– Hello to all of you who are joining us via livestream, and everyone here in the meeting, thank you for coming out. And this is one of our Thursday Zoom meetups, and these are the public facing part of the vidwheel Creator Network. It’s great to have you all here. So what’s the vCN? It’s a group that brings together solo entrepreneurs who aspire to take our businesses to the next level using self-produced video. We draw on my experience and the experiences of everybody in the community as a whole, to guide you through the process of making video and making it work for your business, giving you better reach, efficiency and growth. If you find that intriguing and you are the adventurous type, I invite you to take part in our beta test that we’re currently doing for a new onboarding program for the vCN. The beta test is testing a new challenge that we have called the Reach Challenge and it’ll give you the tools and knowledge to super efficiently create an introduction video that starts conversations with ideal clients anywhere in the world, 24 hours a day, and beta testers get half off our regular membership as part of an incentive to get you all to try it out. If you’re interested in checking that out, feel free to book a time with me and we can discuss. And I will also say that the livestream like this, if you’re watching it on livestream, it’s a good preview of a vidwheel Creator Network Zoom meetup, but if you wanna get the full experience, join us for the next one of these, which happens when we kick off TikTok month, which is on July 7th, at 8:00 pm Eastern. It features marketer and creator, Stephen Pope in a presentation called, “Can You Get Consulting or Coaching Clients on TikTok?” And his hint is yes. So, info for that event and all future events can be found at events.vidwheel.com. I’ve popped that in the chat here, it’s also in the show notes. And with that, we are doing something a little special today. We have a guest on with us, Donnie Boivin who’s the founder of Success Champion Networking and author of a few books, and that’s why Donnie’s on today. He’s gonna have a minute to kind of talk about a brand new book that he put out today, and I’m gonna call it “To Focused,” because I was gonna keep it PG, but I’m sure Donnie is gonna give you the full title here, so go ahead, Donnie, whenever you’re ready.

– Right on, thanks brother. So for those who don’t know me, Donnie Boivin, CEO and Founder of Success Champion Networking add the Success Champion family of companies. We changed how the world networks and fixed everything you hate about networking. It’s nice to see some of the members hanging out with us here. So if you’re looking for a new style of networking, go to successchampionnetworking.com, feel free to visit any of our chapters around the world. But today, have a new book, it is out today, called “Fucked To Focus.” It is literally my story of almost losing completely everything trying to build a business and then turning it around and figuring out how to scale to three companies, two of the top podcasts in the world, and now five bestselling books. The whole thing in there is literally everything I wish I knew about building and growing a business, this is all the stuff that nobody teaches. Everybody says, “Go build a business, it’s gonna be easy, you’ve got this,” and you get a lot of freaking rah rahs, you’re gonna hear in this book the tough stories and conversations I have with my wife when I tell her we’re about to lose everything that we freakin’ own, and you get to hear the dialogue the two of us have. I go into some of the toughest moments of my life and share all my screw ups, my fuck ups, and everything I did wrong in business and how we fixed it. And it’s step by step, so it’s literally, it’s 88 pages, you can read it in less than two hours. It would mean the world for me today if you would go to Amazon, buy it, it’s on sale for 99 cents or Kindle, it’s free, or it’s 3.99 in paperback. It would mean the world for me if you guys would go grab a copy today. But I don’t want to take up too much of your time, but thank you, Neil, for letting me swing in here today and hang out with you guys.

– Yeah, right on. And it is, I got to read a pre-released copy and, I mean, at 99 cents, it’s one thing to say it’s worth every penny, but it’s worth far more than 99 cents, so I encourage you to grab it.

– Yeah, I put my heart and soul, man, into that in every one of those pages, it was fun to write. It was hard to write in some sections, but it was fun to write.

– Yeah, yeah, I can imagine. All right, well with that, we are going to jump onto the main event, which is we’re gonna hear from Marketer and Strategist, Tim Fitzpatrick, How To Create A Compelling Message To Convert Prospects Into Customers. The key there is, compelling. It’s easier than ever to get your message out to prospects or in front of an audience, but can you compel them to take action? So, Tim’s gonna talk to us about how to make this happen. Tim, are you ready?

– Ready as I’ll ever be, Neil-

– All right, let’s do it.

