Full Written Transcript of The Episode

Local Ads: Why Are They So Bad?

Matt Tompkins: Why are local television commercials so bad? They’re awful and we all know it. We all see it. We all make fun of them. But why do they continue to be made in this episode of Midwest Mindset? We are going to answer that question why are local TV commercials so bad?

And I’m going to give you three things you need to do, or maybe not do, so that your commercial doesn’t suck to. Hello and welcome back to Midwest Mindset, the podcast that makes marketing simple and easy to do.

I’m your host, Matt Tompkins of Two Brothers Creative, where we want to make your marketing easy.

With the easy box, you give us 30 minutes, we give you 30 days of content, and we post it for you on all your socials. All of them. Yes. Joining me in the studio here today, we have the other brother of two brothers, creative.

Ben Tompkins: Oh, is that me? That’s me, that’s.

Matt Tompkins: Mikey Austin Anderson. I’ve upgraded.

Ben Tompkins: I’ve been replaced. You’ve been.

Matt Tompkins: Replaced.

Ben Tompkins: The other money. You missed it.

Matt Tompkins: Okay. The other other brother, Martin McHugh. Mayadunne’s in the studio. He’s punching up the buttons and the the knobs and a lot of gizmos and gadgets in there.

And last but certainly least, give it up for my blood brother blood.

Ben Tompkins: Brothers, Ben.

Matt Tompkins: Tompkins.

Ben Tompkins: That’s what Hopkins wanted the company name to not be two brothers. I wanted it to be Blood Brothers.

Matt Tompkins: Blood Brothers. But then true Blood came out and it was like we were like, you know, marketing, branding. We’re like, we can’t we can’t be identified too closely with vampires. Yeah.

Ben Tompkins: Do you ever just stop and think how we’re all just full of blood?

Matt Tompkins: Yes.

Austin Anderson: Oh, yeah. Did you know that blood is actually blue until it touches the air?

Matt Tompkins: I don’t think that’s true. I think that’s an urban myth.

Austin Anderson: I don’t, I think science get.

Ben Tompkins: Out, Austin out spreading misinformation.

Matt Tompkins: That’s misinformation.

Austin Anderson: That was what my kid learned it, you know, and I know.

Matt Tompkins: I’ve heard that too. But I don’t think it’s actually accurate. But I’ve heard it’s green.

Austin Anderson: Is it like ooze?

Matt Tompkins: Yes. I love how in Nebraska, here in Husker Nation, everybody says we all bleed Husker Red. And I’m like, isn’t everybody’s blood red?

Austin Anderson: Yeah, a lot of a lot of losing.

Matt Tompkins: Yeah, yeah. There’s a lot of bleeding. They can’t stop the bleeding. Now get a tourniquet out. Okay, so this is a question I think, you know, this was made relevant to me again last night watching. Have you guys ever watched local high school football? I think they call it Thursday Night Live and they have like a Friday night version.

Austin Anderson: But I want to I’ve seen clips.

Ben Tompkins: When I was a teacher, I would see clips of it and it’s yeah, it’s pretty low production.

Matt Tompkins: Yes. First off, you never see the announcers. No, you only hear them and one of them is a recognizable voice, but they never tell you who they are.

There’s not one point where they made an introduction, so it’s just some guy talking like this. I don’t know who taught sports announcers or newscasters that this is the way we want to hear them talk, because it sounds ridiculous.

Austin Anderson: It is. Where did it come from? No idea. When I watched the news, I think that I’m like, who started this? Yeah. And why? When they would go to school, they’re like, this is the way you talk or you will, why am I.

Matt Tompkins: Ending my sentence like this? Yeah, just talk normal. Like, what is the deal? What’s happening? Tell us the origin. So I’m watching it. And they have all of these, like, just shameless plugs from advertisers on there. And I don’t blame the advertisers, these companies because like, they’re hitting a market.

You know, I think it was like West Side football game. So they’re hitting the rich.

They’re in the rich, rich families, you know, Nebraska Furniture Mart ads, ortho Nebraska. I mean, these kids are going to get hurt. You might as well get the plug in now. So I don’t blame them at all.

But the way it was just presented was really cheesy. It was just a plethora of local television commercials. In fact, the entire halftime show was just one long, 20 minute commercial break and I saw so many back to.

Austin Anderson: Back, back.

Matt Tompkins: To just and they would cut back to the field, but it would be a shot at the field, and then they would cut down to the field with this pre-recorded paid advertising.

So they had like somebody from Nfm there with the guy on the sideline and he’s like, so tell us why Nebraska Furniture Mart is so amazing.

And then he would just do his, you know, obviously rehearsed lines and like the guy that they had from Nfm and I love him Nfm. But it’s not a knock on Nfm at all. Like, I mean, I love all their stuff because they.

Austin Anderson: Don’t even need to do that. They’re just doing that to support.

Matt Tompkins: They’re just doing it to support. So it’s not a knock on them. But whoever it was that was doing their public relations, he reminded me of like, you know, those inflatable arm guys they have at like, car lots. Yeah, wacky inflatable arm guys scare me.

If wacky inflatable arm thing was embodied as a human being, that would be this individual is just was talking like this. So it was just.

Ben Tompkins: The he’s a terrifying looking person you’re saying. Yeah.

Matt Tompkins: So anyhow, we’re watching this and they kept cutting all these local commercials. And that gets to today’s topic. Why are local television commercials so bad?

And I have a hunch a few reasons. Most of I mean, I’m not alone in this, right? Let me just clarify that. Like, because I’m pretty sure everybody sits and just makes fun of these terrible local television commercials when they come on their TV, right?

Austin Anderson: Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Ben Tompkins: Don’t watch local television all that much. I feel the same. I mean, not to get off track, but about local radio too, just with all these streaming services and everything, I very rarely plug in and tune in to the local the local networks.

Matt Tompkins: Yep. Well, I’m the same way.

Austin Anderson: But they’ve always been bad since they’ve always been.

Matt Tompkins: And there’s no there’s been no change. Yeah, usually the reason this happens is because what TV stations will do is they’ll say, hey, if you come to an ad budget with us. We’ll produce your commercial for free, right? That’s usually how it starts. And that is my first tip here.

So why are television local television commercials so bad? That is because, number one, you’re letting a news station produce a television commercial. Tell me, what in the world, just because they own video equipment, that’s really the only thing they have in common with, like a marketing company?

Austin Anderson: Yeah, they.

Matt Tompkins: Have no clue how marketing or advertising works. They have. All they have is you’re listening to the people who talk like this and think this is a normal way to talk, and you’re going to let them brand the company.

Austin Anderson: Shoulder pads are still in fashion. Mhm. Coming up tonight.

Matt Tompkins: We can’t have more than one woman on the screen at one time. Like it just is dumb. Like it’s so archaic and backwards. I mean I love I love anything that’s low budget Hollywood which is why I love local news broadcasts because there’s still so just there on the cusp.

Even when they have money, they don’t they still can’t just pull it all together. Yeah. You know, and it’s just fantastic to watch. It’s like watching a train wreck.

Austin Anderson: And walking into one of the buildings is like walking into the.

Ben Tompkins: 1995.

Matt Tompkins: It is. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, well that’s, that’s if you have people there anymore because somebody like a TV studio now, their new one in Omaha, where we’re based out of our home town here, Omaha, Nebraska. Midwest mindset. It’s super nice. Like it looks like you’re in like,

CNN headquarters. Oh, wow. I know W.o.w. has a new studio. That’s pretty nice. I haven’t seen the finished version. I was there when they were doing construction.

I broke in, stole some things, but I haven’t seen the finished version of it. I would say that the studio that we’re sitting in here now is the next nicest studio in Omaha behind those two, and they spent millions of dollars. I can tell you right now, we did not.

So you don’t have to have a huge budget, I guess is my point, to have a high quality product.

Ben Tompkins: But just because you have a high quality studio doesn’t mean that you know how to produce high quality and effective commercials you.

Austin Anderson: Got to have. It’s like they don’t have anyone that has an eye for it for even for their studio.

Matt Tompkins: So here’s my first tip. When you’re doing a commercial, even if you’re getting it done for free because you know everything, good quality is free, right? That’s that’s we’ve all discovered that to be true, right? Yeah. If it’s free, there’s a reason that it’s going.

Austin Anderson: To last forever.

Matt Tompkins: There’s a reason that hot dog is free, folks. It’s not real meat. But I think the first tip is don’t listen to a television news station when it comes to producing what is going to be a direct reflection of the quality of your product and service. This is a direct reflection of your company. So think of this. The first impression you have or that you give somebody is going to stick with them, likely forever. And so they’re sitting there watching television and they see multimillion dollar First National Bank commercial come on. And then they see a multimillion dollar, you know, Mercedes Benz commercial. Come on. And then they see yours and yours is it’s just it’s hard.

Austin Anderson: To even explain. It’s hard to.

Matt Tompkins: Explain how bad it is without seeing how bad these are. That is going to be what they think of you and your business. And it’s going to be it’s going to cost you so much money in the long run to try and turn that around. Now, I think there are some ways around, like if you use humor, if you’re like, hey, we’re inside, we’re in on the joke with you about how bad this commercial is.

Yeah. Um, but don’t listen to a news station to make the final decision on how you’re portrayed to the rest of the world, because that is, in a lot of ways, it’s it’s permanent.

Ben Tompkins: That back to the point that we had a couple episodes ago of just because you’re good at one thing, just because you’re good at reporting the news, doesn’t mean you’re good at coming up with effective commercials.

Matt Tompkins: I mean, news stations don’t I don’t have a clue how to run a news station. You wouldn’t put me in charge of running a news station. And I would agree with you. I’d be like, I’d be the last choice to do that. But news stations don’t know. They don’t know shit about marketing. They don’t know shit about advertising.

They don’t even know. I don’t even think they know what human beings actually enjoy, just based on the way that they talk. And like, I mean, you can tell I love going to different cities. It’s like every Walgreens and CVS is exactly the same. And every news station, the way they cover the news is all exactly the same. Yeah, the same way they speak the angles, the shots, the cutaways, all of it. It’s like it’s just rinse and repeat.

Austin Anderson: Going to break the mold. Why is everyone why is no one strayed from the format? I don’t get it. I demand answers I don’t understand.

Matt Tompkins: And they’re like, why are our ratings down so much? Let’s blame the streaming services. Yeah, maybe it’s because you’re putting out a quality product and it’s just like the same since 1985, I don’t understand, I really don’t, is it?

Austin Anderson: That is, if you have a commercial made today by a news station, it will look like 1985.

Matt Tompkins: And there are commercials from like 15, 20 years ago that businesses are still using. So we had we were we were meeting with Eric Crouch, we were doing some videos for him and he was telling us about this commercial. He did like 15, 20 years ago.

They’re still using it on the air as a commercial. So like we have like. You know, 25 year old Eric Crouch in these videos with him. And I think Tommie Frazier was in them. Right.

Austin Anderson: And people are going, man, he’s aged.

Ben Tompkins: Wow. He looks really good.

Austin Anderson: Great.

Matt Tompkins: What is the skin care treatment program he’s using? Um, one of my favorites though, because, like, here’s the local news station. They’re going to a they’re going to let they’re going to do two things. They’re going to let you run too far with this. And I’m sorry.

You’re great at running a business. You don’t know anything about marketing yourself. We think we do because we’re like, I know what’s funny, I know what’s entertaining. And if marketing was just that, if it was just coming up with a creative idea or a funny catchphrase, you’d be right.

You’d be great at it. But that’s just 2% of the equation here. And so they let business owners run with these ideas that they they are an expert on marketing advertising would tell them, would coach them and say, listen, here’s here’s the end result of what could happen here if you go this route. How about this option?

Let’s let’s flesh this out before we just do what happened in my favorite local commercial. And then I want to hear about yours. My favorite local commercial features Tommie Frazier.

And I think he’s the owner I don’t know his name of Lebanon Mattress Factory. And so in this commercial and it may still be running today, Tommie Frazier, you know, two time national championship legendary Nebraska football player.

They’re doing the traditional cuts like this mattress is 50% off. This mattress is this, this mattress is this. And then at the end they cut to this notorious scene where it features the owner of Lebda. I assume he’s the owner. Old guy looks like an owner sitting, laying in a bed like pillow behind his head, laying right next to Tommie Frazier in the bed. The owner doesn’t say one line of dialogue.

Austin Anderson: He’s just laying next to Tommie.

Matt Tompkins: Staring at Tommie with the biggest, creepiest smile on his face like. And then Tommy delivers some line, and he doesn’t do it that well. And I don’t blame Tommy. He’s not an actor, you know? He’s just. He’s.

Austin Anderson: Tommy was his line. I forgot protection so bad.

Matt Tompkins: And then after the editor didn’t cut. So then there was like a long pause. So like, Tommy goes like, yeah, stop by my friend Levita today.

And they both look at each other and then it ends. It’s like the long. It’s just awkward. It’s weird. There’s another one I saw last night. It was this guy. Apparently, there was someone at the Nebraska, like, defensive line. He’s. I guess his nickname is the polar bear. Yeah. Polar bear. Yeah. So I’m not familiar with this guy. Kind of the.

Austin Anderson: Albino.

Matt Tompkins: He’s. He’s a white.

Ben Tompkins: Is the.

Austin Anderson: Just.

Matt Tompkins: Polar? Yes. Have you seen this?

Ben Tompkins: Yeah, I’ve seen this one.

Matt Tompkins: Yeah. So this guy. So they have I’m assuming it’s probably because this is what it is to like. And that’s my next my next tip here. You don’t need to be in your own commercial. Like hire a spokesperson. Hire an actor. Come on. We’re cheap. We don’t cost a lot of money. All right. Find someone who’s charismatic within your company. The owner does not need to be in the commercial.

And we see this. I’m assuming I’m making the assumption here. I could be wrong. What I guess happened here is there was like, I’m going to put my wife and my kids in this video. They’re sitting in the living room and there’s this fake snow and they’re fake shaking like it’s cold and it just looks really cheesy.

And then the polar bear jumps up with a horrendous polar bear like head thing with not a mask, but like a mascot. Like a mascot head helmet. Yeah. And he jumps up going, ah. And then you cut to the polar bear who they do this cheesy like he slides up onto the screen. So it’s not to call it animation would be being far too.

Austin Anderson: I’ve got.

Matt Tompkins: He just slides up and he goes, hey, everybody calls me the Polar Bear. And then then I’m like, whoa, whoa, hold on a second. This is the first I’m hearing of this. Like you’re the polar is. Unless your nickname is so synonymous, like, you know, Johnny the Jet Rodgers like, okay, everybody’s calling him the jet for 50 years. Yeah. The polar bear.

Austin Anderson: Yeah. Did you name yourself?

Matt Tompkins: Did anybody validate this nickname? No.

Ben Tompkins: I think it’s the Husker. It’s a Husker football inside the Husker football community. It’s well known. Okay, the thing it’s playing on the, you know, notoriety of Husker football. He’s a Husker football player. So that’s what I think what they’re trying to go for.

