All right, everybody, welcome in to another episode
of Vision Pros Live. I'm your show host, Jackson
Callum, and I'm super excited to have Billy Sammons
in the house today of Live Local Marketing. We're
going to be talking about secrets about... warm
marketing and referrals that actually hurt your
brand and how to fix it. And you heard me correctly.
I'm talking about how referrals and word of mouth
business can hurt your brand. There's so many,
I would say we're 90 % of businesses are falling
into these traps and we've got a warm marketing
referral expert as well in Billy Salmon. So the
unique process of this is we're going to unlock
how to do that appropriately and how to also
ramp up your marketing and really instead of
hiding from cold leads. Learning how the cold
lead opportunity to me, that's your Holy grail.
We'll talk about that later on. So Billy Sammons,
thanks for joining me today. Oh man. Thanks for
having me. I appreciate it. I know it's probably
a lot colder here where we are, where you are,
but you know, I always think to myself that the
cold days help you appreciate those spring, nice
warm days. So you got to appreciate it. Even
if like you still got side and you see snow and
you see crappy better days are on the way. That's
for sure. Totally get it. Well, I'm sweated up
and I'm still cold, but that's what happens when
you're at 10 ,000 plus feet in Ecuador. So I'm
not necessarily on the beach in Ecuador. But
those of you who are hearing in about the marketing
aspect, Billy, you're also a realtor, correct?
Yeah. So the day job that keeps the lights on
and keeps the family fed is real estate. And
I've done it all through these warm marketing
systems and referral systems. you and i will
probably butt heads a little bit on the cold
side i don't do any cold leads and cold calling
but it'll be fun it'll be a fun little discussion
we have about those concepts blind spots man
huge opportunity um you know everybody's got
everybody's got those opportunities my friends
you know lebron james recently in the last couple
years started to play golf um and it is a horrendous
site and he's loving it um you know and so there's
opportunities for all of us to recognize that
our strengths are not necessarily even associated
with our weaknesses Right. And some weaknesses
are worth ignoring. You know, it's like there's
certain things in life I don't need to learn
how I don't really need to learn how to speak
Chinese. Talk to me in 20 years. Maybe I will.
But right now, like as far as I know, it's not
on my horizon and that's OK. But when it comes
to business and business growth, my friends,
visionaries, do yourself a favor. Pull the blinds
by the blinders. What was it called? The blind
spots. Yeah. Yeah. The things you put on horses.
Why am I losing the word? Yeah. Blinders are
good. That's it. The blinders, right? We need
to pull those off. It's because people don't
ride horses anymore. That's why you forgot what
they're called. Time from Texas. I already have
my butt kicked for that one. But to our point
here, right? We've got the opportunity to pull
our blinders off, make sure that we're seen better.
And when it comes to entrepreneurship, Michael
Gerber of the E -Myth always talks about it.
We never want to delegate by abdication, meaning
we always want to understand what we're delegating
and visionaries. don't don't lose sight of marketing
it's too important so billy let's dive in first
let's refine for everybody what is your vision
with live local warm marketing and uh regarding
referrals what's your vision so my vision for
like the audience and so forth is you know i
want to show them there's an easier way like
referrals is a great way to make yourself almost
recession proof, right? Through the ups and the
downs and the ebbs and the flows. If you have
a solid group of people that you work with and
you collaborate with and you have referrals back
and forth and you add value to one another. You
have a great relationship. You have an amazing
business that has potential to make positive
impacts on the community. You're not just selling
things like you're you're doing more for yourself
and your community than than just selling something
or just doing what everybody else is doing. So
I want to be able to show people there's a better
way that referrals is an amazing, amazing, almost
almost recession proof way of building a business.
You can really be proud of, you know. Interesting.
And we will dive into that. In fact, my friends,
we come back from a short little break. We're
going to dive in on why personal touch disappears
as a referral system scale. That's kind of an
easy answer, right? As you automate things and
you lose that personal touch. But we're also
going to dive into how to avoid that and what
things are important to maintain as you systematize
your ability to gain referrals. So we'll be back
on this side. We'll talk about that. The other
thing that we're going to talk about, one of
the next pieces we'll talk about is automating
your outreach. And how doing that without strategic
guidance is going to lead you off of a cliff.
We've got to be very careful about how we automate
our outreach. You can do it, but you have to
be at a position where your company is prepared
for that. And if you're not, you can end up really
hurting your reputation. We're going to talk
about how to protect yourself in the process
and how to make sure your vision gets out there
as widely as possible, but also as safely as
possible to protect both you and your market.
All right. Welcome in to Vision Pros Live with
Jackson Callum. I'm your show host. We'll be
doing interviews for visionary entrepreneurs
and guest leaders who are building fantastic
visions out there. Hey, what's up, everybody?
Welcome into another episode of Vision Pros Live.
I'm your show host, Jackson Callum, founder and
CEO of First Class Business and... We're going
to be talking about the secrets about war marketing
and referrals that actually hurt brands. These
are things that are overlooked and not understood
well enough by business owners and even worse,
the marketers. It is mostly the marketer's fault
when it comes to this reality. And so we want
to talk about the essence and nuance of really
taking great care of people and making sure that
we are treating our referrals with as much respect
as possible. I'll drop a huge hint. i highly
recommend reading the book raving fans by ken
blanchard that is one of the best books you can
read in relation to creating a referral system
not based on the infrastructure of it tools i'm
talking about your mannerisms of how you interact
with people and who you need to support and help
in order to generate truly great referrals we'll
come back to that again before i bring billy
sammons back on who's going to tag team this
effort with me he's got a business called live
local marketing You got to check out LiveLocalWarmMarketing
.com to see what he's up to. If you're in the
realtor space, it would definitely be worth talking
to him because he's an active realtor as well,
in addition to helping people with marketing.
And beyond that, he's got a personality that
when I have people who want to come on the show
and talk about marketing. I am very difficult
with them. I have a hard time allowing marketers
to come on here because most of them, they're
too quick to try to hype the world into something
rather than having a depth and genuine character
about them and authenticity about why their strategies
of work and how to perceive that and how to make
changes and how to play nice on a team. A lot
of them really struggle with that. Billy doesn't.
