214: Simple Marketing for Smart People by Billy Broas

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1. 00:00:00 This episode of Bookworm is brought to you by Morgan.
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6. 00:00:14 - So Mike, you came down with another sickness.
7. 00:00:19 - I did, I'm getting really good at this.
8. 00:00:22 - You are, I tell you what,
9. 00:00:23 when it comes to sicknesses,
10. 00:00:26 you're taking the cake in the last couple of months.
11. 00:00:28 - I'm a pro, yeah.
12. 00:00:30 Yeah, it was pretty rough last week.
13. 00:00:32 So thank you for your flexibility
14. 00:00:34 in moving the recording, feeling significantly better now.
15. 00:00:38 So excited to dive into today's book.
16. 00:00:44 I don't think we have any follow-up items, do we?
17. 00:00:47 - We have zero follow-up items.
18. 00:00:49 I actually had to do a double take
19. 00:00:51 and then I was like, oh, I remember.
20. 00:00:54 Meditations was just so all over the place,
21. 00:00:58 for me that I had absolutely nothing
22. 00:01:01 that I needed to act on for that one
23. 00:01:03 and you didn't either.
24. 00:01:05 So we have no follow-up items,
25. 00:01:07 but you sent out a newsletter today
26. 00:01:11 and had something interesting in there.
27. 00:01:12 So you wanna tell us about what's interesting in there?
28. 00:01:14 - Yeah, by the time this goes live,
29. 00:01:18 the Practical PKM cohort will be available.
30. 00:01:22 Actually, as we record this, it's available now.
31. 00:01:25 So I worked with a designer developer
32. 00:01:28 on a fancy new sales page.
33. 00:01:30 I shared it with you last week.
34. 00:01:32 I'm really proud of how it turned out.
35. 00:01:35 By the way, the video on that sales page,
36. 00:01:37 I'm not sure if you watched the video,
37. 00:01:38 that was completely done using the part-time video editor.
38. 00:01:45 So I walked into my office, I hit record,
39. 00:01:48 I sent them the file, they did everything from that point on.
40. 00:01:52 So that long-term follow-up item
41. 00:01:54 of working with VidPros is, that one's going well.
42. 00:01:59 But the Practical PKM cohort page,
43. 00:02:04 I think looks amazing.
44. 00:02:05 It was developed by the amazing Martin Chris.
45. 00:02:09 And yeah, I'm really happy with how it turned out.
46. 00:02:12 If you want to find out more about the cohort,
47. 00:02:15 you can go to join.practicalpkm.com.
48. 00:02:18 Just a couple of bullets, I guess.
49. 00:02:21 It's gonna kick off on January 27th,
50. 00:02:25 and it's gonna go for four weeks.
51. 00:02:26 There will be three sessions each week,
52. 00:02:28 Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, all at 1 p.m. central time.
53. 00:02:32 If you miss a session, you can't attend,
54. 00:02:34 whatever, everything is gonna be recorded.
55. 00:02:37 With this cohort, the goal is to help you
56. 00:02:41 get a PKM system that you can trust,
57. 00:02:45 and hopefully throughout the process,
58. 00:02:47 I'm gonna explain how some of these workflows
59. 00:02:50 are configured, you're gonna tweak 'em,
60. 00:02:52 you're gonna make it your own,
61. 00:02:53 and you're gonna have a custom system
62. 00:02:54 by the time that you leave.
63. 00:02:56 However, this time around, I am actually giving Life HQ
64. 00:03:00 to everybody who joins,
65. 00:03:02 so that you've got a scaffolding to work off of.
66. 00:03:06 Instead of building everything from scratch,
67. 00:03:08 you can open up Life HQ,
68. 00:03:10 and you can just tweak the things that I've put together there,
69. 00:03:13 and I'll explain all of the concepts.
70. 00:03:15 It's built on a couple of my frameworks.
71. 00:03:17 One of them is the PKM stack.
72. 00:03:19 Another one is the creativity flywheel.
73. 00:03:22 I really believe that creativity is something
74. 00:03:26 that we need to lean into.
75. 00:03:28 I believe everybody is born creative,
76. 00:03:29 doesn't matter if you're an accountant or a lawyer.
77. 00:03:32 You can still express creativity
78. 00:03:34 in the knowledge work that you do,
79. 00:03:36 and when you are able to express that,
80. 00:03:39 you make more sense of the information that you've collected.
81. 00:03:43 You do better work, more quality work, more valuable work.
82. 00:03:47 And so that's gonna be the emphasis of this cohort.
83. 00:03:51 There's two options available.
84. 00:03:53 One is just the cohort, which includes Life HQ.
85. 00:03:56 Also includes all my other video courses
86. 00:03:58 and a year of access to the library.
87. 00:04:00 That one is $997.
88. 00:04:03 It's actually $200 off until January 20th.
89. 00:04:07 So if you're listening to this and you wanna save 200 bucks,
90. 00:04:12 from the day this comes out,
91. 00:04:13 you've only got a couple of days to do that.
92. 00:04:15 If you already bought Life HQ,
93. 00:04:17 you can actually apply the whole cost of Life HQ
94. 00:04:20 towards the cohort.
95. 00:04:21 And then there's another version,
96. 00:04:23 which I think I maybe mentioned a little bit on the podcast,
97. 00:04:25 but I'm gonna try working with a small group
98. 00:04:27 and going through group coaching
99. 00:04:29 and kind of going from zero to one
100. 00:04:31 in terms of setting up your systems
101. 00:04:33 and actually creating consistently.
102. 00:04:37 So regardless of how much time you've got to work with,
103. 00:04:39 the emphasis here would be on figuring out your platform,
104. 00:04:43 figuring out your niche,
105. 00:04:44 then creating and publishing consistently
106. 00:04:46 on some social platform to attract attention,
107. 00:04:48 building an email list, building a digital product
108. 00:04:51 and eventually making your first sale.
