EntreLeadership - #139: Donald Miller—Branding Your Story Part 2

Episode Date: March 21, 2016

Best-selling author Donald Miller returns to share more about what it means for you to tell your story the right way for your brand. He’s getting tactical, so grab a pen and notebook before joining us. Also on tap, digital marketing guru Amy Porterfield talks to our own Christy Wright about social media strategy and why it’s so critical to your business. Listen in, because you are going to learn! entreleadership.com/podcast MarketingMap Tool Infusionsoft: Kick Procrastination to the Curb Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

helping business leaders grow themselves, their team, and their profits. This is the Entree Leadership Podcast. Now, here is your host, Ken Coleman. Broadcasting from the Music City, this is the podcast of leaders, by leaders, for leaders. Thank you so much for joining the conversation. Here's what's coming to you. Our most popular episode of 2015 was with Donald Miller, as we talked about story brand. How to tell the story of your brand.

It was just wildly successful. So naturally we sat down and said, okay, what's next? How can we go deeper? There's a whole lot there. And so part two of our conversation with Donald Miller is going to be really great. It's because it's going to be deeper and very, very tactical. We were more philosophical and gave you an overview of what does it mean to tell the story the right way for your brand so that you're positioned as the guide and your customer is the hero. Well, now we're going to get very practical, so you're going to love this as we're so focused on how to help you market this month.

and we continue with the practical help on marketing with social media strategy consultant Amy Porterfield. Her influence is growing, very respected, and Christy Wright, who is the force behind business boutique, has Amy Porterfield speaking at the next business boutique. We'll tell you more about that, but she got on the phone with Amy, and this is a very practical conversation that will help you as well. An Infusion Soft giveaway for the month of March is on fighting procrastination. 15 minutes a day, how you can kick procrastination to the curb and get productive. Very simple stuff can help you win on beating procrastination. We want you to go to infusionsoft.com slash 15.

Infusionsoft.com slash one five. I mean, we've got it all covered, Eric. This is unbelievable. So let's get right to it. I told you that our most popular episode of 2015 was episode 103 with Donald Miller, as we talked about story brand. We had him back in just very recently as we go a little bit deeper

and very tactical on what does it look like to tell your story well. This is our conversation. All right, so this is fun. Part 2, Don Miller back in studio, National Neighbor. Yes.

The first conversation we had was received so well. I can't believe though. That was fun. It was really fun. So the parties that be, Tim, your chief of staff, our team are like,

all right, we got to do this again. So here we go. I'm excited. You like this? Yeah. I'm honored to be back. It's always fun to have you here. So, okay, by the way, disclaimer, if you're just now joining us and you didn't hear the first episode with Don, you need to go back and listen to it and then come back here because this is like a continuation thing.

That's right. As we were saying. As we were saying. So today we're going to start with the four P's of business. I want you to quickly lay the list out and then kind of outline the four P's why they're so significant. Well, they're pretty well known, but if we don't know them, we can go back over on people, right? I mean, if you want to really have a successful business, you've got to get your people right. And that's partly the people who you hire and partly the people that you're knowing who your customer is, all that kind of stuff. And then your product has to be really great.

If you don't have a great product, it's not going to work. It won't be sustainable. And then we all get to this point where we have to create processes, right? We have to turn things into, you know, whether it's sixth segment or whatever, we have to get our manufacturing down and our sales down and just turn things into processes often so that we can replace people as people come and go and we can plug them into processes. Those tend to be the three P's that people focus on in business, and if you get those three things right, you can make it with enough drive, right? The fourth P is where I see so many businesses stall or even fail, and that's positioning. And we don't often talk about positioning.

How is your product talked about in the marketplace? And when you look at companies that really explode, they got their positioning right. So Steve Jobs, as we said in the first interview, goes off to Pixar and comes back to Apple. he had learned how to position narratively his product in the marketplace, and it took off. So what Storybrand does is we really help people get their story out and position in the mind of the customer. Your customer has a Rolodex in their mind, and you hand in their business card, and they're looking for a place to put that business card in their mental Rolidings.

Most often, when we hand them that business card, you know, you're a lawyer or financial advisor or whatever, it goes into a junk drawer in their mind and they forget about it. But when we can position our brand so that we are differentiated from the rest of the marketplace so that we have a narrative framework and the customer understands what role we play in their story, they remember it. Interesting. Am I to believe that this is really encouraging for the person who's listening to this and they go, okay, we got the first three and we're doing pretty well there, but we're kind of stuck.

Yeah. I mean, if people are going to your website, we said this in the first interview, and they don't understand what you offer them and what role you play in their story. within five seconds, you're losing sales. So even we had to work on this for years. You know, we're a branding company where we have a process that helps you clarify your marketing messages so that people understand who you are.

We tried everything from, you know, a marketing company, a processing company, a framework that you can learn, blah, blah, blah. It wasn't until, and we did great. We doubled in revenue every year. It wasn't until I accidentally sent out an email on my iPhone. We had a bad week, and I thought, guys, we've got to hit our list one more time and just explain some of the stuff that we do. And I kind of from the heart said, you know, I've spent years telling my own story. I mean, more than a decade telling my own story, a bunch of great, successful books.

