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

00:00:00.000 What is up, guys? You're listening to the MFCEO Project. I'm Andy. I'm your host, and

00:00:10.720 I am the motherfucking CEO. Guys, this is an entrepreneurial, personal development podcast.

00:00:17.920 This isn't about just being an entrepreneur and owning your own business. This is about

00:00:22.540 becoming the motherfucking CEO of your life, all right? It's about thinking like an entrepreneur,

00:00:30.000 no matter how you operate in the real world. Only 7% to 8% of people are actually entrepreneurs,

00:00:37.420 okay? That means 93% of you basically are people who work within an organization. But I know that

00:00:44.680 if you're listening right now, you're interested in making more money, you're interested in developing

00:00:48.820 skill sets, and you're interested in more success. And that's what we talk about here. So it doesn't

00:00:54.080 matter if you're an actual entrepreneur. It matters if you think like an entrepreneur so that you could

00:00:59.400 progress in your life in all areas. As always, I'm joined by my co-host, Vaughn, the pastor of

00:01:05.960 disaster. What's up, my dude? Things are really good. I got to be honest with you, man. I can't

00:01:10.500 remember the last time you were wearing a white shirt. Yeah, man. I only wear white shirts when

00:01:15.140 I'm feeling real lean. Yeah. No, you're looking real lean. Yeah. Yeah. I've been hitting my diet hard

00:01:20.300 this last few weeks and just getting my shit together after first form summer smash and

00:01:26.860 starting to feel the results coming. So I brought out the white today. That's great.

00:01:31.900 Yeah. That's great. Am I imagining, did you add another tattoo? No. Oh. Which one? On the

00:01:38.740 right side. On this side? Yeah. Oh, no. That's been there. Oh. Just never noticed. Yeah,

00:01:43.180 man. I haven't got a tattoo in a while. It's been a little bit, but I'm looking to get some more done

00:01:48.380 soon. I want to get a full body tattoo of myself, only taller. Oh, yeah? Yeah. Good luck with that.

00:01:54.180 Yeah. That's a dad joke. It's actually, it's a Stephen Wright joke. No, that's a dad joke. Yeah,

00:01:58.380 it is a dad joke, but it's a 1990s joke. Yeah. Yeah. So today, well, before we get into today,

00:02:06.920 guys, as you probably noticed, we took a few weeks off. I do that every once in a while, okay?

00:02:12.420 Number one, I need a break, all right? I don't like to say things just for the sake of saying them. I know

00:02:18.300 there's a lot of people out there on social media that have podcasts and shit that just like to hear

00:02:22.360 themselves talk. I don't like to do that. I like to give you guys my full energy, my full attention,

00:02:28.200 and when things start feeling a little monotonous, I just need to take a break, and that's what we do.

00:02:33.240 And besides that, I'm an actual entrepreneur. I run real businesses. We had some of the busiest times

00:02:39.840 of the year this last few weeks for us because we have our first form annual summer smash where we have

00:02:45.780 1,000 people out here for basically a big open house event for the weekend, and that takes a lot

00:02:52.320 of planning and a lot of time and a lot of energy. So that took up a lot of energy, and that's why

00:02:56.580 the last couple weeks we've kind of been silent. But we're back. We're ready to rock, and today we're

00:03:01.800 going to talk about something that is very, very important if you're going to be in business in

00:03:07.460 any way or if you're going to contribute in business in any way, and that is navigating the new maze

00:03:13.880 of marketing. There's so many things out there right now that people just don't understand.

00:03:20.540 It used to be as simple as buying ads. You could buy a print ad. You could buy a radio ad. You could

00:03:26.120 buy a television ad, and if you bought one of those three, you would have customers show up at your

00:03:31.200 door. Now, and believe me, I operated in that space for a long time. That's something that separates us

00:03:38.100 from a lot of other entrepreneurs, and I say us because I always talk about my partner and I.

00:03:42.800 But we have operated in an old school way, and we have converted and transitioned and now have found

00:03:48.960 success in the new maze of actual marketing. And so it's changed. You can't just spend more anymore

00:03:57.760 because the attention isn't in radio. It's not in TV. It's not in print ads. When was the last time you

00:04:04.760 got a fucking newspaper? When was the last time you watched a commercial on actual TV? We don't do

00:04:10.660 those things anymore. We don't even listen to the radio. Everybody's got Bluetooth. We're listening to

00:04:14.700 our own playlists. We're listening to shit like this, podcasts, music, whatever we want to listen to,

00:04:20.440 and we're not listening to the ads. So because it was so dominant for so long, what you're seeing now

00:04:28.220 is a lot of older companies fail because they can't transition into the new marketing methods.

00:04:34.040 And then now you have so many marketing methods where you used to only have really three,

00:04:39.840 maybe four if you count billboards. Now you have so many that people don't know what to do or what

00:04:46.020 works or how to do it. And today we're going to break those down in just a very surface level way.

00:04:51.700 It's going to be a quick podcast. We're not going to spend a million because I believe each one of

00:04:56.040 the things we're going to talk about could be an entire podcast. And we will break those down as we go.

00:05:00.580 But today we're going to basically just kind of take your eyes and point them in the right

00:05:04.920 direction so that you can start to learn where you need to be putting your efforts.

00:05:10.260 So before we do that though, I feel like, I feel like I want to tell everybody our PO box so that

00:05:15.480 they can send checks because guys, the stuff we're going to cover, I told Andy, this could be a

00:05:20.840 digital course. We could charge like $900 for it. But once again, we're going to be a podcast.

00:05:26.520 And make that back in like a fucking day. So send me a check. Yeah. And because I'm the money

00:05:30.880 grubber. Well, dude, the thing is, oh, and by the way, guys, again, before we get into this,

00:05:38.820 please, if you get value out of this, which I know you will, please do a couple things for us.

00:05:45.300 Please subscribe to the iTunes or subscribe to the podcast and then also leave a review on iTunes.

00:05:54.060 It will take you less than five minutes. Um, we, we actually, you know, let's just fucking do this.

00:06:00.420 Let's do a contest for reviews between now. And let's say, let me pull up my phone here.

00:06:07.020 Let's say, while you're looking at that, I'm going to say the MFCEO.com forward slash subscribe

00:06:12.940 gives directions. If you don't know how to subscribe and then, uh, go ahead and tell them all. Okay.

00:06:18.860 So today is the sixth. This podcast is going to come out on the 11th. Let's do a review or let's

00:06:26.240 do a review contest that we will announce on the podcast, the winner on the podcast of the 25th.

00:06:32.400 Okay. Okay. And the winner will pick, let's say, let's say we'll do five winners. All right. Five

00:06:40.520 winners. Go leave us a review on iTunes. We'll pick five of the new reviews and five of those winners

00:06:47.120 will get a 20 minute Skype call with me and we can talk about whatever you want, answer any questions

00:06:52.820 you want. Uh, and you know, that's, that's what we'll do. So guys go leave a review. We'll do this

00:06:59.540 contest. It'll be fun. Um, that's what helps us get ranked on iTunes and that's what helps us move

00:07:05.840 up. And, uh, you know, so if you provide, if we're providing value, if you could please do that,

00:07:12.660 we'd really appreciate it. And then we'll, we'll go ahead and run that contest. And the MFCEO.com

00:07:16.980 forward slash review. We actually give you a step dot step by step, uh, instructions on how to do it.

00:07:23.360 Yeah. For whatever reason, some people, I think that's fair. I 20 minute, 20 minutes. Well,

00:07:27.200 knowing you, it'll end up being like 30 or 40 minutes. Yeah. But I mean, it's a real one-on-one

00:07:31.180 time. Be cool. No, it was good. So it was good. Cool. So navigating the new maze of marketing.

00:07:38.200 What do you think? Well, you ever seen that movie Moneyball? Yeah, that's a good movie. Yeah. So

00:07:43.940 could you explain to people who don't know the concept of what even money money ball is,

00:07:49.380 what it is like in terms of putting together your team? Do you, do you, are you familiar with that?

00:07:54.040 Yeah. It's basically, it's basically that guy came up with the idea of using all those

00:07:58.520 analytics and, and you know, the numbers and they put together. Oh, saver metrics. Yeah,

00:08:02.800 saver metrics. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry. My bad. So anyway, I, we have a lot of people write in

00:08:07.080 to us saying, guys, marketing has gotten so sophisticated. It's like Moneyball. It's, it's,

00:08:14.020 it's like you have to memorize metrics and, and numbers and data and analysis and all that kind

00:08:20.220 of stuff. And, and I, I, you know, I resonate with that. It's a little, it's a little overwhelming.

00:08:25.240 So for you, the first works, the first thing declutter their minds, the first thing people

00:08:31.100 have to delineate is that there's a major difference between marketing and branding. Okay. There is a lot

00:08:39.220 of people out there that think that, you know, doing some Facebook ads and measuring the ROI that

00:08:46.820 that's building a company. That's not building a company guys. That's building sales. All right.

00:08:51.940 Branding is a completely different thing. Branding is building a logo, a company, a culture that stands

00:08:58.400 for something that you have to put time and effort and energy into actual people to build. Okay. It's

00:09:04.880 not about getting an ROI. You're going to spend money in branding. You're going to spend money in that

00:09:09.800 area. You're going to have people that are totally dedicated to building content around what your

00:09:16.420 brand represents, but there's not going to be a direct measurable ROI. You're not going to be

00:09:23.860 able to say, Oh, we spent $20,000 here and we got $20,005 back. That's not how it's going to work.

