How To Make Money So Fast It Feels ILLEGAL | Ep 808

The speaker discusses strategies for rapid business growth, emphasizing the importance of visibility, advertising, and focusing on key growth levers. They highlight the need for businesses to overcome obscurity by dedicating time to outreach, content creation, or advertising. The speaker also advises on the importance of building a strong brand and proof of success, rather than relying solely on promises. They stress the significance of clarity in communication, leveraging existing successful strategies, and understanding audience needs. Additionally, they discuss the balance between emotional and logical buyers and the role of word-of-mouth in influencing business success.

• Many business owners mistakenly believe they have a significant market share when, in reality, they are only reaching a small fraction of the potential audience.
• The marketplace is vast, and business owners should explore multiple communication channels to maximize reach.
• Advertising is a powerful tool that can dramatically increase business visibility and growth, unlike mere optimizations that offer limited improvements.

"The reality is the marketplace is significantly bigger than you ever give it credit for. There are so many humans on earth, and so this is what it looks like in reality, you're actually only advertising on one of four different methods."

• Highlights the misconception of market size and the importance of utilizing various advertising methods.

"With advertising, you can in a very real way, 100x the amount of people who find out about your business."

• Emphasizes advertising's potential to exponentially increase business visibility compared to small-scale optimizations.

• Instead of directly competing, businesses should focus on overwhelming the market with visibility to render competitors irrelevant.
• Building a strong presence can overshadow competitors, making them less significant in the eyes of the market.

"What you want to do is overwhelm the marketplace so that you drown them out. You want to be so loud that no one else can hear them."

• Advocates for creating a dominant presence that eclipses competitors rather than engaging in direct competition.

"You grow so big that no one can even hear them. The alternative is that you kill them with kindness."

• Offers two strategies to deal with competition: growing significantly or responding with kindness to criticism.

• Business owners often underestimate the need for repetition in messaging, fearing it may annoy the audience.
• Consistent messaging helps reinforce brand presence and values, ensuring that the audience remembers and understands the message.

"There's this fallacy that most small business owners think, and myself included, for years I thought this was that repetition in and of itself is somehow bad."

• Dispels the misconception that repetition is negative, highlighting its importance in effective communication.

"People need to be more reminded than they need to be taught."

• Stresses the value of reminding audiences consistently rather than assuming they have learned and internalized messages after a single exposure.

• Handling criticism with grace or by ignoring it can prevent unnecessary conflict and maintain a positive image.
• Acknowledging flaws and responding kindly can disarm critics and enhance public perception.

"On the occasion that I do choose to respond to hate, I try to respond with kindness."

• Describes a strategy of addressing criticism with humility and positivity.

"You either grow so big that no one can see them or hear them, or you meet them where they're at on a different game, which is you play on kindness and grace."

• Suggests two approaches to criticism: becoming too successful to notice detractors or responding with kindness.

• Effective communication in marketing involves using simple, clear language that is easily understood by a broad audience.
• Simplifying language can increase comprehension and engagement, making messages more accessible.

"I made one of my big marketing rules clear, not clever."

• Establishes the importance of clarity in communication to ensure messages are understood by all audience levels.

"If you can explain it to a third grader, then you understand it. If you can't, you don't."

• Emphasizes the need for simplicity in explanations to demonstrate true understanding and improve communication effectiveness.

• Using analogies and examples relevant to the audience's experiences can enhance understanding and relatability.
• Adjusting communication style based on the audience's background can improve message reception and effectiveness.

"If I was talking to the same, I was trying to teach the same concept, but I was teaching it to realtors, then I would probably use a house analogy."

• Illustrates the importance of using relatable analogies to communicate effectively with specific audiences.

"You have to match the analogy to the history of learning from the people that you're trying to communicate to."

• Highlights the necessity of aligning communication strategies with the audience's knowledge and experiences for better engagement.

• Complexity in messaging can hinder understanding; aim for simplicity to enhance clarity.
• Communicate in a way that is easily understood by the audience to facilitate faster comprehension.

"And so something complex takes longer to understand. It takes more effort. Right. And it's harder. Right. And so instead what we want to do is say, okay, how do I make it easy and faster?"

• Simplifying communication reduces the effort needed for understanding, making it more effective.

• Proof is more critical than the promise in business; it builds trust and credibility.
• Testimonials, reviews, and feedback are essential for establishing proof.
• Working for free initially can help gather valuable proof and improve the product.

