TBT 001: Jay Baer on Transcending the Transaction

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Speaker 5 Hello, hello, my friends, and welcome back to the Ryan Hanley Show. Today's episode is actually a throwback episode.
It is throwback Thursday, and I had a podcast guest cancel on me or reschedule.

Speaker 5 They were not being a jerk. They had an emergency, no problem.

Speaker 5 But I wanted to take some of my old episodes that I had done when this podcast was called Content Warfare and bring them back because some of those conversations were so incredible. They were so deep.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 they just, they transcend

Speaker 5 the year or what was happening in that specific moment because the ideas are so crucial to digital business.

Speaker 5 And in this case, my guest was Jay Bear, who is absolutely epic all-time Hall of Fame speaker, Hall of Fame marketer.

Speaker 5 And the conversation that we had was called Transcending the Transaction, which I think is going to resonate with all of you insurance peeps, all my insurance peeps, you are going to absolutely absolutely love this episode Jay is a is just a he's a rock star he's just a rock star and I I've actually had him I had him on the content warfare podcast twice this was our very first conversation we had this conversation in 2015 and you are gonna love this episode so get ready for that Before we do, I want to make mention of a couple of the companies that are helping make this podcast possible.

Speaker 5 The first of which is Tarmica. Now, you may not have heard of Tarmica because some people call it Tarmica, some people call it Tarmica.

Speaker 5 But how you actually pronounce this company is Tarmica. And Tarmica is the premier rating platform for insurance agencies, the premier commercial insurance rating platform for agencies.

Speaker 5 And it's built by agents for agents.

Speaker 5 This is really

Speaker 5 a platform, and I've said this before, that I think is going to be a transcendent piece of technology.

Speaker 5 Not so much in like it's doing things that no one could have ever imagined before, but because I think that Tarmica will quickly permeate through the independent agency world and just be a,

Speaker 5 it will be the tool that hard charging, fast-moving agencies, the type of agencies that are trying to grow and build in automation and other pieces of customer experience, improving technology.

Speaker 5 I think they're going to be using Tarmica. I believe in Tarmica.
I'm glad they're supporting this show. And I will be building the commercial storefront for Rogue Risk, my agency, on Tarmica.

Speaker 5 We are very pleased to have Tarmica as one of our sponsors. Our second sponsor is Advisor Evolved.
Advisor Evolved builds insurance websites that alleviate service work and generate leads.

Speaker 5 They help time-strapped, non-techie, independent agencies acquire and retain more clients with marketing tools and a gorgeous conversion-optimized website that will never be mistaken for an outdated online brochure.

Speaker 5 Advisory Evolved will also be powering Rogue Risk. And we're just pleasure to have Chris Langell and his team at Advisory Evolved as one of the sponsors of this podcast.

Speaker 5 You know, when you work for yourself, you got to pay for these things. And sponsors like Tarmica and Advisory Evolved make it happen.
Thank you, my friends.

Speaker 5 Use these tools. I would not have them as sponsors of the show.
I would not talk about these tools. It's not just about taking money and paying to make this show possible.

Speaker 5 I think these are the tools. These are the tools that I endorse to the industry.
And that's why I'm willing to take them on as sponsors. So thank you guys.

Speaker 5 If you're not subscribed to this show, please subscribe. iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, wherever you listen to podcasts, we're there.

Speaker 5 And if you ever have questions, comments, feedback, hit me on Twitter, RyanHanley underscore C-O-M, or just Ryan at RyanHanley.com. That's my email address.
Otherwise, enjoy Jay Bear.

Speaker 5 Enjoy this throwback episode. I love you for listening to this show.
Here we go.

Speaker 5 In today's hyper-competitive market of digital and social media marketing, it's the companies that can take their message and make it inherently useful to the consumer that will be successful.

Speaker 5 That's according to today's guest, Jay Baer from Convince and Convert, and Jay calls this process utility.

Speaker 5 Okay, Content Warriors, just a couple quick notes here before we get to Jay Bear.

Speaker 5 I want to let everyone know that as of today, as of right now, if you subscribe to the Content Warfare newsletter, which is an exclusive newsletter, the content in that newsletter does not show up anywhere else.

Speaker 5 If you subscribe to the newsletter, you now get two free e-books, the social tools book, basic guide to 12 social media platforms that you should and can be using to market your business basically an overview kind of a get-you-going guide and the other is the no BS no bullshit guide to a successful blog which basically runs you through what it takes to actually get a functioning blog up and running and kind of cuts through some of the nonsense that you see in a lot of other guides.

Speaker 5 So two very simple, very basic guides that have a lot of value you now receive when you subscribe to the newsletter. So I'd like to encourage you to do that.