00:09:30.700 It's an investment in the future of your brand and what people feel about your brand and how people

00:09:36.140 are going to, uh, you know, tell their, what stories they're going to tell about your brand.

00:09:42.080 All of that is branding marketing slash advertising on the other side has gotten so heavy now because

00:09:51.800 we have so many people out there that have a product. They want to just sell as much of that

00:09:58.260 product as they can. So they go out, they find affiliates, they do Facebook ads, they find brand

00:10:05.020 representatives, they do brand ambassadors, they do sponsored athletes, they do sponsored spokespeople.

00:10:10.560 They do all this shit to try to develop, to drive, drive sales today without doing any of the

00:10:16.660 branding. And let me tell you something, there's nothing wrong with that. If you want to be the

00:10:21.640 guy who's constantly jumping from product to product, to product, to product, and you're

00:10:25.860 comfortable living in that uncertainty. But if you're trying to build a company that's going to

00:10:30.240 last for a long time, create jobs, create careers, be worth something that another company will

00:10:35.320 eventually acquire, the branding side is equally as important, if not more important than what

00:10:42.460 you're doing on the other side. And a lot of these young kids, they only see the marketing side. They

00:10:47.840 don't see the branding side. They have no fucking clue what that means. You know what I mean? So you

00:10:52.880 have to like understand that it's two different things.

00:10:55.480 So in relationship terms, is that like the people who are really attractive are the people who

00:10:59.520 know who they are. They know their identity. And that's what, like on an entrepreneurial or

00:11:04.240 business level, that's what you're saying. Branding is knowing who you are, being consistent.

00:11:09.400 Branding is, yeah, exactly.

00:11:11.220 And then once you get that figured out, that's when you begin to reach out to people.

00:11:15.120 You're promoting that. And you're telling people, you're showing people through your actions

00:11:19.260 what this brand's about so that when they see your logo, they feel a certain way.

00:11:23.700 You know what I mean? They feel a certain way about your brand. And it's a completely different

00:11:29.400 way of thinking than just what has traditionally become the new marketing methods. You know what I

00:11:36.760 mean?

00:11:37.740 So I'm sure there's probably been times where you guys have created a video or some sort of piece

00:11:44.760 of content that objectively, it was awesome. But you looked at it and said, but it's not really us.

00:11:51.320 Yeah.

00:11:51.540 It doesn't feel like us. So more people, I guess, need to realize that they need to do that.

00:11:56.480 We went through a lot of different versions of quote unquote us over the years. When we first

00:12:02.980 started, we didn't really know what we were doing. So we tried to be like other people and that didn't

00:12:09.080 work because other people were other people. And then we went through all these different trials

00:12:14.020 and tests and trying to figure out what resonated. And then what ultimately ended up resonating was

00:12:19.920 just being who the fuck we were. You know what I mean? And that's why we talk about authenticity,

00:12:23.640 why it's so important and why it's so important to your brand. But I think understanding first off

00:12:32.000 that there are two different things, you know, you, I can stand in front of a room of 500 people and I

00:12:36.660 say, do you understand the difference? And I'll shake their head. But then when they ask questions,

00:12:40.000 you could complete, you could tell that they have no fucking clue. You know what I mean?

00:12:43.260 All they care about is sales. They care about their ROI. They go, well, I've spent an $18 on,

00:12:48.720 on Facebook ads and I'm getting back 37 and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's like, dude,

00:12:53.500 okay, but nobody knows who the fuck you are. So you're going to have to jump from this product,

00:12:57.600 that product, this product for years over and over and over and over and over again.

00:13:02.120 You know what I mean? Right.

00:13:03.060 You don't have, you're not building anything. Right. So, right. So in terms of, you know,

00:13:07.980 I was talking about helping our listeners sort of declutter their minds because there are a lot

00:13:13.040 of things that work. I think a lot of the sophisticated stuff works, but it can be

00:13:17.240 overwhelming to people. So I think of it, you know, in a way like working out, I'm sure is

00:13:21.620 similar to this is that there's a lot of things that work, but there are some tried and true things

00:13:26.240 that if you do nothing else, you do these things, they're going to produce results. So what for you

00:13:30.780 are those things?

00:13:32.000 You know, it, it hasn't mattered if it's been number one, you got to go where the attention

00:13:36.700 is. Okay. It doesn't matter. You can't sell lemonade in the desert. I mean, everybody in

00:13:41.180 the desert needs lemonade, right? But guess what? There ain't no motherfuckers in the desert.

00:13:44.780 So you're not going to sell anything. So you've got to go where the, where the people are. You've

00:13:48.300 got to go where the attention is. And I see a lot of people fighting that concept with the way that

00:13:53.340 they actually market. They, they try, they do what they think is right. And they keep pounding and

00:13:59.100 pounding and pounding and pounding and pounding and pounding at that thinking that eventually

00:14:02.980 it's going to change and they're going to start seeing these magical results. But that's not the

00:14:07.900 way you've got to look at it. You can't be emotionally attached. You've got to go find out

00:14:11.520 what works, find where the people are. And you've got to, you've got to play there. You know what I

00:14:16.220 mean? That seems obvious, but it doesn't happen. You know, one of the actual, you know, that's the

00:14:23.100 most important concept. And then the second, the second most important concept I think would be to go

00:14:27.620 where the influential people are in your industry are. Um, and this, this was good 15 years ago and

00:14:35.080 it's good now. Um, you know, in our industry, you got to go where the people are, uh, that have the

00:14:42.220 most, you know, influential, uh, power reside. You've got to go find people who are the other,

00:14:50.420 the early adopters who are the people who, um, you know, other people, the normal people,

00:14:55.900 the masses come and ask for advice. You know, you're not going to go ask, uh, Bob,

00:15:01.000 your next door neighbor who drinks a 12 pack of Budweiser about your fucking, what the newest

00:15:05.580 computer is. So that's not the guy you're going to try to go after. You're going to try to go after

00:15:10.340 the guy who is the guy that Bob is going to ask about his computer, which is going to be, you know,

00:15:18.000 Harry Potter at the fucking Apple store. You know what I'm saying? So you've got to figure out where,

00:15:22.760 where a, the attention is and B where the influence is. And you've got to blend those

00:15:25.980 things together. Right. And that's marketing on the, on the, on the, on the branding side,

00:15:31.440 you're going to work on building culture behind it. All right. So we, I don't really want to get

00:15:35.980 too far into branding because I think that's its own thing. Right. But I'm just saying you want to

00:15:39.500 mix those two things together. So do you have any general thoughts about the whole concept of

00:15:46.220 promotion marketing versus attractive attraction marketing? Explain what you mean? Well,

00:15:51.640 the idea of, of, of, I'm not even sure I could explain it. I, it's, they're buzzwords that people

00:15:58.240 use basically the ideas instead of, instead of really stepping out and trying to reach people,

00:16:03.800 you just create such a amazing product that you're drawing people in. Well, look, the,

00:16:09.360 the best way to win is to create a fucking amazing product that makes people talk about it. The,

00:16:14.280 the problem is, is that in this day and age, no matter how good of a product you make,

00:16:17.600 there's going to be five other people that make a product that's almost as good immediately.

00:16:22.500 So it's hard because things move so fast now, it's hard to create something that keeps people's

00:16:27.660 attention and keeps people saying, wow, when you have five other people that might not be as good,

00:16:32.940 but maybe they're just a millimeter or two millimeters behind you in terms of product quality.

00:16:37.800 So yeah, I agree that creating the best product is always the way to win, but it's not as effective

00:16:44.080 as it was, uh, you know, let's say 10 years ago or 12 years ago before the internet really came around

00:16:49.220 in terms of creating such a buzz that people will just come to you. You're still going to have,

00:16:54.700 you know, and a lot of people still operate that way. They, they, we're the best, so we don't have

00:16:57.480 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

00:17:01.260 you think you're, cause it doesn't matter how good you are now. You have to go out and at the bare

00:17:06.200 bones, let's say you do make an incredible product like we do. You're going to have to go out

00:17:10.320 and create enough influence, influence or buzz to where you get the ball rolling to where you can,

00:17:16.780 you can achieve, you know, some momentum on its own. And then you can pull back on how much you're

00:17:20.820 spending, how much you're, you're advertising, uh, and let the word of mouth sort of carry itself

00:17:25.460 through, through the curve. That makes sense. So you talked a little bit about branding,

00:17:29.840 which is, I mentioned, it's kind of like knowing yourself, knowing who you are, having a very clear

00:17:34.420 identity as a, but the other side of that is knowing clearly who your customers are or who it is

00:17:40.100 you're, you're trying to reach. And you would know as well as I do, we talked about this before

00:17:44.280 you have only to Google, uh, what is it? Um, ideal customer personas on Google and you'll get all

00:17:51.320 sorts of little charts or sheets that you can fill out saying, okay, this is how you figure out who

00:17:56.040 your ideal person is. And they have questions like you should know what their age is and their

00:18:00.100 gender and that kind of thing. And I feel like a lot of those are really pretty standard. Like what

00:18:04.900 kind of idiot, why is this helpful to anybody? So my question is you guys have been very good in your

00:18:09.520 company at really identifying the kind of people that resonate with what you're trying to say.

00:18:14.200 So what are the things that you think about? This is, this is what I need to know about my customer

00:18:19.920 that most people maybe don't think about that. That's see what the way you're describing is the

00:18:25.120 way it was done 15 years ago when you have three fucking outlets. All right. And you could analyze

00:18:31.140 my customers are 18 to 34 year old, uh, 72% female, and this is where we need to go advertise.

