REAL AF with Andy Frisella - Navigating the New Maze of Marketing, with Andy Frisella - MFCEO158

Episode Date: July 11, 2017

Marketing has become so sophisticated over the last couple of years that developing an effective strategy can become overwhelming. In this episode of The MFCEO Project, Andy Frisella shares the basic principles and practices that have helped him promote his businesses and generate millions of dollars in revenue. In a wide ranging conversation, Andy discusses everything from basic marketing philosophy and common social media marketing mistakes to the use of brand ambassadors and use and abuse of the principle "sex sells." 

What is up guys you're listening to the MFCEO project I'm Andy I'm your host and I am the motherfucking CEO guys this is an entrepreneurial personal developed podcast this isn't about just being an entrepreneur and owning your own business. This is about becoming the motherfucking CEO of your life. All right. It's about thinking like an entrepreneur, no matter how you operate in the real world, only seven to 8% of people are actually entrepreneurs. Okay. That means 93% of you basically are people who work within an organization. But I know that if you're listening right now, you're interested in making more money, you're interested in developing skill sets, and you're interested in more success. And that's what we talk about here. So it doesn't matter if you're an actual entrepreneur. It matters if you think like an entrepreneur so

that you could progress in your life in all areas. As always, I'm joined by my co-host, Vaughn, the pastor of disaster. What's up, my dude? Things are really good. I got to be honest with you, man. I can't remember the last time you were wearing a white shirt. Yeah, man. I only wear white shirts when I'm feeling real lean. Yeah. No, you're looking really. Yeah. Yeah. I've been hitting my diet hard this last few weeks and just getting my shit together after first form summer smash and starting to feel feel the results coming so uh you know i brought out the white today that's great yeah that's great am i uh imagining did you add another tattoo no oh which one on the right side

on this side yeah oh no that's been there oh just never noticed yeah man i haven't got tattooed in a while it's been it's been a little bit, but I'm looking to get some more done soon. I want to get a full body tattoo of myself, only taller. Oh, yeah? Yeah. Good luck with that. Yeah. That's a dad joke.

Actually, it's a Stephen Wright joke. No, that's a dad joke. Yeah, it is a dad joke. Yeah. It's a 1990s joke. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So today, well, before we get into today, guys, as you probably noticed, we took a few weeks off. I do that every once in a while, okay? Number one, I need a break, all right? I don't like to say things just for the sake of saying them. I know there's a lot of people out there on social media that have podcasts and shit that just like to hear themselves talk. I don't like to do that.

I like to give you guys my full energy, my full attention. And when things start feeling a little monotonous, I just need to take a break. And that's what we do. And besides that, I'm an actual entrepreneur. I run real businesses. We had some of the busiest times of the year this last few weeks for us because we have our first form annual Summer Smash, where we have a thousand people out here for basically a big open house event for the weekend. And that takes a lot of planning and a lot of time and a lot of energy. So that took up a lot of energy. And that's why the last couple of weeks we've kind of been silent. But we're back. We're ready to rock. And today we're going to talk about something that is very, very important if

you're going to be in business in any way, or if you're going to contribute in business in any way, and that is navigating the new maze of marketing. All right. There's so many things out there right now that people just don't understand. It used to be as simple as buying ads, right? You could buy a print ad, you could buy a radio ad, you could buy a television ad. And if you bought one of those three, you would have customers show up at your door now. And believe me, I operated in that space for a long time. That's something that separates us from a lot of other entrepreneurs. And I say us, cause I always talk about my partner and I, but we have operated in an old school way and we have converted and transition and now have found success in the new maze of actual marketing.

And so it's changed. You know, you can't, you can't just spend more anymore because the attention isn't in radio. It's not in TV. It's not in print ads. When was the last time you got a fucking newspaper? When was the last time you watched a commercial on actual TV? All right. We don't do those things anymore. We don't even listen to the radio. Everybody's got Bluetooth. We're listening to our own playlist. We're listening to shit like this podcast, music, whatever we want to listen to. And we're not listening to the ads. So because it was so dominant for so long, a lot, what you're seeing now is a lot of older companies fail because they can't transition into the new marketing methods. And then now you have so many marketing methods where you

used to only have really three, maybe four if you count billboards. Now you have so many that people don't know what to do or what works or how to do it. And today we're going to break those down in just a very surface level way. It's going to be a quick podcast. We're not going to spend a million because I believe each one of the things we're going to talk about could be an entire podcast. And we will break those down as we go. But today we're going to basically just kind of take your eyes and point them in the right direction so that you can start to learn where you need to be putting your efforts. So before we do that though, I feel like, I feel like I want to tell everybody our PO box so that they can send

checks because guys, the stuff we're going to cover, I told Andy, this could be a digital course. We could charge like $900 for it. But once again, we're going to podcast yeah so send me a check yeah and because I'm the money grubber well dude the thing is oh and by the way guys um again before we get into this please if you get value out of this which I know will, please do a couple things for us. Please subscribe to the iTunes or subscribe to the podcast and then also leave a review on iTunes. It will take you less than five minutes. We actually, you know, let's just fucking do this. Let's do a contest for reviews between now and let's say, let me pull out my phone here.

Let's say- While you're looking up that, I'm going to say themfco.com forward slash subscribe gives directions if you don't know how to subscribe. And then go ahead and tell them all. Okay. So today is the sixth. This podcast is going to come out on the 11th. Let's do a review or let's do a review contest that we will announce on the podcast, the winner on the podcast of the 25th. Okay. Okay. And the winner will pick, let's say, let's say we'll do five winners. All right. Five winners go leave us a review on iTunes. We'll pick five of the new reviews, and five of those winners will get a 20-minute Skype call with me, and we can talk about whatever you want,

answer any questions you want, and that's what we'll do. Nice. Guys, go leave a review. We'll do this contest. It'll be fun. That's what helps us get ranked on iTunes, and that's what helps us get ranked on itunes and that's what helps us move up and uh you know so if you provide if we're providing value if you could please do that we'd really

appreciate it and then we'll go ahead and run that contest too and dmfco.com forward slash review we actually give you a step dot step by step uh instructions on how to do it yeah for whatever reason some people i think that's fair, right? 20-minute Skype? Well, knowing you, it'll end up being like 30 or 40 minutes. Yeah, but I mean, just some real one-on-one time would be cool. Yeah, no, it was good. It was good.

Cool. So navigating the new maze of marketing, what do you think? Well, you ever seen that movie Moneyball? Yeah, that's a good movie. Yeah, so could you explain to people who don't know the concept of what even Moneyball is, what it is, like in terms of putting together your team? Are you familiar with that? It's basically that guy came up with the idea of using all those analytics and the numbers,

and they put together- Oh, saver metrics. Yeah, saver metrics. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry, my bad. So anyway, we have a lot of people write in to us saying, guys, marketing has gotten so sophisticated. It's like Moneyball. It's like you have to memorize metrics and numbers and data analysis and all that kind of stuff. And I, you know, I resonate with that.

