141: Genius Paid Ad Strategy That No One Is Telling You About

to me about paid advertising. He says that it had always baffled him and that there had been so many experts out there who made it sound so easy, but when put into practice, it ended up costing you a lot of money. And he asked me to break down paid advertising in a way that he could share with his audience and in a way he says that he had never even heard before. He asked me to go through exact

processes and strategies. The things that we use every day for our clients to attract leads, more customers and I really hope you enjoy today's episode, be sure to connect with Nick on his show at ninefivetofreedom.com. It's going to be linked up in the show notes. Show him some love if you enjoy today's episode and without further ado, let's dive in to the original airing of my visit with Nick on what he says is the genius paid ads strategy that no one is telling you about.

letterhead. The essence of a business is to sell a product or a service to a customer who has a problem. And I just took an early interest in how to make that happen, both from a marketing and a sales side. So today, in 2011 or so and up till today, we have focused on helping small and midsize companies drive revenue, through digital marketing, the traditional things you've heard

of. But our emphasis is all around lead generation and sales revenue, as opposed to brand creative or top of funnel awareness and all of those things. We were working with companies that want to grow revenue. And so all of the work that we do is built around the middle of the funnel to the bottom of the funnel. And, you know, as they say, there's only three ways to grow a business, right, you get more customers, you increase the lifetime value of the customers or you increase

the average order value. And you increase the frequency from which they buy, there's really only three ways to grow the business and we help in all three areas.

to a million mark. Generally, up to about 30 million is the sweet spot for us. When we get to $50, $100 million companies, they tend to have some sort of infrastructure. And it doesn't mean we can't help them. But what we're not in the world of what we do is we're not a vendor, meaning some people call us and say hey, we just need help with email marketing. We just like you to help us with well, we're not that kind of company. So we're trying to come in because we believe our

solution is holistic. It's, it's, it's, it's a holistic solution. It's not just a insert my company or my team into a spot in the process. And so we turn down scenarios where companies have already 10 15 people in marketing and they just want us to do Google ads, and we just don't do that. So we're working with companies that are smaller growth firms,

entrepreneurial in nature. But we have had our share of companies I think are outside of a nationwide company that everybody would know here, an $80 million company was, it was strange to see an $80 million company only have two people in marketing. I was just blown away.

do this pod decks icebreaker. So we're gonna get to know you just a little bit better with a couple of these pod deck questions. And then we'll kind of talk about more about your story and get into the real tactical stuff. How's that sound?

wear K Swiss was these days. So that's I just took a pair off just before we got here.

grandmother has it as well. And some people in the spiritual or religious world will know this phrase. But for whatever reason, I have a spidey sense for knowing the right thing to do. And doesn't mean I always do it, but it's made me a good strategist in business. It's made me a great analyzer of people. It's made me have a lot more empathy for other people's situations and be adaptable in variety of environments. And,

you know, interesting story. I said no to a business partnership sort of investment back in 2002. And it just didn't feel right. All the logistics on paper were there and I should have said yes, normally somebody with the analytical brain would have said yes. And my decision was no. And I walked away from that situation. And five years later, the founders of that group, one of them, was arrested for embezzlement and fraud.

summer. But because I played football, they didn't want to adjust my schedule, to the football schedule, which is come in after 5.30 or 6.00. So they fired me, of course. And so I don't really call that a first job, although it was, but the fry cook job came along. A friend of the family called me up, knew I was looking for a job and said, Hey, if you want a job, you gotta be here by 5.30. So I started as fry cook at Taco

Bell. And before you know it, I was a general manager a couple years later, and didn't see that coming. But you know, I've always believed that if you prosper where you're planted, good things will happen. And my dad taught me that when I was little, and you know, used to say never, you never get a chance, a second chance to make a good first impression. So it didn't matter what my uniform was, it didn't matter how stinky I was, when I went home at night. I just did the best I

could. And people would say, Well, this guy, maybe he could do other things, if he can do, by the way, I would be in there to fry for four hours or five hours, I'd be done in two. And I didn't know that was overachieving. I just was like, Well, you told me what I had to do. He told me what my capacity was. You told me what my output needs to be. I just assumed get it done as quick as I could.