Matt Tompkins: But you could do that without the commercial looking like crap. You don’t have to also make a you don’t have to make a crappy commercial. You can have fun with it. I’m not saying you don’t have fun. I’m not saying you use a spokesperson. Like even if it’s really bad acting or it’s just, hey, they’re they’re a famous player or whatever celebrity. We just want them in the commercial. That’s fine. But you don’t have to make it such a low budget thing.

Austin Anderson: I think part of the problem is, is that it’s the the sales, the sales person that’s selling the package, and then they help put together the commercial, even though they know nothing about it. And I only know that because I was with a company and building a marketing department for them.

And one of the local news stations, you know, reached out and same thing, hey, if you buy this many spots, we’ll do your commercial. So then I started going, okay, well, what would the commercial be? And we started going back and forth and she was giving me all these ideas like, okay, yeah, we could do that and this.

But she didn’t know she had no experience whatsoever in, in how to establish shots or what things would look like, like she’s just in that that’s just part of her process. Like you got to sell it, but then she’s got to help, like produce this commercial with no experience.

Ben Tompkins: But I think on the other hand, it’s about I mean, we’ve talked about perception before and we’ve talked about authenticity and the storytelling aspect.

Yes. I think you can easily produce a bad commercial, and it’s totally ineffective and does far more damage to your company than good. But then there’s also a certain level of authenticity and genuineness that comes from these people are a small business trying their best. It’s obviously they don’t have the budget that NFL does or that First National Bank does. So knowing where are you coming from?

What is your attempt like, what are you trying to really do with this and stay within that that stay within that lane because you can be cheesy, low budget, even if it’s not humorous. But if you’re authentic and people believe you, then it can be just as effective as any other commercial.

Matt Tompkins: If you’re if you’re saying we’re in on the joke with you about how low budget this is, you know that that’s true. It is, it is. I think people have in their mind they’re saving.

What I mean, you get a a, I don’t know, 3 to 5 grand around that price. You could probably get a decent production done of a commercial. You’re spending what, 20,000 or more on an ad run, like spend the extra few thousand dollars to have somebody who knows what the fuck they’re doing to produce this thing, because otherwise you’re putting that other 20 plus thousand dollars in the actual ad spend for the schedule at risk.

You can have fun, you can be authentic, you can be cheesy, you can be in on the joke. It doesn’t have to be, isn’t it? To have fly over drone shots like First National Bank or cornfields?

And you don’t have to spend $1 million, but it also doesn’t have to. To be this just crap quality thing. That is, it is far too often it just becomes you become the butt of a joke. You’re not in on the joke with with people. You’re the butt of the.

Austin Anderson: Joke, right? They’re laughing at you, not with you. And then. Yeah, to spend, you know, very little money on a commercial that you’re going to put tens of thousands of dollars behind to push out if like if you really think about it is nuts.

Matt Tompkins: Well, I think and that was my third tip. Like, cheap isn’t cheap and free isn’t free. You know, we’ve talked about how social media people have this misconception.

Well, social media is free, you know, and so I’ll just post on social media. Social media is not free unless your time has no value. So if you’re going to add up the amount of hours you’re going to have to dedicate to social media management on a daily and weekly basis, and then you say, okay, what if you spent that ten, 15, 20 hours a week getting a couple of new clients, like you’re losing a lot of money, so you’re spending money if you’re spending time, that’s just the bottom line.

And so cheap is not cheap. It’s going to cost you far more to take the cheap route in the short term than the than the long the the. If you invest money on the front end, it’s it’s going to pay off dividends in the long run because you’re going to have a video, a commercial that’s going to hold up for years. And so you can put thousands and thousands of dollars behind this thing.

You can really invest in this long term, and then you’re not you don’t risk becoming the butt of the joke. So cheap isn’t cheap. Free isn’t free.

And I would say a bonus kind of tip here, you know, don’t listen to the news stations, hire a spokesperson or an actor or somebody on on camera. Don’t be yourself that we see a lot with business. The owner and he’s on camera. And I’ve been at these shoes. Oh, yeah. Me too. If you think the final take that they actually approved to get into the commercial is bad, just imagine if you saw all the other takes where it’s like, hi, I’m reading a thing in, in front of me. And I am incapable of human emotions. Like. And is that how you want to be represented to the rest of the the the your to all of your potential prospects and customers?

Yeah. I mean, I don’t get that at all. Like you’re doing more far more harm than good.

Austin Anderson: It really is that like the perfect example is Will Ferrell in Talladega Nights where all of a sudden they’re fine, they’re talking, the camera turns on and they’re just like, what am I doing with my hands? Yeah, where do I do it? They just lock up. Well, there’s a.

Ben Tompkins: Level of, you want to be careful in telling people not to be themselves because you do want them to be themselves, but you also want people to be honest with themselves. I think that’s and if you’re honest with yourself, be honest that you shouldn’t be on camera.

You shouldn’t be the person you can hire somebody to represent. Or maybe you are really good on on camera and you can be yourself. You don’t want to be fake. I don’t think that’s the recommendation we’re telling people.

Matt Tompkins: I think it goes back to like the pitch, how they’re selling this because they’re playing to the business owner’s ego when they say, we’ll put you in the commercial. And so as the business owner, we think, oh, me, oh, shucks. Like, really? I don’t know if I could do that.

That’d be cool. And they go home and we talk about it with our spouse and we’re like, they want me to be in a TV commercial, and then they’re not on the.

Austin Anderson: You’re going to be on.

Matt Tompkins: Tv. It’s not on the business owner. I think it’s unfair to put that on the business owner. That is an injustice on the part of their kind.

Austin Anderson: Of being manipulated.

Matt Tompkins: Their they are definitely being manipulated because if the person actually cared about the end result of this video that they’re creating, they would say they would not pitch them to be in it unless they were naturally and naturally could perform, have charisma, and just actually be themselves and read a script on camera if they can. If that’s not their thing, you know, that may not be their jam, that’s fine. You know, there are so many other options because.

Austin Anderson: And it’s hard to, I think, for the sales person that sold it because they don’t want to lose the sale. So even though they might think this person is going to be terrible on camera.

Yeah. They just they go with it and they’re like, no, you’re doing great because they don’t want to say, oh, you’re doing bad. And then have that person go, I’m not on that.

Ben Tompkins: You want them. You want the customer to be honest. You want the people producing it, the business you’re working with that’s producing the commercial, to be honest as well. I mean, honesty is a huge, huge factor in producing effective marketing. Yes.

Austin Anderson: And unfortunately, most honesty in general will hurt some feelings.

Matt Tompkins: And and it’s avoided. And when we when we establish our core values I put like honesty is at the top. It’s number one. And there are a lot of times I’ve had clients where we just like, I don’t think we’re the right fit for you. Yeah. You know, and I’ll help you find what is. But, you know, I think it’s so key.

Austin Anderson: To be able to be able to do that will take you a while though. First, like just over all your years. Yeah.

Matt Tompkins: When I started out, when I first started out like you have to you’re you’re saying yes to everything and you learn really quickly because those clients that you knew, you had a hunch, this isn’t really a good fit. They end up being the whole relationship gets soured in the long run.

And so you learn some hard lessons. Like, I have to be honest with them, you know, it can’t just be about making a quick buck every chance I get. Right. And you’ll make more money in the long term if you commit to that approach.

But yeah, a lot of agencies in marketing, a lot of. A television stations. I think probably 100% of television stations, they do not have the interest, the best interest of the business owner at the forefront of this at all. They just want to make a quick buck. They want to get you to pay for ad time on their station.

They’re desperate for cash because Ben’s only watching streaming services and people aren’t watching local television anymore. You know, I mean that they are desperate to get your money, so they’re going to manipulate you and they’re going to tell you whatever they need to tell you, and they’re going to go back to this old playbook of, listen, it’s free, right? It’s free. You can’t beat that. We’re going to produce for free, and then you’re going to dump 2030.

Austin Anderson: And if it’s terrible, they’re like, well, you know, but you didn’t you were in it.

Matt Tompkins: You were in it. So that’s the reason it was terrible. It’s not on us. You know, if they really gave a shit about the business owner, they really wanted to actually help them increase sales, grow their business.

They would be honest with them and say, listen, like we would love to have you like sample. If you want to be in the commercial, we’d love to have you read some scripts, but we have actors on standby.

You know, a couple hundred bucks, 300 bucks for a day to get this person to come in. They are a professional at doing this, and so they’re going to come across in the best possible way because that’s that’s my last tip here. It’s like kind of a bonus one.

So so far the three we had don’t listen to local news stations. Cheap isn’t cheap. Free isn’t free. And hire a spokesperson or an actor unless you are naturally good at doing that. The last thing is you have to keep the customer. In first place at all times, because I don’t think I’ve ever seen a local TV commercial. Even national commercials make this mistake where they are saying the customer is the hero of this story. The business is the guide here to help them and call them to action. Give them a plan, you know, show them. Here’s what you need to do.

Business owners and you see this on I mean probably 80% of all websites. We make it all about us. And commercials are no different. We make it all about us, the business, and we don’t make it about what our business can actually do for our customers. And that is where you’re going to win. And that’s an easy thing to do. It’s just a mindset shift, right? You know, you have to say the people don’t care about your business.

They just don’t you care about your business, right. You know, that’s because you have to. People don’t care about your business. They care about what you can do, what your business can do for them. Right?

Austin Anderson: Because they just want to know how are you going to help them thrive and survive.

Matt Tompkins: So that’s why you see commercials that you initially you think they don’t make sense, like drug commercials, or it’s just like happy people frolicking in a field. Somebody’s doing, you know, sidewalk chalk, chalk art. And you’re like, what does this have to do with with.

Austin Anderson: Stds.

Multiple People: With what does this have.

Matt Tompkins: To do with shingles? Which, by the way, is it just me or the shingles? Commercial is getting a little bit terrifying these days.

Ben Tompkins: Shingles in general is terrifying.

Matt Tompkins: It’s like they’re really, really very ominous.

Ben Tompkins: One in shingles.

Matt Tompkins: Lays.

Multiple People: In death.

Matt Tompkins: Shingles lay in the darkness. And they could come out at any moment like I’m like. Yeah. But the reason they do that is because what they’re doing is they’re painting a picture of the end result of using that product or taking that drug. That’s what they’re doing, and that’s why they work. And so if you’re if you’re trying to come up with creative ideas, I would just default back to the simple premise.

All right. What is it? What’s the problem your business is solving for your customer. And then how can you paint a picture in any medium, your website, a story you tell, a blog you write, a social media post, a television commercial? How can you paint this picture of that end result of your solution to that problem?

And when you do that, you’re going to win because everybody tries to be cute, funny, creative. And when you’re having a television station, a news station produce it. It’s not going to come across as any of those things.

We’re going to laugh at it, but for all the wrong reasons. And I don’t see a lot of people keeping that that kind of mindset at the forefront.

Austin Anderson: The sales person to a lot of times is the one that’s writing the script. They gather all the information from you and from the website, and then they write it, but they’re like, they’re a sales person. Yeah, that’s their talent, that’s their craft. And then they’re like, they’re just write something. And then because I’ve read them personally with this, I’m like, what is this?

Matt Tompkins: It’s the equivalent of like and we only do this with like marketing and advertising where we think because we just let people do it right, we say, oh, you’re a sales person.

Yeah, sure you do the copywriting. You write the script for this commercial. Yeah. Let’s do it. Like we don’t do that in any other area. I don’t call a plumber to come change my tires. You know, I don’t hire an electrician to come replace my roof, you know, I mean, I, you know, I do hire Ben to build all my human cat trees because he’s good at building human cat. They’re so comfortable, among other things. But the.

Multiple People: Best.

Matt Tompkins: Human cat trees. The new running reference point. I think you’re on the podcast. But yeah, we don’t do that in any. You don’t call a your plumber to perform surgery on you. Why are you letting some person who’s an expert and good at sales do something?

They have no fucking clue what they’re doing. They have none. And that’s why these commercials start off. You have no guidance. They do not have your best interests at heart, and they’re just trying to get your money. That’s really all they’re trying to do. And you.

Austin Anderson: Know what? What I found interesting once when I was working for radio station cluster, is that like, I thought it would be best to have a copywriter who is good at writing commercials and scripts and telling stories. Write them for all the sales agents, you know, so like they do the sale, then that the copywriter gathers it, writes it and does that and then but when it ended up happening, is that a lot of these sales people, they wanted to write the scripts because that was like the fun part.

Matt Tompkins: Everybody wants to be they.

Austin Anderson: Want to be creative. But they weren’t creative. Yeah. So they didn’t want to like, let that.

Matt Tompkins: Even that wouldn’t even go to that because everybody’s creative. Everybody.

Austin Anderson: Yeah you’re right.

Matt Tompkins: But I just don’t know how to write. They don’t know how to they haven’t done any sort of training or practice or anything. They don’t know the rules of the game that we’re playing here. And then that’s what it turns out bad. It’s not that they couldn’t write right. They just don’t know how to write, you know? Yeah. Right.

Austin Anderson: Yeah. No, no I think that yeah that’s. Yeah.

Multiple People: That’s right.

Matt Tompkins: All right. For Austin, for Ben, for Martin I’m Matt Tompkins. Thank you so much for listening to Midwest Mindset. Don’t forget if you want the easy answer, the easy button if you will, to your marketing. It is the easy box. Right now the link is in the show notes.

You can get started for free. You give us 30 minutes. We. Of you 30 days of content. We do know what the f we’re doing and what we’re talking about. So you have that going for you as well.

We are not a news station, but I am going to close out the podcast like this.

Full Written Transcript of The Episode

MATT: The true secret to success in business is not the business plan. It’s not reconciling your books. It’s none of that. No, it’s being delusional in this episode of Midwest Mindset.

We are going to talk about the true secret to success in business having a delusional mindset. Hello and welcome back to Midwest Mindset, the podcast that makes marketing simple and easy to do. My name is Matt Tompkins of Two Brothers Creative, where you can make your marketing easy. With the easy box, you give us 30 minutes.

We give you 30 days of content. I am joined by our producer in the studio, the control room, where he doesn’t do anything all day long. He just pretends to work. Martin McHugh. He’s Irish, we think.

We’re not really sure. We can’t understand him with the accent. He’s a little bit of everything. He’s a little bit of everything. He’s kind of a mutt, I believe is the term.

AUSTIN: I can’t decide if his last name is more of an 80s action hero or villain. Mchugh.

MATT: So, McHugh.

AUSTIN: Yeah, it’s probably like a detective. Yeah, he’s.

MATT: A man who’s also had, like, ten different nicknames. None of them have stuck and people just continue to mispronounce his first name. Nobody can say his first name. Mired it, and you’ll say it to him and say his name is Martin. Oh. Hey, Martin.

AUSTIN: I know every time I practice in the mirror in the morning.

MATT: Austin Anderson is here on the couch, too, along with Ben Tompkins. Austin’s the new, the newbie, the noob, the rookie, the rookie card. You need to get yourself the Austin Anderson rookie card. You worth the money someday. It’s worth the money someday. And that day is not today.