And I just hit this point where there was a law of diminishing returns. It was great to be heard and understood. I really like that. But after a while, you're kind of like, this feels narcissistic now. And I made this switch so that I help other people tell their stories, including organizations, brands, nonprofits, that narrative, I've spent 10 years telling my own story, now I want to help you tell yours, made our company explode. What it did was it positioned us in the market. There are a thousand branding companies. There are a thousand web designers. There are all sorts of people who help you

give a better speech or whatever. But the narrative of, I've spent 10 years telling my own story, it got old, now I'm helping other people tell theirs. Everybody took that business card and went, that goes right there in this Rolodex. And it's a narrative that people can remember. Dave's the same way. In a very similar way, I went bankrupt. I had very bad business practices. I opened my Bible and went, okay, how should I do this and created some integratable practices? And now I'm helping other people understand how this stuff works. That's a narrative. And it's a narrative that captivates people. There are probably, I'm guessing, 10,000 financial advisors in the country. There are probably 1,000 of those writing books currently. There are probably 250 of those who have podcasts and probably 5,000. six, we have radio shows. When people say, what's a personality out there who helps people with financial advice? Everybody says, Dave Ramsey. And I'm convinced part of it is the people, the product, the processes, but I think the positioning is what moved them ahead. What kind of questions do you need to be asking when you know who your target audience is

so that you can really figure out that positioning? First of all, we want to know their pain points. You know, the big paradigm shift for us is that you are the guide in the story, not the hero. Your customer is Luke Skywalker. You are Yoda. So your only job, if you're, for any brand is to help the hero win the day. So in order to help the hero win the day, we have to understand what is it that they want, what is they trying to accomplish, what's the death star that they have to go destroy?

And then what are the challenges that face them? Once you understand those challenges, we've identified our challenges as people have great products, but they can't get the word out. And they're starting to feel like maybe it's them, right? But that's not necessarily true. If we can help them tell their story, we will help them win.

And so to understand, this is the pain point that the customer, is trying to overcome, that's the challenge that they're trying to overcome, in order to accomplish X, those two factors will help you completely define your message. Okay, so this is fun. I'm really excited about this.

In the first conversation, you laid out the seven elements of the StoryBrand framework, how your organization's story brand helps people really figure out messaging. Today we're going to go deeper. Seven messages that grow your business. So not the seven elements of StoryBrand, but the seven messages that grow your business.

Walk us through these. Well, they have to do with the seven-part framework. So the very first is your customer is, hero, not you. So brands come to us all the time and they want to say, hey, we want to help I get our story out. And I think that's great. What we don't understand is that customers don't really care whether or not our grandfather started the company. Subconsciously, every human being wakes up as the hero in a story. And what that means is they're trying to accomplish something and there are challenges that they're facing. If your brand comes along and says,

you know, we're company X and we're trying to accomplish this and here are our goals, what your customer hears is, oh, you're a hero too. And so we're both heroes. They don't necessarily dislike you, but what they say is, man, I really hope you reach your goals and I hope you have a heroic journey. We have that in common. That's awesome. Will you please step aside, though, because I'm looking for Yoda. Right. So what we want to do is we want to position ourselves as Yoda. We want to position ourselves as the guide in the story. This is the biggest paradigm shift. Just this paradigm shift will grow your company. And it has to be company-wide, from the C-suite all the way down.

If you're a small business, from you, the leader, all the way down, everybody has to understand, look, this is all about the customer's journey. If you look at Amazon.com's number one company value, it's this. We have an obsession with our customers. And I think that's something we can all learn from. We have to be obsessed with our customer's journey. So we probably need to get over a little bit this idea of, I want our story out, and we want to get into this idea of,

I want to know who my customer is and want to know their story, so I can step in and say, here's how to win the day. Paradigm shift number two is every hero has a problem. And we have to understand what that problem is and identify it. So when I say to you as an entrepreneur, what problem do you solve for your customer? I need an answer right away. Because as soon as you say, we solve this problem, anybody with that problem is going to say, I'm interested.

But when you say my grandfather started the company, that's not a problem they're trying to solve and so they're not going to be interested. So customer is a hero, the customer has a problem. So the customer is the hero is number one. Customer has a problem is number two. You are the guide is number three. The two things a guide needs to do in order to subconsciously trigger the customer's mind and say, you're my guy, are very simple.

Empathy, we understand their pain and authority. I know what I'm talking about. So the way to make a great first impression is, hey, man, I've really got my stuff together, and you know what? I really like you. Those are the two things, and of course, if they're actually true,

you're going to make great first impressions all over the place. It's the same for a brand. We like brands who like us, understand us, resonate with us, and know what they're doing. Those are the two things that we have to do. That gives us instant trust almost with the customer. Because they go, okay, you understand my problem, and more importantly, you can help me.

That's exactly it. It's almost like instant relief. And you see these, you know, we love to talk about politics before the show came on. We were just catching up on all these races. We're geeking out. I know. That podcast would probably be listened to it by about four people. But, you know, we'll stick to business.

I think it's why so many politicians who are not from Texas wear cowboy boots when they speak in Texas, right? They're trying to say, I like you, I get you. And the language even changes and all that. because people really do batch their thinking. If you're like me, you must be okay. One thing that I didn't talk about in the last podcast, which is fascinating to me and what these seven paradigm shifts break through

are the two things that the human brain is trying to do the most. The first thing the human brain is trying to do is help you survive. That's why when you walk into a room, Ken, you don't know how many chairs are in the room, but you know where the exits are. Your subconscious doesn't need the information of how many chairs there are in the room to survive,

but it needs to know where the exits are in case there's a fire. So your brain is always trying to help your body survive. That's its number one job. The number two job that your brain is trying to do is fascinating. It's trying not to burn very many calories. So when you actually spend a lot of time thinking, you are burning calories and you're exhausting. Your subconscious knows, hey, this guy's wasting calories on stuff that isn't helping me survive. And it's programmed. God programmed your brain to tune out. Therefore, when you are listening, to a speaker communicate, and they're not giving you information that helps you survive.