Speaker 5 You can get on the newsletter by going to ryanhanley.com. Right there on the homepage, you'll see a form.

Speaker 5 Just enter your email in, and you'll get those two guides as well as subscribe to the Content Warfare newsletter. I want to thank everybody who's supporting the show last week.
Bunch of new reviews.

Speaker 5 Even if you didn't go to iTunes or use RyanHanley.com forward slash review, that's ryanhanley.com forward slash review.

Speaker 5 If you did not go to iTunes and leave a review, but you hit the like button or the tweet button or you shared the Content Warfare podcast on Google Plus, I just want to say thank you.

Speaker 5 It just, you know, you guys are awesome. You know, I just, I grew up in the 90s.
I don't have a better word to describe how I feel about

Speaker 5 the supporters of this show. It just keeps me going, and I know I say that every week, but it never ceases to amaze me how much energy I get seeing that type of engagement from you guys.

Speaker 5 So thank you so much for that. Last but not least, if you're not listening to the podcast on my website already,

Speaker 5 and you Jay mentioned something or I mentioned something that interests you, I have links to all the different resources, including we're going to talk about Jay's new book, Utility.

Speaker 5 Like to pre-order that book, just go to ryanhanley.com/slash the numbers 32. So, that's ryanhanley.com/slash the number 32.

Speaker 5 Gets you to my blog and the show notes, and you can find all the resources there. So, with that, let's get on to Jay.
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Content Warfare podcast.

Speaker 5 Today, we are joined by a most excellent guest, Mr. Jay Baer, of Convince and Convert.

Speaker 5 And I want to say

Speaker 5 I've consumed quite a bit of his content, stuff he's written, his books, and

Speaker 5 his podcast. And, Jay, I just want to throw this out there: you are probably

Speaker 5 the wittiest quote-unquote social media professional out there. I absolutely love the podcast, and it's very smart humor, and I appreciate it very much.
So thanks for coming on.

Speaker 8 Ryan, thanks very much. I'm delighted to be here.
I appreciate the kind words. No pressure.
I've got to be like witty and funny. So you fully built me up now, so it's going to have to be amazing.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I did that on purpose so that you'd be extra funny.

Speaker 7 And no pressure. No pressure.

Speaker 5 All right. Well, I want to get right into it.
So

Speaker 5 just so everyone knows, Jay has a new book coming out, Utility, and it is just so much of what we talk about here. He is packaged up into

Speaker 5 his own beliefs and his own thoughts. And it just,

Speaker 5 it's a fantastic book that I can't wait to get. I'm pre-ordered.
I'm waiting for it to come in. But I basically consumed everything that you've created around it.

Speaker 5 So I have a good feeling for what we're going to get when we get there. So I want to get into it.
So if we could, let's do kind of the traditional,

Speaker 5 you know, what you do,

Speaker 5 what got you to writing the book, and then we'll get into kind of the concepts and theories behind it. You bet.

Speaker 8 So my company, Convince and Convert, is a social media and content strategy consultancy firm.

Speaker 8 So we work with medium-sized and large companies across North America to help them make better decisions in social and in content.

Speaker 8 And I wrote a book a couple of years ago called The Now Revolution with Amber Nassland, which was all about social business. It was one of the the very first books about social business.

Speaker 8 And loved that topic, but increasingly I kept seeing companies starting to create content or starting to embrace content marketing, partially the result of the kind of work that you do here on the podcast.

Speaker 8 And the problem was that they were making stuff, but they didn't really know why. They're like, okay, yeah, we got to make some stuff.

Speaker 8 And I felt like what we were missing was a rationale or a framework that kind of explained how the world has changed and why content is necessary and sort of a playbook that you can use to determine whether or not you're doing it in a way that's going to be additive to your brand over the long term.

Speaker 8 So, that's where I came up with Utility: Why Smart Marketing is About Help, Not Hype. And the book is all about the fact that

Speaker 8 if you sell something, you create a customer today.

Speaker 8 But if you help someone, you can create a customer for life.

Speaker 8 So, lots of different case studies in the book about companies of all shapes and sizes using very, very useful marketing to tell their story.

Speaker 5 See, I love that because, you know, specifically,

Speaker 5 I do similar work inside the insurance industry for the most part, helping agencies get a grip on what content marketing is and how it can help them.

Speaker 5 And most often, when I begin talking to them, it's exactly what you say.

Speaker 5 They've started doing something and they're doing something, but have no clue what that something is and how it is moving them forward.

Speaker 5 So that kind of takes us into really my first question, which is, you know, I've heard you say this.

Speaker 5 I've read it in things that you've put together. It's, you know, many companies are marketing online today, kind of doing the wrong things.