– Just let me share my screen here. Let’s see. You guys can see this okay? Okay, cool. Are we good, you can see it? Okay, awesome. I’ll jump into it, thanks, Neil. As he said, my name’s Tim Fitzpatrick, my company’s Rialto Marketing, and we are gonna talk about messaging today, which, to me, is one of the absolute fundamentals of marketing. The first fundamental of marketing is your target market and your ideal clients within that market, you cannot create messaging to attract and engage those people until you understand who those people are. But once you do, you can create messaging, and I’m gonna walk you through a framework today. I did not come up with this, what I’m gonna share with you today is directly from StoryBrand, if you’re familiar with it. I’m gonna dig into it. Please, if you feel like you’ve missed something, don’t worry, at the end I’m gonna give you some tools, I’ve got a recording of this entire workshop where I go deeper than I will today, so tons of resources for you, I just wanna make sure you guys get your questions answered and you’re comfortable as we go through this. So my first question is, is this you, okay? Do you run into times where you’re not sure what to say? People ask you, “What do you do?” And you just, you fumble through it. You feel like you’re reinventing the wheel each time you need to create a message. You’re creating a social media post, or you’re writing an email, you’re creating an ad, but you feel like you’re reinventing the wheel each and every time. Do you feel like you’re confusing people? People ask you what you do and you say, and then you just get like these blank stares, okay? If you’re in this boat, you are not alone, there are tons of people in this boat. But here’s the thing, poor messaging is negatively impacting every marketing action and activity that you take. If you have poor messaging, you’re not getting the return on your marketing activities that you should, which is why it is such a key fundamental to have in place. Think of messaging like the fuel and the tactics that you’re using like the vehicle. If you do not have good messaging, you have a vehicle and you have no fuel, which is not good. But here’s the thing, with the right messaging, you can be confident in what you say, you’ll know exactly what to say so that you’re clear and engaging, and you’re gonna save time and you’re gonna save money, right? Because if you’re putting a message out there with your marketing activities, it’s not gonna work, you’re gonna waste time and you’re gonna waste money. But when you have a good message, you’ve got the fuel that you need, okay? Great messaging, here we go, I’ve already touched on it, it’s the fuel that you need to get your activities to take off and generate more leads for your business. So how do we do this? It’s all about storytelling. We create clarity in our messaging with storytelling. First we need to understand why, why storytelling? And storytelling and marketing is nothing new, okay? This has happened for a long, long time. But what I will say is I think StoryBrand did a very good job of making this easy for people to understand. But the two big mistakes most people make when selling their product and services, one, they don’t focus on what’s gonna help their clients survive and thrive. It’s the only reason why we make buying decisions, okay? We have problems, we have problems that we don’t want, and there’s results that we’re looking for that we don’t have. Our messaging needs to focus on those two things. Too many people talk about themselves, and the reality is, our customers, our clients, whatever you wanna call them, they don’t care about us. This is the key to convert prospects into clients. What they care about is how we can help them solve the problem that they have and help them get to where they wanna go. That’s it. So in our messaging, we really need to focus on them and not us. And you’ll see this as I go through this framework with you today. The second big mistake is, people make it difficult for people to understand, we confuse people. And what happens? Like, when you’re confused, do you do anything? No, confused people do not buy, confused people leave, right? So if somebody lands on the top of your website and they can’t understand really quickly what you do, how they’re gonna benefit, what that next step is, what action you want them to take, less than eight seconds, five to eight seconds, they don’t get it, they’re moving on. They’re going back to Search Results and they’re gonna find somebody else, okay? So we need to capture their attention very, very quickly. That is why we use storytelling. Storytelling will help you avoid both of these key mistakes. So let’s break it down, okay? The essential elements of every story, and I may be dating myself a little bit, but this is from the original “Point Break,” which is one of my favorite movies, so don’t don’t fault me too much. But in the original “Point Break,” you have a hero, right? Keanu Reeves, he’s a green FBI agent. There is a problem in every story, if there’s no problem, there is no story, like, the problem is the hook that brings people in. In this particular story, there’s a band of bank robbers called the Ex-Presidents robbing banks in Southern California. Every story has a guide, right? The guide is trusted, the guide has been where the hero is, he knows exactly what the hero needs to do. In this case, it’s Gary Busey who is Keanu Reeves’ seasoned FBI agent partner, okay? The guide gives the hero a plan, this is the plan that you need to get where you wanna go. In this case it’s, “Hey, you need to learn how to surf, because I believe the Ex-Presidents are surfers. And if you learn how to surf, I think you’re gonna meet ’em, you’ll be able to infiltrate them and, you know, we can catch ’em, right?” So there’s gotta be a call to action. If we don’t take action, nothing’s gonna happen. In this story the call to action is learning how to surf so that we avoid failure, which is, the Ex-Presidents get away and run off in the sunset, and we reach success, which is we catch them. But every story, especially action movies, follow this like, to an absolute tee. If you think about some of your favorite movies, I guarantee you can start to pop these elements in. But you’ve got a hero, they have a problem, they meet a guide who gives ’em a plan, calls ’em to action so they avoid failure and they reach success. So, StoryBrand calls this a brand script, I call it a brand playbook, but these are the essential elements of the framework. And when you use this, what we are doing is we are inviting your customers into a story where