Now, let's define survive. Food, water, social relationships, so you can build a tribe like an entree leadership tribe that helps you survive. Procreating, so cute girl walks in the room, that's going to help me survive and get my line down the room. All those things is what we're obsessed about. We don't even know we're obsessed about it, but we are. So therefore, when somebody goes to your website and you give them a bunch of information

that doesn't help them survive by saving money. increasing my status in the community, connecting deeply in relationships, all these kinds of things. When you give me information, it doesn't help me survive. My brain is programmed to do this. It's going to cost me too many calories to understand what you're trying to say, so I'm checking out. Isn't that fascinating? Could you imagine for a moment if you said that to somebody? They're boring you in a lunch.

You just went, listen. I don't know how to say this, but I'm wasting too many calories. We're going to have to shut this lunch down. It doesn't sound as rude that way. Yeah, we have a mutual client of, I love the guys at Iron Tribe, the fitness group. They love entre leadership. They almost made me throw up, by the way. Yeah, they work you hard.

They've been after me for a while. But I love those guys. And one of the funniest conversations I've ever had was to sit them down and say, your website is making people burn too many calories. And they're kind of like, well, that's the point. Yeah, thanks. Hey, let's write him to the check now. So these seven, you know, we've gone through three now.

But these three, what they do is they help you communicate without burning too many calories, all super easily laid out where they're not having to burn very much. many calories. The fourth paradigm shift here is that every customer is looking for a plan. And we believe in the magic of threes. If you give people a three-step plan to do business with you, your business will increase. Why? Because if I say to you, Ken, I really want to help you retire at an earlier age. There's about 300 pages of information I'd like to take you through. You're gone. I've burned too many calories already. You burn too many. And you know, I've got to climb Mount Everest. business with this guy. But when I say, hey, phase one, let's have a meeting, and I want to hear

your goals. Phase two, I'm actually going to give you a strategy for how you can create these goals and make them happen realistically based on your own financial situation. And three, we're going to do an execution program that will probably take about three years to execute, and then you're going to be great to retire early. Well, you just broke down Mount Everest. No question. And to three escalators. It's a great example. I'd call Stacy and I'd say, Babe, just talk to Don. This is great. We're rocking and rolling.

We're moving forward. All because I gave you a plan. And this is probably, apart from positioning your customer as the hero and yourself as the guide, I would say just go on your website and saying, what's my three-step plan for people to do business with me? If you don't have that, go do it. Go create that. And you can be phase one, phase two, phase three. It can be call us, come into the store and buy something.

I know that sounds silly, but people need it broken down for them or they won't do it. It's like stones in a creek. If I'm going to cross a creek and it's just a bunch of water, I'm not crossing that creek. If I go to cross the creek and it's a bunch of water and there's three rocks I can hit across that creek, I am much more likely to cross the creek. You've got to give people stones in the creek. And it also creates clarity. The human brain is drawn to clarity and away from confusion for the reasons I explained earlier.

Trying not to burn calories, trying to survive. So anything that is unclear. And I said this on the previous podcast. I'll say it again. The best products do not win in the marketplace. The best services and products do not win. They should. In a just world, they would.

It's the products that are communicated the clearest. People write me letters when I say this, but I have an Apple computer, but I don't think it's the best computer. I don't think the iPhone is the best phone. I don't think all that. But they communicate the clearest. It's just the simplest, easiest communication, and you don't have to burn a lot of calories.

Now, it's a great computer. Don't get me wrong. Sure. I stole two of my people from Apple. They always call me saying, it is the best computer. I'm like, which one other one of you ever used in your life? Right, right, right.

But that's not the point. The point is Steve Jobs and Tim Cook after him and Johnny Ives, these guys, they just get focus and clarity and simplicity. Fifth, you have to call your customer to action. If you don't encourage or challenge your customer to buy from you, they will not. This was so hard for me, Kim, because I'm not a natural salesman. I'm not a natural guy who goes in asking for money.

And I realize this was the big paradigm shift for me. What I'm actually communicating by going in and saying, you know, we've got a great product. We'd love to see it at one of our workshops was this. Instead of, hey, guys, you've got till midnight tonight to sign up for this workshop or the price increases. You don't want to miss this. The consequences are dire for your business unless you come.

Unless I ask in that way, what I'm actually communicating is, I've got a great product. I kind of believe in it. I'd love for you to try it out and affirm me. Who wants to do that? Yeah. Who wants to that? Remember when we were dating our wonderful wives?

I don't know if you had a dating history as bad as mine, but I mean, I would ask a girl and be like, hey, do you like coffee? What the heck is that? She's like, I don't know. She has no idea what you're trying to ask. And what you're actually communicating is I'm a complete loser and it'd great for my self-esteem if you would just stand next to me. That's right. No girl's interested, right? That's funny.

I was interested in my wife for four years before I figured out. how to drive the ball to the hoop, right? That's awesome. Just slam dunked. And finally, we were in D.C. one night. She had been dating another guy for three years. And I said, listen, Betsy, he's a good guy and all. But I really wanted to date you for four years.