I was like, yeah, I got to bring him on and help
people with this process of marketing and referrals
and cold versus warm leads, et cetera. So we're
going to dive more into that. Before I do, I
want to give you a few more awesome, awesome
value points that are important to my life. One
is Journey to Wellness. Journey to Wellness is
run by Dr. Shannon and Dr. Justin Pierce. And
I've sent three family members or friends to
them over the last eight years. And all of them
had illnesses that they didn't know what to do
and they couldn't find a doctor to help. If you
know someone in your life that is in a situation
like that, I highly recommend checking out Journey
to Wellness and what they're up to. In fact,
today, Shannon's hosting a webinar on what she
calls the six phases of dot, dot, dot. I'm going
to leave it right there, but those six phases,
again, if you've got somebody who has a challenge,
then with chronic fatigue, brain fog, anxiety,
specifically women. She's been through some serious
health conditions herself, which is why she also
had to figure this out in order to bless her
own family. So let's move on to Practice Makes
Permanent with Jennifer Reed. Practice Makes
Permanent is an entity that helps facilitate
team building opportunities and establishing
culture in your brand. And I see so many brands
as well. overlooking this reality i mean i think
we all know that we have a culture that we belong
to right and that culture is valuable and important
but when we leave it loosely defined we have
loose results as well and that's not necessarily
a good thing and our teams end up fragmenting
and the systems we have don't end up getting
put into place correctly because bureaucracy
slips in or people start to quite quit and move
away from things it is super important to have
leaders around you that help you on both your
leadership and on your cultural development.
Culture is ultimately, in my opinion, what allows
people to want to belong. And when people want
to belong, they don't leave. And when they don't
leave and they're getting better because of your
culture and your culture development, well, again,
that's going to rub off and pay off for your
prospects and your clients. So check out what
Jennifer Reed's up to. When you talk to her,
ask her about her personal story. And I would
do the same thing with any other culture expert
that you talk to or leadership expert. What is
their personal story associated with it? And
in Jennifer's case, bring a tissue box. Those
people who have stories that move you, they're
the ones who are going to dive into the deepest
corners of figuring out how to help the most.
big fan of what jennifer reads up to then there's
a water project we're not affiliated with the
water project but we do support it every month
and uh it's an it's an opportunity to help people
get access to one of the resources that i've
taken for granted my entire life i've never been
thirsty in my entire life my friends um and when
i found out there's millions of people who don't
even have access to clean drinking water and
that there's a actual cause like the water project
where i can pick which which tribe or which village
I want to help. And I get to see the outcome
of whatever I pick. I can, you can spend $10
on that. My real request for you though, is instead
of just jumping in and paying a little bit, even
if you don't have the money, talk about this
with friends or family, you know, over lunch
or over dinner, give them an opportunity to find
out about it and show them what this project
is about. You never know how far the ripple effect
of good will go just by talking about opportunities
like this. And the picture that you're going
to see next, well, it reminds me of my kids celebrating
Christmas day. But these are kids celebrating
clean water. That's the type of effect you can
have. This has a generational impact on people
all throughout the world. There are millions
of people who need this. Let's pull together
and do what we can to help out with that. And
without further ado, we're going to go back to
helping each one of you on your marketing, on
your referrals and how to clean those systems
up. Hopefully you will learn probably a dozen
to a baker's dozen. different realities that
you can implement in your brands and the brands
that you work with. And also discuss with your
colleagues about, wow, are we really getting
this right? Or are we starting to drill our business
into a hole because of the way that we're handling
our referrals and our warm marketing? So without
further ado, Billy Sammons, welcome back to Vision
Pros Live. Sir, thank you for welcoming me back.
That was awesome. Absolutely. So diving in hot
and heavy on this topic, why the personal touch
disappears as a referral system scale. I'll hit
first on this one and then we can talk about
how to clean it up. I am a big fan of Russell
Brunson. And I hate ClickFunnels. I'm just going
to say both right together. And way to go, John
Lee Dumas. He's a ClickFunnels referral affiliate.
And the guy makes probably between $1 ,000 and
$3 ,000 a month maximum. This guy has millions
of followers, yet he's only able to drive $1
,000 to $3 ,000. I think there's so many young
kids, and I guess there's probably a bunch of
adults too, that drive the JV affiliate marketing
systems forward, They gain almost no money. And
what bothers me about this and what hurts is
it's like getting a cereal box that says, hey,
if you share this cereal with everybody, we're
going to pay you a ton of money. And nobody eats
the cereal. Nobody cares about what it is. They're
just out there pushing it. Just look at my cool
glasses. Look at the plane I don't own that I'm
flying on. Look at the car that's not actually
mine. There's all this hype driven around this
process of. referrals, right? And getting your
friends or your family or others to buy into
this stuff, guys, it doesn't work. So those of
you who heard that and are offended, sorry. Those
of you who are not offended, but doing that,
stop. You're not going to make more money than
John Lee Dumas doing it. You're not. He's a multi
-millionaire with millions of followers and the
top 20 podcasts in the world. Like you're not
going to have that type of effect. So let me
get out of that now and let's go back to, okay.
So if we're going to do referral marketing and
we're going to uh maintain a personal touch aspect
to this let's hear from billy billy what are
some ways that what are some things that people
can do to protect themselves from falling into
the category i just talked about and also have
an effective referral marketing system and plan
i i think it comes back to are you adding value
so the system you just talked about added value
to nobody you know it's just empty calories like
you're just drinking coca -cola it doesn't do
anything for anybody you need to take a stop
back and like Am I adding value to the people
that are in my referrals or in my systems, in
my CRM, in my contact leads? And if you're not
adding value, if you're not doing something that's
going to benefit them, then it's not going to
work. Like they don't care. But I'm giving them
a system. I'm giving them the entire system with
all sorts of systems and systems, Billy. Come
on. Yeah, no. How do you get past seeing that?
How do you evaluate if what you're giving is
valuable? You ask them. Like, what do you need?
What are you looking for? Ask them what their
pain points are. Like, don't overcomplicate this
thing. Most of the entrepreneurs that I bump
into, that's one of the first things. Like, what
do you need? What are you looking for? How can
I help you? And they'll say, oh, marketing, or
I need this, or I need to know this person. Oh,
you need ClickFunnels, right? So that's what
happens, right? They dive right in. So in order
to prevent that, right? I love what you said.
