against All Odds

Matt: If I told you that there was a business that generates over $2 million annually, and whose success was built on old school grassroots marketing tactics, you’d probably want to give them all the credit in the world, right?

I mean, this is a huge success story. Unfortunately, many people don’t give the credit that’s due because this business operates in the sex industry. Dun dun dun. Oh, yes. Today we’re joined by Shane Harrington, the owner of Club Omaha.

Now Shane has built an incredibly successful business from scratch, from nothing. Today we are going to give him the credit that’s due, and he’s going to share with us the ways in which he built his business successfully. There are roughly 32 million companies in the United States, of which 81% have no employees.

They’re all solopreneurs, so that means only 6% of all companies nationwide are ever going to reach $1 million in revenue. Of those companies, only about one out of ten are 0.5% of all companies nationwide ever make it to $10 million in revenue.

If your company or my business or anybody’s in the state of Nebraska hit these goals and achieve these accomplishments, they would be celebrated.

Matt: Um, we would be asked repeatedly, what’s the secret to your success? How did you do it? That’s not necessarily how things have played out for our guest on today’s podcast, uh, Shane Harrington.

Uh, I feel like you are a man of mystery. Um, I’m excited to have a conversation with you today about entrepreneurial ism and your your, your business traps the success that you’ve built.

You can’t deny, you know, and I look at it on paper if if it was no name attached to it and no industry, no line of work and just said, hey, here are the straight numbers.

Here’s how long we’ve been in business, here’s how much money we’ve made. Here’s our success story. Anybody would say, man, that’s incredible.

And there it’s all legal. Nothing. Yeah, nothing wrong with what you’re doing, right? However, it has this, uh, this doubt cast on it. I mean, is that, like, tough to live with that a little bit, or is it just. Is that fuel for the fire, uh, to just kind of stick it to the man, flip them, flip the bird. Just keep moving forward.

Shane: Uh, fuel for the fire? Definitely. Yeah, yeah. I mean, at first I took it personal. Uh, the posts, the comments, the, uh, friends that I lost because of the business I was in that chose not to hang out with me.

Some just, uh, ghosted me. Some were, uh, had a conversation like, well, you know, with my job and the church and, you know, I, you know, if we were hanging out, it’d be bad for my, you know, growth at my company or this or that.

Um, so at first, you know, I was a little butthurt, I won’t lie. Uh, but then it kind of became a me against the world.

And when it’s you against the world, but it literally is you against the world, you find ways to fight and persevere.

Because not only do you want to prove, um, your friends wrong, you want to prove everyone who is commenting and hating on you and says you’re this, that, or whatever.

Well, the proof is in the pudding. If you can be successful, nobody can really argue with that.

Matt: I mean, 51% of all businesses in the United States will fail in their first 3 to 5 years. So majority of businesses are just going to fail first 3 to 5 years. And all these statistics that I’m rattling off here today, they’re staggering. It is an uphill climb. It is a battle to get to that top of that mountain. Right?

Yeah. And to do it and then do it again and again and again and do it on a level that I think very few, uh, businesses see in our state here in the Midwest especially.

And then to not get that credit, that that was really my big motivator for initially wanting to have you on. Um, when we started this podcast, um, the, uh, partner at the time that we were, uh, having on the show opposed to you being on the show, I believe it, uh, due to some, uh, religious, uh, you know, beliefs.

And so it kind of got put on, on hold. And I’m glad you’re here today, because I do feel like it is. It is unfair. It is unfair that we judge men and women, especially in this industry, who are not doing anything wrong.

They’re doing it by choice. They make a great living. It is. It is. Sex is something everybody hates talking about. And I feel like.

Shane: Everybody loves.

Matt: But everybody loves and everybody’s obsessed with it. Here’s a here’s a number that will blow your mind. And I want to ask you how you built this.

So correct me if I’m wrong. Over 50,000, um, male is your mailing list or 50,000 subscribers on your website? What’s this, like 50,000 number, uh, that you’ve built up? It’s like a subscription. Yeah.

Shane: So we did a membership. Um, and people would fill out a membership form and subscribe. And I think actually, through all of my clubs, we reached nearly 100,000. But at Club Omaha, it was 50,000 when we stopped doing our our membership. But still.

Matt: Like, you know, how much I would give for a 50,000 member subscription list. Yeah. I mean, how much would any business give for 50,000 members of their own tribe? Yeah, because, you know.

Shane: Like you said, it’s 50,000 of your people. You can buy mailing lists anywhere. Oh, yeah. Yeah, most of the people on that list, maybe 2% of them actually are interested in the product you’re selling. Go get us. We have them all. Yeah.

Matt: Go get 50 people to sign up voluntarily for something. Yeah. Related to your business. And then. Yeah. Try and. Take that to 50,000. So when you first started out, I know, um, you are notorious for making the news, which we’ll get to in a second. Um, I’d like to, I guess maybe ask you this to start. Like, why do people love to hate you so much?

Like, what do you think it is? Is it your set?

Is it your success? Is it the fact that you are successful despite all the haters that you won’t back down? Like, what is it that just you mentioned your name and people like? I mean, I used to think I had a face that angered people, but man, I.

Shane: Mean, no, no, my.

Matt: Name, Shane Harrington. And it’s like, yeah, it changed some people going.

Shane: I think it’s a combination of everything. You know, I was, um, I gotten a lot of trouble in high school. I was voted most likely to end up in the Nebraska State Penitentiary.

So prison was where people thought I was going to go. I ended up being the first person in my graduating class of, like, 732 people to make $1 million. So, um, I wasn’t supposed to make it. I didn’t have family money. I grew up poor. I didn’t go to college. No one loaned me any money to do my business.

Um, and I think that that upset people because the status quo is, is that you do these steps to become successful, and you don’t deviate from them because they’re they’re pre put in our minds from when we’re children and we go to, you know, elementary school and middle school and high school and then off to college that you have to take these steps and follow this protocol and be a good person in their mind.

Them being the church, them being, uh, the people who followed that protocol.

Matt: They have to sign off.

Shane: They have to approve. Yeah, it has to be to allow it.

Matt: It’s a control thing. Yeah.

Shane: Because when I made a lot of money the first time, we we, my wife and I had bought a house in Wilderness Ridge Golf Course in Lincoln, Nebraska, and we lived next to, like, judges and and all the well to do, you know, uh, had a Corvette and the license plate said paid for because I was proud I was I was able to write a check for a brand new Corvette.

And I remember getting my mail one day and one of the older gentleman that lived in our, you know, house area, he looked at the license plate and he said, paid for. How’d you do that?

And it was just like, wow. Like, it really is like that. Um, you know, he’s probably looking back, maybe 68 years old. I was maybe 31 or 2. And so to him, I clearly didn’t follow the correct protocol.

And it upset him. Um, you know, so I think that’s, you know, you know, number one. And then number two, obviously, sex, um, people don’t want someone to speak freely about it, to encourage people to speak about it, to engage in it, to have fun with it. And those are my two things, I would guess.

Matt: And sex is a topic I feel frustrated on a personal level. Um, I feel like probably eight years, ten years of my like my prime years, my 20s were just wasted because there was never a conversation about it.

There was no sex ed class in high school. Small town Nebraska. Uh, parents didn’t have a to date, and thankfully they haven’t brought it up like recently, like today. No conversation about it whatsoever. We didn’t have the internet like Pam and Tom and Lily. The sex tape was like the first introduction to that when I was like a senior in high school. And so and we were like.

Shane: Wow, yeah, you.

Matt: Know, we’re like, oh my God. Like there was no roadmap to follow. Um, there’s a lot more information out there for good or bad for kids today online, on the internet. But it really is frustrating that we can’t just talk about it, because I think that that’s what shuts things down. Um, you know, you say, okay, well, I’m a dancer,

I’m a professional dancer. I’m, I’m an escort or whatever. You work as a sex worker. People don’t even know what that means. I mean, there are a lot of legitimate workers in the sex industry who are just. They just sit behind a camera at their computer all day long, right? And they just produce content.

And so but there’s this stigma that comes with it was I’m curious with your, um, your entrepreneurial start, did you, um, was that related to sex or like, what was your first how did you make your first million?

Shane: Uh, first million. Yeah. Was, uh, on the internet website. Okay. An adult website. Um, my, uh. Ex-wife. Um, she became, you know, kind of a big deal in Lincoln. Omaha, Nebraska. Um, she I was able to place her in some magazines, and so she started getting a following.

Uh, my research told me that, you know, we need a place to send people so they know what she’s doing next. I thought simple, like, oh, she’ll probably do another magazine. We can promote that. Linked up with someone who said, no, you need an adult website like you. You need to create content. I didn’t even know how to barely turn on a computer. Like, what year.

Matt: Was this, by the.

Shane: Way? This would have been in 1999. Oh, wow. Okay, so so like the the beginning of.

Matt: Like AOL chat room days. Yeah.

Shane: Oh, yeah. Dial up internet. You couldn’t you know, sometimes it took 15 minutes to get the connection, you know, the whole bit. So yeah. Yeah. So that was it.

But we got in before anyone did. Um, we were able to build, uh, at the time and still to this day, actually the most successful single girl website in the world, um, thanks to, in part to the church’s, um, and the city of Lincoln who found out about this website and attacked us with everything they had. Um, and they ended up ticketing my ex-wife for being nude in a public place. But the catch was, they actually didn’t catch her nude in the public place.

They saw a picture on her website in a bar in downtown Lincoln, and they gave her a they’re.

Matt: Really trying to stretch there.

Shane: Well, the thing was, is it was the scariest thing that ever happened, but also the biggest blessing we ever received, because here’s my ex-wife calling me from work saying, the police are here, they’re giving me a ticket. They want to take me to jail for public nudity. Those pictures that we took at the, you know, bar downtown, it was Mars Bar was the name. It’s not in business anymore, but, uh, um, we freaked out.

We’re thinking about closing this thing down and next thing you know, we’re getting calls from every newspaper across the world, not just in the United States. They said you’re the first person to ever be ticketed from a picture off a website. This is a huge constitutional issue. All these law firms started calling, and Jay Leno is talking about it has a it’s one of his jokes of the night because he has these jokes and he has a joke about her. She’s the little park going across the bottom of CNN and we’re like, Holy shit, what just happened?

And from that moment on, it just it just just exploded. And then we just work outworked everybody. We just we didn’t stop. It was like, we accomplished this the next, the next, the next. And we just kept going and ran until millions of dollars just came rolling in.

Matt: And when when you started out, when you had like the idea for the website before the, the publicity kind of jump started, everything was that like just something you were naturally into? Like, how did you have the foresight to say, you know what, internet’s going to be a thing.

The dial up isn’t going to suck forever. We’re going to be past the 56, uh, you know, was it 56,000 K, uh, modems or whatever? Uh, back in the day, what was it that made you say, this is where I’m gonna I’m gonna invest and dedicate my time?

Shane: Well, I’d watched I’d watched a show. I don’t even remember what channel it was, but I’d watched a show, and it was this guy who was explaining how the internet was going to be like the the next big thing, like the biggest thing ever, like, you know, and he really hyped it up. It got me a little bit excited. I thought he was dreaming a little bit because, you know, look where we are. I mean, who would have imagined?

Um, but I knew that. She was building up fans, and there was no way that people were going to able to find us, connect with us, connect with her.

And so there had to be somewhere where we could go and create. All I was creating in my mind was very simply a landing page. I was just going to create a landing, a Melissa landing page so that they could go and see next magazine here, next feature, you know, strip club here or whatever it is. I never thought of it as a way to make millions of dollars. I never I’d never signed up for adult websites.

They were there was only a handful of them, even on the web at that time. So for me, um, you know, yeah, I tried to, you know, obviously look at porn and, you know, do my thing, you know, like everybody else did. But I never thought, you know, like putting a website up for my wife was was even a big deal. I thought once I got her in that first magazine, I thought I was the man.

I was like, whoa, how did I pull that off? I’m Lincoln, Nebraska, I have no connections. And here is my wife on the ex-wife on the cover of all these magazines. And yeah, it was, uh, was a crazy ride.

Matt: So from what I’m hearing, just to kind of translate this into terms, I think any business owner listening can take away something here. The make the news is a real strategy. Oh, yeah. Like, go make the news is a legitimate strategy. It sounds kind of silly. Um, but go make the news and then stick to the boring shit.

The routines, the mundane, uh, monotonous tasks that, you know, you want to automate day in and day out. Walk us through that. Like, what are your tips? What are Shane Harrington’s tips for making the news?

Like how do you make news headlines in a way that’s going to it because it can’t come across like fake, you know, no. Phony. No, you can’t. Like you’re seeking attention, right. Um, but it has to have a kind of a, a wink and a nod to it. Like, you know, we we understand that. Yeah, this is ridiculous that we’re on the news for this.

Shane: Well, sex sells. And so I think as a business owner, if you’re not afraid of that, push the envelope, you know, don’t break the law, but push it right to that line.

You know, and any business right now could sit, you know, ten scantily clad women out front holding up, you know, signs, and their business would increase exponentially. Now, will they do that? I don’t know, you know, it’s a big risk. You’re, you know, people are going to talk about you, but you want people to talk about.

Matt: I can’t get one woman to, uh, dress scantily clad in my life, you know? I mean, yeah.

Shane: You pay him enough, they’ll they’ll come. Good. You still gotta pay him.

Matt: I don’t have I don’t have that kind of persuasion.

Shane: You also return every email. You know, when we. My ex-wife and I were really big, I remember we would be flown out to Vegas for, like, the internet awards. Um, and we would have to go to our hotel room and people would say, well, where are you going? Well, we have work to do.

Like, what do you mean you have work to do? Got to return emails. And they laughed at us. The other models were like, we don’t return our emails. Our webmaster does. It’s like, no, we return every single email. Personally, we want to know what our customers want, what they need, and we would return hundreds of emails a day. And yeah, it was crazy. Yeah, it took hours, you know, sometimes 4 to 6 hours in a day to return all the emails.

But we knew that we wanted to grow. We wanted to do all the things that nobody else was doing. But most people just don’t want to work. Even business owners are afraid to work. They want to work Monday through Friday, 9 to 5, and then they want to check out. And it’s like I’ve never checked out since

I’ve been a business owner, I don’t. There is no such thing as checking out if I’m on my honeymoon, my vacation, my birthday. I’m returning emails. I’m working still at the same time because that’s how you take your business to that upper echelon that very few people make. Like your statistics said, it’s because people do not want to put in the extra work.

Matt: Yeah, and it’s not just put in the work because I think there’s that’s kind of a misnomer. We think we equate how many hours we worked to the quality of hours we worked.

And I think, you know, you talked about the 4 to 6 hours with the emails, like that was a lot of hours, but you were using those hours efficiently in a way that’s going to net a return on that investment of time. That’s probably 10 or 20 fold because they’re going to be we need lifelong yeah, fans.

Shane: And to learn what was going on. And the only way to really learn how people like your you know, it’s one thing to say, well, people are signing up. They love us, you know, like we’re making money. No, no, no. Why are they signing up? What what picture sets videos do they like the most? What would they like to see? You know what you did type.

Matt: Of things unknowingly. I think you you you built out you almost Mr. Miyagi yourself back in the day here, right? You built out a legit business ideal customer persona. Yeah, that’s what you did, right? You got in the weeds, you listened, you talked with your customer, you got to know them, and you built it out. What are their desires? Their pain points, their needs, their fears. And when you can get into that headspace, you know where they are, where they. Been time where they want to be with where they don’t want to be. Um, that’s where you can really dial in your marketing and how you’re going to approach, you know, selling your products or service, uh, to that individual, that ideal customer of yours.

Shane: Yeah. I wanted to do an automated one, don’t get me wrong. Like, it would have saved me a ton of time, but there’s that. They wouldn’t have made me money because the customer is not dumb. You have to remember like they’re spending their money. People are smart when they spend their money.

They want to be getting a value. And we were the best value for your money because we had the best product and the best customer service, both at the same time. It wasn’t good enough just to have one or the other. You’ve got to have both.

Matt: And I think in today’s, you know, age of AI, it’s very easy. It’s too easy to just let I do everything for you and miss the point entirely. Right?

Because what you’re talking about is you’re giving customers an experience. Yep. Right. And that’s what that’s really the only commodity that there is in life is an experience.

You know, you you can’t take your cars with you. You got the the memories of the experience. Um, and so like as far as putting in those hours though, like I feel like for a lot of entrepreneurs or entrepreneurs I think is they’re sometimes called, I’m working 60, 70, 80 hours a week.

Okay. And then are you having meetings with your staff? Are you setting metrics and measurables? Are you implementing, uh, like we use an iOS here with our company and operating system for your company, uh, to your business to set goals and just measure success over three, five, ten year plan. And they go, no, no, I’m just working a lot of hours and I feel like there’s a lot of people who just want to have a job they can’t get fired from.

They don’t really want to be a successful business owner. And you can see those types. They’re rare. Like those those numbers we mentioned at the beginning of the episode are it is rare to find that I don’t know if it’s that quality of just constantly seeking learning and, uh, just kind of it’s like a relentless, um, approach to just never giving up, which I know you have every entrepreneur that’s successful has that as well.

And the, the, um, as far as the button up, the, the making the news, any other like, secret tips you can give us on like making.

Shane: No, I just I think you press the envelope on every way, shape and form and that’s how you do it. You go against the grain, you know, um, if they tell you to go left, you go right, you know, you do your own thing and then you stand out and people pay attention to you. And for me, the business I’m in, they pay attention to me in a negative light.

So then they’re trying to get me. They’re trying to destroy me, show me up. And so, you know, craziest story I have, I think, from the websites is, um, I got a call one time from the FBI. I was a little scared.

The FBI was calling me like. Like it was the FBI. It wasn’t like a prank call. Like they they they was legit. And and they said, um, you know, uh, we’ll make this quick. Um, your website was reported to us from local law enforcement where you’re from. Um, and there was illegal activities going on on it.

And I said, okay, you know, like, like, okay, like, did we do something wrong? And he said, no, I literally wasted 12 hours of my life going through your entire website. I can’t find any bestiality, any child porn, anything. And I said, well, that’s illegal. We would never have that stuff.

And he said, well, it was reported to us that it was a very serious matter. And so then we have to go and then investigate it. And literally the conversation was 32 seconds or something like that.

He said, I’m sorry, Mr. Harrington, to waste your time, you won’t hear from us again. And I thought somebody really in law enforcement baited the FBI into hopefully because in their mind, these conservative Christians in Lincoln,

they thought that this just people having sex on a, on a website was had to be illegal. And it’s like, no, it’s not illegal. And you just wasted this man’s time. Who could have actually been investigating a website that maybe did have illegal activities on it, and he missed it because of you.

Matt: And I feel like we have to understand where people are coming from. I’ll use this like a minor analogy here when you’re in traffic. I used to get really frustrated, you know, people cutting you off, you get angry, you get the road rage going. Now, it doesn’t get to me because I can kind of take a step back.

And I realize that dude is angry. He’s got road rage, cut me off. Has nothing to do with me. Yeah. Has something to do with something going on in his life? I don’t know, maybe his mom’s in the hospital.

It could be something serious. Things going on. Right. So I have a little bit more empathy and compassion and and and and grace, I guess right under fire. And I think that’s the case here too, with haters on a bigger scale when you have somebody.

When we did our comedy television show Omaha Live, there was a lot of hate, not nearly the hate and vitriol you’ve gotten because it involves sex with your industry.

But, um, you know, you have to consider that these people who are telling you that you’re going to. Hell, this is wrong. You’re the spawn of Satan. You’re all of these things.

Shane: Those were pretty nice, actually. They’re a lot worse than that.

Matt: The, um. That’s all. I cleaning it up here for the podcast.

Um, those very same people are the ones who are often doing far worse things behind their own closed doors. Sure. I mean, how many times have we seen this story play out where it’s the, the the pastor who is, you know, homophobic and then turns out later, he’s actually gay and he’s in the closet and he’s battling his own demons and identity crisis.

And so I think that sex is an easy scapegoat to just whitewash and just get, you know, throw a bunch of hate at. And I don’t think it really solves anything. It doesn’t do anything because it doesn’t help the women who work in the industry.

And it doesn’t help anybody. Um, with the women who work like, give me just an idea of like some of the boring, mundane things we probably don’t know have to happen on a daily basis at, uh, Club Omaha, your strip club, because there has to be just, like, boring, like t.p.s. reports level. Just like.

Shane: You know, for us, um, I don’t know that that I find any of it boring, to be honest with you. For whatever reason, this was the job that I was meant to do. I, my mom and I have had this conversation and she was a very Christian person.

))))))I grew up very Christian, went to Catholic Church and was confirmed and, you know, lived in the church basically for years of my young life. And, and, um, you know, we battled back and forth because, you know, obviously she didn’t like what I did. Um, and then one day she, she obviously, as success grew, bought her a new car, things like that. She, you know, she finally was like, you know what?

I still don’t like what you do, but you’re damn good at it. And my mom doesn’t cuss, so. Damn is like, actually a cuss word for her. So it was her way of, like, letting me know, um, that I accept it because I see that this is who you are. So for me, I don’t really find, um, the the job itself boring in any way. What? I mean, like what?

Matt: I mean by it is like like there has to be a moment. I mean, this is what I’m envisioning in my head, like where you’re sitting there and you have to get a clipboard out. You got, like, your Walgreens, like readers, you know, because we’re probably about the same age. So let’s be honest. You got to I.

Shane: Squint, I haven’t, I haven’t, I haven’t sucked down to the Walgreens readers yet.

Matt: And you have the clipboard you bust out like the, um, the, uh, printed off, you know, uh, Excel form that’s got, like, everybody’s names. So, you know, for, like, attendance for the night and you’re like, all right, um, Barbie here, you know, Mercedes here, I guess I would say, like, there has to be Daytona, whereas. Is she late again? All right. That’s. Yeah.

Shane: We our girls are independent contractors, so they literally can come and go as they please. So there isn’t a lot I don’t have very many employees because none of the girls are actually employed by me. Um, I would say the part I guess that I would dislike the most is just paperwork in general. Um, we’re constantly changing, adjusting, and adapting our contracts to fit, uh, new laws, um, new rules at the club. Um, there’s constantly a girl that’s. Doing something you never thought could be done. Like, oh, we never thought about that. We better add that into the contract too. So when that happens, I have to redo the contract and then I have to have all of them sign it again. And so we have to read through to be legal. You have to read through every single line. We have about a four page contract. Um, and there’s a lot of initialing and things like that. So it’s probably about every 2 or 3 months that, you know, we’re printing out a new contract. That’s the kind of stuff that that’s that’s the part stuff. Yeah. That, that that’s the part that’s the hardest for me is it’s like it’s so repetitious to what I already did. And I feel like. Sort of a waste of time. I mean, obviously you have to do your legal work, but it becomes a bit much even for the girls.

Shane: They’re like another contract. I’m like, well, so and so decided to do. And we never thought about that. So it wasn’t in the contract because you the one thing about this job is, is no night is the same as the next night and in a way that you just can’t even fathom. Like every time you think you’ve seen the craziest thing or heard the dumbest thing, it’s like the next night just blows you away and you’re like, oh yeah, I can’t say that anymore because you just know, you know, tonight we have, uh, you know, Toy Show Wednesday.

Tonight we’ll be really busy and, uh, something crazy will happen. And but it’s what makes the job so fun is you really never know what’s going to happen. So you don’t get that lull so much. And then I also believe in the jobs that I don’t like generally are the jobs that I’m not as good at. Um, so then you hire people for those jobs, you know, delegate. Yeah. I half of my success is being able to train, hire and put the best people in the best positions that they’re good at so that I have the best at this, this, this, this, this. So, you know, my team is really, you know, what’s taken me to the next level in the website time my wife and my, my ex-wife and I at the time, we did everything ourselves.

Shane: Like, literally like we almost killed ourselves. We were working 120 hours a week type shit, but we did make a lot of money. I don’t have any regrets for it, but I learned a lot then, moving into this phase of my life and into the new business being the the gentlemen’s clubs, um, you you hire great people and then once they prove to be great, you pay them a great amount of money. So now I overpay all of my people, if that’s even a terme. I sometimes feel like, um, that undermines their abilities when you say overpay. But comparative to any other gentleman’s club, I pay significantly more to all of my staff, and I do that because they make me look good. They make my job easier. Um, so as I’ve gotten older, I’ve gotten smarter, which we all should. I hope you know, you get wiser, smarter. Um, and so for me, um, you know, my, my slogan on life is teamwork makes the dream work. And my team is stronger than anyone. I don’t care any strip club in the whole country. I put my team against them and we smoke them every single day. I don’t care if you’re the, you know, biggest strip club in in the world. Nope. We still smoke you.

Matt: I don’t know, you’re you’re you say that you’re just lucky, though, that the original Chippendales is not still open because they may give you a run for your money. Yeah. Um, but you’re right. These are some of the basic building blocks for any successful business. You know, you want to bring in the right people, build the right team. You have to surround yourself with a leadership team, too, like you’re talking about not just people. You give orders to people who can step up and lead. And, uh, you know, it’s taken us time. I think I would compare your, uh, two different, uh, timeline trajectories, but like your, uh, your go at the website and kind of just the Wild West at the time was how we did it with Omaha live. And it was like, I don’t even know how to what an entrepreneur was, let alone how to spell one. You know, I didn’t have any hours or any consistency. It was just, you know, late nights, all nighters, drugs, just bad all around bad, bad, bad. Right? Yeah. It was a party.

Shane: And, you know, that’s how we were.

Matt: Um, but looking back on it, there was a lot that I learned by doing it the wrong way. Yeah. And so now I can apply that today and like, okay, I’m going to pause. I’m going to take time to really find and build the right team and build this team that. Now, like you said, we have we have a team here as well where it’s like we are really performing at a high level and this team has come together, um, in both leadership and in execution. And so I think that that’s important to, uh, to be willing to delegate. Yeah. Good rule I kind of learned is like, if they can do it 80% as good as you, then let them do it. Yeah. You know.

Shane: Exactly. No one no one’s ever going to be like when it’s your business. No one’s ever going to quite work it as hard or as thorough as you would. But if you like you said, if they’re at 80%, you thank them and let them run with it.

Matt: Or in the case of, you know, our production director, Martin, um, who’s producing the show right now, 22%, you know, you gotta no, I’m kidding. He does a great job. Um, he’s probably like, 95, 96%, you know?

Shane: You know, sometimes you get really lucky. Yeah. You know, I have a lawyer, and my lawyer is, like, 100%. And, um. And I’ll pay this guy until the day I die because he helped me on the one thing that I could not do at all. Legally, you cannot represent yourself. Not against city, state governors, mayors, city council, the police chief.

You know, you need a good lawyer. You need somebody who will grind for you, who will fight for you. No matter what gets thrown at them. And for me, you know that that’s where that whole teamwork thing he introduced me to. Um. I need somebody that’s good. I need to pay them well. And if I do, and they do their job, I’m going to succeed and I’m going to make it. And he kind of helped get me over that hump.

But also, like I said, taught me that valuable lesson that if you put the right team together and we’re all working for the same common goal, uh, you know, there’s no limit to what we can do. So I pay a lot of my guys on bonuses, too. So you get a great hourly wage, don’t get me wrong.

Shane: But you also get a bonus. Every time we do something great, everybody gets paid. It’s a team win. Yeah. So then everyone’s fighting to break records. Like, if we break a record on privates, or we break a record for the night or for a Wednesday or for it’s it’s everybody gets paid extra.

And I think that that really changed the whole game for me. Um, because it’s like if we don’t do well, they get paid good still, but they don’t get that bonus. You get start getting used to that bonus and you’re like, shoot, we can make that again and again and again and and when we’re all working together, we’ve broken, I would say, upwards of 100 records in just the last year.

Wow. So it’s like we break a record and we think like, oh man, we can’t do any better than that. And it’s like, nope, we did better and better and better. And everybody’s kind of gotten, uh, high on the bonuses, you know, like, no, I want I want to keep getting these bonuses. We can keep doing better. And and we just all keep pushing.

Matt: Yeah. I mean, you want your team excited, you want to get them motivated.

And that has to come from inside. It can’t just be a forced external thing. Yep. Um, you know, the the drivers for solving any problem. You know, you have your internal I need money, you know, your your external, your internal. Like I really want this bonus so I can show up. My neighbor Todd and philosophical is the one people forget often. And that’s where you’re a part of something bigger than yourself. Yeah.