I really like you. This is the kind of girl I think you are. This is how I think you should be treated. In 30 days, I'd like to call you, and I hope you broke up with that guy. In 30 days, I'm going to call you, and if you've broken up with that guy, I will take you out. And I'm really dying to. Call her 30 days later. the guy. And we're married now.

Unbelievable. But I think customers are looking for the same thing. They're looking for you to say I believe in my product. It really will change your life. And you need this. You know, if I could encourage people, stop apologizing for your product. If you have to apologize for your product, get out of the market. If you really can't change

people's lives, get out of the market. And my guess is you can. And so it's time to step into that confidence. And not only that, your customers need you to. So we have to call our customers to action. And then the sixth and seventh are really simple. There have to be stakes in the game. It has to either end in a successful ending for your customer or a tragic of failure ending for your customer. I have to know what's at stake before I'm willing to hire you as a lawn care provider, right? I have to know successfully,

I'm going to have tons of time this summer to spend with my family. My yard is going to look better than my neighbor's yard. You know, there's not going to be any weeds. I'm going to wake up and be so proud of my lawn every day. Failure, I'm going to keep having these problem with weeds. I'm not going to have any time on the weekends. I'm going to be out there sweating in a hundred and the scourge of the neighborhood. I'm going to be an embarrassment. My wife is probably going to start, you know, flirting with the mailman. If I don't do something about this, I've got to know what's at stake. So those are the seven, those are the seven things. And we would say it's story brand. If you aren't communicating from one of these seven buckets or all of these seven buckets, you're

creating noise and you're creating clutter and you're creating confusion that this is your filter your guard wheels to communicate well so i go to websites we've helped a thousand businesses now uh we're actually developing a website audit where somebody can call them for 10 minutes we'll just we'll just rip your website apart is that right that's fantastic yeah it's coming up real soon and uh you can just call it for 10 minutes we'll say hey put a buy now button here nobody understands this this is the wrong image you know you're selling you're selling uh you're selling tech devices and you got a picture of your building i mean why do you have a picture of your building. Have a picture of a happy person selling or using your tech device. And, you know, so things like that. But it's so fun. And here's what's so fun.

When we're talking about entrepreneurs, you know, we've all been in this place where we're like, my idea must stink. Nobody likes it. Nobody understands me. What if you have a really great idea and a really great product, but you're just positioning it wrong? I think the, if you can get that positioning right. And one thing you do is you work on the process for a little bit, you figure out your message, you apply it to your website. And then your website just sits there and sales for you 24 hours a day because you're actually communicating. clearly. This is no excuse for having an inferior product. I think we should all have the best product and the best service and work very hard about that. But many people out there are

beating some of the people listening to this podcast because they're communicating more clearly. They don't have a better product. You have a better product and you're getting beat in the marketplace by people who just know how to communicate much more clearly. This is very interesting that you say this. A couple things I want to hit if you're talking about stakes in the ground. Yeah. And you said you have to present them, you know, a stake for the customer. Yeah, what's at stake? But you gave us positive and negative stakes. when you gave us the examples of the yard. Yes.

This isn't just website stuff. This is sales teams need to figure out this vernacular, right? Yep. They need to be able to speak quickly to people in a sales process, even if it's a big pitch. I just want you to speak to that because I know we're talking a lot about external branding, but I don't want to pass over the fact that, to me, you just gave us a really simple construct so that when salespeople are actually eyeball to eyeball with people, they're laying the stakes out. Well, one of the things that the story of the framework offers is offers a common vocabulary. So you can actually go in and say, hey, on X product, what's our customer's internal frustration?

And everybody in the room needs to know it. We actually have a one-page sheet that you can fill out for your company or for a product or for whatever it is that you're trying to get a clear message on. And everybody can understand that in one shot. And then everybody gets to be talking about using the same language. We need to approach our communication strategy the same way a politician approaches. campaigning. Every CEO or every entrepreneur who's starting company needs a stump speech. They need

a stump speech at a cocktail party. And we all know who's the greatest right now. Now this is going to be dated by the time people listen to this maybe. Donald Trump is amazing at going in and saying, I want to make America great again. And China's a bunch of losers and we've got to be winners and these politicians

are awful. That is a near... Now, is he going to be a good president? You know, I'd love for him to like be governor of New Jersey or something first. And I mean, I don't want... I like Chris Christie, so I don't want to taking his place. But just go to Iowa and be a governor for a minute and let us see. What you do in that environment. But in terms of communication, he's the absolute best.

He keeps it simple. Nobody has to burn calories listening to Donald Trump. They don't have to think about anything or nuance they're thinking at all. And everything is about survival. These people are trying to kill us. We're going to stop them. Now, I'm not saying... It's elementary, though.

It is. I interrupt on purpose because I want you to help me because I sit there and listen to him. And this is not a political statement, people. So this is just a fact. The guy can't finish a complete thought. Am I right or am I wrong? No, he speaks in guttural sentences. He speaks, he communicates at a fourth grade level.