because it's hot as hell. You got to sell something that don't melt. So that was kind of the first little thing but, but, but when I got into college, I had the entrepreneurial bug. And so I started a business out of the trunk of my car. And this was really to pay for college expenses because I paid my way through school. I stopped playing sports at the end of high school. I wasn't, the protract wasn't ideal. I still

love sports. I'm a fanatic at sports, but I ended up coaching sports but I knew I wasn't gonna play pro ball. So I started selling sports wear hats, T shirts and stuff like that out of the trunk of my car at the Swap Meet. So I would buy stuff, today it's E commerce where you can do drop shipping, I would actually buy inventory, ship it to my house. I used to order from New York and California if

my memory is correct. And I like had to send a physical check and send it somewhere and hope they'd send me the stuff and then if I had a return I had to do, I mean so you can imagine the timeframe of doing all that. This is all pre Amazon and pre FedEx and I mean . . . so and I would back my little Honda Civic up, pull out my little table and I kept all the popular teams, because you know, the popular teams are going to sell faster than everybody else's teams. And I used to make a couple $100 a

weekend. I had maybe $100, $150 or rent. And I was making a couple $100 a day or a couple $300 dollars a weekend, something like that. So it was kind of my first little side hustle. I never had any glamour thinking I was gonna be in the retail business. I mean but it was just something I stuck my toe in, and then I became a real estate agent. So this is all in college. I'm still working at Taco Bell by the way. Yeah, so I

was just curious. And I just, there was something at Taco Bell that happened that made me realize that I for sure wasn't going to stay at Taco Bell. And, and I realized that this corporate America thing is a little weird. Because I'm working my tail off, I've never missed a day of work. Or I miss very few days of work, I'm giving more to you that I'm giving to myself, I care more about this business in some cases, than you're caring about

me and my team and my staff. And I found myself like, I'm like, something's out of balance here. Like I'm giving you all this, and you're not giving me anything back in return, except a little 3 or 4% raise. I remember one restaurant I was in, and I'm not talking bad about it, but it's just, there was no heat in the restaurant. So in the winter, it was freezing cold. And it was, there was no air in the summer, it was a swamp cooler. This is Vegas.

And we couldn't get an air conditioning unit to work and they wouldn't give us jackets in the winter. So what is this? So I'm like, so if I've got to fight for stupid stuff, like we're in here making you money.

intended to be. As a matter of fact, when I took the job, I remember telling them, I don't think you're promoting the right guy, because I have no intention on being here long term. I told 'em that. And they were like, What are you gonna give us, two or three years until you get out of college? I'm like, Yeah, I can give you two or three years until I get a college and that's it. And it ended up being a few years longer than that. But, but

they knew the deal upfront. And it was a great relationship for both of us. I got a ton out of my experience there. No question, Nick, I learned so much about business, so much about systems, customer service, hiring, training, empowering leadership. I mean, I learned more in that, in that window of time, that helped me I think, become a better entrepreneur, than, than probably most people would imagine.

She never punished me. She educated me, she counseled me. She kept trying to show me the ropes, but she never tried to stop me from failing. Which was really interesting, because it took me a couple of years to get the GM thing right. Because you're, you know, when you're 20 and you get the keys to a whole restaurant, you're little arrogrant. Okay, you like, you're little arrogant, right? You're like ahh . . . . . . until you realize you're

not. Right? Until you realize, until you realize what you used to do good for eight hours on a shift. You're now responsible for 24 hours a day. And now you're not responsible, things you weren't responsible for, you're now responsible for and you're responsible for it at a different level. Instead of being a doer of all things on your shift. You're now a coach, you're now a leader, you now have to inspire and empower the execution. Right? And there were, everything in Taco Bell

