The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Wayne Mullins, Founder of UglyMugMarketing.com Interview

Episode Date: April 28, 2022

Wayne Mullins, Founder of UglyMugMarketing.com Interview UglyMugMarketing.com...

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Starting point is 00:00:00 You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain now here's your host chris voss folks welcome to chris voss show the chris voss show.com hey thanks for being here my brain i think is already bleeding but i think it came from working out last night at the gym uh but the gym is healthy place to go just don't i don't know i was doing mind exercise i was reading a new book by the moth people that were on our show
Starting point is 00:00:48 earlier. Anyway, guys, thank you for tuning in. As always, put your arm around that friend, look them deep in the eye, give them that look that you really care and say, hey, you should subscribe to the Chris Voss Show podcast, the family that loves you but doesn't judge you, which is the best kind of family there is. I mean, I've seen some of your family's people. Give me a break. Anyway, guys, I'm just kidding. You have wonderful family members except for that one uncle. We all know that guy on Thanksgiving, right?
Starting point is 00:01:12 Anyway, guys, be sure to go to YouTube.com for Jesus Christ. Hit the bell notification button. It's free for an unlimited time. You want to get that deal. It's still available. And let's see what else is there. There's Goodreads.com for Jesus Christ. Our big LinkedIn group, 12 122 000 people over there and the 4 000 people i think they're on the
Starting point is 00:01:29 linkedin newsletter this is fairly new this is growing like uh gangbusters over there it's pretty cool subscribe to all that stuff that linkedin is really cool now i don't know we have an account on twitter i guess we'll see what happens next i don't know elon musk just might might shut it all down and i don't know you'll have to tweet out of your tesla or something you might corner the market on that i don't know how that's gonna work shut it all down, and I don't know. You'll have to tweet out of your Tesla or something. You might corner the market on that. I don't know how that's going to work out, but it will be interesting. Anyway, guys, thanks for tuning in. We have an amazing gentleman on the show. He's going to be talking to us about his company. He is the founder of Ugly Mug Marketing.
Starting point is 00:02:01 I think he named it after me, Ugly Mug. Is that what happened? Wayne Mullins is on the show with us today. He is a husband, father of four, CEO, entrepreneur, and author. He's a generous soul, a risk taker, and out of the box against the grain, thinker and leader. Over the past 20 years, Wayne has scaled multiple companies and helped hundreds of entrepreneurs do the same with their companies. Wayne influences more than 250,000 entrepreneurs annually through his blog, books, and training program and has personally worked with clients in over 100 industries from every corner of the globe. Yeah, Ugly Mug Marketing has won the praises of some of the leading influencers in the business world such as Neil Patel and Ari Wiesnig-Wieg. I'm not sure if I got that correct.
Starting point is 00:02:48 Wayne, welcome to the show. How are you? I'm doing well, Chris. Thank you so much for having me. There you go. Did I get Ari's name correct? Close. Wines-Wieg.
Starting point is 00:02:57 There you go. Super close. I'll have some more Wines-Wieg, and I will be getting that name done better in the future. Welcome to the show. We certainly appreciate you coming by. Thanks for being here. Yeah, thank you. I'm excited for our chat today.
Starting point is 00:03:10 Yeah. And why did you name the name of the company Ugly Mug after me? Well, you know, all the people we could have. Yeah, it's a different name. It's an unusual name. There's a bit of a story behind the name. Yeah. So the name is actually a play off of a phrase from this
Starting point is 00:03:25 gentleman of the name David Ogilvie. So David Ogilvie is in advertising world. He is kind of world renowned or was world renowned. He's passed away now, but he built a small agency called Ogilvie and Mather. Ogilvie and Mather at one time was the largest in the world. And to this day, they're still in the top 10. But the founder, David, he had this saying that was, I would rather an ad that's ugly than one that's beautiful and not effective. I'd rather an ad that's ugly and effective than one that's beautiful and not. Our name is really just a tribute to that philosophy that beautiful for the sake of beautiful isn't necessarily good, that we need to stay focused on what's that end result that we're after. Maybe that should be more people's policy on Twitter.