Jeb Bush communicates at an eighth grade level. Yeah. That's just been proven. But you're saying it doesn't matter that it's a fragment because it's a fragment that meets the need. And this is, you know, I like Jeb, I like the family, all that stuff. Jeb would have served the American people by learning to communicate on a fourth or fifth grade level. That doesn't mean people are stupid. That's not what I'm saying.

saying people are as in the health. What I'm saying is they're getting 3,000 commercial messages a day. And it is a bit narcissistic to think that they want to give you 15 minutes. Right. And it's a great statement. And, you know, as much as he's called a narcissist, I actually, I've heard firsthand from people of interact with him. Donald Trump's actually a really nice guy and actually thinks about things from other people's perspectives, which is true in his communication. He's actually saying, how are people going to hear this? What do they want to hear? What do they need to hear? and he's right now being rewarded for it. Time will tell what happens down the road.

Another guy who thinks in black and white, easy soundbite narratives is Bernie Sanders. So on both sides you have people who are surprising the world in this primary season by communicating very simply. What would happen if every leader, listened to this podcast, sat down and spent a day or two just saying, what are some messages that I can say that help everybody understand what I'm doing? That's what I'm talking about when I say positioning. And then, honestly, stop saying all the other stuff. Stop wandering around them weeds looking for your golf ball. Stop talking about how your grandfather started the company.

I love your grandfather. He was a great guy. But nobody else cares. Just me and you. It's really true. It sounds so harsh, but it does sound harsh. But it is true. So positioning, I think, is what the whole game is about.

And getting that common vocabulary in your staff, getting common talking points, turns everybody from the janitor to the CEO into a Salesforce. Okay, so we've been talking. We went really deep dive, and I love that on the seven messages. Yeah. But one of the things you talk about that I think is really practical is five things your website should include.

Yeah. And it's a wonderful tie into what you just, you've prepped them. But let's list that out. This is really practical stuff. Yeah. I love this idea. I see you as like Tom Cruise and Minority Report. When people get the 10-minute consult, you're just like, up, getting rid of that,

I'm getting rid of that. But tell us what the five things we need on a website. Okay, five things that you need. One is your website should have an easy-to-understand tagline. visually is put a picture of a happy person using your product. And then I would actually say in big letters what your product is or what the benefit of your product is. And so if your business to business, you know, increase your revenue by using our software product or something like that. A lot of times this is a massive mistake that companies make.

They'll say, you know, we've won 12 awards in a row for customer service. Well, what are you? I'm giving you five seconds. for you to explain to me why I need your product to solve a problem, and you just told me you want an award. You told me you're awesome in two seconds. Yeah, you told me you're awesome, but I don't even know what you sell. Right.

And so not helpful. And so sometimes we're inside the bottle trying to read the label. We need to go to our website and say, can a caveman understand this, right? Can they get it right away? And think in sort of guttural primitive tones, you do lawn care. My lawn look good, me not pay big price. That's all you do. It's like a guyco commercial.

Hey, you can't argue with their success, right? I mean, it's super simple stuff. Absolutely. Okay, so you've got to have that tagline, or I don't want to call the tagline necessarily. It's that statement on your website, big and bold, that says, you can solve my problem. So I say, say my name and say where you want to take me. So I'm an entrepreneur. So we help entrepreneurs organize their time.

Okay, well, that's interesting. It's a software program that helps me organize. You've just said my name, entrepreneur, and what you're going to help me do. That's one key way to create something that catches everybody. Think of it as a hook. So I remember watching this bass fishing show one day. Don't make fun of me. I'm in a hotel room.

I'm flipping channels, and there's a bass fishing show. And I happen to be on Lake Norman in a hotel. I think they do this out on Lake Norman. Maybe this is Lake Norman. I get cut up. This guy is in his hotel room the night before the bass tournament, and he's taking hooks out of his tackle box. He's literally got a file, and he's sharpening every hook. These hooks already come sharp, but he's sharpening everyone.

And I'm like, you know what, that's how you win. So for us to look at our website and say, I just want to sit here and sharpen hooks all day. How can we get rid of words that are cluttering? How can we get rid of words that are confusing? How can we sharpen these hooks? That person will be rewarded. That's what we do as a staff all the time.

We just sharpen hooks, sharpen hooks. We'll catch a lot of fish because of it. The second thing, your website should include an obvious call to action. In the top right corner of your website, there should be a buy-now button or a schedule an appointment button, and it should be a different color, and it should be big. I believe in this rule, there should be one obvious button to press on your website. I don't mean there should be just one button. You can have a bunch of other buttons, but there should be one that's obvious. So when somebody goes to your website in five seconds, I should be able to close that laptop and say, what was the

obvious button I'm supposed to push? And they would say, oh, order now. It was in the top right, it was in a different color, and it was in the middle. It was repeated twice. And then as they scroll down the page, you never want that call to action to disappear. You need to keep it going and going, going all over that website. You can't ask too much to call them to action. Why? Because you're asking them to think, right? I mean, I want to start an investment company.