That’s why George pride in it. Yeah. George Lucas said like pizza, free pizza and beer is is more effective than any six figure salary you can give. Yeah I mean it is it. People love just that that camaraderie that that teamwork and that, you know, being a part of something bigger than themselves. What would you what’s the if we, as we kind of wrap up here, like what is the biggest misconception about yourself and what is your what would be like your single greatest tip for an entrepreneur or business owner right now?

Um, because we’ve talked a lot, a lot of different things that we talk about a lot on this, on this podcast. But, um, it’s interesting through your lens how they are identical. They mirror each other because you’re a a business. Yeah, it’s a legitimate business. Yeah. We do.

Shane: I know we pay taxes. Yes, I know the whole bit.

Matt: And I think people forget they’re like, oh, it’s not a business. It’s, you.

Shane: Know, you know, if they knew how much I was paying in sales tax every month and income tax every year, they would say, oh, wow, you’re.

Matt: Probably paying for those like schools and churches that, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They’re protesting you.

Shane: Yeah. It’s it’s crazy. And, uh, so what’s the biggest.

Matt: Misconception about you today that you still feel lingers.

Shane: On? Um, you know, you I don’t know if you can ever shake like, you know, the creepy strip club guy, you know, like that. That’s just, um, because there are so many of them, you know, people always say, like, do you feel like you were unfairly treated? Well, of course I did. My, my my civil rights were violated, and I proved that in court. But. I understand why sometimes. Now I don’t understand the churches and things like that.

But I understand that you. See those 60 minutes and 2020 specials. And they are about the creepy strip club owner who was hooking his girls on drugs and was prostituting them out, and was encouraging underage girls to drink and things like that. That is kind of how that name or that thing got associated. Obviously, with us, they not just were an easy target because they were in a business that people didn’t like. They actually held true to exactly what people thought they were. They actually were.

Matt: Some people earned the reputation.

Shane: Yeah. And it was.

Matt: It was unfair to other people who may be doing it a different way. Well, it’s.

Shane: Actually what made me get in the strip club business. So my ex-wife would feature when she became very well known, she would feature all over the country. Strip clubs would hire her to come in and, and and I obviously met them because, you know, I work hand in hand with her.

I did all her contracts and everything, and almost all of them were complete pieces of shit. Really? Yeah. They were sleeping with 17 different girls. They were, you know, partying every night with them. They were getting drunk and doing coke in the bathroom with the the customers and things like that.

Matt: Sounds like a normal day here at our studio. So.

Shane: So what I thought was I at that time, I had a lot of money, but I thought, you know, if I ever decide to go into a different business, I’m going to go into the strip club business and I’m going to try to run it as close to a fortune 500 company as you can. We’re going to have contracts and rules and regulations, and everyone’s going to follow them from me to security to the dancers to whatever.

And when I would tell this to owners that they would, they just laugh at me. They’d say, oh, you’re dreaming, can’t be done. You don’t know these girls.

They’ll screw you over in a second, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I said, no, no, no, I really think you can create a more positive environment. Sure, it may be harder to get your staff of girls that follow that protocol, but I believe if you do it, you will reap the benefits for years to come. And so when I decided to get in the business, that was my thing. How do I help make these girls better? How do I get them to quit smoking? Quit doing drugs, quit drinking?

Um, how do I get them to build their credit up? To save money, to invest money to come up with a 2 to 3 year plan? Because I tell every girl that comes in and trains with me, I say.

Shane: Tonight is your first night at my club. I guarantee you I’ll make you a life changing money and I will keep you safe. Those are my two promises to you. I want you to promise me that this isn’t your lifetime job. That in 2 to 3 years, you will then move on to your big. I call it the big girl job. Mhm. Um. And so. I am doing things as good as possible. Um, I look in the mirror at night and I feel good about who I am. Um. I feel good about the changes that I’ve made in my girls. I can’t fix them all now, you know. Of course not. Do all of them listen to my investing tips and not drink and things like that? No, but I would say I probably have somewhere around a 30 to 40% of them actually follow through and come up with a escape plan, so to speak. They go to school, they pay off their bills, they buy a car, they get an apartment. We help them do all of that. Um, we’ll do reference letters, we’ll do income verification letters. We’ll even call the apartment complex on the phone, and I’ll speak to them directly. No other business is doing that. No other strip club is. But no other business is probably doing that.

Matt: Yeah. No, you’re you’re you’re 100% correct. And I think that that’s admirable. Admirable to, uh, to hear that you’re doing. And I’m glad that you shared that, because it’s interesting. We talked about the churches and these groups who have a this moral, uh, motivation. It’s against our values, what they’re doing over here.

Where are they? In helping young women who maybe need some guidance, who maybe they are dancing or stripping, and it’s because they’re desperate for money, but it isn’t what they want to do their whole lives. Where are they actually in stepping up to help them? Instead, they’re just casting a stone.

And I remember this because my our dad’s a pastor, so I grew up in the church. And I remember, um, you know, there is a there is a reason that the first person that that Jesus revealed himself to was a prostitute in the town, very first person. Yeah. You know, and and I think, you know, yeah, it’s like, uh, people in these organizations, we get high and mighty, and they feel like I’m just going to cast the first stone and judge, and they forget what their Christianity is.

They describe it is actually supposed to be all about. Yeah. You know, and so, um, so that’s good to hear. And then what any last tip you have for like a, um, for an entrepreneur or business owner, we talked about, like, standard operating procedures, your checklist, your, your, um, um, get your processes and procedures in place, make the news as much as possible, um, and, uh, and pay attention to the legal stuff. Any other big tips you can leave us with here today?

Shane: Uh, learn everything you know. Know how to do every single thing that your business does so that no matter what happens, somebody quits. Uh, what gets sick?

You know, you can literally cover anything, you know, um, whether it’s fix the computer, DJ, uh, plunge a toilet, um, you know, whatever it is, you need to know how to do it. Um, you’ll go a lot further. You’ll also gain a lot more traction.

My girls. When they saw me in a suit plunge in toilets one night because they backed up and I got shit all over my pants and they were like, oh my God. I know. Had to be done, you know? And so if you’re willing to do all of the shit work. Mhm. As well as take the credit and whatever. Well, well you’ve got to be able to do both sides.

But if you know how to do every single thing that your business does, even if you have someone better than you at it, go learn from them how they do it. So that if you need to to slide by, you can. Because there’s nothing worse than having, you know, five people on your team and one calls in sick or two get Covid or whatever it happens to be. Um, and then you have to shut your business down because you don’t know or no one knows how to fill in their spots. You don’t want. That is important.

Matt: You don’t want to let an employee of yours hold your business hostage because they hold the keys. They’re the only ones who know how to do it. Yeah, I’m a big proponent of that as well. Like do every job in your company.

Shane: You don’t have to be the best at it, but you have to know how to do and manage through every single scenario that your company does.

Matt: It’ll help you gauge things like how to measure, you know, progress. And should that take that much time, you know? Or is that are they just kind of, uh, going slow like it took me ten hours to do that? It’s taking them 20. That doesn’t seem right, you know. So the.

Shane: Only thing. Oh, correction, though, there’s always something you can’t do. Because though I can dance and I could strip, no one would. Actually, my customers wouldn’t want to watch me dance. But if I needed to get up there to buy us some time, I goddamn would be up there.

Matt: I did, I actually did this last year, uh, last, uh, fall, uh, a I tried a pole like a stripper pole. Yeah, yeah, 20 foot tall, uh, stripper pole. Now, they didn’t have it hooked up correctly, so the pole didn’t spin. Okay, okay. And it was very painful. Yeah, it was very painful. I have all the respect in the world now for for dancers on poles. That is like, I don’t know how they do it.

Shane: Like, it’s not just that, you know, I think that people need to understand that to be a dancer is one of the toughest things that you’ll ever do. You sell a little bit of your soul every time you go there. You it’s not.

Matt: Really that sexual to them. You know, you crush your.

Shane: Body because you’re constantly on nine inch heels, dancing on a pole, walking a 10,000 square foot building all night long in a.

Matt: Thong. Yeah.

Shane: So, so mind, body and soul. These girls are giving up a lot to entertain you. Um, yes, they are being paid very well, but. But I think a lot of people forget, you know, if you put yourself in their shoes for a night and had to give your mind, your body and your soul the way that these girls do, you would have a newfound respect for them.

Matt: Absolutely. Or just watch the movie, uh, hustlers with Jennifer Lopez. They they lay it out pretty good in that one. Uh, I appreciate you coming on, man. Yeah. Thanks for having.

Shane: Me. I appreciate you.

Matt: And, uh, congratulations on your success. And and here’s to cheers to all the controversies to come. Yeah.

Shane: Oh, yeah. There’s going to be more. I’m opening another club soon. So when you get on the news, keep going. Next time you get on the.

Matt: News, then we got our coordinate something so that like, we can somehow get some like cross promoting collaboration. You got you two brothers in there.

Shane: Yeah. Got you. We’ll come.

Matt: Do our podcast from wherever they’re protesting you.

At in the corner. Sounds good man. I’m in. All right.

Full Written Transcript of The Episode

Matt: Have you ever watched those drug commercials? That make no sense. It’s just people happy frolicking through fields. But yet it works. And we’re going to talk about why it works in today’s episode.

Matt: Of Midwest Mindset.

Matt: Hello and welcome back to Midwest Mindset, the podcast that makes marketing easy and simple to do for any business. I’m Matt Tompkins of Two Brothers Creative, where we believe every business deserves affordable and effective marketing. Uh, let’s intro everybody on the show.

All right. Big round of applause for this. We’re going to lead into it with some positivity. Okay. Uh, first up, we have a man who he is recovering from Covid. Mhm. Uh, he did not take him out.

Next to him. Austin. Yeah. Well, we’re in the clear at least I hope. Right. You’re negative. Right. You’re good. Yep. Okay. Thank thank you. All right. Sweet. Um, I.

Austin: Would feel terrible. I don’t wish that on anyone. It is the worst.

Matt: Here’s my question. With Covid, like, okay, people when they get Covid. All right, I gotta stay home. I don’t want to get anybody else sick.

But then any other illness we get, like, you get strep throat or the flu or, you know, cold. It’s contagious as well. You just go to work. Like, why don’t why aren’t we applying that mindset to all the illnesses? I think you’re supposed to.

Ben: Stay home for those two. But I agree with you.

Austin: No one does. No one.

Matt: Does. No one does. If you get a really bad cold, people still come to work. Yeah. And they spread it.

Ben: It’s because you don’t have the test with Covid. You have the drama of you have this test and this big thing.

Matt: I mean, you test for the cold. Well, you can.

Austin: Test for strep throat.

Matt: So congratulations on congratulations on surviving and still being alive. Uh, Austin, uh, he looks like the kind of guy who always puts it in the wrong hole.

Ben: Oh, yeah. Yeah, that is you.

Austin: Gets me in a lot of trouble.

Matt: Trust me. I know we’re.

Ben: Talking about golf, right?

Matt: Uh oh, yeah. Probably golf too. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I was talking about. I was thinking about pool.

Ben: Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you gotta call.

Austin: That’s what I was thinking about.

Matt: Yeah. And if you’re thinking about something else that’s on you, you pervert. Uh, next up, we have Myron. Uh, Myron McHugh. He is the producer extraordinaire. He’s in the control booth right now.

We still don’t allow him to have a microphone. Uh, for reasons, uh, maybe someday. But, Myron, you know, he, uh, he looks like the kind of guy who makes his own slippers. That’s Myron.

Ben: Oh, that is him.

Matt: Yeah, he probably hand knits them. Maybe some crochets.

Austin: Involved with human hair.

Matt: With human hair.

Ben: That’s why he’s grown a beard.

Matt: It’s all wool woven together.

Ben: Oh, God.

Matt: And you don’t want to know where he gets the human hair from. That’s the weird. That’s where it gets weird. We don’t know. That’s where it gets weird.

Austin: Toilet seats.

Matt: And last but least, uh, of course, the other brother from the same mother, Ben Tompkins, who, uh, he looks like the kind of guy who is always near jello.

Ben: Uh, yeah. You know, it’s a quick and easy meal. Yeah, it’s very practical. So I always. I know where all the jello spots are in town.

Matt: Uh, so growing up together, since we’re brothers, you know, that’s how it works. Um, Ben would sit and eat a whole tub of frosting. He would get cake frosting and just devour it. I mean, it was like it.

Ben: Was real jam. It started with Dunkaroos. Dunkaroos? You could buy the little graham crackers or the kangaroos.

Austin: I remember those.

Ben: Dunk them into frosting. And then I started to think, well, I just like the frosting. So I would just eat the frosting. And then I started to think, let’s just take out the middleman and buy the frosting.

So I just go buy frosting and eat it. But I’d have to hide the frosting, because if my parents or anybody found me, they would take it or they would judge me. Yeah, that’s the perfect.

Austin: Metaphor to for drugs. Like, you start small and then you move up. You’re like.

Ben: My drug.

Austin: Container. My name.

Matt: Is Matt, and I’m addicted to.

Ben: Frosting. My drug is just cake. Frosting.

Austin: Yeah.

Matt: It was it was bad. Like, it was. It was crazy. Like, I mean, I’m.

Austin: How old was he?

Matt: Oh, he’s like, you know, I don’t know. I still do it. Yeah. He still does it. Yeah. So his entire life I think it started out young. He was like probably six, five years old, six years old. And he would just devour it. And he loved it. He was so happy. I didn’t want to stop him. You know?

Austin: God, it is a it’s a miracle that you’re a skinny guy.

Matt: Ben. Is that how.

Austin: You felt when I see if I eat tubs of frosting? My metabolism was so terrible, I would have been even a fatter kid.

Matt: Yeah. Uh, I mean, is that how you felt, Ben, when I went through my addiction, when I was just taking all kinds of drugs? You’re just like. Yeah, but Matt looks so happy. Uh, you know, I don’t know.

Ben: I got it. I was like, no, I get what he’s going through. You try to.

Austin: Give.

Matt: I had the same issue.

Ben: I know it just got to let it play. Yeah.

Austin: You try to get on Matt about it, and then he freaks out about your frosting, right? Yeah. Ben, you the.

Matt: Frosting, man. Leave me alone with my my OxyContin.

Austin: Take the log out of your own eye.

Matt: Uh, okay. So today we’re talking about focusing on the end result. Okay. And this is key to your marketing for any business. So if you guys seen the drug commercials, right. Yeah.

The ones I’m talking about. So these are the drug commercials or the there’s all this, like, video footage of people, like, frolicking through a field or they’re they’re just going to the market and it’s like all this weird shit and you’re like, what does this have to do with anything?

What is your take? What is your take on those commercials?

Like, why do you think they’re effective or not effective?

Ben: Um, I think they come from a time when they’re an older form of advertising. So they’re they’re probably still effective. They’re not as effective, I don’t think, as they once were, because I see them and I think these are the same cheesy commercials that I saw when I was a kid.

Austin: Yeah. Every time I see one, I wonder the same thing. Why do they still make them like this and who can’t see it? Um, you know, like who? Who is this fooling?

Matt: So the answer is they work. That’s why they still do it. Why do they work? That’s the other question, right?

Austin: I’m excited for the answer.

Matt: They. Work, because what they’re doing in this commercial is they’re showing you they’re in a visual format. The end result. This is what your life will look like after consuming our product, in this case, our drug. Right. So if you take this, they’re going to have paint the picture of the end result.

So that’s why it’s all this happy footage that makes doesn’t seem to make any sense. It’s not really connected to anything they’re showing you.

Here’s how good your life can be. You know. And with businesses in their marketing, a big mistake it’s easy to make is to just talk about the product. And we’re going to say this is the best product. It’s the best. It’s here’s the specs, here’s the facts. And you are. When you do that, you are targeting the thinking brain for your customer.

And nobody makes decisions based on their thinking brain. Nobody makes any decisions based on the facts or the specs. And we like to say that we do, but nobody does. That’s just a hard fact.

That’s a reality. Reality check. We make decisions based on our feeling brain. Right. So the end result is targeting your feeling brain. It’s saying this is how it’s going to look.

This is how your life is going to feel after you buy our product. Right. Um, focusing on the specs just does not work. It just doesn’t work. It’s not going to attract anybody. So what do you think of the drug commercials now that you know that?

Austin: That makes me think about the difference between features and benefits. Like they’re showing they’re showing the benefit because no one really wants to hear about the features they want. They want the benefits.

Ben: It makes me think there are a bunch of liars.

Matt: What?

Ben: Yeah, because they’re gonna sell this prescription and they, number one don’t know. They don’t care about the other consequences of the prescription. And some medication does terrible things to people. Some people abuse medication. Some people have a horrible past with medication. They don’t care if you actually feel that way. They’re just trying to manipulate you and trick you into thinking that so that you buy their product.

Matt: Well, in the case of drug companies, probably you’re probably right. But like, let’s just say overall painting the picture of the end result.

Austin: Like like Diet Coke. Yeah. And when I first, when I was younger and I was, uh. About five years into standup, I wrote this whole thing about Diet Coke and how it’s, uh, brings the party alive and all that, because just those commercials growing up, it’s like, you crack open this.

Ben: If I.

Austin: This time of your life.

Ben: If I saw a drug commercial that said, hey, we have this drug. But first, have you tried changing your diet? Have you tried increasing your. Yeah.

Austin: They would go out of business, tried all.

Ben: At least if you did. And it still doesn’t work. I would buy that drug even if I didn’t need it, just because I would respect that company. I used to.

Matt: Think that way too. I used to think, man, if somebody did a commercial that just came on and they said, hey, listen, I get it. Commercials suck. Here’s my product. Here’s why it’s good. I always thought that would work, right? Nope. Why doesn’t anybody do that? Well, there’s a reason. Like, you know, it doesn’t work.

Ben: I mean, you’re not going.

Matt: To sell, you know, and like. But what you’re saying, I’m not discounting that. That’s probably true in a lot of cases. And that’s unfortunate. Manipulating people, especially when you’re targeting their feeling brain sometimes it’s very easy to do.

And so a lot of companies will do that, especially drug companies. Um, it’s the drug commercials are hilarious, though, with the disclaimers at the end.

That’s what gets cracks me up like, you know, side effects may include, you know, explosive diarrhea. Because what.

Austin: Your dick flying off. Yeah.

Matt: You’re going to lose.

Ben: Coming back to you like a boomerang. Yeah.

Matt: If, uh, your dick will turn into a boomerang if you take this drug, I actually would take that drug. That would be fun.

Austin: About the party dudes outside shooting their dicks in the air, talking about.

Ben: The party coming to life.

Matt: This is the best drug ever. Not only does it prevent scabies, but it also is a boomerang.

Austin: Dick, an epidemic has swept the nation. Yeah.

Matt: Boomerang. Dick. Speaking of drug commercials, this is a total side. Side note here, a side tangent, but like, um, shingles. What’s going on with shingles?

Ben: 1 in 3 people will have shingles. And that means somebody in this one of us will have shingles.

Matt: One of us has shingles.

Ben: It’s already inside of us. Yeah. The virus.

Austin: Yep. That’s what’s wild. Yeah. Because it’s part of the chickenpox.

Ben: Just needs to be activated.

Matt: Yeah. It’s like chicken. If you’ve had chicken pox, then you can get. Yeah shingles or it’s not scabies but.

Austin: Shingles and apparently stress.

Matt: Scabies is something totally different. And I don’t want to talk about that. No. Okay. Listen, I got scabies once. I went to summertime, we went to the I was like 21, maybe went to the club. There’s some club in Omaha Cadillac. It was guitars and Cadillacs.

Ben: It was this. Yeah.

Matt: Scabies guitars and Cadillac Cadillacs. I go out on the dance floor. There’s a pretty girl wants to dance. So we’re dancing. We’re kind of grinding, right? Well, I’m wearing shorts. She’s wearing a skirt.

Ben: Shorts to a club.

Austin: It was guitars and Cadillac.

Matt: Guitars, a Cadillac. What are you.

Austin: Don’t judge. Yeah. He was. You can’t wear shorts out.

Ben: No, you can’t wear cowboy boots.

Austin: Okay, well.

Matt: You know, I was 21, I was little, I went out with shorts. So anyhow, we’re dancing. So, like my inner thigh.

Austin: I’m on your side.

Matt: My inner thigh. It was rubbing up against her inner thigh. And then over the next couple days, my thigh just turned. It looked like, uh, it looked like like not chicken pox, but worse, like just red bumps everywhere.

And then it started spreading. And pretty soon I’m like, I’ve got scabies. I didn’t know what it was, but it was all over me. Went to the doctor like, hey, you got scabies. Here, take this medication, clear it right up.

And it did. But I’m like, you know, that lady should have told me. She should have gave me a disclaimer herself. Listen, I wanted to dance with you. Want to bump and grind? But just so you know, the.

Austin: Music was too loud.

Ben: She needs to go to see one of those, uh, frolicking. Dancing?

Austin: You thought she was singing along to the song, but she was screaming. I have scabies.

Matt: By the way. I have scabies, like, uh. So anyhow. Okay, side tangent over. Um, but the shingles is interesting because, like, I don’t remember ten, 20 years ago, I didn’t even know nobody knew what shingles was.

And now it seems like these commercials make it. They are terrifying too. But that’s really are grinding. Like, did you know you could have shingles right now? But that’s the.

Ben: Other thing with this. I mean, I know this focus of this isn’t just pharmaceuticals and drugs. I know you’re I would imagine you’re applying this approach to all advertising, but with pharmaceutical companies it’s a business. So there who knows? I mean, you can find out, I’m sure, by doing research on how prevalent shingles really is and how dangerous and painful. But it’s a business.

They want you to buy their product, so they’re going to promote it. It’s not a health thing. That’s the other thing when it comes to drugs, is that you’re not treating it as if this is a community service.

They’re treating it like it’s a business, which is probably the biggest problem with with this whole thing is that they put their money first. They don’t put the customers interest first.

Matt: So I’ve been here, Ben, is our ethical morality check.

Austin: Yeah. And well, now I’m thinking like, okay. Yeah, I always feel like they’re manipulative, the commercials. But if human beings, if it’s a scientifically proven fact that we think with or, you know, we make decisions based on our feelings and we don’t think about it, don’t they don’t really have a choice.

Ben: Right? I would argue that that because.

Austin: Like, if we’re if we’re programmed to, to make decisions that way, they have.

Ben: To I would argue that that’s the way of thinking of your emotional brain is making most of your decisions, and facts aren’t playing as big of a role as maybe we would like, is true for a majority of people, but it doesn’t have to be true in all decisions, and it doesn’t have to be true for that majority. I think that’s where education, where not leaning into like, well, this is just the way it is. We can’t change it. I think you can change a lot.

Of how we learn and receive information and process information. Back when we only had three news channels and newspapers getting our news, I know there’s still a lot of manipulation and propaganda out there, but the misinformation wasn’t as prevalent as it is today because,

I mean, today we’ve just accepted this idea of we’re going to believe what my brain tells me to believe. We’re not going to trust a process of elimination or research or peer review. We’re not going to trust that that’s credible sources.

Austin: That’s yeah, that makes me, me and Matt are going to stand up on his desk and say, captain, oh, my captain. Yeah. After that. Wow. What movie was that pulling a reference there.

Matt: Robin was in that. Yeah, it was a book book club.

Austin: Yeah. It was a.

Ben: Teacher who.

Austin: Inspired everyone.

Ben: Dead poets.

Matt: Dead Poets Society. Yeah. That was that was a reference pulled out of the back of the box there. Um, so the end result. Let’s let me give you an example of an inn where a commercial gets it wrong. Okay.

And they focus too much on what you’re talking about. We’re talking about like negative that that’s called the stakes. You’re highlighting the stakes, right. So any commercial, anything, you know, you follow this story, you know, so you have a hero who’s the customer and the hero has a problem. And then the hero meets a guide.

The guide is the business. The business is there to give them a plan and say, hey, one, two, three. You do this, you buy a product, you do this and it’s going to work. And then they call them to action. And the last two things are highlighting the stakes, which is like, here’s what happens if you don’t buy our product, and then painting a picture of the end result. If you do so, a commercial that gets this wrong or a type of commercial is the commercial is about the the dogs and the animals, um, like the ASPCA, whatever the name of it is. And they load this commercial 60 minutes or 60s or even two minutes, right? With just horribly sad images. The whole thing is just it’s terrifyingly depressing. Yeah. Every time that commercial comes on, I have to change the channel. Now. They should highlight the stakes.

Austin: It’s interesting. So do I they.

Matt: They highlight the stakes through the entire thing. The reason that they it would perform much better for them if they had a little bit of stakes and then show the end result. So hey, here’s what’s going on right now. If you donate your money, call to action. Here’s the stakes. Sad puppy, abandoned, starving. And then here’s what happens when you donate. End result. So that’s an example a.

Austin: Dog running into a loving family.

Matt: Yes, sprinting along but big in that park.

Austin: From full House.

Ben: That. But those commercials. I think one reason why they might be effective or they might continue to do them, is that they stick in your brain as there is no result that those, those dogs and those animals that are in the commercial are forever in those cages.

Austin: So are they are they are they marketing with trauma?

Ben: Yeah, absolutely. If you see a dog run into a happy family in your brain, you’re thinking, oh, the dog saved. I don’t need to worry about it. But you’re always, you know, you.

Matt: Highlight both you.

Ben: Always you.

Matt: Show, show the dog get trapped and you say, here’s what happens when you donate your money and you show the end result, but you do both.

Ben: When you come to like, you’re saying that.

Austin: People are so stupid, they’ll think the dog is saved and they won’t give money.

Ben: They won’t feel as guilty when they see the dog.

Matt: But here’s the thing I so I donate to causes a lot of local, uh, like animal nonprofits and stuff here, here in the Omaha area. I haven’t donated anything. I’ve not felt motivated to donate to those commercials just because I’m the same way. I’m, you know, and it’s like, it’s not that I’m not a giving person. It’s just. And I love animals, but they just got it wrong. Like, now, listen, I don’t say they got it wrong. Their commercials likely work to a degree. What I’m saying is they’re going to work a lot better if they just put a little bit, a little bit of the end result in there.

Ben: Now, I agree that I wish again, I think there’s manipulation. I mean, that’s all it’s all types of marketing is propaganda in some ways, or capitalizing on your guilt or your fear or whatever.

Um, but with that, if you see and you know that these animals are safe, I’m sure once you donate, that’s when you see this result. You get just inundated with with things that are showing happy animals and all this stuff, and you start feeling like, yep, I’m doing it. So I’m going to keep donating.

Matt: So let’s, let’s do this little exercise here to wrap up this episode for any business who’s going through this? Let’s pick a random business like, I don’t know, a company that does kitchen countertops. Right? So now it’s easy on your website and your content on social media with all your marketing, um, to say this countertop is made of, you know, blah, blah, blah, you know, stone that’s imported from Egypt and it’s, you know, ground down by using the teeth of former deceased, uh, uh, American soldiers. I don’t know, but it’s like this. It’s this high end enlist. It’s easy to list off the specs.

You’re not going to win anybody what we’re talking about here today. So how would you take that?

A countertop company and paint the end result. So the end result would be the experience that your family is going to have in this beautiful kitchen. So something like, you know, come home to a loving family. You’re talking about the experience with this countertop. And that’s the feeling brain, not the countertop itself.

That’s how you sell kitchen countertops. Free tip for any kitchen countertop company. But that’s the end of the.

Austin: Perfect.

Ben: Good way to wrap.

Matt: It up. Uh, cool. For for Austin, Ben and Martin, I am Matt Tompkins. And thank you so much for joining us on this episode of Midwest Mindset. We have free resources for you to help you grow your business. Right now they’re free. That means they don’t cost any money. They’re you know.

Ben: You just have to. Yeah, you just have to be my Facebook friend.

Matt: All you have to do is become Ben’s Facebook friend and then click the button in the show notes. You can download our resources there. We have them for you every week and you can find out more at our website. The content box.com toodaloo.

Full Written Transcript of The Episode

Nebraska Tourism Too Cute for the Room or Effective Advertising?

Matt: Nebraska. Nice. Honestly, it’s not for everyone. Just how many shitty slogans has this state come up with to try and bring tourists to our state? And have they even worked?