And audience, I'm really driving this home for
those of you who aren't doing this. If you don't
ask, tell me more about that. If you don't ask,
tell me more about that and dive into the depth.
You're just selling. That is all you're doing
is selling. Even if you think you're helping,
all you're doing is selling something you don't
understand. So keep going, Billy. Or let's build
on that. Or if you're like, hey, what do you
need? And then barely listen and then turn around
and try to sell your product to them without
actually doing the thing that they're asking
you to do. I see that all the time. And I'm sure
you do too. Like you go out there and you're
like, oh, I need to meet these people. All right,
cool. I'll introduce you. And then, all right,
now here's my product. Buy it. You know, the
get the ask right away. You can't do an ask right
away. You've got to give and you got to give
and you got to give. And then you sit back and
wait patiently. You'll get your time. Just sit
back. The things that you want will come to you.
Just continue to give. Do the right thing. Help
other people with their pain points. As the saying
goes, if you help enough people get what they
want, in return, you will eventually get what
you need to. Absolutely. Talk to me about your
referral system. When you set up a referral system
for others or the type of referral system that
you have for yourself, sometimes that system
is, I'm going to wake up and I'm going to call
three people and say thank you. I'm not actually
talking about... automated tech things i'm talking
about uh processes and atomic habits ultimately
but billy on your side what does your referral
system look like or what what do you build for
somebody else You know, so I do mine very localized
and very specific. So I know all the local business
owners in my community. And what I have done
is I've gone out and I've done video commercial
for them. It's something they need. It's all
of their pain points. Every single time I talk
to them, they're like, we need more people. We
need more attention. I don't have enough time
to do all my marketing. I'm like, cool. I'm going
to go out there. I'm going to do a quick video.
It's so easy because you just do interview style.
Three to five minutes. What are we doing here?
You know, what kind of thing are we selling?
How long have you been doing this? Super simple.
And then once you give them what they want, you
know, you give them the content. You know, you
make it in clips. You put it in an email. You
start bringing your audience to them and give
them the thing they want, which is attention.
And you really want to see them succeed. And
so once you gain that trust, which you've deserved,
and it's genuinely like I really want to see
them do well, then you create a referral partner
from that. You know, you've given them something
they need. You didn't ask for anything in return.
It's something that can help them succeed. And
I don't ask for anything in return right away.
Just don't do it. And then eventually the referrals
are coming your way. Once I know 30, 40 business
owners in my community, the real estate works
itself out. You know, I get the referrals. I
get the marketing. I get all the stuff. It happens.
And so I teach them a very specific give. Cause
I've been in so many meetings and I've been in
so many seminars and so many, all this stuff
where the person standing in front of you is
like, Hey, make sure you give. And I always sit
in my chair thinking with my notepad and my pen
and thinking, what, what the hell do I have to
give somebody? Like, what do I have? And so once
I figured out that the video for me or the podcast
for you is the give, then you can, you have something
solid. I've got something I can give anybody.
I can go into any shop, any store. I can do a
quick video. I can tell them my audience all
about them and I've given value. And so that's
the next step that I've taken from all the other
referral gurus is I created the, what I'm going
to give, you know? Yes. Huge. That's, I mean,
it's legendary and it aligns with one of my best
friends who. My best man, actually, for my wedding.
He's retired already. He's in his 40s. And he
ran BNI. He's the president for BNI. And he received
the most referrals out of those groups. Every
single month, he'd receive the most referrals.
Why? Because he gave the most referrals. That's
exactly. It was a reciprocation process. He knew
how to give. And so, like Gary Vaynerchuk says,
give, give, give. Or jab, jab, jab, right hook.
I almost called it right hook, give, give, give.
That whole book. The same idea. Same. Is on continuing
to give, is making sure that you give. And you
came up with something that anybody can do. Anybody
can go and do a video. I'm not saying it's easy.
I'm not saying that getting on camera isn't uncomfortable
when you first start. But if we want to have
results. that are beyond and above what comfortable
people do. We've got to do uncomfortable things.
And there's AI to help you on the process nowadays.
There's coaches out there can help. Everybody's
got a decent camera on their phone. And the more
raw and real your content, the more likely it's
going to resonate with an audience anyway. And
while some business owners won't appreciate that.
others will and so you just keep moving and finding
people to serve so we've talked about the personal
touch disappearing as referral system scale and
that is a truth if you're going to scale a system
that's going to happen so for the bigger brands
out there the ones that are looking to scale
on this i want to go back to airbnb and uber
airbnb started this process from what i know
And I remember the week that it came out because
I was an Airbnb user and it was give $25 gift
cards to your friends and you get a $25 gift
card in return. I was like, that is awesome.
I was like, they're rewarding me, but they're
also allowing me to give. And it came with a
little like simple CRM system that showed me
who I had sent things to, who had opened it.
I had never seen something like that at the time.
And they even did a blog post on how to create
something like that yourself. And then systems
like. uh viral loops came out a few years later
um there's there's other says you go viral soup
viral loops on google versus and find out what
other systems exist um that could potentially
help you do the same but the the key behind that
is if you're going to be if you're going to make
it impersonal make sure that what you're providing
is of extreme value to both sides of those audiences
and recognize that whatever you're giving i mean
if i'm giving $25 each, that's $50. If that's
less than my lifetime value of my customers,
and I'm going to get that return back. within
a three month to six month period. And in fact,
it's actually instant in Airbnb because they
were booking reservations and paying on the spot.
It's like, why would you not create something
like that? It doesn't matter if you're making
less money on something. If you're rewarding
the people, we're going to bring people back
again and again and again, and your revenues
and compounded stack from there. So that is one
type of system that can be implemented for scaling
your referrals. And you don't have to lose the
personal touch. I recommend keeping up with both.
So now automated outreach without strategic guidance,
the hidden brand risk that exists here. My friends,
outreach is one of those things that I see crippling,
crushing, destroying reputations all throughout
the internet. Thank goodness LinkedIn is finally
cracking down on it and making sure that people
can't do it as much because, and you can blame
LinkedIn about that, but if they're shutting
your messaging down, it's because your messaging
sucks. OK, like that's just that's just all there
is to it. Well, I'm getting an eight percent
conversion rate compared to those who are getting
the two percent. That's still not good. It's
still not something that's that the platform
is intended for, built for. And it's it's not
good to stay ignorant when you could be creating
systems that perform way better. And if you're
not in a position to where you can go on vacation
anytime you want. And it's probably a good idea
to open yours up and say, well, wait a second.