Yeah. It's a little overwhelming. So for you, what works? Declutter their minds. Look, the first thing people have to delineate is that there's a major difference between marketing and branding. Okay. There is a lot of people out there that think that, you know, doing some Facebook ads and measuring the ROI, that that's building a company. That's not building a company, guys. That's building sales. Branding is a completely different thing. Branding is building a logo, a company, a culture that stands for something that you have to put time and effort and energy into actual people to build. It's not about getting an ROI. You're going to spend money in branding. You're going to spend money in that area. You're going

to have people that are totally dedicated to building content around what your brand represents, but there's not going to be a direct measurable ROI. You're not going to be able to say, oh, we spent $20,000 here and we got $20,005 back. That's not how it's going to work. It's an investment in the future of your brand and what people feel about your brand and how people are going to tell their stories they're going to tell about your brand. All of that is branding. Marketing slash advertising on the other side has gotten so heavy now because we have so many people out there that have a product. They want to just sell as much of that product as they can. So they go out, they find affiliates, they do Facebook ads, they find brand representatives,

they do brand ambassadors, they do sponsored athletes, they do sponsored spokespeople. They do all this shit to try to develop, to drive sales today without doing any of the branding. And let me tell you something. There's nothing wrong with that if you want to be the guy who's constantly jumping from product to product to product to product, and you're comfortable living in that uncertainty. But if you're trying to build a company that's going to last for a long time, create jobs, create careers, be worth something that another company will eventually acquire, the branding side is equally as important, if not more important, than what you're doing on the other side. And a lot of these young kids, they only see the marketing side.

They don't see the branding side. They have no fucking clue what that means. You know what I mean? So you have to understand that it's two different things. So in relationship terms, is that like the people who are really attractive are the people who know who they are? They know their identity. And that's what, like on an entrepreneurial or business level,

that's what you're saying. Branding is knowing who you are, being consistent. Branding is, yeah, exactly. Yes. And then once you get that figured out, that's when you begin to reach out to people. You're promoting that. And you're telling people, you're showing people through your actions, what this brand's about so that when they see your logo, they feel a certain way. You know what I mean? Yeah. They feel a certain way about your brand. And it's a completely different way of thinking than just what has traditionally become the new marketing methods. You know what I mean? Mm-hmm. So I'm sure there's probably been times where you guys have created a video

or some sort of piece of content that objectively it was awesome, but you looked at it and said, but it's not really us. Yeah. It doesn't feel like us. Yeah. So, so more people, I guess, we went through a lot of, we went through a lot of different versions of quote unquote us, uh, over the years, you know, when we first started, we, we, we didn't really know what we were doing. So we tried to be like other people and that didn't work because other people were other people. And then, you know, we went through all these different trials and, and, uh, tests and trying to figure out what resonated. And then what ultimately ended up resonating was

just being who the fuck we were. You know what I mean? And that's why we talk about authenticity, why it's so important and why it's so important to your brand. Um, but I think understanding first off that there are two different things, you know, you, you, I can stand in front of a room of 500 people and I'll say, do you understand the difference? And I'll shake their head. But then when they ask questions, you could complete, you could tell that they have no fucking clue. You know what I mean? All they care about is sales. They care about their ROI. They go, well, I've spent $18 on Facebook ads and I'm getting back 37 and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

It's like, dude, okay, but nobody knows who the fuck you are. So you're gonna have to jump from this product to that product to this product for years, over and over and over and over and over again. You know what I mean? You don't have, you're not building anything. Right. So. Right.

So in terms of, I was talking about helping our listeners sort of declutter their minds because there are a lot of things that work, I think. A lot of the sophisticated stuff works, but it can be overwhelming to people. So I think of it in a way, like working out, I'm sure is similar to this, is that there's a lot of things that work, but there are some tried and true things that if you do nothing else, you do these things, they're going to produce results. So what for you are those things? You know, it hasn't mattered if it's been, number one, you got to go where the attention is. Okay. It doesn't matter. You can't sell lemonade in the desert. I mean, everybody in the desert

needs lemonade, right? But guess what? There ain't no motherfuckers in the desert. So you're not going to sell anything. So you've got to go where the people are. You've got to go where the attention is. And I see a lot of people fighting that concept with the way that they actually market. They do what they think is right. And they keep pounding and pounding and pounding and pounding and pounding and pounding at that, thinking that eventually it's going to change and they're going to start seeing these magical results. But that's not the way you've got to look at it. You can't be emotionally attached. You've got to go find out what works, find where

the people are, and you've got to play there. You know what I mean? That seems obvious, but it doesn't happen. That's the most important concept. And then the second, the second most important concept I think would be to go where the influential people are in your industry are. Um, and this, this was good 15 years ago and it's good now. Um, you know, in our industry, you got to go where the people are, uh, that have the most, you know, influential, uh, power reside. You've got to go find people who are the other, the early adopters who are the people who, um, you know, other people, the normal people, the masses come and ask for advice. You know, you're not going to go ask, uh, Bob, your next door neighbor who drinks a 12 pack of Budweiser about your fucking,

what the newest computer is. So that's not the guy you're going to try to go after. You're going to try to go after the guy who is the guy that Bob is going to ask about his computer, which is going to be, you know, Harry Potter at the fucking Apple store. You know what I'm saying? So you've got to figure out where, where a attention is, and B, where the influence is. And you've got to blend those things together. Right? And that's marketing. On the branding side, you're going to work on building culture behind it.

All right? So I don't really want to get too far into branding because I think that's its own thing. But I'm just saying you want to mix those two things together. So do you have any general thoughts about the whole concept of promotion marketing versus attractive attraction marketing? Explain what you mean. Well, the idea of, of, of, I'm not even sure I could explain it. I, it's, they're buzzwords that people use. Basically the idea is instead of, instead of really stepping out and trying to reach people, you just create such an amazing product

that you're drawing people in. Well, look, the best way to win is to create a fucking amazing product that makes people talk about it. The problem is that in this day and age, no matter how good of a product you make, there's going to be five other people that make a product that's almost as good immediately. So it's hard, because things move so fast now, it's hard to create something that keeps people's attention and keeps people saying, wow, when you have five other people that might not be as good, but maybe they're just a millimeter or two millimeters

behind you in terms of product quality. So yeah, I agree that creating the best product is always the way to win, but it's not as effective as it was, you know, let's say 10 years ago or 12 years ago before the internet really came around in terms of creating such a buzz that people will just come to you. You're still going to have, you know, and a lot of people still operate that way. They were the best, so we don't have to market or we don't have to, we don't have to go find people. You're going to die if that's what you think you're, because it doesn't matter how good you are now, you have to go out. And at the bare bones, let's say you do make an incredible product like we do,

you're going to have to go out and create enough influence or buzz to where you get the ball rolling, to where you can achieve some momentum on its own, and then you can pull back on how much you're spending, how much you're advertising, and let the word of mouth sort of carry itself through the curve. That makes sense. So you talked a little bit about branding, which I mentioned, it's kind of like knowing yourself, knowing who you are, having a very clear identity.