Starting point is 00:04:10 Or on Twitter. On Tinder. There's a dating joke for you. So give us the.com so people can find you guys in the interwebs and look you up as we find out more about you. Absolutely. It's just uglymugmarketing.com. There you go.
Starting point is 00:04:22 Whoever draws. There you go. It wasn't named after me, darn it. Tell the lawyers to call that trademark thing off. No, I'm just kidding. So tell us a little bit about your origin story, your history, and what got you here and deciding to do this. Sure. What got me here was this dangerous thought in my head that when I looked at my paycheck and I looked at the amount of sales that I was generating for the company I was working for at the time, this thought popped in my head.
Starting point is 00:04:49 What if I actually went and sold something for myself? What if I went out and did something for myself? How much more money could I possibly make? And it was with that one dangerous thought that I left a great sales career, major company, publicly traded company, eight to five, Monday through Friday, all the perks, and decided to start a business. But for me, Chris, at the time, I made a list of all the skills that I had. The list was very short. It was selling, how to sell things, and I knew how to cut grass. So the logical choice was to start a lawn and landscape company. Over the course of a three-year window, Chris took that company from
Starting point is 00:05:25 startup and ended up growing it to multiple crews and sold the company three years later. In the course of that growth, people started coming to me. Our clients of the lawn care company started coming to me and saying, how are you actually growing your business? And you see most of our customers were commercial businesses. And so these owners would come to me and they'd say, we see the way you're growing your company. We see, you know, you've grown from startup to where you are today with the company. What are you doing? How are you actually marketing to grow that quickly? And so, you know, the answer was very specific marketing related things that we were doing that were so different, kind of out of the box to what was the norm in our industry at that time.
Starting point is 00:06:07 And, you know, as they say, the rest is history. So those relationships over time turned into a different business after I sold the lawn care company, turned into what would become Ugly Mug Marketing. Yeah. Well, that's awesome, man. I mean, it's so funny. People don't see like blue car labor as a way to get rich and build successful businesses. We had an author on, I think a couple of years ago, who built a whole world on an empire on blue collar businesses. And they're actually, you know, in the trades are actually kind of an interesting place to be. But marketing and sales, once you learn sales, I mean, it's really, you can almost do anything with yourself at that point. Yeah, Zig Ziglar used to always say,
Starting point is 00:06:50 nothing happens until someone sells something. And, you know, that was, Zig was kind of my mentor, if you will, from a distance, my sales coach, if you, I consumed all of his stuff, Tom Peters, Tom Peters in the right one. There's another Tom, I can't think of his name. Tom Somebody. That was great at sales. He done a lot
Starting point is 00:07:08 of closes. I don't know. There was a lot of Toms. We get them all going on that one. Especially in our own age. But yeah, sales to me is still a passion. I still love selling. I think it's like you
Starting point is 00:07:23 said, it opens up the world to you when you learn to hone those skills and develop those skills. Yeah, it definitely does. I wrote in my book, Zig Ziller really saved my life. Like, you know, somebody said, you know, you've got to read this book or else we're going to fire you because you can't slay your way out of a paper bag. And yeah, I was like, okay, well, I read it. And I mean, my whole life changed because of that book. Otherwise I'd been fired and I don't know, I'd probably back to flipping burgers somewhere or something. There is a Tom Hopkins, a sales speaker. Yeah, that was it.
Starting point is 00:07:56 That's him. Yeah. There you go. There you go. Tom Peters writes some amazing books too, as well. Hopefully, I think we're supposed to try and get him on the show for his next book that should be coming out soon. So what services do you guys provide? What do you guys do there at Ugly Mug Marketing? Sure. We work in three core buckets, if you will, Chris. Bucket number one. You guys don't have an office?