"The next massive growth lever is proof over promise. All right? And so what this means is that in my earlier days, I would spend so much time on my promise, right? I wrote a whole book on promises, which is basically offers, right? And I would obsess about the offer, but then the offer is super important. But the only thing that's more important is proof."

• Proof is prioritized over promises in establishing trust, making it a key focus for business growth.

"The proof process both makes you convicted because you get the opportunity of many feedback loops to make your product better so that you then can collect the positive feedback that you can then advertise to get more people like those customers."

• Gathering proof through feedback loops refines the product and enhances advertising effectiveness.

• Demonstrating success through proof is more compelling than making promises.
• The messenger's credibility is crucial; showcasing achievements can enhance message impact.

"The most compelling way to advertise anything is show don't sell. If I just stand here and said nothing. And I said, and I just stated the facts and told the truth."

• Demonstrating success through tangible proof is more effective than verbal promises.

• Hooks are crucial for capturing attention and ensuring the audience sees the proof.
• Both visual and auditory hooks are important for effective advertising.
• An effective hook can drastically increase engagement and conversion rates.

"The next big thing is the hook. Now you're like, okay, I've heard about hooks before. Not the way that I'm going to talk about it. All right, so the hook is greater than everything."

• Hooks are essential for grabbing attention and ensuring the audience engages with the content.

"We just started reviewing short form content on the content team and just doing a more regular activity of saying like, what are the things that make content do well? And there was a video that we're like, we think this thing is good. All we did is we took the same video that got like 40,000 views and then we just chopped out the first three seconds. That was kind of like getting into the video before the actual real hook was delivered. And by snipping those three seconds and then just starting where the hook really was, it went from a 40,000 view video to a 780,000 view video."

• A well-crafted hook can significantly enhance the reach and effectiveness of content.

• Growth can be achieved through doing more of what's working, improving existing methods, or trying new strategies.
• Over-focusing on new ideas can be detrimental; mastering existing successful strategies is often more effective.
• Increasing volume in successful activities can lead to substantial growth.

"So I talk about more, better and new as the three primary strategies of growth. You either do more of what's already working, you do what you're doing to make it work better, or you do something entirely new."

• Growth strategies focus on amplifying successful actions, improving them, or innovating with new approaches.

"And so one of the big meta lessons of this is that what presents as volatility is typically a symptom of low volume."

• Increasing the volume of successful activities can reduce perceived volatility and enhance growth.

• Positive word of mouth can reduce customer acquisition costs, while negative word of mouth can significantly increase them.
• Negative experiences spread faster and more widely than positive ones, impacting business reputation and costs.

"Word of mouth people are familiar with referrals. You know, customers tell other customers or tell other prospects that your stuff is good. What a lot of people don't understand is that negative word of mouth is significantly stronger and faster than positive."

• Negative word of mouth has a greater impact and spreads faster than positive, affecting business growth and costs.

• Negative word of mouth can significantly harm business growth; it's easier to be crushed by it than to grow from positive word of mouth.
• Business owners often overlook their own negative word of mouth, which is crucial to address early on.
• Focusing on proof over promise can help mitigate negative feedback and improve product quality through customer feedback.

"It's way harder to grow off word of mouth that's positive. But it's really easy to get crushed on negative word of mouth."

• Negative word of mouth can quickly damage a business's reputation, making growth challenging.

"If I'm going to get negative word of mouth, which I know I am, if I'm starting out, I want to keep that as concentrated and quiet as possible."

• Minimizing and managing negative feedback is essential in the early stages of a business.

• Continuously use and replicate successful strategies rather than constantly seeking new ones.
• Deviating from what works increases the likelihood of failure.
• The concept of "stealing from yourself" involves refining and reusing existing successful elements rather than seeking novelty.

"When you find something that works, keep doing it. Deviation from what works is more likely not to work."

• Consistency in successful strategies is more beneficial than frequent changes.

"You will get bored of it far before your customers ever do."

• Business owners may tire of repetitive strategies before their audience does, emphasizing the need for consistency.

• Buyers exist on a continuum of information requirements, not simply as emotional or logical.
• High information buyers require more details before purchasing, while low information buyers make quicker decisions.
• The pool of high information buyers is significantly larger, and they require more education and brand building to convert.

"I actually think that there's a continuum of buyers that people sit on and you've got people who require more information, so they're high info buyers."

• Buyers' needs for information vary, and businesses must cater to these differences.

"The amount of high information buyers is an order of magnitude or multiple orders of magnitude greater."

• The market for high information buyers is vast, necessitating a focus on education and brand development.