But the other side of that is knowing clearly who your customers are or who it is you're trying to reach. And you would know as well as I do, we talked about this before, you have only to Google, what is it? Ideal customer personas on Google, and you'll get all sorts of little charts or sheets that you can fill out saying, okay, this is how you figure out who your ideal person is. And they have questions like you should know what their age is and their gender and that kind of thing. And I feel like a lot of those are really pretty standard. Like what kind of idiot, why is this helpful to anybody? So my question is, you guys have been

very good in your company at really identifying the kind of people that resonate with what you're trying to say. So what are the things that you think about? This is, this is what I need to know about my customer that most people maybe don't think about that. That's see what the way you're describing is the way you're describing is the way it was done 15 years ago okay when you have three fucking outlets all right and you could analyze my customers are 18 to 34 year old uh 72 female and this is where we need to go advertise and that's that's how they decided what channel, what show, what program they were going to put their ads on. Okay. Now, it's changed.

Now, because we could get the word out so fast and so broad and so heavy, although you can do that, you can absolutely target people the way that you need to target them and you should the the more effective way that i found is to be completely yourself get your fucking message out there and let people resonate with that you know what i'm saying instead of trying to create a message to manipulate the crowd create a message that's authentic and let people come be a part of it so instead of micro-targeting you're just saying no we do that too okay no, we do that too. Okay. But after we do that too, we definitely do that. But I'm saying the more important part is to be authentic with who you are, what you're about and let that be, let that story be told over and over again. Many different platforms. Yes. And let people decide that they resonate with you versus you deciding that this is your ideal person. People are always more likely to buy from you and be a part of your company and support your company if it's their idea, right? So you create whatever your story is, tell the truth, tell your story, let people know what you're about, and then let people resonate with that and see who you attract. Because I guarantee you, no matter what the fuck your

story is in business, you're going to tell it. And if you're a good storyteller, if you know how to tell your story the right way, you're going to resonate with people no matter what the story is, because they're going to say, you know what? I like that guy. And there might be, you know, like I said before, you're going to have 50% of people say, I don't like that guy, but that's not the 50% that matters. The 50% that matters is the, is the 50% that you have a chance at grabbing by being your authentic self. You see what I'm saying? Yeah. You mentioned story a couple times,

and we didn't plan to, but let's talk about that a little bit more because that's huge. I mean, I've read a lot of books on this, and there's actually a whole course called Story Brand, which is the idea of how you take your company's identity and you put it into a narrative that people that connects with people. So what, I mean, in practical terms, like how have you, how have you done that with,

what's the story of first form? I've done that multiple times. I've done it with my personal brand. I've done it with our retail stores. I've done it with first form. And it's not, it's not like we made it up. We just told how the fuck we did it. Like, Hey, this is what, what we do, what we did. This is how we started. did it. Like, Hey, this is what we do. What we did. This is how we started. This is what we stand for. This is what we're trying to accomplish. And you tell that story. You know what I mean? But people don't do that. You don't see that from other companies. Right. I mean, you see it from very, very few companies. I mean, what, what do you see, uh, you know, from most companies, you see a product and then you see a price and

then you see a sale price. Right. And they think that's marketing. Right. You know what I mean? That's not marketing. Right. So if there was somebody in here and, you know,

they had a piece of paper and they said, okay, Andy, I've got my lawn care business. Right. I want to create a story based on. Okay. Okay. So what are the key questions they're going to ask? I wouldn't ask questions.

This is how I would do it. I would say, hey, my name is Andy. You know what? I started this lawn care business. I really don't know what I'm doing, but I'm working as hard as I can. I do this because I care about providing a great service to my people and I really have a passion for the way lawns look, you know, I'm making this up as I go, obviously, you know, but I love, you know, the way a freshly cut lawn looks when it, when it, uh, when it has stripes in it. And you know, when you get to the way, the feeling that I grew up with after I cut my grass and I cracked open an ice cold beer after cutting my grass and the smell of the grass. And I would tell a story about how good it feels

to have your grass fucking cut. You know what I'm saying? And then I would tell the story about my business and what I'm trying to accomplish and how I'm trying to help you have that feeling. And dude, you could create an amazing fucking story about cutting grass. The two things that struck me about what you just did is one, you didn't just say, this is what I provide. You said, this is the motive. This is why I do this. And then you also added the fact that you enjoy it. It's passionate.

But isn't that common sense? No. It's crazy. Well, what do you see in advertising and marketing? You see what I just told you. Yeah, no, you're right. You see a product, you see a price, you see a sale price. Yeah.

That's what people who do who don't know what the fuck they're doing. Yeah. Right. Cause let me tell you something, and this is, this is off the fucking subject, but if your only method of getting people in the door is cutting your margin down and selling, uh, at a sale price, first of all, you don't have a good enough product. Second of all, you're training your customer to wait for the sale price. So they're never going to buy a full price, which means your, your projections and everything you project your company upon will never actually work math wise. So people will always wait for the sale. They will always wait for the deal. They will always wait for this, which means when you go to do your books, you won't have enough margin. You won't have enough money. Your business

doesn't fucking work financially because you're projecting a full price instead of margin instead of half price or whatever the fuck your sale is. And you're training your customers to devalue your product. They'll never look at it as a $40 product when you're selling it for $27 all the fucking time. You see what I'm saying? Yeah. And so then when they have an issue with maybe coming to or switching to another brand,

you're training your customers to look at your brand completely unpriced. And when they do that, they have no brand loyalty. You cannot build a culture behind it. That's why you don't see fucking Apple on sale. That's why you don't see Harley Davidson on sale. You see what I'm saying? Right. That makes total sense. If your advertising strategy is based upon fucking selling at a discount

or running a sale, for me, when I see it, I automatically think these motherfuckers need fucking help. They have no clue what the fuck they're doing. And you're seeing massive companies, billion dollar brands doing it all the time. Because they have no idea how to transition from 10 years ago into now. Right. You see? So based on that was a good, I mean, that was a good side topic based on what you were saying. And I've heard you say before that you're always amazed at the kind of money that

companies pour into Superbowl ads. And, uh, you know, a lot of these ads, you know, people do wait for them, but they're just, a lot of people just don't remember them. So based on what you were saying about story, do you almost feel like it would be more effective if like the president of Coca-Cola, very simple, sat down and just said, listen, first Coke I ever had in my life was when I was, you know, six years old. I remember the fizz. I remember it was awesome. Since that time. What do you think? I think it's incredible but i'm just amazed that nobody's ever done that that i know of you know and just a very simple business is

about connecting with people yeah it's about connecting and engaging your fucking audience it's about connecting and engaging and empowering your culture and your brand and the way that you get people into your culture and your brand it starts with marketing. So that's why it's intertwined and that's why it's hard not to talk about both of them at the same time. But the marketing strategies that are being used right now, let's say the Superbowl ad. Okay. Budweiser makes an ad for nine 11 at in 2001. It got played one time. People still fucking talk about it. That's effective. That's effective. Okay. You have a website for dog food or whatever, and you think you're going to put an ad on the Superbowl and everybody's going to come to your site. It's going to blow your company up.