was metric driven. Like people may not know this, but this, how food is made. It's all metric driven. If you think about what I do in the world of marketing today, think about what I do in the world of entrepreneurship and sales and growth. Back then I learned metrics. We were getting mystery shopped two or three or four times a month by a customer hired by the company to come in and they were checking everything, the temperature, the food, and we didn't know who they were. We did not know who

they were. They would just walk through the line or the drive thru just like anybody else and I've used that tra. . . , I've used that technology or that, that process ever since I left there. We would have to stay on our toes for all the things and I forget how many things were on this report. But it was the cleanliness of the restaurant, what the person said at the drive thru window, what the counter person said, did they see someone come out and clean

the tables in the lobby? What was the cleanliness of the lobby? What was the cleanliness of the front line? Could they see food? Could they see trash on the floor, from the countertop to the back door? All this stuff, was there trash in the garbage can hanging outside of the bin, I mean, it was, they were detailed about this stuff. So you had to be on your toes.

And so I think the metric driven mindset that I have about growth in marketing today, maybe even has some sense of being having to tie up those metrics and variables back inside that restaurant, and in that environment. So I tell people all the time, I'm not saying you got to go work for Taco Bell or fast food restaurant to pick up

entrepreneurship, you don't. But if you've ever been there, think back, if you're an entrepreneur today, think back to what you saw, and look at it from a different lens and apply that. And like I said, I had one of the best general managers, she was my general manager, or she was my district manager for the vast majority of my time as a general manager, I think maybe the last year, year and a half she wasn't. And and, and I give her a ton of credit as well.

a lot of sense. And they're running a very, I mean, strategic, proven method, when that's why it's got to be that way. And that's . . .

every day of the morning. 730. Right. So there's no room for, and if there are some numbers that were off, you got to answer questions as to why they're off. And they knew what the variable and the variance could be. Right? So if there was a number you reported, I'm making something up right now. But let's say your deletion percentage was 4%. They knew the variable should have been around 2%. 4%'s way too high. So either (a) you've made a mistake in your calculation, or (b) someone

stole money. That's easy. Because the only reason your deletions will be high is if someone's stealing money. They're making food, bringing stuff up, then they're deleting the items, and they're stealing the money. And it was a scam inside the fast food world. Right? Where if you come through with your team, and we're in it together, and I tell four, you and five people to come through the drive thru, and we calculate

what you're going to order. The order comes to 20 bucks, you give me the 20 bucks, I delete the order, give you the food, put the 20 bucks in my pocket. It was a scam. There was Oh believe me, theft in a fast food restaurant is your biggest enemy.

So marketing was one of my things that just took my interest. I didn't feel like selling was a problem for me because I'm just a relationship kind of guy. I just believe in, you know, the conversation that has to happen in sales and I can talk more about sales and why I don't ever think anyone selling anything ever, which is a hang up for most people. Some people think of sales as a bad thing. And I talk about it differently as sales is just a conversation.

We can come back to that. So I took involved, I got interested in marketing and I ended up working with a guy. He was a top producing agent around '96. '95, '96 and I learned something from him about direct response marketing, whereby you're producing some sort of advertisement or marketing material, to a very specific target audience with a very specific really laser focused message, if and only if the thing on the messaging mattered to them when they raise their hand. Fast forward to 2000. I'm

in the mortgage industry. And I left that, I'm still in real estate, but I preferred the mortgage side. So I'm a originator in the mortgage industry, independent contractor, self employed, basically. And I started getting involved in digital around '03. So I got my first email marketing system in 2003, because I realized I'm saying the same thing to people over and over and over again, and over and over and over again.