We’ve got national headlines for them, but in this episode of Midwest Mindset, we’re going to talk about the pros and cons of failing and winning if that’s something Nebraska is capable of doing anymore.

Was that too harsh? I feel like that was too harsh. I was trying hard. I feel like that was too harsh. Oh, this is what we’re doing. No. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to dive in. I was like, wow.

Chad: We just went.

Matt: Full throttle leave. Uh, leave that in. Editor. That’ll be good. That little tail in there. Was that too harsh? All right. Hello and welcome back to Midwest Mindset, the podcast that makes marketing easy to understand and simple to do.

I’m your host with the most toast from neither coast who has an extra toe, which makes me extra good at swimming. And that’s pretty much it.

All right. Uh, now we have today sitting in here today instead of the other brother Ben. Uh, we’ll get to who this handsome devil is here in a second. Uh, we have our returning champion, Austin Anderson. He is bringing plaid back, whether you like it or not. He’s like 90s fashion. He’s just here, and he’s not going anywhere.

Austin: Dude, I you know, I just like the. I like how Wrangler shirts are long. They don’t come untucked.

Matt: So you’re a wrangler man then, huh? Yeah. You’re a wrangler. Shirts and jeans.

Austin: No, not jeans. Okay, I do have one pair, but those were just, well, broken in from woe will style.

Matt: Those are. Those are bro broken in. Those are bro.

Austin: Broke. So bro broke. Those are comfy. But I’m not breaking them in my own pair of wranglers. Man I don’t got the time for that. You have somebody.

Matt: Else break them in.

Austin: Yeah. No I got an interesting.

Matt: Okay. You got it. Yeah. All right. Uh, once again, being silenced in the control booth is our producer, Martin McHugh. We intentionally do not put a microphone in front of him because he says very inappropriate things on a regular basis. It’s become an issue with air, and it’s just I’m not really willing to pay for the fines.

So I don’t even know if YouTube issues fines or not, but if they. It’s just an excuse, really. We don’t want to hear Martin. Sorry, bro. Man, that was a harsh too. I’m just like I’m just dishing out the harshness today. Wow. Scorched earth Omaha I am, I am so guest. Hey, guess who’s next then?

I guess in the guillotine. Uh, here is, uh, the one and only leave. Yeah. He’s gonna walk. I’ll see you later. What happened here? Sitting in for, uh, Ben Tompkins? Uh, who’s busy in the other room working, whatever that is.

I don’t even know what that means. Um, is Chadwick Dodd otherwise known as Chad Dodd or Chad the Bot. Dodd, as we like to call him. Oh, gosh. No. Yes. Yeah. You know, you keep walking around bragging about losing all this weight and looking good and stuff, and you’re going to get that title. This is what happens.

Chad: I have nothing to say about this.

Matt: Yeah. Uh, Chad is, uh, Chad not only has an awesome name. Chadwick, uh, which I think you should fully embrace. I’m embracing Matthew. I’m embracing Matthew for a change.

Chad: Uh, that’s my middle name. Is it? Yeah. Wow.

Matt: Oh, now the connection makes sense. Yeah. It all comes. Yes. Yeah. So Chadwick is the founder and owner of clink. I think he said that. Clink claw. Oh. Claw Inc?

Yes. Claw no claw Inc with a k. Uh, we partner with Chad for all of our website builds at Two Brothers Creative Design. He’s a marketing guru, branding expert.

Uh, and he’s got his hands in, like, 20 different companies. Now he’s just found. He’s just, uh. What is it? What is it? What do they call that, a serial killer entrepreneur. A serial entrepreneur?

Yes. That’s what it is. My bad. I see I’m getting all mixed. See, the thing is, it a little inside baseball, behind the scenes? So, like, I am, I am, I’m stopping vaping and. And so now I’ve made the switch to no nicotine. And so now I’m on like the Nicorette, which I guess still has nicotine in it, but I don’t know how. So this is.

Chad: What we get is the.

Matt: Hyper. You’re gonna get basically bipolar Matt for a while. All right. Worse than normal because I am bipolar. So you’re going to get like, it’s like an accelerant added to this equation.

Austin: In and out of those nicotine withdrawals.

Chad: It’s more like a dumpster fire. Yeah. No, you shut up.

Austin: I just cut back to you. Just chewing on a bunch of. Yeah.

Matt: Um, so. But it’s all for good things, so I, you know, don’t die sooner, right?

Yeah, yeah. So, uh, welcome to the show, Chad. It’s good to have you here. We’re talking about branding, and we’re talking about slogans and marketing today with Nebraska tourism.

Uh, the brutally honest and, I don’t know, some would say brilliantly genius.

I don’t know if I agree with that at all, because I don’t, uh, but you were a guy. You’ve taken a lot of clients through this journey, through this path. And, uh, let’s start because they’ve had what?

Nebraska. Nice. We’re nice.

Which, by the way, our parody of that commercial still gets shows up number one and gets more views than the actual ad. Yeah. That’s fantastic.

We did a parody of it. And I think people, because we pulled like very similar photos and clips, it looks like the real thing. And um, and I think people probably think that’s the actual tourism commercial when they. Oh, that’s right, look at it, which is awesome.

Austin: Let’s go ahead and, uh, show that video. Yeah.

Matt: So let’s play it. Cue it up. Well, you didn’t have it ready. See, this is why Mierden doesn’t get a microphone you didn’t have fucking ready.

Chad: You know, I did.

Austin: That for me because I’m gonna edit that in.

Matt: Yeah. No, we’ll we’ll put that in there. Yeah. That’s a note for Austin who’s also editing.

Chad: Yeah.

Austin: So I’m just giving myself cues.

Chad: Right. Uh.

Matt: Punch in a.

Chad: Funnier joke there for me. Cut this out.

Matt: Accentuate my thighs. Yeah. Um, so they have had what? Nebraska. Nebraska. Nice. Was one. Yeah. They had, um, what was it then? The recent one was, um, honestly, it’s not for everyone. That’s the one that made.

Chad: National headlines the.

Austin: Colorado agency like.

Matt: 50 grand to do or something crazy.

Austin: They didn’t even pick anyone from here. Yeah, and Colorado’s like, it’s not for everyone. Yeah, like, of course they’re gonna say that.

Chad: I mean, football.

Matt: I wish I could have been in the meeting because I want to hear all the other ideas that they tossed out, like, you know, Nebraska. Fuck it. You know, like, here’s an interesting fact for you, though. And then, Chad, I want to hear your thoughts on, like, where they went wrong because this is your like, wheelhouse. Right? Um, more people drive through the state of Nebraska going to play like, touring, you know, than any other state. And yet we can’t get people to take a right or a left turn and stay, you know, I mean, we’ve got Stonehenge or Carhenge Carhenge.

Chad: We have Stonehenge.

Matt: We don’t have Stonehenge.

Chad: Falls.

Matt: Every time. Maybe that’s our problem. We should just start advertising things that aren’t here. Like, yeah, the Mona Lisa.

Austin: Buffet’s got the money. Bring us the Stonehenge.

Matt: Um, but, you know, we’ve got carhenge, which is just like ghetto Stonehenge, which I don’t even know why we want to even, like, have that. Uh, we’ve got the the chimney Rock state capital, Pete Ricketts and many other things that resemble a penis. So we’ve got things to come see here in the state, is what I’m saying.

Um, but we can’t seem to get people here. And it made national headlines, but I don’t from what I saw online, like, it didn’t really increase tourism. It didn’t actually get the job done. So we were I don’t know if people were laughing with us or at us in that situation that.

Chad: That I don’t know.

Austin: I don’t think that how are you going to convince people to vacation here? You know, they get one vacation, they got to spend a bunch of money. Like, why, you know, they want to go somewhere that’s like exotic.

Chad: It’s like like.

Austin: They’re not going to post Instagram photos where.

Chad: They were.

Matt: The dollar store of vacations. You know, it’s like we’re cheap. We’re cheap. Uh, but, Chad, let’s start like, where should somebody start with an actual slogan to actually accomplish an end goal, whether it’s a state or a business?

Chad: Oh, it’s like really? Where do you want to start?

Matt: Yeah, where do we start? Because I feel like they I don’t know where they started. I don’t know how they got to this.

Chad: This comes down to who who you really are.

Rather like we’re looking at the state or whether we’re looking at, you know, a company like really who who you are and embrace who you are. Um,

I don’t think Nebraska embraced who they are, you know, and, and with the nice slogan is like the way I took it from being a coast boy. Is Nebraska nice or, like, nice? Like, it’s just.

Matt: Like the O in there.

Chad: Like it’s just like nice. Like, is it a nice place? Is it a nice place to drive through? Like, there’s nothing there to it. And if it’s not for everybody, that same slogan.

Well then who is it for? Like they’re not defining who we are as a state. And I think that’s where they kind of screwed up.

Austin: Almost too simplistic.

Matt: Yeah. Well, and there wasn’t a lot of meaning or substance behind it, like you said. What does that mean? Like the people are nice because I know a lot of people here. They’re not nice. Um, so driving nice. No. Drive traffic. Nice. No. Um, but you’re right, I think, like, that’s a mistake a lot of businesses make, uh, you know, steering this back to, like, what, a small business can do or something like this is, like, you don’t know who you really are or who you’re really speaking to. And I don’t know that they went through that process. I think this is a.

Chad: Who are they? Who are they attracting? Yeah. Like, are they attracting people from Kansas? Iowa? I mean, if it’s nice and they’re attracting people from Iowa, then of course, like we’re, we’re we’re better.

Matt: We’re better than, we’re better than Kansas.

Austin: Yeah. We are.

Chad: Better. But like, who are they. You’re not going to get somebody from Florida. You’re not going to get somebody from Boston. You’re not going to get some from somebody from California. So who are you really attracting into India’s? Like, are you trying to build your own tourism inside of the state, like.

Matt: And like building out a persona, like you can build out a persona for literally anything and you should. It’s a great exercise. I mean, whether it’s like, hey, we’re going to attend this conference, we’re going to build out a persona for the people attending this conference. We’re going to build out a persona for this specific sale or this campaign or or for your business overall. Right? I mean, I think that’s a that’s a common misstep is we don’t know who we’re actually trying to attract or who are we targeting, who are we trying to reach, and then we don’t lean into who we are. And this is a marketing mistake. I would say it’s like a marketing one on one mistake where we try and get too cute for the room, we’re too cool for the room where it’s like, yeah, okay. Yeah. It’s not. Honestly, it’s not for everyone. Ah ha ha. That’s a funny joke. It’s going to get national headlines, but is it going to move the needle? Is it going to be able to laugh and then say, you know what. But it is for me. No, I don’t think I mean the statistics. I don’t think so.

Austin: Why would why would anyone not for me like, why would anybody go, ooh, I’m gonna go check that out. Yes. I don’t see.

Matt: Something nobody else likes. Maybe I will like it.

Austin: Right. Or maybe they were trying to get the people that are, like, want to be different than everyone else.

Matt: But who are they? Like, are they going on vacations? Weirdos.

Austin: Those are like school shooters.

Matt: Yeah, I feel like those like they’re going to the theaters in Colorado and doing horrible things. Or they’re I mean, it’s like, I don’t know, I don’t see the connection. You gotta keep up with it. Chatter podcast has gotten weird since you last were on okay.

Chad: Like, here we go.

Matt: Uh, it’s new formats, a whole new life. Um, so. But, Chad, like, walk us through the process. As though it’s like you’re trying to come up like a slogan, like, do you even need a slogan? I mean, let’s start there. No.

Chad: Yeah. Like, no. I think we’re looking at like, marketing campaigns or advertising campaigns or brand statements or whatever it is, like you’re trying to figure out, like how you’re going to communicate to somebody.

And a lot of times it’s just say what you mean and you don’t have to overcomplicate it, you know?

And so that’s where I think people try to be cute and clever and, you know, it falls flat. If you go too cute or too clever, you’re going to alienate people. It’s going to be confusing to people. Um, and too, you could offend some people as well. Like, I mean, there’s other campaigns where it’s like, okay, that’s kind of offensive.

And it wasn’t meant to be, but it was just a simple like, you’re trying to be too clever with something, and in that you’ve lost the audience. Yeah. And so just say it like it is, you know, and if it takes you like, if it takes you just a little bit to say something, you know, and just say like Nebraska. Nice.

Like, that’s too small. Like what is nice. You’re not clarifying it. You’re not simplifying it for somebody. You simplified it too much. And in the simplification you confused it. So simple simplicity isn’t like in length. It’s in clarity of what you’re saying. Like be precise in what you’re saying and.

Matt: Also understand like what are the words actually mean?

Because nice. Let’s be honest. Like, I mean if you were to describe like yeah, like, okay, this is, this is, this is not like PC, but this is the this is the real life. All right? So is this real life.

Yes. You have a group of girls or guys and they have that friend and they’re trying to hook their friend up and you’re like, oh, you’re single now. And like, oh, you need to get with Chad. He’s so nice. I’m sorry, Chad, that I didn’t.

Austin: Yeah, no, it’s a stereo.

Matt: Thinking of a different.

Chad: Chad that really cut deep. No.

Matt: Or Brenda. Oh, she’s so nice. And it doesn’t mean they don’t. It’s they it’s like a it’s a.

Austin: Way of getting out. Yeah. Of, like hooking up with that person. Yeah. It’s like a stereotypical thing. Yeah. From decades and decades of, like, no one wanted to be voted like, the nicest in their class.

Yeah. No. Yeah. You know, I’ve even seen that in TV shows and sitcoms and Goldbergs, there’s a whole episode about it. He, like, he gets voted like the nicest, and he’s like, no one wants to be nice. No one is nice. You know? It’s like, what is that?

Matt: Well, yeah. Like, because you never want to be the nice friend because then you’re in the friend zone. And trust me, I’ve spent my life in the friend zone.

That’s where I’ve resided. I have built my camp there, and it’s like the nice. It’s like. It means it translates to like, uh, I don’t know, like all the things we say we want, but we don’t actually want. That’s what it translates to. Like, oh, he’s nice or he’s he listens, he’s friendly, he’s supportive, he’s loving, he’s caring.

Are you going to date him? No. Nope, nope I’m going to go date. The guy’s a piece of shit who you know, doesn’t live with his parents. And he’s 35 and he’s got, uh, you know, uh, uh, what do we call it in that previous episode, the, uh, the Al Capone syphilis. Oh, yeah.

Austin: Yeah, he’s got the syphilis syndrome. You missed.

Matt: That one. The Al Capone syphilis syndrome. But, yeah, go back and watch links in the show notes. It’ll make more.

Chad: Sense. Nice is safe. Like when you. When you want a vacation.

Do you want safe? Like adventure. Like you want adventure. You want something that’s out of your norm. Your normal life is safe, right? You wake up, you go to work, you go home, you make dinner, you maybe go to the movies. It’s all consistency. It’s just safe. And then when you go on vacation, you want to go clubbing. You want to go to the beach.

You want to do, you know, the adventurous things. You want to go mountain climbing, like whatever it may be. And Nebraska is nice, is just we’re safe.

Matt: It’s like an average. It’s like it’s equates to boring. Yes it does. And I feel like that, that that one was a swing and a miss. And then honestly, it’s not for everyone. I think the big miss there is it’s like they’re trying to be too cool for the room, trying to be too clever.

And like, I think, Chad, tell me what you think about this. Because marketing, I think this is one of the biggest and easiest mistakes to make is where we try and get too creative and we only focus on creative and we don’t focus on the formula. And I’ve always believed it’s like formula.

First, there is a rhyme and reason to what works, why it works. Psychology. You’re not reinventing the wheel in a lot of things, just somatically. Um, and then you incorporate your creative into that.

And I think we sometimes think, oh, I’m just going to come up with a great catchphrase or a goofy lizard mascot and, uh, you know, I’m gonna he’s gonna be a hand puppet. It’s gonna be hilarious, but. Well, is it actually fitting into the formula of resonating with your ideal customer?

And is it reflective of you? Is it just there’s so many different things you can just skip over, gloss over, and yeah, you’ve got something that’s funny and entertaining, but like, is it going to, you know, unless it’s a Super Bowl ad where you got hundreds of millions of people watching, is it really going to connect or resonate deeply with anybody?

Chad: Well, even when you watch the Super Bowl ad, you see so many ads that try to be funny and they fall flat, right? Yeah. Oh yeah. And there’s only a few that really do a great job at it, you know, over time. But they’ve perfected it over the years of falling flat on their face with it.

But when you’re looking at like when you’re looking at coming up with a. Campaign or something that is quote unquote clever is be true again, be true to who you are as a as an organization and then present that to the people you know, you don’t want to sit there and like like I’m kind of just I am safe, right?

Like I am like that guy who like, I like simplicity. I don’t, you know, my place is clean, OCD, like, that’s who I am. And so when somebody approaches us as an agency, they’re looking for, you know, like things to be in order. They’re looking for structure. They’re looking for clarity and simplicity. And that’s what we’re attracting because that’s who who we are. I’m not trying to be another agency that’s, you know, flamboyant with things and go over the top.

Chad: I’m being true to who I am. And those people are then coming to me. And so I think that’s the key is just be you. And we’re so quick to wanting to get like a lot of like followers.

We’re so quick to want to have, you know, big numbers. But we’re not thinking like long game of it, you know, and, and how are we really building an actual following of people who want to be part of us? And so you get skewed numbers over the time too, right? Like if you’re not being you and you like just following a trend, you’ll get a huge number and then it will drop off and you’re not sure like who your followers are anymore.

And then leadership is like, what the hell’s going on here? This isn’t right. And then you’re then the next thing is like, we have to now chase the next campaign or the next trend. And so you’re always a trend chaser, not a trend setter. Yeah. And you look at big organizations, they’re setting the trend. They’re not following the trend.

Matt: It’s easy to make pivots based on false information. When I say false I mean like information that you don’t it isn’t accurate. You don’t have a big enough sample pool like and this is a mistake. I mean, we I’ve made this mistake in the past. I think probably most, if not all business owners, when they start off make the mistake of just I just need a logo, I’m going to get somebody from uh, like what was what’s the what’s the Fiverr?

Fiverr. Yeah. 99 design. I’m gonna get somebody for Fiverr to do it for five bucks and throw it up there. It doesn’t matter. And then you don’t really know the resounding impact things like that have on the long terme play for, in this case, the state of Nebraska.

Because now you’ve made the state of Nebraska a the butt of the joke.

And how long is that going to last? Can that even be reversed? So then when you put out your next thing where you try and make your next slogan, your next pivot, your next, uh, you know, present yourself to the, the, the country for travel and tourism. They’re going to think, oh yeah, they’re the joke.

Chad: So but why do we get away from the Arbor Day thing?

Austin: I don’t know, what was the Arbor Day like?

Chad: We were we’re home of Arbor Day. Yeah. So why did we get away from like that was our that was on all the the signs coming in when I first moved here that was the big thing. So we would.

Austin: Probably have more people because people really care about trees now.

Chad: Yeah, that was my pitch.

Matt: I sent that in to the state secretary of state. Say, here’s my slogan. Trees, trees. It’s it’s simple. It’s simple. It’s one word just like nice, you know?

Austin: And people would be like, man, we gotta check out I love trees.

Matt: But that’s the thing. Like, that’s embracing us. Because, like, when I tell people about coming here, you know, we don’t have mountains, we don’t have oceans. It is beautiful here, though. Like in the summertime, in the fall. I think it’s one of the most beautiful places in the country.

Austin: The whole state to.

Matt: The whole is covered in trees. You have trees everywhere. And Chadron, you know, it’s that Ogallala Aquifer fueling those trees.

Austin: Long Pine Bassett, great territory.

Matt: Yeah.

Austin: Well, I’ve been everywhere. Okay.

Matt: Yeah, well, he wears plaid. Chad.

Chad: No.

Matt: That’s true. Wow. Plaid Chad and even.

Chad: Oh, Lord. Wow.

Matt: We just got a new, new nickname.

Chad: Well, plaid Chad Thibodaux. We’re moving on from that quick.

Matt: Okay. Wow. That’s gonna stick.

Chad: Nebraska has a lot of different, like, landscapes in one state where you don’t get that, like, yeah, where I’m from in Massachusetts, it’s mountains, it’s trees, it’s lakes and rivers and like, but it’s the same landscape. When you come here, you have the plains. Then you have to go further out west. You have gone into this unique mountain forms, you know, shapes. You go to Valentine, Nebraska. That’s a different look. And so it’s a unique thing. So why aren’t we playing on. Mhm. You get all the states in one.

Matt: Or just embrace like Husker football. There’s so many things that are like the identity of the state that we try and like steer away from. Like you don’t have to say obviously you can’t do Husker football because they would trademark and bill the state, you know, millions of dollars for that.

But embracing the color red like it’s a red state. It’s a conservative state for the most part. It’s a Cornhusker state. I mean, like our blood is red. I mean, there’s a lot of red people eat is red state.

Yes, exactly. So, um, so to button up this conversation about branding, coming up with a slogan like, um, what? Like if we had to break this down in like, three simple steps.

Steps, you know, and you can correct me if I’m wrong and toss in your thoughts here, guys, but, like, know who you are, what is your identity and embrace it. You know, even as weird and awkward and scary as that is, embrace it. Know who it is you’re speaking to. You know who is your ideal customer. Build out a persona, know exactly who you’re speaking to so you can actually connect with and resonate deeply with them. What else would you throw in?

Chad: I would throw in there the why? Like why would somebody want to be here? So you have the who I am. Why am I doing this and who am I talking to? Like, I think that’s a key thing because if you don’t have the why, like.

Matt: Yeah, if you don’t have the why, you don’t have the what if you don’t have the what, you don’t have the how. If you don’t have the how, you don’t have the where. If you don’t have the where, you don’t have the why. And that brings us back to today’s.

Austin: Who’s on First.

Matt: Episode. The letter y. All right. Chadwick. Thank you so much for popping on the show. If you need help with your branding, if you need help with your marketing, if you need help with your graphic design, your website builds. Uh, we’re just going to refer you to Chad, because that’s who we go to, because he’s actually the secret behind everything we do now. Uh, but we do partner with him because he’s a phenomenal. Uh klaa. Inc.com. Check out his brand new website. Oh, my God, let’s give a big round of applause to the brand new website.

This guy has been just working on this thing for, uh, years, and, uh, it turned out phenomenal. Check it out. Clarin.com. The link is in the show notes. You’re just one finger away.

Finger that thing and the notes I really need to work on how I’m, uh, I need to do. I need to contract that company out of Denver to come up with a new out, a new out drill.

So. Okay, uh, you can use your finger to push on the thing in the show notes. Takes you to his website. You don’t have to use your finger. You can really use any body part you want. This is really spiraling.

Austin: Unless. It’s unless it’s, uh, got a deep callus. Um, I don’t think.

Matt: Or if it’s a crevice, it probably wouldn’t work. It’d be as effective in protecting my things.

Austin: All right.

Matt: Uh, that is how you sell your services there, Chad. Thanks. Uh, but all joking aside, uh, check it out. Link is in the show notes. Uh, the content box.com.

That link is in the show notes as well. For everyone here, except for Martin, who, you know, once again, he didn’t chime in with a single funny, uh, you know, anecdote, thought question. And yes, he doesn’t have a microphone, but still, that’s no excuse.

Austin: You could have you could have yelled.

Matt: He could use sign language. Yes. So Martin is still in the bullpen, and we’re going to keep him there until he’s been picking on Martin. See, the lack of the the nicotine gum is wearing off. It’s wearing off now. Docex. Yes. I’m in. I think that’s what I said.

I don’t know, my Lasik is starting to wear off. All right. Well, thank you so much for joining us here on this episode of Midwest Mindset. We’ll see you next time.

Full Written Transcript of The Episode

Mike Smith: Storyteller, Community Builder, Guide

Matt: Would you rather have a legacy or more likes? You can get the likes on Instagram and Facebook, but what’s that actually doing to move you and your business forward?

Today we are joined by the guest of the author of the book here, A legacy Versus Like Mike Smith, also written with Andrew Norman, and we are excited to talk about how this translates into your happiness, your success, and the impact you leave.

For your future.

Matt: Welcome back to Midwest Mindset, the podcast that makes marketing simple and easy to do. My name is Matt Tompkins. Here, your host with the most toast from neither coast. There we go. See, I just did an ad lib rhyme in the middle there to kick off the episode. That was beautiful. A+.

Ben: I heard you practicing that.

Matt: But I did throw the with no coast. The new coast was new. All I got through was the host with the most toast.

Ben: Just left out. Rump roast? Yes.

Matt: Who has six toes?

Mike Smith: And Omaha. Omaha doesn’t coast. It doesn’t.

Matt: It doesn’t coast. Yes. And we’re nice.

Ben: Still don’t know what that means.

Matt: Yes, yes. Uh, also joined by, of course, Ben Tompkins, the other brother from the same mother. Yeah.

Ben: We look exactly alike. Yes.

Matt: Neither one of us were adopted. And as I mentioned in the intro there, Mike Smith here with us. Mike, uh, it’s a pleasure to have you here. It’s been a long time coming because I.

So this book here, legacy versus likes. You wrote this with Andrew Norman and who my my wife knew Andrew from the reader and had this connection. And so I’m reading this book and I actually be honest, I stole this book from, like, she was reading it, I walked in, I’m like, hey, this looks kind of cool. I started reading it and I didn’t give it back. And so I kept reading it and it was, you know, related to it on a lot of levels.

Coming from a small town in the middle of Nebraska, like Ben and I grew up in, uh, Hastings, Nebraska. Uh, so similar backgrounds, but it really hit home, uh, because I think this is an issue that is only gotten more, uh, has more more of an impact. It’s more important now than ever before.

But you wrote this, it came out 2017. Uh, and we’re looking here six years later. I think it’s more more prevalent. It’s more important for people to focus on this.

And it doesn’t matter if you focus a lot on helping kids and you help us a lot on on families, parents and kids and and not getting this current generation too sucked into defining their self-worth by how many likes they get, how many views, how many heart emojis.

But it also pertains equally, I think, to what businesses are doing, uh, you know, with their companies, because I think it’s a big misstep to think that that’s all that matters, that that’s the only metric is how many likes, how many views. And it usually doesn’t, you know, may not push the needle at all. So excited to have you here.

I guess that was kind of a long introduction, but, uh, Mike, you’re also the co-founder of a rabble mill and founder of the Bay, residing from Lincoln, Nebraska. Give it up for Mike Smith, everybody. Yes!

Ben: Insert studio applause.

Matt: I hope we don’t have any like Omaha. Lincoln rivalries go down in this episode. No, no.

Mike Smith: No, I love Omaha, love Omaha. We’re, uh, we’re expanding into Omaha, which is exciting. So we’re we, uh, we do a lot of programming at the Bay in Omaha after school programming and stuff, but we’re headed here. So.

Matt: So when you were writing this book, like, Take us back when you started, like, what was the thought? Because legacy versus likes. It’s a cool title. Yeah. Um, I think it’s kind of self-explanatory.

But take us back to where you started with this project you and Andrew worked on with this book. Like, was this just something you were just observing in real time around you on social media?

You’re like, man, I’m. I’m motivated, I moved, I got to speak out. I got to say something, uh, because I think most people probably feel the same way. They just don’t articulate it into words like you guys did so well in this book. Sure.

Mike Smith: So in 2017, I was, um, actually a youth speaker speaking all over the world. So I would host these tour stops and events where schools would bus in, you know, 10 to 100 kids to an event center or a college.

And it would be this, like all day leadership conference where we would talk about how to make an impact back on your campuses. And so I was speaking in front of hundreds of thousands of kids every single day, and social media was, you know, I don’t TikTok wasn’t around.

Snapchat was kind of in its infancy stages when we wrote this. And I think everybody I was seeing a generation of kid get more and more sucked into their phone every year. It would be cellphone was the issue. Social media was the issue.

There was more issues happening online than in real life. Every single year. It was like that was increasing more and more. And when school principals are telling you something, hey, this is happening in our schools all across the country at the same time, you kind of got to listen to it because that’s the finger print of finger on the pulse.