What can I do better to improve my marketing
so that my automated outreach isn't making my
warm audience continue to unfollow me and isn't
being completely refuted or ignored by cold audiences?
So, Billy, let's talk about outreach and automation.
And that's kind of the beauty of the system I
have in place. When you do go out to a local
business and you make a video. everybody in their
community is going to see what's going on. They
want to see what food truck opened up. They want
to see who just did this or they want to meet
the owners. Like that's what separates our community
from like a Walmart. You know what I mean? Like
they get to actually go in there and talk to
the owner. And so my open rates and my emails
are like 57, 60%. Because everybody wants to
meet the owner. They want to see what's going
on. And you just got to shorten these things
up. They're three to five minutes. But I always
have to add value to the audience and ask myself,
like, would I watch this or would I open this
email and get anything out of it? Because if
I'm not going to get anything out of it, my audience
is not getting any out of it. Right. So I'm helping
that business owner by making these little bits
of content. And I'm helping my audience because
I'm introducing them to somebody in their community
that they should know. And so my open rates are
great. And my people are like, yeah, I love your
emails. You know, I keep them super short. I
add value all the time. I'm not selling anything.
I'll do the, you referenced Gary V. I do a lot
more jabbing than hooking. So I'll do a hook
like every once in a while. I'll throw a little
bit of real estate stuff in there. But honestly,
I just want everybody to know what's going on
in their own community. I want them to meet some
of the owners of some of the businesses they
frequent. And I want them to feel more comfortable
going into that business than a box store because
box stores are everywhere. Who cares? They'll
be fine. We need to help our local business owners
and people in our community who give our communities
identity. That's who I want to support. Yep.
That's awesome. It's a noble cause. And I've
tried to do that at scale with a local agency
in San Antonio. And it was hard. It was very
hard to have patience with the entrepreneurs
who weren't as consistent and as reliable. And
I was other stores. And so I appreciate your
your compassion and thought process on that.
And, you know, maybe maybe it's not fair of me
to judge small business owners everywhere related
to that. That's not the goal or point. We've
got to do our best to be consistent and reliable.
We've got to be able to honor the people in our
lives that do things like Billy does. You know,
if Billy's going in and doing a commercial for
somebody and, you know, they're not sending referrals
or they're not. thanking him and proactively
saying, you know what, this, I can't afford what
this probably is worth, but here's something,
you know, for what you did for us, right? Those
are opportunities. And so, Bill, you don't have
to speak to, I'm not even going to let you speak
to any particular business owner on that. That
way we don't shame anybody because this is my
own thought process. But why do I mention it?
Because I do believe that there is a higher power,
my friends, that rewards us or holds us back
based on. are we diving in and valuing and honoring
the people who are actually helping us or are
we just taking it and running with it um you
know we we have such an opportunity to give back
on these opportunities so um as we as we look
at automating the outreach i'll tell a little
story about this that relates to all of you again
back to those messages on linkedin 90 of the
messages that i receive on linkedin are awful
um and there's some type of automation and it's
easy to see that it's automated But it's also
easy to see that it's automated in ways that
are kind of disingenuous. Like, I see we have
lots of connections on here. You really not think
that most people are using this exact same message?
Like, what are you doing? Shut that crap down.
So right now, my messaging is not automated.
We've automated in the past. We don't have a
need for automated messaging right now. We're
at a scale situation where we're experiencing
growing pains. And we don't need less people
coming in. But we need to spend more intentional
time on the people who are coming in because
we happen to be getting the right people coming
to the door regularly. When I was at another
company, we had a one in five, one out of five
people who responded were interested in meeting
with us. And the response rate was in your typical
like 20 to 30 percent. It was pretty high. But
I went in and ran a deep dive analysis because.
there was something off. Like I could just, I
didn't feel right. And out of those one in five
responses, the other four freaking hated this
company. They were pissed about this messaging.
And so the owner's justification was like, yeah,
but it's leading to, you know, one, you just
got to ignore those people. And haters are going
to hate, find the ones who we can actually help.
But the irony is the ones who were saying that
they wanted to meet, it was like a, sure, let's
do it. What's the catch? It was all speculative
or like half -baked yeses, which meant that even
if he did have the sales superpowers to convince
these people to buy, guess who hated him a month
later? Those same people. And so that often happens
with these cold email marketing outreaches, these
LinkedIn automations. So we ended up launching
a new platform, a new automation for our brand
when we launched First Class Business. One of
our automated messages was... It was targeting
leaders and then saying, hey, you seem like a
caring leader and we'd love to have you on our
show, Vision Pros Live. Would you be interested
in seeing the trailer? No link, a complete, we
had to get their buy -in before we actually send
the link so we wouldn't get punished for that.
And yeah, we had like an 80 % response rate and
everybody was excited except for the few that
would, a few would say sure, but nobody was mad.
One lady even responded, my friends, and she
said, Oh, my gosh, I'd love to. But I'm at Disney
World right now. You know, can we talk later
about this? And I'm like, did I literally just
get a lady in Disney World who's supposed to
be focused on those rides to respond to my LinkedIn
message? That's nuts. That's crazy levels of
attraction. Right. And so before we did that,
we had a very similar campaign and I didn't have
a podcast. And it was, hey, we're looking for
feedback for a study regarding leadership and
what's going on with the quiet quitting culture.
Would you be willing to comment on that for the
study we're putting together? Once again, it
was very, very helpful for getting people to
talk to us and engage with us. I didn't know
if I wanted to sell them or not. I didn't know
them. I didn't have a relationship. That's the
whole point of if you're going to automate a
message, it is not to sell out the gate. It is
typically to intrigue, attract, and inspire,
which are principles that are overlooked in the
world of business in favor of invite, offer,
and support. I have no business inviting, offering,
and supporting people who don't know they want
that from me. I first got to start with healthy
boundaries. So those are some elements regarding
this. Again, Billy, on your side, automated outreach
and getting strategic guidance on this. What
are your thoughts? Trying to get that. Yeah,
that's you still have that mild value. They want
to be heard. Right. So you're at least reaching
out and you're getting their insights and you're
kind of just tapping them. Excuse me. You know,
and if you get the response or if you get some
insights, then I wouldn't even say that's cold.