We joke around the office. I want to start an investment company when we bring in a story brain client, kind of look at their materials, and then the right ones, because there are many, great product, great service, great customer satisfaction, huge profit margins. I want to go to them and say, listen, if we can double your revenue in 24 months, can't we? have a 10% equity stake in your company? Well, probably a lot of people are going to take me up on that. And they're going to say, Don, we're excited. We've got the lawyers in the room. We'll fill out the contracts. We'll get it all right. And then they'll say, okay, Don, we're in. 10% if you can double our revenue. It's a big risk on your part. And I'll say, not really. What you want to do is put a buy now button on your website and call me in 24 months and write me a check because you're

going to owe me so much money because you're not asking anybody for the order. And when you don't ask people for the order, what do they think? You're passive. You don't believe in your product. I need a guide who believes in what they're doing because I'm trying to survive here. Yeah. So calling people to action, challenging them, having a direct call to action, a buy now button somewhere on your website. Also, if you've got a bunch of frequently asked questions, contact us, pictures of my cat, if all those buttons are at the top of your website, sync them to the bottom, put them

in faded language, give me one obvious button, top right and in the middle. It's a whole different lure out of your tackle box, and you're going to catch more fish. Three, your website should visually display the success your client will experience if they use your product or service. Your images should be images of happy people using your product. It gives them a subconscious vision of what their life could be look like if I engage with you. Tons of websites we review have pictures of the product, which is sometimes nice. I like the product with a happy person. Because this is what you're going to do in my life if I do business with you.

It's not just words that we communicate with. Our image systems are very, very important. And also pretty easy. I can't tell you how many websites they go to. And they're visually stunning. And really what they're doing is they're showing off to me their artistic prowess. Well, that's really sweet. But you're not a fourth grader bringing home a coloring drawing for mom and dad.

Let's get to business. Show me what you're going to do in my life. Number four, your website should break down your products and services into bite-sized categories. This is those three steps, right? If you're a software development company and you can help me figure out my sales assessment program, that's a big deal. So phase one is we're going to analyze your assessment program. Phase two is we're going to wireframe a specific piece of software to help you.

Three, we're going to execute it and stay accountable to see if sales go up. Now I'm doing business with me. Right. Because you just help me understand how this giant process might work. Step five is your website should be a clear communication of your brand script, and that just goes into the story brand framework. Those seven buckets that I explained earlier, you can actually relist. listen to this podcast, pause it, get out a piece of paper, and write down seven messaging systems

based on that. And we would call that a brand script. We actually have a physical pad that we give to our clients, and we work through for two days. We help them figure this out. But everything needs to come from one of those seven buckets. It's interesting. I've learned so much, folks. Don, the one thing I'm taking away is Jeff Foxworthy had a show, are you smarter than a fifth grader? I think the question becomes, is your website? Can your website be understood by a fifth grader? smarter than a fourth grader. You said, you know, if you speak on a fourth grade level, I think there's something to that, could a fourth grader, look at a website based on these five things and go, I can tell you what they do. Yeah. We actually, we're developing now, and it should be ready in

April or May, grunttest.com. We own gruntest.com. That's great. And the idea is, can you give your website to a caveman and have them grunt the response? And you will literally be able to go to gruntest.com, enter your URL, email all your friends, and then they will give you feedback on what And we only give your friends five seconds to look at your website. And then we asked them specific questions. And I think people are going to be amazed when they think they're saying this, but people are actually hearing something completely different. I mean, I can't tell you how many websites I go to. And in five seconds, I say, okay, I'm pretty sure I figured it out. You offer a service that helps people find athletic coaches for their athletic departments. And they'll say,

no, we offer executive coaching for high-level executives. And I'm like, oh, my gosh, I would have never, I would have never thought that looking at your website for five seconds. So now I'm having to burn all these calories to figure out people get that first impression and they go down one path. Now you've got to, not only do you have to educate them, you have to get them off the path that they're already on. You are losing enormous amounts of sales by doing that, by making those mistakes. Wow. Well, before we let you go real quick, tell folks how they can connect because I'm told that we've had a bunch of podcast listeners come to. Nashville.

We have. Is that right? I mean, I would put a conservative number at like 25 entree leadership folks have come through our workshop, and we love them. We want to create a little entree leadership community at the table. So we do these workshops in Nashville, about 50 people come to each one, 50 business leaders all in a room. And for two days, we help you figure out your messaging.

Then the funnest part is, I kid you not. We give them a little glass of whiskey, and then we put their website on a giant screen. So that it kind of dulls the person. It doesn't hurt as bad. Right. John Wayne did that when they dug a bullet out of his arm, right? And we just give you really practical tips on what you should be doing. But I've got a free resource.

If you're not going to be able to come, there's something great for you. And it's at 5-minute marketing makeover. You can either spell it out or just use the number 5-minute marketing makeover. It's three five-minute videos. And I just talk about everything that needs to be on your marketing cloud or in your marketing cloud or on your website. And that third video, it actually goes about 10 minutes. But the third video, I actually talk about going into a presidential campaign and helping them rebrand their entire campaign. And I'll let people find out which candidate it is there.

So fun. I'm not going to ruin it, but go watch the video. And do you promise we won't burn too many calories watching it? You will not burn? No. We do all the thinking for you. I love it. That's a great analogy.

He is Donald Miller, and of course, storybrand.com. Storybrand.com. You can check them out there. Again, many of our team has been a part of the – I've gone through this, rather, and it's great, great, great stuff. As always, pal, your friend of the organization. I know our community loves you. Thanks for being with us. Oh, this has been a pleasure.

Okay, great resource that Don mentioned there. Five Minute Marketing Makeover.com. Five-minutemarketingmakeover.com. The link is in the show notes under Donald Miller's name in this episode. If you go to Entreeleadership.com and click on the podcast. This is a great tool. And it's a way for you to take what you just heard and kind of go, All right, let me take a real assessment.

I heard what I needed to hear. I know what I need to do. Let's see where our company website is. Take advantage of that. It's always fun when Christy Wright, Ramsey, personality, and the force, the heart behind business boutique, which is a new event. And quite frankly, I would say it's much more than an event. We've found already that it is a movement. Just one event.