Starting point is 00:08:17 Yeah, we do. But you're working in buckets? I'm just doing jokes here. It wasn't that good of a joke, really. I agree with you on that one. No. Web development is one of our services.
Starting point is 00:08:33 I won't use the word bucket again. One of our services. We also do social media, specifically Facebook and Instagram, some LinkedIn. And then we do general marketing, for lack of a better term. So everything from television, radio, print, billboards, whatever it may be. I mean, really, the bucket. I'm looking at the bucket behind you. It's really designed well.
Starting point is 00:08:55 So it's quite big. It's got a large bucket. Anyway, we won't use that as a callback joke for the whole show. But I just thought it was a funny place to put that right there. So you guys do a lot of services, and you have a large group of people that work with you or work for you, I should say. Yeah. There's 10 of us full-time here in the office. I guess if you count me, that'd be 11. You know, I'm marginal. I may become as a half, some 10 and a half people. And we work with clients all over the country from California to New York, sometimes occasionally all over the world. It just depends on the clients.
Starting point is 00:09:27 That's awesome, man. And so you just help them achieve their results in marketing. I'm looking at your guys' website here. Let's see. I need to move this just a little bit so I can see all the services. Website design, results-based marketing, social media marketing, visual speaking, SEO. So you help people do all these different things. I noticed there's a career tab on your website. Are you guys hiring or are you just talking about your team and stuff like
Starting point is 00:09:51 that? Yeah, no, we're in the process of hiring right now. We've continually grown over the past few years. Slow growth, pretty much the bulk of our growth comes from word of mouth from referral, oxymoron, if you will, because we're a marketing company. But yeah, we don't do a ton of marketing. It's mostly word of mouth and organic growth. And we're always looking for great people to join the team. Sometimes that's the best, the word of mouth marketing stuff. Are you guys based in a certain place in the U.S.?
Starting point is 00:10:19 Yeah, our office is in Alexandria, Louisiana. So for those not familiar, you think of New Orleans, Louisiana, right? You think of the sights, the sounds of New Orleans. And now picture the polar opposite in your mind. That is Alexandria, Louisiana. That is where we're out of. There you go. Do you guys do, are most of your clients, I mean, you already told me your clients are
Starting point is 00:10:41 kind of international and stuff. How is the South like for business? I mean, there are a lot of people coming online, a lot of brick and mortar people looking for services and stuff like that. Yeah, I would say for us personally, we probably, you know, 60% of our businesses in Louisiana, 40% is scattered all over the country. Yeah, I mean, you know, I would say it's true, you look. I think the shifts that have taken place over the last few years because of the pandemic have permanently changed the way businesses operate. And I think where we're at right now as entrepreneurs and small business owners, I think what we're seeing is so many owners, entrepreneurs are trying to go back to the way things were. They're trying to
Starting point is 00:11:21 go back to the strategies, back to the marketing, back to all the things that worked pre-pandemic. And the world has shifted so much in that time that those things no longer bring value. Those things do not produce the same ROI that they once did. So I think across the board, it's such an important time. It's a learning time. It's time to reevaluate and question everything that used to work and that we're attempting to reimplement at this point. You know, a lot of, a lot of, a lot of brick and mortar companies, a lot of restaurants and stuff really got caught with their pants down when COVID came. I mean, a lot of them were, it's like, Hey, you've got to convert to, you sales, delivery, or at least be communicating when you're open. One of my friends at NSU who we interviewed that started the thing, between him and I, we couldn't believe how many companies weren't putting on their website or their Google update for search and SEO that they were open. They were still open.