00:18:39.440 And that's, that's how they decided what channel, what show, what program they were going to put

00:18:43.840 their ads on. Okay. Now it's changed now because we could get the word out so fast and so broad,

00:18:52.420 uh, and, and so heavy, although you can do that, you can absolutely target people the way that you

00:19:01.140 need to target them. And you should, the, the more effective way that I've found is to be completely

00:19:06.820 yourself, get your fucking message out there and let people resonate with that. You know what I'm

00:19:12.080 saying? Instead of trying to create a message to manipulate the crowd, create a message that's

00:19:16.020 authentic and let people come be a part of it. So instead of micro targeting, you're just saying,

00:19:20.880 no, we do that too. Okay. But after we do that too, we definitely do that. But I'm saying the

00:19:25.600 more important part is to be authentic with who you are, what you're about, and let that be,

00:19:32.000 let that story be told over and over again, many different platforms. Yes. And let people decide

00:19:36.920 that they resonate with you versus you deciding that this is your ideal person. People are always

00:19:42.240 more likely to buy from you and be a part of your company and support your company if it's their idea.

00:19:48.040 right? So you create whatever your story is, tell the truth, tell your story, let people know what

00:19:55.560 you're about, and then let people resonate with that and see who you attract. Because I guarantee

00:20:00.080 you, no matter what the fuck your story is in business, you're going to tell it. And if you're

00:20:04.440 a good storyteller, if you know how to tell your story the right way, you're going to resonate with

00:20:09.680 people no matter what the story is, because they're going to say, you know what? I like that guy.

00:20:12.740 And there might be, you know, like I said before, you're going to have 50% of people say,

00:20:16.440 I don't like that guy. But that's not the 50% that matters. The 50% that matters is the 50%

00:20:21.740 that you have a chance at grabbing by being your authentic self. You see what I'm saying?

00:20:27.020 Yeah. You mentioned story a couple of times and we didn't plan to, but let's talk about that a

00:20:31.760 little bit more because that's huge. I mean, I've read a lot of books on this and there's actually a

00:20:37.200 whole course called Story Brand, which is the idea of, you know, how you take your company's

00:20:41.680 identity and you put it into a narrative that people, that connects with people. So what,

00:20:46.500 I mean, in practical terms, like how have you, how have you done that with what's the story of

00:20:52.200 First Form? I've done that multiple times. I've done it with my personal brand. I've done it with

00:20:56.060 our retail stores. I've done it with First Form and it's not, it's not like we made it up. We just

00:21:01.540 told how the fuck we did it. Like, Hey, this is what, what we do. What we did is how we started. This

00:21:06.280 is what we stand for. This is what we're trying to accomplish. And you tell that story. You know what I

00:21:11.480 mean? But people don't do that. You don't see that from other companies. Right. I mean, you see it

00:21:15.520 from very, very few companies. I mean, what, what do you see, uh, you know, from most companies,

00:21:21.780 you see a product and then you see a price and then you see a sale price. Right. And they think

00:21:26.460 that's marketing. Right. You know what I mean? That's not marketing. Right. So if there was somebody

00:21:31.200 in here and you know, they had a piece of paper and they said, okay, Andy, I've got my, I've got my

00:21:35.500 lawn care business. Right. I want to create a story based on. Okay. Okay. So what are the key

00:21:42.840 questions you're going to ask? I wouldn't ask questions. This is how I would do it. I would

00:21:46.160 say, Hey, my name is Andy. You know what? I started this lawn care business. Uh, I really don't know

00:21:52.300 what I'm doing, but I'm working as hard as I can. Um, you know, I do this because I care about

00:22:00.000 providing a great service to my people. And I really have a passion for the way lawns look,

00:22:05.260 you know, I'm making this up as I go, obviously, you know, but I love, you know, the way a freshly

00:22:09.920 cut lawn looks when it, when it, uh, when it has stripes in it. And you know, when you get to the

00:22:15.220 way, the feeling that I grew up with after I cut my grass and I cracked open an ice cold beer after

00:22:20.260 cutting my grass and the smell of the grass. And I would tell a story about how good it feels to have

00:22:25.520 your grass fucking cut. You know what I'm saying? And then I would tell the story about my

00:22:29.800 business and what I'm trying to accomplish and how I'm trying to help you have that feeling.

00:22:33.320 Yeah. And dude, that's, you could create an amazing fucking story about cutting grass.

00:22:38.680 The two things that struck me about what you just did is one, you said, you didn't just say,

00:22:43.020 this is what I provide. You said, this is the motive. This is why I do this. And then you also

00:22:48.520 added the fact that you enjoy it. Right. It's passionate. Right. So, but isn't that common sense?

00:22:54.080 No. It's crazy. Well, what do you see on, what do you see in advertising marketing?

00:22:59.080 You see what I just told you? Yeah, no, you're right. You see a product, you see a price,

00:23:02.480 you see a sale price. Yeah. That's what people who do, who don't know what the fuck they're doing.

00:23:06.160 Yeah. Right. Cause let me tell you something, and this is, this is off the fucking subject,

00:23:11.120 but if your only method of getting people in the door is cutting your margin down and selling,

00:23:16.620 uh, at a sale price, first of all, you don't have a good enough product. Second of all,

00:23:21.920 you're training your customer to wait for the sale price. So they're never going to buy a full price,

00:23:26.740 which means your, your projections and everything you project your company upon will never actually

00:23:31.020 work math wise. So people will always wait for the sale. They will always wait for the deal.

00:23:35.400 They will always wait for this, which means when you go to do your books, you won't have enough

00:23:39.260 margin. You won't have enough money. Your business doesn't fucking work financially because you're

00:23:43.900 projecting a full price instead of margin, instead of half price or whatever the fuck your sale is.

00:23:48.220 And you're training your customers to devalue your product. They'll never look at it as a $40

00:23:53.440 product when you're selling it for, for 27 all the fucking time. You see what I'm saying? Yeah.

00:23:58.580 And so then when they have a, when, when they have an issue with, you know, maybe coming to, uh,

00:24:03.640 uh, or switch you to another brand, there's, you're training your customers to look at your brand

00:24:08.420 completely unpriced. And when they do that, they have no brand loyalty. You cannot build a culture

00:24:12.580 behind it. That's why you don't see fucking Apple on sale. That's why you don't see Harley Davidson

00:24:17.060 on sale. You see what I'm saying? Right. That makes total sense. People who, if you're, if you're,

00:24:22.420 if you're, if you're an advertising strategy is, is, is based upon fucking selling at a discount or

00:24:27.460 running a sale, you, it, for me, when I see it, I automatically think these motherfuckers need

00:24:33.700 fucking help. They have no clue what the fuck they're doing. And you're seeing massive companies,

00:24:38.380 billion dollar brands doing it all the time because they have no idea how to transition from 10 years

00:24:43.300 to go into now. Right. You see? So based on that was a good, I mean, that was a good side topic

00:24:49.840 based on what you were saying. And I've heard you say before that you're always amazed at the kind

00:24:54.940 of money that companies pour into Superbowl ads. And, uh, you know, a lot of these ads, you know,

00:25:01.980 people do wait for them, but they're just, a lot of people just don't remember them. So based on what

00:25:06.420 you were saying about story, do you almost feel like it would be more effective if like the president of

00:25:11.260 Coca-Cola, very simple, sat down and just said, listen, first Coke I ever had in my life was

00:25:16.500 when I was, you know, six years old. I remember the fizz. I remember it was awesome. Since that time,

00:25:22.480 I've had, I think it's incredible, but I'm just amazed that nobody's ever done that, that I know of,

00:25:28.120 you know, and, and they just a very simple business is about connecting with people.

00:25:32.800 Yeah. It's about connecting and engaging your fucking audience. It's about connecting

00:25:36.800 and engaging and empowering your culture and your brand. And the way that you get people into

00:25:42.560 your culture and your brand is starts with marketing. So that's why it's intertwined and

00:25:47.220 that's why it's hard not to talk about both of them at the same time. But the marketing strategies

00:25:52.360 that are being used right now, let's say the Superbowl ad. Okay. Budweiser makes an ad for nine

00:25:57.780 11 in 2001. It got played one time. People still fucking talk about it. That's effective. That's

00:26:04.660 effective. Okay. Um, you have a website for dog food or whatever, and you think you're going to

00:26:11.440 put an ad on the Superbowl and everybody's going to come to your site. It's going to blow your company

00:26:14.920 up. That's not, it's never going to work. You never see those companies again. You know why?

00:26:19.360 Because it takes people time to trust your brand enough to become a customer. You can't just run

00:26:24.740 one ad. You can't pour all your money into one big bang. It's a, it's a, it's a slow process.

00:26:29.440 It's educate about the brand. People build trust in your brand. Then they become loyal to your brand.