Ben is a self-proclaimed inventor of the human cat tree. He loves to make cat trees or human beings, and cats can intimately spend time together. You can learn more at human cat reorg like you have.

BEN: Never looked at a cat tree and thought, how? How comfortable would that be to crawl that little box?

AUSTIN: It’s all I just connected the dots. It’s all making sense. Now you’re Omaha live sketch where you’re a kitty. Oh, yeah. Yes.

BEN: I don’t remember that.

AUSTIN: That was.

MATT: You blacked out, I think, for that sketch.

AUSTIN: That was, you know, that was the foreshadowing of.

BEN: Human Cat.

MATT: Yeah, exactly. I was trying to explain foreshadowing to my wife the other night.

AUSTIN: Didn’t go over well.

MATT: No, it’s because she gets mad at me whenever we’re watching TV shows or movies. Or I’ll say out loud, oh, she’s going to die. Oh, it was. She did it. And she did.

AUSTIN: The same thing.

MATT: Dude, how did you know? And I’ll go. It’s called foreshadowing.

And then I had to mansplain what foreshadowing was, which, as we both know, by the way, mansplaining is when you explain something to someone else in a condescending tone your mansplaining.

Mansplaining, man, am I mansplaining? Mansplaining? So mansplaining, by the way, is every man knows goes over it very well with women. Women love to have things mansplain to them. You know, if you want.

AUSTIN: To go to bed at night in silence, yes, it’s the best. Do some.

BEN: Mansplaining.

MATT: Do some mansplaining. Yes. That’s. Yeah. She will no.

AUSTIN: Longer talk to you for the night.

MATT: Yeah. It’ll be a week and you’ll hear back. But no, I was trying to explain that to her. I was like, well, that’s where this little this little nugget was brought here, you know, it’s like, oh, the girl had a sliver in her finger.

And in a world or world. And she said, it’ll just push its way out. And that’s how you know how the movie’s going to end, right there in that little moment.

AUSTIN: Right. And I just watched Ghostbusters with my son, and I saw some foreshadowing I never caught before. Bill Murray goes to Sigourney Weaver’s penthouse for the first time, and on her counter is a carton of eggs and a package of Stay Puft Marshmallow. Yes, I.

MATT: Remember that little. That little drop. Yes. Foreshadowing, by the way, nothing to do with foreskin. Totally different topic. We’re not getting into that one.

No, which is another one. Next episode. I’ve been watching this show. It’s like Naked dating, where they have a game show where they all start off naked and you just see their naked bodies slowly. It starts at the waist down and then the waist and then up.

And then, like you eliminate people purely based on looks, purely based on looks. It is the most fantastic reality show I’ve ever seen. It’s some in the UK it was. It’s on HBO Max.

AUSTIN: Is it French?

MATT: It sounds. Oh my God, it’s just like the variety of penises that you’re exposed to. It’s it’s educational really. But I didn’t realize that foreskin was as popular as it is throughout the planet. Oh, yeah. I think we’re kind.

BEN: Of minority there.

MATT: Yeah, we’re hanging in the minority there. I’d be like, you know, but, you know, anyhow, let’s get to marketing and business because we can’t talk about foreskins all day long. Yeah.

BEN: We we we’re sounding like we’re sounding pretty delusional. Don’t be the.

AUSTIN: Foreskin of.

MATT: Your business, Ben. Yeah. Good segway. Yes. Okay, so here is the true secret to to success in business. Because everybody’s searching for this.

And there’s all how many clickbait articles are there out there? They’re like, this is the secret. There’s a Michael J. Fox. Fox got in on this madness with the secret to my success.

Remember that movie in the 80s, a terrible movie? It was a terrible movie. He slept with his aunt. The secret to success in business is. Well, there are a lot of things that factor into like being successful in business.

Most of it is like the boring shit. It’s all the things you don’t want to do that business owners put off. Like, you know, taxes and paying bills and, you know, not racking up credit card debt. There’s all these things you’re reconciling your books and having processes and procedures.

A lot of things we’ve talked about in this podcast, all those things, yes, they’re very important. You need to do those things. But if I had to pick one thing that is the true like secret defining difference that I have seen and noticed between successful entrepreneurs and business owners and those who who don’t make it all the way, would be having a delusional mindset. And what does that mean?

Okay, so all right, 51% of all businesses go out of business in the first 3 to 5 years. All right. By the way, we just celebrated our three year anniversary here at Two Brothers Creative. So we are almost out of the window there. Only a couple more years of this to go, boys, and we’ll be in the top 49%.

BEN: Then we can go out of business our sixth year and set a.

MATT: Whole new oh, we’re going to be in a category of one. Only 6% of all businesses in the United States ever reach $1 million.

AUSTIN: That’s wild to me, by the way. That’s crazy. Yeah. When you first told me that, I was like, that is nuts and so low.

MATT: I don’t know the percentage, but it’s a crazy percentage. It’s like 60, 70 or 80% of all businesses are solopreneur, where it’s just one person in the United States, like, you know, it’s kind of wild to look at those statistics.

But you look at these numbers, like as a business owner, you kind of have to be a little bit delusional to get into business in the first place because, you know, we don’t know those statistics when we get into it. Right?

But we start to feel it right away. We start to feel the pinch. We’re like, oh my God. Like, this is tough. You know, like anybody who’s like gotten into real estate. That’s a perfect, perfect example. So real estate they get their real estate license or realtor. Now I’m going to go out, make $1 million a year. This is going to be easy. It’s going to sell some homes can use my charm, my wit, my good looks and my good smells.

Yes. And what we don’t realize, though, is the average age, the average age for the the age for the average real estate agent in the United States. 60 years old, six zero. The average income under $17,000 a year, that is the average income. So when we get into any business, even if it’s like a solopreneur venture, we’re slapped in the face.

BEN: And it’s like, you.

AUSTIN: Don’t want to know.

MATT: Like those. Did you like that? Slap those? Yeah. It’s not very good one. You’re all for the people listening on audio only. They’ll have the shot. But yeah, like the. We find out really quick how hard it is to run a business that’s in business, let alone profitable, let alone successful, let alone $1 million in revenue. Successful.

So you have to be delusional to a degree. But what I’m talking about is in that path, in that journey, there are things that will happen that are these like gut blows, these just massive blows that any average person, if they’re dealt one of these blows, they would be curled up in the corner of the shoe department at Kohl’s, crying and crying, and would not leave for at least a couple of days.

And they would say, forget this, I’m out, man, this is dumb. I’m going to go back to my job at Kohl’s.

AUSTIN: Live at Kohl’s.

MATT: Department. Yes, I used to work at the shoe department at Kohl’s too. Did you overnights. Yeah, baby. But you have to be able to absorb these blows. Keep calm and carry on as they say. Right.

And then focus on what you know you need to get done. Now when I say delusional, like sometimes we’re delusional, we don’t ignore all the things, okay? We ignore too many things. We’re like, okay, well, maybe you should pay attention to the taxes or the different things you aren’t doing.

AUSTIN: Anything that can result in prison time. Yes.

MATT: Don’t do anything illegal, at least not yet. But you have to have this kind of a the ability to compartmentalize things is what I’m talking about. You have to be able to compartmentalize.

Like I had a week recently where it was like, okay, this was a sequence of real things that happened, got found out. I was told, you’re going to have you owe $90,000 in taxes by the end of the year, which was not expecting it. Turns out it was like a clerical error thing learned. We’re going to have to pay instead of $17,000.

AUSTIN: Wait, how many days did you have to go before you knew it was an error? I just.

MATT: Found out like it was like over a month, 5 or 6 weeks.

AUSTIN: Now. So you had to you that was your shoulders for it till you found out. Oh yeah.

MATT: That out how you’re going to pay $90,000 in taxes you didn’t expect. The $17,000 payment is actually $67,000. You’re going to have to pay us for this other thing, you know, and then you have swings. Like most business owners, we’re going to have that natural churn with clients where it’s just nothing you can control. It just happens.

And so you might have a month where you have like a 10 or $12,000 swing in a matter of a few days. It’s like all of a sudden poof. And so you get dealt with these blows. Like literally by the end of the week, I was like talking about it. And people would look at me like, are you okay?

Because that really sounds like a rough week. And I’m like, I’m good. Like, I mean, at some point you just kind of kind of laugh at it because it’s ridiculous. You know, it’s these numbers are so ridiculous.

BEN: Yeah, there’s a level of delusion, but then also a level of ignorance that’s mixed in that. Yeah, that’s.

AUSTIN: What I was thinking like about.

MATT: Willful delusion, not ignorance.

AUSTIN: Well, to get started, like being ignorant of those numbers, like 6% only make it. Yeah. You know, like like not knowing that stuff before you jump into business. I think not knowing. Good. Because then you’d be like, why would I even try? Why even.

BEN: Bother? And I think in our history, when the other, you know, ventures that we’ve gone through with, like playing in a band and you doing stand up, I mean, you have a big sense of ignorance. Not that you’re choosing to ignore, but you just are entering this field and you don’t know anything about it and you’re just going ignorance blindly. Ignorance is bliss until you figure it out.

But if you had known everything that you know now, maybe not because the company’s gotten to be pretty successful, but all of the turmoil that you’ve gone through when you first started the company, that would probably push a lot of people away. Yeah, right off the bat.

So you have to have this sense of ignorance to a degree starting out, which I would I would classify underneath that umbrella of delusion.

MATT: Like, yeah, I’m talking about like it’s like it’s like an optimism, optimism versus pessimism.

Like you have to be like a real realistic optimist or whatever the the term is like you have to have you can’t ignore reality, you know, and like we just two brothers created the first time around when we were doing the TV show Omaha Live. Like, I didn’t even know what an entrepreneur was, let alone that I was one.

BEN: I still don’t know how to spell it.

MATT: It’s a hard word. Entrepreneurialship why is that even a word? We have entrepreneurial, entrepreneurial ism, entrepreneurial ship.

AUSTIN: They just keep adding things. They just.

MATT: Keep adding.

BEN: More vowels.

MATT: It’s dumb. You know, entrepreneurs are struggling with just entrepreneur, let alone all these other extra words but or letters. But entrepreneur being an entrepreneur, I didn’t know what it was. I remember the first year I didn’t pay any taxes or I didn’t take I didn’t keep track of anything on my books and I had to pay like seven.

We had to take out a loan, like a line of credit on the house to pay this like $27,000 tax bill, because I just didn’t have a clue. I didn’t even know that was a thing. You know, I’m like getting.

And so you learn a lot of these lessons really quick. And like the first time around, that was probably two and a half, three years of doing that wasn’t like we went out of business because we were really just doing a we had a few clients, and then we were doing video production for, and then the television show was the main driver. We were doing television show did not pay Dick. I mean, it paid $500 per episode. Gross, dude. And not taxes for a weekly 30 minute television show.

AUSTIN: Out of work so much you put into that.

MATT: Yeah. So much work is but mine.

You’re right. Like the first time around. Like so much learning experience. Looking back now, I mean, a we learned how to produce a high quality show on a freaking shoestring, non-existent budget. Yeah. Which we now translate to how we help clients because, you know, we’re going to charge them a much more fair rate than what you’re going to see at any other marketing agency, production, content creation.

So that was a huge learning curve, learning how to lead and motivate teams because we had to by the end of the seventh season, we had 24 total people volunteering their time every week, the equivalent to each of them having a 15 to 20 hour part time job.

Yeah, and they were not getting paid.

And it was just so you had to learn ways like, how do we get people invested in this idea so that it’s a team effort, you know, how do you reward, how do you incentivize when you don’t have money and you learn that money isn’t even the big incentivize either?

AUSTIN: What do you do in that in that case? Because I think that’s a good example.

MATT: So a I started by always proving I’m willing to do everything I’m asking you to do. So I’m going to show up every time we shoot. I’m going to help tear down sets, break down lights.

I’m never going to be like when we played in a band. I’m probably the only lead singer of any band that ever existed that actually did most of the.

I would go pick up the trailer, then go pick up the sound equipment, then pick up our bass player. You didn’t have a car to drive.

AUSTIN: Your own.

MATT: Roadie? Yeah. Then I would drive home.

We would load up all the gear. I would be the one leading the setup of all the equipment. Then we’d do a four hour gig, and then we’d have a four hour take down and tear down of all the equipment. Then we drive back just so I would be like, all right, I’m going to do this.

AUSTIN: And that’s why it’s important. When you started a band to be delusional. Yes. Because you did not know, know that you were going to be doing that after playing a show and then have to do all that work. You know, that’s that’s you’re up all night.

MATT: Oh, it’s relentless. Like, and you’re young, you’re drinking like, I don’t know how we did it because I mean, I have like a beer and I’m hungover for two days now. I don’t know how we did that back in the day. I mean, Ben had so many women coming after him as the drummer. So many.

BEN: They’re still coming.

MATT: They’re still coming after him. There’s a lady in Grand Island. She knows she’s the leopard lady. Remember her? Yeah. Oh, wow. The leopard lady.

He used to go around interviewing 80s tribute bands. And this is in like the early 2000, late 2000. And she was on to first our bass player, then Ben. And she was she was relentless, like, you’re going to sleep with me. And she’s like 30 years older than us. I mean, like, not remotely.

BEN: Wore leopard.

MATT: Pants. She wore leopard pants everywhere she went. She was a leopard lady.

AUSTIN: That was her. You know, that’s an example of her modifying her business strategy. It was probably main bands. And then she just. I’m just going to target band bands.

MATT: From now on, I’m going to target bass players of tribute bands. She found her niche. And then and then you went after the bass player. She’s like, nope. She had to make the pivot, made a pivot. All right, I’m going after bass players and and tribute bands. Yeah. Looking at the.

AUSTIN: Statistics, who gets asked less to get laid?

MATT: Oh, it’s the bass player. It’s not working. So you have to have this like it’s your eyes on this dream. Like you’re a dreamer. If you’re an entrepreneur, if you’re a business owner, you’re a dreamer. I think everybody’s a dreamer, I think everybody I mean, nobody out there, I think a true delusional like sociopath and like the scary way is a non dreamer. Like, I mean, everybody has a dream, right?

Everybody has a good idea. And I think really it’s just it’s can you can you compartmentalize all these different things and then can you go through really challenging horrible experiences? Let’s be honest. Like the TV show is like I mean, nearly ruined my marriage. Like by the end of the show, the last episode, I mean, it was like at this, like, okay, we’re at a crossing point, like, this is.

AUSTIN: Like, how many hours do you think you put on in a week? A week on average?

MATT: Well, I mean, we edited the TV show at night, so 30 minute show. So you had a I mean, I would have 42 hour straight editing marathons at least once a week where I would just edit. I mean, I was doing a lot of drugs at the time, so that’s why that’s why that’s not quite as impressive as it sounds.