they are the hero and you are the guide. And we all love stories, right? Stories are engaging, they invite us in, they keep us captivated, that’s why we wanna use storytelling in our marketing. So in the first, right, we’ve got character, the hero, the customer is the hero, right? Have is how you convert prospects. You are not the hero. Our customers are looking for a guide, they are not looking for a hero. If you think about most stories, the hero’s actually pretty weak, they’re struggling, right? They have this problem, they have no idea how to fix it, like, their hands are up in the air, “How do I fix it?” Right? Luke Skywalker wants to become a Jedi and he has no clue how to do it, who does he meet? Depending on which one it is, it could be Yoda or Obi-Wan Kenobi or whoever it is, there’s too many different ones now, when I was a kid, there was only like, two or three. But Yoda knows exactly what Luke needs to do. You are the same, you wanna position yourself as the guide, not the hero. What we wanna do in this first step is we need to identify what our clients want, what do they want as it relates to what we do? So for example, a financial advisor, they wanna plan for retirement. You know, a real estate agent, the home they’ve always dreamed of, you know, an executive coach, become the leader everybody loves, we need to identify what our ideal clients want at this phase in the framework. Then we get into the problem. Like I said before, the problem is the hook that brings them in, and identifying our customers’ problems deepens their interest in us. The more we can talk about the problems, the more they’re gonna become engaged. There are multiple aspects of these problem elements, okay? First, every story has a villain, we need to find a way to bring a villain into the story, okay? The villain is, what’s that chief source of conflict that what you do defeats, right? If you think about, one of the ones that always comes to mind for me is Mucinex. Mucinex is cold medication, right? It defeats mucus. They’ve got a commercial where, you know, there’s like this cartoon-looking thing, a blob, a mucus that looks like Jabba the Hutt. That’s how they’re personifying the villain in the story. Then you have three types of problems. You have the external, internal and philosophical problems. The external problem is the problem that’s outwardly manifested that we see, the internal is how that’s making them feel. How is the problem and the villain making your customers feel? And the philosophical problem is what’s larger than the story itself? What’s the right versus wrong in this story? So here’s a few examples. Commercial cleaning company, right? The villain, cleaning companies that don’t do the job, right? They come in the middle of the night, they empty the trash and they leave. The external problem, well, it’s pretty simple, “I need a clean office,” but the internal problem is, “I’m frustrated. I give my cleaning company the keys to the castle and I think all they’re doing is empty in the trash, but I have no idea.” The philosophical problem, right? What’s right versus wrong, you should be able to trust your cleaners, you should be able to let them in when I’m not there and know that they’re doing the right job, okay? Financial planner. Villain, noise, too much noise in the market. The problem is, “I need an investment plan, I’m confused about where to invest,” but everyone deserves a sound financial plan they can depend on, okay? So just a few examples to kind of hammer that point home. Third element is meeting a guide, customers aren’t looking for a hero, they’re looking for a guide. You wanna position yourself as the guide. You know where they are, you can empathize with them, and you have the plan that’s gonna get them where they wanna go. You position yourself as a guide by talking about two things, you have empathy and you establish authority, okay? Empathy and authority. Empathy is just as simple as saying, “Hey, I understand what it’s like to be in your shoes. I understand how frustrating it is to let your cleaners in and feel like all they do is empty the trash.” Authority, things like testimonials, certifications, awards you’ve won, clients that you’ve worked with, all of those things help establish your authority. A guide with a plan is trusted. We need to give our clients an idea of what it’s gonna be like to work with us, okay? We don’t need to dig into all nitty-gritty details. But there are two types of plans, there’s a process plan and an agreement plan. Process is about alleviating any confusion, what’s it like to work with you? The agreement plan is about alleviating fear, what fears do people have in working with you? Here’s an example from a wedding planner. Listen, collaborate, wow. Like, I don’t even need to go into detail on each of these things, anybody that’s been married knows exactly what they’re talking about right there, and people that are thinking about getting married know exactly what we’re talking about here too. “You’re gonna listen to me, we’re gonna collaborate, and damn, we’re gonna have an awesome event.” “Okay, cool.” Are they doing a ton of other things as part of this process? Yes, but in the beginning, I can’t talk about the 50 things that I do, I’m gonna lose people. Just give them the high level bits that are easy to understand. The agreement plan, alleviating fear. Here’s an example from CarMax, which is a used car dealer. What are our fears? “Oh my gosh, I’m gonna go in and I’m gonna deal with these people, and, you know, I’m gonna haggle over the price, he’s gonna have to go back to the manager five times. Oh my God, I don’t wanna do this.” Never haggle over the price, okay? The price is the price. The other thing we worry about is, “I’m gonna buy a car and it’s gonna drop the transmission three blocks down the road.” So they say all their vehicles pass their vehicle check, right? So you’re not gonna get a lemon. Those are statements that they make in their process to help alleviate fears that their clients may have in working with them. Then we have to call people to action. Like, only the most motivated among us, which there are very few of, take action without being told what they need to do. So we need to tell our customers exactly what we want them to do. There are two types of calls to action that you will use in your marketing. One is direct and the other is transitional. Direct is for people that are ready to take the next step. Buy now, schedule a consultation, schedule an appointment, shop now, those are all examples of direct calls to action. But, if somebody comes to your website and they’re not ready to take