Speaker 5 And I completely agree with where you're going to go with this, but I really want you to dive into what are the wrong things and kind of where did people get the ideas for doing these kind of wrong things?

Speaker 8 From consultants.

Speaker 8 Primarily from podcasts.

Speaker 8 No, I would say, you know, there's a lot of things that

Speaker 8 this is where I put on my grouchy middle-aged man hat.

Speaker 7 No, put it on.

Speaker 5 I love that hat.

Speaker 8 I would say, you know, there's a few different things that bug me.

Speaker 8 First is, you know, look, content is fire, and social media is gasoline.

Speaker 8 And it doesn't matter what kind of company you are, you will succeed better in social if you use social to draw attention to your very useful marketing instead of using social to draw attention to yourself.

Speaker 8 This fundamental

Speaker 8 belief that somehow social media is just the world's shortest press release is not really a success formula. The, hey, you know,

Speaker 8 the tweet, and I'm paraphrasing, but you've seen this and you see it every minute of every day, the tweet of, we're awesome, click here to let us prove it, is really not going to work.

Speaker 8 It's never going to work. So that bugs me.

Speaker 8 The notion that companies believe both in social and in content marketing that just because a platform exists, they need to do that platform, I think that's a poor line of thinking, right?

Speaker 8 You end up spreading yourself really thin, and instead of doing anything great, you do 11 things half-assed. So I don't think that's very good advice.

Speaker 8 And then the one that probably bugs me the most that I talk about the most in this book is, look,

Speaker 8 we're in a hyper-competitive environment now, right? Everybody's a publisher, et cetera, et cetera. It's really, really hard for businesses to break through.

Speaker 8 And we can elaborate on that a little bit, but it's really tough, right? It's tough for everybody. And so there's two schools of thought, right?

Speaker 8 Two ways to break through in a hyper competitive environment what you'll hear from a lot of people and what you'll see in books and you'll see in blogs and podcasts and speakers is this advice of just be amazing right just be amazing just just be an just be a terrific company and your marketing will take care of itself and while that's probably true

Speaker 8 you're probably not an amazing company nor are you probably going to be

Speaker 7 nor are you

Speaker 8 able to make a company amazing. Maybe it's not your company.
Maybe you don't have that kind of authority in the organization. So it's very seductive advice, just be amazing, be better.

Speaker 8 But I don't think it's very good advice because go viral and be amazing is more hope than strategy.

Speaker 8 So instead, I believe the answer is to be useful, that if you are truly and inherently useful, if you create marketing that is so good, if you create content that is so helpful, that people would theoretically pay for

Speaker 8 it if asked. To me, that's the success formula is to become a utility, to create utility.
And if you do that, your customers and prospective customers will keep you close.

Speaker 8 They will reward you with loyalty and attention and dollars.

Speaker 5 So let me throw a different kind of angle on the amazing

Speaker 5 idea. And that is another thing that I've heard, and actually heard the other day, I was given,

Speaker 5 I was not the keynote, I was after the keynote at an insurance conference, and the keynote person I wasn't familiar with beforehand, but their thing was, you know, be yourself, you know, whatever it is that you are, just be you.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 I feel like you could take that advice and throw it in the same basket as the be amazing because

Speaker 5 you might not be that interesting. People may not connect with you.
Like, I feel like that is like just a slice of that amazing concept is this do you, be you thing, which I think has merit.

Speaker 5 Like you said, it

Speaker 5 it there is merit to it, but it ultimately is not for everyone. Is that where you're going with that?

Speaker 8 Yeah, although I think in that industry, right, in insurance where most people are buying insurance from an agent that they want to look in the face more so than from state farm or all state or whatever, at the end of the day, right, it's a people business.

Speaker 8 So I don't think that's terrible advice.

Speaker 8 You know, what I always tell people is your real life is probably way more interesting than your professional life, right? So

Speaker 8 I've done those kind of presentations before in those kind of industries. And, you know, the fact that you sell insurance is not interesting.

Speaker 8 The fact that you grow prize-winning roses and happen to sell insurance, that is interesting. And I might remember that.
So

Speaker 8 from a sort of personal branding perspective, I don't think it's bad advice, but that's more on the personal level, not on the company level. But what I would say is take that one step further.

Speaker 8 It's not just about being yourself. It's about being yourself and finding a way to be useful that isn't just about insurance, right?

Speaker 8 So a big part of the utility formula is giving yourself permission to make the story bigger. Let me give you an example if I can.

Speaker 8 So Columbia Sportswear, right? You know those guys, they make jackets and pants and all that, right? Outdoor gear.

Speaker 8 So Columbia Sportswear has this mobile app called What Not to Do in the Great Outdoors, K-N-O-T. And it shows you how to tie knots.