I mean, it was bad, but no, that’s how I would like maintain that. And then so yeah, I was going through a severe opiate addiction at the time of doing that, which was taxing. I don’t even know how I survived that, because I did that whole show at maybe like 30 or 40% capacity, that entire most of that show.

Because just because when drugs like you’re going through the withdrawals and you’re on and you’re off and it’s just like, so it’s so taxing on your body. Like I was nowhere close to 100% as a person. So yeah, it was, I would say probably 80 to 90 hours a week because, I mean, we would film like all day Saturday, all day Sunday, sometimes during the week. And then there was like the last season of the show, like, and then you.

AUSTIN: Had writer’s groups. Yeah. You had that.

MATT: For, well, for half for three of the. Yeah, two and a half of those years. I was also hosting radio shows for three hours during the day,

Monday through Friday. Yeah, I did a news talk show, and then I was doing mornings on suite 98 five. So for the last season. So I don’t know how I did it, you know, I mean, having that team I think is crucial. It was you know, it started off as just literally me and Ben and our cousin Adam with just like some one camera for lights.

And that was all we had basement of our dad’s church. And then you build out from there, you grow from there. And so I think you have to be able to. Learn. You have to be delusional in a in a constructive way.

You have to keep your eye on the dream and be like, yeah, I know this looks impossible. I know people are going to tell me I’m crazy, but I’m just going to keep pushing forward, which is what people told us. They were like, you can’t do a show for 500 bucks a week.

MATT: You’re not going to be getting any ratings. And, you know, being number one rated show in its time slot and ended up everybody thought the television station produced it, and they had nothing to do with the production. We did it literally out of our basement. So I think you have to have that.

But you also you have to learn through those failures and setbacks and then apply them to the to the next leg, the next venture, which is what we did here with the, the, the, the version of our company here today is applying all these things and lessons that we’ve learned over the years to today. But I think no matter what stage of success or where your business is at, you’re always going to have these setbacks, these blows that seem devastating.

And some people can take them on and compartmentalize them in a healthy way and be like, okay, I can’t do anything about a $90,000 tax bill today. I don’t think I ever could do anything about $90,000 tax bill just.

AUSTIN: Run like Wesley Snipes did.

MATT: And then you have two options. Like I could compartmentalize it and I can just pretend like it doesn’t exist forever. And it turns into a big problem that turns you into that statistic of 51% that go out of business.

That’s not the answer. Or you can compartmentalize it in a healthy way. And that’s what we’re talking about here today. And I think that’s the key takeaway here is compartmentalize things in a healthy way, where it’s like, I’m not going to let this derail me from my focus of where I need to be paying attention, because if you look at it and you play this game of a having a scarcity mindset where it’s just, oh God, how am I going to do this?

How am I have $90,000 taxable? I don’t know how to taxable. Well, then you think, well, I need to hire this new person to expand. I can’t hire a new person if I’ve got $90,000 tax bill. And then then you can’t expand and then you lose this business opportunity and then it’s going to have this compounding effect. And so if you you have to be able to compartmentalize it not forever to deal with it later accordingly.

Because you can’t control these events. They’re going to happen. They’re going to get. And that’s why that week I just laughed. I’m like, this is ridiculous.

BEN: Quite maniacally, I just heard this very scary laughter coming out of Matt’s office was a number of minutes. That’s what that was crying. Is he laughing? I’ll come back later. It’s a.

AUSTIN: Combination. It’s a.

MATT: Combination. Combination. The laughter.

AUSTIN: You know, when you were talking earlier about dreams. You know, these people that have everyone dreams. And then one component is taking action on that dream. So what would you say to someone that you know has all these dreams? They talk about their dreams. We’ve all know these people, but they’ve never, ever took that first step, that first, just putting it into action. This is a.

MATT: Great this is great. And I told this to my dog the other night and when I was talking to them. You’re going to notice the thing I talk to my dogs like there’s there are people that say, this is $1 billion company. This is $1 billion idea. This is $1 million company. This is the idea.

There’s no such thing until you have $1 billion offer. Until you have $1 million offer, it is not worth anything. If you have a great idea, that’s awesome. But guess what? Everybody on this planet has a great idea. Literally everybody on this planet has a great idea. Ben and I came up with Celebrity Farts in a bag 15 years ago. Yeah, and it became a thing. Everybody laughed at us at the time.

AUSTIN: That’s amazing. Yes.

MATT: What is Brad Pitt’s fart smell like? Oh, it’s like potpourri, but no, but celebrity farts in a bag aside.

AUSTIN: I think, like, wood chips and musk.

MATT: Yeah, that’s exactly what Brad Pitt’s farts smell like. Thank you. Yes. So everybody has a great idea. The difference is, are you willing to actually fucking do it?

Are you willing to actually step up on that stage in front of that crowd? Are you willing to take out that loan for your business?

Are you willing to actually share your idea with somebody else in the first place? A lot of people have these great ideas. We leave them up here and we don’t even we don’t even verbalize them. We just we’re terrified of the result or.

AUSTIN: Even what people will say to you about it. Yes. You know. Yep. So, I mean, what would you say to someone that is just so worried about what people think? They don’t want to do their idea because they don’t want anyone to say something bad about them.

MATT: Then I would say for them, don’t start a business because you’re not ready. You know, I think, I think there are these key fundamental qualities like that. Compartmentalizing is one we’re talking about today, but I think, you know, having the ability to have this I don’t know this.

Like I don’t give a shit attitude where like, you care more than anything, but you kind of have to not care about anything. Yeah, you know, that’s true. And you have to, like, step up and be like, I’m willing to, like, put myself out there.

And I think that’s part of, like, us growing up, you know, Ben and I grew up with in theater musicals, and we had a lot of performance growing up. And so being on the radio, when I got to the radio, I remember showing up and I was like. I never saw it as being on a big stage in front of tens of thousands of people.

I was like, I was meeting these two people in a room. I just trying to make each other laugh. Okay, that’s easy. Let’s do this. You know? And so I think you have to have that kind of delusional mindset. Sometimes it comes easier than for some people, than others, but you have to embrace it. And you have to know which which choice you’re going to make. Because the stakes are you compartmentalize it.

You know, if you don’t compartmentalize it and you just let it overwhelm you, it’s going to destroy you in real time. If you compartmentalize it and you don’t deal with it in a constructive, healthy way, it’s going to slow you, destroy you over time. But the other option is you make the choice to compartmentalize it, apply it to what you’re doing, face it head on, and that’s where you win, you know?

But it is a skill set. Just being able to take the blows and not let them for real, turn you into a freaking wet blanket on the on the ground.

AUSTIN: I think it comes with age and time to being able to like, you know, taking because when you first take blows, you’re like, you do want to sleep in a cold. You know what?

MATT: You know what it is like what you’re talking about. So I have this theory. Everybody has a crucible in their life they go through. And a crucible is like a crucible is like an extreme test. I think in the definition is like an extreme test of, like, fire and steel. Like they get graphic with this description of this test.

AUSTIN: The dark night of the soul. Yes. What I’ve heard.

MATT: And so.

AUSTIN: Like in a movie I talk about.

MATT: That. But when I went through my addiction and hit the lowest lows, you can get like literally praying to die, just be killed because it was just torture.

Yeah, I look back at that now as, as a blessing, you know, it’s like that is the that was the best thing that could have happened to me, because that was my crucible. And coming out the other side of it, it gave me all this like perspective and wisdom and things I didn’t really have before.

Like I didn’t have an understanding of of grace for other people or myself I didn’t have I wasn’t able to empathize with people in situations and think, okay, well, I’ve been through something, not the same thing, but maybe I should be open to understanding this.

You know, understanding and appreciating what you have and what you’re working towards, and that the risks are or the rewards are worth the risks, you know, so I would not have been able to host radio shows, a talk show for three hours a day. If not, you know, because that was right when I decided to get sober and clean in 2016.

Oh yeah, and start a news talk show of all years to try and stay sober in news talk radio. Yeah, dude. Oh yeah, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. That was a that was.

But I made it through and it’s like but I look back at that as like that’s a blessing. You know I, I’m saying it’s like all shits and giggles now. But when you go tough it’s just it’s always a challenge.

But. Right. You’re right. It’s not even an age thing. It’s just the wisdom of going through these crucibles and these challenges that define you like that is truly where you discover who you are. And if you’re if you’re cut from the cloth to do this because you.

AUSTIN: Can look back on that and go, I got through this insane addiction. Like I can get through anything, basically, because that’s extreme. So if you can make it through that, then you know other things that come your way in business or life in general. You’re like, all right, you can look back at those past wins, you know, whether small or big, and be like, I can I can do this.

MATT: I mean, if I can go from mainlining cocaine in the bathroom of a Casey’s General store to where we are today, I think anything is possible.

BEN: Where now you’re at a Kwik Trip moving on up these days.

MATT: I’m at a quick trip because this is Casey.

AUSTIN: You’ve only hit rock bottom if you go to Mega mart.

MATT: What has happened to Casey? That’s a topic for another episode. Oh, God. Oh my God, I don’t know, but the original Casey’s are doing. They’re still solid, but all the new ones. What the fuck?

AUSTIN: I actually before they built a new cases in Wahoo because I lived in Wahoo for a while. They had an older one and I actually got them a new roof because no one they wouldn’t fix it. Every time it rained, it poured inside. They had buckets everywhere and I just. And I like the ladies, like the people that work there. I’m like, I’m going to get you a new roof. So I would call corporate and I’d be like, I can’t believe you treat your employees like this. You don’t even fix the roof. I’d send pictures. And then it took about two weeks. They came out and new roof on. Yeah. There you go.

MATT: Good job. Austin. Thanks. We’re ending this episode on a high note.

AUSTIN: Guess what? I’d go in there. They give me free pizza. Really? Yeah. Ladies.

MATT: And their pizza is not bad. Yeah, yeah, it’s not bad.

Not too shabby. Thanks for joining us here today on Midwest Mindset. If you want to make your marketing easy, there is no easier solution than the easy box. It’s as simple as this.

You give us 30 minutes, we give you 30 days of content and we’ll post it for you on all your socials, all your all the socials, you know, the socials where your kids are. You’re afraid to go because of what your grandma might say. My grandma thinks she’s sending a message to someone.

She’s just posting things. I think my uncle got on there and he thought he was asking Google a question. He was really just on Facebook. It’s all it’s always just kind of a gamble what’s going to happen.

But if you want to promote and grow your business, you need content. You need it out there on a daily basis. Quality content that. Reflects you and your unique perspective, experience and success. And that’s what the box does. We take it all off your plate for you 30 minutes, 30 days of content. Get started now the link is in the show notes. You can click on the link. I’m told with your fingers or Ben, any other.

BEN: Body part.

MATT: Any other body part.

AUSTIN: And once you get that Elon Musk brain chip, you just think about it. Yes, if you don’t die from.

MATT: It pretty soon, well, let’s hope that doesn’t happen.

Full Written Transcript of The Episode

MATT: Just because you’re good at one thing does not mean you’re good at everything. This is important for every business owner to accept and understand. We’re talking about that and why perception is all that matters in marketing in this episode of Midwest Mindset.

Welcome back to Midwest Mindset, the podcast that makes marketing easy to understand and simple to do. I’m your host,

Matt Tompkins. Here in the Big Chair. We have a newly revamped new and improved Midwest mindset. We have branded bottles of water. We have branded cups to pour the water into. We are not conserving plastic.

BEN: We made that water ourselves.

MATT: Yes, it’s a filtration process and I’m actually doing right now while I’m hosting the show. Oh, yes. All right. All right, so we need to introduce everybody who is here on the show.

Everybody from the Two Brothers Creative Ensemble here. So first up, we have the man who’s behind the scenes. He’s running the switchboard. He’s editing videos. Nobody can pronounce his name.

He’s the man who’s never had a golden tan. He soars through the digital skies like a mythical creature of old. He’s a master of puns. Really bad puns. They’re pretty bad.

They’re pretty bad. They’re really bad. He doesn’t just edit videos. Edit videos. He conjures them up with his weaving his digital skills, leaving you spellbound. And if you haven’t, if you haven’t caught on yet.

He is named after Merlin the Wizard and his name is Myron McHugh. Myron in the control booth there. We didn’t give Myron a microphone, so you’re not going to hear from him, and that’s intentional. Next up we have. Next up we have the the new guy on the crew. He’s the the newbie. What do we do?

What do they call him like the rookie. He’s the rookie fish. He’s the fresh fish. Fish. Oh yeah.

BEN: They say in prison. Yeah.

AUSTIN: Better than fresh.

MATT: Meat. And this is similar to prison. This this company working here at least.

So yes. We now present you a legend. He dwells on a dwells on a homestead where apparently he has chickens, ducks, pigs, dogs, rabbits who all dance in perfect harmony. I think he has some kids there too, right? Yes. I mean, you wrote this, so you just left your kids out of the mix?

AUSTIN: I did.

MATT: I did care more about the pigs than the chickens. He’s no ordinary farmer. He’s a masked maestro of multimedia. He’s a video editing virtuoso.

And you can tell him Austin wrote his own intro because you’re really talking yourself up here. Wow. You’re like a month into this gig and you’re just like, I’m setting the bar high.

AUSTIN: I was I was watching old videos of, you know, like in the day from A Knight’s Tale and they really just talk up the intro. So I just went on, okay.

MATT: Yeah. He’s also he this is true. He actually challenged Piers Morgan to a shirtless showdown once. And I don’t know that the world, anyone in the world wants to see that, I don’t know.

AUSTIN: I probably have the only copy because it’s not online anymore. It’s on VHS. Is it really just.

MATT: You standing next to like, an image of Pierce?

AUSTIN: No shirt off. So. Oh man, this is a story. But anyways, I ripped off my shirt in front of 11.5 million people on America’s Got Talent and Nick cannon goes, he’s getting naked and he’s pointing. So I have a picture of my shirt open with Nick cannon pointing at me.

Oh, wow. And then and then I slapped my belly. I was like, you want some of this, Pierce? It all happened right before I went on stage.

The producer handling me said, by the way, Piers Morgan doesn’t like stand up comics before I perform live. No good on America’s Good Motivator channel. And then. So that’s where it all went down. Well, he’s.

BEN: British. Yes.

MATT: So next up we have the the other brother of the two brothers. There are two brothers here, two brothers, and the other one is named. Well, I’ll get to his name here in a second. He’s a man who adores his cat. He swears he’s plotting world domination.

Dominion, dominion over the domination. I think that’s how it works. That’s my dominion. Yeah. Um, this cat is. I think Ben is, too. He is the ability to fall asleep anywhere at any time.

That’s true. Watch out for that. If there’s a moment of silence, he’s probably taking a nap. You can also bend his fingers all the way back like a fresh pretzel. Yes, that’s.

BEN: That’s how I got my wife to go on a second date.

MATT: Yeah, I’m sure that’s. What did it give it up for Ben Tompkins, everybody. Ben Tompkins, Austin Anderson, Maya and McHugh.

BEN: I feel like my intro wasn’t anywhere near as hyped up. It was. It was pretty. Well, Ben.