Yeah. That’s it. And so I was like, wow, this is really where people are at. And so, you know, I wanted to be able to leave something that my hope was there’s, you know, there’s challenges in the book. So each chapter ends with, hey, do this. Hey, there’s action steps, there’s action items. And so I wanted to leave school specifically with something they could give youth that called them to action and was a lot to think about, but also kind of made them put a little bit of skin in the game. And so you actually have the first edition of it. So it’s been around for so long that we’re on our third cover of it. And I went through and so I’m old school. Yeah. I’m like, oh yeah, you are OG.

Matt: Fan over here.

Mike Smith: Yeah. And so the the cool part with the third one is I went and did every challenge in the book and made this like virtual book club during the pandemic. And so during the pandemic, I acted out all of the challenges in the book. And then schools would have their kids do the the book club, and then the kids would go do the challenges. And so I wanted it to be something that if you picked it up, there was a call to action to it, and it kind of made you think, not just think about it, but then go do something. And so it’s been cool to see the stories and the the comments or emails I get from parents, teachers, kids all the time.

Matt: This feels like it was kind of a precursor to there’s a great, uh, Netflix documentary, The Social Dilemma, which came out, and I forget the guy’s name, uh, who’s in it, but he was like one of the Facebook, uh, one of the one of the first whistleblowers, if you will. And, uh, he’s he’s been a big advocate for the issues that come along with social media, especially with.

Teens like teen girls cutting and attempted suicide, and suicide rates spike right at the moment that these apps hit mobile phones. And so it’s a real issue. I think parents were.

Ben: More about the like the self facing camera, the selfie, whatever that was like 2010 or 2011 that you saw a huge spike in self-harm. Yeah. Um, and things like depression and anxiety rising and it’s connected to to the selfie to social media.

Matt: Right. And there was never this conversation. We never like parents didn’t have it. We just thought, oh, this is a cool new toy. It’s technology. We can’t criticize technology out of Silicon Valley.

Therefore it’s all good. It’s all good, it’s all good. And then over that, like, you know, in your case here over the probably a 5 to 7 year stretch, rapid increase in all these harmful, destructive things, social media can do some very cool, positive things. But we didn’t have a conversation about the impact of on kids especially.

And then now you look at like generations and even people. I’m 42, even people my age. It’s like we’re defining our our worth by how many likes we get. And, uh, you know, we’ve talked on the podcast for a business how that’s a big mistake because business needs to make sales like conversions. And if you’re only focused on how many likes you get in a video, that’s not going to translate.

You know, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to sell more things, just like in real life with kids who look at this and they say, okay, I got 200 views I got, but the classmate got a thousand views.

That means I’m worthless. And like, the worth isn’t tied up. Like, when do. What conversation do you think parents are having now looking at this? You know, 11, 12 years after the advent of the Facebook and Instagram on the mobile devices?

Mike Smith: I think to be honest, that’s why it got out of control, is now you have more mommy Fluencers dad influencers. Family influencers, like it started through kids. It was like kids trying to get famous on the internet. But then you have a generation of parents now I see moms dancing on TikTok and you see hunters doing.

I mean, it’s like every genre knows I’ve got to do this thing on this thing so I can get views and likes and engagement. So it’s it’s not like it stopped at a younger generation. It kept.

Yeah, it kept going. It kept going. So there’s this conversation around where with parents, it’s like the competitive momming like the Christmas time, like the posting of that showing of that. Like it didn’t it didn’t just stay with youth, which is largely who I wrote this for. Yeah. But six years later, it’s now, especially with TikTok and the way Instagram is, you’ve got more adults marketing to adults through.

That means then you had kids just looking at it, because kids use it as a form of communication. Kids use it as a form of like, okay, you know, I’m in my bubble in my school and my thing, but parents have taken it to a whole nother level. And that didn’t that didn’t start there.

And so this conversation’s actually evolved into the parents as those kids grew into adults. And so that’s interesting. It’s been very interesting for me to see how many mom influencers you see on the internet when ten years ago, that wasn’t it wasn’t as prevalent. Yeah.

Matt: I mean, and it’s such a highly competitive space. We did an episode recently about like LinkedIn versus like Instagram. Linkedin is they have 830 million active monthly users, and it’s 1% of their users are posting weekly content. And then you look at Instagram and Facebook, it’s like 87. They got 1.2 billion users on Instagram. 87% of those users are posting weekly content. And so you look at this mad rush to just stay relevant, not even like to get an effective message across or to be heard, like, actually heard. It’s just to be in the conversation. You got to be posting stuff constantly. And I think that’s where we’re at, where it’s just for business owners. I know it feels overwhelming for kids. I know it feels overwhelming in a different way. Um, but, you know, we look at all these different platforms and options and how fine tuned they are on getting us addicted to them. Like, is there an actual. Like solution to this very real problem, because the conversation, like we’re talking about here is not one most people want to have, I would say.

Ben: I mean, the solution, one solution potentially is time. I mean, all of this is the news. Anytime something brand new is. And as revolutionary as this kind of technology is, you’re going to have cautionary tales.

So you’re going to have 2000. You had iPad kids, parents at the time giving iPads, giving this technology to kids because they didn’t understand the effect that that’s going to have on them.

Um, it’ll be interesting to see the time aspect of the kids who are in school now, seeing their parents consumed by social media, seeing their friends consume by social media, how they raise their kids, knowing the effects, knowing how, how addicting it can be because their parents didn’t know that.

They didn’t know that when they were kids with it. And so I think a matter of time and I think you could see a potential like blowback on that and that it’s not the cool thing to do when mom and grandma and everybody else is doing these TikTok dances. But are we too.

Matt: Addicted at this point? I mean, I’m in this current generation.

Ben: This current generation.

Mike Smith: But yeah, I mean, parents are on Facebook, so kids ditched Facebook and went to Snapchat and then parents are now on Snapchat. So kids went to TikTok. Parents are on TikTok like, yeah, kids are going to find their way to communicate in their internet space, which it’s honestly kind of what gaming is turning into it.

Kids are spending a lot of time doing that because they can connect and communicate and talk and meet someone around the world that way. So you see it.

Kids are always going to find their space. You know, their third space, they say, which is like, you know, they need that and so they’re going to find it. But for adults, like, I think you’re going to use what you’re comfortable with, you know, and like boomers use Facebook, you know, and kind of Instagram sometimes and like X uses what they use and millennials use what they use. And you know, you kind of can look at it generationally and it’s really easy to see who’s using what.

Matt: When you’re talking to kids because you travel all over the globe, talking to kids, talking to working with parents and schools like what today are like because I’m guessing, you know, I mentioned the movie Social Dilemma that came out a few couple, two, two years ago or so.

This is such a rapidly changing and evolving digital landscape, right? Right. And so what are the challenges now that like you’re seeing with kids that are facing with this technology,

I’m guessing what the parents are probably mirrors it in a lot of ways. We talk about businesses here, primaries in a lot of ways compared to some of those early warning signs like, you know, with the first edition came out, you know, like 2017 where we’re seeing this.

Mike Smith: Yeah, I think, you know, the the more you’re connected to the world, the more options you have. And so kids today, I think have this kind of paralysis by there’s so many choices in the world. And so they’re they’re online. And I think you constantly feel this sense of like, I could do this, I could do that.

There’s kids my age that have are famous already. There’s kids my age that are doing x, y, z. And I think some kids feel defeated and deflated by that.

And then I think some kids feel inspired and challenged and want to raise raise to it. But I think what I see is a generation of young people who recognize the path for millennials, and Gen X isn’t the path that they want to take. Like they don’t want to do the four years of college, the I’m going to follow this traditional sort of path. You know, they just don’t. And the reason that they don’t is largely because of social media.

And they’ve seen it on YouTube. They’ve seen it on the internet, like they have access to all these awesome other pathways. And they realize I don’t just have to go to college for four years to get the perfect job, perfect grade, perfect house, perfect life. They don’t think that’s real anymore.

And so what you’re running into is a generation who’s kind of figuring it out very differently for themselves. You know, like they’re taking weirder paths to get where they want to go. And they’re jumping from this to that, where Gen X didn’t. Millennials really didn’t, you know, and like it’s just different now. They’re just approaching it so differently. We didn’t even.

Matt: Have sex ed in school, let alone YouTube when I was like going through puberty. Oh yeah. I mean, I just imagine the difference.

And that could be for good or bad. I don’t know, it could be a double edged sword because I mean, obviously rates of like porn and and how that has influenced sex.

You look at like body image types and Instagram and how that has influenced like just the way most human beings look and physically.

Oh yeah, I mean, it’s it’s substantial and it makes you wonder, like, where is this going? Like where are we going to go? Like, yeah.

Mike Smith: I think you got to watch like an episode of Black Mirror to figure out, I think so, yeah.

Matt: Exactly. There we go. Yeah. Um, so let’s talk about this because you work a lot with, like, content creation and all in the same kind of sphere we do. We were nerding out about storybrand, you know, before we started recording this episode. So let’s talk about some of, like, the practical things, like a business. I say business owner.

That sounds so like cold and disingenuous. It’s a person. Yeah, who has a business. They have a company. And if they have, if they have a real solution to a real problem and they really want to serve their customers. Um, you know, in this competitive, we talk about like having a legacy versus likes in the book.

You talk about you’re looking at like the tweets of like world leaders, people who are actually doing right. And it’s like a fraction of what the Kardashians are tweeting, like the Kardashians are tweeting like, I just got off a plane, you know, and then and then you have, you know, a Barack Obama.

Hey, I just, you know, we just negotiated this, you know, $200 million and aid donated to this country or whatever it might be. So if you want to have a legacy, you want to have an impact, big or small, like what is the direction that you recommend people go?

As far as I’m a small business owner, yeah, I want to actually have results and actually help people, you know, how do you get them away from focusing on the likes or the wrong analytics and focus on what actually matters?

Mike Smith: I think it kind of boils down. Onto a couple things.

The best brands, just like, uh, if you know, even the best humans, you really know yourself. You you know what? You you know what you value. You know what you care about. You know what’s important. You know what matters to you. And I think for a lot of people, they get caught up thinking that getting likes matters.

And so you get into the analytics game and how do I play it and how does this happen? And at the end of the day, if getting more likes really does matter to you, then go play that game.

But I think for most business owners it’s like, I want to make more money, I want to sell more of my stuff. I want to help more people. Yeah, I want to help more people. I were a nonprofit, but we’re we’re selling something. We’re selling impact. You know, we’re constantly selling like.

And what matters to us is changing kids lives. Yeah, that’s what we’re selling. That’s our product, you know? And so we’re constantly talking about that. But I think as I see it, I, you know, I’m not this isn’t just a shout out to liquid death because shout out liquid death, but.

Matt: Shout out liquid death. We’ll give him a shout out.

Mike Smith: Yeah, yeah. But that’s a brand that they’re not every single day beating you over the head with it. They’re this one hilarious video that takes a long time to put together. That was really thoughtful. And boom, they drop something great and it goes nuts. And the reason why is they understand themselves and they’re not trying to beat you at the we put out more. They’re putting out just incredible content.

I think a friend of mine told me this who’s the a guy at Ithaca? Ithaca is a action sports underwear brand. Awesome. Work with him for years. They’re great people. But a friend of mine over there,

Danny Evans, said it’s easier to be relevant for 30 minutes than it is for 30 days. And so sometimes you just have to come up with your thing that’s like loud and big, and then you ride that for a while and you do something else.

But the whole it doesn’t matter which way you go, it matters if it’s true to your brand and know yourself and your audience really identifies with the content you’re posting. And I think for most brands, they’re mimicking someone else, just like most kids are mimicking someone else. And it doesn’t change. And I see it all the time.

You see entrepreneurs that are they want to be where the Uber of this, we’re the something of that. And it’s like, okay, you don’t necessarily fully get yourself you know, and I think that when you can truly say, no, this is who I am, this is what I really give a shit about.

Mike Smith: And we’re just and you run after that sort of a thing. It makes your content so much easier to post. You don’t have to copy other people because it’s flowing out of who you are. And I think why social media is so interesting to me. I get the opportunity. I was just in Paris talking to kids and I humblebrag. Jeez, it was awesome, right? But you’re in the you’re in the fashion capital of the world.

This place that’s like it’s Paris, you know what I’m saying? And it’s where it’s the epicenter. And they look exactly, exactly like the kids at Bay High in Lincoln, Nebraska. I’m talking identical, and I honestly think our kids were a little bit swagger because just the skate part. But, like, truly. And that’s something that’s different.

But because of the internet today, every kid can look like every kid everywhere immediately. And it can happen overnight like you can find it overnight. Didn’t used to live like and Imperial Nebraska and growing up in Hastings, you had to wait for it to get mailed to you in a magazine and hope you found it. By that time, the coasts had already been doing it for months. You know, it.

Matt: Was like, if Sears didn’t have it.

Mike Smith: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And we weren’t there was no Sears where I, you know, we were an hour from a Walmart. You know, we tried.

Matt: We travel with the Conestoga mall in Grand Island. That was like the road trip.

Mike Smith: Totally. Yeah. Grand Island was was like.

Matt: Big city.

Mike Smith: Huge for us, you know, way too far to drive to. So I just think for, for a lot of brands and for anybody that’s listening, you know, if you actually know yourself, know what you value and know what what you’re trying to kind of accomplish it, you know, company Cam’s a good it’s an app for contractors in Lincoln and their marketing is great. It’s hilarious. It’s on brand but they know who they’re talking to.

Their guys. It’s people driving around with ladder racks on their vehicles and logos on the side, like they know exactly who they’re going after. So they make content exactly for them. But they’re not counting the algorithms and the likes. They’re trying to tell a great story about their product that’s solving problems.

And I think people just get get caught up in trying to chase what other brands are doing. And I see youth speakers do it, but I also see kids do it every day. It’s like, oh, this is the famous way to talk on the internet today. We’ll do this.

Matt: And there’s so many, there’s so much of this with entrepreneurs where they want to be, they want they’re in love with the idea of being a successful entrepreneur.

But then when you start talking about, okay, well, here’s how you get there. And it starts here with what are your core values? Yeah. What are your core values?

Define them. And then let’s put them into something you can memorize. You can say you can rattle this off and it feels right. It clicks right. And I thought core values was a cheesy exercise when I started. But it’s not. It becomes the filter and the foundation for everything you do moving forward.

And then like you said, what is the problem you’re actually solving? You know, who is your ideal customer? Create a full, detailed persona. Give them a name, an age you know, are they married?

Do they have kids like all those things? Oh, yeah. But that’s it’s that’s a hard work. Yes. That’s not the sexy part, right? No, the sexy part is like pulling up and a brand new Tesla and you’re like, yeah, take that Todd. Like you know. Right. We all hate Todd around here.

Mike Smith: Nobody likes Todd. The coolest breakdown. The coolest breakdown I’ve ever heard for the persona was, uh, a guy who did marketing for the Timberwolves. And I got to have a conversation, and he said they used The Simpsons, so they had every.

They did all the characters of The Simpsons, and they made it. So it was like, Who’s Homer, dad? What platforms does he pay attention to? This one, this one and this one? What kind of content does he consume? This. What about Marge, Lisa? Bart, Homer?

And it’s like, if you’re if you’re marketing to Maggie, you got to get Marge to drive her there. You know, it was, like, so cool to see how they broke it down. So we really took that same model and built some of our email campaigns and marketing campaigns around The Simpsons. And so it was really a fun way for us to be like, is this a Homer conversation?

So we’re talking to Bart right now, and it was just great for us to break it down. So what you’re saying.

Matt: The Simpsons have done everything they have.

Mike Smith: Yeah. They can. They can be used for the foundation of anything.

Matt: Um, the other thing I wanted to hit on, too, because I think the overwhelming nature of just one individual platform on social media for a kid or a small business owner is it’s too much as it is to try and understand it, the nuances, how it works, each platform. It’s like its own own planet, almost like they don’t mix well like they used to.

Like YouTube wants you only on YouTube, and Facebook doesn’t want you to leave Facebook watch. And so then you layer on top of okay, most business owners, they start with like 6 or 7 different platforms all at once.

And I’ve joked, it’s kind of like the movie. I’ve joked that you shouldn’t be everywhere. Was it everywhere? Everything. Everything everywhere, all at once? Like the movie? Like that’s a recipe for disaster for most people, because it’s just too much and you’re going to end up putting out mediocre at best content on all these things.

Or more likely, you have a bunch of dead channels that just sit there and not active for years.

And so when it comes to like, you know, we always talk about start with one platform that’s the right fit for, you know, is it a platform that you spend time on and that your ideal customer spends time on, like increase the likelihood?

But what what advice or tips do you have for people when they’re trying to like, just manage the sheer quantity of social media platforms and picking which one is right for them.

Like because that that’s a that’s like a probably 30% of how or more of how overwhelming social media is. It’s not just posting content, it’s you’re on all you have to post it seven different places.

Mike Smith: Totally. I would go to who’s your audience? You know. And if you know, you’re selling to a certain demographic, hyper focus on that demographic.

And if if they’re on all of them and you can be on all of them, that’s great. I don’t look at social media. I’ve never looked at social media like that. You know, I’ve always looked at it like it didn’t matter where it was. It’s all just my website. Yeah. Like I didn’t care, like I didn’t. I know you got to engage. I know you got to do all the thing I know. Like, it really matters and everybody really cares about that.

But like, truly when you go, it’s like, how do you look at someone’s Instagram? If that’s where you go, you click and then you scroll and you immediately start to kind of get a feel for it.

Then you pick one of those random boxes that stuck out to you, and you click on that thing, and then you go and then you do it again and it’s like, that’s how you do that. How do you do Twitter? Will you go on there thing and then it’s immediately like, which tweet slot machine.

Yeah, you can do you know what I’m saying. That’s how the user consumes you. So like okay, don’t think that they’re following you like episode one.

Mike Smith: Episode two. This is they’re not. No one does. You don’t consume like that. So don’t assume that they would. So I always just assume this is my website. Somebody’s going to find this someday.

And I want I want them to find the right things about what I care about now, what it’s important now, what problems I’m solving now. And sometimes that means clean up the back end, go back and delete old stuff. But it to me, it’s all your website, so it doesn’t matter. And if you really have to engage people all day long on your Instagram or Twitter or TikTok to sell your product more, then do that.

But I bet most of us don’t. I bet it’s just your website and you’re hoping to drive traffic to some site something so I didn’t really care about the I tell people all the time, I lose more followers a year than most people will ever have in a lifetime. Yeah, I do like I’ll lose 5000 followers a year, but I might gain 15 sometimes. Do you know what I’m saying? And it’s like, I don’t care. Like the who’s my customer is different than who’s my audience when I’m talking, you know what I’m saying?

Matt: And that’s like, we’re big proponents of, you know, organic traffic anywhere because organic traffic, it’s like real estate to your investment portfolio. It’ll just pay off as long as you have it up, you know? And there isn’t a lot, most, most I won’t say most, but I don’t know the exact statistic.

But I would say most businesses don’t even think about that. They just think about, okay, how many people can I pay to click today?

It’s that like hunter versus farmer mindset where, you know, yeah, sure, that’ll get the job done today. But five years from now, where do you want to be? Do you want to be like maybe not working at all and have it just paying off and reaping the rewards? And you know, your website should be your home base driving that organic traffic. But social platforms all work the same. It’s all based off of engagement. Stay. Yes, there are changes and nuances, but if the if the quality of your content isn’t there, if you’re not speaking to the right audience, who’s your customer and you’re not doing it for the right reasons? I think that authenticity factor, you know, it really doesn’t matter if you’re on six platforms or ten platforms or one platform, you’re just going to be a swing and a miss.

Mike Smith: Yeah, it’s go ahead.

Ben: Or how long did it take you then to find your brand, and did that require like a lot of just test, trial and error? You’re throwing up a bunch of different kinds of content early on, because I think that’s a concern a lot of businesses have is they don’t want to throw up all these different identities. But how else do you find out what your brand is without testing things out?

Mike Smith: Totally. I, I wanted to and really tried to push the edge for my industry. So like you think youth speaker to kid like you don’t think me. You know what I mean? Like I’m not what pops up.

Matt: I know you kind of would be, to be honest.

Mike Smith: Like maybe now, today, but like, if you think about who spoke at yours, right, right. Like, who did you have? So I was like, for a long time I was like the, the UN speaker,

like the guy that was very different from the other people who did it. And so for me, it was really easy to just my brand was like always what I was doing, like the nonprofit stuff that I was doing, the impact I was trying to make, like the things that I cared about. That’s what I would talk to kids about.

So I would just talk about giving, you know, giving socks to the homeless was this thing called skate for change. And it was skating around, and I told the story of how that started, and it went all the way back to college, and I tied it into my coach and all these lessons, and I just talked about what I was doing, and it clicked with kids because I’m not. Really special.

Like I always make the joke. I’m like the most average dude of all time. My name is Mike Smith, for God’s sake. Like, it’s the third most common name. It’s in the book. Like, I’m not this exceptional human. I just tried to do these things that were really meaningful to me, and being able to communicate that to kids.

Related. Because you can’t all be the the best in your school that went to Harvard, that was the one that everybody expected to be the best.

I was never that. And so I think for me, my brand was always this idea of you can kind of just like double down on yourself and really go for it. But like, it takes one of the coolest things we ever created was this thing called an adventure log.

Mike Smith: And it was like I challenged kids to come up with a list of 100 things they want to do before they graduate high school. And it’s this like real adventures, real things. Like the things you said you always wanted to do in your small town, but you never did them.

The things that you say, oh, we should do this sometime, but you never did it. Make that list. Go out with your friends and go and do the thing. Yeah, I did the same thing. I put an adventure log in the book and I was like, I want to do this dirt bike adventure, flip an old truck, like all this stuff.

And I went and did all the things from the time I wrote the book till now. But it was a if you don’t challenge yourself to go out and kind of live, you’re not going to go out and live. And so for me, it was really this brand of being about it and doing it. But I’ve had the same logo. I don’t even really have a logo. I’ve had the same kind of website and vibe, but like, I’ve just all the good. Mike Smith domain names were taken.

So Mike Smith live was all I could come up with.

You know what I mean? Like the Michael W Smith took all the good names, you know, and so like they’re all gone. So I just, I kind of, I don’t know that I even really thought about my brand. I thought about I’m going to show people what I’m doing and I want to solve real problems.

And that was all it was. And I think that people maybe were drawn to the the relatability of it.

Matt: Yeah, yeah. And like we went through that process and I so I can attest to this how a lot of people feel where it’s very scary to commit to the process. And by the process, I mean, like figuring out what your identity is and what you actually want to do, like what’s the legacy that you want, right? And even for us, like, you know, initially I thought because everybody has these crucibles,

I believe in their life where these, these, these, uh, events, these things that define you for good or bad moving forward, you know, for me, I thought it was my addiction. And so I’m, like, doubling down on that. Um, and while that was a crucible, it wasn’t really the defined what we’re doing here today and like, what our purpose and mission was. And so as we were going through this process with this podcast,

the Midwest mindset came and the Midwest mindset we define as helping other people without expecting anything in return, which in business in life ends up having the highest return of all. Like if you do it genuinely. And that is like the core theme for our lives, from growing up in small towns, just how we were raised to like all the favors and ways we help people.

Never in a million years thinking, okay, you know, 20 years from now we’re going to own a company and they’re going to want to come to us for their services like it was just doing it for the right reasons.

The phenomenal thing about it is, even though it’s scary to go through that process, once it clicks, it’s like you’re unstoppable. It really is like, I think I feel like for us, not just with the podcast, but for our company, it’s like that defines us. And that’s how we approached everything.

And it feels right. It connects, it clicks, and we have we have our story to tell. Right? And so even though it’s scary, stick through the process. Right? I mean, would you say I agree with that. Oh yeah.

Mike Smith: I mean, I think and I, I think you got to really kind of embrace your failures. It hasn’t always worked, you know, and I tell I know, you know, I tell I tell kids all the time. I’m like, you know, make a failure resume. Talk about was it really a failure? Did you learn something?

Can you take something great from it? But like, if you’re not failing forward, you’re not really doing it. But that’s the process. And so I think I think if you can’t kind of fail and be like, okay, I’m taking 5% and going this way after that, you miss it. But the process for me has been a lot of like fumbling my way forward and figuring it out as I go, but not being scared of of that part.

Matt: Embracing failure because, I mean, like, I don’t I don’t know if it’s attributed to to Will Smith because it was in a meme, or if it’s one of those fake memes where they put his face on it and somebody else quote.

So I don’t know. But it’s like when you go to the gym, you’re literally pushing your muscles to failure. You’re tearing them apart because that’s the only way they can rebuild stronger. And so you do want to be failing forward.

Ben: It’s always bragging about you going to the gym every which is every even just in one on one conversations. He just brings it up every chance.

Matt: Hey, Ben, have you seen the, uh, you know, staplers over here?

Speaker4: I’m just gonna go rebuild my muscles.

Matt: Yeah, uh, but failing is something we are afraid of. You can’t succeed without failing. And those who who are the most successful have failed the most.

Mike Smith: You know well, and you got to swing big sometimes, and it doesn’t always work, you know, so I yeah, I’m, I’m a big fan of just giving things a go. And sometimes you got to run a lot of options to the end too. Yeah. And not everything’s going to work out well.

Matt: Last thing I want to ask you like with, you know, this book into context, what we’ve been talking about here today for for business owners, for kids, for parents.

Because this touches every corner. Um, what is what like what would you tell people to go through? I mean, because I know the book holds up, uh, I mean, I read the first edition, uh, you know, I think it was last year when I first read it and stumbled upon it.

So it’s not that the first edition doesn’t hold up, but, like, what would you tell people when they’re trying to define, like, their essence, their who they are, what they want, all these important big things like is there kind of a simple like one, two, three step process. You can say, listen, start. Here, then go here and then go here.

Mike Smith: I mean, I think, uh, I’m kind of. That’s what I. Are you familiar with the flywheel like that concept? No, the Jim Collins, I believe. Is it the guy that wrote good to great somebody? You have a fact checker somewhere up in this place? Fact check. It’s pretty sure it’s Jim Collins. Yeah. Good to great guy.

But there’s a book called Turning the Flywheel. And it’s really kind of like Amazon has a flywheel and companies have flywheels. And it’s like, if you do this, you can’t help but do this, can’t help but do that. And once it sort of starts turning, you build that momentum.

And so I’m trying to combine this idea of creating a like a flywheel for your life, you know, and like if you do these things in a certain order, it can kind of lead to building momentum to get where you want to go. And for the most part, I think it starts with most of us have a genuine curiosity or wonder or I’ve always kind of wanted to or I really if I could just. And it’s like this thing we wonder about and we’re kind of curious about.

And so I think the first thing is follow that, like chase that a little bit and see where that gets you. And to chase that, you typically probably have to like, try it and like get immersed in it a little bit and like then you have to call somebody who’s doing it and then you have to like kind of ask them real questions about it.

Mike Smith: And I think for me, it’s like most of us are terrified to jump in and immerse ourselves in a new thing. Try it, look like a fool, get ousted by the locals, and then we’re gone.

Do you know what I’m saying? And it’s like, I think for most kids and for most parents and people today, they’re afraid to follow their curiosity and just sort of chase the next sort of thing. It even happens in marketing. You really want to try something outside of the box, but the rules say do this so we don’t.

Or my boss said, do this so we can’t. And so I think for a lot of us, there’s this like sense of wonder out in front of us. And if you can keep sort of chasing that, that is what I think the, the growth edge and the bleeding edge and the cutting edge is, is, is that ability to sort of chase these new curious spaces, if you see it all over the internet and if you see it all over the world, it doesn’t mean you can’t do it, but it just means it’s been done.

And so I think that in some ways you’ve got to sort of chase new things.

Mike Smith: So for kids, what does where does that translate to parents. And you see parents, it’s the ironic part is you see parents doing this all the time on the internet.

And so you can do this without posting it on the internet, but come up with this, this list of things to have your kids try and do that is outside of your comfort zone and their comfort zone and try it. I bet there’s amazing life lessons at the end of it. I’ll bet you there’s core legacy memories that your kids are going to remember forever. It’s not going to be the time that you came home and watched the screen again.

Whichever screen everybody’s watching, whether it’s the big one, the little one and the medium sized one, it’s the shut them all down.

Make a list of some things you can actually go out and do and experience together and like, see what happens. I just read a cool article about the Nebraska couple that like, sold all their possessions and traveled the world with their kids for a bit, and it’s like a guarantee you those parents lives changed forever. But those kids, yeah, there’s core memories in there. Those kids are going to see Nebraska differently forever. And I think that I’m not saying sell everything and go travel, but.