that direct call to action and you don’t have something that you can offer them to capture their contact info, they’re gone. You’re relying on them to come back, and the likelihood that that’s gonna happen is slim to none. That’s where your transitional call to action comes in for those people that aren’t quite ready. Maybe I’m thinking about buying a new home, but I’m not there yet, I’m starting to check out different realtors, seeing what’s going on in the market. So I’m not gonna schedule a call with you at this point, but maybe you’ve got the top 10 things that are happening in the Denver real estate market right now. That’s pretty helpful for me, I’ll give you my name and my email for that. I give it to you, now, you can nurture that relationship with me so that when I am ready, hopefully I think of you because you’ve kept in touch with me, you’ve stayed top of mind. That’s what we’re doing with our transitional call to action. Six is, we’re helping people avoid failure, right? We’re all trying to avoid this tragic ending, we need to paint the picture in our marketing message of what life is gonna look like if you don’t solve this problem, so we need to let people know that. This is like salt in a recipe, we need to put it in there but we don’t wanna put too much, okay? But we do wanna have an idea of what they have at risk, and we need to let them know what they have at risk as we create our marketing message. Then you end in success. We can’t assume that they know what success looks like, we need to paint that picture so that they understand and they start to buy into that. The success elements, the benefits, the results, this is like flour in a recipe, you can just pour it on, but we gotta tell people, we can’t assume that they know it. And then there’s one more thing that happens in story, right? Characters transform, right? They go from feeling a certain way or being a certain type of person to becoming a different person. They’re better, right? They feel different. We can talk about that transformation that they’re gonna experience when they work with you in your marketing, and that helps them get even more entrenched in your story. So for example, a financial advisor, right? I may go from confused and ill-equipped to competent and smart, or a real estate agent, I’m unsure and now I’m a happy homeowner, right? If I can buy into that transformation, man, I’m all in, in what you do. So how do you create your playbook? I’m giving you three simple steps here. And by the way, in the tools that I give you here today, there is the playbook template that we use, okay? So you’re gonna have this template. But if you do one thing from this 20 minutes or so that I’m talking, do step one, interview your ideal clients. I want you to think about those clients that you love working with, that are profitable, that you get great results for, those are your ideal clients. I want you to identify at least a handful of those people and I want you to interview them, because here’s the thing, we cannot think objectively about our business, but our clients can often articulate our value so clearly when you hear it back, you’re like, “Oh my God, why didn’t I think of that?” You didn’t think of that because you’re too close to the fire. Talk to your clients. One of the tools that I will give you today is this exact, is an ideal client interview sheet. Questions are there, just ask, ask ’em, it’s a 10, 15 minute conversation, your business will transform if you just do this first step, I guarantee it. But once you’ve got that information, now you can start to brainstorm your various playbook elements because they’ve given you the information that you need in their words. Your marketing message should be in their words, not yours, ’cause their words are gonna resonate with them, the thoughts that are going on in their head are gonna resonate with them, that’s why step one is so, so important. And then once you’ve done brainstorming, then you need to make some choices and finalize your playbook and then you can start to use it. Couple tools that I find super helpful when we’re doing this for clients, Grammarly is a grammar checking software, they’ve got all kinds of different tools, tips in there, the other one is the Hemingway App. I was a math major, ironically now, I do a lot of writing, but the Hemingway App, Hemingway wrote very short, succinct sentences, very clear. The Hemingway App analyzes your writing and makes suggestions about how you can tweak it to make it clear and concise. So both of these are really, really helpful tools when you’re going through this if you choose to do it yourself. Once you have a playbook, where do you use it? Like, it’s one thing to create the playbook, but if you create it and then you don’t use it, then you just wasted a bunch of time. Your playbook is not just your marketing message playbook, it should infiltrate your entire company. It is marketing, it is sales, it is customer service. A lot of businesses drop the ball because their marketing message is one thing and then they transition people over to sales and they’re getting a different story. And then the potential client’s like, “Whoa, whoa, wait a minute, that’s not what I got over here, now, you’re telling me something different.” That’s a gap in the process. Your messaging needs to infiltrate your entire company. Your website is the first place single most important because everything you do from a marketing perspective drives people to your website. But from there, look, I’ve got this list here, this is not an exhaustive list, the bottom line is, everywhere you market your business, everywhere you come in contact with a client, customer, you can use your playbook. That is how you convert prospects. And you wanna make sure, don’t get overwhelmed, right? I just got through doing this with the client, we went through all this stuff and he was like, “Oh my God, I feel like we have this huge list now.” Well, there is a list, but break it down into the chunks. What’s most important? Create the list and just start banging ’em out one after another, okay? Nobody expects you to get this stuff done all at the same time, break it down into small little chunks and get done with the next measurable step and then just bang out the next one. But the more you implement this across your company, the more benefits you’re gonna get from the message that you just created. So, Neil, I don’t know how much time I’ve got, but I have just a couple quick things and then, guys, I’m happy to answer any questions that you have. If you have questions, somebody else I guarantee you has the same question. So-