And then there's the sales cycle for buying a house or getting a mortgage, it's not an emergency. So for example, somebody could be transferring from one military base in Texas to Las Vegas, which is where I was. And they are inquiring about some things that they have to have in place 10 months from now. So there is no mortgage to write, there is no homes to go look for. But I've got to stay top of mind. And I've got to make sure that I'm relevant to them when

it gets closer to the time. So I started using email marketing, fast forward to '05, I now co owned a mortgage company with some partners at the time. And we started, we started buying leads from lead generating companies online. So I started seeing the leveraging part power of the Internet. In that timeframe, 2003, 4 and 5, YouTube opens up. And I'm like, Oh, so now I can use a video to answer those frequently asked questions that I'm tired of answering 52 times a month for

all my clients. They're relevant questions, but gosh, I'm tired of answering them on the phone. You know, I hate to tell you, but when you're doing 30 to 50 loan applications a month for clients, which was a good month for me, I mean, probably an average of 20 to 25 on average. I'm saying the same things over

and over again. And I'm like, gosh, this is too, this is draining, like so I said, Okay, why don't I record all the frequently asked questions on YouTube, or I'm sorry, on a video recorder, camcorder at the time, transfer them to the computer with a FireWire which anybody listening to show that don't know what that is look that one up for kicks and giggles, it would take eight hours to get the stuff from my camcorder to the computer. Anyway, I'd finally make them up

to YouTube. And so that was my first YouTube channel 2007. And it wasn't to be a famous YouTuber like you see today, it was to take what was in my head that would come out of my mouth for a customer or prospective customer who had a valid question to ask, but I would just direct them to my YouTube channel. And then they would get all the answers to their

questions at once. And it would increase my level of trust and authority and would actually help them build a relationship with me even before we met or even before we had a number of face to face interactions. So I just became fascinated with the leveraging component. And then as the internet continued to take off, and more and more people went to search online for questions, for queries and for services and for products. I was just like, no one else around me

was doing it. And I'm like, nobody's doing this, like, am I an anomaly or something? So the market crashes in '08, obviously and you know, I take my lumps, just like the rest of them. The rest of us in the industry, we, we got beat up. And I was still doing well. Like I mean, I got beat up because of what happened. But I bounced back and recovered. And my business was booming. And I'm getting business from people in and out of the country. And they're all

finding me online. And they're finding me on forums, and they're finding me on these sites. And I'm like, but nobody's doing this? Because a lot of my friends were struggling. They're like how you closing loans? Ain't nobody buying nothing. I'm like, I'm using the internet, this thing called the internet. You ever heard of it?

the time. Nick, people agree when I ask this question. Do you believe people buy from people they know, like and trust? 9 out of 10 business owners agree with that statement. Then, if there was a way to get them to know, like and trust you, without you having to be there face to face and shaking their hands, belly to belly as I used to call it, would you want to do that?

life plan. And I just decided to make it, I could see doing this for the rest of my life. I couldn't see during the mortgage industry for the rest of my life, I enjoyed it. I had a blast. I was great at it. I had great friends I still had great relationships in the industry,

in that industry. But I was like, Yeah, I don't know if I want to do this the rest of my life I. So I wanted something where I could work from anywhere on the planet, I wanted to be able to work from a mobile device or laptop, on any planet in the country in the world, sorry. Or any planet in the country, any country on the planet. So maybe one day we'll be on other planets, who knows. And so that was part of my design. And that was part of the

way my life was developing. And that was something I said, and I said, You know what, I think this digital thing, no one seems to get it and I seem to get it. So a lot of people get it now. That's, that's what led me to where we are.

content out. Like if you could go back right now and start putting content on YouTube, you would do it, knowing how big it's gotten.