That's not, it's never going to work. You never see those companies again. You know why? Because it takes people time to trust your brand enough to become a customer. You can't just run one ad. You can't pour all your money into one big bang. It's a slow process. It's educate about the brand. People build trust in your brand. Then they become loyal to your brand. And it's a process that if you violate, you will fucking lose every time. And you know why I know you lose? Because I've lost a lot like that. Right. So you just said a word that I definitely want to hear more about what you think about this. You said trust. And you mentioned the,

you mentioned the Budweiser ad. And in my opinion, what the reason that that resonated with people so much, as opposed to the Pepsi ad that really pissed people off because it had whatever her name is. Kylie Jenner. Right. Is that Budweiser trusted their people to identify the brand. The context. Right. That's right. Whereas the Pepsi was throwing shit against the wall. Oh my gosh.

And they were over promoting the product. Right. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, I'd love to hear more about what you think about that. Like, dude, you can't, when you're designing copy or content, you, and this is actually a really good point to bring up. When you're writing advertising

copy or coming up with a concept for a video or internet content or youtube or anything over promoting the product is the fucking worst thing you can do okay it looks so cheesy it looks so bad and that comes as a result of people sitting around a big conference table and assuming that the customers are fucking stupid. Right. Customers know how to connect dots. They don't, you didn't need to put a fucking 15 Pepsi fucking logos and 15 Pepsi cans in that commercial.

Or having them drinking it. You could have not had a one fucking Pepsi and the whole thing. And you could have said at the end, unity Pepsi. Right. And it would have worked. Right. Or might not even say Pepsi,

just the logo. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And it would have worked. Or not even say Pepsi, just a logo. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah. Right, it would have fucking worked. Yeah. But that is why, because they made it so fucking cheesy. And, you know,

when you're going to broach a sensitive issue like that, that is basically you're trying to bring the 50%s together, right? You got 50% PewPew one way, 50% the other way, and you're trying to bring unity together. You can't make it a cheesy fucking ad. It's got to be a legit from the heart message.

Like, hey, motherfuckers, quit fucking fighting. And brought to you by Pepsi. You know what I'm saying? Right. No, it is. And I love what you said about you got to trust them and you got to not treat them like idiots. Don't treat them like children yeah nobody likes that all the best

writers like when i was getting my ma and everything all the best writers will tell you a rookie mistake in writing like if you're writing a novel is you're spelling out all these details no you don't need to spell out no they have to trust your reader because the imagination is where the pleasure of the reading comes from. Right. You got it. I know I get it cause I know how to fucking write, but I'm just saying like, you know, like you, when you're out,

when you're writing copy and you're writing advertising copy, you've got to remember that. Like you don't need to spell out every detail. You don't need to like put out, uh, you know, 15 fucking Pepsi cans in a commercial. It looks stupid,

you know? And that's why they got blasted for it. So let me recap a little bit thus far. You started out by making distinction between branding and marketing. Branding is really knowing who you are and that is incredibly important and it dovetails with marketing, but it's, it's something that people don't necessarily get nailed down before they reach out to marketing, which is, of course, then connecting with the people that you want to sell to. You also talked about how, you know, yes, there's a value in micro-targeting, but generally speaking, what you want to do is just be yourself, get yourself to as many different platforms as possible, and you'll draw all sorts of people. So not to be overly concerned about niching everything and then the final thing that we talked about before

we move on is that we just talked about this ideal customer personas and um no i'm sorry excuse me we talked about the idea of trusting your customers and not over promoting your products but just not treating your customers like idiots and uh and you know trusting that that's going to have results. So I don't know that that was my best summary that I've ever done, but it wasn't. Yeah. So going forward. So do you want to talk about, you mentioned copywriting? I mean, that could be a whole nother topic. That could be a course. Thursday I talked about the number one skill that you need to learn to become

a higher earner yeah you know what the what the second learning skill i think to become a higher earner is is to learn how to write yeah seriously i agree yeah learn how to fucking write and not i'm not saying learn how to do a video i'm not saying learn how to fucking do a podcast i'm saying learn how to fucking write right and engage people through your writing it's super valuable i definitely agree yeah and it has and and and you know how you become a good writer by fucking writing right you know uh i copywriting you know dude i've got a really really good friend um who is basically the number one copywriter in the world, advertising copy. He sold over a billion dollars in product through his ad copywriting. And he's sort of my mentor in terms of writing. You know what I mean? I mean, we talk about it all the time. And the biggest thing that he always talks about is it's the same shit we talk about. It's being authentic. It's telling a story. It's, it's getting people engaged and doing it in a truthful way. You know what I mean? Like so many

people write copy and they try to like squeeze these little fucking lies in there. And that doesn't improve shit because people, you, first of all, you don't need to do it. And second of all, people smell it. You know what I mean? It's when you're real dude, when you tell the truth and when you tell the truth about the product, why you produced a product, who you produced a product for, why you came up with the idea, how it can help people and tell a real authentic story. Not, not this bullshit that people try to manufacture. This shit doesn't work. It might work for like the bottom 3% of the population that is like basically a fucking 60 IQ, but it doesn't work for, for what you're trying to do. Right. So when you're real with people and when you're authentic with people and when you, when you genuinely tell real stories and there's books, dude, on copywriting, I mean, I'm not going to get into it, but there's literally dozens of books that are awesome for ad copywriting that you can learn. But, uh, and we're talking about

direct response writing. We're talking about writing a story that actually produces people to buy now. Okay. Um, and then your goal when they buy now is to wow them with service, capture them as a customer for life and grow your company. So, so, and that's what I'm trying to like talk about with these. Cause I know there are a lot of young kids right now listening to this shit. And they think that it's all about the first half of that getting the sale. But what if you could get the sale and you did it the right way and you kept that person for life? Oh, you know,

you took that person from a regular Joe to a one time customer to a lifetime customer, to an advocate, to a fucking loyal advocate that advertises for you. That's the goal. That's how you build a fucking billion dollar brand. That's how you build something that matters. You don't want to be this dude who goes out and sell shit and makes five, 10 grand a month selling shit online for three months and thinks he's rich and then has to fucking start over because the product burned its life cycle out or whatever. And you go from one to the other, the other, that's that affiliate shit, man. And like very few people can live like

that because there's no certainty to it, you know? So learning how to copyright and learning how to tell a story and dedicating yourself to that skill, it becomes really, really valuable. And I would say, you know, it's right there behind leadership and managing people in terms of value. Absolutely. And I would say this to anybody, that to me, writing is a little bit like, I'll use a sports analogy. If you think you're just going to work hard and you're suddenly going to become Shakespeare or whoever, massive literary genius, you're probably not.

Just like I could work my butt off and I would never become LeBron James. But the awesome thing about writing is that if you do put in the time, you do put in the work, then to use the analogy, you're going to get playing time. You're going to make a team.