00:26:34.520 And it's a process that if you violate, you will fucking lose every time. Right. And you know why

00:26:38.720 I know you lose? Cause I've lost a lot like that. Right. So you just said a word that I definitely

00:26:43.260 want to hear more about what you, you know, what you think about this is you said trust and you

00:26:47.360 mentioned the, you mentioned the Budweiser ad. And in my opinion, what the reason that that

00:26:52.060 resonated with people so much as opposed to the Pepsi ad that really pissed people off

00:26:58.040 because it had whatever her name is. Kylie Jenner. Right. Is that Budweiser trusted their

00:27:03.060 people to identify the brand. The context. Right. That's right. Whereas, whereas the Pepsi

00:27:07.660 was throwing shit against the wall. Oh my gosh. And they were, and they were over promoting

00:27:11.340 the product. Right. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. I'd love to hear more about what you think about

00:27:15.320 that. Like, dude, you can't, when you're, when you're designing copy or content, you,

00:27:21.200 and this is actually a really good point to bring up when you're writing advertising copy or coming

00:27:26.600 up with a concept for a video or internet content or YouTube or anything over promoting the product

00:27:31.820 is the fucking worst thing you can do. Okay. It looks so cheesy. It looks so bad. And that comes

00:27:39.260 as a result of people sitting around a big conference table and assuming that the customers are fucking

00:27:44.380 stupid. Right. Customers know how to connect dots. They don't, you didn't need to put a fucking 15

00:27:50.240 Pepsi fucking logos and 15 Pepsi cans in that commercial or having them drinking it. No,

00:27:55.240 you could have not had a one fucking Pepsi and the whole thing. And you could have said at the end,

00:28:00.200 unity Pepsi. Right. And it would have worked. Right. Or might not even say Pepsi, just the logo.

00:28:05.460 That's what I'm saying. Yeah. Yeah. Right. It would have fucking worked. Yeah. But that is why,

00:28:08.880 because they made it so fucking cheesy and you know, and, and you, when you're going to broach a

00:28:16.200 sensitive issue like that, that is basically true. Trying to bring the 50% together, right? You got 50%

00:28:22.500 people feel one way, 50% the other way. And you're trying to bring unity together. You can't make it a

00:28:28.780 cheesy fucking ad. It's got to be a legit from the heart message. Like, Hey motherfuckers, quit fucking

00:28:34.380 fighting and you know, brought to you by Pepsi. You know what I'm saying? Right. No, it is. And I

00:28:41.100 love what you said about you got to trust them and you got to not treat them like idiots. Don't

00:28:44.620 treat them like children. Yeah. Nobody likes that. All the best writers, like when I was getting my

00:28:48.780 MA and everything, all the best writers will tell you a rookie mistake in writing. Like if you're

00:28:53.500 writing a novel is you're spelling out all these details that you don't need to spell out. You have to

00:28:58.300 trust your reader. Because the imagination is where the pleasure of the reading comes from. Right.

00:29:03.000 You got it. I know I get it. Cause I know how to fucking write. But I'm just saying like,

00:29:07.960 you know, like you, when you're out, when you're writing copy and you're writing advertising copy,

00:29:13.780 you've got to remember that. Like you don't need to spell out every detail. You don't need to like

00:29:18.800 put out, uh, you know, 15 fucking Pepsi cans in a commercial. It looks stupid,

00:29:24.960 you know? And that's why they got blasted for it. So let me recap a little bit thus far.

00:29:30.980 Sure. You started out by making distinction between branding and marketing. Branding is

00:29:34.600 really knowing who you are and that is incredibly important and it dovetails with marketing, but

00:29:38.940 it's, it's something that people don't necessarily get nailed down before they reach out to marketing,

00:29:43.180 which is of course then, uh, connecting with the people that you want to, uh, to, to sell to.

00:29:48.440 Um, you also talked about how, you know, yes, there's a value in, in micro targeting,

00:29:54.840 but generally speaking, what you want to do is just be yourself,

00:29:57.280 get yourself to as many different platforms as possible and you'll draw all sorts of people.

00:30:02.420 So not to be overly concerned about niching everything. And then the, uh, final thing that

00:30:07.460 we talked about before we move on is that we just talked about this ideal customer personas

00:30:11.100 and, um, no, I'm sorry, excuse me. We talked about the idea of trusting your customers and not over

00:30:17.880 promoting your products, but just not treating your customers like idiots and, uh, and you know,

00:30:24.740 trusting that that's going to have results. So I don't know that that was my best summary that

00:30:30.060 I've ever done, but it wasn't. Yeah. So going forward. So do you want to talk about, you mentioned

00:30:36.880 copywriting. I mean, that could be a whole nother topic. That could be a course. Uh, Thursday I

00:30:42.560 talked about the number one skill that you need to learn to become a higher earner. Yeah. You know

00:30:48.640 what the, what the second learning skill I think to become a higher earner is, is to learn how to

00:30:52.400 write. Yeah. Seriously. I agree. Yeah. Learn how to fucking write and not, I'm not saying learn how

00:30:57.480 to do a video. I'm not saying learn how to fucking do a podcast. I'm saying learn how to fucking write

00:31:02.180 right and engage people through your writing. It's super valuable. I definitely agree. Yeah. And it

00:31:07.340 has, and, and, and you know how you become a good writer by fucking writing, right? You know, uh,

00:31:14.780 I copywriting, you know, dude, I've got a really, really good friend, um, who is basically the number

00:31:21.620 one copywriter in the world advertising copy. He sold over a billion dollars in, uh, in product

00:31:27.100 through his ad, ad copywriting. And he's sort of my mentor in terms of writing. You know what I mean?

00:31:31.780 Uh, he, uh, I mean, we talk about it, you know, all the time. And the biggest thing that he always

00:31:39.640 talks about is, you know, it's the same shit we talk about. It's being authentic. It's telling a story.

00:31:44.300 It's, it's getting people engaged and doing it in a truthful way. You know what I mean? Like so many

00:31:50.300 people write copy and they try to like squeeze these little fucking lies in there. And that

00:31:55.100 doesn't improve shit. Cause people, you, first of all, you don't need to do it. And second of all,

00:31:59.080 people smell it. You know what I mean? It's when you're real dude, when you tell the truth and when

00:32:03.940 you tell the truth about the product, why you produced a product, who you produced a product

00:32:07.860 for, why you came up with the idea, how it can help people and tell a real authentic story. Not,

00:32:13.960 not this bullshit that people try to manufacture. This shit doesn't work. It might work for like

00:32:18.740 the bottom 3% of the population that is like basically a fucking 60 IQ, but it doesn't work

00:32:25.640 for, for what you're trying to do. Right. So when you're real with people and when you're

00:32:30.220 authentic with people and when you, when you genuinely tell real stories and there's books

00:32:35.100 dude on copywriting, I mean, I'm not going to get into it, but there's literally dozens

00:32:39.760 of books that are awesome for ad copywriting that you can learn. But, uh, and we're talking

00:32:45.580 about direct response writing. We're talking about writing a story that actually produces

00:32:49.240 people to buy now. Okay. Um, and then your goal when they buy now is to wow them with

00:32:54.260 service, capture them as a customer for life and grow your company. So, so, and that's what

00:33:00.520 I'm trying to like talk about with these. Cause I know there are a lot of young kids right

00:33:03.560 now listening to this shit and they think that it's all about the first half of that getting

00:33:08.540 the sale. But what if you could get the sale and you did it the right way and you kept that

00:33:13.460 person for life? Oh, you know, you took that person from a regular Joe to a one-time customer

00:33:18.940 to a lifetime customer, to an advocate, to a fucking loyal advocate that advertises for

00:33:24.940 you. That's the goal. That's how you build a fucking billion dollar brand. That's how you

00:33:30.620 build something that matters. You don't want to be this dude who goes out and sell shit and

00:33:34.780 makes five, 10 grand a month selling shit online for three months and thinks he's rich and then

00:33:39.860 has to fucking start over because the product burned its life cycle out or whatever. And

00:33:44.160 you go from one to the other, that's that affiliate shit, man. And like very few people can live

00:33:48.740 like that because there's no certainty to it, you know? So learning how to copyright and

00:33:53.940 learning how to tell a story and dedicating yourself to that skill, it becomes really, really

00:33:58.460 valuable. And I would say, you know, it's right there behind leadership and managing people

00:34:03.680 in terms of value.

00:34:05.320 Absolutely. And I would say this to anybody, that to me, writing is a little bit like,

00:34:10.760 I'll use a sports analogy. If you think you're just going to work hard and you're suddenly

00:34:18.440 going to become Shakespeare or whoever, you know, massive literary genius, you're probably

00:34:23.940 not. Just like I could work my butt off and I would never become LeBron James. But the awesome

00:34:28.220 thing about writing is that if you do put in the time, you do put in the work, then to use

00:34:32.340 the analogy, you're going to get playing time. You're going to make a team. And so don't

00:34:36.940 say to yourself, well, I'm never going to be Shakespeare. I'm never going to be these

00:34:40.280 amazing writers. So how can I get to be? Yeah. If you work hard, you're going to become

00:34:45.100 a fundamentally good writing, a writer. And so like Andy said, take advantage of the copywriting

00:34:51.000 books. There's also great books like Roy Peter Clark's book, Writing Tools. He'll give

00:34:55.100 you really, really practical ways to just, I mean, there are literally the simple, like this

00:35:00.180 is one of the biggest things. Try this. If you're listening right now and you have a business

00:35:07.300 that you're running, or if you work inside of a company, just try writing a story about

00:35:14.900 what the company stands for, what it means and how it can help people. And try to write

00:35:19.620 that over and over and over again. And if you live and if you work in a big company, break

00:35:25.060 down each product and start writing about the product and write how, you know, this is

00:35:30.600 going to help you, what the story behind it is, why it came about, what the purpose is,

00:35:35.840 why you believe in it. And you know, everybody worries about the clothes, the clothes. If you,

00:35:41.020 if you write the front end good enough, the clothes doesn't fucking matter. Right. Right.