Matt: That’s what I’m doing.

Mike Smith: Yeah, do it if you can do it. But for some of us it’s as much of travel around Omaha. Take your kid all over Nebraska, take weekend trips to shatter and and go see what’s out at toadstool. Like give your give yourself a chance to sort of follow the things that you’re curious about.

And I think that being bold enough to immerse yourself in those things next is where the pay dirt is for most of us. But most people kids will tell me, I want to do this thing, and you’re like, sick.

Have you ever called anybody, talk to anybody, reached out to anybody doing it, and they’re like, no. Have you ever gone to an event where it happens? No. Have you read a book or studied it? No. And you’re like, get in there. Like go give yourself a shot. And so, yeah, don’t live vicariously.

Matt: Just live.

Mike Smith: I would say stop watching people do it and go, go for it. Yeah.

Matt: There’s a I always believe that like we worked in comedy doing the television show Omaha Live. And like every comedian, every I think every person has a great idea. But there is this thing that always gets in the way. And our our old sales director in radio or not sales director general manager in radio, used to have this slogan he put up until HR made him take it down. It was af die actually. Fucking do it and you have to actually fucking do it.

Yep. And you know what that means. You got to be a little bit delusional. You got to be like, ah, there’s no way to succeed. And I’m just I’m going to go ahead and just try it anyhow.

I’m going to jump in there like, yep, I’m probably going to I mean, I’ve humiliated myself and I just humiliated myself this past weekend. I mean, I do it on a regular basis, but the stories you take, the experiences you take, not only do you learn from them, but those become the stories that you tell your friends. And you’re like, hey, remember when I biffed at snowboarding down the mountain? I had to be towed down and a fricking medical sled.

And it was embarrassing. Oh yes. Like, those are the memories we take with us. And those are the things that define us, whether it’s a fun memory or how you’re building your business. I mean, I agree, like taking that risk, committing to it. And don’t be afraid to fail.

Full Written Transcript of The Episode

What Does an Entrepreneur Do?

Matt: What does an entrepreneur do? Most entrepreneurs have no idea. Most likely. In fact, I couldn’t even spell entrepreneur until . Today we’re going to break down what an entrepreneur does and the biggest mistakes that entrepreneurs make so that you don’t have to make them to.

Hello and 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 that every business deserves affordable and effective marketing. You give us 30 minutes, we give you 30 days of content, check it out at the content Box.com and now would like to introduce the other brother.

Who’s that? His name is Benjamin. Michael. That’s. That’s Ben’s real name.

Ben: That’s my middle giving away. Why don’t you just give everyone my Social Security number while you’re at it? Do you have two names?

Matt: 05062193.

Ben: That’s not it. Got one number wrong.

Matt: I know it was my. I gave away meriden’s. He’s he’s screwed now. He does not have an identity.

Austin: Probably not even his real one.

Matt: Probably not. Yeah. He’s like a CIA spy. I’m pretty sure our producer, Myron. But Ben, Michael Tompkins, Mike Tompkins. Mike, can I call you Mike?

Ben: No.

Matt: Okay. Mike. Mike Tompkins and I’ll be Wayne, because that’s my middle name, Wayne Tompkins. Okay. Mike and Wayne. Wayne and Mike.

All right, why don’t you introduce everybody? Because I feel like you’re working on all these these jokes in this, like, stand up comedy.

I feel like Austin Anderson here, he’s a stand up comedian. I really want to see if your material holds up. So, Ben, I’m putting you on the spot. Introduce the rest of us.

Ben: Don’t have any jokes. I’ve never done stand up in my life, but. Okay, well, in run on the board back there, we got the one and only Myron McHugh mired in McHugh.

He looks like the kind of guy who apologizes during sex a lot. Oh he does, he does that. He does it. Then we sitting.

Matt: I think I think he does. He apologizes before too. Like very.

Ben: Preemptively. Sorry.

Austin: This is going to happen to you.

Matt: I’m so sorry.

Ben: Sitting to my right, we’ve got the one and only Austin Anderson.

The new, new addition to the crew. Austin, you look like the kind of guy who has a closet full of overalls. Oh, is that true? Am I anywhere near.

Austin: I have one pair.

Ben: One pair of overalls? Yeah. Okay. Well, I’m gonna be honest.

Matt: Austin Anderson has one of the most unique approaches to style I think I’ve seen in a while.

Because, like, today, he’s got. It’s like a it’s like a Miami Vice meets biker meets Midwestern Idaho cowboy, you know, retiree, like. Yeah, it’s kind of what it is.

Austin: And I bought these jeans at the goodwill when my wife forced me to go there on Sunday.

Matt: Oh, nice. I feel like the shirt like from the waist up. It’s like I’m an Idaho potato farmer who retired early, invested well in bitcoin.

And then the boots are like, I’m a biker. Like, I rode here on my Harley, but then the hair, it’s just like full of Miami Vice action. So well done is what I’m saying.

Ben: Well done, well done. And then to my left we have the owner of two brothers.

Matt: Creative shit. Don’t let people know that.

Ben: The the one who started it all. The kind of guy who looked like the kind of guy.

Speaking of potatoes, you look like the kind of guy who eats a lot of potatoes with nothing else on him. Just whole potatoes like you eat them like an apple.

Matt: Oh, wow.

Ben: Yeah, that’s that’s the kind of guy you look like.

Matt: Yeah. Okay. I mean, I can see how I look like that guy. I do eat a lot of potatoes, though. Mashed potatoes, baked potatoes. I don’t eat them raw. Side note my head. When I shave it, it looks like a lumpy potato. So maybe you’re.

Ben: Turning into a potato?

Matt: I’m probably. Yeah. I remember in high school, they, they, we did like Mohawks. And then we shaved our heads and everybody thought I had, like, some really bad disease for like 3 or 4 weeks, like, oh my gosh, son, you shouldn’t be out at the Walmart. You should be home resting.

So today we’re talking about what does an entrepreneur do. And if you don’t know what an entrepreneur is, well, you’re not alone. I don’t know if this is actually defined for people who get into business. People like to say I’m an entrepreneur, entrepreneurial ship, entrepreneurial ism. It’s it rolls off the tongue.

But what is an entrepreneur and what does an entrepreneur actually do? And we’re going to dive into the top nine mistakes that entrepreneurs most often make, so that hopefully you don’t have to make them too. So I want to hear from you guys, though.

What does an entrepreneur do? When I say entrepreneur? It’s like, hey Bob, you’re Bobby’s an entrepreneur now. What’s Bob the entrepreneur doing?

Ben: Ben I think Bob doesn’t have a job. That’s what I normally. That’s what I used to think before I started working here, when someone’s like, oh, I’m an entrepreneur. It’s like somebody saying, I’m a life coach. It’s not. It’s like, okay, well, you probably you probably don’t have a job.

Matt: You don’t have to get a license, probably certified or.

Ben: Probably made a lot of bad investments. Oh, so.

Austin: You didn’t go to college, right?

Matt: An entrepreneur is really just you have a job that you can’t get fired from. That’s really all it is.

Ben: But now that I’ve, I know and I’ve met many entrepreneurs, the first thing I think of is if you’re a successful entrepreneur, just hard working, driven, um, business minded thinker.

Matt: Business minded thinker. That was my high school band. Yeah, actually, um, it’s interesting though, because all those things you mentioned. The hard worker.

The long hours. We think of those first, but those are not. At all related or connected to what defines a successful entrepreneur.

You know, we’ve mentioned like 51% of all businesses fail in their first 3 to 5 years. Only 6% will ever reach $1 million a year in recurring or gross revenue for a year. Which are some staggering stats.

Austin: I was blown away to hear that everybody works hard.

Matt: Not everybody. I mean, like our cousin Adam, he’s pretty lazy. He’s pretty lazy. He’s doing.

Ben: His thing.

Matt: He’s just chilling. He’s just chilling out in California. But the hard work isn’t enough to do it. So, Austin, for you, what does an entrepreneur. What defines an entrepreneur?

Austin: Someone who is trying to get people to give them money and then crying.

Matt: So like a like a carney, I think is what you’re describing.

Austin: Yeah, I think it’s a I don’t know, there’s there’s the freedom aspect of it, you know, kind of like a free spirit or a free, free bird. Yeah.

Where you’re like, all right, I’m going to do this. Like, you have a vision and, and, you know, maybe you’ve worked at other places and didn’t quite fit and you’re like, no, I’m going to go out. I’m going to do this my own. I see it working a better way.

Ben: I think that was beautiful.

Matt: That was. Yeah, that was like poetry. I kind of lost my train of thought. I think entrepreneurs, this isn’t a mistake on our list, but I would say I would define it as what I most commonly see. Entrepreneurs try to be everything, everywhere, all at once. They try and micromanage.

They’re too emotionally involved in every single decision, and I think that’s a big contributing factor why people work really, really hard and long hours.

But most businesses don’t succeed, you know, most of them fail. And so most entrepreneurs are actually solopreneurs. It’s like a I don’t know what the statistic is like. 80 or 90% of the entrepreneurs in the United States are solopreneurs.

So it’s just them just solo. And, you know, you look at like real estate agents that talk about a self-proclaimed solopreneur, the average salary of a real estate agent, though, is like 17 grand a year and the age is 60. It’s 65% women. So we have these like misconceptions of what is an entrepreneur?

What do they do? And we see entrepreneurs make these mistakes left and right. I think when I looked this up on the Google, I don’t know if you’ve heard of this thing. I think that’s how you say it. Google the Google, it’s either that or it was my my face or face space.

One of those my grandma was telling me about. So here’s the list of like typical responsibilities for an entrepreneur. Planning and directing daily operations. Having new ideas. Yeah, I mean.

Ben: I can do that.

Matt: Yeah, yeah. Ben does that every day.

Austin: Like the second one. The first one is, I think, difficult for a lot of people managing conflicts.

Matt: Learning supervision, sales and marketing or overseeing supervision, sales and marketing. So your your entrepreneur though because there’s different roles you have like your like your visionary integrator depending on if your iOS or what, what operating system you’re looking at, you have I think they call it an orchestrator or a what’s the conductor? Maestro. A maestro. There you go.

Austin: An opus, I.

Matt: Think an entrepreneur, though you have to be first and foremost. You have to be willing to eat crow. Not literally, but like, you have to be humble to be able to recognize your own flaws.

Yeah. I mean, would you agree? Like that is a commonality we see with a lot of entrepreneurs and why a lot of entrepreneurs struggle is because they don’t want to face reality or the truth and think, okay, you know what? I need to hire somebody who’s better at this than me and let them take the lead on this.

Austin: You got to do some intro introspection and do some. Be self-aware, just like what you’re good at.

Matt: And what did you take mushrooms before this? I feel like you’re very chill and wise today. All of a sudden.

Austin: I think it’s just towards the end of the day. Yeah.

Ben: Like like really mellowed out. I think any in any profession, being able to take criticism and feedback and learn and grow and not let it break you down, having a thick skin, you’re going to succeed.

And that’s what entrepreneurs have to do. I mean, you fail probably more than the average person in most jobs, but not being being able to get back up and keep going and build from that is is huge. But that that applies to any profession or anything in life really.

Matt: It’s just on a different scale with when you when you own a business or you’re on your own.

If you’re a solopreneur or you have employees, it is a different scale or different level of just pure terror that you have to compartmentalize on a consistent you know, hour by hour, daily basis. Yeah, you’re.

Austin: Right about that because you really do. Like if you’re like, oh, I got all these expenses I have to pay coming up, but where is the money going to come?

Like, you have to put that in a box somewhere in your mind. Otherwise you will you will not sleep. You’ll just be in a constant state of panic. You got to be like, all right, it’s going to come.

But I’m going to put this in my mind where I can’t think about it.

Matt: It’s kind of like how syphilis killed Al Capone, right? I mean, we all know this story very well, right?

Ben: See this?

Matt: So Al Capone had had this approach to when he was told he has syphilis, right. And it will kill you or it’ll eat away your brain. Right. Slowly. Or maybe it was chlamydia. It was one of those bad syphilis. It was syphilis. Okay. Right.

Austin: That it wasn’t a bullet that would kill him, but his own dick.

Matt: So Al Capone was just in denial. So he’s in prison, and they’re like, hey, we want to give you treatment. We want to give you penicillin for the syphilis you have that’s going to likely kill you. And he’s like, nope, not going to think about it. Not going not going to think about it.

There’s nothing to see here. And he just was like, you know, deaf, blind, ignorant. He intentionally where he’s like, I’m not even going to pretend like what they’re telling me is actually happening.

And I feel like a lot of entrepreneurs have the Al Capone syphilis syndrome because it was a I’m trying to get that hashtag going, by the way, at that.

Austin: Time it was curable. It was curable.

Matt: Yeah. They had penicillin.

Austin: And that’s yeah, that’s good.

Matt: It was an easy fix. An easy it was like a shot and you’re good and. Yeah, but a lot of entrepreneurs have the Al Capone syphilis syndrome hashtag.

Austin: And that’s a great book.

Matt: Title I’m going to start doing. I’ll start doing that afterwards instead of going hashtag before. I’m just going to do it afterwards. You know, like, you know, Al Capone syphilis syndrome hashtag.

But a lot of entrepreneurs have that, that fall. It’s like a fault or a flaw that they have where I’m just going to be in denial. I’m not going to I’m going to be stubborn about it. I’m going to pretend like, okay, I’m looking at my bank account.

There’s one side of that where it’s like, okay, well, I don’t know how I’m going to get an extra ten grand to make payroll this month in ten days, and I’m just going to ignore it entirely.

Or you could be like, okay, I got to compartmentalize this. I can’t ignore it. You know, let’s follow up with some invoices and make sure people are paid up and see what’s going on with our our cash flow.

And so that Al Capone syphilis syndrome hashtag is it’s a real business killer, though both mean metaphorically and literally. Like if you have syphilis and you’re refusing to treat it, not going to be good. If you’re an entrepreneur.

Austin: Either your business will fail. Yes, along with your.

Matt: Life and your along with your sex life. Probably not going to do very well either. So we’re talking about some of the mistakes. So an entrepreneur though I feel like is the leader of the organization.

They are the face of the core. The the core values stem from them. And you look at any company, it doesn’t matter how big or small it is, even if you’re a solo preneur, entrepreneurs at the top are what set the tone for the entire company. And I’m a big believer in this.

Like you can’t really get mad. As somebody who’s on your team for making a mistake. Because they’re just following what you’re doing.

So if you come in as an entrepreneur and you’re like, hung over every day and you just are, you’re phoning it in or you’re not going through the proper processes, procedures and just having systems in place. Well, your employees, your staff, your team, they’re going to follow what you’re doing.

So it’s a reflection of the leadership. So I think the most important thing that an entrepreneur does is effectively build a team and lead the team, right. Getting those players, those top talent people that you want on your team and and then leading them.

And leadership is not easy like most people who think they’re like a good leader. It’s this ready, aim, fire approach, which is not how you should shoot a gun because it’s very dangerous.

Ben: Yeah, you’ll get in trouble.

Matt: Yeah, you’ll.

Ben: Do something bad.

Matt: Ben does that outside on the highway all the time with his cap gun. Shoot at birds. Yeah, it is that.

Austin: That’s why you go on those walks around the building. Yes. Pow!

Matt: He gets he gets 12 caps per day that he gets to go fire off.

Ben: I like the smell. Yeah. Sulfur.

Austin: He goes into your office. Can I get another cap?

Matt: Ben? That was your 17th cap today, buddy. All right, so let’s let’s take a look at some of the other the top nine mistakes that entrepreneurs make. Failure to plan.

What was a team where he’s like, I love it when a plan comes together. Right. Um, there’s a quote. I’ll probably butcher it. It’s one of my favorite. But a goal without a plan is just a wish.

And I feel like that hopium drug we talk about, like, hope and just hoping it’ll fix it, or wishing it’s not going to do anything might make you feel a little better in the moment, but you really have to have a plan and doesn’t mean you have to have, like, everything laid out from day one or a business plan from day one. But if you’re not having some sort of strategy organization, that’s a big one.

Austin: I had a sales manager in radio and she was great, and her line and it always stuck with me, and I don’t know if she got it from somewhere else, but it was, you know, make the plan, work the plan that’s, you know, right. That’s simple to follow.

Matt: I mean, a plan is like it’s a checklist, it’s a system. It’s just it doesn’t have to be super complicated. It’s just okay. When you go to the grocery store, you go with a grocery list, right?

Ben: Shopping list. Not me.

Matt: And let’s just go. He just wings.

Austin: It, then he just goes there and buys meatloaf supplies.

Matt: You probably go there when you’re really hungry too, don’t you? It’s the worst.

Austin: That’s why the other. Yeah. The other day I was like. I was up till midnight making meatloaf.

Ben: Yeah, yeah. Meatloaf and mashed potatoes at midnight.

Matt: And I was trying to figure it out because your wife shared how much you spend monthly on groceries, and I am struggling to do the math.

But if you’re going there when you’re hungry and without a list, that makes sense. That makes total sense. Yeah. She shared a lot about your personal life.

And and we’re going to get to that in future episodes. Um, another mistake is all talk, no action. So this is the false bravado, right?

Austin: So many people are guilty of that.

Matt: Entrepreneurs are notorious for their egos. I mean, we all have an ego, right? But entrepreneurs, by and large, it is. It’s a confidence game. So you have to kind of fake it till you make it to a degree, but you have to be able to back it up at least somewhat at some point. Right? Right. Yeah.

Austin: There are so many people that fake it but then never back it up. Yeah. And then you just realize that, oh, you’re an insane person. Yeah.

Matt: That’s a sociopath is what that is. Yeah.

Austin: There’s a lot.

Matt: Um, not asking for help is another mistake. How do you feel about leaders who ask for help? Do you respect them more? Do you respect them less?

Austin: I respect more, right? Yeah. I respect everyone more if they’re willing to ask for help and.

Matt: Not even just asking for help, but sharing that you’re struggling with something or that you need a break or you need, you know, whatever it might be.

Austin: And not having the Superman syndrome. Yes. Where you just think that you can handle everything.

Ben: It’s much better than the Syphillis syndrome.

Matt: Yes, hashtag and I have the Superman syndrome. It’s just where I walk around in red Spanx. It’s not really a Superman outfit. It’s just kind of my thing. It’s my. It’s my Tuesdays, right?

Austin: We’d be bothered by it. You look good in it, so. Well, thank you very much.

Matt: Thanks. I mean, I spend like, four hours manscaping just to be able to pull off those red Spanx.

Austin: And I was shocked to find it was painted.

Matt: Yeah, the tube socks I painted with spray paint to look red. So, um. Impatience. This is a big one. Like shiny object syndrome is a notorious virus within the entrepreneurial community. And not having the patience to give things the time that they need that are due.

That is a big mistake. And it’s really hard because you get very passionate and excited about things and you want to go, go, go. And I’m horrible at this, but you end up saying yes, yes, yes to too many things or too quickly.

And then, you know, one day Ben’s going to just have a total meltdown and. Really just kind of snap at you in a way.

Ben: All those caps.

Matt: You know, he just started shooting his cap gun at me in the office and was saying curse words I don’t even know. I’ve never heard before. I don’t know where they came. I don’t know if they know they’re English or what, but.

Ben: You know, I’m mad. I start making up curse words.

Matt: What’s a good curse word that you made up?

Ben: Blubba Blubba.

Matt: Yeah, mine is Dave Nabity. That’s a good one. Like Dave Nabity like, that’s that’s a person.

Ben: Matt. The name of a person. That’s a.

Austin: Good.

Matt: Yeah, it’s a good curse word, though. I feel like if I was Dave Nabity, I would totally take that and own that. Right?

Austin: Take Dave Navidi’s name in vain all the time.

Matt: If you’re wondering, you, Dave Navidi is by the way, that’s a local, almost politician. He was on the city council in Omaha, Nebraska, where we’re based out of but think maybe I don’t know. I mean, you know, I know he drives a convertible and he loves that thing.

Austin: What kind is it, a.

Matt: Vw bug or something like one of those, like, kind of, you know, not a normal one, but like, it’s still it’s a convertible. Yeah. You know. No. Another mistake hiring friends. So guess.

Ben: Uh. Oh, we.

Matt: Need to make some cuts.

Ben: You hired your.

Matt: Brother? No.

Austin: You got hired.

Matt: Family and friends. Yeah. Family? Two friends and three strangers from Mexico. That sounds like a sitcom. Sitcom there. Yeah. Um, hiring friends is tough, though, too. And there’s this exercise you can do with your leadership team where you you have everybody write down, put a name and assign a role.

And sometimes they’ll be like six, seven people in this meeting. And there’s only three names that have been written down on all the sheets. You got four people sitting there with no designated responsibilities. And that happens a lot when you are just hiring friends.

And it’s really hard to have blunt conversations because it’s a business. It’s not personal. It’s not a family. Right? I mean, you family is grandma. You know, you can’t fire grandma for, you know, ruining the mashed potatoes and.

Austin: Push her down the.

Matt: Stairs. You can. Yes. And been tried. Fortunately, she had one of those electric chairs that caught her and took her all the way down nice and slow. So it worked out. She’s she’s she was notorious. It was notorious.

Austin: No, I don’t even know what your grandma looks like, but my visual was awesome.

Matt: Our grandma Nola is like, if there was a picture of a grandma in the dictionary, it would be her. Like, it was just, you know, I mean, next to, like, homemade milkshakes, mashed potatoes, fried chicken and the best hugs ever. That’s. Oh, yeah, that’s notorious

Nola right there. But hiring friends is tough. And you really only want to do that or work with family if you know for sure, you can manage it and it can work. And Ben and I have worked together for like 15. I know years like Ben just can’t get enough.

Austin: I think where that goes wrong is if people like a friend needs a job, but they’re not really, they don’t have any experience for whatever you’re going to hire them for or training or passion. And you’re just like, oh yeah, you need a job. Yeah, come do this. That’s where I’ve seen it go bad.

Matt: And I think because I thought about this when, when you came on board because, you know, we’ve known each other for quite a while and doing the TV show and everything. And so it was like, okay, well, I know he’s capable. We have like, we’re friends so we know each other.

So on the flip side, like there’s trust. So, you know, you can trust a friend, right? Most well most friends, some friends, some are just jerks.

But. I had to look at it and say, okay, but can I separate like in the workday? Like, can we separate it where it’s like, okay, so then there’s that separation of, I don’t know, not powers, but like separation of like roles or responsibilities where it’s still work. We still got to like have quality standards and critique each other constructively.

But having a friend that you can trust or a brother you can sometimes trust, who occasionally steals your left sock when you’re taking a nap. I’ve stolen it is a it is a plus. It’s just you got to kind of know it’s such a weird gray area. Yeah. You know, um, it’s kind of like dating your your fourth cousin. It’s like, why did it take four cousins to figure out that? Yeah, you shouldn’t be. I think it comes with.

Austin: I think it comes with age and maturity. Yeah. Don’t you like, like the older for sure that.

Matt: Don’t hire your best friend when you’re in your 20s. Yeah.

Austin: No. Then then you guys will probably both just party all the time and the business will go away.

Matt: I mean, yeah, especially if you were in a fraternity. Yeah. Just coming out of college. Yeah, that would be a recipe for disaster. For getting the customer is a big mistake.

And I think this is like maybe one of the biggest on the whole list, because that’s what the entire business should be focused on.

And we forget about the customer. When I say we, I just mean entrepreneurs in general. A lot like way too much. We don’t focus on the customer, we focus on ourselves or the business.

And so forgetting the customer is a big mistake. Um. This one is fearing theft. Fearing theft. I don’t even understand what that means. Maybe read my handwriting. Wrong.

Austin: I scribbled that on after I did.

Matt: You write.

Austin: Ben steal a bunch of that.

Matt: Feral theft? Did you write feral theft again on here? We’re not talking about that last couple here. Um, so perfectionism is another one. And this is one.

I kind of hate this word because people always say this in interviews. Like, what’s your what’s your what’s your downside or what’s your weakness? Well, I’m a perfectionist.

Austin: They say that it’s a weakness. Yeah, I struggle with it. But, um, I don’t know. It’s weird you want it to be the best, but like, then you can it can just waste your time. And it’s kind of hard to.

Matt: There’s like a I forget who said it, but it’s like, fuck it, ship it or something like that. Or like maybe, maybe it was Jewel. I think it was the company jewel. So maybe it’s not that great, but I think they actually.

Austin: Like.

Matt: That. It’s like, fuck it, ship it. If it’s at like 70%, get it out into the world. That is a that is a mistake. We see a lot especially with like websites and graphic design. And you can go.

Austin: Down forever because it can never be perfect. You can always find like a mistake here or there. So that’s nobody wants things.a thing.

Matt: Nobody wants perfect, right? Like imperfection is actually what people seek and authenticity.

The last mistake here is leading sales. So like leading sales, knowing how to actually lead your sales team. Because without sales, your business isn’t going to grow, it’s not going to succeed.

And it doesn’t matter how great all these other mistakes are that you avoided, if you’re not bringing revenue in, you’re not going to be in business for very long. And I think sales is such an important and old school tactic, like cold calling people is still the top way to like, drum up new business and sales.

But not a lot of people want to do it or learn how to do it. Right. So so there you have it. Those are the mistakes, Ben.

Ben: We’ll just avoid. We’ll just avoid those.

Matt: Yeah, we’ll just avoid those.

Austin: Like how those. And they really are the the hardest ones to become disciplined in.

Matt: Yeah. Discipline is really that’s if you want to pick an extra one, a bonus. Yeah. Discipline is the biggest challenge in business because it is so hard to be consistent.

And with the boring shit that’s like, no fun. Like, this isn’t sexy to do my TPS reports, you know, like, come on, I don’t want to do panels all day long. And it is important. So having discipline. Speaking of discipline, that is our episode as we got a I don’t know is it was that a good got away. We got to.

Ben: Wrap it up.

Matt: We got to wrap it up. We’re going to stay disciplined and not go over our 27 minute mark here today on the show. So thank you so much for joining us here on Midwest Mindset. You can learn more about us at the content Box.com. Where if you give us 30 minutes, we give you 30 days of content. Plus Ben gives you.

Full Written Transcript of The Episode

The Biggest Social Media Opportunity That You Aren’t Leveraging

Matt: What is the biggest social media social media opportunity that you aren’t leveraging? What is the biggest social media opportunity that you aren’t leveraging? I’ll give you a hint. It rhymes with Schmidt. Schmidt. Mm hm. I bet it’s Twitter. Oh.

Here we go.

Matt: Hello and 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. You give us 30 minutes, we give you 30 days of content.

Check us out at the content Box.com. We have the the usual gang, the crew. Are we a gang? Are we? What are we? Squad.

Yeah, I don’t know. I feel like politics kind of hijacked that one and it lost its coolness, you know? Oh, yeah.

Austin: Squad the Swifty. Yeah, but you’re right. Then they did the politics. I feel like.

Matt: Taylor Swift is probably murdered somebody and gotten away with it.

I just feel like that has happened. Am I alone there, or is that, like, now that.

Austin: You say that she doesn’t have that song vigilante? Yes. That might be about her murder.

Matt: Yeah. And yeah, I think so, because she could I mean, she’s got the resources.

Yeah. I mean, they’re not going to spoil that, you know, that golden egg from laying chickens or whatever just comes.

Austin: Into some, like, secluded black site. Yeah. Slits a throat.

Matt: All right, Taylor, go ahead. We call this room Fifth Avenue and nobody’s going to stop you. So today we’re talking about the biggest social media opportunity that you aren’t leveraging.

And I want to start out by well, let’s lead up to this one we’re going to talk about today. It’s one in particular. So I want to put you guys on the spot.

And I would like you to sum up each social media platform in the form of a celebrity. All right. So let’s start with Pinterest. Pinterest, Pinterest. Yeah I.

Ben: Don’t know. Pinterest is Martha Stewart.

Matt: Goldie Hawn, I thought Goldie Hawn.

Ben: Goldie Hawn.

Matt: Yeah or yeah.

Austin: Was Christopher Walker. What’s crazy is I was actually going to say Martha Stewart. Okay.

Matt: All right. Yeah.