Speaker 8 It's an animated demo that shows you how to tie knots on your iPhone or your Android, which is pretty cool, right?

Speaker 8 So if you're hiking or you're hanging off a cliff, you're like, damn, this is amazing. This is super interesting information.

Speaker 8 I i need this if you're recording a podcast less so i don't really need any not knowledge just now but but but here's the thing right columbia doesn't sell rope

Speaker 8 right so they are providing useful information

Speaker 8 that their customers need. They're finding a way to be useful in the lives of their customers that isn't necessarily exactly their products and services.

Speaker 8 So one of the key things about utility is to transcend the transactional, to find a a way to be a part of your customers' lives that isn't reliant solely upon your products and services.

Speaker 8 So in an insurance situation, it's could you, as the local insurance agent, be the guy who knows everything about USports and actually publishes standings of all the little leagues?

Speaker 8 Because the newspaper never does because they don't have any space. So could you be the guy that actually has a website with all the little league standings? That would be useful to your customers.

Speaker 8 I just made that up, but that might actually work.

Speaker 5 I actually just wrote that down because now I'm going to do that.

Speaker 5 I actually have to bring back some deliverable stuff to my boss so that he doesn't think I'm just in here playing around all day interviewing people for my personal podcast.

Speaker 5 And if he's listening, that was just a joke.

Speaker 5 All right.

Speaker 5 So I'm wrapping my brain around that concept, and I think that

Speaker 5 where a lot of where I find a lot of the people who are just getting in are struggling, and even myself when I first got in, is this idea of I want to get traction early, and it seems intuitive that the only way to get early traction is to start asking for stuff.

Speaker 5 So how do we

Speaker 5 talk ourselves out of, work ourselves through those early stages where it feels like nothing we do is gaining any traction.

Speaker 5 And in order to make, you know, and this speaks to what you said, a lot of times the people who are doing these things in organizations aren't the business owner they aren't the decision maker they're trying to get buy-in because they believe that it should be part of their organization and it's not currently so

Speaker 5 how can people be useful early or if it just applies immediately and kind of get the ball rolling per se to where you can really expand upon a project because if I went to my boss two years ago and said I want to do a little league blog because that's useful to our community you know I probably would have been fired on the spot yeah I think there's a few things there one I'm not suggesting that you only do utility.

Speaker 8 I think that's ridiculous, right? So it's part of the marketing mix.

Speaker 8 Anybody who says you should do any one thing only doesn't really understand marketing, whether that's search marketing or TV or social or content or anything else, right?

Speaker 8 It's a marketing mix because you do multiple things. So some of what you should be doing is utility, and that is essentially farming, right?

Speaker 8 You are developing relationships that will pay off long term. The direct response

Speaker 8 by now kind of stuff that you're doing is hunting, right? We're like trying to kill something immediately.

Speaker 8 there's a difference right and there's a there's a place there's a place for both but what I always say is if you want to have a bunch of new customers this week you're better off having built a relationship with those customers over the last year and this is the week that you happen to harvest those customers right that's that's the way you got to start thinking about it because

Speaker 8 A, if you're going to start a utility project in your company, you got to do it in pieces. You got to do it in pilot.
You got to say, look, let's try this.

Speaker 8 You can't just say we're going to change all of our marketing because no one will go for that.

Speaker 8 So you got to start small. And the second thing that I think is hopeful is to think about how you actually buy things and sign up for things and interact with companies.

Speaker 8 How often do you respond immediately to some sort of direct response, coupon special offer, interruption marketing, same old song and dance?

Speaker 8 How many people listening to this podcast have purposefully not filled out a contact us form?

Speaker 8 even though they were interested because they didn't want to be hassled. I can tell you the answer.
It's every single person listening.

Speaker 8 And consequently, why would you suggest or why would you believe that your customers behave differently than you do? They don't, right?

Speaker 8 Nobody wants to be shouted at, especially now when everything is a vehicle for shouting. People want things that are useful, that make their lives better.

Speaker 8 And so, does that mean that you have to be more patient about marketing and ROI? Yeah, it does. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

Speaker 5 See, I really like that because

Speaker 5 when we first get involved in social marketing and especially in my agency, and then I know that because having done some of the work,

Speaker 5 everybody immediately says, you know, it's that ROI question is the very first question.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 I like the idea of the pieces and doing different pilot programs

Speaker 5 to get this off. And

Speaker 5 is there a way to

Speaker 5 integrate your direct marketing or your, I want to,

Speaker 5 you know, I need to get this going

Speaker 5 with your utility. So, can you have both at the same time working together, or do they tend to be separate entities working to the same goal, but performing different tasks?