Starting point is 00:12:25 And like whatever their hours were or new hours, that was a big problem I had after COVID started. So everybody changed their hours and you're like, I thought you were open. I drove like five miles to come here. And a lot of people got caught with their pants down. And it costs, I think, some people, their businesses, especially restaurants, some people scrambled and adapted. They already had their websites going. And, you know, from what we've seen, like with the jobs of people where they don't want to go back to the office because, I don't know, living at home and doing your work in your underwear is kind of fun. The, you know, people are kind of more at home now, especially from what I just
Starting point is 00:12:58 said. I mean, people are working from home, so they're probably going to order food for or from home, et cetera, et cetera. And so companies have to be ready for that. They've really, it really forced people to get, get your, get your brick and mortar put on the internet and get going. Yeah, no, I completely agree with Chris. I think one of the things that the pandemic did was it, it actually, it didn't, you know, we hear a lot about it. The pandemic broke my culture or now people don't want to work or they don't want to show up. They don't want to do all these things. The culture of my company is now different from the pandemic. My response to that is no, the pandemic didn't actually break or do anything to your culture. What it did was it actually revealed your true culture. It revealed what was actually there
Starting point is 00:13:40 before. I often say that leaders aren't needed when things are easy. And so pre-COVID, pre-pandemic, business was relatively easy. Things were pretty consistent. Growth wasn't that complicated. Obviously, there's ups and downs in every business, but for the most part, you show up, you do the thing, and you're going to succeed over time. But the pandemic really shook all that up. That no longer was true. And so to navigate through that, and now I think actually navigating beyond the pandemic, what does the world look like now? How do we lead now? I think that is the true challenge because again, I think so many entrepreneurs are trying to do what they did pre-pandemic and it's just not going to work. Yeah. And what do you see the future of marketing going and where we're going?
Starting point is 00:14:32 What do you see the future where marketing is going with post-pandemic? Yeah, I believe, Chris, that I hope that the future of marketing is actually going to the past. So the future I hope is going to the past. And what I mean by that is we're coming out of a season where advertising online was easy, right? You click a little button on Facebook and you can reach a lot of people and it made you feel good. It made Facebook feel great because they got your money. And you reach some new people because we were in a time of expansion. In other words, more and more people were joining the platform or whatever the platform may be. And now what I think people are realizing is this segmentation or the number of options that exist in terms of platforms, it's never going to stop expanding. In other words,
Starting point is 00:15:16 there's always going to be the next social media platform, right? So whether or not Elon Musk does something crazy with Twitter, whether he does nothing different with Twitter, the fear that a lot of people are having around this is what are the changes going to be? And where I think we're hopefully going to go is back to the old days where when you treat people well, when you exceed their expectations, when you provide them with exceptional value and exceptional service, you can build what we would call these things called evangelists, right? So we're borrowing from the church community, but evangelists are people who so love your product or service that they're willing to go tell their friends, their clients, their neighbors, et cetera, about you. And I hope that there's the shift back to the quote-unquote good old days where we believed in the value of our existing customers so much that we're willing to invest in them. We're willing to spend our marketing dollars nurturing those relationships instead of just throwing money trying to get the next new person in the door.
Starting point is 00:16:21 So that's kind of my hope of where we're going with marketing. We definitely need to work on the customer service end of all that. I'm always amazed at how many people, especially with Facebook pages, I send messages to. We do a lot of shows and events and interviews with CEOs and stuff. I'm just astounded at how many people we send messages to on facebook pages that it's just i never get answers we'll send in like online forms and like we'll get it we'll get an email like i don't know three weeks later be like yeah yeah it's got it's got lost and people who don't give a crap and yeah we're just getting back to you and i'm like you know if i was a customer
Starting point is 00:17:00 i already went to a bar with somebody else. Like, you know, this is, customer service has really gone downhill with what everything's going. And, you know, maybe that's the problem. Like you say, where everyone's trying to chase the next biggest, the next customer. And one of the things you have is, there's some stats that, you know,
Starting point is 00:17:19 probably go back decades, where your best customers and the best business, if you're going to get it, is from your current database of customers. You know, it costs less to plumb that field or whatever until that field to get more business out of your current customers than it is to acquire a new customer. Yeah. You're spot on, Chris. One of the things you mentioned, you know, when you're talking about you fill out, you
Starting point is 00:17:43 message somebody on Facebook about, you know, whatever the thing may be, and then they don't respond or they take weeks to respond. I find that it's often those same people who then turn around and complain that Facebook doesn't work or that Facebook's not effective for growing their business, right? It's those same people. It's the same people who you form on the website and it takes them three weeks to respond it's those people who say there's not much value in having a website and to your point there was a study done by banning company or a banning company large consulting firm and they surveyed 4 000 small small businesses around the United States. And they asked them on the scale from what life, how well do you rate your customer service?