Austin: So I mean chipping Joanna Gaines. Yeah, I could see count as one.

Matt: Celebrity or two.

Austin: Rachael Ray they’re one flesh.

Matt: Rachael Ray I had the biggest crush on her when she did that $40 a day. Remember that show? It was like her first show. Yeah, man, that was a woman right there. $40. Is she a.

Austin: Big woman now?

Matt: She’s.

Austin: She’s a little.

Matt: But on a few. But is she a big woman now? Yeah, she’s all grown up, Austin. She’s all.

Austin: Grown up. No.

Matt: Not a little girl anymore. Hey. She’s beautiful. Yeah. Appearance. Does it matter? Oh, haven’t you heard the news?

Austin: The fatter you get, the better you cook. Mean the be a great culture.

Matt: Wars are over and peace is here on planet Earth. We’re all sexy mofos. Okay, next up, Twitter. Twitter.

Ben: Um, to I’m going to say Elon Musk because he’s ruined it.

Matt: Yeah, I feel like I feel like Elon Musk has body odor issues that could easily be addressed, but nobody in the room is willing to confront him about it.

Austin: I’m going to go, yeah, I’m going to say Charlie Sheen because it’s a train wreck.

Matt: Okay. Yeah. What’s Charlie Sheen doing now? Remember he went on his, like, whole cocaine tour? Yeah. He’s like cocaine.

Austin: And he’s like tiger. Blood Tiger ended up being Aids.

Matt: Which is good. I mean, that’s the thing though, people were making fun of him. Cocaine and tiger blood are a delicious combination.

Austin: I loved his spiral.

Matt: Thursday night potluck. Oh man, it was great. But yeah, Elon Musk he Twitter seems like of all the platforms it would be the one with. How does he have.

Austin: So much money when all he does is blow up rockets and destroy.

Ben: Change names to X.

Austin: Platforms?

Matt: You know, I think it’s just a lot of Adderall and no sleep. And he’s got like nine. Baby mamas. Is that the correct term? I think yeah, he’s like nine different women or something like that.

Austin: Spreading a seed.

Matt: So anyhow, next social media platform is a celebrity. Facebook.

Ben: Oh, Facebook. I’m gonna say Tom Hanks. Colin Hanks. I don’t know.

Matt: Why his kid Colin Hanks like just yeah.

Austin: I am going to say the. Who is the old woman that was like the cook that got in trouble for being racist?

Ben: Oh. Paula Dunn.

Austin: Yeah. What’s her.

Ben: Name? Paula. Paula pound.

Austin: Paula deen.

Matt: Paula deen. There we go.

Austin: Paula deen and I only say that because it’s like kind of just older people now are on Facebook. There’s just a lot of.

Matt: It was it was a sensitive time, like to have an old tape recording of you dropping the N-word at that time, I wonder what would happen today like is it does it carry?

I feel like we go through these phases where, like things like that, you can be canceled quicker. It just depends on like the climate. Right. You got to read the room.

Austin: I think it depends on the news cycle. Yeah, like slow news cycle. Let’s destroy Paula Deen.

Matt: If you like, not Tony Danza. What’s the what’s the other guy who had the blackface on? He was in cheers. What was the guy’s name? Ted danson. Ted danson? Yeah. So, like, he didn’t get canceled?

Ben: Yeah. No, he did blackface.

Matt: Yeah. Him in, like, Oprah or not. Oprah. Somebody who was actually African American for Halloween. And they dressed and he dressed up as Michael Jackson. It was like, yeah, it was like blackface. And Justin Trudeau.

Austin: Oh, yeah, he’s always an Indian. That guy’s in blackface last year.

Matt: And they’re like, nobody said anything.

Austin: And he’s done like Andy. He’s done all the indigenous people. They’re like.

Matt: Selective outrage. It’s just yeah, I mean, so I mean, maybe he just has a great appreciation. Maybe he’s just an idiot. I don’t know, dude.

Austin: He went to remember he went to India and dressed in their Hindu attire and acted like he was.

Matt: I just love how people, when they reflect back on like being caught on tape or on email saying horrible things, they’re like, oh, this isn’t me. And I’m like, I don’t know anybody who just drops the inward, freely and casual work emails or in conversation. So I don’t know if I buy that.

Austin: Don’t know one. But I say that if it’s, you know, 20 years or something in the past like that, I mean,

we got to give people the opportunity to change, you know, because we all change and evolve and realize that we’ve made horrible mistakes.

Matt: I was a horrible person and that was like two weeks ago. I mean, so yeah. Then you.

Austin: Quit sugar and.

Matt: Then quit sugar, and I’ve lost £50 in 20 days and I’m really not healthy. I’m actually I’m slowly dying inside. Reddit. Reddit, I think, would count as a social media platform. Reddit, I feel like, is like the Adderall cocaine fueled platform.

Austin: Dude, right? The famous person comes to mind for Reddit, Charles Manson.

Matt: Charles Manson there’s so.

Austin: Many things on Reddit that scare.

Matt: Me. I was going to say Johnny Depp, Johnny Depp.

Austin: All right. Yeah, we’ll go with that.

Matt: Almost there, but not quite what? Yeah, just.

Austin: Like like piratey. Like rotten teeth.

Ben: All right. Yeah, I’m gonna say Pete Davidson.

Matt: Instagram. Who’s Instagram.

Ben: Kim Kardashian.

Austin: Yeah.

Matt: Yeah. Guess that. Yeah. That’s just.

Austin: Vain, you know.

Matt: Tiktok.

Ben: Ooh!

Matt: Selena Gomez say, Olivia Rodriguez. I’ll say yeah, or Cardi B. Yeah.

Austin: I would say like a Taylor Swift or like someone.

Matt: Some ten year old kid who makes, like a 30 foot Nerf basketball shot and makes tens of millions of dollars more than we do. Yeah. That guy. Yeah.

Austin: We should rob that kid.

Matt: Yeah. And YouTube. Last one is YouTube.

Ben: Uh, Mr. Beast.

Matt: Mr. beast.

Ben: Yeah, he’s, like, the most popular YouTube star. Well, I.

Matt: Don’t mean, like, if it was a celebrity representing the channel.

Austin: I’m gonna go Walter Cronkite just because I feel like it’s, you know, the. You can do news, educational stuff, learning. You know, it’s a dumpster fire, but it’s also it’s it’s very I think it’s the most beneficial out of all the platforms. I’m going to take.

Matt: A turn and return back to cocaine and say, Wolf of Wall Street.

But today. So not 1980s today. Yeah, right. You know, like says maybe thinks they’re reformed, but we know they’re still doing Quaaludes and cocaine and enjoying themselves with those penny stocks. So the biggest social media.

Austin: Is true because I saw an ad earlier with this video that was trying to use and an ad came on and it was a guy like an old guy, and he was like, self-defence, you need it.

The first thing, you throw dirt in their face, in their eyes, and then you kick them in the balls. I’m like, this is what is happening here. It was very entertaining.

Matt: The kick to the groin is a good move. I’m always just hesitant, like I’m going to be focusing too much on their groin in advance of the move, and I don’t know if I’m going to like, forecast my intentions or if they’re just going to maybe get aroused. And the opposite could happen. We don’t end up fighting.

We end up making love, making love. So the biggest social media opportunity that you aren’t leveraging today we’re talking about is Linked In. Have you guys heard about LinkedIn? Have you been on this? Yeah. This thing, it’s the business.

Austin: I don’t know what to do on it, to be honest. I don’t know what to do.

Matt: It is a little confusing and overwhelming because it is not at all set up like any of the other social media platforms we know, right? Like you like the video content on there. It’s not. It’s not.

They haven’t kept up with the fact that we’re on phones that are vertical, you know, now upright. Yeah. You have to do these connections. You can pay for other services in different ways. You can get around that. But it’s expensive.

My God, you can spend a couple hundred bucks a month for like their sales. I forget the name of it, their sales thing. So you can have like unlimited connections.

Austin: And I have a secret fear, if I might share of clicking on people’s accounts, because if they have that service, they can see who’s viewed their page. And then I’m like,

I don’t want anyone to know, even though it’s not a big deal. I just think it’s weird. You can do that.

Matt: On either Instagram or TikTok to TikTok, because I had somebody so somebody that like locally here in, in Omaha in our market that I had replaced on the radio. And then I found out like for like six months, they were just stalking my I could see that they were visiting. They would show me who’d been visiting. I’m like, I don’t.

Austin: Know if we want that information.

Matt: I don’t want it.

Austin: Do you want that?

Matt: I almost texted him and I was like, hey, I see you’re snooping around my, my, my channel. I’m going to help you. So out of the 830 million users, though, on LinkedIn, that’s how many users. So it’s not that’s actually that surprises me. It’s not a small audience. Only 3 million of them share content.

So this is where like some of the opportunities we’re going to get through these tips here today. If you are a business to business or as they say, if you want to sound cool, B2B, B2B, B2B, B2B sounds like a 1998 three person boy band that Ben started.

Ben: With a bunch of. There was 150 year old men’s.

Matt: Yeah, and he was like you and like two retired old guys.

Ben: Only Ben’s allowed in my band.

Matt: Oh yeah. B2b Ben to Ben I get it now. Yeah, it makes sense. It’s not business to business. Now you have like, when people learn these acronyms, it’s always cute.

They like to just recite them fast and throw them in your face like, oh, B2C, B2B. Oh yeah. Gyn, you know, and it’s like, what? I don’t know, that last one is appropriate.

Austin: The real words.

Matt: Business to business just means you are a business. Who is your clients are other businesses now they’re also customers, which is business, B2C business to customer base or consumer base. So it’s kind of a LinkedIn is kind of a combination.

But if it’s business to business, if you’re serving other businesses, that’s your ideal customer base, your target market. It really is a social media platform that you want to be active on. And when you look at just how. Little how low the amount of actual content is shared on LinkedIn. Only 3 million users sharing content regularly out of 830 million. That is what we call in this business. An opportunity, Ben. An opportunity.

Austin: So I’m not alone. I think that people just don’t know how to use it. Maybe. So why do you think it’s so low?

Matt: Compare it to Instagram for example 1.2 billion users. So not mean you’re talking 4 million or 400 million more users. But it’s not a huge leap. But out of those 1.2 billion, 1.21 billion users, 87% are creating and posting content regularly. So there is a lot more competition.

You know, we look at this in like the area of like search engine optimization with keywords and you’re trying to find out, okay, what’s the highest search volume. All but also balanced with the amount of competition. Because if it’s a high search volume term with a lot of competition, you’re not going to be able to compete.

There’s just too many people competing. And that’s like Instagram here. It’s a it’s like a keyword for SEO.

That’s just there’s too many people posting content on Instagram and also for B2B on Instagram. I think it’s like a 1% engagement rate, like it’s really low. It’s just oversaturated with too much content.

So if we’re going to pick any platform, if you’re B2B, LinkedIn, which should be your primary because you’re going to get a lot more bang for your buck. Ooh, I just made that up. I wrote that before the show. Nice. Thank you.

Austin: I feel like that’s going to go in the lexicon.

Matt: I feel like it is I mean like Guinness Book of World words and names, records. What’s it. Yeah, exactly.

Austin: Important things.

Matt: That whole thing there. That was the name of my autobiography. Someday. Linkedin has a ton of users. It has far fewer engagement though, per user.

So like you have less engagement, but more of an opportunity with the content. If you’re posting video content especially, and we’ll get into some of the like content tips, you want to definitely be investing.

Austin: Your time in. Yeah, that would be good because I have a thought about that. I feel like everything that I’ve ever read on LinkedIn, I don’t feel that people post authentically.

I feel like they’re writing from a perspective of they’re trying to get a move up in a company or get a different position, or just like really using all the buzzwords and how they’re awesome.

Matt: Yeah. And you, there’s different platforms function and it moves in like cycles and phases, like TikTok right now is more like kind of behind the scene lifestyle, like, you know, more like documentary, guerrilla style filming bins in a gorilla costume, running around.

Gets lots of views. Yeah. You know, and he’s, you know, all kinds of weird things happen on TikTok. But you’re right, like, you want to have authentic content, but just posting content, let’s say forget about what type of content or how good it is.

You know, you’re going from 87% of users on Instagram, posting and creating regular content to 1% of LinkedIn users. 1%. That’s the cap. That’s the cap. So it is a huge opportunity. And then you have most of the other social media platforms. They all follow suit with Instagram. There is a high volume of content constantly being pushed out.

The engagement might be higher, but it’s so oversaturated it’s really hard to find your audience to reach your ideal customer. So here’s the one thing.

The next tip if that you won’t accomplish on, say, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook. Most of the social networks. When you create content on LinkedIn, you can actually get all of your followers to see your content. So this is something a lot of people may know or may not know.

But like Facebook is a great example, Facebook pages came out, businesses invested tons of resources, time and building these followings up. Right. And then Facebook just changed the rules. They said, now, today in 2023, you will reach about 15% of your own.

Austin: Following that is insane to me.

Matt: Unless you pay Facebook to reach them. That’s and it’s their business model, right?

Yeah. I mean, don’t blame them or fault them. Facebook groups are super popular right now, just like Facebook pages were. However, Facebook could change those rules at any time too.

And so we want to look at the the platforms where people are actually going to your followers or your connections or however you want to define it.

Right? Your friends, your fans, are they actually going to see the content you’re posting? And then if they see it, is there so much competition that’s just going to get drowned out in like the white noise of, you know, say, Instagram as an example?

Austin: I really do miss the days of Instagram where whoever you followed that was your feed.

Ben: Right? Right now you see a lot of people.

Austin: Suggested you go down and you’re like, I want to see these are the people I want to see. And now with Facebook and everything else, you’re getting like, don’t. What is this?

Matt: That’s why Mr. Rogers Instagram is all that. Ben shows up in Ben’s feed. Because he. That was the first mistake he made on that channel.

Ben: I followed Mr. Rogers.

Matt: And it’s inappropriate. It’s not the Mr. Rogers from PBS. It’s like something happened. Like if everything went wrong in Mr. Rogers life, that would be the representation on that channel.

So if you if you look at the the how the algorithms function. So they are going to put content in front of people, they’re just flooding people with content, trying to figure out, okay, is this working? Does this are people engaging with it. It’s all about engagement.

And so if your content doesn’t click right away, you’re talking like in the first few seconds or minutes, the algorithm is just going to kill it.

So with LinkedIn it doesn’t function the same way. So at LinkedIn you you they can be as they have the luxury of just being picky and selective with all the content that they place in front of different and new people.

So not only do you have an opportunity to have less competition, and not a lot of people are posting content you can reach actually reach your own audience that you’re connected with, but you can also have the platform itself place you in front of other people simply because you’re one of the few 1% of the users who’s actually posting consistent content.

Now, when we look at some of the other advantages for LinkedIn, um, one big question is like, how do you create good content? Or how do you how does content perform well on LinkedIn? Yeah, that’s.

Austin: A great question.

Ben: And I bet you I want to know I.

Matt: Would like to know the answer.

Ben: I bet you have the answer I do.

Austin: I’m like because I’ve like I’ve always thought that like, what do you put on if this is mainly professionals, businesses, like what kind of content should you be on?

Do you just put the content of the stuff like your work, what you do? Is that what you present? Do you give people advice like what do you do?

Matt: Well, here’s where it gets fun. And Ben, you’re going to like this one. I think. Austin you will too. The three of us. Little secret. We all love stories, right? And that is really the foundation.

That’s step one. So the first way that you can really gain traction with content on LinkedIn is to tell stories. It’s as simple as that. So write stories. Whether you’re giving tips or sharing an experience, put it in the form of a story.

So it’s a video. It’s a on LinkedIn, one of the cool features that they have.

And I think if you sign up, you have to pay for that like sales thing. It’s like 200 bucks a month, but you can send out a blast like a newsletter they call it. I think they call it a newsletter, actually, and they send it out, and every single person that you’re connected with is forced to see it.

They will see that along with all the other content, because then LinkedIn follows it up with, here’s other content from this, this person, this individual. And so you’re going to get people to see the content if you’re packaging it in the form of a story. I mean, I would recommend the story is the oldest form of just the human experience, right, that we know. So it works. You know, unless you’re doing like a

Star Wars prequel series and you could maybe drop the ball on a good story.

Ben: Don’t bring up the prequels.

Matt: Mean.

Ben: Prequels were awesome, but.

Austin: Is that is is is LinkedIn the sort of platform where when you’re telling these stories, does it have to? Be about work. Like about your career, about, you know, just you.

Matt: Want to have intent, right? You want to have an intention with everything that you do. I would also encourage you to repurpose. And we’ll get to that, like some of the things you can do there with content on LinkedIn specifically. But I think you want to be focused but don’t like lock yourself in to where, okay, this is about my business or my company. I’m never going to talk about anything personal.

I’m never going to be authentic or I’m going to be flawless. I’m going to read off a teleprompter and I’m never going to curse.

And, you know, it’s just you want to be real. I think you want to be authentic. If you just follow the basic principle of putting it in the form of a story instead of this, like polished Ted talk or even Ted, think about the good Ted talks.

Those are just good storytellers up on stage. Right? Um, the second tip is I want you to upload videos to LinkedIn. So videos you specifically you need to go do this. Go upload ten videos before dinner tonight or you can’t have any brownie sundae surprise. Oh dang it.

Matt: Only Ben knows what the surprise. Ben knows the surprise. It’s not a very good surprise. It’s a Lego. So go on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok.

Every social media platform is a video platform now, and that’s just a fact, right? And video is the top performer of any type of content across the board, but it gets kind of forgotten on LinkedIn. And not a lot of people are posting video content.

And again, this is an opportunity because if nobody else is posting and you start posting consistent, you know, daily three times a week videos on LinkedIn, you are going to stand out.

The platform is going to favor you, put you in front of new people because you’re one of the select few that’s posting video content.

We have found this out though, that you should probably go with widescreen. So like 1080p, 1920 by 1080 versus horizontal like you would see on other like reels and TikTok and YouTube shorts.

The reason being, especially if you’re a woman, because it frames up a vertical format video so that all you can see is your your breast section on a woman.

Austin: What is going on with their video?

Matt: And I think LinkedIn did this intentionally. I’m pretty sure this is done intentionally, but it’s not a very flattering look when you have like, does it have.

Austin: The black sidebars to.

Matt: It? It’s like 50 videos and then just a picture of your, your chest in a, in a blouse and.

Austin: A bunch of guys smoking cigars going higher.

Matt: That one in the LinkedIn boardroom. Yeah, right, boys, we did it. Yeah. We finally figured out a way. Yeah, we got this.

Austin: The boob settings on.

Matt: The videos done.

Austin: Good.

Matt: But a lot of LinkedIn users, unlike the other social platforms, are desktop users. So you do have that opportunity to and demographically a little bit older too.

So you have people who are more accustomed to that widescreen like 1080p format, but post video content. And then you can also do what’s called posting like a carousel.

So this is like a collection of different photos that you can have. Linkedin. The basic premise here today is like LinkedIn has a lot of options that we don’t know exist.

And so a lot of people or most people don’t even think to take advantage of them. And then it’s even smaller number of people who actually take advantage of 1 or 2, let alone all of these different things. Um, I would suggest repurposing your content on LinkedIn within LinkedIn.

So make content specifically for LinkedIn only, right? It’s a specific campaign for just LinkedIn. Make a video, turn that video into a blog and then a newsletter blast like we were talking about and then posts.

And then just create all this different types of content that you can share on LinkedIn, but keep it all centralized to LinkedIn, where you literally say, hey, LinkedIn, how’s it going? Hey, LinkedIn friends, I mean, don’t have friends on LinkedIn.

Austin: So I guess I guess one misconception I’ve always had about LinkedIn is it was just a platform to find a job.

Matt: Yeah, to find a job.

Austin: But is that not true? Like is it.

Matt: It’s a networking platform.

Austin: Yeah. So like you were saying like business to business. So to sell. So it is more than just like I’m here to be hired. So, so I think that that’s probably the biggest misconception I’ve had.

Matt: Linkedin is like Facebook like 14 years ago, you know, I mean, Facebook and Twitter and Instagram, they originally were network based algorithms.

So they were based on the premise that you made connections with people, friends. Right. And then those people saw your content and they moved away from that. Now they’re all based on engagement and all the algorithms are based just on engagement, thanks to TikTok coming on the scene and China just ruining every Saturday afternoon for the last five years for me, because I have just not been able to focus. I get in those dance videos and man, it’s have you seen Martha Stewart’s dance videos? They’re amazing. Ah.

Austin: Dude. Fantastic. Stewart is hot.

Matt: Yeah, yeah. No, this is this age. This is Martha Stewart. She’s a adult film star. Different?

Austin: Yeah.

Matt: Martha. Martha Stewart, fourth tip here is to promote your own site. So create. Offers blog content. I mean LinkedIn with your company page. I highly encourage you to use your personal profile, which I’ll get into in a second, but promote your stuff, create offers, create specials. You know, make it unique. Really make it like an experience and you want to talk about things you’re selling. Because that’s one thing I think LinkedIn functions more like kind of like a website than like a social platform, like we know the others to be today. So you can get away with promoting your company page or promoting your, your, your site and your blog and your articles and all these things that are housed within LinkedIn. Um, that’s the next tip is use your personal LinkedIn profile, your business profile more than your company page. So this has been taught at like every LinkedIn seminar that I didn’t attend. But I have friends who went and.

Ben: That saw their content.

Matt: On I saw their content about it and I’m stealing it.

Austin: So they said, use your business page, not your personal.

Matt: So this is true on Facebook. It’s true on I would say like Instagram, but you have like a company page. People often see that as promotion. Right? It’s a commercial. You’re trying to get me to buy something.

Your individual profile is seen as you, it’s seen as a person. And so you’re going to have a much wider reach. It’s going to be more impactful. You’re going to connect with people across just in general, across social media. Linkedin is the same way, though much more effective for your individual profile on LinkedIn.

Facebook is cool because you can do like a professional version of your personal profile so you can get stats, you can do ads and things like that, but that’s something you want to do on LinkedIn. And the last thing is try LinkedIn ads. So LinkedIn advertisements are one that. Their interface is very. How do I put this? Shitty. It is not easy to figure out. It is like Facebook. It’s like super easy.

However, you know, we have like our friends at Refined Marketing that help with. We partner with them for this because they know this world. And if you do know what you’re doing and you are B2B, LinkedIn is that’s your jam, that’s your strawberry jam. And Facebook. Yeah, it’s easy to pinpoint and target, but most people don’t get results.

They don’t know how to actually do it. It’s easy to use. It’s not that effective for a lot of people, business owners. Linkedin is very effective if you know how to use it. So study up a little bit and you don’t have to have a huge budget.

You can have 500 bucks and it can go a long way on LinkedIn. So Ben would like you to take all of these tips that we’ve covered here today. Okay. And I would like you to go to the chalkboard in the other room and write them all down 100 times in cursive. And then. Go implement them for your business, which we’re announcing here today. Ben has a brand new business. It’s a new company. And Austin, you want to guess what it is?

Ben: What do you think it is, Austin?

Austin: I mean, I would say the human cat tray.

Ben: No, I’m done with that.

Matt: Yeah. That business failed.

Ben: It was one of that business.

Matt: 1%.

Ben: I sold that business.

Matt: Yeah. How much did you sell it for?

Ben: $20. It was a.

Austin: Guy in an alley.

Matt: A pack of Garbage Pail Kids trading cards. Yeah. All right, so tell everybody about your new business.

Ben: You tell it, Matt. You say it, you do it. Okay.

Matt: No. All right. Okay, so Ben has a new business. It is called rubber cats.

Now, it’s not actual rubber cats. There’s nothing to do with cats. Ben just wanted to put the word cats in there.

But it is where you wear rubber underwear that you can just rinse off in a moment’s notice so you know you have an accident or something happens, a little sweaty or a little stinky. You just hop into the bathroom while you know people are coming in and out. You’re at the sink. You rinse out your rubber underwear.

They don’t feel like rubber, though. People are coming in, you know, they don’t feel like rubber. They feel very soft. It’s kind of like a it’s like a silky. Pleather.

Ben: Just kind of. It’s really just a line of rubber clothing that you can just sleep in and shower in.

Austin: I imagine a lot of sweat.

Matt: There’s a lot of sweat. Yes. And that’s why you have to rinse them out constantly. I mean, like, probably ten, 15 times a day or you will be leaking through your pants.

Austin: It’s really kind of washing.

Matt: Yeah. And the smell is not pleasant, especially when that rubber gets a few days old because you can’t put them in a washing machine.

Austin: It just smells like old used tires behind a firestone that homeless people piss in. Yeah. Burning.

Ben: Exactly.

Matt: Yes, exactly. Or. Yeah. Burnt human hair is another. Good. That’s a good scent that comes from that often. Ben still workshopping like, remember.

Austin: When you were trying to make that candle? Yeah.

Matt: Oh, yeah. Yeah. The burnt hair.

Ben: I don’t know how to.

Austin: Make coming around the office asking for all our hair.

Ben: Yeah, I still have it.

Matt: All right. And we’re going to end the episode on the topic of burnt hair from LinkedIn to burnt hair. This has been Midwest mindset for Austin Anderson, Ben Thompkins, our producer Meredith McCue.

I’m Matt Thompkins. We’re all with two brothers creative. And we appreciate you. We love you. Nah. Well, that’s being a little bold. I’m not going to lie. I’m not going to sugarcoat it with you. We’re not there yet, but we’re getting close. All right.

Austin: You have the potential of love.

Matt: You have the potential of love.

Ben: I love you.

Matt: I have a new closing catchphrase I’d like to try.

Austin: Okay.

Matt: You are redundantly unique. What do you think? It’s pretty good. It doesn’t make any sense. Yeah.

Austin: I’m gonna go look up redundantly right when we get done with this. Yeah.

Matt: Do it like ten times.

Austin: Remember, write it on my chalkboard.

Matt: Check us out at the content Box.com. You give us 30 minutes, we give you 30 days of content. And thanks for joining us. We’ll see you on the next episode.

Full Written Transcript of The Episode

The 3 Stages of a Relationship

Speaker1: Curiosity, enlightenment and commitment. We all want those prospects to commit to us in the end. And just like any relationship where you get committed, you have to go through the three stages of any relationship curiosity, enlightenment, commitment.

We’re going to cover those today on this episode of Midwest Mindset and why this shit matters.

Hello and welcome back to Midwest.

Speaker1: Mindset, the podcast that makes marketing easy to understand and simple to do. I’m Matt Tompkins, your host of Two Brothers Creative, where we are making your marketing easy with the Easy Box. That’s why we named it the Easy Box. It’s almost as easy as me, ladies and gentlemen.

Yes, the easy box is where you give us 30 minutes. We give you 30 days of content. The link to get started for free now is in the show notes. All right, without further ado, we got to introduce the two brothers. The crew. Oh, yeah. Yes! Oh, yes. Couple dudes.

Speaker2: Couple of guys, couple of dudes. Couple of dudes in here on the couch hanging out.

Speaker1: I’m just a man standing in front of a girl holding a sign that I’m in love with or whatever. Yeah. What’s. Did you do that? No, I’ve never done that. We have Myron McHugh.

He looks like the kind of guy who is a Civil War reenactor. Yes, and he will constantly argue it was all about states rights. I think that’s the type of he.

Speaker2: Says it was about states rights more than people probably should. And he won’t let it go.

Speaker1: He really clings to it. He’s that he’s that kind of guy. We’re not saying Myron is that guy. He just looks.

Speaker2: Like that guy.

Speaker1: He looks like that kind of guy.

Speaker3: He does look like the guy in every single, like, old Western documentary. Yeah, I watched one on wild Bill Hillcock. I swear he showed up a couple times. He’s in the.

Speaker1: Background. Yeah. Next up, the voice you’re just hearing there, or seeing Austin Anderson, who looks like the kind of guy who, you know, you remind me of if the guy from Miami Vice, if he never went to Hollywood and never got into acting and just lived a normal, healthy, balanced life, that would be you.

Speaker2: That’s a compliment. Yeah.

Speaker1: It is. It’s a compliment. And Ben Tompkins, the other brother you would be. You remind me of Tubbs a lot. I always think you and Tubbs. Yeah. From Miami, from Miami Vice.

Speaker2: Tubbs.