I think that's a lukewarm because they're responding
and they're reaching out to you. They're not
going to like you said before, coldly people
right away are like they're going to they have
no dedication to you. They've got no commitment
to you. What you were doing is kind of a. handoff
like a lukewarm handoff basically right so are
you interested in this kind of get some information
from you about this and you got them to raise
their hand and say listen i want to partake i
want you know to to give to you i want to have
a say in what's going on here so that's an interesting
way of doing it and i might tweak some of what
i'm doing based on some of those insights and
some of those strategies you're using that's
good I love it. Well, don't click the button
on my mouse that I clicked. That kicked me out
of my own pocket. I saw that. I'm like, I got
big all of a sudden. I must be saying something
good. You are saying something good and very
important. Well, thank you for validating what
we're up to. We haven't even touched cold yet.
We're still on the warm aspect. That's right.
That's right. It is very important. Like if we're
going to reach a cold audience and have a good
effect, we've got to understand. the elements
of irresistible marketing and creating irresistible
offers that are also balanced with what I called
healthy boundaries, my friends. When you can
learn to combine those two things, you can create
systems that are just phenomenal. And so we'll
get to that in a little bit. But do you have
any further thoughts, Billy? I got cut out a
little bit. I didn't get to hear your wisdom.
So I have to go back and listen to that. But
any other thoughts on creating the automation
for outreach and strategic guidance when you
set that up? No, I don't think I have anything
further. I think you and I touched on most of
it. Be sure you're still adding value because
even when you reached out to those people, you're
adding value. You're like, hey, listen, we're
doing a seminar. We're doing a thing. I need
your feedback. Like you're still adding value.
You're taking their information. You're making
them feel validated. You know, you're getting
their inputs and insights. You're not just selling
something. So if you're just, it's all warm,
lukewarm. you know even you're cold even when
you say you're doing cold you're not really doing
cold cold you're doing like lukewarm you're not
really the traditional cold man you're you have
a little cheat code to it because when i think
of cold i think of and we'll probably get to
this i think if you've got a list of people and
you start calling people on their way to work
that's cold cold you don't know them you're not
yeah that's painful that's rough that's not what
you're doing now It can be very valuable, though.
And so as somebody who knocked doors for two
years in Uruguay, I learned to find the love
for it. And it can kind of be a little bit masochistic,
too, though, because it can be a bit painful.
Yeah, there's that. You have to have a high tolerance
for pain to do it. But that said, you can uncover
some really, really important. knowledge about
an industry that usually your warm audience won't
share with you because they don't want to hurt
you um you know when they're warm and so ruinous
empathy comes into play in those realities um
all right so we were we're talking about these
automated systems and my friends you can use
ai to help bolster and jumpstart these processes
And it can absolutely hurt you in the process
too. So be aware. It's a very good yes, man.
The AIs right now, they're at a level at best
of junior strategists. I'm using Claude and it
is crushing it at a junior strategist level.
It makes so many mistakes. And it does so many
things that if you don't understand marketing,
you haven't spent 10 years in it, it's going
to accidentally convince you to do things that
are just stupid. And in most cases, AI acts more
like an intern. And so you're not actually working
with an expert who knows how to create safe bridges
for your brand. And that's really what marketing
is. It's about building safe bridges to get people
from where they are to where they want to go
and back or to their next location super safely.
We need to do that for our people. So there's
no more excuses, business owners. If you want
to figure out how to hire well, learn Ask AI.
What's the difference in transformational questions
and transactional questions? And if you say,
I already know that now you don't, because the
next thing you're going to go ask somebody like
Billy is how much do you cost, which is a transactional
question. We've got to learn how to honor professionals
better than that. In addition to learning that
process, step number two for creating the automated
systems, ask it, you know, what, what can you
do for growth, blah, blah, blah, related to warm
marketing referrals and say, and do me a favor.
Do some deep research online. You don't have
to do deep research mode. Just tell it. Do some
deep research. Find actual case studies, third
party verified case studies that the solution
you're going to propose to me actually works.
It will still lie sometimes, by the way. So,
again, that's why you have to don't do this by
yourself. But if you're going to start and then
ask it, OK, now for creating said systems, you
know, I need to operate on a minimal budget,
but I don't want to dishonor the people I'm working
with. What does the mid -tier market value look
like for implementing such a system over what
period of time? You can do all of this research
upfront these days. You do not have to go in
blind to your marketing meetings and your leadership
meetings and your hiring meetings. Please stop
doing it. It's disgusting. It's not helpful.
It doesn't make you look good as a business owner.
It doesn't make you look like a good leader.
Why? Because you're not if you're doing that.
So do your research up front. It only takes five
to 10 minutes, maybe 30 if you're being super
diligent about it. And you can get so much context
around the value that you might be able to create.
And then ask it. Build a scope of work for this.
Break it down. It's task by task, hour by hour.
team member by team member who needs involved
in order to launch this whole process. I'm promising
you AI will get that somewhere between 60 % and
90 % right. And if you just ask it after that,
is there anything you forgot? It will actually
fill in most of those gaps too, but you will
still have pivotal gaps. You do not want a bridge
that has a break in it. That does not work. You
need a full bridge. So secrets about warm marketing
referrals that actually hurt your brand. Most
people aren't doing this when they're building
their brands. They're not doing this level of
research. So that's more on how to do the automation
side of it and how to prepare for that and having
your team members help. And that's cool too,
but always refer back to an expert. And then
when the brands say we grow from referrals, that's
a signal for your market that I'm going to reinterpret
that. We can't attract strangers to our business.
That's what I hear when I hear somebody say that.
And I know it's true because if you're only growing
based on referrals, it's because you probably
don't have a website that makes a lot of sense.
You probably don't have a marketing strategy
that's actually reaching people who could be
in need of what you have. And you might've tried
some of that, but you got burned out by the amount
of unqualified people who came through and wasted
your time. And you wasted their time too, by
the way. It's all about the process of truly
pre -qualifying and helping people realize they're
in the right place for the right reason at the
right time. That's easier said than done. But
it's important to get that done in order to really
expand what we're doing. Because most people
I know that almost everybody I know that tells
me we grow solely based on referrals. You're
struggling. You have major debts. You have team
members who are underpaid. You are underpaid.