00:35:45.420 So just try that. It doesn't matter if you're in the, if you're the owner of the company or

00:35:49.900 if you're fucking working in the warehouse, if you want to develop a skill, start writing like

00:35:53.860 that. Absolutely. You know, don't worry about being fucking Shakespeare. No. Don't worry

00:35:57.020 about being, we're talking about making money here. Right. You know what I mean? I mean,

00:35:59.860 dude. And it's amazing how quickly if you do it, you can pick up things that really are

00:36:04.120 so practical and so easy to implement that they really make your writing good in a short

00:36:07.920 period of time. I always tell people, one of the biggest mistakes that people do is that

00:36:12.020 they talk passively. So they'll say something like this. The vampire was impaled by Vaughn.

00:36:19.120 And it's like, no, you want to speak actively. Vaughn impaled the vampire. You know,

00:36:23.200 it's those little things that you just pick up and you become a really, really quality

00:36:26.520 writer that, that people find compelling, you know? And that's not hard to pick those

00:36:30.660 things up. Not only that, man, it's, it's more than just that. It's, it's telling little

00:36:38.140 stories about yourself in the writing. You know what I mean? Like when you talk about the product

00:36:50.320 that you're writing about, and let's say you use the product, throw in one or two instances

00:36:54.440 where that product really helped you out and not, not say, Oh, this product really helped

00:36:58.400 me out. You know, I was using this product and before I started using it, I was afraid

00:37:03.940 to go to the store because I knew my pants would never fit. And I would go to the store

00:37:07.460 and you know, I would put on my pants and I would feel terrible about myself because I

00:37:11.720 was three sizes bigger than what I was. And I hated living like that. I just hated it.

00:37:16.700 Right. You know, and then I found this product. You get what I'm saying? Yeah, absolutely.

00:37:22.700 Well, what you're, what you're touching on is, is there are studies upon studies upon studies

00:37:26.780 that show that when people, people naturally become more eloquent when they are speaking

00:37:33.540 from personal experience. Exactly. That's why I brought that up because that's a real thing

00:37:37.460 for me. Yep. That's why I use that example. It's the same in speaking and it's the same

00:37:41.420 in writing. It's something weird about human beings that when you all of a sudden start

00:37:44.840 talking about something that means a lot to you, you become extremely communicative.

00:37:48.640 Exactly. Yeah. Well, that's great. I mean, uh, we could stop here and that, that would

00:37:52.540 be a worth the money that they're charging or we're paying for the, excuse me. They're

00:37:57.540 not paying. Yeah. Anyway. Um, okay. So we covered copywriting. So I want to talk about

00:38:02.660 this cause I see this a lot. I, I, I will sometimes lurk on, uh, on your, you know, I'll read

00:38:08.420 the comments that people put on your, on your Instagram page and kind of check out the different

00:38:13.280 people that are following you. And every now and then I'll find, you know, some guy

00:38:17.440 or girl, they're, they're starting a business. They have maybe, you know, 27 followers and

00:38:22.160 they're doing a couple of things. They're already looking for sponsored athletes or they're looking

00:38:26.260 for brand ambassadors. Right. Is that a good idea or a bad idea? It depends. It depends.

00:38:31.080 Let's just talk about brand ambassadors as a function. It depends. Like that's the new thing

00:38:34.380 now. Right. Because especially in, in our industry, the fitness industry, um, the problem

00:38:40.860 with, with brand ambassadors is a, um, most people don't do their homework to see if they

00:38:49.100 actually fit with your culture. Right. So like, let's say you, cause most people don't

00:38:53.020 even know what the fuck their culture is. So let's say they have a business, they haven't

00:38:56.740 done the research. Um, and let's just say they're regular, they're regular people, right?

00:39:02.520 Like their mom and pop, they have this little soap business and they're looking for brand

00:39:08.440 ambassadors to represent their soap. And they go out and they sign, they find all these people

00:39:13.680 to give free soap to that have, let's say, um, a hundred thousand followers. But these,

00:39:20.800 these, this mom and pop is like this good, wholesome Christian doing, uh, their, their, you

00:39:26.800 know, the work themselves, you know, they're, they're, they're farmers, right? Let's just say

00:39:31.220 like middle America type people. And they go out and they sign like all these people

00:39:35.560 just based on their following. And then they go and look at the shit they're posting and

00:39:38.900 yeah, they're doing the post for the soap, but on their other posts, they're posting

00:39:42.340 pictures of their tits or posted pictures of their ass or posting pictures with all

00:39:47.380 kinds of profanity or, you know, just basically not resonating with what they're about. It

00:39:52.860 can be very damaging. Right. And a lot of people, most people do that because they, they

00:39:57.560 don't do the work to develop their culture. B they don't do the homework on who they sign

00:40:01.460 up or affiliate with. They just want the numbers and see they just because someone has a hundred

00:40:08.680 thousand followers doesn't mean that those hundred thousand followers are interested in

00:40:12.880 your fucking soap. Right. So like I see a lot of companies doing that too, where they

00:40:17.560 don't go out and like pre-qualify who it is this audience is. So like for the fitness industry

00:40:23.740 for us, right, we've got to go out and for a long time, we didn't even use, uh, we didn't

00:40:28.640 even use like brand ambassadors or influencers. Uh, we, we always used regular people. Um, we,

00:40:36.360 we have an amazing, amazing team here at first form and we've always cultivated that out of

00:40:42.040 our customer base. And we got to a point where, uh, we weren't growing our awareness anymore.

00:40:47.060 And so what we did was we had to go out and we had to find people with massive followings.

00:40:50.980 But the first thing we did when we did that was we went out and searched our customer

00:40:55.740 database against these people that we were pre-qualifying to find out who was actually

00:40:59.360 customers. And we, so that, so, so we took basically a hundred people that were massive

00:41:04.540 influencers, a million plus followers. And we narrowed it down to like 30 who were actual

00:41:09.560 customers of ours. And then we took that 30 and then we looked at their culture and we

00:41:14.320 said, okay, do they resonate with the brand? And then we narrowed it down to like nine or

00:41:18.240 10. Okay. So that nine or 10 people, they've got like 40 or 50 million followers. Then we

00:41:23.660 started using these people to go out and send the message out. They would bring people to

00:41:29.140 the page, to our brand. And then those people started following what our real culture is.

00:41:34.560 And that's how we're, that's how we started to grow. Now, in the beginning, when I first

00:41:38.180 started the brand, I said, Hey, I'm never going to fucking do that. I'm never going to do

00:41:41.460 that. I'm never going to do that. But that was five years ago. And when it, and when

00:41:45.080 you could still run an ad in a magazine or you could run radio ads or TV ads and they

00:41:48.940 were effective. Now we've gotten to a situation where, um, you know, if you don't utilize

00:41:55.080 influencer marketing and it doesn't matter if you're on internet or it matters if you're

00:41:59.540 brick and mortar, you could do this in your neighborhood. Um, if you don't go out and get

00:42:03.760 the people who have the attention, you're going to fucking lose. And I got criticized pretty

00:42:08.640 heavily on that situation when we first started doing it. Cause people were like, Oh, Andy, you

00:42:12.820 said you would never do that. And I'm like, okay, well, um, we can either do this or nobody

00:42:16.900 could ever fucking find out about us again. Because when we develop this community of

00:42:20.840 athlete search winners and our athletes, you know, after so many months, those people, all

00:42:27.440 those people that those people represent know us. So we're not able to capture anybody new.

00:42:32.060 You see what I'm saying? Yeah. So you have to look at the influencer marketing as the new

00:42:37.080 radio station or the new TV or the new newspaper. But, and this is a huge asterisk, you have to make

00:42:43.960 sure a, they resonate with your culture. B, if they're great, if they're already customers, great.

00:42:48.980 Cause that makes a huge, huge difference because those people actually believe in your product.

00:42:53.660 Right. Which for a lot of brands, that's not going to be the case, but our brand had already

00:42:57.220 gained so much market saturation that we were able to do that. Um, so let's just say that's not

00:43:03.540 an option. Make sure they resonate with your culture. Make sure that you've identified your

00:43:08.100 culture and make sure that they know that you're going to hold them accountable to that culture

00:43:12.480 standard with their, with their posts. You see what I'm saying? Right. So is there some sort of

00:43:16.700 written agreement? Oh yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Like there's a lot of things they can't fucking do.

00:43:20.380 So you, so you basically answered the question that I was going to say, which is, which is what

00:43:23.860 are the common mistakes that people make when, when, when thinking about brands? That's the one.

00:43:27.460 They just don't do their homework. They just don't find a good fit. Yeah.

00:43:29.560 Wouldn't you say that another mistake is, is frankly, this is just people who want to be

00:43:33.520 around hot girls. So they hire hot girls to be on there. Yeah. And in our industry, that's like

00:43:37.760 the, that's like a huge deal. Right. So like in our industry, you know, we have these, we have

00:43:44.340 these bodybuilders who have clearly been on fucking steroids for the last 20 years. And I'm not judging

00:43:50.280 when I was a younger guy, I've took steroids too. I'm just saying you can't fucking represent a brand

00:43:56.640 when you're on massive amounts of fucking steroids and then go tell people that you use these products.