AUSTIN: Here’s the thing.

MATT: It gets weird in here. I didn’t want to read all of it. Just got really intimate and weird. And I’m like.

BEN: Ben wrote his though.

AUSTIN: To ask him what he wanted in it.

MATT: Okay. All right. Yeah, he’s a man who pinned a rock opera with highlight that highlights the very moment dinosaurs met their fiery end. That’s actually true.

BEN: That’s what he told me to put in there. That’s true. Why would you not include that, Matt? Why would you skip over that part?

MATT: Because that’s all you ever talk about. Is this musical maestro about dinosaurs until you release it to the world. We can’t talk about it.

BEN: Lovelorn dinosaurs.

MATT: Let’s get to what matters here today. We’re talking about. Just because you’re good at one thing doesn’t mean you’re good at everything. All right, I want to ask you guys a question here. Herschel Walker, Herman Cain, Ben Carson. Yeah. What do they all have in common?

BEN: Um, they’re they’re all Republicans. Nope.

MATT: That’s not it.

AUSTIN: They all had one profession and then went into politics. Nope. That’s.

BEN: Come on, guys, they’re all black.

MATT: Ben.

BEN: Well they are.

MATT: Yeah, I guess that’s true, but no, no, they are all good at one thing, and they try to do something else and were horrible at it. All right. Do you remember like Herschel Walker he just ran for. These are all politicians. But Herschel Walker ran for office. He’s an incredible football player.

AUSTIN: Oh, yeah.

MATT: I would not want him running a McDonald’s, let alone a state in our country. Herman Cain, Ben Carson, remember, Herman Cain, he is the godfather’s guy.

Yeah, yeah, Ben Carson, a neurosurgeon. He’s a neurosurgeon. And you think we attach this false credibility to people when they’re really good at one thing? We do it to ourselves as well.

So with Ben Carson, he’s a perfect example. He’s a neurosurgeon. He must be smart at everything. You know, we do this with money. People have lots of money.

They must be good at everything. Let’s listen to their advice.

That usually does not end well. It doesn’t end well. And so we do this with ourselves as well. When it comes to running our business, and especially with marketing our businesses, because we assume, okay, well, I got a video to go viral or I got a bunch of views or likes or, hey, I’m on all these social platforms.

Obviously, I know what I’m doing when it comes to marketing or even just in this general business sense.

We say, okay, well, I had a good idea here. That means every other idea or business venture I’m going to have. Like, I’m really good with this cat pet store that I have. I’m going to open up a Taco Bell. Like, those are two completely different things. They require two completely different skill sets. Although now that I say that, I wonder if Taco Bell is.

AUSTIN: Makes their tacos from cats.

MATT: Because if you spell taco backwards, it’s oh cat, oh cat.

AUSTIN: Oh that’s true.

MATT: Okay, okay.

AUSTIN: Sometimes I mean I love talking about sometimes I go there, I think it smells like cats.

BEN: You’re not allowed near my cat anymore. Now, Matt, which one of those was the pizza guy?

MATT: Herman Cain? He was the Godfather’s. He had the whole 999 thing. It was like 9%. So I don’t even remember what it was. But like, yeah.

BEN: That was like a tax plan.

MATT: We do this all the time. It’s hard not to do it to yourself because you get good at one thing and especially if you’re like really, really good at one thing, you know, our egos get in the way.

And so we get this false confidence in ourselves. And this happens a lot with like just running a business because business owners will chase down ideas and we will not let them go, even though we know that it’s a bad idea, we know it’s a losing idea.

Sometimes you just have to cut your losses and say, listen, this didn’t work right.

AUSTIN: You think you have to be honest with yourself about what you’re good at and then just be able to say no? Because I think that, like in Herschel Walker, I bet someone came up to him and said, you know what? You would be great in politics. And then they start going, you know what?

I think I would be too, you know? So if you have people approaching you and asking you to do other ventures, you kind of got to be have your ego in check and then also be able to say, no, this is what I’m good at. I’m going to I’m going to stick with this. But then that’s part of it.

BEN: Part of it also is that some of those, like in those cases, some characteristics that help you build a good business might apply to being a good politician also.

So it’s easy to maybe buy into that idea. I don’t know if with football with Herschel Walker, I mean, I guess the discipline and the dedication that it takes to be a standout athlete might you could apply some of those characteristics to, to politics.

But with running a business, you saw that with Trump everyone equates he’s this great, great business, this great business person.

That means he can run the country, because running the country is just like running a business. So of course there’s some things that are not true, but there probably are things that are true about that too. I mean, well.

MATT: There are characteristics and qualities that make any one person successful, like, you know, okay, I’m going to have dedication. Discipline is probably the hardest trait for any success in any industry. And anything you do, who’s going to have the discipline to get up every day, you know, two in the morning and work out and every single day you’re obviously obviously been the.

AUSTIN: Example that say that. Two discipline is the hardest thing to master in all areas of life.

MATT: It is. So yeah, there are core characteristics, but this gets to something else that’s at the core of marketing, and it’s truly what marketing is all about. And it is the number one reason that I love marketing because marketing is life. And so you mentioned Trump is perfect example.

All that marketing is, is perception, right? So in the sense of business, like you, you’re good at one thing. That doesn’t mean you’re good at everything.

And it’s going to be a major mistake if you’re a business owner to just assume I’m good at everything. Right? Well, I’m good at even the thing you’re good at. Oftentimes business owners are terrible at for themselves, like for marketing.

Marketing people who are really good for doing marketing for other clients are usually bad at it for themselves. Right? They don’t walk the walk, but they don’t follow up with what they tell people to do. But marketing is all about perception.

And so we we have these perceptions. And politics is just pure marketing. That’s all the marketing is. The facts do not matter and they never have mattered. We always try and convince ourselves that the facts matter, but they don’t. And so Trump is a perfect example of a guy who he literally checks off every.

Every single law in the 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, which is a great book. You should read that if you want fantastic about marketing. He checks off every single one. It doesn’t matter whether or not he’s really a billionaire, whether or not he’s really a success, whether or not he’s gone bankrupt several times, which he has. You know, it doesn’t matter.

All that matters is the perception. And he established that perception. He was in the law of marketing. He was first in the mind of his prospect, his prospect being the American citizens.

And he did that with The apprentice. So he was first in the mind as a success, as a billionaire, as a person who makes the big decisions, makes the big calls in the big chair at the top of the building. And that’s why people attach that to him.

AUSTIN: With his name on the.

MATT: Building forever. Yeah, with his name literally on the building in gold. That’s that’s why people will always you will never shatter that. And that’s important thing to understand. When you’re on the inside looking out, you need to be able to look at yourself and be honest.

Because let’s be honest, it’s just you, right? You know, you suck at something, Austin. You know you’re good at something. Austin.

BEN: That’s what this is really. This is this.

AUSTIN: Is where it pivots. This is where.

BEN: We have to talk to you.

MATT: We need to talk. You’re really. You’re fired, you know? So. So it’s important to be, like, honest with yourself internally because we let our egos get in the way.

Right. And we know like, I mean, last night I was having a conversation with my two dogs, Burley and Teddy, and I’m like, they were making some great points. You know, it’s like just about observations in my life about, okay, maybe I’ve heard.

AUSTIN: This thing with the Son of Sam, too. When I read his book, I just, I just.

MATT: I just haven’t killed anybody yet. No, but I do. I have full I don’t care. I talk to myself out loud, I have full conversations, I talk to dogs. And. But it’s just so therapeutic because I’m like, you know what?

You’re right, Burley. Like I did let my ego get in the way when I made that decision. Like, that’s a good observation and you have to keep yourself in check.

And if you’re not being honest with yourself, you can’t be honest with anybody else. You’re not going to be honest about your business. It’s just going to hurt you more than anything.

So there’s that kind of internal component. But externally it’s important to understand marketing is all about perception. And this proves the point.

Like on the outside looking in, the public doesn’t know shit. They don’t know anything. They see Herman Cain, they see Ben Carson, they see Herschel Walker. I’m sorry. I’m just thinking of all the crazy things, you know?

But they attach the perception of success and authority. And once you’ve been, once you’ve done that in your first in the mind of your prospect, you cannot shake it. And that’s why you’ll never shake somebody who loves Trump. You’ll never shake somebody who loves Biden.

You’re never going to win an argument based on the facts, because the facts don’t matter. Not just in politics or news, just in marketing, anywhere. The facts only matter internally when you’re looking at the numbers, like when you’re marketing, all that matters is the perception.

And this proves like, you know, you you. Just because you’re good at one thing doesn’t mean you’re good at everything. But to the public, they can’t distinguish. They can’t distinguish what you’re actually good at.

AUSTIN: A really good example that popped into my mind is that the first televised debate of all time between JFK and Nixon, Nixon was hideous and sweating and had fake makeup and JFK charismatic, handsome, all that.

And then right after the debate, there was newscasters and people going, oh, well, this has never happened. We just we just elected our president after the first debate because the perception was like, this guy’s got it all. Jfk has all the looks, you know, it’s just perceived. And it took him.

MATT: A lot of work an assassination, a president stepping down for Nixon to even have a chance of getting back to where he wanted to get it is so much work to try and change the narrative that is already established in a prospect’s mind. So much work, so much money. Like, you know, everybody says like, oh, first, first impressions matter, first impressions last forever. Like that is true.

And it’s true in marketing, especially on social media, like the content you put out, the post, you put out the perception of you that you put out.

You know it matters because that’s the perception somebody may have of you forever, forever, and you may never be able to change that.

So when you’re thinking like, I’ll just do it the cheap way, the quick way, I’ll just do this cheap quick thing, throw it up, have it be done, I don’t care. We’ll, you know, learn how to fly the plane later.

Well, you may not have a plane later. And you’re going to literally show your sell yourself short out of potentially millions and millions of dollars in the long run here.

Just because you’re not you’re not sticking to this core element. Perception is all that matters. Perception is everything.

And you have to be honest with yourself. I think internally, like just because you’re good at one thing doesn’t mean you’re good at everything.

And we see like we’ve seen this, I mean, just not in like with clients we work with necessarily, but just across the board.

You have so many people think that they’re great at marketing and they don’t really even understand what marketing is. They don’t even understand how important it is that it’s the core, essential foundation to growing any business.

AUSTIN: But when you’re talking with someone, a client or a business owner and you’re trying to explain marketing and you know that they don’t really get it, but they feel like they do, what is it? What do you say to them to kind of.

MATT: It’s you have to describe it in like you have to kind of it is hard because it’s like we see all the tactics of marketing. We see all the tactics, like social media is like Facebook is a tactic. Instagram is a tactic.

Social media is a tactic. Seo is a tactic. All these things are tactics. And what gets what muddies the water. As we start talking about we, we mistake a tactic for a strategy and we think, oh, this. What’s your what’s your marketing strategy?

Well, I’m posting on Facebook three times a week. Well, that’s not a strategy. That’s just something you’re doing. That’s an action you’re taking. And so it is tough because people also assume marketing is your sales. People think, I’m going to spend money on marketing,

I’m going to make money, and it’s just going to come in like I’m going to have customers walking in the door. But if you don’t have sales, if you don’t have a way to onboard said this or take advantage of this pump that has been primed.

That’s what marketing really is. Marketing is there to get you discovered, build awareness, build relationships, and trust. It is priming the pump so that you can make the sales.

That is really what marketing is. And so, you know, that’s why that perception is what matters. You know, the overarching, you know, key component there.

But people often mistake it. Is this something that it just isn’t. And that’s I think that hurts businesses probably more than not doing anything is assuming it’s one thing, and then investing a lot of time and resources in that one thing and having it not produce results.

Because, I mean, you can’t grow your business, any business without marketing, because marketing, even referral word of mouth, that’s referral marketing. Like you people have to know you exist. They have to discover you. They have to know, like, and trust you to want to do business with you. Right? So if you’re not marketing yourself.

AUSTIN: And and like your business, you know, if you obviously plan on having a business for your entire life, maybe passing it along to your kids, you marketing never stops. It’s a continuous thing and it’s for the life of your business.

And I you know, you guys have radio background, so do I, and I sold radio for a while, and I would have to explain that to potential clients that like, you see Coca Cola commercials. Right.

Well, everyone on earth knows who Coca Cola is and you would think that they wouldn’t need to advertise, but they still do. Relentless. They spend billions of dollars on it because I would have people telling me like, oh, everyone in the community already knows who we are. You know, everyone already knows that we’re here.

And it’s like, all right, well, everybody knows that Coca Cola is a soda.

MATT: But yeah. And you get to a point where it’s like you need to be discovered and then you have to remind people that you exist. It’s just staying present in their lives. Yeah.

I mean, how many times have you like somebody, like, if I said to you like, hey, recommend the best burger joint in Omaha, and I give you one second to answer, you throw out something, probably Wendy’s, McDonald’s, Burger King, and then you would stop and like, well, wait a minute, that’s not the best burger like, but that was just the first thing that came to mind because they’re the ones who are in your mind. They’re the ones staying present.

AUSTIN: They got that real.

MATT: Estate, they got that real estate. And so yeah, I think, you know, marketing, it’s like your clothes, it’s going to evolve it. Not one action or one thing lasts forever. There is no such thing as set it and forget it.

People are bombarded with literally thousands of ads every single day, and let alone all the content that we consume.

The average American spends anywhere from 2 to 6 hours per day on average on social media alone. So just think about how much they are consuming and then how are you breaking through that noise, you know, how are you establishing the perception, even if it’s an accurate perception of what your business is right for these people.

So you can’t just set it, forget it. You can’t just sit there and like, you know, you can’t get high on the hopium drug and just hope this is going to work, you know? Yeah, everybody has hopium.

BEN: I’ve been doing this wrong this entire time. What’s your business? My cat tree store is I’m not doing it right. I’m not. I’ve just been.

MATT: You have a cat.

BEN: Tree store, I yeah, I build my own cat trees for cats to.

AUSTIN: Climb. So why is a cat tree important? Sell me a cat tree.

BEN: Because it’s extremely comfortable to sit on with you and your cat. It gives you.

AUSTIN: You perch on there.

BEN: It’s a human and cat cat tree.

MATT: Oh, see, you’ve.

BEN: Got the.

MATT: First. You’ve established a new category to be first in. That’s what you’ve.

BEN: Done. Now I just need to change the perception of what everybody thinks a cat tree is. Yeah, they think it’s just for a cat, but it really could be for a human too.

But that to that point with Trump’s a great example of this, of the perceptions. I mean, you say be honest there with Trump, it’s kind of the opposite of being honest. And he’s also the opposite of of somebody who doesn’t. He says he’s good at everything.

AUSTIN: Yeah. No.

BEN: And that’s and that. So that perception is you can change the perception. I think you can you can use the perception. To your advantage, but you can also manipulate people with that too.

And as a business, you have to decide what avenue do you want to take. And then also, as a marketing company, it’s extremely easy to take advantage of businesses.

MATT: Which most unfortunately do. I mean, we are surrounded by snake oil salesman types in the marketing industry because of those things. It is because that’s, you know, manipulation. It’s usually seen as a negative thing.