something I believed in. I never thought about the idea of recording content and all that. I have missed a lot of stuff like Bitcoin got produced. Bitcoin, just to be funny, not funny, really not funny. Somebody who worked for our company in 2013, or 14 wanted to mine Bitcoin in my company and make us a partner. And I was like, Okay, give it a shot. My partner and I were like, give it a shot. And then we saw the electricity bill and we're like,

cut that shit off. I mean, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have cussed, I'm sorry. Like, we're like, turn that mess off. Like, we just didn't understand it. Now imagine if we'd been mining Bitcoin since 2014. You might not even be talking to me right now. Shoot, I might be on Pluto somewhere. Anyway, so I'm not, I don't have all, I don't, I don't have the crystal ball to all things. I missed a bunch of things in my run.

posts. The problem is a business that's just getting started with their digital journey today, or a business that's been around for a while who's just getting serious about their digital online customer acquisition process. There's a mountain to climb that they can't bear to carry. Here's what I mean. It used to be we could take a client back in 2010, 11, 12, 13,

maybe even up to 14 and 15. No problem, take them from no online presence to first page of Google in a couple of months, no problem and have leads coming through the door no problem. Today, especially in this gig economy, especially with the world of YouTube University and Udemy dot coms and HubSpot academies, and everyone's teaching how to do it. And then now with the globalization, it's been a commoditized conversation

that everybody's doing. So when you want to stand out in the market, you've got to get better at getting the client a result. And so the question that I always operate from and I got taught this in 2002, by one of my early business coaches, and that is what would you do if you only got paid when the client got a result? What would you do if you only got paid when a client got a result? The result is the key phrase, not what would you do when they pay you for the retainer? What would

they do? Right? It's what would they do? What would you do if you only got paid when they, when you got them a result? Well, today, it's not realistic to get them a result with SEO, if they're just, if they're in their early stage of getting started, or if they're transitioning from an offline to an online world. Now, we can do that all day. But the way we do that today is through paid advertising. And that's what I became good at way back in the day before this internet thing

popped off. I was great at direct mail. I was great at classified ads, I was great at direct response copywriting, I was great at saying, Okay, I want to target a first time homebuyer who's renting a property, or renting a house who may not have enough money to

save to put a down payment. So I would propose through this ad, how to buy a house with no money down, or somebody who had a high interest rate credit card or a higher interest rate mortgage loan, because maybe their credit was deemed up when they bought it, I would run campaigns to help people get their credit improved so they could get out of the high interest rate, mortgage financing into prime weight rate financing. So if you don't have that problem, you'd

ignore the message. So I got really specific about target marketing, and target focused buyer persona. So what we do in our work today is very much that. But again, we're trying to go to a place where there's less competition, sometimes even more risk on our part, because we have to take the risk of delivering results at a high level, though we're not trying to be, we know that all a business cares about is the growth of the rep and the growth

of their business. And a return on investment in the money, they don't care about all the stuff, I hate to tell you now one of our clients really care about how SEO works. They don't care about how conversion optimization works, and heat maps, they don't care about this. The call to actions, they don't care about copywriting. They don't care. They don't care about how Google Ads works. They want to, if they give us $1, they want to get 2, 4, 5, 10

back. And as long as that happens, we don't have a problem. So my job and our team's job is to solve that. If you give me $1 and I give you three back, do you want to play that game? And the answer is yes. Great. My job then is to figure out how to make sure we get them three, four or five back because there's cost of goods on whatever they're doing. That's our, that's, that's our game. And so we're not in, we do, we do all the other stuff. Sure. But we're selling the result.

behavior is the same. And I don't have a degree in psychology, but I think I should have an honorary one right now, after this many years in marketing and sales and human interaction. But here's what I've learned is that this applies to any industry because humans do the same thing. Whenever they have a problem that they become aware of, that they decide to solve. And they go through the same decision price, process once they become aware of the solution and the providers who do set solutions.

And they make the same behavioral distinctions before they make the purchase. So I don't care if you sell frickin robotics. Or if you sell frickin fitness memberships. As long as a human is going to purchase it, we can figure out how to map the buyers journey. So here's the lawyers example. Here's the lawyers example. There's a 30 year attorney. He's a family law attorney who handles divorces child custody, the whole nine.