00:44:02.760 That's how you got who you are. Right. It's unethical. Right. You know what I mean? And

00:44:06.420 so I was very happy with, uh, you know, what we did and how we found our influences. We will

00:44:12.400 find people that were actual real customers. That was really cool. Um, but that's the best

00:44:18.100 case scenario. Uh, worst case scenario is like the other spectrum, right? Go out and find fucking

00:44:24.960 massive bodybuilders who use tons of shit and have, have been huge for 20 years and then get

00:44:29.340 to represent their brand and have been with five other brands. Okay. That means nobody believes

00:44:33.260 anything they said. So you're wasting your money. That's another mistake people make. Let's say

00:44:37.440 you've got a soap and this person's represented three other fucking soaps in the last 12 months.

00:44:43.520 Well, what do you think that their customers are going to think when they post about your soap?

00:44:47.100 They're not going to listen. So you want to find people that are fresh. You want to find people

00:44:52.060 that are real. You want to find people that are authentic and you're going to have to coach them

00:44:55.580 on how to be that way because a lot of people don't know how to be that way. So, um, there's a

00:45:01.660 lot of things that they can fuck up, but at the end of the day, we're in a transition period where it

00:45:06.020 went from, you know, basically three outlets, radio, TV, print to, you know, Facebook ads,

00:45:13.300 Instagram ads, Google AdWords, influencer marketing. And you've got to realize that those things I just

00:45:19.100 named are the new radio station, TV station and print. And if you're not playing in those areas,

00:45:24.460 you're going to get fucking destroyed. Okay. And this doesn't matter if you're brick and mortar

00:45:28.660 or if you're a massive online company like we are, our brick and mortar store have used influencers

00:45:35.120 for fucking 16 years. Go out. Let's say you find, you have a soap company, go out and find the people

00:45:43.140 who you think in your neighborhood would be influencers in your actual neighborhood face to face

00:45:48.980 and make friends with those people. Give them free product, you know, help them, whatever they're

00:45:53.500 doing, get them on your team and have those people represent you. And that's how you utilize,

00:45:59.060 you know, you could utilize influencer marketing in, in person just as well, even better than you do

00:46:04.600 online. Um, so, you know, just because you run a small business and you can't afford to get somebody

00:46:11.060 who's got 10 million followers, like, you know, one of our people, Anna Sheree, you, you, you have to

00:46:18.160 understand that you could still do it. And, and not only that, the moderate influencers, the ones

00:46:23.300 on the internet, like, let's say you can't afford some people on the internet, the ones between 50,000

00:46:28.560 and 500,000, they're, they're better and more effective than anybody else anyway, because they're

00:46:33.480 still real. They're not out there trying to promote this fucking massive image of whatever

00:46:37.720 it is they want people to see. The more followers people get, um, the more tendency they have to be

00:46:44.600 repetitive in their posts and become this quote unquote figure online versus being a real person.

00:46:50.580 That's a great point. Yeah. I, I, I, you know, that that's a really practical thing. So you're

00:46:55.840 saying look for the, at least in the, in the early going, look for the 50 to a hundred thousand

00:47:00.780 dollar, excuse me, 50 to a hundred thousand followers. If you're, if you're in a position to

00:47:04.600 where you could spend some money and build, build a brand around, you know, that's, that's real

00:47:08.920 people. Yeah. You know, some of these people, some of the people that we have, dude, they had less

00:47:13.700 than fucking 10,000 followers and we got them or even less than a thousand and they were built up,

00:47:18.440 you know, and some have 50, some have a hundred, but I mean, they've built it up over the course of

00:47:23.520 time by providing quality content and being affiliated with the brand. The worst thing, and let's talk about

00:47:29.420 this on the other side, the worst thing a brand ambassador can do or an athlete or a representative

00:47:34.220 of a company is jump from brand to brand, to brand, to brand. These people are so fucking

00:47:38.340 short sighted and they're so dumb. They don't understand that when you jump from brand to

00:47:42.100 brand, to brand, to brand, you have no fucking say or no influence with your people anymore

00:47:46.440 regarding whatever it is you're representing. So you might get a better deal today, but you're

00:47:50.620 shooting yourself in the foot for the rest of your life. So loyalty is a big thing when it comes to

00:47:54.980 influencer marketing, you've got to pick the right people. You got to stick with them.

00:47:58.060 Okay. So it'll be easy to transition from the subject of brand ambassadors and obviously in

00:48:04.220 your industry, you know, hot women, or I suppose hot men to another question, which you can't really

00:48:10.560 talk about marketing and advertising without talking about the age old Maxim sex sells. So

00:48:17.180 I think that before you even ask that question, I already know where you're going with it,

00:48:22.540 but go ahead and finish the question. Okay. All right. Well, so there's all sorts of evidence

00:48:26.800 obviously that appealing to sexual drive sells products, sell services, but there's also a lot

00:48:33.840 of new information and new studies that say that using sex in certain situations can actually really,

00:48:41.120 really hurt your brain. And not just because, not just in the sense of, you know, if you're trying

00:48:45.180 to sell Bibles and you're putting hot women on the front of them, it's not going to work.

00:48:47.740 First of all, it's what your culture, it all comes down to what does it align with your

00:48:50.540 culture. And second of all that you've got to take into account this, like, like my example

00:48:57.240 a minute ago, the first thing, you know, it's got to align with the culture. If you're the

00:49:00.140 Midwestern home, homely couple selling soap, you don't want some half naked chick selling

00:49:07.180 your soap. It ain't going to work. Um, there's a clash there. So you got to find something that

00:49:12.680 drives your culture and fitness. Yeah. It's a little more cloudy because most of the people

00:49:17.880 in fitness are very attractive, but honestly, that's not what fitness is about. Fitness is

00:49:21.200 about taking people who want to improve and working with them and helping them, uh, you

00:49:26.780 know, to feel better and make progress and improve their lives. And those are the people

00:49:32.040 that matter. It's not these fucking super sexy, this, that, whatever the super sexy thing comes

00:49:37.580 into where that those are the people that tend to tend that typically have big followings

00:49:42.660 and you're going to want to get people's awareness about your brand. Right? So how, how, how can it

00:49:48.780 be good? Well, it could be good because you get the attention. How can it be bad? It can be bad

00:49:55.180 because you also get the attention, right? And you end up with attention that you don't want,

00:50:00.100 you end up with attention you don't need, and you end up with attention that doesn't jive with your

00:50:02.540 culture. And what happens is you alienate a lot of your core audience. And that was a big,

00:50:06.680 um, that was a big concern of mine when we brought on influencers from, uh, just never using them

00:50:12.840 before. It was the first time we ever actually did that. And I knew some people weren't going to

00:50:16.980 jive with it because they didn't understand that you have to, you have, we had to transition to

00:50:21.120 that point and we weren't going to grow. And, um, what you have to think about and what can go bad.

00:50:27.500 And this is why I say you have to retrain these people is that you, you know, we're bombarded by sex

00:50:32.700 now, nonstop, especially if you're on Instagram, if you're on Instagram, all,

00:50:36.680 we have on there is just fucking boobs and ass and, you know, girls in swimsuits. And like,

00:50:42.580 it's just like overload. You know what I mean? Where it wasn't like that 20 years ago. So when

00:50:49.160 you put up something sexy 20 years ago, it stood out. Now all that shit is, it doesn't work like

00:50:54.860 that anymore. Substance is what sells caring about people's what sells in our industry. You know,

00:51:00.780 people trusting you, people trusting your mission, people trusting what you're, what you're doing.

00:51:05.100 Those are the things that work because nobody's doing that now. And that's what stands out. It's

00:51:09.360 the old adage. You know, when you see everybody running one way, you run the other way. You know

00:51:13.440 what I mean? So getting a bunch of sexy girls to represent your product, no matter if you're

00:51:16.860 selling whatever you're selling, towels, soap, cars, it doesn't fuck beer. It doesn't work like

00:51:21.820 it used to work because it's not, there's no like attention. Oh, another hot girl. We see it all the

00:51:27.080 time. So, you know, if you're going to use attractive females, which in fitness generally,

00:51:31.740 that's a part of the game. We also use regular look of females. We also use people who are

00:51:36.300 overweight, but at the core, the core of what we're trying to do and what is important is not

00:51:43.120 in the fucking picture. It's in the thing below the picture called the caption, right? Okay. It's

00:51:48.040 the story you tell. It's what people are communicating. And so what we've done with, with our influencers

00:51:54.520 and our athletes is we've highly encouraged them to be transparent with their stories. You know,

00:51:59.800 a lot of people look at these people who are super, uh, huge followings and super fit and super

00:52:06.340 beautiful and think that they were just like that their whole lives. Dude, these people have

00:52:10.380 suffered depression. They've suffered eating disorders. They'd suffered accidents. They've

00:52:15.880 suffered illnesses just like everybody else. And so no, but no other company has ever been cool with

00:52:21.120 them sharing those stories. So what we've done is, and this goes for everybody in our brand. I've

00:52:26.780 always encouraged everybody to tell their fucking story because if you tell your story, people that

00:52:32.040 have the same situation or something similar, they're going to be inspired by it. They're going

00:52:36.140 to say, you know what? I've dealt with that too. That means I can fucking do this. And you know,

00:52:40.220 that's something that people are missing out on right now. They're still trying to beat that old

00:52:44.560 thing. A sex sells to the ground. Like, Oh, look at this hot chick or look at this hot dude.