Starting point is 00:18:33 So the top of that list was exceptional. Below that was great. Below that was good. Below that was average. At the bottom was terrible. So they surveyed these 4,000 business owners and 80% said, we provide the highest level exceptional service. And so Bainly Company, they're smart. They're smart people. They're a smart consulting firm. And they said, something's not right here. There's no way that 80% of these 4,000 businesses
Starting point is 00:18:58 provide that level of service. So they went back to those businesses and they said, would you mind if we actually surveyed some of your customers and ask them the same exact question? Hey, we know you do business with small business X over here. How would you rate their service? And so they went and did that study and they came back and only 8% of the customers agreed that they provide exceptional service. That's exactly your point, Chris. We are often so delusional as entrepreneurs, as business owners, in terms of the level of service that we truly provide. Because this is our baby, right?
Starting point is 00:19:37 We don't want to call the baby ugly. We don't want to say that we've got these terrible flaws or that we've got all these gaps in our customer experience. We don't want to say that we've got these terrible flaws or that we've got all these gaps in our customer experience. We don't want to admit that. But my hope is that we'll return to that. Like you were saying, customer service seems to be at this all-time low. It's just, I guess, going downhill so far that expectations, I think, have dropped over time. But as expectations have dropped, service has followed them down that path, right?
Starting point is 00:20:13 The level of service provided has followed. Yeah, it's just like no one cares anymore. It does their job. You're just like, you know, it's really bad too when I go into like most business places and so many people, so many employees are on their phone and you're just like, Hey, can I interrupt whatever you're doing there on TikTok and ask you a question? And you know, they look at you like you killed their mom or something. You're just like, seriously, dude. So yeah, it's kind of interesting how the whole thing's working out. What are some other aspects of what you see in the future for business or tips maybe you have,
Starting point is 00:20:42 or things that revolve around the services you provide? Sure. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the very first thing that I would say is, you know, I completely agree with what you're saying about customer service. I personally believe that that is the key right now that any small business owner can do to differentiate themselves from their competitors. If you can lean into providing a noticeably different level of service, you will succeed. You will succeed because we live in this world, like it or not, where every single person in their pocket or in their purse has this little device, right? And with this little device, they can broadcast a message to the entire world. And we as business owners, as entrepreneurs, we do a terrible job of thinking through what are the ways that we can create surprise? What are the ways that we can create a level of remarkability into the products and services that we provide it doesn't matter the business you know for so many people i think well you know my business is just an average business you know i just i i cut lunch or i cut hair or i
Starting point is 00:21:51 do plumbing there it doesn't matter the business there's always something that we can do in terms of service to differentiate ourselves from everyone else around us and just sit down and think through what are the things that we can do in such a way that it's so different so remarkable remarkable doesn't mean expensive but so remarkable that people would be willing to share about it to tell their friends tell their neighbors about it on social media influence or marketing and of course what's the old adage if someone loves your product or service they'll tell at least six other people. I don't know if that's still true. It was like, I think that's from 30 or 40 years ago, but it's true.