But that’s really what we’re all all we’re doing all the time.

That’s all perception is. We market ourselves every day. When I walk up with a smile and I shake your hand and I say, how are you doing? You look great today, Ben. I’m manipulating. I want you to. I want to have a good impression.

You’d have a good impression of me. I don’t really think you look good.

BEN: You say that every morning, I do. I do the highlight of my day.

AUSTIN: And now you know.

MATT: So now you.

AUSTIN: Know that it’s nothing but lies.

MATT: You know. And there’s also the with the politics, like all politics is, is all marketing, you know. And even though Trump you’re right like there are mistruths across the board with politics and Trump.

Trump is probably most notorious for this just blanket just wildly exaggerated statements. But that is the perception is that he’s just like sticking it to the to the man. That’s the image and the character he is crafted over the years.

Yeah. And so there is a truth to it. He stays consistent to his truth, even though all the things he’s saying maybe aren’t the truth. And the problem with politics,

people get in there and they they need marketing experts to come in and just tell them, like, quit arguing the facts because that does not nobody buys anything or makes any decision based on the facts. We use our our our feeling brain, not our thinking brain to make these decisions.

And when you are arguing that the facts somebody who has an emotional attachment, you know, be like, Ben, your cat has attacked you literally 12 times. You had to go to the emergency room because your cat bit him in the finger and they had to, like, do a whole like an.

BEN: Iv treatment for a while. Yeah. Cat teeth are full of nasty bacteria, dude.

AUSTIN: Cat teeth terrify me.

MATT: And and the wound seal shut afterwards. Yeah, but Ben is still with the cat. Why? Because he has an emotional attachment.

BEN: My grandma’s cat.

AUSTIN: Cat doesn’t have teeth anymore.

BEN: But it doesn’t. It lost 11 of them.

AUSTIN: You had a bull, Ben.

MATT: Pull them out.

AUSTIN: Just gums me now.

MATT: All right. Thanks for joining us here today on Midwest Mindset. The key takeaway here today just because you’re good at one thing does not mean you’re good at everything.

Just because Ben is good at building human cat trees does not mean that he’s good at building dog parks. Well.

BEN: You haven’t seen a dog park that I’ve made.

MATT: If you’re struggling with your marketing and you’re sick of social media, just stop and let us do it for you. With the easy box, you give us 30 minutes, we give you 30 days of content. It is marketing made easy.

Check out the link in the show notes here. Today of this episode we made that easy too. You can just click it.

All it requires is one finger. You don’t even have to use a finger. Matt. Use anybody. You can use any body part to click on the link right now.

Full Written Transcript of The Episode

How Public Failure Fuels Future Success

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That’s the only way to move on.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Full Written Transcript of The Episode

How Do You Make Money from Your Podcast

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Full Written Transcript of The Episode

How to Survive Blackmail by Dick Pic

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

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

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

From the past.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Full Written Transcript of The Episode

Why We Tip the Valet But Not the Housekeeper

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

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

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

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

Hello and welcome back to.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MATT: But all of.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Full Written Transcript of The Episode

The Little Things Successful People Do

MATT: How you do anything is how you do everything. I thought that line was a little cheesy the first time that I heard it, but it could not be more true, especially in the world of business. It’s the little things that make the biggest difference. We often brush off the little things. You know, I’m a business owner. I don’t have time for that. But it is these minor details, these minor adjustments and pivots that make the biggest difference in how successful your company is and will be. There are things that the most successful entrepreneurs all have in common.

There are little things that they all do. So it all starts with knowing which of these little things you should be paying attention to. In this episode, we’re going to break down the little things that make the biggest difference, because how you do anything is how you do everything.

MATT: Hello and welcome back to the Midwest Mindset, the podcast that makes marketing easy to understand and simple to do. I’m Matt Tompkins of two Brothers Creative, where we believe every business deserves affordable and effective marketing.

Whether it’s your marketing or just your business operations overall, we are always just a mindset shift away from success from achieving those big, hairy, audacious goals that we set for ourselves and for our companies. It is a mindset shift that changed my trajectory. It is mindset shifts and usually it’s the smaller, the seemingly smaller mindset shifts that make the biggest difference or have made the biggest difference, not just in my own experience, but in those of the most successful entrepreneurs and business owners we’ve had the privilege and honor of working with over the years. Early on, when I was just contemplating leaving broadcasting, I had spent over 17 years in radio and television, and I kind of I was well past I was going to say I kind of hit my breaking point.

I was well past it. I just kept going back to it. I was like a glutton for punishment. I thought all this time it’s going to be different this time. It’s going to be different. And finally, it was in January of 2020. I remember I went out to my mom and dad’s house. They had moved me to a new station just literally that day. They said, Hey, you’re no longer on this station. Now you’re on this station.

MATT: I went out to my mom and dad and I said, Listen, I’m done. I got to figure something else out. It just felt stifling. I knew I contemplated of something bigger, something more. Right. I was I knew that something better was possible. And one of the biggest difference makers was reading this book called Micro Resilience.

Now, in this book, micro Resilience, there is a lot of focus on these perceived little things. They were trying to figure out the two authors in this book. They went out and they were studying elite athletes and they were trying to figure out what is the real difference between those athletes who are professionals, the best of the best and those who are elite. It’s a small percentage of these professional athletes. I mean, look at the NFL as an example, right? The NFL, if you make it into the NFL, even if you’re third string, you are you are the best of the best, only the best make these teams.

But then there are those elite NFL athletes, the greatest of all time, those players who just year after year, sometimes in Tom Brady’s case for what, 40 plus years, just keep delivering unparalleled results. We see this in the world of business just the same. And that’s what these two authors were looking at in this book.

Micro Resilience. What are the tangible little things that were the difference between a professional outstanding athlete and an elite athlete? And how could those things translate to the rest of us, not just in the world of business, but just overall with our lives? They found one of the biggest difference makers was one of the littlest things.

MATT: When I say little, I mean by we’re talking fractions of a second or a second or two at most of time. That was the difference in time between an elite athlete and how they recovered from a mistake or an error. And everyone else. They looked at tennis players.

The top 100 tennis players on the planet and all of these tennis players, they all had the same skill sets. They all had the same talent level. I mean, maybe it varied a little bit, but not enough to be a determining factor consistently in those who were elite and those who were just the top 100 best tennis players in the world. What they found was the difference was the tiniest of literally seconds of how the elite athletes responded to adversity and how the rest did.

The top 100 athletes who didn’t make it into that elite bunch, that small sliver of athletes who are just the best ever, the greatest of all time. They took seconds or minutes to recover from making a mistake. Those who made it into that elite group, they were able to shift in a fraction of a second or at most a second or two after making a mistake or an error being scored on. They just reset and moved on.

MATT: And that compounded over time being the biggest difference maker. I mean, if you think about all the things all the time that these athletes put into being a professional athlete, and you look at what and you try to decide what is going to be the deciding factor between a great athlete and an elite athlete. The difference of a couple seconds in how we respond to adversity would probably, probably not be the first thing we think of, but that was it. Literally the littlest of things make the biggest difference.

So they took that and they translated that to professionals in the business world. And little things like, you know, learning how to manage your time, learning how to give yourself an hour long break for dinner with your kids instead of just powering through the day. The idea that. Multitasking is actually a myth. We’re actually like 34, 40% less productive. Our quality of work suffers when we try to multitask. Those were some of the little things they found in this book that made worlds of difference to the regular business professionals, the entrepreneurs, just like you and I. That they took what they’d learned from these athletes and applied.

I want to give you a few real world examples of how these little things can make not just a difference, but the biggest difference. One of our first clients, in fact, I think they were literally our very first client, just sold their company for over half $1 billion a few years ago, sold their company for over a half $1 billion.

MATT: And I will never forget going into their office. You would never know that they owned a company worth that much money. They were sitting at a desk like a cubicle with everybody else.

They didn’t have a special office for the most of the time that we knew them. They were in this kind of rundown building. They had dogs running around everywhere. You know, it wasn’t until the last few years they moved into like a nicer office building like you would normally think of. And I’ll never forget walking in. And this one of the most successful entrepreneurs I’ve ever known.

This person would sit there and argue and just chip away at fractions of a cent and I remember thinking like, Come on, man. Like, it’s like we’re talking about pennies on the dollar here. And it is pennies. That turn into millions and in this entrepreneur’s case, billions. A recent example, we took over a podcast for a client and we went in and we transferred everything over to our podcast network.

And I was just going through the the routine, checking all the, you know, there’s all these different boxes on the back end you need to check. And I noticed there were a few things that just were left undone. Now you would look at this and you would look at things like setting my release schedule weekly, semi-weekly monthly for a podcast.

MATT: You would think that’s a little thing. Picking the right category to place your podcast in. You would think those are little things that don’t really make that much of a difference. They were averaging 416 downloads per day, and in a matter of literally four days, they went from that to over 1100 downloads per day, and they hadn’t released a new episode. This was all just checking off those little boxes, paying attention to those little things.

A third example I’ll give. This was a client who had been working with a previous SEO company last year and they came to us, just didn’t know what was wrong. They knew something was wrong because they were spending tens of thousands of dollars and had gotten zero leads. Now, this company was showing them, here’s all this amazing traffic that we’re bringing to your site. Thousands of people are visiting your website every day. What they had neglected to do, though, is point people to the right page. So they were pointing people to the wrong page.

They were advertising one thing, sending them to a page that featured something entirely different and losing people in the transition. So they spent tens of thousands of dollars for months on end and got zero leads. Not even like conversions or sales. I’m talking like zero leads, like just general leads, nothing. I bring up those three examples because that’s how much of a difference the little things can will and I guarantee you are making with your business right now.

MATT: So I want to share with you today some of the top little things that I have seen make the biggest difference in my own life with my own company and with those very successful entrepreneurs. We’ve had the honor and privilege of working with, being mentored by collaborating with and even having his clients first on my list here. It’s simple. It probably goes back to something our mom taught us when we were little kids Get up early and make your bed. Getting up early is one of two things I have found in my research.

Looking online here. I found every single elite entrepreneur the most successful of the successful. They all do this. They all start their day very early because that is when your brain is at 100% optimized efficiency. They get up early, make your bed. Why do I add Make your bed in there. Well, make your bed. It is.

I’m a big believer in quick wins, you know, getting a quick win to start the day. It has a huge impact on the rest of your day. It’s the same reason I’m a big fan of checklists. Sometimes this is how bad I am. I will make a checklist and I will put things on it that I just finished. But I just want the satisfaction of crossing something off the list. It does have a real tangible, measurable impact on the rest of your day and how successful your day is going to pan out.

MATT: So getting up early so you can start early, no distractions. You’re focused, you have energy. Your brain is operating at 100%. Making your bed. That’s just a quick win out of the gate. You know, establish quick wins right away at the start of your day. You know, you go upstairs, you have breakfast, do the dishes, wash the dishes, rinse them off. That’s a quick win. If you’re struggling throughout the day. You know. Take a minute. Take a minute and take the trash out. Clean your desk off. You know, dust off that bookshelf. Those are quick wins that can reestablish your day just as impactfully as starting your day. Establishing your day. Like making your bed does. My wife comes down now. Wendy’s like, Who are you? What did you do with my husband? Because I’ve never been a person who makes my bed.

Getting up early is number one and the second is journaling. Now, this was fascinating to me, those two things there. The first two I’m mentioning here are two that two commonalities I have seen with every successful entrepreneur. Why journaling and why at the end of the day, is it most impactful? Well, think of it this way. You start off your day, you get up early, you’re fresh, you have energy. Your brain is 100%. You make the bed, you do the dishes, you take out the trash. These little quick wins. You have added accelerant to your day.

MATT: Much higher likelihood of a successful day for you when you started off that way. Now, let’s fast forward to the end of the day, closing out your day when you’re journaling. What you’re doing is you are reflecting back on the day. And this is something that most successful entrepreneurs, in fact, I believe every single one of them do they reflect back on what they have accomplished, what they’ve gotten done. It’s too easy. And I think it’s just human nature to focus on that single negative. We get ten reviews. One of them is negative nine or positive.

Do we obsess over the nine positive reviews? No, No. Or social media comments, whatever it might be? No, we focus on that one negative. That’s just where our mind tends to go. It’s too easy. And I do this frequently and I have to kind of check myself with it because at the end of the day, we’ll look at the clock. Oh my God, I’ve been working for ten hours. I didn’t get anything done. I didn’t make any progress. Now, is that accurate? Is that true?

No. What does journaling do? It allows us to reflect on those things we got done, reflect on our accomplishment, accomplishments, and show gratitude for them.

Appreciation so that we can reset for the next day. It has an amazing impact on your mental state when you are about to go to sleep, when you are drifting off, you know, reading a book, closing out the day, journaling, those are ways you can close out the day in a very healthy, constructive, positive way as opposed to being on your phone, on social media or just, you know, and I’m guilty of this far too frequently eating ice cream, binge watching TV.

MATT: So getting up early, getting some quick wins and then journaling. At the end of the day, you can even get things like the Gratitude Journal is one. I’ve done that one frequently where you can you just list three things you’re you’re grateful for. You don’t even need to pay for the expensive gratitude diary or journal that you can buy online. You can just do it on a piece of paper. Write three things you’re grateful for three accomplishments of the day, and then three things you plan to accomplish accomplish the next day. It’s as simple as that. Writing things down has an amazing impact on our mental health as well. It just helps to physically write things out.

We recall them better, we remember them better. That’s how I used to memorize lines when I was in theater and I did commercials and stuff. You write it out. You remember it much quicker that way. It sets in. So those are the first two tips. Your first two things, little things that make the biggest difference. The third here is one that’s an ongoing struggle, I think, for all of us, and that is being on time. As business owners, I think it’s important we remind ourselves we are not as important as we think we are.

MATT: You know, we think we’re super busy. We think we always have to be on our phone. We always have to be checking our email. Unless you’re the president of the United States, you are not that important. Okay? You’re just not. There is no email. There is no text message. There is no piece of communication that can’t wait for 5 minutes or 10 minutes or an hour or a day. We think and we obsess. I have to be on this. I have to be on this. And it’s just not true. And we allow that to distract ourselves from respecting other people’s time. People make time for what is important. And if you’re not on time, if you’re consistently late, this is the third. I put it number three here, because it is the third most common trait that I see with the most successful business owners and entrepreneurs that we’ve worked with. Those who show up on time show that they are respecting their team, they’re respecting their clients, those people that they’re meeting with, which commands respect from those people right back at them, those who don’t, the opposite happens. It has the opposite effect. And we could tell ourselves all day long, Oh, it’s a Monday. Oh, I’m late. Oh, I had this thing. Oh, I had to answer this email. I have to be checking my phone. None of that is true.

MATT: Those are just made up excuses. Being on time is how you show respect and earn respect. And it is not inconsequential. It has a very big impact on how you’re perceived and how you’re respected. Be on time. Number four, accountability. And by this I mean something specific in the world of accountability. I’m not necessarily talking about holding your team accountable. And that is important.