– To answer you, oh, I was gonna say we’ve got 15 or so, Tim, so we got some time, all right?

– Cool, cool. So I’m gonna take this link and I’m gonna put this in chat for you guys, but if you go to this link, I’ll show you exactly what this looks like, my slide deck is there and this is the complete slide deck. Normally I do this in about a 45 minute to an hour presentation, so I go a lot deeper. If you want that slide deck, the customer insight survey worksheet, the workshop recording from the full workshop, and the template that we use, it’s there. If you click on this link, you’re gonna go right to this page, put your name in, your email address, you are going to go on our email list, I’m just gonna tell you that right now, if all you want are the tools, unsubscribe, you’re not gonna hurt my feelings, but if you stay, you will get all kinds of good marketing, business growth, revenue acceleration tips from us on a consistent basis, okay? But want you to know what you’re getting into if you do that. And then my contact info is here if you guys need it. From there, Neil, I’m sure people have questions. Messaging is something that a lot of us struggle with, but I’m telling you this framework, it just, it works. Once you start digging into it, you just go back to your playbook each and every time. You’re not gonna use all the elements from your playbook for every message, but think of it like Lincoln Logs or LEGOs. You’ve got these different pieces and depending on what type of message you’re gonna create, you pull the pieces that you need and you put it together and you go. But it keeps things consistent because you’re working from the same playbook every single time. And when we talk about marketing messaging, consistency and clarity are key. You know, in marketing we talk about the marketing rule of 7. It takes at least seven impressions for people, for your message, your brand to resonate. If people are getting a different message each time, it’s never gonna sink in for them, which is why this is so, so important.