Speaker 8 That's a great question, Ryan. I think it depends on the company and how many different components of your overall marketing plan you have.
But certainly, you can have them run together.

Speaker 8 And in fact, in terms of metrics and ROI, the entire last part of the book is all about exactly how to measure utility and actually walks through a bunch of ROI formulas. So it's not like it's just

Speaker 8 a concept that you're left to figure it out on your own. We actually have charts and graphs and the whole thing and equations.

Speaker 8 And an example that I used in the book is a blog, right? So let's say you started a blog like Marcus Sheridan's River Pools blog. I know Marcus has been on the show.

Speaker 8 And in fact, Marcus wrote the foreword for utility.

Speaker 8 So let's say you have a blog like that. Well, you can very easily track the effectiveness of your utility in a blog situation like that, right?

Speaker 8 You can tell how many people came to the blog, how many people ended up becoming a lead as a result of looking at the blog, how many of those people actually bought something, what their lifetime customer value is, what your average margin is.

Speaker 8 All you got to do is have a pen and a piece of paper, and you can fill out your ROI formula in that circumstance. So if you want it to be trackable, you can build it to be trackable.

Speaker 8 It's absolutely doable, right? But what most people want is some sort of press magic ROI button and formula spits out of your computer. It's not that easy.
It's never going to be that easy.

Speaker 8 If you want to do something trackable, you have to do something trackable.

Speaker 8 Like a lot of clients, even big companies that we work with, come to me and say, oh, Jay, we got to figure out the ROI of content marketing, the ROI of social media. I'm like, great.

Speaker 8 So do you have a bunch of trackable URLs? Or, you know, do you have some sort of insight into the commerce chain so you can see when somebody converts? No.

Speaker 8 I'm like, well, then I can't help you, right? I'm not a wizard.

Speaker 8 You're not going to have trackability.

Speaker 5 Though if you were a wizard, that would probably help your business quite a bit.

Speaker 8 Totally.

Speaker 8 I should absolutely work on that.

Speaker 8 If I could actually become a real wizard, that would be sweet.

Speaker 5 So that's actually a great topic for your third book, which would be How to Become a Wizard. And then, geez.

Speaker 8 I like it. I like it.
I'm not a big fan of any of those sort of guru, wizard, genius. You know, I'm just a guy.
You know, I'm just a guy with a laptop.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I'm right there with you. Okay.
So

Speaker 5 I want to transition out of the book itself for a couple minutes.

Speaker 5 Mostly, and this is, I'm going to be honest here, it's completely selfish because I'm, and I told you this before, I'm about two-thirds done with my own book.

Speaker 5 So I'd like to talk about, move out of the book itself and talk a little bit about putting it together, some of the decisions you made around how you packaged it, how you've brought it to market, and that kind of stuff.

Speaker 5 So my first question would be, because I think that it's, you know, it's the hot question in book publishing today, is, did you even consider self-publishing for this book?

Speaker 8 No, I did not.

Speaker 8 That's not to say I wouldn't consider self-publishing in the future, but I think that question, I've been on some panels about this question in the past, I think it really depends on why are you writing the book, right?

Speaker 8 So what's,

Speaker 8 you know, are you trying to make money on the book itself? In which case, self-publishing probably is the better way to go because you keep more of the money.

Speaker 8 If you're trying to use the book to generate

Speaker 8 consulting business, then I think it's probably about a wash, probably 50-50 at this point. but for me

Speaker 8 the book is about speaking right I do a lot of speaking and and more and more all the time obviously we have a large consulting practice as well but but for me the book ties mostly to the speaking business and and at this point in time meeting planners for major conventions and events still believe in the vote of confidence that a major publisher gives you so that's why I went that route and we're with I'm with Penguin portfolio this time on the book and they've been fantastic to work with I love the guys over there it's it's been a really good experience

Speaker 5 now in releasing the book, and I know it's coming out on June 27th, and so that everybody knows who's listening, if you go to ryanhanley.com/slash the number 31, I'll make sure that there's links to Jay's pre-launch website and the Amazon pre-order form and stuff so you can get this.

Speaker 5 I know the first day that I got the email, I logged in because I'm very excited to

Speaker 5 get the book myself. But

Speaker 5 you have done the

Speaker 5 complete swath of things that I could personally think of to market your book.

Speaker 5 Contests, a trailer, music video.

Speaker 5 You did some slide share stuff. You've given away free chapters,

Speaker 5 which is all really valuable content up front.

Speaker 5 And I think what a lot of people who may be new slash naive to the kind of publishing game would think, well, geez, you've given away so much before you've ever published the book.

Speaker 5 Are you diminishing the actual product itself?

Speaker 7 I hope not.