Starting point is 00:22:33 But, you know, if somebody doesn't like your service or product, they'll tell the whole bloody world. You know, and I'm renowned for that. If I love something, I tell everybody about it. I'm like, you got to check this out. You know, and we try and review a lot of things on the Chris Foss show out for 12 years now, but you know, people just call me all the time and they're like, yeah, I saw you reviewed like those 10 speakers. Like, which one did you keep? Cause we know you keep the best ones and you, you hand off the other ones. And, and that's funny. Cause they'll call me and they go, what are you using? What are you using
Starting point is 00:23:03 Chris? And I'll post about what I'm using and stuff. And I go, I really like this. And, you know, sometimes it's not a product maybe you've either reviewed, maybe I bought it myself. You know, I like good products. And so we tend to talk about it. We post about it on Facebook. People, I see it all the time.
Starting point is 00:23:18 They're like, hey, I'm trying this, I'm doing that. You know, people talk. And, you know, it's hard to measure that sort of engagement. People will be like, well, how many eyeballs do we get? How many sales do we get? And they can't measure the long term sometimes of some of those interactions and how they actually feed into themselves and get people to buy. Yeah, spot on. I think it's the difference between a short-term mindset versus a long-term mindset. Social media has trained us, the pace of the world has trained us to think very short-term.
Starting point is 00:23:53 I do the post, I see the likes, the shares, the comments. I make the post on the other platform, drive people to the website, I see the clicks to the website, whatever it may be. But I think to win the game that we're playing, the game of business, if you will, we have to embrace this long-term mindset. We have to be willing to invest in things that may not pay off immediately or may have a longer term payout. One example in terms of standing out or being different, back, I guess this would be early 2000s of terrible time frames, but
Starting point is 00:24:32 when the EMP3 players first started coming out, which I know I figured it out, basically no, but when the Apple iPod first came out, Microsoft had their version of the product, which was called the Microsoft Zune. If you were to compare tech specs between the two, the Zune, one hands down, it had more storage, it did more things, it had better display, it had all the things better
Starting point is 00:24:57 than the iPod. But Apple's marketing was simple. It didn't list all these million different things that it did. It just, the phrase was a thousand songs in your pocket. That was it. But the true beauty of differentiation for bill was the cord on the headphones. At that time, every single set of headphones was black.
Starting point is 00:25:24 The cords, the cables were black. Apples were white. So anytime you saw somebody out in public on the bus, on the subway, whatever it may be, and you saw the white headphones, you knew they had something different. They had the Apple product. And so it's little things like that that we can do, no matter the size of the business, that helps us stand out in the crowded product. And so it's little things like that, that we can do no matter the size of the business that helps us stand out in the crowded marketplace.
Starting point is 00:25:51 That's awesome. The, you know, I remember what was the thing I was thinking about? There was somebody else who had that when Instagram first came out, that was when Instagram first came out, there was actually a company, there was actually two big companies. They weren't, oh, they weren't big, but they were startups, but they were, they had a pretty good foothold in the market. The first one did. And the first one had full scale 10, 28, 70, 68 images, a high resolution, the highest, whatever the highest resolution.
Starting point is 00:26:18 And they were, they were, you know, landscape and they were running a good show. They were doing really good. And then Instagram came along and launched their thing. And I remember hating Instagram as a photographer because, you know, it wanted to cut all the pictures down to idiot portrait mode. And, and then of course the resolution was completely awful compared to the leader in the market. But because of the simplicity of what they did and I don't know, whatever marketing they did, they marketing they did, they ended up putting this company out of business. It was insane. I'm like,
Starting point is 00:26:51 this is a much better product. What the hell is going on? Yeah. We often, I think, believe that we have to have something better. And I think different is the better word to look at. Better, but different. And if you look, Apple's a great case study on this you know some of their original campaigns were think different oh do you think it's because different is an easier way to differentiate stuff like it's it's probably easier than reading the tech spec list you're just like hey well they say they're different, so they must be different. Yeah, absolutely. And people don't care about all of the things. They want to know what it will do for them. They want to know.