– Right on, right on. We do have some questions coming in, so I’m gonna shut down the share here and give you a chance to have a drink of water. Lot of talking, good job, Tim. That was an incredibly informative presentation and that’s a great offer to everybody to be able to grab it for the low, low price of an email address that you can unsubscribe from if you don’t like it. So, Kim Locklin put out a question in the chat here. She’s asking how long characters or whatever metric you want should your story be on your website do you think, Tim, do you have a best practice?

– Well, there’s different, as you go through it, you’re not necessarily using every element from the playbook in one section, okay? And now this is transitioning to, “Hey, I’ve got a playbook, how do I use that and implement it on my website?” Now you’re starting to get into, “What are the key elements that we need to have on a webpage for it to be effective?” But one of the things I will tell you is, the beginning part of your, here, you know what, Neil, can I share my screen again?

– Yeah, go ahead, go for it.

– This might help. Okay, so this is my website. “Marketing Shouldn’t Be Difficult. All You Need Is The RIGHT Plan.” That is, marketing shouldn’t be difficult is the philosophical problem from our playbook, okay? This combined is our core message, okay? Then the message down below here is part of our one liner. Like, what do you do? Well, we help businesses create, implement, and manage a marketing plan to communicate the right message to the right people, okay? So that they can build results that last. Direct call to action, Get a Free Consultation, right? So these are multiple elements from my playbook, the whole story is not there, and frankly, you can’t tell the whole story in the beginning. What you want to do is grab enough interest where they’re like, “Huh, okay, I’m interested, let me see what else is on this page?” This blue box here, I’m focusing on success elements. What does success look like? “Simplify Marketing, Grow With Less Stress.” “Battling Information Overload.” Information overload is the villain in our story. Are you battling information overload? These bullet points are failure elements, right? You’ve wasted time and money on marketing, you’re struggling to implement and execute consistently. Oh, there’s the direct call to action again, right? How many websites have you been to where they go and you’re like, “Where’s the contact info?” You’ve gotta scroll all the way down to the footer, like, nobody’s gonna do that. We wanna make it clear,. “Get a Free Consultation, Get a Free Consultation.” I don’t want them to have to scroll very far. This content block focuses on success elements. Here’s the process plan. What’s it like? Do we do a bunch of other stuff? Yes, we do. “Talk With Us, Get The Right Plan, Build Results That Last.” So we’re taking some of the elements from the playbook and popping them into various content blocks. Here’s trust building, right? Establishing yourself as the guide. Another establishing ourselves as the guide. This section here is more of a, this is a Cliff Notes version of our playbook. So this is what we call brand narrative. That is more information if people wanna read it, but your website, you wanna make sure it’s in bite-size chunks ’cause most people aren’t reading it word for word, they’re strolling and they need to be able to read it and see it very quickly and easily. So I hope that answers the question, if it doesn’t, pop it back in.

– Okay, excellent. Does anybody else have any questions?

– Yep.

– All right, Karen says she really likes the distinction of two different types of call to actions, the direct and transitional, which I also, that’s something I put in my notes, that’s something that I think outside of marketing, even in sales, one of the things that we typically recommend to our group members is to have that like, lesser, that kinda off ramp, right? You know, if somebody’s definitely not ready to buy, to have that, you know, and in full disclosure, I use events like this in that way. If somebody’s not interested in buying right away, I’ll invite them to these events. And that’s a great point and that’s a good thing to include in all your sales and marketing, I think. Okay. And, yep, pain points. Good one, Kim, include the pain points. Pain points are huge for convincing somebody that you have the right solution, so. Does anybody else have any questions at all?

– I do.

– Go for it, Donnie.

– Tim, you know, one of the favorite things that I was taught was to write down all the major moments in your life and then what you learn from those major moments in life, and that becomes a lot of the stories you tell and share out there. How else are you coming up with some of these unique stories that you can run through the StoryBrand promise? I mean, I get the whole structure of it, but where do you find the other stories in addition to that?

– To me, it’s not so much finding the story as discovering it, because sometimes we think we know the exact problems that our ideal clients have, but in reality, again, we’re too close to the fire.

– Absolutely.