But the online community, the community in each city when Christy writes out on the road speaking, whether it be for entree leadership one day or speaking events for other organizations when she's out sharing. The women are craving this. Simply put, business boutique exist to help women start businesses around the things that they've always loved doing. This is a huge movement. It's so entrepreneurial and it is very exciting. And you'll hear more about business boutique events as the days go on. But we wanted Christy to talk with Amy Porterfield, who she is having at Business Boutique.

Amy will speak on stage at one of those great events in the near future. And so they got on the phone, and the conversation is around what Amy knows so well. That is social media strategy. The game has changed. If you're thinking marketing and you're not thinking about social media, well, then you've missed something. Amy started in social media with Tony Robbins. She co-wrote Facebook for Dummies, and as I said, she'll be speaking at Business Boutique in May. I'll tell you more about that event after the conversation, but let's get right to.

to it, get ready to learn. Amy Porterfield with Christy Wright. Amy, you have become an expert on social media and I know you're adding value to businesses all over the world, but tell me a little bit about how that got started for you. Like what made you want to focus on that? When I first got into social media, I was still working with Tony Robbins. And so I was inside his corporation and we were starting to do social media for Tony. I don't know if he still does it himself or not, but in the beginning, he was doing every single tweet. And I watch. how people were just mesmerized with everything he put out there. But even more important, I saw that Tony was able to connect with people on a one-on-one

level that we had never been able to do before. And so from behind the scenes, I thought, oh, wow, this is really powerful. We just added a whole other layer to how we're communicating with our audience, and the audience was really excited about it. So that was kind of like my first introduction into social media. And I have to say, honestly, I was hooked from that very moment. So for these business leaders, I know many people don't really understand the role that it plays. They know they're supposed to have a presence on social media, but they probably don't understand

why it's important. So talk me through a little bit about why this is so crucial to the success and growth of small businesses. Well, you know, you'll hear a lot about social media allowing you to connect and engage and listen. And all of that truly is important. I think all of us need to have a social media presence in order to become more real to our audience. And that's kind of of where social media is going, the raw, real videos, the posts that are really honest and open and transparent. That's really what's working right now in social media. Nothing really polished needs to get out there in order to make an impact.

But how I see social media is a little bit different than most in that I feel like social media allows you to find your tribe and then build your email list. And the reason I bring that up now is because I firmly believe that when you're doing business online, the energy of your business is directly tied to the quality of your email list. And there's no better way than to build a quality email list than by using social media, specifically Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and YouTube, wherever your audience is spending time. So a lot of people that are saying, I don't know why I need to be on social media, it feels like a big waste of time. I usually tell my students, well, if we look at it as a way to build a quality tribe and a

quality email list and revenue is generated from your email marketing. It's a whole different ballgame. Sure. Well, I think for most people in their business, social media is just overwhelming. And it's not because they don't want to put an emphasis there, but they just don't know how. So kind of take us through what are some of the basics in the beginning? So the first thing I want you to think about is where should you be spending your time and putting your focus with one social media platform? What most people do when they jump on social media is they feel like they need to be everywhere all the time right away. And that spreads yourself too thin. It's just you or a really small team. And so I say find out where your audience is spending time.

Ask them. Do a quick little survey. Get on the phone with them. Whatever you need to do in terms of how it works for your business. Find out where the majority of your audience is spending time. But the goal here is to start with one platform and spend 30 days there. Post on a daily basis, engage, ask questions. It will be. be slow at first and you will feel like nobody is listening. But consistency always wins with social media. So you got to be patient with yourself. I love that you said that consistency always wins because that's probably one of the biggest mistakes I see leaders make whenever I'm coaching them. What are some of the other most common mistakes you're seeing small business leaders make

with their social media presence? So a lot of times I see people jump to the opportunity to promote and sell on social media. And most people are surprised to hear that 99.9% of the time, I never sell anything on social media. Yet social media is a huge factor in my revenue growth. What I like to do, instead of selling directly through social media, is I might create a freebie, like a PDF cheat sheet, or for those in retail, maybe a special coupon code or something like that. And I give that away on social media and people opt in. They give me their name and email in exchange for some kind of freebie I create. And then I nurture that relationship over time. So to me, doing business online today, most people will need an email list in order to nurture and build relationships. Social media is

so busy and so crowded that you need a presence there, but it's not the end all, be all. It's a really great place to start the relationship. But I think taking it on to email and really cultivating the relationship there is a huge game changer. So take us through some of the steps of that. I know, you know, there are probably businesses that are listening right now that they don't even understand the beginning stages of list building, why they need to build a list, how to utilize that list, how often do you reach up to your customer? So talk us through some best practices for list building. I would love to. This is my favorite topic. Oh, good. So the first thing you want to think about is, what could I create as a giveaway that my audience would find incredibly

useful and valuable. And it could be as simple as a cheat sheet or a checklist or a quick little report or just anything that you think my audience would really love this and they would take action with it. When I start talking about creating, they're called lead magnets, also called freebies or giveaways. When I start talking about creating some kind of giveaway, I always say you can keep it incredibly simple. And the goal is to have your audience get it and be able to digest it pretty quickly and take action with it or do something so that they feel like, wait, this is really good. I really like this person. I want more of what they're creating.