And so don't say to yourself, well, I'm never going to be Shakespeare. I'm never going to be these amazing writers. So how can I get to be? Yeah, if you work hard, you're going to become a fundamentally good writing, a writer. And, and so like Andy said, take advantage of the copywriting books. There's also great books like Roy Peter Clark's book, writing tools. He'll give you a

really, really practical ways to just, I mean, there are, there are literally simple, like, this is one of the biggest things. I don't want to get off it. Try this. Okay. If you're listening right now and you have a business that you're running, or if you work inside of a company, just try writing a story about what the company stands for, what it means, and how it can help people. And try to write that over and over and over again. And if you work in a big company, break down each product and start writing about the product and write how this is going to help you,

what the story behind it is, why it came about, what the purpose is, why you believe in it. And everybody worries about the clothes. If you write the front end good enough, the clothes doesn't fucking matter. So just try that. It doesn't matter if you write the front end good enough the clothes doesn't fucking matter right right so just try that it doesn't matter if you're in the if you're the owner of the company or if you're fucking working in the warehouse if you want to develop a skill start writing like

that absolutely don't worry about being fucking Shakespeare no don't worry about being we're talking about making money here right you know what I mean I mean dude and it's amazing how quickly if you do it you can pick up things that really are so practical and so easy to implement that they really make your writing good in a short period of time. I always tell people one of the biggest mistakes that people do is that they talk passively. So they'll say something like this. The vampire was impaled by Vaughn. And it's like, no, you want to speak actively. Vaughn impaled the vampire.

You know, it's those little things that you just pick up and you become a really really quality writer that that people find compelling you know and that's not hard to pick those things up not only that man it's it's more than just that it's it's telling little stories about yourself in the writing you know what I mean? Like when you talk about the product that you're writing about, and let's say you use the product, throw in one or two instances where that product really helped you out and not, not say, Oh, this product really helped me out. You know, I was using this product and before I started using it, I was afraid to go to the store because I knew my pants would never fit. And I would go to the store and, you know, I would put on my pants and I would feel terrible about myself because I was three sizes bigger than what I was. And I hated

living like that. I just hated it. Right. You know, and then I found this product. You get what I'm saying? Yeah, absolutely. Well, what you're touching on is there are studies upon studies upon studies that show that when people naturally become more eloquent when they are speaking from personal experience and passion. Exactly. That's why I brought that up because that's a real thing for me. That's why I use that example. It's the same in speaking and it's the same in writing. It's something weird about human beings that when you all of a sudden start talking about something that means a lot to you, you become extremely communicative. Exactly. Yeah. Well, that's great. I mean, uh, we could stop here and that, that would

be a worth the money that they're charging or we're paying for the, excuse me. They're not paying. Yeah. Anyway. Um, okay. So we covered copywriting. So I want to talk about this cause I see this a lot. I, I, I will sometimes lurk on, uhk on your, you know, I'll read the comments that people put on your Instagram page and kind of check out the different people that are following you. And every now and then I'll find, you know, some guy or girl, they're starting a business, they have maybe, you know, 27 followers, and they're doing a couple things. They're already looking for sponsored athletes or they're looking for brand ambassadors right is that a good idea or a bad idea

it depends it depends let's just talk about brand ambassadors as it depends like that's the new thing now right because especially in in our industry the fitness industry um the problem with with brand ambassadors is a um most people don't do their homework to see if they actually fit with your culture. So like let's say you, because most people don't even know what the fuck their culture is. So let's say they have a business. They haven't done the research. And let's just say they're regular people, right? Like they're mom and pop.

They have this little soap business and they're looking for brand ambassadors to represent their soap and they go out and they sign they find all these people to give free soap to that have let's say um a hundred thousand followers but these these this mom and pop is like this good, wholesome Christian doing, uh, their, their, you know, the work themselves, you know, their, their, their farmers, right. Let's just say like middle America type people. And they go out and they sign like all these people just based on their following. And then they go and look at the shit they're posting and yeah, they're doing the post for the soap, but on their other posts, they're

posting pictures of their tits or posted pictures of their ass or posting pictures with all kinds of profanity or, you know, just basically not resonating with what they're about. It can be very damaging. Right. And a lot of people, most people do that because they, they, a don't do the work to develop their culture. B they don't do the homework on who they sign up or affiliate with. They just want the numbers. And C, just because someone has 100,000 followers doesn't mean that those 100,000 followers are interested in your fucking soap. Right? So, like, I see a lot of companies doing that, too, where they don't go out and, like, pre-qualify who it is this audience is. So, like, for the fitness industry, for us, right, we've got to go out. And for a long time, we didn't even use, uh, we didn't even use like brand ambassadors or

influencers. Uh, we, we always used regular people. Um, we, we have an amazing, amazing team here at first form. And we've always cultivated that out of our customer base. And we got to a point where, uh, we weren't growing our customer base. And we got to a point where we weren't growing our awareness anymore. And so what we did was we had to go out and we had to find people with massive followings. But the first thing we did when we did that was we went out and searched our customer database against these people that we were pre-qualifying to find out who was actually customers. And so we took basically a hundred people that were massive influencers a million plus followers and we narrowed it down to like 30 who were actual customers of ours and then we took

that 30 and then we looked at their culture and we said okay do they resonate with the brand and then we narrowed it down to like nine or ten okay so in that nine or ten people they've got like 40 or 50 million followers then we started using these people to go out and send the message out. They would bring people to the page, to our brand. And then those people started following what our real culture is. And that's how we're, that's how we started to grow. Now, in the beginning, when I first started the brand, I said, Hey, I'm never going to fucking do that. I'm never going to do that. I'm never going to do that. But that was five years ago. And when it, and when you could still run an ad in a magazine or you could run radio ads or TV ads and they were effective. Now we've gotten to a situation where, um,

you know, if you don't utilize influencer marketing and it doesn't matter if you're on internet or it matters if you're brick and mortar, you could do this in your neighborhood. Um, if you don't go out and get the people who have the attention, you're going to fucking lose. And I got criticized pretty heavily on that situation when we first started doing it. Cause people were like, Oh, Andy, you said you would never do that. And I'm like, okay, well, um, we can either do this or nobody could ever fucking find out about us again. Because when we develop this community of athletes, search winners and our athletes, you know, after so many months, those people, all those people that those people represent know us. So we're not able to capture

anybody new. You see what I'm saying? So you have to look at the influencer marketing as the new radio station or the new TV or the new newspaper. But, and this is a huge asterisk, you have to make sure, A, they resonate with your culture. B, if they're already customers, great, because that makes a huge, huge difference because those people actually believe in your product. Which, for a lot of brands, that's not going to be the case. But our brand had already gained so much market saturation that we were able to do that. So let's just say that's not an option. Make sure they resonate with your culture make sure that

you've identified your culture and make sure that they know that you're going to hold them accountable to that culture standard with their with their posts you see what i'm saying right so is there some sort of written agreement oh yeah absolutely okay yeah like there's a lot of things they can't fucking do so you so you basically answered the question that i was going to say which is which is what are the common mistakes that people make when when when thinking about that's the biggest mistake they just don't do a good fit yeah wouldn't you say that another mistake is is frankly this is just people well let me talk about this around hot girls so they hire hot girls to be on there yeah and in our industry that's like the that's like a huge deal right so like in our industry

you know we have these we have these bodybuilders who have clearly been on fucking steroids for the last 20 years. And I'm not judging. When I was a younger guy, I took steroids too. I'm just saying you can't fucking represent a brand when you're on massive amounts of fucking steroids and then go tell people that you use these products. That's how you got who you are. Right. It's unethical. Right. You know what I mean?