Starting point is 00:27:33 So an example that I know, a phrase that I like to use is this, that people are interested in their interests, not in your product or service. So people are interested in their interests, not in your product or service. So people are interested in their interests, not in your product or service. So let's just say you make golf clubs. People don't care about your golf clubs. You can say your golf clubs are better. You can say they'll drive the ball further. They don't care about any of that. What do they care about?
Starting point is 00:27:56 They care about their game. Right? You know that? Go ahead. Sorry. Yeah, so you'll say when we learn to speak to their interest, to the things that they're interested in, that is when we begin resonating. That's when our marketing messages speak to the heart, if you will. It cuts beyond all the noise, all the clutter of, you know, all the tech specs.
Starting point is 00:28:19 And it speaks to what they truly desire. Most definitely. You know, you've helped me identify something, actually. You know, for years, we used to do a lot of the iPhone versus Android phone back in the day and, you know, start all sorts of nuclear war fights on YouTube and Facebook and stuff. And, you know, I'm a big fan of Android. And we compare the two products against each other. And so there's some real difference in their tech specs.
Starting point is 00:28:46 In fact, a lot of the tech specs for Android or Apple are about two or three years behind Android. And Tim Cook has been really honest about it. He says, you know, we do that to maximize profit. And, you know, we follow the market instead of leading the market. And what's interesting to me is when I've tried to always explain tech specs to iPhone users, they say what you say, where they're just more interested in the comfort of what it brings to them. Like, I have an ecosystem. I have my music, and I have my computer, my Apple computer that it works with, and I have the mail, and, you know, it's a whole ecosystem, Chris, that makes me comfortable.
Starting point is 00:29:21 And, yeah, maybe it's not the greatest phone in the world compared to Android, but it works with this ecosystem, making my life easier. And you'll talk tech specs with them, and their eyes will just glaze over, and you're like, but this has 8K cameras, and you're paying more for a phone that has 4K cameras. Do you understand why that sucks? But they don't care. The comfort and the familiarity and all that sort of good stuff.
Starting point is 00:29:47 So it's more about how they personally feel about it. So you've really helped me identify that. Maybe I'll have less arguments on Facebook about what you're talking about. Yeah. The thing that, so I started out as an Android user and just way back in the day, my first phone was the, the droid Motorola droid. Oh God. So it had to slide out clip you know slide out uh keyboard on it it was great i loved it before that i actually had the palm trio was
Starting point is 00:30:11 the first one i had but i was android but then it came time for me to go upgrade to get a new phone and i went in and there was all these different types of android devices at that time and so i didn't know which one was better. So do you get the Samsung? Do you get the LG? Do you get the, what do you get? And I was doing all this research. I was trying to figure out which one was the best.
Starting point is 00:30:33 And I finally just gave up and I went and bought the iPhone. And like, I'm done with it. There's the simplicity of it. Yeah, because it did get out of hand. There was like way too much in the marketplace of craziness. And, you know, what does this do? The Palm Trio. Wow.
Starting point is 00:30:47 My friend Andy Gregg now worked on that and the original iPhone. That takes me back. I still have the Palm Pilot. Mark V, I think it was, or something. I still have like one or two of those in a bag somewhere. Those were definitely the days. So, yeah, it's interesting to me. But like you, I mean, it kind of comes back to what you said at the beginning of the show.