He started years in the business and he's like, Darrell, I want a son, I'm gonna get ready to retire. I'm tired of going to court. I just don't want to go to court no more. He's like, I just can't do it. He goes, I want to only do. I don't want to do child custody fights anymore. I don't want to do, what it was the one, alimony. I don't want

to fight with that stuff. I don't want to go before a judge if I ever have to, again, I only want to work with people who were married, partners who were married, who have agreed that they're going to get divorced. And they've already agreed on the separation of property. And who's going to watch the kids and what the, they call it an uncontested divorce. So when he approached me with this, we're like, I'm like, hmmm that's interesting. So we have to go figure out, does that actually

happen? Because on TV it looks like all divorces are nasty. So I first had to say I don't know if that's possible. So we go research, right? We put our team, we get, we go to the, to the process, Google, Google Ads search. We do all the research. And we're like, oh, there's actually a market for this. And not a lot of the other competitors are paying attention to it. So here's the, here's the punch line. His name is Bruce. Bruce has been with us since 2015. He gets 30, 35 leads a

month. He only charges $400 or $450 for this service, so he's not charging the $2,000 you probably know, or more for the big contested thing. He does get leads that are contested divorce cases and he's partnered up with another guy, but he gets 30 to 35 leads a month and I'm embarrassed. I can't, I don't even want to tell you what he, what he pays for his campaign because it's so low for an attorney because he got archived in to our rates. He don't even

show up to meetings. He has everything he needs, he don't want to dime more than, he don't want 10 more leads than he has. He, you know, he knows what season of the year divorces, the leads drop, the, the leads drop at November and December because no one gets divorced around the holidays. He's been on set it and forget it for the entire time and he got exactly what he needed because we were able to go into the market and find the gap.

tried Google ads. And all I did was spend a bunch of money $5, $10,000 a month and I got a bunch of clicks. But nobody converted. I can go down all of the objections. But here's I guarantee what they didn't do. What they didn't do is they probably didn't have somebody like us working with them. Number one, and here's how we go about it. Let's just say for example, your plumber, plumbing is something every household is going to have a need for at some

point. And I know for a fact from working with plumbers that we've worked with over the years, the, the highest ROI service. And the one that converts to cash the fastest is when a water heater goes out. And maybe that's not 100% of plumbers, but in our market, that was what it was. Okay. So they would normally come to a company like us and say, Yeah, I want to get more water heater repair business when the water

heater goes out. Because they it's an emergency they have to get it it's three, four or $500 transaction, $700. I don't know what they cost now. But okay, so if we go directly into Google ads, and we bid on Water Heater Repair in Las Vegas, or Water Heater Repair in your area of South Carolina, we're going to be in competition at $40 a click, $25 a click, $30 a click and this goes in every industry, personal injury. You know, I've got an IT company right now we're talking to them. $100,

$150 a click. That scares most businesses. Here's what we do. We say is there, is there a sign that the water heater could go out before it goes out? Is there a sign that happens on the water heater before it goes out, that may let the homeowner know that the water heater might go out? And it turned out that there was six, there were six things that could happen to the water heater before it actually officially went out and caused an

emergency. Now I had one of those things happen where the water was spewing all over my garage. That was an emergency. But I had never gotten a check. So it happened to be that if you get in the shower, and you don't have any hot water, you might wonder if there's something wrong with the hot water heater. It turned out that no hot water in the shower is not Water

Heater Repair. But when we bid on no hot water, by the way out of curiosity, Nick, how many times would you take a cold shower on purpose when you were expecting the water to be warm?

right? So your job is to get to the door, like you've got to get to the house. So if the water is not working, and someone's a new homeowner and doesn't have any construction background, they may not have no idea that the water heater is about to go out. So it could obviously be a pilot light or something. So we do that. That's what we do, Nick, we try to find a blue ocean. Have you? Have you ever read the book, The Blue Ocean Strategy?