And so I was very happy with what we did and how we found our influence because we were able to find people that were actual real customers. That was really cool. That is awesome. But that's the best case scenario. Worst case scenario is like the other spectrum, right?

Go out and find fucking massive bodybuilders who use tons of shit and have been huge for 20 years and get them to represent their brand and have been with five other brands okay that means nobody believes anything they said so you're wasting your money that's another mistake people make let's say you've got a soap and this person's represented three other fucking soaps in the last 12 months. Well, what do you think that their customer is going to think when they post about your soap? They're not going to listen. So you want to find people that are fresh. You want to find people that are real. You want to find people that are authentic and you're going to have to coach them on how to be that way because a lot of people don't know how to be that way. So, um, there's a lot of things that they can

fuck up, but at the end of the day, we're in a transition period where it went from basically three outlets, radio, TV, print, to Facebook ads, Instagram ads, Google AdWords, influencer marketing. And you've got to realize that those things I just named are the new radio station, TV station, and print. And if you're not playing in those areas, you're going to get fucking destroyed. Okay. And this doesn't matter if you're brick and mortar or if you're a massive online company like we are, our brick and mortar store have used influencers for fucking 16 years. Go out. Let's say you find you have a soap company, go out and find the people who you think in your neighborhood would be influencers in your actual neighborhood face to face and make friends with those people,

give them free product, you know, help them, whatever they're doing, get them on your team and have those people represent you. And that's how you utilize, you know, you could utilize influencer marketing in, in person just as well, even better than you do online. So, you know, just because you run a small business and you can't afford to get somebody who's got 10 million followers, like, you know, one of our people, Anna Cherie, you have to understand that you could still do it. And not only that, the moderate influencers, the ones on the internet, like, let's say you can't afford some people on the internet, the ones between 50,000 and 500,000, they're better and more effective than anybody else anyway because they're still real. They're not out there trying to promote this fucking massive image of whatever it is they want people to see. The more followers people get, the more tendency they have to be repetitive in their posts and become this quote unquote figure online versus being a real person.

That's a great point. Yeah. That's a really practical thing. So you're saying look for the, at least in the early going, look for the 50 to 100,000 followers. If you're in a position to where you could spend some money and build a brand around, that's real people. Yeah. Some of the people that we have, dude, they had less than fucking 10,000 followers when

we got them or even less than a thousand. And they're built up. Some have 50, some have 100. But I mean, they've built it up over a course of time by providing quality content and being affiliated with the brand. The worst thing, and let's talk about this on the other side, the worst thing a brand ambassador can do or an athlete or a representative of a company is jump from brand to brand, a brand, a brand. These people are so fucking short sighted and they're so dumb. They don't understand that when you jump from brand to brand, a brand, a brand,

you have no fucking say or no influence with your people anymore regarding whatever it is you're representing. So you might get a better deal today, but you're shooting yourself in the foot for the rest of your life. So loyalty is a big thing when it comes to influencer marketing. You've got to pick the right people. You've got to stick with them. be easy to transition from the subject of brand ambassadors and obviously in your industry you know hot women or i suppose hot men to another question which you can't really talk about marketing and advertising without talking about the age-old maxim sex sells so i think that before you even ask that question i already know where you're going with it but go ahead and finish the question all right well so there's all sorts of evidence obviously that appealing to sexual drive sells

products sell services but there's also a lot of new uh information and new studies that say that using sex in certain situations can actually really really hurt your brain not just because not just in the sense of you know if you're trying to sell Bibles and you're putting hot women on the front of it, it's not going to work. It's what, first of all, it's what your culture, it all comes down to what does it align with your culture. Okay.

And second of all, that you've got to take into account this. Like my example a minute ago, the first thing, you know, it's got to align with your culture. If you're the Midwestern homely couple selling soap, you don't want some half-naked chick selling selling soap. You don't want some half naked chick selling your soap. It ain't going to work. Um, there's a clash there. So you got to find something that drives your culture and fitness. Yeah. It's a little more cloudy because most of the people in fitness are very attractive, but honestly, that's not what fitness is about.

Fitness is about taking people who want to improve and working with them and helping them, uh, you know, to feel better and make progress and improve their lives. And those are the people that matter. It's not these fucking super sexy, this, that, whatever the super sexy thing comes into where that those are the people that tend to tend that typically have big followings and you're going to want to get people's awareness about your brand, right? So how can it be good? Well, it could be good because you get the attention. How can it be bad? It can be bad because you also get the attention, right? And you end up with attention that you don't want, you end up with attention you don't need, and you end up with attention that doesn't jive with your culture. And what happens is you alienate a lot of your core audience. And that was a big, that was a big concern of mine when we brought on influencers from just never using them before.

It was the first time we ever actually did that. And I knew some people weren't going to jive with it because they didn't understand that you have to, we had to transition to that point and we weren't going to grow. And what you have to think about and what can go bad. And this is why I say you have to retrain these people is that you, you know, we're bombarded by sex now, nonstop, especially if you're on Instagram, if you're on Instagram, all we have on there is just fucking boobs and ass and, you know, girls in swimsuits. And like, it's just like overload. You know what I mean? Where it wasn't like that 20 years ago. So when you put up something sexy 20 years ago, it stood out. Now all that shit is, it doesn't work like that anymore. Substance is what sells.

Caring about people is what sells in our industry. You know, people trusting you, people trusting your mission, people trusting what you people trusting what you're what you're doing those are the things that work because nobody's doing that now and that's what stands out it's the old adage you know when you see everybody running one way you run the other way you know what i mean so getting a bunch of sexy girls to represent your product no matter if you're selling whatever you're selling towels soap cars it doesn't fuck beer it doesn't work like it used to work because it's not there's no like attention we're oh another hot girl we see it all the time so you know if you're going to use attractive females which in fitness generally um that's a part of the game we also use regular look at females we also use people who are overweight but at the the core the core of what we're trying to do and what

is important is not in the fucking picture. It's in the thing below the picture called the caption. Right. Okay. It's the story you tell. It's what people are communicating. And so what we've done with our influencers and our athletes is we've highly encouraged them to be transparent with their stories. You know, a lot of people look at these people who are super huge followings and super fit and super beautiful and think that they were just like that their whole lives. Dude, these people have suffered depression. They've suffered eating disorders. They'd suffered accidents. They suffered illnesses just like everybody else. And so no, but no other company has ever been cool

with them sharing those stories. So what we've done is, and this goes for everybody in our brand. I've always encouraged everybody to tell their fucking story. Because if you tell your story, people that have the same situation or something similar, they're going to be inspired by it. They're going to say, you know what? I've dealt with that too. That means I can fucking do this. And you know, that's something that people are missing out on right now. They're still trying to beat that old thing, sex sells to the ground. Like, oh, look at this hot chick or look at this hot dude. Nobody fucking cares because, you know, you're talking about, unless you're talking about like 17 year old dudes, which aren't your customers, you know, nobody fucking cares.