Your spouse is probably not happy. And there's
all sorts of other challenges going on. But you
can't admit any of that because if you show anything
but. You're a strong face in the market. You're
worried that nobody's going to buy from you.
And you might actually be right about that. But
unfortunately, now you're getting inauthentic
people to buy from you. So there's a huge opportunity
here. Don't hide behind your, we get referrals
shield, right? Be proud of your referrals, but
also be open to systems that help you scale responsibly.
Really, I hit pretty hard on that one. What are
your thoughts? I have an asterisk, right? Because
since I'm in the world of real estate, my time
is not infinite. I've got finite time where I
can show houses and do all those different things.
So when I run my referral based business in real
estate is because I only have finite number of
hours per day. So I just do everything through
referral because I'm not an online business where
I can sell 24 hours a day in that regards. So
that's the asterisk. I think that's kind of the,
not who your target audience was when you said
that just now, the people that are like working
10 hour days. Oh no, I'm talking to all of them.
And then, so, so in that regard, I have just
referrals because I only want 10, 15, 20 people
a year, but if I, in my marketing side, let me
ask you an unfair question though, Billy, can
you afford to buy 20 billboards in your city?
I know because that wouldn't work, but have you
ever done it? No. how about we'll change it to
google ads we'll change from signs to google
ads do i have yeah can you spend a hundred thousand
dollars a month on google ads billy yes you know
do you have a hundred thousand dollars my point
is it's it's hard to compare and look at what
else is out there if we don't have those budgets
look i don't have a hundred million dollar budget
for first class business or vision pros live
um you know we're startup too and so i'm not
hiding from it i want i want those leaders who
are listening to understand know that while i
know the value of cold audiences and building
them you have to have a certain amount of money
in order to invest in that in order to scale
it properly. So I'm not, I'm not saying Billy's
wrong in what he's doing. I'm also not saying,
well, Billy, just go buy a bunch of billboards
as much as continuing where you're going with
it. And let's explore the other alternatives
as well. That makes sense. No, I agree with you.
Like I should be able to. And I do. You end up
attracting people that are cold just based on
your referrals. And I do all the local marketing
stuff and I do like the outreach. And so people
see what you're doing. And because I'm helping
the community and I'm out there doing videos
and helping my local business owners, I gain
trust from people that don't know me. Right.
Because you're doing these kind deeds and you're
doing things like, for example, I ended up somehow
I got in charge of a STEM program in our community.
which basically are students who are going to
be engineers and do things like that. I got asked
to run the food truck festival to raise money
for this program for the kids that are going
from states to nationals because they're like,
we see you out there. You're doing all this stuff
for the community. Can you help us run this?
My kids aren't even in this program. Like I haven't
been in that sphere for a while, but because
you're out there and you're doing these things
and you gain trust and you know all the different
people that they trust, like you just, you gravitate,
people gravitate to you. because you're doing
things that are good for the community. You're
doing all this positive impact. And you end up
putting yourself in positions you would have
never had if you were paying for Google ads.
You're meeting people you never would have met
just by putting up billboards. It's just a different
feel. It's a different vibe. So I do get it,
but I get it in a different means by knowing
the different people. So it's kind of an interesting...
Yeah. Our takes are different. Same, but different.
Well, it's, it's super. Well, so I'm, I'm an,
I'm an and guy. I'm an abundance guy. Be out
in the community, do the wonderful things. One,
it also fulfills, fulfills our human need that
almost no human fulfills in life to contribute
and to be significant as well. So you have an
awesome opportunity to get into that. And. You
don't have to say, well, I'm doing this so I
can't or I'm doing this, but I won't. Right.
There's there's that and aspect of it. So if
you were to if you were to today, visionary,
if you were to purchase a billboard, I would
I would go, oh, my gosh, they didn't bother consulting
with the extra. Right. If you don't have the
landing page and you have the testimonials, you
don't have the case studies, you don't have the
download process. You don't have the automated
workflow for the nurturing systems. You don't
have the frequently asked questions answered.
I'm giving you, by the way, the entire recipe.
for how to make sure that you position yourself
well, because if you don't build the bridge,
if you just go for the source or the medium,
you're likely going to fail. And so don't go
the cold route without understanding how to build
it out. So that's why I said, Billy, he shouldn't
be doing the billboards thing or going to the
ads thing until he has those elements in place
too. And all of us have the ability to reverse
engineer the forecast for this type of traction.
And so we really need to be responsible. Play
Monopoly before you go out and try to be the
king of real estate. Learn the arts of what to
do with it. So let's move to the next subject,
which is that warm marketing versus cold audience
strategy. And we're going to talk a little bit
about are our competitors competitors or are
they possible companions? Most of that has to
do with how we show up in the market. You're
going to find dog eat dog people out there. but
there are most people are not dog eat dog in
most societies that i've lived in and so if you
can go out and you can be that champion of of
cause to include people and to create value with
others you can create strategic alliances and
allies that lead to referrals as well so um anything
anything specific any specific secrets you want
to reveal about warm marketing billy before i
talk about cold Ooh, any secrets about war marketing?
Yeah, anything that visionaries might be overlooking
and should dive in and ask you or AI about? I
think, honestly, I think what you won't get from
AI and the secret kind of is it takes patience,
but you're not building it to sell something
right away. You're building it because I want
a career. I want a business. 15 years from now,
10 years from now, 20 years from now. And so
you can't expect this to turn around and do sales
right away. But in five years, you're going to
look back and be like, I'm glad I started this.
Then my career is ingrained. When I talk to entrepreneurs,
I'm like, all right, so look in your office.
Think about the most senior person in your office.
Is that senior person who wins all the awards
and sells all? Are they sitting back there making
400 cold calls every single day? Probably not.
They're probably sitting in the back of the office
and referrals come to them and they know everybody.
And it probably all comes to them because they
put the time in to know everybody. And wouldn't
we want our business to be more like that where
we're like, you know what, I'm going to show
up today and make some calls. I know some people.