– So when we get out and we talk to them, all of a sudden we’re like, “Oh my gosh, that’s it.” Right? So I’ll give you a perfect example. And by the way, if you’re just starting out and you don’t have existing customers, Google is your friend. It will help you convert prospects into clients. Go to online reviews for your competitors. What do people talk about in online reviews? The problem, how it was solved, what the benefit was? I worked with a commercial, a residential siting and roofing company a while back. Man, the construction industry is notorious, like if you go to five different websites and remove their logos, they all say the same darn thing. You know, “Number one roofer in Denver.” Really, according to who? And does that really tell me anything? No, it does not. I was reading through their reviews and there was a woman in there who was like, nothing to do with siting or roofing or anything. She said, “The thing that I appreciated about them was that they treated my home like it was their own.” That’s it, that is in their words. “Man, I don’t want some contractor coming into my house traipsing dirt all over the place, dropping their tools everywhere.” Like, it is an expectation that you do good work, that does not differentiate you. What does differentiate you is, “Man, you do great work which I expect, but gosh, you treat my house like it was your own house.” That is a core message that will resonate with clients and this stuff is gold, it is there, you just need to find it. So that’s a quick example of how you can do that. I hope that helps, Donnie.

– Yeah, absolutely, I love it, I love it. One of the things that I have also found is being on a lot of podcasts has been a great way to find stories because you get asked so many questions in such rapid fire.

– Yes.

– Like, I got asked a question the other day, someone said, why do I talk more about introductions and referrals? And I’d never been asked that question before so I didn’t have an answer, I had to pull it straight outta my ass. And all I said is, “A referral leads to a one-time deal, an introduction could lead to thousands of deals.” And I’d never put it in that perspective, but oftentimes when you gotta think on your feet like that, it’s a great way to come up with the things that you had running around your damn head.

– Well, the other thing too is your business, all our businesses are evolving, so your message is going to morph over time. You know, I think one of the things that is a roadblock for people with messaging is they’re like, “Oh my gosh, once I do this, it’s set in stone.” No, it’s not set in stone, it’s going to change over time, but your message shouldn’t be changing weekly, that’s the issue. Your message should change when you have a valid reason for it to change. You know, you were on a discovery call with the potential prospect and they said something where you were like, “Oh my God, why is that not in my problem elements?” Or, “Why is that not in my failure elements,” and you add it because it’s the words directly from an ideal prospect. Or you shift ideal clients, right? Your business is evolving, you’re adding a new service, then your message is gonna need to change. That’s okay, but it should not be changing on a weekly basis.

– Adrian’s got some nice things to say in the chat, I’ll leave those so that we can get one more question in, but she appreciates the hero villain guide. And Tom, I think has a great point here. So Tom’s in insurance and he says, “Most people don’t know they have a pain point in insurance until something bad happens and they realize after the fact that they have a serious pain point.” So, do you have any advice on how to attack that, right?

– Yeah, and this happens all the time. So I’ll give you an example from, this is directly from, I think it’s Allstate. Allstate does a really good job of bringing in the villain into the story, which is mayhem, right? So, there, you’ve got the guy, he’s got a suit on, it’s disheveled, his hair’s all over the place, his face is dirty, Allstate Insurance defeats mayhem, right? You’re defeating, they don’t have a problem right now ’cause they don’t need the insurance, but when you can bring in, it’s the unexpected in life that, nobody wants insurance, but we have to have it because it protects us from all the things that can happen that we don’t even have visibility to at this point. So bringing in a villain is one way that you can really easily start to hone in on the problem. And Allstate does a really good job of that, because, yeah, am I thinking about, do I wake up in the morning and go, “Gosh, I just wanna find a good insurance policy.” No, like, nobody does that. But do I wanna make sure that I don’t freakin’ lose my house if something goes wrong? Hell yes, I do. So, find a good villain and bring that, that will bring people into the story, and then you can bring, start to talk about the problem that you’re defeating, if that makes sense.

– I think insurance is sexy just so you know. Yeah.

– Well, there’s one in every room, I guess. All right. And with that, I think we’re gonna go into our closing remarks here. For anyone, Tim has said he can stick around a little after 1:00 pm Eastern here, so if you have some more questions, don’t sign off. But to all of you who joined us via livestream and to everybody in the meeting, thank you again for coming out. Don’t miss Stephen Pope, which is our next Zoom meetup. “Can You Get Consulting and Coaching Clients on TikTok?” That presentation happens on July 7th at 8:00 pm Eastern, that event is published at events.vidwheel.com, and you can find the link in the description of this livestream. So with that, have a good day.