teach it to my clients. But if we think about the iceberg, an iceberg, if anybody's watched, whatever that was Titanic, science says that 85% of the iceberg is underwater, we don't see it. And what I've learned over the years, is 15% of our customers are even less than that. Sometimes even 5 or 10% are above the water that we can see. And everybody's fighting for them. Everybody's fighting for those, the big keywords, we've always played in the

longtail. So what we do is we say we go to the underneath the surface that nobody can see. And it may even take a little longer to convert those customers. But when you show up on the longtail, no hot water in the shower, and they find that you're a plumber, guess who gets the call? You! Guess how much you paid for that click? $1.80 cents, not 40.

People always want to pop on social media and sell their stuff. And let's say it's a socially prominent type of business like retail, or clothing or fashion or something like that. So gonna use a restaurant. It's more, better if I use a restaurant. So restaurant came to us some years ago, and it was an Asian restaurant, Asian fusion if my memory is correct. And yeah, Asian fusion is good stuff. So we had Asian fusion. And so here's how I would take that if now we're talking about a local

business. And rather than just target anybody who eats at restaurants, rather than target anyone who likes even Asian food, you go a little deeper than that and pull out those menu items. And let's say you pull out sushi, and then you pull out, you pull out the individual items and go two layers deeper and only target people who actually love restaurants, and love sushi, and are in your marketplace. How do you go to for example, I love this one in the professional

services world. Like I use this all the time, like we're entrepreneurs. I will run an ad and use a quote from an entrepreneurial influencer, that my target audience would know. And target my product against their audience using their words to become more aware of who I am, knowing good and well that my client can't afford to work with them anyway.

him. If I believe that my ideal customer followed Gary Vee, I would get one of Gary Vee's famous quotes, something about hustle, something about self awareness, something about the things that he talks about, right? The long game. And I would put some quotes with Gary's and give him credit. It's his quote. And then I would run an ad, to get someone to stop the scroll. And all I want them to do is look at my profile. And guess what I just did, I just invited them into my retargeting

sequence. I don't need them to come opt in on my webinar, I don't need them to come, even check out my page. I just need them to stop, hit like, comment or share or watch a video. And then they're now in my retargeting sequence. So I can start building the know, like, and trust factor. See? So there's the long game of this, there's a short game of it. So I can do it at the Google level, we can do it on the social level, even for kind of esoteric

like stuff. And the question is, is you just gotta be prepared strategically. So I think strategically, I just understand where people are in the buyers journey. And in some cases, it's unaware, some people are unaware that they even have some, like the no hot water in your shower? You're unaware that the water heater could even go out. You're just wondering like damn, water aint hot! Right? But you're gonna go Google, no hot water in the shower. That's it. And then all of a sudden, my plumber

shows up. And they explain why the water heater or why the water may not be hot, it might be related to the water heater. And it happens to be that my plumber's in that area, they get the phone call. So it's buyer psychology, but it's meeting people where they are. And that could be unaware, problem aware, solution aware, product aware or decision. There's five stages of awareness in the buyers journey.

And a lot of people just want to sell people who are ready to buy, I spend time on all five parts of the spectrum, which is why we win, all the time, consistently.

expertise to them. And then they are building trust, they first of all, they get to know you, if they're gonna listen to you, they're gonna either like you or don't like you, maybe in your, the way you deliver, but you're gonna build trust, the minute they trust you, they'll do business with you. It's, it's, and we can do it all without being face to face. That's the beauty of it all, like, the vast majority of my, our clients and the people I work with, they don't work face to face with

these people. This is not, I'm not against face to face, belly to belly, I'm not against that at all, pre or post pandemic, I'm not against it. But if you want leverage and scale, you're gonna have to get this online thing knocked out. And all it is is human psychology, behavioral psychology. And I have no degree in it, trust me. I don't. I just have, one, and I can look at the analytics and see all this stuff

is . . . someone touches a website and doesn't do, we can see exactly what they're doing on the website. So we know exactly how to tweak the website, we know exactly how to tweak the user experience without ever talking to anybody. Sure, user testing, and user calls and surveys are helpful. But you can use digital technology to figure out exactly what people are into and not into. So I don't wanna get too geeky on this stuff but . . .