Speaker1: Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Speaker2: I’m not going to lie. I have not seen that show. Oh, I know of it. Okay. And they never seen an episode. Yeah. Colin Farrell, is that Zac Efron? Is that what you’re saying?

Speaker1: Yes. You look like the kind of guy who brings up Zac Efron randomly in conversations at an alarming rate. Which is true.

Speaker2: I am that guy.

Speaker1: You are that guy.

Speaker2: You are that man.

Speaker1: All right. In today’s episode of Midwest Mindset, we are talking about the three stages of any relationship and I mean any. So this is like your personal relationships with your friends, your intimate relationships with your lovers, your family relationships, your work relationships, and yes, most importantly, what’s feeding the family? Well, you’re buying food. You buy food by making money from your business.

Yes, business relationships and sales, closing those sales. And it is important. I’d say it’s crucial to know how these three stages of any relationship work, because in the end, we’re trying to take people from, I don’t know who you are. I just discovered you to let’s hop into bed together, let’s go to Vegas.

Let’s get married in the business sense. You know, where they’re, you know, a paying client of yours. So we’re going to walk you through these three steps today. All right. So and I would like you guys today because both of you are married still I think. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker2: Yes. As far as I know.

Speaker1: And Austin, you’ve been married the longest I think. Yeah. Out of all of us.

Speaker3: Yeah. 17 years.

Speaker2: That’s a, that’s a bit. That’s a while. How are you doing, buddy. Yeah.

Speaker1: Is what that is.

Speaker3: That is a stint.

Speaker1: Yes.

Speaker2: And you seem to be okay. You have good flesh tone. Yeah.

Speaker3: Yeah, it’s it’s remarkable. We lived in a camper together for 617 days.

Speaker2: And if you can survive that, I would imagine. Yeah, yeah, you’re in it for the long haul.

Speaker1: The farts alone. Oh, and a self-enclosed place. A space like that would be.

Speaker3: Let’s just say you always know when someone’s going to the bathroom.

Speaker2: Yes, I feel like that’s a lot of what marriage is, is just.

Speaker1: Bad smells.

Speaker2: Hearing one another. Pee.

Speaker1: Yeah, yeah. We have very thin walls in our bathrooms are on top of each other. And yeah.

Speaker3: Bathrooms should be in like a separate wing of the house. There’s almost like a little corridor to it.

Speaker1: I am the kind of guy though. I like to sit when I pee. I find it’s more relaxing. I think it’s a little bit better on your your body, you know, and there’s not any, you know, mess that comes with normally when dudes are standing and just, you know, letting I like to.

Speaker3: Pull my pants all the way down while I stand at the urinal. Yeah.

Speaker2: Saw that the other day. Austin I walked into the bathroom here at work and it was not. It was about I wasn’t pleasantly surprised. I was surprised.

Speaker3: Trying to break that habit since I was eight.

Speaker1: Sometimes I just squat in my shower. That’s what I’ll do. So. So I would say my tinkling is probably not as noisy as the normal guy, but these are the things you have to learn to live with when you’re in a long term relationship. You know when you’re in a committed relationship before you each get committed.

And so the first step of any relationship, and I want you guys to tell maybe a little bit about your how you piqued the curiosity of your mate, because that’s what it’s all about. It’s getting their attention.

Right. So first impression, that first impression that grabs your prospect, your new ideal customer, you’re trying to bring on board as a client. It grabs your attention, establishes your brand quality, even maybe your identity.

And I think some key ways today, with all the content that we are in a content creation universe, it is just a Mecca nirvana for creating content. It is a very easy and affordable way for you to be seen as an expert, as a credible industry leader, a leader in your field.

And then you could follow that up with 6 to 8 more of those impressions, like, let’s just it’s a marathon with putting content out every day.

But it’s all about making that impression, right? It’s about grabbing their attention in a way for a reason. You want the attention to be grabbed. So not for some scandal like Ben has had many.

Speaker2: Yeah. So I’ve met all my other girlfriends.

Speaker1: Ben had a sex tape once, you know, that came out, and.

Speaker3: I’ve seen it.

Speaker1: He was the only one in the sex tape. It was the first ever solo sex tape.

Speaker2: And I released it myself.

Speaker1: Yeah, Ben leaked it himself. So how was it that you guys piqued the curiosity of your wives? Because Ben’s married now, too, man.

Speaker3: Well, we met in in high school, so I was a sophomore.

She was a freshman drama class, and, I mean, so we were young. So I liked corn nuts, and I would eat corn nuts and then just blow the smell up into her seat so that she could smell the corn nuts and turn around. And then. What is corn? Nuts are gross.

Speaker1: Your relationship has always been built on just bad smells. Yeah.

Speaker3: So yeah, but I mean that that got the, you know, that started the conversation I suppose. So that’s probably not what you want to do.

Speaker2: Right. Corn nuts.

Speaker3: So you’re trying to close a sale.

Speaker1: If you’re trying to get a new client 15. If you’re trying to land that new customer, eat some corn nuts and blow it in their face. Find them.

Speaker2: Loves that. Find the metaphorical, find the metaphorical corn nut in your life. Yes, and blow that in your client’s face. Yeah.

Speaker1: There you go. That’s a tagline right there. Yeah, I think we should use that for our marketing company. So. So you piqued her curiosity. And, Ben, did you have to do anything? Because I know you had, like, an interesting story with how you. She found you for some weird painting.

Speaker2: Well, I was, yeah, we met later. Kind of the opposite, where we were in our mid 30s and we met online on him and.

Speaker1: Was saving himself.

Speaker2: And we she found I liked her a photo of, of hers. And then she looked at my profile and I had a video of me painting what ended up being an absolutely horrible self portrait and that made her laugh. I gave it to her as a as a gift. So she still has it, but it’s fantastic.

But with with that I would say, piquing her curiosity with humor. She really attached to that. And that’s what started the conversation. And I would.

Speaker1: Say too, because Ben went through this, I haven’t been through this myself because Austin, you and I, we got, we got we got into the

The Old Wives Club a little bit before the social media took over our lives. Yeah. So we did not experience the online dating. I remember when was the last. It was like one of the first platforms they had and it was called Hotornot.com. That was like one of the first dating websites.

And all it was though, was just you put a photo of yourself up and you got rated between 1 and 10 other people rated you.

Speaker2: Oh yeah. And that judgmental. But that was all that it was.

Speaker1: Yeah. And so it was just you were really rolling the dice. Oh man.

Speaker3: On that. That’s like playing Russian roulette with your emotional stability.

Speaker1: I walked away with a seven. I’m like, I’m like, that’s like a ten. Am I like, yes, thank you.

Speaker2: Just be above a five.

Speaker1: But since then it has evolved.

And I think this runs parallel with what businesses go through with social media. So Ben, you experienced it all the good, bad and the ugly with dating or trying to date on on dating apps like Tinder, Bumble I think Grindr’s another one.

Speaker2: Yeah. You know, I dabbled on all of them and all of them.

Speaker1: Duolingo. I think it was another dating app that Ben was on. It was where you learned Spanish while you date. Right? And, you know, it’s.

Speaker2: My my perspective of online dating similar to with businesses. You know, when you’re in your early 20s, you’re going to experience things differently mid 20s, late 20s, early 30s and just how you’re going into it when you have what if you know what you’re looking for and that your type of character and personality, certain characters and personalities do better with online dating than others. Same with businesses and social media. Same kind of thing. I overall there are tremendous cons and problems with online dating, but overall I think it is has evolved into a pretty effective way.

Speaker3: I’ve met somebody, I’ve met a lot of couples that that’s how they met. And I mean, they’re surprisingly they’re perfect for each other.

Speaker1: Yeah. I mean, there’s like, you know, farmers only Christian Mingle, like there like there’s some, like ones for people in their golden years, which is, you know, the golden Ashley Madison. Yeah. About to die. Madison is another good one. Yes.

Oh, yeah. Preferred 401 I think is another reputable platform for, you know, both finding a potential wife, future husband or just hiring a, you know, a sex worker. I mean, there’s just a lot of options out there.

My point, though, is that it runs parallel with because we had to relearn, reprogram ourselves on how to pique the curiosity out of the gate. Businesses are having to do this now, and it’s a major pain point because there are so many different platforms. They’re always changing and evolving and so you have Facebook Reels and Instagram Reels, you have TikTok, you have YouTube shorts, you have how many times should I post?

Oh, I got stories. Now they’re saying I should post every single day. How long should these videos be? What type of content should this be?

And so just to simply grab someone’s pique, someone’s curiosity, grab their attention. It’s similar to like dating like.

And that’s why you see a lot of people go into extremes. Or it’s just shirtless dude with a six pack or, you know, in Austin’s case, shirtless dude. Yes, six pack, maybe somewhere in there. But, you know.

Speaker3: Buried my son. Once I was got done working out, he was like, dad, where’s your muscles? And I’m like, I hide them under a layer of fat in order to trick my enemies. You’re like.

Speaker1: A bear, bears. I think you’re the same thing. So?

So you have to pique their curiosity, and you have to do it in a way that is going to reflect you in your business accurately, so that it doesn’t do damage because you don’t want to do things that are that push the line edgy, scandalous in a way that isn’t genuine to you. You know, if it’s forced. If it seems fake, because that’s going to have the opposite effect and that can have a first impression, can last forever, good or bad. The other important thing with curiosity.

Don’t sell them anything at this stage in the relationship. You do not sell them anything. You don’t make an ask. You only give them something of true value.

Speaker3: It’s almost like finding and waiting for the right opportunity to kiss them. Like if we’re going to relay that comes in.

Speaker1: In light enlightenment probably. Yeah.

Like the curiosity. It’s like, you know what? You don’t get to pressure, babe. I’m not going to ask you out here. I just said babe. Like, if I ever say that in real life.

So, like, with the curiosity, it’s kind of a no pressure zone, right? I mean, nobody likes the guy. Trust me. I know, because I was that guy who is just, like, quasi like stalker vibe where it’s like, oh, you want to go out, you want to go out, you want to hang out, you want to go out. I mean, nobody likes that kind of relentless pursuit, you know?

And they make it seem romantic in the movies. But when you show up in a girl’s front yard with a boom box above your head in the rain, in the rain, they just call the police.

It works differently. It’s a different universe for John Cusack than me. So, curiosity, you piqued their interest. Number two enlightenment. So this is where you show that there is something more to you, to your business.

So you can’t bore people into buying you. So you have to have engaging content in multiple, multiple forms. We encourage you.

We’ve talked about this before in the podcast to market like a farmer. And so you have like a hunter mindset, which is like, I’m going to go get sales, go get my dinner so I can eat tonight. Farmer mindset is I’m going to plant a seed. I’m going to slowly nurture it till it grows.

Then I can harvest this crop and then get the seeds from that, and it’ll all have a full belly for the rest of my life, because it’ll just keep feeding and fueling itself. And so you want to have this long term approach where again, you aren’t selling them on anything, but you are showing them, right, that you.

You have something more. There’s a deeper level. So, like, you know, Austin isn’t just a hot dad bod. You know, he’s also a really funny guy. He’s talented. He’s got some brains and some smarts in there, too. Are you two.

Speaker2: Dating?

Speaker1: Yeah.

Speaker3: This is where the ask is.

Speaker2: He’s gonna try to kiss you. Austin.

Speaker1: We both been in long term relationships. It’s tough. How long.

Speaker3: Have you been.

Speaker1: Married? Married for 12 years together, though. Is because that’s what I count. How long have you been together? That’s going on? 16. 16 years, 16.5 years. Something like that. We just did 20 years.

Speaker3: We just hit 23 in September. Yeah.

Speaker1: I probably got both of those numbers wildly inaccurate. And we’ll hear about it later when Wendy’s listening to this episode of the podcast.

Speaker3: Well, you got to say real quick, how did you pique her curiosity?

Speaker1: Well, so I was on the radio. So she I mean, she became a fan girl pretty much right out of the gate. I mean, come on, let’s be honest. Voice like this back there, I had big, poofy, horrible hair too, you know, it was a little chubbier, so I had everything going right for me. I mean, talking about.

Speaker2: Corn nut breath.

Speaker1: Oh, yeah. I was on a m news talk radio as a producer. So, you know, a lot of blue haired old ladies coming around after hours. And, you know, I mean, I did. I had one woman. She was very, very large woman. I mean, we were talking like she could be on have her own show on TLC. Sent me a nude photo of her and her husband telling me, this is like my first six months of working there, that they like to make love to each other with my photo up on their computer monitor.

Speaker3: Oh man.

Speaker1: Yeah, the world is weird world. You think they’re a bunch of squares? But no, they know how to party. They know how to party. But. So she heard me on the radio, so I had that going for me.

And then we played in a band too. We were playing in a band, so we had like the whole, I think I want to be a rock star, even though it was probably wildly embarrassing compared to how it played out in my head at the time, it was a lot cooler in my head than maybe how it looked, but so. So I had that going for me.

So you want to pique their curiosity and then the enlightenment part. So like with the enlightenment part, you know, Wendy and I would we would spend quality time together. You learn, you find out that, okay, this business, it isn’t just this one thing or. Yeah, that was kind of a funny way to grab my attention, Geico.

But it turns out Geico does all these things that are in line with my core values. You know, they’re military based and they support the military. Whatever your your company or you’re a lizard, they have a lizard, a talking gecko.

Speaker2: That’s my core value. Talking animals.

Speaker1: Specifically lizards. Yeah. Yeah. I want that lizards tail to fall off.

Speaker2: Oh, it’ll grow back.

Speaker1: Yeah. So you want to enlighten them.

Speaker3: Filed insurance claim on it for Ben.

Speaker1: You know he’s a musician. Very talented singer songwriter, very talented writer. He’s a teacher. He’s, you know, he’s, you know, he’s teaching. He’ll be back teaching someday here.

Speaker2: And you talk about core values. And when we being in our early 30s, we both knew what we wanted in a relationship. And so we were able that was probably one of the biggest adhesives that stuck us together and kept us interested in one another, because we knew long term that we’re not going to waste our time, which you don’t always have that in your 20s and other relationships. That’s a great.

Speaker1: Point for businesses, though, because I feel like businesses often don’t know who their ideal customer even is, like who they even want to be in a relationship with, or.

Speaker3: Even who they are.

Speaker1: Or who they are. They don’t know who they are. Like, if you can’t love yourself, you can’t love anybody else. Austin.

Speaker2: That’s what the point of this podcast episode is really about prevention. Another intervention. Love yourself each episode.

Speaker1: But you’re right. I mean, and I think that’s why businesses, they try businesses try to date everybody. They want every customer and they say, who’s your target audience? Everyone. I want everyone to come into my store.

Speaker3: They’re bisexual.

Speaker1: If you say if you say your audience is everyone, it really means no one. That means you don’t have anyone. You don’t know who your ideal customer is, you know, and you can have you can have, you know, you know, polyamorous relationship all day long. We’re not going to judge. We’ll support you. However, you need to know that that’s what you want, right? That’s the key.

Speaker2: Is it polyamorous or is it polygamous?

Speaker1: Well, no. Polyamorous is where you are dating in a relationship with multiple people. Okay. So like a throuple would be polyamorous a lot of times. Polyamorous are often in open relationships. They can date other people outside the relationship. Polygamy is where it’s like one. It’s that’s illegal. That’s where it’s like one guy who has like ten wives. History has shown us oftentimes they are underage, to say the least. And that’s where it gets kind of creepy and weird, right?

Speaker2: We don’t support polygamy.

Speaker3: Yeah. And plus the guy, I mean, how could he deal with that many women in the house, I hope. And because they’re going to fight each other for his attention.

Speaker2: Well, you said that.

Speaker1: Yes, that was Austin Anderson who said that. Ladies, Austin Anderson. Yes. I’d like to see a show on TLC where it’s like it’s the opposite. It’s like reverse polygamy, where it’s like a woman with like ten dude husbands. Is that does that exist? No, I’m saying I wish it did.

Speaker3: Only in the Bee Kingdom.

Speaker2: Yeah. The bees, they’ve got to figure it out.

Speaker1: Queens. Yeah. That’s true. Queen bees. That’s true. So we have curiosity. Grabbed their attention, piqued their. Just enlightenment. Show them there is something more to you and your business. Show. Show them what you are all about. You know you showing off the body to grab the attention.

Now you got to show them your mind.

Show them that you’re something more. You know, I like to use the analogy of like you see a, you know, like me, for example, running down the beach, you know, got my my Speedo, obviously, you know, you see me, I grab your curiosity right out of the gate because.

Speaker3: Because it’s an American flag.

Speaker1: It is an American flag, Speedo and.

Speaker2: On the front. But like some other country in the back. So you’re kind of confused.

Speaker1: And it’s got an American flag flag flying behind me. So as I run, it’s it’s like it’s really having an effect on tail. Yes. I mean, the muscles, the six pack, the just the fake tan, it’s all there in your face. And I have got your attention. I have piqued your curiosity. So then I walk up to you and you’re like, oh my God, now what’s going to happen here?

And then I start speaking in three different languages. First, you think I’m a little crazy because I am, but I also speak three languages and I have a PhD. I’m super smart. I’m a single dad and I volunteer for. I don’t know what’s like a good.

Speaker2: Um.

Speaker1: Uh, the Make-A-Wish.

Speaker2: All right. Sure.

Speaker1: Yeah. So you find out all these.

Speaker3: Things you deliver kids to their make a wishes, it’s like.

Speaker1: Wow, this guy is he deliver wishes, sexy douchebag. He. There’s actually some substance to this.

Speaker3: And he just didn’t know what language I spoke. That’s why he did three, right?

Speaker1: That’s why he did three back to back. I do that sometimes, though. Again, at the end of the enlightenment phase. Don’t sell anything, only deliver more value. So that’s all you want to do up until the final stage, which is commitment. So curiosity, enlightenment, commitment.

Speaker3: Of value like when you say deliver more value what like if you were talking to a business, just what’s an example of what you.

Speaker1: So for example you see this oftentimes online like you I want to download this free template or this worksheet or this workbook or this journal that I can print off and use again and again and again. Right. In order to get it, I have to give my email address. So people tend to equate the value of their email address to 10 to $20. So they will give you their email address for something that’s worth 10 to $20. So if they see something of true value. So let’s say you let’s say you do a podcast episode like this one here today. And we have what we call a lead generator.

So at the end of this episode, I’ll say, hey, if you want to download the, you know, seven key steps to Writing the best SEO blog article for your business.

The link is in the show notes. You can download it. It’s free, it’s free. It’s something of value. People will say, okay, well, to get it, they give me their give us their email address.

So now we can begin to nurture this relationship. Right. But even after they’ve given the email address and this is where that mistake can happen after enlightenment. So they’ve learned something.

We’ve given them an episode of something of true value. We gave them this cool daily planner or PDF or a checklist or something that they could really use. It’s also free, no strings attached. All we’ve asked for so far is just an email address. Pretty, pretty low request, right?

But it’s easy to make the mistake of jumping into commitment too fast, too soon. And then we say, buy this thing or make this decision, or schedule this meeting instead of just continuing to deliver something of true value. The best way to sell something is to not sell something. I have found like it requires patience, grace, and some virtue. You got to like kind of sum it up to be able to just not not jump the gun. I think you hit.

Speaker3: The key word there is patience. In so many aspects of life, but in that as well, just selling. Because I know you know from my past experience selling stuff. Yeah, when you’re not patient and you just want that sale right away, you normally don’t get that sale.

Speaker1: No you don’t. And it’s a it’s a vibe. It’s an energy that you put out. It almost is this like air of desperation to it. And so this applies to like when we were dating too. I mean, I remember we’d go out and when you walk up to somebody at a bar and you’re trying to, you know, put your best moves or your, I don’t have any moves, but like your best pickup line or whatever, and it falls flat.

Speaker3: That’s a good stretch. You got to, you know.

Speaker1: Yeah, I got the moves. I got the moves straight up.

Speaker2: Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. That’s what it looks like.

Speaker1: That’s what it looks like. You see me up.

Speaker3: There on stage. Those my band.

Speaker1: I’ll never forget my buddies when they would take me out to these clubs. And I hated going to clubs. They’re loud. You couldn’t hear anybody, and they would go on on the dance floor and just start dancing with random women. And so they were like the cool, you know, good looking guys. And I’m just like the I’m the funny guy entertainment sidekick along for the ride. And so I remember one time they’re like, come on, come on, just get out of here. I’m like, I can’t do this. I don’t even know how to do this. You just go up behind somebody, you start dancing, and pretty soon you wait. They’ll turn around and they’ll give you the look. And so I did. I walked out and I was like, started dancing.

Well, sure enough, there’s this girl back to me and she’s dancing and like, next thing you know, we’re dancing together.

And I’ll never forget the get the look of terror on her face when she turned around and I thought she was going to scream or something. It was just it was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, not interested in you at all.

So I jumped the gun. Now, had I given it more time and said, hey, maybe talk to her before I go up and try and dance behind her on a dance floor. You know, it worked for maybe it works for those guys. Some people jump into commitment.

Speaker3: Some people can pull that off.

Speaker1: Yeah, some people can do it, you know? So some key things to closing the deal or the sale.

Are you making the ask. Are you calling them to action? Are you even. Because we do this a lot where we think we’re making the ask, but we’re not on our websites. We have no call to action. It’s really hard to find like, okay, what am I supposed to do? I’m ready to buy. I’m ready to commit, but how do I do it? And then painting a vision of the stakes at hand.

So here’s what happens if you take action with us. Here’s how it happens if you don’t. But again, don’t pressure them, you know. And if you make the ask and they don’t buy it yet, then reintroduce the next leg of your nurture campaign, which goes back to enlightenment. So it’s just this cycle of you keep going and you have to wait. You have to be patient.

When they’re ready, they will say yes. And when they’re ready to say yes and you don’t force them or push them, they are going to commit for life. They’re going to commit because it’s their decision. It’s like people finding you organically, you know, like, you know, when people search Ben’s OnlyFans page, you know, they find him on their own.

He doesn’t promote it, he doesn’t talk about it. And when they do that, there’s this level of satisfaction and loyalty that comes with that. Yeah.

Speaker3: You know. Yeah. That’s right. That’s exactly how I felt when I found it.

Speaker2: Yeah, that’s that’s what I’m going for. Especially considering I only post blurred out of focus pictures.

Speaker1: And your sex tape.

Speaker2: And my solo sex.

Speaker3: Tape on a cat house.

Speaker2: On my cat tree. Human cat.

Speaker1: Tree. I haven’t seen a human.

Speaker2: Human cat tree poses. It’s my calendar that one got.

Speaker3: That one was posted this morning.

Speaker1: The three stages of any relationship curiosity. Enlightenment. Commitment. If you want some help putting together a free marketing plan, we have a one page marketing plan at six steps. All you got to do is just fill in the blanks and you can download it. Guess what? For free? Boom! The link is in the show notes and you can check out all the details on Two Brothers Creative for Ben Tompkins, Austin Mayadin and myself, I’m Matt. Wait, that didn’t add up.

Speaker2: Matt, you look like the kind of guy who is quick to point out the difference between jam and jelly. Yes.

Full Written Transcript of The Episode

The Best Marketing Can Still Fail

Matt: It’s time to close down the Success Prevention Department at your business. All the best marketing in the world cannot help you if you aren’t doing this.

We’re going to talk about what that is next. Hello and welcome back to Midwest Mindset, the podcast that makes marketing easy to understand and simple to do. I’m your host, Matt Tompkins of Two Brothers Creative, and today on the show, we have not one, two, three, four dudes. We have four dudes and a woman who is none other than Tracy Winkler of Elevate to grow the number two, by the way. Yeah, she’s cool like that.

Speaker2: By the time we get some representation on the show.

Speaker1: It is. It’s been a little unbalanced. That’s right, a little bit unbalanced. And that’s on us.

Speaker3: Need a good woman on us?

Speaker1: We own that. Tracy Winkler is. She’s a coach, business advisor. She’s done marketing. She’s done. She’s done a whole. I mean, I don’t even know.

You’re, like, doing a whole new coaching. Every time I see her, she’s doing a whole new coaching platform, but they all kick ass. She’s helped tons of business owners, including us here at Two Brothers Creative.

Tracy also looks like the kind of woman who has to Google on a regular basis what a GIF is and still isn’t sure if it’s a compliment or an insult.

Speaker2: So that’s a good one.

Speaker3: That’s the truth.

Speaker2: It actually.

Speaker1: Happened. It happened. She was on this podcast and somebody on YouTube. Like there were a couple people were like, look at that gif. And she’s like, what’s that mean?

I told her what it means. That’s so old school. I don’t know, it’s like, yes, it’s like you’re saying that I’m hot, but you’re also calling me old grandma. Like what?

Speaker3: I don’t am a grandma. I am a grandma. Let’s. Let’s be real.

Speaker2: It’s a compliment.

Speaker1: Grandmas. They’re young grandmas. I’ll take it as that. All right, let’s meet the rest of the crew here today. Behind the scenes, running the switcher, the control room.

There is a guy who he. He likes to pee in the shower, but only after he’s done showering. Ladies and gentlemen, Myron and McHugh. Myron, the guy he looks like.

Speaker2: Find out something new about you every day. Yes.

Speaker1: Austin Anderson is here with us again. Austin. He looks like the kind of guy who makes his own deodorant and thinks that it works.

Speaker2: It does. And I’ve been sitting next to you for a while.

Speaker4: I got to stop. You know, I got to take out garlic. Yeah, I think that ingredient is good for the skin.

Speaker2: Good for the skin, bad for the odor.

Speaker1: Add some deodorant to it. That’s. I think what you’re missing is the deodorant. So. And then I think you’ll have a home run, you know. And last but certainly not least, we have Ben, who looks like the kind of guy who brings up 911 a lot.

Speaker2: I just want people to be informed. I don’t want we. There’s an important day in our history.

Speaker1: It was. You’re right. Yes. Never forget.

Speaker4: But the kind of guy that might be writing a manifesto in his shed. In the backyard?

Speaker1: Yes, I can see that.

Speaker2: I like to journal. Austin.

Speaker4: It’s reflective journaling, a manifesto. Ben.

Speaker1: He looks like the kind of guy who likes to remove peas from the pod before he eats his green beans. I find.

Speaker2: It tastes.

Speaker1: Better. Yes. So therapeutic is.

Speaker2: What? Yeah, that’s.

Speaker4: What I was thinking. Those aren’t.

Speaker2: Insults today. This is real.

Speaker1: Today we’re talking about closing down that success prevention department. What does that mean? Well, you have to ask an honest question.

When you were running your business. That is, do you really need marketing or do you need operations? Do you have a plan? Do you have any way to actually capitalize or take advantage of this?

Marketing doesn’t matter how great the marketing is, it could be the best marketing in the universe. But if you’re not ready to close the deal, if you don’t have sales in place, you’re not really ready to onboard people or you provide a lackluster experience for your customers, it’s not going to matter.

In fact, it’s going to have the opposite effect. And since Tracy is like she’s Ms. operations, like, you know, they had the movie Miss Congeniality.

Speaker3: Oh.

Speaker1: Really? Yes. Okay. I’m not comparing you to her. I’m just saying that they made a movie called Miss Congeniality for you. I might they would make it.

Speaker3: Could be compared to.

Speaker1: Her, miss. Really? For you? They would make miss operations.

Speaker4: That’s a cool.

Speaker2: Nickname to.

Speaker1: Miss operations. Miss operations?

Speaker2: Are you like.

Speaker3: That? Yeah.

Speaker2: Okay, miss.

Speaker3: Oh, okay. Okay.

Speaker1: Don’t you think, like.

Speaker4: We all need more than one name? You know, like we’d be like, miss, this is Miss Congeniality. So this is multiple names. Yeah. The ultimate coach of America. Mcgill. Yeah. Skills of.

Speaker1: Lauryn Hill. You know, I think is in there. So yeah, it’s a compliment. So miss operations here. So I thought this would be a great topic to talk about with you. But I wanted to start off, I wrote a little poem.

Speaker2: It’s always writing poems for the guests. He never writes a poem for us. But as soon as you come on, as soon as Miss Operations comes on the show.

Speaker1: Well, it’s Miss Operations, all right. Humpty Dumpty had a brother named Paul.

Paul’s new business had a great fall. Paul spent lots of money on marketing and ads. But just like his Beanie Baby collection, they were worthless and sad.

Speaker2: Ben, why are you looking at me when he says you have.