Speaker 8 Right? I mean, I've actually given,

Speaker 8 man,

Speaker 8 I've probably done the keynote presentation of the book 40 times before the book has even come out. So I've presented this material live to audiences all around the world.

Speaker 8 Probably at this point, I don't even know, man, 25,000 people that I've talked about this concept to live from the stage before the book even comes out. So it's a relevant question, Ryan.

Speaker 8 Is it, hey, now that everybody knows about the book, they want the book, or everybody knows about the book, and so now they don't feel like they need the book?

Speaker 8 I think we'll find out here in the next three weeks. And it's definitely an experiment, because I did it differently the first book I wrote, right?

Speaker 8 The first book I did very traditionally, did not release much in the pre-order phase, didn't do much speaking about the book until the book launched, etc. This time I did it the exact opposite.

Speaker 8 In fact,

Speaker 8 this book is based on a presentation. I had the presentation first and then wrote the book around it.

Speaker 8 But I'll tell you, the whole idea of the book is to give away information snacks to sell knowledge meals.

Speaker 8 And I thought it would be a little bit hypocritical to write a book about being extraordinarily useful and helpful in content marketing and then not be extraordinarily useful and helpful in content marketing around my own book.

Speaker 8 So that was a level of hypocrisy that

Speaker 8 I couldn't handle, which is one of the reasons why we marketed it the way we did.

Speaker 5 Which I think is very

Speaker 5 obvious. I think that

Speaker 5 when you read the concept behind the book, even if you just read

Speaker 5 the early breakdown of what it's about, and then you see what you've done around the book, I think that is apparent to people. That,

Speaker 5 hey, look what we're giving you up here, and

Speaker 5 like you say, the snacks for the meal. I like that analogy.

Speaker 5 I personally think

Speaker 5 that it's going to, I mean, there's so much buzz around this, and I've had people say, hey, did you see the five-minute version that you've done? And, you know, people are talking about it.

Speaker 5 So I it it just seems only natural to me that it that it would work.

Speaker 5 You know my next my next question is kind of around

Speaker 5 I don't know if everybody, both from um a knowledge standpoint, maybe where they are in their career, what have you,

Speaker 5 could

Speaker 5 put together all the resources that you've put together, or you know, has the time, inclination, whatever.

Speaker 5 Is there a

Speaker 5 is t is there like a minimum amount for for when you're launching a book, is there a minimum amount of promotion that you should do versus, you know, kind of going up?

Speaker 5 What are the necessities and what are the luxuries? I just beat that question up quite a bit.

Speaker 8 That's a great question.

Speaker 8 I don't totally know.

Speaker 8 And all I really have is anecdotal evidence, which I'm always cautious about extending because it's a case study of one.

Speaker 8 But let me tell you what I do know to be true, Ryan. And you're right.
I mean, we've worked our ass off on this book.

Speaker 8 You know, we've put, you know, every dollar I got paid to write this book has gone back into marketing times 10. So,

Speaker 8 you know,

Speaker 8 this is not an insignificant effort. There are multiple people, you know, working on the marketing, not just me.
So, yeah,

Speaker 8 it is a fairly significant book launch. There's no question about that.

Speaker 8 That being said, though, Of all the things that we've done, two different websites and pre-orders and banner ads and retargeting and giving away all kinds of content and speaking and blah, blah, blah, all this stuff, right?

Speaker 8 I'll tell you the thing that has worked the best in terms of selling books, and it's not even close,

Speaker 7 is me

Speaker 8 sending individual emails or phone calls to people that I know who I've worked with for the last 10 or 15 or 20 years and said, hey, this book is really important to me. Will you buy some?

Speaker 8 By far, that is the most effective tactic. And that may not be a very good answer because this is a podcast about content marketing, but it's true.

Speaker 8 And I had a conversation two years ago before I launched my first book, and I was talking to Gary Vaynerchuk, and he and I have known each other for a long time, and he had just finished Crush It and had done really well with that launch, of course.

Speaker 8 And I was on the phone, I said, Gary, what am I not thinking about?

Speaker 8 How can I sell more books? And he said, look,

Speaker 8 you've already sold the books. You just haven't connected the dots yet.
And he's exactly right. The reason this book will launch well is not, frankly, because of all the content marketing we're doing.

Speaker 8 The reason this book will launch well is because of all the helpful content that I've produced for the last 10 years. It's not about the executive summary of the book with the videos that we created.

Speaker 8 It's the thousand blog posts that I wrote over the last five years that people have read for free.

Speaker 8 And now when I say, you know what, I wrote a thousand blog posts for free for you and a weekly podcast and a daily email for five years, I'm asking you to spend 20 bucks.

Speaker 8 And so when you put that much value into the well, when you finally get around to asking to kind of even the score, it's amazing how well that works.