00:52:49.240 Like nobody fucking cares because you know, you're talking about, unless you're talking about like

00:52:54.800 17 year old dudes, which aren't your customers, you know, nobody fucking cares. I think it's gotta

00:53:00.040 be, it's gotta be something that relates to people. Absolutely. And I think another thing that figures

00:53:04.300 into this, Andy is, is obviously in our day and age, people are more accessible and the, and the

00:53:10.380 expectation on social media is that you're going to be a somewhat likable, accessible, engaging,

00:53:17.740 friendly person. And so if you're just a hot person and you're posting pics, but you're not

00:53:21.960 interacting with your followers, you're not posting stuff, you know, that is a big deal.

00:53:26.280 A lot of people try to do that fucking a Hollywood thing or they're like, they don't

00:53:29.860 fucking reply to anybody. They're too cool for it. Right. Dude, eventually people are going to get

00:53:33.460 tired of your shit. Right. You know what I mean? Like, dude, you got, let's say you got a guy who

00:53:37.040 comments on your shit every day. Hey man, I love this. Or Hey man, I love that. And you never fucking say

00:53:41.340 thank you. Eventually he's going to say, fuck you. And he's going to move on. But you see, have all these

00:53:45.880 fucking people with big followers that really honestly haven't accomplished shit in the rest

00:53:50.460 of their real life, thinking there's some fucking special being that they don't have to fucking

00:53:54.460 do that. Fuck. I see people with 10,000 followers do that shit. It's like, motherfucker, you better

00:53:59.620 be thankful for your lucky stars for every single person that even fucking shows you any love,

00:54:04.940 you know, but, but you know, sometimes you got to train people to do that.

00:54:10.160 Okay. So we've, we've covered the difference between branding and marketing. We talked a little

00:54:13.980 bit about, you know, the idea of, of what you should know about your customers, um, brand ambassadors,

00:54:20.380 you know, we even talked about copywriting. I feel like we've covered a lot of different topics, man.

00:54:24.640 So, uh, I don't know what you want to wrap up with, but, um, I had a couple other questions I was

00:54:30.760 going to ask you. I, I guess I, my question is, um, you know, a lot of people find a lot of success

00:54:36.820 on Instagram and they're so successful on, on that one platform that they think, well,

00:54:41.720 why don't I just pound this or, or, you know, rather than dilute my efforts by going on Facebook,

00:54:47.540 Twitter, that sort of thing. What are your thoughts on that? Do you, do you develop a

00:54:50.380 portfolio or do you, if you ask 20 different people, they're going to tell you 20 different

00:54:53.820 things. So I'm just going to tell you what I, what I think. Um, and we're pretty fucking good at it.

00:54:59.680 Uh, look, here's the deal. When you, when you pick one of those channels, let's say, like I said,

00:55:06.180 Google, Facebook, Instagram, influencer marketing, things change. Okay. So if you pick one and you

00:55:13.280 go all in on one and you don't learn the other ones or learn, uh, how to, at least how to be

00:55:18.760 effective in the other ones, you're really shooting yourself short because things can change because

00:55:24.060 I'll give you an example. You know, two years ago, if a fucking 10 million person influencer made a post,

00:55:30.220 10 million people fucking saw it now with Instagram's new algorithm, it's not that way.

00:55:35.620 It cuts it, you know, less than half of those people see it. I think, you know, I don't know

00:55:39.500 what the exact percentage is, but the point is, is that you have a situation where things can change.

00:55:45.900 And when you go all in on one thing and you're at the mercy of one of these other companies and

00:55:49.400 they change something, dude, you're, you're pretty much screwed. And then you're not ready to know

00:55:54.040 about anything else. So I personally think it's a great idea to make sure that, you know,

00:55:59.680 about all of them and the one that's working the best, obviously dissect it, look at it,

00:56:06.880 decide while it's, you know, figure out exactly why it's working and then try to re try to reposition

00:56:13.240 that, uh, that same campaign on a different platform. You know, the reason something works

00:56:19.440 is not because of the platform. It's because of your copy or your resonation with people or your

00:56:25.180 ability to connect with people or your story or your product. And if you, if you could figure out

00:56:32.540 how to make something work on one of the platforms, it's probably, it's probably highly likely that

00:56:37.900 you'll be able to, uh, you know, re equip that same message over somewhere else. And if you don't

00:56:43.580 know how to do that right now, you're really, you're really setting yourself up for a big punch

00:56:48.060 because these things change all the time. And when they change and you don't know how to adapt,

00:56:52.520 it'll put you out of business. Look at all these big, huge companies that are going out of business

00:56:56.700 now because they're still running fucking radio ads and TV ads and, and print ads. And they're

00:57:01.780 wondering why sales are down. Well, sales are down because no one reads that shit. No one watches TV.

00:57:06.440 No one listens to real radio. You know what I mean? And so you've got to figure out how, how to adapt.

00:57:12.120 And if you don't know how to adapt when some of the changes, you know, I think it, I think it's,

00:57:17.180 you know, you're putting yourself in a really tough position. So I would say, you know, figure

00:57:22.380 out, put your time in to figure out one, dissect why it's worked. When it starts to work, dissect

00:57:27.740 while it's working, start to figure out how to make it on another one and, and get it going on

00:57:31.620 everywhere. That way you're never, you know, held down or locked down by these other companies making

00:57:36.420 a change. Makes sense. All right. So in wrapping up, I just, I want you to use your crystal ball. Tell me

00:57:42.360 what Andy for sell his predictions are for the future in terms of, you know, do you see anything

00:57:47.680 changing in terms of how people use Instagram? Uh, a lot of people ask me, why isn't Andy on

00:57:54.060 Twitter? You want to share your thoughts on that? And, uh, you know, I think Twitter's ineffective

00:58:00.000 for what I do. Okay. Um, first of all, first of all, I've got so much other shit going on. I just

00:58:05.020 don't have the time. Yeah. And I'm not one of these people who, who has a social media person

00:58:09.560 posting for me seven times a day. You know, if you notice, I only post once a day usually,

00:58:14.240 and that's because I'm actually really doing things. Uh, I don't have or hire somebody to do

00:58:19.520 my comments. If you get a comment from me, it's me. If you get a like for me, it's me. Uh, if you

00:58:25.080 get a post, it's me, you know, it's not some dude standing next to me with a camera saying, Hey, post

00:58:30.300 the shit. That's not how I run shit. I do it myself. Um, so I just don't have time, you know,

00:58:35.580 I don't have time to do the Twitter shit. So I just don't do it. Um, what, you know,

00:58:42.480 what was the question? Well, just about, do you, do you see, how do you see Instagram

00:58:48.620 evolving? How people use social media evolving? You know, it's pretty open-ended question.

00:58:53.640 Man, you know, I don't see, in my opinion, I don't see many people doing it right. I think

00:59:00.640 we're in the beginning stages of, of mass confusion on how to actually build a brand using

00:59:07.040 social media. Um, I just don't see that many people doing it right. I see, you know, I see

00:59:13.060 people like Gary selling services to other companies to try to teach them how to do it

00:59:17.100 right. But yeah, I still don't see people doing it right. Um, I don't see people developing a

00:59:22.060 culture. I don't see people developing a true brand. I see a lot of people selling a product with

00:59:27.980 an ROI, you know, and they're making sales and yes, they're making money. But the minute that

00:59:33.360 product burns out or something changes or adapts or evolves, they'll have a problem selling the

00:59:36.860 product or it doesn't sell or they're, they're out of, they're out of sales. I also see most of

00:59:41.040 the time, those people making a lot of money doing that, spending all their money, which dude, if I'm,

00:59:44.620 that's you, you better save your fucking money. Um, you know, if I could predict what's going to

00:59:52.360 happen, I think we've already covered it. I think people are going to get more and more and more,

00:59:56.420 um, disenfranchised with the sex cells and with, uh, the same old shit that people have seen for

01:00:05.360 ever and ever and ever. And they're going to get more and more, uh, you know, engaged with brands

01:00:11.720 that fucking care. And until you can figure out how to do that, you're not going to really be able

01:00:18.360 to be successful. You know, you might do a little bit of business, but you're always going to struggle.

01:00:23.400 And, and we're in a, we're in a real interesting place right now because people are like, Oh,

01:00:27.820 the internet's been around for 20 years. Yeah, sure. It has. But, but also, but the internet

01:00:32.360 hasn't been strong enough and social media hasn't been strong enough. And all the things that we're

01:00:35.480 talking about here haven't been strong enough, uh, to, you know, YouTube, Facebook, and I forgot to

01:00:41.260 put YouTube in those categories earlier, but YouTube's a tremendous thing. But, uh, it hasn't been

01:00:47.700 around, it hasn't been strong enough until maybe the last two or three years to really kill off the

01:00:55.080 big three traditional advertising medias. You know what I mean? And their effectiveness. So now

01:01:00.700 we're in a real transition. We're in a transition period where the old shit doesn't work. Nobody

01:01:05.640 knows how to do the new shit. And so it's like a fucking free for all and everybody's trying to

01:01:11.180 figure it out. And like, dude, you have people writing books about, about like I see book I've dude,

01:01:15.520 I've literally read books. I'm not going to say names, but I've read books that have told people

01:01:19.520 to do shit that just isn't fucking true. Cause I've done it and it doesn't work because they're

01:01:24.660 guessing and they're trying to ride away. Nobody right now is an expert on this shit. Nobody,

01:01:29.040 nobody. I don't care how much they say they are care how much they pretend to be. I don't care how

01:01:34.000 much they charge you to beat, to fucking tell you they're an expert on this. Nobody is an expert on

01:01:38.360 this. Nobody. There might be micro experts that know how to do one thing. Well, right now they might not,

01:01:44.440 they might know how to do, they might know how to do Facebook ads or affiliates and they might make

01:01:48.860 a hundred million dollars right now. But the minute that changes, they don't know how to do

01:01:52.000 the rest of that shit for anything. So, you know, and then you got people that know how to do YouTube

01:01:56.360 a little bit and they're making money on YouTube and they're doing good. And then they're trying to

01:02:00.260 sell people how to do YouTube shit. They don't fucking know, right? They they've hit on something

01:02:04.660 that works and they don't know how to teach it. They just know how to fucking make it work for

01:02:09.360 them right now. Right. You get what I'm saying? Absolutely. So we're like, we're like, we're like in this

01:02:13.580 time. We're like, you know, people are jumping in the deep end of the pool with no fucking water

01:02:18.980 wings on man. And they're fucking floundering around, you know, and they're pretending like

01:02:25.480 they know what the fuck they're doing, but really do they're really that, that close to drowning.