It's got to be something that relates to people. Absolutely. And I think another thing that figures into this, Andy, is obviously in our day and age, people are more accessible. And the expectation on social media is that you're going to be a somewhat likable, accessible, engaging, friendly person. And so if you're just a hot person and you're posting pics, but you're not interacting with your followers. You're not posting stuff. That's a big deal. You know, that is a big deal. No, a lot of people try to do that fucking Hollywood thing, or they're like, they don't

fucking reply to anybody. They're too cool for it. Dude, eventually people are going to get tired of your shit. You know what I mean? Like, dude, you got, let's say you got a guy who comments on your shit every day. Hey man, I love this. Or Hey man, I love that. And you never fucking say, thank you. Eventually he's going to say, fuck you. And he's going to move on move on But you see have all these fucking people with big followers that really honestly haven't accomplished shit in the rest of their real life Thinking there's some fucking special being that they don't have to fucking do that Fuck I see people with 10 000 followers do that shit It's like motherfucker. You better be thankful for your lucky stars for every single person that even fucking shows you any love You know, but but you know Sometimes you gotta train people to do that Be thankful for your lucky stars for every single person that even fucking shows you any love.

You know, but, but, you know, sometimes you got to train people to do that. Okay. So we've, we've covered the difference between branding and marketing. We talked a little bit about, you know, the idea of, of what you should know about your customers, brand ambassadors. You know, we even talked about copywriting. I feel like we've covered a lot of different topics man so uh i don't know what you want to wrap up with but um i had a couple other questions i was going to ask you i i guess i my question is um you know a lot of people find a lot of success on instagram and they're so successful on that one platform that they think well why don't i just pound this or you know,

rather than dilute my efforts by going on Facebook, Twitter, that sort of thing. What are your thoughts on that? Do you, do you develop a portfolio? If you ask 20 different people, they're going to tell you 20 different things. So I'm just going to tell you what I, what I think. Um, and we're pretty fucking good at it. Uh, look, here's the deal. When you, when you pick one of those channels, let's say, like I said, Google, Facebook, Instagram, influencer marketing, things change. Okay, so if you pick one and you go all in on one and you don't learn the other ones or learn at least how to be effective in the other ones, you're really shooting yourself short because things can change because I'll give you an example, you know, two years ago, if a fucking 10 million person influencer made a post, 10 million people fucking saw it. Now with Instagram's new algorithm, it's not that way. It cuts it, you know, less than half of those people see it. I think, you know, I don't know what the exact percentage is, but the point is, is that you have a situation where things can change. And when you go all in on one thing and you're at the mercy of one of these other companies and they change something, dude, you're, you're pretty much screwed. And then you're not ready to know about anything else. So I personally think it's a great idea to make sure that you know about all of them. And the one

that's working the best, dissect it look at it decide while it's you know figure out exactly why it's working and then try to re try to reposition that uh that same campaign on a different platform you know the reason something works is not because of the platform it's because of your copy or your resonation with people or your ability to connect with people or your story or your product. And if you, if you could figure out how to make something work on one of the platforms, it's probably, it's probably highly likely that you'll be able to, uh, you know, re-equip that same message over somewhere else. And if you don't know how to do that right now, you're're really you're really setting yourself up for a big punch because

These things change all the time and when they change and you don't know how to adapt It'll put you out of business Look at all these big huge companies that are going out of business now Because they're still running fucking radio ads and tv ads and and print ads and they're wondering why sales are down Well sales are down because no one reads that shit. No one watches TV. No one listens to real radio. You know what I mean?

And so you've got to figure out how to adapt. And if you don't know how to adapt when something changes, you know, I think it's, you know, you're putting yourself in a really tough position. So I would say, you know, figure out, put your time in to figure out one, dissect why it's work when it starts to work, dissect while it's working, start to figure out how to make it on another one and, and get it going on everywhere.

That way you're never, you know, held down or locked down by these other companies making a change. Makes sense. All right. So in wrapping up, I just, I want you to use your crystal ball. Tell me what Andy Frisella's predictions are for the future in terms of, do you see anything changing in terms of how people use Instagram? A lot of people ask me, why isn't Andy on Twitter?

You want to share your thoughts on that? I think Twitter is ineffective for what I do. First of all, I've got so much other shit going on. I just don't have the time. And I'm not one of these people who has a social media person posting for me seven times a day. If you notice, I only post once a day usually. And that's because I'm actually really doing things. I don't have or hire somebody to do my comments. If you get a comment from me, it's me. If you get a like for me, it's me. If you get a post, it's me.

It's not some dude standing next to me with a camera saying, hey, post this shit. That's not how I run shit. I do it myself. So I just don't have time. I don't have time to do the Twitter shit. So I just don't do it. What was the question? Well, just about, do you, do you see, how do you see Instagram evolving? How people use social media evolving? You know,

it's a pretty open-ended question. Man, you know, I don't see, in my opinion, I don't see many people doing it right. I think we're in the beginning stages of, of mass confusion on how to actually build a brand using social media. I just don't see that many people doing it right. I see people like Gary selling services to other companies to try to teach them how to do it right. But yeah, I still don't see people doing it right. I don't see people developing a culture. I don't see people developing a culture. I don't see people developing a true brand. I see a lot

of people selling a product with an ROI, you know, and they're making sales and yes, they're making money, but the minute that product burns out or something changes or adapts or evolves, they're having a problem selling the product or it doesn't sell or they're, they're out of, they're out of sales. I also see most of the time, those people making a lot of money doing that, spending all their money, which dude, if I'm that's you, you better save your fucking money. You know. If I could predict what's going to happen, I think we've already covered it. I think people are going to get more and more and more disenfranchised with the sex sells and with the same old shit that people have seen forever and ever and ever.

And they're going to get more and more, you know, engaged with brands that fucking care. And until you can figure out how to do that, you're not going to really be able to be successful. You know, you might do a little bit of business, but you're always going to struggle. And we're in a really interesting place right now because people are like oh the internet's been around for 20 years yeah sure it has but but also but the internet hasn't been strong enough and social media hasn't been strong enough and all the things that we're talking about here haven't been strong enough uh to you know youtube facebook and i forgot to put youtube in those categories earlier but youtube's a tremendous thing but But, uh, it hasn't been around, it hasn't been strong enough until maybe the last two or

three years to really kill off the big three traditional advertising medias. You know what I mean? And their effectiveness. So now we're in a real transition. We're in a transition period where the old shit doesn't work. Nobody knows how to do the new shit. And so it's like a fucking free for all. And everybody's trying to figure it out. And like, dude, you have people writing books about, about like I see book. I've dude, I've literally read books. I'm not going to say names, but I've read books that have told people to do shit that just isn't fucking true because I've done it and it doesn't work because they're guessing and they're trying to ride away. Nobody right now is an expert on this shit. Nobody, nobody. I don't care how much they say they are, care how much they pretend to be. I don't care how much they charge you to beat, to fucking tell you they're an expert on this. Nobody is an expert on this. Nobody. There might be micro experts that know how to do one thing. Well, right now they might not, they might know how to do, they might know how to do Facebook ads or affiliates, and they might make $100 million right now.