What I’m talking about is holding yourself accountable. In other words, if you have a member of your team who makes a mistake, are you scolding them or are you holding yourself accountable? You can’t blame someone on your team for a mistake if you haven’t taught them how to do it right. Take accountability for your own leadership. Who’s holding you accountable? Your team members are only going to operate to the highest capacity you allow them to. So blaming someone on your team.

I see this often. It becomes a scapegoat. Oh, well, that’s Tasha. It’s Bill. It’s Bob. But did you show any of them how to do it? Right? How you want it done Now, if you show them how to do it, you give them a checklist. You have processes and procedures in place, your standard operating procedures, and they continue to do it. Then yes, you want to hold them accountable. But too many entrepreneurs and business owners, we don’t want to hold ourselves accountable because that means we got to actually step up. Number five, this one is broad, but I think it’s very important.

MATT: It is reading books and learning. When you’re reading books, when you’re learning, this shows you are willing to be coached. I have yet to meet a let me let me rephrase that. None of these successful entrepreneurs, the business owners, the multi millionaires, even, you know, close to billionaires that we’ve worked with over the years. None of them had said, you know what, I know everything. I don’t need a coach. I mean, look at it this way. Lebron James, Michael Jordan, you can argue all day long who’s the best.

And we all know Michael Jordan obviously is. But that’s aside. If the best in the world have a team and a coach. What makes you think you don’t need one? Those who are coachable, those who are willing to be coached and are willing to learn have the most growth potential. You are never at the best you will ever be. It is a lifelong pursuit.

So to recap here today, the five little things that make the biggest difference.

Getting up early. Get those quick wins. Make your bed. Journaling Close out your day by recalling and reflecting on what you have accomplished. Number three, be on time. Don’t be late. It’s that simple. It means more than you think it does. Trust me, we’ve all been on the other side of that, where you’ve had to wait 15 minutes for a zoom call and you think, okay, obviously they don’t respect this.

MATT: Why should I? Number four, holding yourself accountable. And number five, reading books and learning. In other words, are you coachable? If you do these little things and you do them on a daily basis and then you surround yourself with people who also do all these little things friends, peers, colleagues, mentors, you will see success. This is the way to quote the Mandalorian randomly. This is the way. This is how you do it. We can look up all the clickbait we want on secrets to my success. And if you do this one thing.

But it really boils down to these simple little things. Do them. Do them consistently. Stay disciplined and you will see the results. Thank you so much for joining us here today on Midwest Mindset. Now, if you would like some help, we have put something together to do just that. The link is in the show notes for you to download our free daily planner. Now, you don’t have to go out and buy the gratitude journal or a diary. I mean, you can if you want. They’re cool. I’ve used them.

But this is free. You can print it off every day. It’s reusable. It is a simple daily planner worksheet that has helped me. It has helped countless other successful entrepreneurs, and I know it can help you too. It is 100% free. The link is in the show notes for you to download now. Thanks so much for listening. We’ll see you on the next episode.

MATT: And that’s a wrap.

Full Written Transcript of The Episode

The Secret to Piad Digital Ads Transcript

Matt: I am so excited for today’s episode because I know this is a major pain point for nearly every business owner. Paid digital advertising. How much should I spend? Which platform should I run ads on? How do I get the results I actually want? From Facebook to YouTube, Google Pay per click and every other digital advertising platform in between, it is far too easy to take a step in the wrong direction.

That not only doesn’t bring in new business, it literally costs your company money. Today we are joined by our paid digital advertising pros from Refine Marketing to give us the secrets of paid digital advertising. 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 passionately believe every business deserves affordable and effective marketing. We are always just a mindset shift away from success. And this is the Midwest mindset. I’d like to tell you, I’d like to share with you the story of Bob, the business owner, because I feel like this is a common journey we see often, and it doesn’t have to be this way.

As we’re going to hear from Ann Marie Faraday and Matt Falken of Refine Marketing. Our guest today on the podcast to give you the secrets of paid digital advertising. But here’s usually how the story goes. Bob, the business owner, he’s on Facebook, he posts a video and he sees that little blue button that says Boost.

Matt: Post says, What the heck? So he boosts it, spends a couple hundred bucks, he gets thousands of views, but no new business. He thinks, well, I got a lot of views.

Obviously it worked. I just need to do more of it. So now Bob starts spending hundreds, even thousands of dollars, still getting more views, more heart emojis, more likes. But he’s still not getting any business. No new revenue is coming in. So Bob thinks, well, I’m not a social media expert. My nephew, though, he’s on social media all the time. I’ll just I’ll just have him do this. So he gives his nephew thousands of dollars. He says, Go out there, run some ads. And they do. Again, they get a lot of traffic to their website. Even they get more heart emojis, more likes, more views, but they’re still not seeing that bottom line move.

They don’t know why. What are we doing wrong now? Bob is running out of money very quickly. This was money he didn’t have to spend in the first place. And it could put a major, major damper on any business and the success that you’re trying to achieve. This is all too common because paid digital advertising is far too easy, as I mentioned in the open to take a wrong step. These social platforms want you to spend money on ads. They want you to boost posts. They’re not going to give you the roadmap, though, on how to do it effectively.

AnnMarie: I think that what it really requires you to take a step back and look at the entire customer journey and that purchase funnel, if you will, because the content that Bob might be putting out could be really engaging. It could be really entertaining, but maybe it’s not content that’s going to close the sale. It’s all plays a role though, in the entire customer journey.

So I think it’s important to take a step back and think through what are the different steps that we want a customer to take to to learn who we are, to engage with us, to identify that we’re credible, but then also want to make a purchase. And so there are different ways that we can utilize paid media throughout that entire journey to close that sale.

Matt Falcon: Yeah, I think he was knocking on the door. Right. You see the difference if you go from 20 views to 3000 views. So like Marie said, then it’s just about honing in on, okay, am I on the right platform and am I giving the right message to to lead to ultimately value to the business, not just the view inflation.

Matt: Now our guest today, Matt Falcon and Anne Marie Faraday of Refine Marketing are who we partner with for paid digital advertising because it really is a skill set and specialty in and of itself in the world of marketing. And we partner with them because they understand content marketing, which works hand in hand with digital marketing. We have seen too many businesses though, who don’t have the right experts on hand to help guide them through this process, and they end up losing tens of thousands of dollars without any results to show for it. So let’s start off with the basics. What is paid? Digital advertising.

AnnMarie: It can be really anywhere that somebody engages with your brand. So we can use paid advertising to engage people who have never heard of your business before because they’re engaging with content that’s similar to what you offer. They might be searching for something that’s that’s similar to something that you provide. So I would say Google Ads is one great tool for paid advertising. That can be a search ad, that can be a display ad more and more if you’re on YouTube and that little commercial that pops up that 10s before you can watch the content, you’re really there to listen to. That would be considered a paid ad. Social media does a great job of weaving paid advertisements into your newsfeed, into your reels, into your stories. And so there are lots of different platforms, as you mentioned earlier, be it on TikTok and Twitter and Facebook, Instagram.

Everybody is trying to monetize the content that we’re all creating. But I think it’s just figuring out what’s going to be most effective in driving people to your website and engaging with your brand and then eventually in closing that sale. So those are a couple. Do you have any others to add?

Matt Falcon: No, I think that’s that’s a good overview of what paid ads are. I think to your point about finding the right platform, it’s really all about thinking about the behaviors that people are exhibiting on that platform. So everyone’s on Facebook, for instance, right?

But with a paid ad, you can target just 30 to 35 year old moms if you want, say, right. So you can find your target audience on almost any platform. But when you’re choosing a platform, I think it’s important to think about how people are behaving on that platform and what you want them to do when they see your content.

Matt: I want to put an exclamation point at the end of what Matt just said, because that is so important to consider and most businesses don’t factor this in. You need to know why people are on each social platform in the first place. If they’re just looking for a few seconds of a laugh or an entertainment, they’re swiping on to the next video and your ad pops up in the wrong place at the wrong time. With the wrong message, you can run the risk of turning off or alienating people. They’ll leave them with a negative impression of your business, which is the last thing you want.

AnnMarie: Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, I would say the old school marketing rule that it takes somebody seeing your brand 7 to 20 times before they’re ready to take action. So consider them, you know, maybe taking a few seconds to to watch that video as a win. How can we leverage then

that that those those metrics and to retarget that person again and again until they are ready to make that purchase decision? We love to use first party data in all of our paid ad strategies. First party data would be people who are currently following your any of your social media platforms, people who are coming to your website. And then what we do is we take that data and we model it to find other people that look like them.

So even though that person who scrolled through didn’t make a purchase that day, it’s it’s still a win, right? Like, we know who they are. We know what they like. And we can go find other people like them to continue to get our message in front of again and again and again until they’re ready to to make that purchase. It’s like that annoying pair of shoes that are always show up in your feed and you’re just like, okay, fine, I’ll buy them, you know?

Matt Falcon: So because it’s not just finding other people who look like them, but it’s staying in front of those specific users over and over if necessary. Until you get that.

AnnMarie: We’re hitting them hard on social media. But how can we find them in other platforms, be it on YouTube or when they’re searching for content or they’ve come to your website? And so we now know who they are so we can retarget them with ads across the Internet.

Or maybe we have their email address and we can start sending them emails or better yet, their phone number and we can start texting them. I mean, we don’t want to get annoying, but at the same time, I think the more we can surround them with relevant messages that are timely, the more likely we’ll be able to convert them to a customer.

Matt Falcon: And you’ll know if you are getting annoying because you’ll see your unsubscribe numbers start to start to increase. But we almost never see that. I mean, I think to your point, it’s it’s hard to overemphasize those calls to action.

Matt: Another question that I think business owners ask frequently at this stage in the process is, can I do this myself or do I need to hire an expert? Yes. I highly encourage you to hire an expert you can trust. And trust is the key word there, because I understand and we see this; unfortunately, it feels like it’s the norm. Sometimes we see marketing agencies and gurus and experts, so-called experts, just flat out ripping businesses off, taking advantage of small businesses, taking their money, not producing results, and manipulating the analytics to show all the web traffic in the world. But again, no conversions, no sales, no increased revenue at the end of the day.

So you need to find an expert you can trust. That is key. I highly encourage, especially with specialty niches like this, paid digital advertising. It takes someone with skills and experience that most business owners just don’t have. So hire an expert you can trust. The next question that’s often asked is, Well, how much money should I spend? Am I a business that could even benefit from paid digital advertising?

Matt Falcon: Basically, every company has at least some applications for digital marketing, whether it’s at the lowest hanging fruit of just paid search. Right?

If someone is actively seeking relevant services that your business provides, you want to make sure that you’re showing up near the top of that search engine results page that’s useful for almost every company. But then even if not that, whether it’s a YouTube ad or or Facebook, I mean, we’ve talked about some other tactics already today. I think there’s almost always at least some application for enhancing your voice online.

AnnMarie: And I think there is a misconception that it’s going to be wildly expensive and it doesn’t have to be. I mean, that’s the beauty of digital media, and that’s why we also recommend media like mass media, like TV and radio for certain clients. But the reason we love digital so much is because it’s so scalable. I mean, you can spend $100, you could spend $100,000. I think that what the key is, is identifying what does it cost to get a new customer and then how many customers do you want in a particular month?

And that can help you kind of determine your budget. If it only if you only need one new customer, maybe you only need 100 bucks. So I think but to your point to utilizing professionals who understand where you’re going to get the most for your money, I think is going to save you in the long run because we’re not going to be wasting dollars testing things that we already know don’t work for a particular vertical. But yeah. Any company, regardless of how big they are, regardless of if they’re just starting or if they’ve been in business for 20 years. You know, there are effective ways to use paid advertising anywhere in the journey.

Matt Falcon: I also think it’s helpful to think of a marketing professional as someone that’s there to kind of protect you from Facebook and Google. If you just log on and want to boost a post, create a simple campaign. These tools have come a really long way in enabling really any even moderately digitally savvy person to to do that, right? They want you to spend the money so they make it easy to spend the money.

This is where really the tracking comes in and having an expert kind of tracking template and making sure that you’re understanding where your money is going and what that is accomplishing on your back end of your website. That’s what protects you from just wildly overspending because Facebook made it easy and you’re seeing a lot of impressions and clicks. If you have that tracking in place, you can make sure that you’re making a sound investment.

Matt: Now I understand entirely. That is, it is easy for me to say find an expert you can trust. Hire an expert you can trust. But how do I actually do that, Matt? Well, let’s get into things you should be looking for with a paid digital advertising specialist. And really, anybody in the world of marketing, you want to be able to trust them and to build trust with a company that maybe you’re not familiar with personally. It all starts with honesty and transparency.

AnnMarie: One of the key foundational pillars of our business is, is really providing transparency into your analytics. The first thing that we ask a customer, I mean, obviously beyond what is your business objective is do you have Google Analytics on your website?

And then can we take a look at what that is and what’s going on in the back end? Because we want to be we want to bring our customers along with us on that journey so that they can be part of the decision making process throughout. We take a very conservative approach when we are utilizing paid advertising because we want to make sure that we’re understanding what’s working before we tell our client to put more money. So you’re.

Matt: Multiplying it? Yeah.

AnnMarie: Yeah. So it’s like, what are the tactics that are working? And we will actually show you on the back end the analytics that support that and really illustrate and educate them on how you get back to that return on investment. How are we how am I going to prove to you that the money that you put in, whether it’s 100 or 100,000, is generating more income for you? And that’s like the key component of us working with a new client?

Matt Falcon: Yeah, I think a helpful step if you’re vetting a marketing professional would be to ask for a sample of what reporting will look like and if that report is full of a bunch of stuff that you don’t understand, that’s a good sign right there that, you know, things aren’t maybe totally transparent. Yeah. So it’s really it’s not that complicated, right? Like, you should be able to get a report that is meaningful and demonstrates ultimately I gave this amount of money via management or hard costs. And this is what I’m getting and I think it’s actually valuable.

Matt: Being transparent is not something that I think many marketing agencies like to do, at least not fully transparent, because when you are fully transparent and you are genuinely honest, that includes telling customers, Hey, I made a mistake. I mean, we’re human. There are going to be mistakes.

You’re going to collect data and figure out what is working and what isn’t working. So you can right the ship. I think what our clients appreciate is if there is a mistake or if there is a new way of doing things, that we’re transparent and honest with them about it so that you can correct that and improve the services you’re delivering to your clients.

AnnMarie: We want to make sure our clients understand that of their total marketing budget. What part of that is a management fee and what part of that is actually going into Google or Facebook?

I think there are a lot of other marketing businesses in this business that will just kind of lump everything together and the client doesn’t really know how much of that’s going to the agency to run the campaign versus actually going into the market to find new customers. And so I think that’s another big red flag that clients need to be aware to ask that question.

Matt: That’s a good point.