Speaker 8 Which goes back to your question earlier about ROI and immediacy.

Speaker 5 I feel like so many people miss the mark on

Speaker 5 where we take the value out.

Speaker 5 I had this conversation the other day about something which I feel is very trivial and I think applies on a much smaller scale about doing Facebook contests.

Speaker 5 Someone emailed me and was asking me about doing Facebook contests as a strategy for growing their Facebook presence. And

Speaker 5 what I said to them was,

Speaker 5 a Facebook contest is not a strategy that you can do on a weekly basis.

Speaker 5 It's a one-time value extraction tool from your community that you've built up over the course of weeks, months, years of delivering value over and over again.

Speaker 5 And the question that they opposed me with is, how often can I do Facebook contests?

Speaker 5 And it just, to me, it was just like a microcosm for what so many people miss on in everything that we're doing here. And it's that the relationship has to be there first.
And if it is,

Speaker 5 you know, then you have the ability to do all these things that you want to do.

Speaker 5 You know, is that, I mean, that just seems like the essence of what we're really drilling down to here.

Speaker 8 Yeah, and absolutely. And in terms of Facebook contests, the thing that most people don't realize is that it's not necessarily value, right? You're asking them to do something.

Speaker 8 You're asking them to create a photo or upload it or whatever, right? So it's not actually a give. It's an ask in some cases.
It's totally mischaracterized. Yeah.

Speaker 5 I mean, it's completely an ask.

Speaker 5 It is value extraction for you, the company, not in any way a value to the people. I mean, yes, some one person may get an iPad or an iPod or whatever thing you decide to give them.

Speaker 5 But for everybody else, it's a testimonial, putting their neck neck on the line.

Speaker 5 It's sharing to their friends, you know, filling up their news feed with information that their friends probably are not interested in. So

Speaker 5 it's these type of activities that

Speaker 5 make me nervous, I guess, in trying to help people because they don't necessarily see them as what they really are. You know, your book is the value extraction from

Speaker 5 a career of dumping value onto people for nothing.

Speaker 6 Yep.

Speaker 8 That's exactly it.

Speaker 8 That's the whole idea.

Speaker 8 We'll see if it works. So far, I'm happy with how things are trending,

Speaker 8 but that's

Speaker 8 absolutely the way I look at it.

Speaker 7 Okay, good.

Speaker 5 Well, when you have an expert on, I like to get my mind framed around where they're at.

Speaker 5 I selfishly do these things because I wanted a chance to pick your brain on this stuff. So that's very

Speaker 8 next time I'm screwed, right? Because I can't wait 10 years to write another book. So I don't know how to get to come up with a different strategy next time.

Speaker 8 I won't have as much value in the well enough to come up with something new next time.

Speaker 8 Hopefully, it's like the music business, right?

Speaker 8 When the last album sells, the next album just sells because people bought the first one. We'll see.
But yeah, I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

Speaker 5 I think that'll be the case. So

Speaker 5 we're getting close to kind of the end here.

Speaker 5 I want to ask you one more question, only because this is a podcast and you have a podcast. And personally, I love the format for delivering information to people.
And I think that

Speaker 5 when I was building this podcast,

Speaker 5 yours was one of the kind of shows that I listened to quite a bit in an effort to try to model

Speaker 5 how I kind of delivered this product.

Speaker 5 This is a different format from yours because for, you know, just I think yours is a little shorter and it's more, you have like three or four people on at one time.

Speaker 5 I wanted to get your

Speaker 5 ideas on what the podcast means to you, how it it has maybe helped your brand, and

Speaker 5 what advice or guidance could you give someone who is potentially considering a podcast in today's environment?

Speaker 5 I know when you started yours or even when I started mine a year ago, the environment was different than it is today.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 8 Yeah, it's definitely different. The show is Social Pros at socialprose.com, and it's the podcast for real people doing real work in social media.

Speaker 8 So each week, we interview somebody who is a social media manager, content marketing manager, or community manager for a major brand.

Speaker 8 So just this last week we had on the guy who is the in-the-field social media manager for Tailor-Made Adidas Golf.

Speaker 8 So Charlie Couts is his name and he goes to every PGA tournament and takes all kinds of Instagram photos and makes vine videos and things like that around the actual golf tournament in terms of promoting the drivers and irons and balls and putters of Tailor-Made, which is a pretty cool gig.

Speaker 8 So the show is very inside baseball, right? So people who do social media and content marketing for a living love the show. People who don't are like, I don't understand this.
This is stupid.

Speaker 8 But that's okay, right? I don't think you, especially in podcasting, right? Don't be afraid to be specific. And I started the show, I don't know, a year and a half ago, kind of on a lark.