But the minute that changes, they don't know how to do the rest of that shit for anything. And then you've got people that know how to do YouTube a little bit. And they're making money on YouTube, and they're doing good. And then they're trying to sell people how to do YouTube shit. They don't fucking know. They've hit on something that works, and they don't know how to teach it. They just know how to fucking make it work for them right now. Right. You get what I'm saying? Absolutely. We're like, we're like in this time where like, you know, people are jumping in the deep end of the pool with no fucking water

wings on man. And they're fucking floundering around, you know, and they're pretending like they know what the fuck they're doing. But really, dude, they're really that close to drowning. Right. My favorite is, and you know that someone is lying through their teeth if they put out a book that says, you know, how to guarantee your video will go viral. Because all of the studies, all of the data says that there's so many unknowns. Why does, you know, why does a, a, a, a cartoon of a, of an orange, you know, laughing or whatever, why does that go viral? I'll tell you this. Here's what I know is that things that are entertaining are always going

to go viral before things are educational. Okay. And if you're selling fucking pizza and you're selling beer, you're always going to sell more pizza and beer than you're going to sell vitamins because people want it. People want to laugh. They want to feel good. So you need to think about what people want. And if you can figure out how to work your product into that, then your chances of getting viral attention are very good. Right. But you would also agree that if we're honest, there is an element of mystery that nobody's figured out. I think it's numbers. I think that it's, you know, I think you've got to strategically look at it. Like, like if Tyler and tyler and i were saying hey we're going to create this viral video

you know we would break it down and say okay uh we we think that that this would be good and it would be funny and it would also work and uh and then well you know we would i mean dude we've had so many videos that like we thought were going to be fucking home runs I mean, dude, we've had so many videos that like, we thought we're going to be fucking home runs that weren't. And then we've had videos that we thought were just okay. They fucking people loved. And so you can strategize all you want. Um, but I think the, you know, if you want to create a viral video, I think it's about, you know, you're going to have to work some entertainment in there usually. Um, and I'm saying about increasing your chances, other cool videos that go viral that don't

have that? Absolutely. Yeah. But you know, entertainment works, laughing works, getting people to, uh, taking a stand. We've talked about taking a stand works and, and you know, if you really want to plan it out, you can get other people, you can plan other people that have high, high level, uh, influencer power to repost your video. Yeah. Still all of that doesn't, it's, it doesn't guarantee anything. Yeah. Guys, uh, another episode that dovetails really nicely with a lot of what we're talking about here is the episode we did on how to, how to create killer content. I don't have the number up the top of my head. Just Google, Google MFCEO project, how to create killer content. It's within the last, last what like two or three months we did that one but that's got a andy goes into depth um about the actual content you know the things that you

know he just mentioned content that entertains tends to go more viral well in that episode he actually goes into more detail like take a stand you know be very clear on what you know be willing to be a little controversial you know so so take a look at it at the of the day, that's what keeps people from never ever getting attention is because they try to make this content that's going to appeal to everybody. Right. And when you do that, you end up being so fucking vanilla that nobody likes it at all. Right. So, you know, and we do talk about that on the, on that.

I think that was in December when we did that or right after the beginning of the year. Yeah. Somebody said, some famous person, I forget who it is, but it said right now in America, if you want to really stand out, tell the truth. That was me. Was that you? No, I'm just kidding. I don't know who said that. I wouldn't be surprised if it was you. That is true though. You know? Yeah, that is true, man. And you tell your truth, you know, the way you see it, because if you see it, some, if you see it one way and you see that as truth and you speak it as truth, other people are going to resonate with that. Right. You know, like it's how you speak it some, if you see it one way and you see that as truth and you speak it as truth, other people are going to resonate with that. Right. You know, like it's how you speak it too,

right? Like, you know, let's say you have your truth, but then you come on in some wishy-washy way. Like, well, from my perspective, this is how I see this thing. No, that's how you say, so you know what, this is the way it fucking is. It's this, this, this, this, and this. And then that gets people excited. And then some some people will disagree which brings only more attention to your whatever it is you're doing yeah the only thing i would add is that you my friend when you make a statement you can back up your statement and there are a lot of people that so when what i'm saying to people is when you well i try to think before i speak well if you're going to take a stand then be able to argue your point it's amazing how many people just throw ridiculously controversial statements out there.

There should be like a certification for even being on social media. And I mean, it's amazing. They should let everybody be on social media, but to be able to actually post on social media, you should like pass a test. Yeah. I don't care. I don't care how controversial a statement people make, as long as you're willing to back it up and to argue your case.

But it's amazing how many people make these broad statements these crazy you know how much i don't post because i don't have the time to argue with people well can you remember the last time i posted a political post i'm a pretty i'm talking about anything yeah but i mean dude i just don't even put because on facebook it's way worse than on instagram is like you get these people who just want to fucking argue for no reason no matter what you say and it's just like dude it kills the who just want to fucking argue for no reason, no matter what you say. And it's just like, dude, it kills the whole vibe of the fucking platform. For me, Facebook is where all the asterisk holes hang out. You know, we haven't talked about asterisk holes for a while, but yeah, it is. Yeah. No. Okay. Well, anything else?

No, man. If you guys like the podcast, you've got content, you know, if you got good content from it, if you got some good benefit from it if it helped you guys rethink about where it is you're trying to go and what direction you're trying to go the one thing I would stress guys is that make sure like if you're even if you're the guy sweeping the floor in the warehouse dude take this shit serious do what I said go

go start writing about the products developing these skills these skills just because you don't need them now because you're sweeping the fucking floor doesn't mean you won't need them a year from now, two years from now. You know what I mean? And I think a lot of people get fucked up in their career that way because they get stuck in whatever they're doing now and they don't put the investment in to what they're trying to learn, what they need to learn because they don't need it today. It's not about needing it today. It's about what you're going to need a year from now,

two years from now, three years from now. And the great thing about where we're at in this society we're in is that information is so readily available and cheap and free most of the time that you could do this on your own in your spare time. And guys, being successful within the walls of somebody else's organization is 1000% your responsibility. It is not the boss's job to come up and recognize you and give you a fucking raise. It's your job to become so good at whatever it is that you're becoming good at that people take notice and they say, yeah, that's the motherfucker that we need right there. You know what? But he only sweeps the floor. Yeah, but dude, have you ever talked to him about marketing?

You ever see his copywriting? Dude, this guy could be, we could move him in the front office right now. That's how you do that. You know, if you wait and wait and wait and wait and you never take initiative and you never take control, you're always going to be paid the least amount possible. And I hate that people don't understand that concept. They think it's the other way around. Oh, I've been here for 17 years sweeping the floor. Eventually they're going to move me into the office. No, unless you display that skillset and take control and take

responsibility for yourself and showing that skillset. Like I talked about last, uh, last week on the leadership management podcast, you're going to be doing that shit either here or there or somewhere else for the rest of your life. It's your responsibility, not ours. So I'll leave you guys with that.