Matt Falcon: Yeah. Any time. I think you should be able to request either an invoice that’s broken out by that that line item or to see the actual invoices from Google or Facebook or whoever, because it’s super important to understand how much of your money is actually going towards that.

Matt: This one is surprising, but it is kind of a red flag. If your marketing agency or your marketing expert is not willing to give you a monthly at least, or even a weekly standing appointment for them to review all your analytics, all the numbers with you so you fully understand where your money is going, how it’s working, what isn’t working, and what the next steps are. That is a giant red flag.

That is a giant red flag. If they’re just sending you a report, a PDF that’s 50 pages long and not giving you the respect or the time to go through it in detail.

AnnMarie: As a business ourselves, we’ve tried to come up with a standard format of a report that we can deliver to every single client because it’s easier for us to do on a monthly basis. And what we found is that’s just not realistic. Every single one of our reports is custom based upon that business’s key performance indicators or KPIs. And really also where they are in their business. Are you are they the owner of a countertop company and they don’t necessarily want to get in the weeds of how many impressions were delivered on every single platform?

Or maybe they’re the marketing director of a larger business that that’s really important to them. So I think it’s working with your marketing partner to determine like, what do you want delivered to?

Matt: It’s important as we talk about digital advertising to understand it is not a content marketing versus paid digital advertising strategy or options here that we’re talking about. You need both and they both complement and support each other in many different ways.

Matt Falcon: One of the big differences I think, is the audience that you’re reaching. So this doesn’t apply across all platforms. But take social media, for instance, right?

Anything that you post organically to your social media is basically going just to the people who already follow you, maybe some hashtag traffic or something, but essentially it’s people who are already familiar with your brand have made the decision to follow you and expect to get some kind of helpful.

Content out of out of that following you with the paid, it’s often your first introduction to a new person. So the messaging can be really different with that is a big critical difference there on the social media front.

AnnMarie: In terms of resources, it’s hard to say like what percent, but I would say that they definitely both need to coexist because you’re organic content is what’s going to establish credibility. We might be able to pay for a click, right? We can pay to get a customer to your website or we can pay for somebody to find your social media profile. But if there’s not great content there, to then capture that person’s attention and establish you as a credible expert in your service or the products that you offer, then that was a waste of money.

So I think one of the things when we start, people will hire us for a paid campaign and the first thing we say is, whoa, like let’s take a step back. Let’s look at your website. Is this even a place we want to send people and that and like and that that really is a testament to their organic content building, which takes time.

And it’s hard to whip all that up. So people will come and say they just want to pay for all this traffic. But like I think that that’s a waste of money if you haven’t spent the time and effort in building that foundational organic landing page.

Matt: I like to use this analogy that paid digital advertising. It’s like your paycheck, all right? As long as you’re working every week, you’re going to be collecting a paycheck. Just like as long as you’re running these effective ads, you’re going to be producing results.

You’re going to be making money and content, organic SEO content, blog articles, podcasts, video content, even content on social media, your content marketing strategy that is like real estate to your investment portfolio. It takes much longer for it to pay off, but once it does, the return is far greater than anything you could ever pay for. You need both. You need a weekly paycheck and you need a long term investment strategy. Continuing that analogy with your marketing call.

AnnMarie: On Friday or a prospective client call and they said, We need SEO, we just want you to come in and like fix the back end of your website. And I was like, Great, you know, we can definitely do that. It’s kind of like a one time thing. We’ll come through, we’ll kind of clean everything up for you.

But then I was like, How are you doing? Any paid ads? And she’s like, Well, no, we don’t want to invest in that right now. And I’m thinking, it’s going to take a really long time for people in Google to organically find your brand new website without us just paying a little bit to show up. I mean, I think that you can get there a lot faster if the proper benchmarks or best practices are in place. If you just put a little dollars behind getting it.

Matt Falcon: Yeah, the opportunity cost of waiting for your organic only strategy to pay dividends I think can be a lot higher than the cost of just investing in the.

Matt: The last question I want to address here is a big one, and that is how much should I spend? How much money should you spend on paid digital advertising.

Matt Falcon: And start small, especially on on social boosting a post you can get some decent response for 50 to $100, right? And so that’s what we like to recommend too, is just starting conservatively, finding what works and then building from there so you don’t have to go in with $100,000 investment.

You can go in at a number that makes you comfortable identify what’s working. That goes back to the tracking set up and then reinvest from there.

AnnMarie: It also comes back to, though, what is the value of a lifetime customer to your business? I mean, if if the value of a lifetime customer is a couple hundred bucks because they’re buying some gizmos or gadgets from your retail site, that’s that may not require as much. If you’re looking to $100,000 a new B2B client. Yeah, I mean, that’s that’s going to take a lot longer, a lot more nurturing. And what is that sales cycle? And so I think that those are all things that you need to take into consideration.

But what we love to do is go through the exercise of like, how do we take that lifetime value and back into all the way to the cost per click and how many clicks you need to get to your website to then convert a lead. How many times do we need to get rid of that lead to get them to be a customer?

And then how many purchases do we need that customer make to get that lifetime value? That’s where we start geeking out over return on investment. But and that to your point, Matt, is where the the analytics need to be in place in order to get to that point. And that’s where I think working with professionals that know how to implement all that is, is really valuable.

Matt Falcon: Yeah, that’s how you avoid just throwing stuff at the wall, right? Yeah, just burning money like is making sure that everything that you’re doing is trackable and you can really tie the value back to your bottom line.

Matt: And that’s just one of the many reasons why I recommend you find an expert you can trust. And that is key. That is crucial because marketing is foundational, it’s fundamental. Your business will not grow without effective marketing, and that marketing can come in many different forms.

There are many different ways to get to the same end goal, whether that be organic content you’re posting on social media or SEO content you’re posting on your website or paid digital advertising. Like we’ve talked about today on the podcast, it may just be referrals going to a networking group or talking to your grandma who loves spreading the word about your business.

Grandma Nola loves to promote all of that is marketing. It’s just different tactics to accomplish the end goals for your overall marketing strategy. And that is why it is so important that you do it right. You can’t afford to miss with your marketing.

You just can’t afford to miss. It’s going to cost you far more money in the long run than simply doing it right from the start. And we hope you learned a lot. Took a lot away from this podcast here on Midwest Mindset, on paid digital advertising.

I appreciate Matt and Marie of Refine Marketing. They are experts that we trust. I know you can trust them too. We have their link and all the details to contact them in the show notes.

Thanks so much for joining us here this week on Midwest Mindset and we’ll see you on the next episode.

Full Written Transcript of The Episode

How to Kill Your Business Transcript

MATT: 51% of all businesses will fail in their first 3 to 5 years. Yet we don’t hear many people talking about why that happens. Everyone wants to talk about how to make your business succeed, but we don’t hear many coaches or gurus or self-proclaimed influencer experts telling us how to kill your business.

Knowing how businesses fail might be important because if we know how it happens, one would think it would be much easier to avoid. So today we’re going to talk about one of the major reasons why businesses fail when it comes to their marketing so that you can do the opposite. So let’s dive in and learn how.

To kill your business. And welcome back to the.

MATT: 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 on today’s episode, yes, we are going to learn how to kill your business. I agree. That sounds absurd, as I say it out loud.

Who on earth would want to learn how to kill their business? I think it’s important, though, to know how it happens because too many businesses don’t. And that is why over half of all businesses will fail in their first 3 to 5 years. That’s a national statistic. It is also a Nebraska statistic. It is true nationally and it is also true here locally. They align. If you don’t want to fail, if you want to succeed, you need to learn how to avoid that happening. Marketing is one of the major reasons why it does happen.

Marketing is crucial. It is. It is foundational to the success of your business. You cannot succeed without marketing, without successful marketing, and you may be thinking of marketing as just advertising or social media posts. And those are different tactics in your marketing strategy. Marketing is everything. So you could tell me, Listen, I haven’t spent a dollar, Matt. It’s all been word of mouth.

You know, people telling people. That’s referral marketing as an actual term for that people are referring anybody finding out about your business, no matter how they did that, is marketing any type of word that is being spread about your business, that is marketing.

MATT: So whether it’s grassroots, it’s just word of mouth or it’s, you know, paid pay per click Google ad campaigns or social media posts, all of that falls under marketing.

Even your sales falls under marketing. Sales is closing the deal. Sales is the end of that relationship or the beginning? I guess, you know, you have your relationship you get from the initial enlightenment stage to the building, the trust and and then the commitment stage is where they, you know, sign the deal, become a paying customer, you close the sale, but that all falls under your marketing. So if we’re talking about how to kill your business, we have to be talking.

About marketing, specifically how businesses kill themselves when it comes to their marketing. Now, what I’m about to reveal to you here today is one of the easiest and most common ways that, honestly, you can kill your business. I hope that you won’t do it. I am a fan. I am cheering you on. I’m trying to help you with this episode in particular, but this is probably one of the biggest mistakes that small business owners make when it comes to their marketing. It is at the heart of why most small businesses marketing just fails.

Now, if you’re a small business owner, you’ve probably put a lot of effort or thought at least into your marketing, into your advertising. And when you take your approach, when you make your decision, the most common way people go is by looking at large, successful competitors in their industry and then imitating what they do.

MATT: And it seems logical. I get it right. It seems like the logical thing to do. I want to be as successful as this company, so therefore I should do what they do. Right. And I’ll get the same result. Unfortunately, this is one of the fastest ways to fail. And here’s a few reasons why. Okay. If we’re looking at these large companies. They have a completely different agenda than we do. Large companies, they’re not serving their customers necessarily. They’re serving their board of directors. They’re serving their shareholders.

They are satisfying their superiors. They are hitting their quotas. Making a profit may be actually last on that list. I mean, yeah, they do. They want to make a profit, but. Their marketing priorities are different than yours. Because, let’s be honest, the only priority you have is making a profit. You don’t have shareholders, you don’t have people that you have to appease. You just need to make a profit to survive, to stay alive. Large companies also have a very different budget that they’re operating with.

So a large company is going to have, I don’t know, ten 100 x the budget that you’re working with. So they can do different strategies. Now, we’ve talked about these different tactics, right, that don’t work for small businesses. This getting your name out there approach, you know, I don’t know where there is that we’re getting it out to, but people say, well, I’m going to get my name out there.

MATT: I’m just going to post, post, post, post, post, post post every social media platform. Because that’s what I see Coca-Cola doing. That’s what I see Pepsi doing. That’s what I see. All these big name brands doing Nike, Adidas, right? If they’re doing it,

I need to be doing it. And what happens is we don’t see the results that we thought we were going to see because it is our job as a business owner, a small business owner, to find our niche. There are there are riches in the niches. You need to find your niche. You need to find your target market and you need to be as specific as possible because you don’t have the budget of these big, large companies. And so you need to make every dollar you spend count. And if you’re saying, Man, I’m not spending any dollars, I’m just doing all my social media management myself, that is still costing you money because your time is the most valuable asset you have as a business owner.

How much is your time worth? If you’re spending ten hours, 20 hours a week on social media, honestly, it requires 30 to 40 hours per week to effectively manage 3 to 4 channels. It’s a full time job. That’s why people hire full time social media managers.

MATT: That’s why we recommend finding a company that can manage your social media, even if it’s just 1 or 2, your primary and secondary channels. It’s important because it takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of expertise. And while I know it’s tough to find a company you can trust to manage that because I agree there are a lot of snake oil salesmen in our industry who will sell you the the insights.

They’ll sell you how many views it got, but they’re not really going to work to produce results. They’re not going to really focus on conversions or the conversion rate of all this content you’re putting out there. You know, we like to focus on on leads, qualified leads and then closed sales. Like how how is this actually impacting your bottom line? Are you making a profit with our efforts?

Let’s quantify the lifetime value of each customer and then let’s add up how much we’re spending to acquire that customer and see if it’s worth it. You have to be a metrics based company when it comes to your marketing.

Absolutely. Metrics based and find someone you can trust, someone who’s going to explain it all to you. And we’ve talked about that before, But I think it’s important to just reiterate, I understand and I empathize with the struggle to find a company that’s not going to take advantage of you, that’s going to focus on your best interests, and that isn’t going to overcharge you.

MATT: That’s a priority to us and there are many other companies where that is the priority here locally. I know them personally. They are out there, but there are a lot where that’s just not the case. Their priority is their own bottom line or their own shareholders or their own investors, whoever it may be. So when it comes to the money that you’re spending on this, your time is invaluable.

You can’t just discredit the amount of time you’re putting into it. So it is costing you money. So every hour you spend, every dollar you spend. That is, you have to see a return, right? You can’t just gamble. You can’t just spray and pray like a shotgun approach. You need a sniper approach. You need to be laser focused in on your specific ideal customer. Who are they? Where are they at? How are you going to speak to them? What is your message? How are you going to resonate deeply with that person? Are you going to connect with them?

Focus on getting one person, not a thousand. The thousand will come when you get that one. It really is is crazy. It seems counterintuitive, but I see this with every business we work with. I see this with every podcast we produce for companies where when they do focus on that one person, they reach the the widest, largest audience. The impact is huge.

MATT: It resounds.

Those who just try and do mass appeal do not branding and mass marketing. It is ego based marketing and that is the domain of large companies because they can afford to fuel their own egos. They can afford to spray and pray because they have far more money to waste than you and I do.

So strategy. From an outside observers perspective, strategy from an expert you can trust is vital because they’re going to tell you, at least I hope they tell you, because this is simply true. You must focus on your specific ideal customer, Focus on your niche. The riches are in the niches. If there is one takeaway in this episode, it is this Do not do what everybody else is doing. That is a recipe for failure. And that is why many businesses fail. So if you want to know how to kill your business, do what everybody else is doing. Trust me, it won’t work because you aren’t everybody else.

Don’t do what the big companies are doing. They have a different agenda, a different budget. Don’t do what your competitors are doing because we don’t even know, even on a local level, we don’t know if that’s actually producing real results. You need to do what you need to do what is best for your company. And we want to help you. In the show notes, you can click on a link and download our Free six Step marketing plan.

MATT: It’s all condensed down in one page because our goal on this podcast is to make marketing simple. Step one is identifying who your ideal customer is. Step two What is the message you’re going to use to reach that ideal customer? Step three What is the media?

How are you going to get this message to your ideal customer? Many different tactics social media posts, LinkedIn campaigns, Direct messaging. Email marketing. Step four Establishing what your lead capturing system is. How are you getting people into your ecosphere, into your sales funnel? Step five What is your lead nurturing system? So let’s say they’ve given you their email address. How are you going to follow up?

How are you going to continue to build that relationship? You know, those three steps of that relationship, You know, first you’re going to get their attention, right? Then you’re going to enlighten them and eventually you build towards commitment and that is step six. What is your sales conversion strategy?

These are all vital steps in the process of getting someone who is a prospect into your business as a paying customer, hopefully for life. The six step marketing plan is free. It’s a PDF you can download right now. The link is in the show notes. Thank you so much for joining us here today on this episode of Midwest Mindset. I hope you enjoyed it. My name is Matt Tompkins and we’ll see you on the next episode.