And so you create your giveaway and you set it up so that people would give you their name and email in exchange for that. And once you get their name and email, then you can send them an email and say, here's what I promised. And right away you're creating trust because you're delivering on your promise. And once you do that, what I encourage, and you've got to take a deep breath when I say this because it might overwhelm some if they're just starting out. But what I encourage people to do is email their list once a week. Now that might feel like a lot and you've got to kind of gauge your

audience. But if you're emailing them once a week with let's say a link to a brand new blog post or maybe just a fun quote or a tip or a short video, you're constantly giving them great value and asking nothing in return in the beginning. And let me tell you, it makes a really big difference when you get ready to sell. So just keep it simple. You don't need a lot of bells and whistles. You don't need a lot of technology to get started with list building. So one of the things that you talked about that I think is really interesting is you've said it multiple times as we want to provide value. Can you give me some examples of how to provide value of content that is valuable to them? I'm just thinking of some of the small businesses listening. They're thinking, you know what, Amy, I've got an air conditioning business.

How do I provide value? What is great content and value for my customers? What would they possibly want hear from me. Oh, I have a great example for you. I have a good friend that he used to sell swimming pools. And what he started to do is he put out all these different blog posts about questions that people would ask about swimming pools, but other people weren't talking about it. Like, how much is a swimming pool? And should I go with this kind of swimming pool versus that kind of swimming pool? And what should I look for in a contractor when I want to get a swimming pool built in my backyard? Like all the questions people might ask about swimming pools. He put it all out there. And it skyrocketed his business because he was talking about the things

that other people in that type of industry weren't saying a word about. And that builds instant trust. So it doesn't need to be a sexy topic or incredibly creative or fun to talk about. It just needs to be the information that people are searching for anyway. I really like that example, too. And one of the things that you said is that builds the trust, but it also teaches your customer they know who to go to. Now, I know for many people, it becomes overwhelming of just trying to figure out how do we stand out. And so you've used Facebook as a prime example in many cases, but, you know, Amy, Facebook is busy and it's cluttered. And so how do we get our businesses and our post to stand out among all the pictures of cats and people's dinners and casseroles and all of

that other stuff? So I've been paying close attention to this over the last few years, but really more so over the last year I've noticed that others are gravitating toward are those that are really real and raw and aren't afraid to throw on the video camera real fast and just share some of their opinions. We've talked about that buzzword transparency since social media started, but I really do feel like social media is shifting a bit where those polished, real professional, expensive videos are not needed as much anymore. And where the quick post that you share a story that's real and in the moment and is happening to you. People love that. They want to know you and your team more and more. And so what I'm saying here is you don't need to be super polished and spend a lot of

money on production and make your images look gorgeous or anything like that. The more real you are, the more people will gravitate toward you. And it's a trust thing as well. So the more trust they have for you when they're seeing that, hey, this person is just like me. They're real. They're honest. they're taking us behind the scenes and they're really sharing the good stuff with us. That's so interesting because it's kind of opposite of what we've been taught in business, right? Like we want to put out the most professional website and we want everything to be polished and perfect. And so you're kind of saying this is a different approach and it's working. And to tell you the truth, it's really hard for me.

I come from a serious corporate background. And so even I struggle with putting out those quick one-off videos where the lighting's not perfect and I don't have my video guy over here. And I recently have been doing it for a promotion over the last week. And I cringe each time I post the video because it's just not my style. And at the same time, the feedback has been amazing. And so they'll actually say, oh, we like these videos way more than your professional ones. And I'm thinking, well, that's good because I spend thousands on those.

So really nice. But I've seen it more and more. Well, it's interesting that that's actually what's working because that makes the barrier to entry for us as business leaders that much easier. It truly does. So tell me, as we stand out on Facebook or as we craft our post and we want to add value, how do we really turn those posts into lasting impressions where they don't just scroll through, give it a millisecond thought and then move on and they're thinking about something else? How do we stick out in their minds?

So the way you stick out is you actually need to make a concentrated effort to get those conversations going. When you're just starting out on social media, this is actually really easy. You'll get just a few comments and everybody should get a response from you, whether it be you or someone on your team. They should know that you've heard them and you know they're there. Now, when your business gets bigger, this is a little bit impossible, but this is what creates a lasting impression on social media, you getting involved in those conversations. Well, Amy, thank you so much for taking some time with me. And I know for our business leaders as well gives them a good starting off point and then some great best practices as they try to

grow their business. So thanks for taking time with us. Thank you so much for having me. Hey, if you want to learn anything more about business boutique and trust me, you do, gentlemen, If your wife is thinking about starting a business, a nonprofit, wants to do more with what she loves, she's been having that conversation, this is the place to send her. Or friends, family, whoever. Christyright.com is the website. And the links for both events. We've got two business boutique events coming up is what you will see.

Phoenix, Arizona, May 13 through 14. Phoenix, Arizona, May 13 through 14 at North Hills Church. And then Fort Worth, Texas on May 20, 21. May 2021, 2016 at the Fort Worth Convention Center. So both events and all of the details at Christyright.com. Also, if you'd love to learn more about what Amy's doing and how she can help you, her website is amy Porterfield.com. That's amy Porterfield.com.

Big thanks to Donald Miller, Amy Porterfield, and Christy Wright. Of course, we want to thank Fusion Soft for the resources that they're giving you to help stop procrastinating. On behalf of our producer, Eric Anthony, and the entire Entree leadership team, Thank you so much for listening. We'll talk with you again very soon.