Speaker1: A massive Beanie Baby collection?

Speaker3: Beanie babies at home?

Speaker1: He still buys them today even though he knows.

Speaker4: Did you keep the collection?

Speaker2: I know you have Princess Diana. There’s a Beanie Baby. Princess Diana?

Speaker4: Yeah.

Speaker1: Princess Dean, is that the same?

Speaker4: I don’t know.

Speaker3: I have no idea. I did all the best marketing.

Speaker1: In all of the world couldn’t save Humpty. Brother Humpty Dumpty’s brother Paul’s business at all. That was not a very good poem. It’s terrible.

You get it? I loved it. It’s Humpty Dumpty’s brother, Paul, so it’s not going to be like the original. He’s the black sheep of Dumpty Humpty’s.

So this happens, I think, more times than we think. So first let’s establish first thing we need to understand what is marketing. What’s the goal of marketing? What are we trying to accomplish?

Speaker4: We got to let. Tracy. Tracy.

Speaker3: Yeah, okay.

Speaker1: Difference between marketing and operations here. What is marketing?

Speaker3: It’s actually to just get eyes on your business and it’s just to bring get awareness to the business. Yeah. A few of the things get discovered.

Speaker1: Yep. You’re going to remind people that you exist, which sounds really weird. But when they’re bombarded by thousands of ads every day and content every day, you need to be there in that.

Speaker3: Need to be relevant.

Speaker1: You need to be relevant. You need to build relationship, right?

Speaker3: Yes. That’s a key. Absolutely.

Speaker1: Trust is the foundation for anything and everything we do in life. And I will tell you firsthand, and, Tracy, you probably speak to this like if you if you establish trust, they will fill in the blanks.

Speaker3: Right? Absolutely. You’ve got to know, like and trust before people try buy and refer.

Speaker1: Oh I heard the know like and trust but try buy and refer try buy refer.

Speaker3: So you’ve got to build that first.

Speaker1: This is why we call you miss operations.

Speaker2: Like earning the name.

Speaker3: I’m earning my name.

Speaker2: Your titles are proven.

Speaker1: Yeah. I think you could be the next Sandra Bullock.

Speaker4: Then will you give us a quick, just brief overview of your career, like how you became the Miss Congeniality of operations? Miss operations.

Speaker3: Oh my goodness. Well, where.

Speaker1: Did it all start?

Speaker3: That was just a couple of years ago. Started. Let’s just say I was 27. Yep. 27. No. Started. I worked for my family business for almost 20 years and they have truck stops, convenience stores. There’s eight different divisions.

Speaker1: She’s a muscleman. She’s a boss man, big family out in Grand Island. So I was third generation.

Speaker3: So slave labor in the early years didn’t matter, right? So started working there after college and spent 20 years there and worked through all different divisions, making it more efficient.

So and I was in the ops side, everything ops project management. After I left there, there was a forced buyout. There was kind of some crazy stuff that happened with family business.

So I left have co owned six total businesses owned and co owned and so I’m addicted. Kind of that serial entrepreneur that gets loves business talks business misses operations. Did I say misses or was I miss miss miss.

Speaker1: Yeah. Don’t tell your husband but we’re giving you a little. Okay. I’m Miss Freedom a little. You know, the leash isn’t quite so tight on this program. You know, it’s like. Wait, that sounded really weird. That’s not what I meant by that. But. Yeah, and you’ve been a CMO, a chief marketing officer.

Speaker3: So it’s been. I am so multi-passionate that I love all things to help businesses. So by doing that, I’ve have enough certifications to probably like paper that wall over there, you know.

So yeah, it went on, I was in medical weight loss and I owned a couple weight loss clinics, and I was a regional rep and a national trainer for coaches. So I traveled all over.

And so like I said, the coaching, there’s the coaching aspect. I always needed to market and help them market. So that’s that’s just like the ten cent tour of what I. What miss? Oh, not Miss Congeniality. What miss operations.

Speaker1: Operations. What would you say is like how common is this scenario where they have marketing? It kind of I feel like there’s almost two outcomes.

Typically it’s either operations is working but the marketing falls flat. Yes, they need to pivot because that’s just how marketing works. It’s a B testing. Yes. And they don’t.

They blame marketing. And so then they give up on marketing. And then that kills can kill your business or marketing maybe works and maybe it works really well, but the operations aren’t in place to handle it. You know, if you don’t like when I say my operations, like, do you have a sales team so that when you have been discovered, you grab people’s attention, you have made them aware you are having those daily constant impressions.

They know, like and trust you. And they say, you know what? Now it’s top of mind when I’m going to buy this pair of homemade shoes that Ben has sewn together the homemade shoe.

Speaker2: High quality, high quality. And they’re made with care. They love and care too.

Speaker1: Yeah. Their hair shoes.

Speaker3: Okay. Yeah.

Speaker1: Cat hair.

Speaker2: Well, it’s a it’s a.

Speaker1: Trade secrets secret.

Speaker2: Can’t tell you. Can’t tell you.

Speaker1: Yeah. It’s like the it’s like the secret sauce at McDonald’s. You know what.

Speaker2: Kind of.

Speaker4: His wife’s hair keeps getting shorter.

Speaker5: Oh, okay. Makes sense.

Speaker1: Actually. Okay, so so so.

Speaker3: Watch my hair.

Speaker1: If Ben though, if he has his marketing is going gangbusters. Everybody is interested. And then he’s not making the ask or putting out the. They don’t know that he’s even selling a product. They just they’re familiar with him. They know like and trust him, you know. Worry. Worst case yet they walk into his store, physically walk in and they don’t have customer service. They don’t have a sales team.

There isn’t anybody with any sort of training or experience who can take this person, who is more than interested, to buy those crazy pair of hair shoes. But since Ben has not invested any time into building the operations of his business, he can’t capitalize on marketing, no matter how good it may be performing.

Speaker3: That happens more than not, and most people, they think of marketing as tactical or doing one thing, and that’s going to lead them there. We’re going to do a social media post and they’re going to come right to us, but they’ve never given a real call to action. They don’t have a strategy around it or the inside part. We can lead them to water, let’s say, with the marketing. But how do you get them to drink? So you’ve got to give them the actions so they know and they need simple actions.

Speaker1: That’s it.

Speaker4: It’s oh, sorry. Oh I was just going to say what do you think the in your experience over all these years is the best call to action, you know, is it I mean does it is it different for each scenario or.

Speaker3: Absolutely different for each scenario. So and it’s really what you want them to do. We have to tell them what we want them to do. It could be multiple things. So you know basically if you want them to sign up for an email list, if you want to have them buy, if they’re, you know, it really depends.

Speaker1: I think the best way to make a call to action is to call them to action for their benefit. So think like Star Wars, right? Perfect example here.

Obi-wan Kenobi. He is the guide. He is your business, right? Luke Skywalker he is the hero of this story. Luke Skywalker is your customer. Businesses. We make the mistake of assuming we’re the hero of the story when we’re not. We’re the guide. We are Obi-Wan Kenobi here to call Luke to action. So we give him a plan.

We call him to action. Use the force is literally the call to action. You know, you have to give up the at the end of the movie. I mean, he’s got the thing he’s like, pushes it away and he’s like, no, man, I’m just going to use the force, which is how he says it. If I remember, man, no man.

Speaker2: No man, use the force.

Speaker3: Yeah, I don’t remember that. But, you know.

Speaker1: Use the force. And so then he used it. He shoots those two laser things in a very sexualized scene in the movie. I feel like that’s never talked about. I mean, it’s like, uh, like very kind of.

Speaker4: Yeah, yeah, I always thought that was Ghostbusters and those weird things that they hold by their crotch.

Speaker1: Yes. That’s true. You call them to action. You make the ask by not saying buy from me. Now give me your money. I mean, you want to say that, but, like, you’re not that direct or that cold. It’s. This is what’s at stake, right? If you don’t use the force, Luke, then it’s going to be the annihilation of your home planet of Alderaan or whatever.

Speaker2: The Tatooine.

Speaker1: Tatooine, you know.

Speaker3: And they’re going to go to another planet.

Speaker4: It’s like the kind of guy that knows everything about Star Wars.

Speaker1: If you do use the force, then we destroy the Death Star and the whole galaxy is saved, right? So painting those stakes, and I think the operations side of it, though, is one I think. Would you agree? Like business owners, we don’t want to admit when maybe we don’t have a ship that’s run as tight as as we think, like we business owners are. We talked about this. There’s like constructive delusion.

Like you have to have like positive delusion to even be an entrepreneur. But I think sometimes we’re delusional in the sense that it’s unhealthy where we think, oh, well, I’ll just do marketing and it’ll bring people in, and I don’t need a sales person, and I don’t need to train people and what’s lead generation and follow what’s a nurture sales campaign.

And like I have to have a database. Why would I need a database to follow up with customers?

Like, what do you mean? It’s like five times less expensive to get a person who’s already shopped here to come back here and shop again than getting a new customer. And there are these those are just operational things.

I mean, there’s obvious stuff like, you have to keep the lights on, you have to keep enough of your product or service in stock to where you can provide meet the demand. But not having a sales, not having a way to capitalize on your marketing is a I think it’s a kind of a hidden Grand Canyon of just like this mistake that I think is made more common than we realize.

Speaker3: Oh, 100%, because you obviously have like all, all the people that are like, there’s just so much to it.

There’s a lot of steps. So people get overwhelmed. They’re like, they just let’s do the tactical and it’s just quick and easy and they’re just going to come and like you said, they’re just got blinders on and they’re in overwhelm. A lot of entrepreneurs and founders are just trying to keep the lights on, trying to do everything to, you know, having the galaxy blow up or I’m not a I’m not a Star Wars. No, I’m not, I’m not I’m killing this one.

Speaker4: No, that was perfect. I understood it because I’ve I’m not either a Star Wars. You’re not.

Speaker3: Okay.

Speaker2: I’ve, I’ve got everybody covered here. Yeah. Because I got.

Speaker1: The Star Trek covered on that side. So we’re really.

Speaker4: You guys were brothers growing up in a household. One’s a trekky. One’s a yeah, yeah.

Speaker1: Well, I enjoy stars.

Speaker4: Get along well.

Speaker1: Okay. I enjoy Star Wars as well. But it was the the sophistication of TNG. Star Trek The Next Generation is just, you know, it’s kind of like, how do I say this?

Speaker4: It’s for the more intelligent.

Speaker1: Yes. I mean, it’s like, yes. Am I wearing a pair of whitey tighties? Yes. Obviously not the coolest look, but they’re fresh, they’re soft, they’re Calvin Klein’s versus these ratty old. I don’t know what this is dad’s been wearing for 30 years. The original series, you know. So I don’t think there’s really a comparison between the two personally. Now, Star Wars and Star Trek, we’re not going to get into that because that’s going to get heated.

Speaker2: And get ugly.

Speaker1: Yeah.

Speaker3: I mean, I am going to say I do like Star Wars better than Star Trek.

Speaker2: I’m sorry. That’s the correct answer.

Speaker1: Well, Star Wars, it’s more adventurous. They have more stuff going on. But Star Trek is more, you know, it’s more more attractive. And Star Wars, there’s no jar Jar Binks in Star. Star Trek, all right. I mean, you have reasonable thought and rational debates.

Speaker4: And weird airs and.

Speaker1: Yeah, and weird ears and. Yeah. So let’s talk about how to close down this success prevention department. So you mentioned how it’s like complicated. It gets overwhelming.

So give Ben some simple tips here on how to like what if we’re if we’re looking to put something in place for a marketing strategy for a business before we even hit the ground?

Because you’re right, they make the mistake of going for the tactics. Let’s put together a strategy that includes how are you actually going to benefit from this marketing? So let’s say we’ll take Ben’s. You want to use your cat human cat tree restore.

Speaker2: A human cat tree where you and the cat are in a tree together.

Speaker1: Like those carpeted trees, you.

Speaker3: See.

Speaker2: Okay, okay.

Speaker3: So this is what you’re selling now.

Speaker2: You can snuggle up with the cat in the cat tree. So it’s a human cat tree.

Speaker3: So? So it’s big enough for you to snuggle? Yes.

Speaker1: Okay, okay. There’s a perch.

Speaker2: There’s a perch. There’s a little compartment. Does it take.

Speaker3: Like a up a room?

Speaker2: Yeah, it’s pretty much a bedroom.

Speaker3: So it’s the bedroom. It’s a cat. But the human can be with.

Speaker1: Like binge is carpeted his bedroom.

Speaker2: I pretty much did wall to wall. Yeah.

Speaker1: So let’s say different levels. What’s your what’s your goal with these human cat trees? I want to go for your business.

Speaker2: I want to bring happiness to cat owners, and I want to build a stronger connection between the cat and the owner.

Speaker1: And how do you do that?

Speaker2: I want to support equality.

Speaker1: Okay. And how are you going to do that in a tangible, measurable way? Like what’s the metric we’re going to?

Speaker2: Well, I feel like the more I sell these cat trees, that that cat tree is going to be the tool that does it.

Speaker1: So selling cat.

Speaker2: Selling my human cat trees.

Speaker4: And he’s thinking ahead because he’s looking at, you know, the trend forecast about how more children are becoming cats. Yes.

Speaker2: So I identify.

Speaker3: I identify as a.

Speaker2: Cat.

Speaker4: He’s going to jump on the market.

Speaker1: Yes. Okay. So selling cat trees human cat trees, just pure sales numbers here. Right. So you just list it out and you could put this in more simplified terms for yourself at some point. But you, you laid out your, your mission statement and your vision statement. Your vision is you want to make human beings and cats equals who love and respect each other. Your mission statement can be more specific. So beautiful. In the next three years you could say, you know by the year 2028 or 2020. By the year 2028, we will have sold 2000 human cat trees because we believe that humans and cats are equals.

Speaker4: All right. It’s.

Speaker1: And now your mission statement is as simple as that. It’s just that here’s a here’s a tangible goal, a metric. And then here’s why we’re doing it.

Speaker3: It’s kind of your loneliness statement as well. Kind of what makes you so different. And this is very different.

Speaker5: Yes. Yeah.

Speaker2: Well you be our operations. Yeah.

Speaker1: So I.

Speaker2: Don’t know Cat.

Speaker3: I have to learn a little more. I’m a dog girl. Okay.

Speaker1: Dog trees. Now let’s say you, you want to put together your marketing strategy. Your end goal is here to sell those.

Those, you know, 2000 human cat trees. You’ve got three years. So we’re going to backtrack it a little bit. So maybe we’re selling like, you know, 750 of these human cat trees per year over average. So then we’re going to backtrack that even more. How many do we need to sell each quarter? Austin. Oh geez.

Speaker2: What’s the math on that. Yeah.

Speaker4: I mean, I’m just I’m just going to rough it around, you know, say a couple.

Speaker1: Hundred.

Speaker4: 200. Yeah, I was going to say 200 to 50.

Speaker1: So then to 200 and then now you can break that down into the months of the quarter. Ben, you remember how months work in the quarter, right.

Speaker2: There’s 12 of.

Speaker1: Them in a quarter. That’s right. And then so so then we’re going to.

Speaker3: Break that down, then.

Speaker1: Say 7580. Whatever your numbers are you can break it down that simple. So this month we need 80 human cat trees sold. So that means each week of that month we need 20 human cat trees, which means we need to get I need to.

Speaker2: Get off this podcast and go start selling some human cat trees is what this is sounding like.

Speaker1: So now now you have your metrics. So you know, okay, every week we need to sell, you know, ten human cat trees or whatever your number is. Are they.

Speaker3: Made?

Speaker2: No. Yeah.

Speaker3: So productions a whole nother to produce.

Speaker1: So we haven’t produced them yet. Okay.

Speaker2: Wasn’t prepared for this. Well, we’re.

Speaker3: We’re mapping it out. Don’t worry.

Speaker1: We’re mapping it out. It’s a mind map here.

Speaker4: You don’t second guess yourself.

Speaker1: So you you have your goals. So then now we kind of have a we have a plan of like how can we measure success. So before here’s the mistake I think that’s made is we just jump into it and we just start calling up our friend and saying, hey, you want a cat tree? Hey, you want a cat tree? Hey, you want a human cat tree? And I’m like, Ben, stop calling me. I don’t have a cat. You’re going to lose friends.

Speaker3: I’m sorry.

Speaker1: Yeah. So putting together the strategy.

Speaker2: I think I’m going to lose a lot in.

Speaker1: This includes how you’re going to produce all these human cat trees. Where are you going to store these human cat trees? Are you going to be the only person selling these human cat trees? Are you the only person building them who’s going to be overseeing production and quality check and just all these different variables. Do you have any of that together, Ben?

Speaker2: Well, that’s why I’m working here at this company. I was hoping you could help with this.

Speaker1: Little panic in your voice. It’s okay. Ben, we’re here for you.

Speaker2: I want to sell the company.

Speaker3: Sell it before you’ve made anything. That’s awesome.

Speaker1: So, Tracy, walk us through the operation side, sell it to.

Speaker4: The Tiger King.

Speaker1: We have these big goals. We have metrics we can start tracking. Maybe we even have some ideas for marketing. But before we get to that, it’s the operational side of of it.

So miss operational operations. So what would you do? What would you put together. Do you need to what accountability. Chart roles, responsibilities, workflows? Where would you begin if we’re simplifying this for not just Ben, but any human tree kind.

Speaker3: Of a startup basically, yeah. The way we’re going about this, because this is just a dream in your head. Have you even build a prototype?

Speaker2: No, I built one out of cardboard, so and it didn’t work.

Speaker3: Okay.

Speaker2: But the idea in my head looks amazing.

Speaker3: That’s awesome. Okay, so. So first we need a prototype.

Speaker5: Yes.

Speaker1: Well, Ben has taken out a sizable loan from the bank, though, so I will give you a credit for that, I think. What, half $1 million, right. If. How much is left?

Speaker2: Well, I’m not really sure.

Speaker1: But, you know.

Speaker2: You know, I I’ve, I’ve got to treat myself.

Speaker5: So. Okay.

Speaker3: We got.

Speaker4: Caviar.

Speaker1: He really needs this to work because.

Speaker2: I feel like I need to be in a strong mental state in order to build the first. Okay. And being in a strong mental state means I need to go on a number of vacations.

Speaker1: Forehand massages. I get it.

Speaker3: Okay, this is not a good start. I’m sorry to say we’re not planning very well. So yes, you need a prototype. You need to actually have know the numbers of what’s going to what it takes to produce them, how long it takes to produce them. As Matt had said, where are you going to store these? How many?

What’s what’s the overhead? What’s the cost involved? Then you have to include how are you going to get it out to the world? Who’s going to handle that?

Who’s going to handle selling it? Who’s going to handle the internal part to get it shipped, or do you build it when you get there? All the just a few little things, right. Because you have to measure things you have to track.

Speaker2: I’ll just send I’ll just have a pro like the prototype, the blueprint. I’ll just send that to the people with the material they’re building. They go out and get the materials. Oh.

Speaker1: So. And then. Yeah, well, that mitigates even.

Speaker3: A lot easier.

Speaker2: Yeah. So I’ll just give them a list. Here’s all what you need to buy.

Speaker1: So you’re selling them a drawing of a cat human cat tree at this point okay.

Speaker3: So just.

Speaker2: Thought of this.

Speaker3: Okay. So now we got.

Speaker4: To I can see Matt is losing faith in you with the size. All right.

Speaker1: Big, big selling point here for two brothers created by the way. You know.

Speaker3: So you’re selling weight in three years. How many units? 2000.

Speaker1: I think it was the random number. We.

Speaker3: So we’re not going to be making a lot because this is just a blueprint, right? Yes. So this is just a side hustle.

Speaker1: So here’s what I would say is go back to baby steps. All right. So back.

Speaker5: To basics.

Speaker1: How quickly this all kind of spiraled out of control. And you Ben he’s sitting here. You look overwhelmed. And you look a little I’m scared. Yes you’re shaking right I’m scared shaking. And, you know, like a leaf.

Speaker5: Like a leaf.

Speaker2: Could use a cat tree to sit in.

Speaker1: So instead of letting yourself get to this state, because this is usually usually where most business owners find them at some point early on, the first, you know, 1 to 3 years is in this anxiety ridden state of just pure panic. And they’re just trying to tread water, trying not to drown.

Basically, they don’t know what they’re doing. They’re grasping for straws. They’re listening to people like us telling them, oh, you need to do this, this and this. Just focus on the simple things, the little things, and take it step by step.

So, you know, she mentioned tracking time. So just keep track of how long does it take you to make one cat tree. Does it make one human cat tree. Let’s give it to Nana and let Nana. That’s it. One of his cats. Try this human cat tree and beta test it.

So let’s see if this even works. Is there any interest then? Okay, there’s some interest. She likes it. You made some notes. You applied that to your next your next version or model of this human cat tree.

Then you go on social media and you just do a post, hey, here’s this incredible human cat tree. Would anybody be interested in buying taking pre-orders now? And you can set up a simple click funnel or an email system through your website or just, you know, you could a lot of easy ways you can do that. Message me. Slide into my DMs as they say. I think that’s what that’s about, right?

And then you find out and you can gauge is their interest. You know, if it’s like, wow, I got 400 requests for this thing and I just did one post. Or it could be I got zero requests for this. People told me to stop posting about my human cat trees.

Speaker3: And what if they don’t want to build it themselves?

Speaker5: And if they don’t want.

Speaker1: To build it themselves? Yeah, so so but then you have a gauge because then you can do things like, okay, we’re going to take pre-orders where you pay half down to help us kind of finance building out these human cat trees. And you start to build that out and you just keep track of everything.

But that’s how you want to work is it’s it’s kind of slow and methodical, which is I think it makes it unsexy. But that is how you establish an operational structure to your business. The secret about operations is that you are never done, never, never done. You’re always working to improve it, to fine tune it. It’s never done to where you can just set it and forget it. And I think that’s been one of the biggest mistakes, is we think, oh, I can just set it and forget it. I’m going to.

Speaker5: Do some marketing Kodak moment.

Speaker1: I’m going to buy some Facebook ads. This thing’s going to take off. And I just sit back and cash the checks.

Speaker4: So it’s operations the same as putting systems into place basically.

Speaker5: Processes.

Speaker4: Processes. And then the systems always evolve over time. You’re always tweaking. And like you said, refining.

Speaker1: Create a system. That’s the easiest way to describe it.

Speaker3: Just like when you’re onboarding a client. What’s your onboarding process? When you’re any type of sales, any type of accounts payable, everything has should have a process to make it simplified so that you can it can be scalable and repeatable as well, even because Matt might or Ben might have like cats that he brings along.

So it’s something that a cat can do maybe. Right. Okay, I think so. You know.

Speaker1: I mean, even sales like people just assume, well, just go out and get some sales. But there’s a there is a method to the madness. So cold calling is still the number one way to by the way, to get new new prospects and land new business. People hate doing it because we hate being rejected and Austin’s been in LA. It’s worse than being an actor auditioning for shows.

Speaker4: Oh yeah, because I’ve done cold calling. Oh yeah, and I’ve been rejected on a mass scale. It takes, I think, that.

Speaker3: Going for the. No.

Speaker4: I think that the cold calling is it’s tough. I don’t know why, you know, because as a performer and I’ve done stand up for so long, I was like when I got offered, hey, do these cold calls? It paid really well. I’m like, that would be easy. And then I can get up in front of 2000 people. But calling one person on the phone and I’m like.

Speaker6: That is.

Speaker1: Rejection. Like, like stuttering. But it works. It works. It’s still top dog, you know? I mean, even if you could get through, leave a voicemail. That’s fantastic too. It works far more effectively than email, than, you know, messaging. And so but have you.

Speaker4: Done a lot of cold calling and.

Speaker1: Calculate how many cold calls you need to make to close a sale, though? 100 cold calls, I get one new closed sale. So that means if I want to have 2000 cat trees, well, I just got to take 2000 times 100 spread that over over three years break it down into your days. Now, I know if I make, you know, 100 cold calls per day, by the year 2028, I will have sold 2000 human trees.

Speaker4: Is that is that pretty much ironclad? 100 calls, one sale for people that I’ve never tried it before.

Speaker1: Hypothetical example.

Speaker4: But or it.

Speaker3: Varies. But it is. The more calls you make, the more you’re going to close, right? I mean, it’s just numbers, you know, so you have to be scientific with it. And the more you call and yes, I have done it. And when I slack off, I don’t get as many prospects in as many deals.

And it’s just keeping the relationship and the follow through. So that’s the same thing with systems. If people don’t have the follow through or for marketing sake, we bring in the leads. Let’s say we’re helping bring in the leads, but it’s their job. We lead them.

You lead them to water. But how do we make them drink? That’s on the company, right? Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah. So if Ben gets all these leads and he’s not like, calling, well, his buddies are kind of saying no, but now he’s got to start calling people he doesn’t know and just. And yes, there are a lot of them are probably going to say no. Yeah. Because he’s got to get those right.

Speaker2: Cat lovers don’t have any faith in this project. You need to.

Speaker1: Find your niche.

Speaker3: Oh, there might be there might be cat lovers like you out there. I’m just, you know.

Speaker4: There are so many weird people out there like Hope.

Speaker1: I like to use this as the the analogy I like to use to close out this episode. Your marketing, it’s like, imagine that your your business is a bathtub.

Speaker2: Okay. The bath bathtub analogy.

Speaker1: Yes. Your bathtub. All right. So you are all the way down in the bottom of this bathtub, right? And you imagine you’re a tiny little like one inch person. And then there’s all these customers up at the top on the ledge up there, and they’re all hanging out, and they’re waving their money and they’re like, hey, we want to we want to give you money for your product, but you got to figure out a way to get up there.

So now to do it without marketing is to oh, you got to figure out you got to you got to be able to climb a scale, a mountain. And those bathtubs are tough because it’s slick. It’s porcelain. And it’s really hard to get to stop. You are exerting a lot of effort and energy and resources to make one sale.

Marketing is like you start to let this bathtub slowly fill up with water, and you just sit in your boat and you just let the water slowly rise you to the top, to where you are now at eye level. And then people can just hand you your money. You can hand them your goods or services. It’s much easier, but you still need a boat.

You know you can’t be selling stuff if you’re swimming in the bathtub. You need a boat for your business to be in. You need a place. You need the tools. You need the the strategy, all of these things. You need the people, the strategy, execution and the cash critical for your success. So and it’s similar to like Ben when you take baths. So I thought you’d like that one.

Speaker2: Stop telling people I take baths.

Speaker1: Twice.

Speaker5: A day. Do you have a.

Speaker3: Boat in your bathtub?

Speaker2: No, not a full size one. Okay.

Speaker1: Sometimes I pretend my bathtub is a boat, though. We want to help you make your marketing easy right now. In the show notes, click on the link.

You can get started for free. You give us 30 minutes. We give you 30 days of content.

All you got to do is book that free strategy call. We’ll talk about this and more. We’ll dial in on your business, see what your pain points, your needs, your challenges, opportunities and the threats, the strengths, the weaknesses, everything and Swot analysis. I’m really getting into this. I think I probably could have closed it a lot earlier, but I just kept going. That’s okay. And now I feel like I can’t really regain. It’s like when you’ve left a voicemail that’s gone on too long and you know it.

Speaker4: Oh, dude. And then you and then you want to start over. Yeah, I want.

Speaker1: To start over.

Speaker4: I hate when you do the record and send a message and it automatically sends and you want to redo it. Have you ever done that. And then I’ll say this message is terrible. I’m sending you another one okay.

Speaker1: Yeah.

Speaker4: Just be honest. Throw that out.

Speaker1: All right. So Beep.

Thank you so much to Tracy Winkler for joining us here today on the podcast. Of course in the show notes you can click on the link and get your marketing started. Easy easy peasy easy breezy beautiful CoverGirl. Yes, the link is in the show notes to get started for free with a free strategy call you give us 30 minutes. We give you 30 days of content.

Let us help you take the marketing off of your plate. We’ll work with you to develop a strategy for your business, whether it’s a human cat tree or not. And I believe that that idea is now open. If anybody wants to buy the web domain human categoryqom from me, I think Ben is throwing in the towel on this. I’m done.

Speaker4: Yeah, it’s only half a mil.

Speaker5: Yes, yes.

Speaker1: Half $1 million.

Human cat tree.com.