I have referral partners. I've got friends who
grab some coffee in my business runs more of
a more naturally, more, more seamlessly than,
you know, making 400 cold calls every single
day. I just think that's a painful way to do
it, you know, and I just. I think the secret
is patience. That's the patience, you know? I
love it. Patience is one of our core pillars,
our virtues at First Class Business. Patience
and persistence are two of the pillars that go
hand in hand, my friends. They're not enemies
of each other. They work well together. So I
love that. I agree with it completely. I do believe
there's an opportunity to explore and expound
upon both opportunities. So to one of Billy's
points, I had a counterpart in sales when I was
at Restaurant Connect, and he had close to a
90 % close ratio. He could close almost anybody.
He could sell ice to Eskimos. And I got beat
up a lot because I had a 60 % or so close ratio,
which should have been pretty good, but man.
My psyche was off because everybody's like, Jackson,
why don't you sell as well as he does? I'm like,
I don't know. I was like, I can't sell people.
I need it to be inception. I need them to come
to their own conclusion about what they wanted.
And sure enough, three years later, I had 100
% retention rate with all of our clients still
to that day. Nobody had canceled. And he had
a 50 % retention rate. I was going to ask that.
The problem with that was we wished his 50 %
that stayed would leave because they were all
pissed off. And how he had oversold them. They
were all mad that, oh, he told me this was going
to be here. He told me this is going to happen.
This is coming and it hasn't happened. And it's
been six months. I mean, it was such a nightmare
to work with these customers who unfortunately
had been coerced into using a system rather than
being shown how to understand and really appreciate
what it was they were doing for themselves. So,
Billy, you're spot on about the ability to build
these relationships long term. My friends, I
want to unlock some of the secrets of cold audience
targeting and cold audience attraction so that
you can also enhance your warm audience's reception
of your messages. So one of the greatest systems
you can use for this is Facebook ads. You can
run a Facebook ad at a dollar per day. Now, it's
going to take you a while to get true. bottom
of the funnel results. In other words, to get
returns on that, it's not going to be likely,
but you can easily test the value of your messaging
doing this because it's going to show that message
to hundreds of people. So I can either go out
to my warm audience with my new idea. Oh, I'm
going to talk about why real estate in San Antonio
is so important to people, right? That's my message.
Obviously, it's not a good message, my friends.
You got to do better than that, right? That's
my point. I can go out to my warm audience and
I can bother them with that like they're lab
rats. I can treat them all like lab rats, my
little bitty message. Or I can put that same
ad on Facebook and I can leave it broad targeting
because the algorithm is smart enough to put
that ad in front of people who are going to care
about it. And the thing is, it's such a bad ad,
my friends. This is such a great example that
nobody's going to like it. People comment on
it, they're going to make fun of it. They're
not going to share it. And there's a little button
on there that says, please show me fewer ads
like this. Because Facebook doesn't want to show
you crappy ads. It wants to show you what you
want to see. So you stay on their platform. And
so Mark Zuckerberg is going to be quietly whispering
to you, Jackson, please turn that ad off. It's
awful. Jackson, we don't want it. And he's going
to raise the cost on it. And what happens is
most small business owners blame Facebook. And
they say, well, Facebook doesn't want to show
my business. No, your business sucks. Your ad
was awful. And so instead now. I didn't bother
my warm market. I put this out to a cold audience
and I spent a couple bucks and within a matter
of $15, I'd probably know if that ad is going
to do something good or not. And how do I know
if it's going to do good? The opposite. If I
put an ad out there, Realtors, it says, find
out your maximum home value. Thank you, Matt
O 'Neill, Charleston, South Carolina, one of
the best Realtors in the world. If I put that
type of ad out there and I get likes and I get
comments and I get some shares on it. Facebook
lowers the cost of the ad because it knows that,
wow, people are actually digging this. And in
addition to that, I know that people are resonating
with that. If you can get people who are supposed
to hate what you say in business, people say
they hate ads. They don't hate ads. They hate
crappy ads. But if people actually like your
ad who don't know you, that same message is going
to resonate that much more with your warm market.
So if you're going to be cheap. And you're going
to avoid working with experts, at least spend
a minimum amount of money checking your vision,
your offer, your invitation against a cold audience
that doesn't hurt your reputation with your warm
audience. And then you can work on learning how
to scale the rest of that because you can crush
it. And like at NordicTrack, they got a 32 to
one return on their ad spend. That's $32 for
every dollar they spent, 15 ,000 spent. $430
,000 in sales within a two week period on a cold
advertisement. Like it's so important that we
know how to leverage these systems and use them
for, for growing our visions. So moving to the,
well, I've got an ad. Let's hit it. You love
the word. You love an ad. And I have an, and
so I, an, and to the Facebook marketing, what
we've done when we've gotten great results from,
and it's grown our audience really quickly as
we do a local business gift card giveaway every
week. And we do that. We tag the business. But
then you can still get the information you want.
Right. So let's say you have the business featured
and you want your audience to answer a certain
question in order to be entered into that gift
card. You put that in there and you get tons
of feedback. You get all kinds of feedback. And
what you want to do is, hey, answer this question
so I can get feedback and then tag a friend so
that both of you can go. to the restaurant together
or whatever they'll start tagging their friends
no problem like people love themselves some gift
cards you're helping that business out you're
collecting information much faster than you would
with an ad and it's your own audience so i'm
getting a very targeted group of people not just
a spray and pray So that has worked out for us
really well. And we've doubled, tripled our audience
just by doing a gift card giveaway every week.
And you grab some of the businesses will even
like volunteer. Like, Hey, listen, I saw you
got a lot of traction. Can I give you a 50 bucks
or 20 bucks? Make me the next big gift card giveaway
next week. And you, sometimes you can get it
for free. Like if you get some businesses on
hopping on board and you still can collect that
information and collect the data and get that
feedback from people because, well, the only
problem is that you get those bots that sneak
in there. Be careful of bots because once you
start getting. a thousand two thousand people
who like it and commenting on things those bots
sneak in and start doing their oh click here
and win a ten thousand dollars that's the only
problem i had with it but we collected information
very quickly and we helped the community and
we built our audience all at the same time Oh
man, that's amazing. And I love it as an and.