Starting point is 00:31:04 I'd rather have an ugly ad than a that works or a good ad that doesn't it's the simplicity of that that is it yeah because you can spend all day being pretty but you're still going to end up looking like me no matter how much makeup you put on that's probably the ugly marketing lesson yeah you know i just think holding that point i think so often you know business owners entrepreneurs get so distracted by trying to get their stuff to look like a competitor or to look like you know this big company or in the whole time what we're doing is we're looking around we're playing follow leader, and we're assuming that because the competitor is doing it, their Instagram looks beautiful and they do these certain stories or reels or whatever the thing is, that we assume that that is why they're successful because they're doing that thing. And oftentimes, what's happening is we're confusing the action that they're taking with the true asset that
Starting point is 00:32:07 they have in place. So if you use the Instagram post as an example, we see that as a competitor who's doing that. We look at them, we're like, wow, that's great. They're doing this amazing. That's why they're successful. And we see that action and we think we need to replicate that action. Instead, we need to pull back a little bit and say, what is the true asset that they're building here? And in that case, they're building a responsive group of followers on that particular platform. And so for us, maybe I suck at photography, or maybe I suck at doing real old bits or whatever it may be, but maybe I can write really well. So maybe instead, I go build that same asset, which is a responsive group of followers on a different platform that's better suited for my skills, my abilities, my talents. So,
Starting point is 00:32:52 you know, we all know this, but the comparison game, when we look around and we say, oh, well, they do this thing so well, so I need to do this more like them. It's a dangerous trap to fall into. Mm-hmm. Yeah. it's interesting. You know, the, the Facebook marketing has come so far lately. I've ordered two things and I didn't close out my, I didn't close it. I didn't end up buying the product, but it was in the cart and, and they, you know, they started following me on Facebook. They were like, Hey man, you didn't, you didn't finish your card there. You need to finish your card. I was like, wow, it's really come a long way.
Starting point is 00:33:28 Now, now you're, now you're just hustling me and bugging me. But I was effective because, you know, some people like that, they have a massive ADD and you know, there's like, Oh, tick tock notification, you know, and they get wandering off on something else. But I thought it was pretty brilliant of what they're able to do now. Yeah. And they get wandering off on something else. But I thought it was pretty brilliant of what they're able to do now. Yeah, I think it goes back to the how do we, small business owners, entrepreneurs, how do you stand out? Salespeople, how do you stand out in an ever crowded marketplace?
Starting point is 00:34:01 And I believe the simplest way is to, if you want to look around at what everybody's doing, that's great. Look around what all the successful competitors in your field are doing and then just simply do the opposite that alone is enough to help you stand out that alone is enough to help you get the attention which you know we we live in this world where attention is a currency right attention can be traded for money if we have the dominoes lined up correctly, but attention is kind of that intro point that we need to be focused. Yeah, the OnlyFans discovered that. Attention is money. There you go. Anything more you want to part out to us, Wayne, on who you guys are, what you do, and how you do it? No, I mean, I think we love working, just big picture, we love working with what we would call growth-minded entrepreneurs.
Starting point is 00:34:50 We love working with entrepreneurs who don't mind challenging the status quo, who don't mind something ugly. And I use that term very loosely. Obviously, we don't design stuff ugly just for the sake of ugly, but you don't mind ugly stuff. In other words, they're, they're more concerned about the results than they are about something shiny, something fancy.
Starting point is 00:35:11 That's, that's who we love working with. That's awesome. I'm going to add that to my Tinder profile. You know, I'm, I'm not the latest shiny object, but I'm pretty good at,
Starting point is 00:35:21 I don't know, cutting wood or something. I don't know. Uh, chopping trees or I don't know, pouring coffee. I. I don't know. Chopping trees or, I don't know, pouring coffee. I have some talents. I have some skills. Anyway, Wayne, it was wonderful having the show.
Starting point is 00:35:30 This has been a brilliant, insightful discussion about what's been going on in the future and marketing. So thank you for coming on. Thank you so much, Chris. I appreciate it. Thank you. And thanks to my audience for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com. For us, that's Chris Voss.
Starting point is 00:35:42 Go to youtube.com. For us, that's Chris Voss. There's a playlist over there of all of our guests and authors and everybody who's been on the show. You can check that out as well. Go to all of our groups, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, all those crazy places the kids are playing nowadays. Thank you for tuning in and we'll see you guys next time.

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