pain point. I think that's

way we think about it. And that is the best exercise you could do about whether it's, you asked about this earlier, about content that you're going to create for your website, content you're going to create for social media posts on social media, ads you're going to run, assuming they're not at the point of decision and you're trying to get a couple steps ahead of their pain points, your job is to sit down and say to yourself, what is keeping my

client up at night? What is keeping my customer up at night? At 11 o'clock at night? They can't sleep, but they'd like to be asleep. What are they thinking about? And what might they Google to get an answer to? That's one, that's an exercise we take all our clients through. And the goal is to come up with 10, 15 20 different things related to your product or service that could be keeping

your client up at night. And if and, if they're likely to go to Google, what do you think they type in at 11 o'clock at night? They're not typing in plumber in Las Vegas. They're not typing in Lasik eye surgeon office hours. That's not what they're doing. They're typing in, like I remember in Lasik, it's just the practical. After we work through this practically with a doctor, here are the two big things that they were worried about. How would they pay for it? Because

it's $4,000. Not everybody could afford that. So they were wondering if there were financing options? And is it safe? And all of the things that could go wrong with the safety of their eyes if the surgery didn't go, right. So our content mechanism, our content cadence was mostly around safety, then we taught them how to buy it without paying it all in cash. And then we, what is your client, why can't your clients sleep? Get good at that. And it isn't because they're ready to

buy right now. Because it's 11 o'clock, and they'd rather be ssleep. And if they were ready to buy they'd already bought it or they'd be at your office the next day at eight. Why can't they sleep? Get clear on that. And it'll lead you to all the SEO you need. It'll lead you to all the ads, it'll lead to all the content. And it starts there. And once you get that, oh, you almost, it's almost like you're reading people's minds.

an outsourcer. Right? So we work with our clients closely on this. I don't pretend to know all things. I just know how to ask great questions. I don't, I don't know enough. I can't be a lawyer or a doctor or an engineer. On some of these clients. We got some real sophisticated, we got a, we got a company that is paid to hack stuff, like to help make sure people's securities, online security.

clear on that. Remember the statement, what would we do if we only got paid when the client got a result? It wouldn't be hurry up and run an ad campaign. It's get freaking clear on what's going to get a result.

Right? If it takes six weeks, it takes six weeks, but we're not pushing no Google buttons, no ad buttons, we're not creating creatives, we're not building landing pages, we're not writing emails, until we get clear what the hell is going on 11 o'clock at night in the mind of this person so that we can build the right quote unquote funnel now. I don't like the phrase funnel per se, but it's getting inside the mind of the customer and trying to be empathetic to where

they are. That's why I say selling isn't hard because it's just a conversation. And if you meet them at the conversation they're already having, the conversation is do you want to do it with me? Or not? That's it, it's just do you want to do it with me or not? And if you don't, that's cool. It's an option. But it's not a sale. I'm not trying to twist your arm. I've never sold anything any to anybody. I don't think I just asked 'em if they wanted to solve the problem with me. They

already had the problem. My solution can fix it. I just don't know if you want to do it with me.

questions. My website is DarrellEvans.net. And that'll lead to all things, Darrell's agency, coaching, whatever the case is, but my podcast is pretty cool. And Nick, hopefully we can have you on as an entrepreneur. That's what we do over there is interview entrepreneurs, about their journey from inspiration to realization and when life knocks 'em down from breakdown to breakthrough. So thank you so much for having me, Nick. It's been a pleasure. I've, we've

laughed a bunch. I always love these conversations where we just, we can have some fun.