• The five levels of awareness are unaware, problem aware, solution aware, product aware, and most aware.
• Businesses must guide customers through these stages to convert them into buyers.
• Unaware customers require broad curiosity-driven advertising, while most aware customers respond to direct offers.

"The way to move people through this is something that Eugene Swartz pioneered in his book Breakthrough Advertising."

• Eugene Swartz's framework helps businesses understand and navigate customer awareness levels.

"A customer will basically move in this direction, going from unaware to most aware."

• Understanding and leveraging customer awareness levels is crucial for effective marketing strategies.

• Effective advertising requires a balance between brand building and direct sales efforts.
• A shift towards more brand-focused advertising can yield long-term benefits, although it may take time to see returns.
• The optimal ratio for advertising impressions is approximately 70% brand building and 30% direct response.

"When he took over 30% of their advertising budget was going to here was going to the broad awareness level, storytelling, emotional stuff, and then 70% was basically geared towards buying shoes."

• Reallocating advertising budgets towards brand building can enhance long-term growth.

"It took 18 months for them to see the return on that budget."

• Patience is required to see the benefits of increased brand-focused advertising efforts.

• B2C businesses often use emotional stories and endorsements to connect with high information buyers.
• B2B businesses focus on aspirational outcomes and providing free content and services to build relationships.
• The approach to top-of-funnel marketing differs between B2C and B2B, requiring tailored strategies.

"B2C businesses, so like business to consumer businesses, where will typically do these types of pairings in terms of high information buyers, by telling emotional stories."

• Emotional storytelling is a key strategy for B2C businesses to engage high information buyers.

"In understanding the difference between B2C and B2B in terms of what do I do top of funnel here."

• Recognizing the distinct marketing needs of B2C and B2B businesses is essential for effective strategy development.

• Emphasize the importance of stating facts and telling the truth in marketing.
• Encourage creating compelling truths rather than exaggerating underwhelming stories.
• Highlight the uniqueness of a business by identifying and promoting specific strengths.

"State the facts and tell the truth. And the reason this is so important to me is that it forces me as an advertiser, business person to change reality."

• This quote underscores the fundamental marketing principle of honesty and authenticity, which can lead to long-term success.

"Every business, if you get narrow enough, has something that's unique about it."

• Emphasizes the need to identify and highlight a unique aspect of a business to stand out in a competitive market.

• Discuss the importance of showcasing unique aspects of a product or service.
• Use examples like the "toasted" cigarettes from Mad Men to illustrate how highlighting a unique process can differentiate a product.
• Differentiate between truly unique features and those that are perceived as unique due to marketing.

"The best version of this is finding something that's truly unique. The second best version is to just say something that's unique about something that everyone else already does."

• Explains the value of highlighting unique features, whether they are genuinely unique or just perceived as such.

"Say what only you can say. So you show what only you can show and you say what only you can say."

• Stresses the importance of communicating unique selling points that competitors cannot replicate.

• Explain the significance of targeting the correct audience in marketing campaigns.
• Discuss how different advertising platforms impact targeting effectiveness.
• Provide examples of how misaligned targeting can lead to unsuccessful marketing efforts.

"The first thing that you have to get right in marketing is targeting the correct audience."

• Highlights the foundational role of audience targeting in successful marketing strategies.

"If nothing is coming through, it's simply because the wrong people are seeing it."

• Points out that ineffective marketing often results from reaching the wrong audience rather than issues with the product or offer.

• Define mastery as having multiple ways to measure and achieve success.
• Explore how experts use a variety of metrics to track progress and identify areas for improvement.
• Provide examples of how beginners and masters differ in their approach to measuring success.

"Masters have more ways to win. Now what does that actually mean? They understand the many different ways that you can measure progress."

• Illustrates how mastery involves a deep understanding of diverse metrics and progress indicators.

"Beginners typically look at purely the lagging indicators. They just say, churn is up, sales are down, revenue is down, cash collection is down."

• Highlights the tendency of beginners to focus on lagging indicators, while masters focus on leading indicators for proactive improvement.

• Highlight the benefits of personalized strategies for business growth.
• Discuss the potential impact of scaling workouts and networking opportunities for business owners.
• Provide context for the value of attending specialized business events.

"If these kind of higher level strategies and in-depth tactics are things that you would like us to personalize to your business to help you get to the next level..."

• Emphasizes the value of personalized strategies in accelerating business growth.

"The scores that we get in terms of NPS, so net promoter scores have been kind of off the charts."

• Indicates the high satisfaction and perceived value of the business events and programs offered.