Speaker 8 Like, it wasn't even my idea. Eric Boggs, who was my original co-host, said, hey, do you want to do a podcast? I'm like, yeah, sure.
I've always kind of wanted to do one.

Speaker 8 So we did and just sort of on a lark. And it ended up becoming very successful.
And a lot of people listened to it in the industry.

Speaker 8 But it's turned out to be a fantastic vehicle for me and for my company. It doesn't have nearly the reach of the other things that we do.

Speaker 8 It doesn't have nearly the readership that our blog does or the subscription that our email does. It's a much more focused audience.

Speaker 8 But from the consulting perspective, it's been very, very good.

Speaker 8 You know, I would say all of our clients and certainly all of the clients that we have signed in the last year and a half are podcast listeners.

Speaker 8 And I think, especially in a B2B environment, that's a good lesson. Like create a podcast where you interview your future clients or who you want to be your future clients.

Speaker 8 That's a page of the playbook that everybody can execute on

Speaker 8 and is very simple to do.

Speaker 5 Yeah,

Speaker 5 I feel like the podcasting format, because there isn't video

Speaker 5 associated with it, is one of the most intimate forms of, I guess, content marketing or communicating with your audience because you really have to, in order to get enthusiasm, passion, energy, expertise, you really have to be on your game.

Speaker 5 Otherwise, it sounds dull and boring and

Speaker 5 bad in some cases. So I feel like you really get

Speaker 5 a good, solid look at who people are, what they're really about, their sense of humor, their expertise. Because if you can come off the cuff

Speaker 5 on audio and really kind of drive your point home without the use of visual aids, images, like you would on a blog post or on YouTube or something like that,

Speaker 5 it is a really great highlight of your skills and ability.

Speaker 8 Yeah, I think so, especially as much speaking as I do, and I'm starting to do actually more MC and hosting of events and things like that. So it's a good showcase

Speaker 8 for that skill set, too, I think.

Speaker 5 Great. Well, Jay, I want to wrap it up.
I want to thank you for coming on. I know that you're a busy guy, and this has been really fantastic.

Speaker 5 I want to let everyone know that all the resources we talked about that Jay discussed, including links to his book and the now revolution, his first book, they're going to be on the show notes.

Speaker 5 You can get at those at ryanhanley.com forward slash the number 31. So the number is 31.
Jay, let people know where the best place to connect with you is.

Speaker 8 Best place to connect with me is probably on Convince and Convert. ConvinceandConvert.com.
You can find all our other stuff there, links to the book and all kinds of other stuff that we're doing.

Speaker 5 Okay, great. Well, Jay, thanks so much and have a great day and good luck on the launch, man.
I'm going to do everything I can to help you out.

Speaker 8 Thanks so much. I really appreciate you having me on the show.
Best of luck to you and all the cool stuff that you're doing.

Speaker 8 And hey, when you get, you know, as you're working on the book, give me a shot. I'm happy to help however you want.
You let me know.

Speaker 5 Thanks, buddy.

Speaker 5 Hey guys, I just wanted to let you know I had mentioned show notes in the podcast there. Again, I did this podcast in 2015.
There are going to be no show notes for this episode.

Speaker 5 Go to jbear.com or convinceandconvert.com if you want to learn more about Jay and his work. If you're interested in tarmaca, go to t-ar-m-i-k-a.com.

Speaker 5 Or if you're interested in advisor evolved, go to advisorevolved.com. Check out those two tools.
If you have questions about either one of them, ryan at ryanhanley.com.

Speaker 5 And if you're not yet an insider, if you are not following my journey as I go from zero to one with a scratch agency and come in to this kind of mastermind coaching community where we talk through all the issues of ramping up a business.

Speaker 5 You know, this, even though I'm talking through it in the context of a scratch agency, I am not necessarily building a scratch agency in the same way that someone who has never been an insurance agent before or been involved in agencies before.

Speaker 5 I've been in this business for 15 years. Was an agent for eight years.
So this isn't the traditional scratch agency situation.

Speaker 5 Really, what we're talking about are making the decisions necessary to grow your business and grow it fast in a sustainable and meaningful way. That's what's important to me.

Speaker 5 Rogue is going to be built in a

Speaker 5 sustainable and meaningful way. And we talk through all the decisions that I'm making as well as issues that come up with the members inside that group.

Speaker 5 There are some tremendous people in there already. I'd love to have you start your 14-day free trial.
of the inside. Go to ryanhanley.com forward slash insider.

Speaker 5 You'll learn more about what it's all about

Speaker 5 and sign up right there. I hope to see you on the inside, guys.
And I'll see see you on the next episode of this show. I'm out of here.

Speaker 7 Peace.

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