I do. And I used to participate in a networking
group in San Antonio that every week they would
do a giveaway like that. And it was certainly
helpful for the few of us who knew how to win,
but it was so sad to see how many people came
back for the cheap tricks. and never ended up
getting referrals and never ended up actually
running their business. I didn't even know how
they survived. And so it's very important, my
friends, that we use these to bolster what it
is we're up to, not hide from the opportunities
to learn from the greater opportunities. But
I definitely want to talk to you more about that,
Billy, because I think there's great ways we
could implement that for podcasting and help
people on a national scale as well. But obviously,
we need to dive in more. My friends, if you have
more to learn from Billy about this process,
and you're like, man, I want to learn how to
do that for my market, then reach out to him
on LinkedIn. um you know actually check out and
see like what what he can do to help you in your
specific uh realities because right now we're
speaking about our own personal stories and we're
speaking in general for the sake of all visionaries
but when you get into a one -on -one conversation
with us it gives us a chance to do exactly what
we said earlier ask you to tell me more about
the situation So we can fully understand how
do these principles potentially apply with your
existing strengths, weaknesses, opportunities,
and threats. We're going to hit one last thing
real fast because I know we both got to go. The
reframe that turns referral dependence into real
brand confidence. I'm going to hit an angle I
wasn't planning on for that, but I think really
for me, it just comes down to quality assurance,
right? If you're getting referrals. then you
want to dive into that book, Raving Fans by Ken
Blanchard to find out how do I take care of everybody
who's absolutely touched by this process or this
experience of working with us. And if you can
reframe your brand around that level of customer
service where you're truly taking care of everybody,
and that puts you in a phenomenal position to
be able to have a confident brand. Now, you're
going to need to do a little bit above and beyond
to get online reviews and testimonials. And there's
systems that can help with that. I don't recommend
the automated systems. I recommend either working
with AI or asking us for some of our materials
related to this, but do everything you can to
make sure that you have as much social proof
as possible about what it is you do and how it
is you help others. Because at the end of the
day, even though we want everybody to do their
due diligence and know exactly why they work
with us and why they should work with us and
the case studies and all that, most people are
just going to follow what others do. And so you
want to make sure that you have those transformational
stories depicting what it is you do as a visionary.
So others can say, you know what, I want to have
the same type of experience. And like I said,
double down on your quality assurance and making
sure that people win with you. Billy, what are
your thoughts on reframing the referral process
in order to create a confident brand? Yeah, no,
I'm going to have a set of challenge. How about
this? I'm going to take it in a different direction.
What I've been preaching this week actually is
especially spring cleaning. Everybody's doing
their spring cleaning. Go through your CRM. Go
through all the people in your CRM. And in that
box where it says notes or comments. Say, what
value add do I have for this person? What can
I do for their business? And if you can't, if
you can't either reach out and be like, hey,
listen, I'm missing information. I want to know
how I can help you. I want to have a meeting.
I want to get your pain point or hit that delete
button and get them out of your CRM. Spend 30
minutes a day for the next two weeks. Do your
spring cleaning and ask yourself that. What's
the value add? What am I adding to this person?
And if it's nothing, change it or delete them.
My friends, I will add one caveat to that. Please
don't delete your database. You will regret it
someday. Archive it. Put it in a later opportunity.
But I love the idea, diving in intentionally,
looking at those relationships and seeing what
is that value add we can have. I'm going to pull
up two real quick. One from Billy. And the biggest
one, my friends, is... Just go and have an honest
conversation with somebody like Billy and look
at marketing. I love this marketing that feels
good and actually works. It should feel good.
It should be something that you're happy and
excited about that you would want your friends,
family, your mom to see. If it's not, that's
probably not what you should be doing for your
marketing. And then I want to go over here to
what we're launching right now. It is not launched
yet, but it is so. close that I'm going to reveal.
And that's the AI marketplace we're launching
for first class business. And the whole point
of this process is to make sure that everybody
has the chance to get the right type of AI training
based on the things that you actually already
know and have in your arsenal. But the real reason
I'm showing this page for you, my friends, is
not only will we have the video testimonials
and the standard written testimonials baked in.
We decided we wanted to take it up a notch and
make sure that everybody that we correlate with
our testimonials, you can click on their LinkedIn
button here and actually go talk to them as references.
Do everything that you can to make sure that
your social proof. is as on point, authentic,
and clear as possible. Join programs and mentors
that are going to help you out. And of course,
if you've got a vision you want to share, we'd
love to have you on the show as well. Billy,
final words of wisdom. I know we're right down
to the wire, but if this is the last chance you
had to talk to visionaries, what would your advice
be to visionaries? The last bit, you have something
to give. Find out what it is that gives you energy,
that makes you feel good, that makes you positive.
And then find and align with people. that will
reciprocate, that enjoy the thing you give them,
right? And those are greatest referral partners.
It makes for a much stronger business. It makes
for great collaborators. And it's just way more
fun to have a business when you're dealing with
people that you're aligned with, that you share
the same values, that you can refer back and
forth, that you can call them at any time and
you work together. much more rewarding and it's
a better way to run a business. You know, it
doesn't have to be like painful door knocking,
or I think you meant instead of the word masochist,
it doesn't have to be masochism. It doesn't have
to be that way. Like it can be smooth. It could
be easy. You can have relationships like Jackson
and I like now on, he can email me anytime and
we have, he can, Hey, I need this. And I do that.
Cool. I've got the people for you, or I've got
the, this for you. And I'm sure it's the same.
If I email him at any time or message him at
any time. Yeah, he hooked me up. And that's the
way to actually run a business. It is way more
rewarding. It's way more fun. And all of you
listening, you have a give. You've got something
of value. You just have to find people that align
with that same give and just get to work. You
know, just do the thing. Patience and persistency.
I'm putting into action right now, guys, I'm
going to be doing everything I can to wine and
dine Billy into the AI marketplace with me. All
right. This is important. I need great leaders
by my side. If we're going to help the millions,
possibly billions of people that we can with
that, then it's going to come down to having
great leaders by my side to help me learn how
to scale that authentically and really, really
take care of great people. And Billy's one of
the guys who I trust to be able to do that. So
my friends, we'll see you on the next episode.
If you enjoyed this. Like, subscribe, comment,
let us know. We'd love the feedback and everybody
have a wonderful rest of your day. Thank you
for being here today. I'm really happy that you
tuned in to Vision Pros Live. I'm looking forward
to seeing your reactions as these episodes continue
to move forward. This is going to get more and
more fun. We'll have more and more engagement
as well. We'll invite people to participate in
the show. And thank you for giving us your time
and attention. Have an excellent time building
out your vision and becoming a vision pro.