01:02:29.500 Right. My, my favorite is, and you know that someone is lying through their teeth. If they put

01:02:33.320 out a book that says, you know, how to guarantee your video will go viral because all of the studies,

01:02:39.120 all of the data says that there's so many unknowns. Why does, you know, why does a, a, a, a cartoon of

01:02:46.820 a, of an orange, you know, laughing or whatever? Why does that go viral? I'll tell you this. Here's

01:02:51.860 what I know is that things that are entertaining are always going to go viral before things are

01:02:57.000 educational. Okay. And if you're selling fucking pizza and you're selling beer, you're always going

01:03:02.180 to sell more pizza and beer than you're going to sell vitamins because people want it. Right.

01:03:06.300 People want to laugh. They want to feel good. So you need to think about what people want.

01:03:10.780 And if you can figure out how to work your product into that, then your chance of getting viral

01:03:15.060 attention are very good. Right. But you would also agree that if we're honest, there is an element

01:03:19.040 of mystery that nobody's figured out. I think it's numbers. I think that it's, you know, I think you've

01:03:24.120 got to strategically look at it. Like, like if Tyler and I were saying, Hey, we're going to create

01:03:28.000 this viral video, you know, we would break it down and say, okay, uh, we, we think that,

01:03:33.860 that this would be good and it would be funny and it would also work. And, uh, and then, well,

01:03:39.880 you know, we would, I mean, dude, we've had so many videos that like we thought were going to be

01:03:45.580 fucking home runs that weren't. And then we've had videos that we thought were just okay. They

01:03:49.660 fucking people loved. And so you can strategize all you want. Um, but I think the, you know,

01:03:55.000 if you want to create a viral video, I think it's about, you know, you're going to have to work

01:03:58.080 some entertainment in there usually. Um, and I'm saying about increasing your chances.

01:04:03.260 Are there cool videos that go viral that don't have that? Absolutely. Yeah. But you know,

01:04:07.640 entertainment works, laughing works, getting people to, uh, taking a stand. We've talked

01:04:12.140 about taking a stand works. And, and, you know, if you really want to plan it out, you can get

01:04:17.200 other people, you can plan other people that have high, high level, uh, influencer power to repost

01:04:22.660 your video. Yeah. Still, all of that doesn't, it's, it doesn't guarantee anything. Yeah. Guys,

01:04:28.840 uh, another episode that dovetails really nicely with a lot of what we're talking about here is

01:04:33.600 the episode we did on how to, how to create killer content. I don't have the number up the top of my

01:04:38.320 head. Just Google, Google MF CEO project, how to create killer content. It's within the last,

01:04:42.740 what, like two or three months we did that one, but that's got a, Andy goes into depth, um, about the

01:04:48.360 actual content, you know, the things that, you know, he just mentioned content that

01:04:52.440 entertains, tends to go more viral. Well, in that episode, he actually goes into more

01:04:56.540 detail, like take a stand, you know, be very clear on what, you know, be willing to be a

01:05:01.120 little controversial, you know, so, so take a look at it. At the end of the day, that's

01:05:05.140 what keeps people from never, ever getting attention is because they try to make this

01:05:08.600 content that's going to appeal to everybody. Right. And when you do that, you end up being

01:05:12.480 so fucking vanilla that nobody likes it at all. Right. So, you know, and we do talk about

01:05:17.880 that on the, on that, I think that was in December when we did that or right after the

01:05:21.220 beginning of the year. Yeah. Somebody said some famous person, I forget who it is, but

01:05:24.540 it said right now in America, if you want to really stand out, tell the truth. That

01:05:29.500 was me. Was that you? No, I'm just kidding. I don't know who said that. I wouldn't be

01:05:33.320 surprised if it was you. That is true though. You know? Yeah, that is true, man. And you

01:05:37.560 tell your truth, you know, the way you see it, because if you see it some, if you see it

01:05:41.680 one way and you see that as truth and you speak it as truth, other people are going to

01:05:45.640 resonate with that. Right. You know, like it's how you speak it too, right? Like, you know,

01:05:49.780 let's say you have your truth, but then you come on in some wishy-washy way. Like, well,

01:05:53.500 from my perspective, this is how I see this thing. No, that's not how you say. So, you

01:05:58.380 know what? This is the way it fucking is. It's this, this, this, this, and this. And

01:06:02.300 then that gets people excited. And then some people will disagree, which brings only more

01:06:06.460 attention to your, whatever it is you're doing. Yeah. The only thing I would add is that you,

01:06:10.680 my friend, when you make a statement, you can back up your statement. And there are a lot

01:06:14.660 of people that made, so when, what I'm saying to people is when you, if you're going to take a stand,

01:06:18.320 I try to think before I speak. Well, if you're going to take a stand, then be able to argue

01:06:23.120 your point. It's amazing how many people would just throw ridiculously controversial statements

01:06:27.700 out there. There should be like a certification for even being on social media. And I mean,

01:06:31.220 it's amazing. They should let everybody be on social media, but to be able to actually post

01:06:34.960 on social media, you should like pass a test. Yeah. I don't care. I don't care how controversial

01:06:39.780 statement, a controversial statement people make, as long as you're willing to back it up and to argue

01:06:43.820 your case. But it's, it's amazing how many people make these broad statements, these crazy

01:06:47.760 statements. Do you know how much I don't post because I don't have the time to argue with

01:06:50.540 people? Well, can you remember the last time I posted a political post? I'm a pretty, pretty

01:06:55.040 political. Dude, I'm talking about anything. Yeah. But I mean, dude, I just don't even post

01:06:58.220 because on Facebook it's way worse than on Instagram is like you get these people who just want to

01:07:02.720 fucking argue for no reason, no matter what you say. And it's just like, dude, it kills the whole

01:07:06.900 vibe of the fucking platform for me. Facebook is where all the asterisk holes hang out. You know,

01:07:12.360 we haven't talked about asterisk holes for a while, but yeah, it is. Yeah. No. Okay. Well,

01:07:16.740 anything else? No, man. If you guys like the podcast, you've got content, you know, if you got

01:07:21.340 good content from it, if you got some, some good benefit from it, if it helped you guys rethink

01:07:26.920 about where it is you're trying to go and what direction you're trying to go. The one thing I would

01:07:30.400 stress guys is that make sure like if you're, even if you're the guy sweeping the floor in the

01:07:34.700 warehouse, dude, take this shit serious. Do what I said, go, go start writing about the products,

01:07:39.680 developing these skills, these skills, just because you don't need them now because you're

01:07:44.300 sweeping the fucking floor. It doesn't mean you won't need them a year from now, two years from

01:07:47.940 now. You know what I mean? And I think a lot of people get fucked up in their career that way

01:07:51.660 because they, they get stuck in whatever they're doing now and they don't put the investment in

01:07:56.080 to what they're trying to learn, what they need to learn because they don't need it today.

01:08:00.940 It's not about needing it today. It's about what you're going to need a year from now, two years

01:08:04.260 from now, three years from now. And the great thing about where we're at in, in, in this

01:08:08.500 society we're in is that information is so readily available and cheap and free most of the time

01:08:13.120 that you could do this on your own in your spare time. And guys being, being successful within the

01:08:22.220 walls of somebody else's organization is 1000% your responsibility. It is not the boss's job to come up

01:08:29.640 and recognize you and give you a fucking raise. It's your job to become so good at whatever it is

01:08:36.640 that you're becoming good at that people take notice. And they say, yeah, that's the motherfucker

01:08:42.340 that we need right there. You know what? But he only sweeps the floor. Yeah. But dude, you ever talk

01:08:46.480 to him about marketing? You ever see his copywriting? Dude, this guy could be moved. We could move him

01:08:50.560 in the front office right now. That's how you do that. You know, if you wait and wait and wait and

01:08:55.520 wait and you never take initiative and you never take control, you're always going to be paid the least

01:09:00.420 amount possible. And I, I, I hate that people don't understand that concept. They think it's

01:09:06.660 the other way around. Oh, I've been here for 17 years, sweeping the floor. Eventually they're

01:09:10.220 going to move me into the office. No, unless you display that skillset and take control and take

01:09:15.960 responsibility for yourself and showing that skillset. Like I talked about last, uh, last week on the

01:09:21.760 leadership management podcast, you're going to be doing that shit either here or there or somewhere

01:09:27.120 else for the rest of your life. It's your responsibility, not ours. So I'll leave you guys with that.

REAL AF with Andy Frisella - July 11, 2017

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

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