109. 00:04:53 So that one is $19.97.
110. 00:04:56 And that includes a lifetime access to the library.
111. 00:04:59 So you can find all the details.
112. 00:05:01 You can watch the video over on the sales page.
113. 00:05:05 And if anyone has any questions about anything,
114. 00:05:08 please don't hesitate to ask.
115. 00:05:11 I am also, by the way,
116. 00:05:13 I was convinced by the designer developer
117. 00:05:14 to offer a 30-day money back guarantee.
118. 00:05:17 So if you sign up for Practical PCAM
119. 00:05:20 and you put in the work,
120. 00:05:23 you show up for the sessions,
121. 00:05:24 you try to apply the things that I'm teaching
122. 00:05:26 and it just doesn't work for you,
123. 00:05:28 I'll give you your money back.
124. 00:05:30 So yeah, that's what's new in Mike's world.
125. 00:05:34 And then if you want to be a part of this cohort,
126. 00:05:37 join.practicalpkm.com.
127. 00:05:40 - Nice.
128. 00:05:41 I'm excited for that one to see.
129. 00:05:42 When does the first session launch again?
130. 00:05:45 - January 27th.
131. 00:05:46 So that's a Monday, yep, at 1PM Central Time.
132. 00:05:49 - So this will come out.
133. 00:05:51 You have a couple of days to hit that one deal
134. 00:05:53 and then a week later it'll start on the 27th.
135. 00:05:57 Fantastic.
136. 00:05:58 Okay, are you ready to get into today's book?
137. 00:06:02 - Let's do it.
138. 00:06:03 - All right, so today's book is Simple Marketing
139. 00:06:05 for Smart People.
140. 00:06:06 The one question you need to win customers
141. 00:06:09 without gimmicks, hype or hard selling.
142. 00:06:12 Now you originally pitched this book to me
143. 00:06:16 because you had read it already
144. 00:06:17 and you had told me that it was an interesting book.
145. 00:06:19 I think at some point I had mentioned
146. 00:06:21 or something marketing or I don't know
147. 00:06:23 and you threw it on my radar
148. 00:06:24 and when I read it and I read the Amazon description of it,
149. 00:06:27 I was like, this is exactly the kind of book
150. 00:06:29 that I want to read.
151. 00:06:30 So for my day job, we're thinking about marketing,
152. 00:06:34 we're thinking about promoting the engineering program
153. 00:06:36 and how would we do that and how do we, you know,
154. 00:06:38 help out in that realm.
155. 00:06:41 I am not a marketer, right?
156. 00:06:42 At all, by no means.
157. 00:06:45 I am the person that they describe in the book
158. 00:06:48 as having the negative orientation toward marketing,
159. 00:06:51 which we'll get to, where it's like,
160. 00:06:52 I feel like marketing is like scheming and sleazy
161. 00:06:56 and like, I just don't like it.
162. 00:06:58 Even though I acknowledge that there's good marketing
163. 00:07:00 and bad marketing, but one of the things
164. 00:07:04 that like really drew me to this book
165. 00:07:05 is basically like how you, it stated
166. 00:07:08 that it was going to simplify, allow you to focus,
167. 00:07:12 stop thinking about all these channels, you know,
168. 00:07:14 do I do YouTube?
169. 00:07:15 Do I do TikTok?
170. 00:07:16 Do I do Instagram?
171. 00:07:17 You know, what do I do?
172. 00:07:18 'Cause I've thought about marketing things in the past,
173. 00:07:20 prior podcast, this podcast, you know, different things.
174. 00:07:24 And I've been like, I don't know how to do this
175. 00:07:26 and I see these people doing these things.
176. 00:07:27 Do we do giveaways?
177. 00:07:29 Do we do awards?
178. 00:07:30 Do we, you know, do we do like whatever it is?
179. 00:07:32 And I wanted a different approach to it
180. 00:07:36 and I wanted to hopefully think about it in a different way.
181. 00:07:39 Now, I didn't know the name Billy Broaz, right?
182. 00:07:44 I knew Tiago Forte through the second brain stuff, right?
183. 00:07:48 I've not done his class, but I knew Tiago Forte.
184. 00:07:50 So I was like, oh, okay, well,
185. 00:07:51 this could be an interesting, interesting book.
186. 00:07:54 And the reason why was because
187. 00:07:56 Tiago Forte did not come across to me as a marketer.
188. 00:08:00 Like, I would not put him in the camp of marketer.
189. 00:08:03 I had no idea who Billy Broaz was,
190. 00:08:05 but I was like, well, Tiago's not a marketer.
191. 00:08:06 He just created a product, right?
192. 00:08:08 About around, you know, second brain and those sorts of things.
193. 00:08:11 So I was like, this could be a really, really cool book to read.
194. 00:08:13 So the book has 13 chapters.
195. 00:08:16 So it's got an introduction in 13 chapters
196. 00:08:18 and they break down and they kind of outline
197. 00:08:21 this plan called belief building,
198. 00:08:23 which we're gonna get into in more detail.
199. 00:08:25 So going into this, I knew not very much about marketing.
200. 00:08:29 I knew that I didn't like it and I thought it was schemy
201. 00:08:31 and I was interested in learning more.
202. 00:08:34 Mike, how did you approach this book?
203. 00:08:37 Not for the show 'cause you've already read it once,
204. 00:08:39 but when you originally picked it up
205. 00:08:41 back before you had read it, how did you approach this book?
206. 00:08:45 - Hmm, good question.
207. 00:08:48 I don't remember.
208. 00:08:50 - Okay.
209. 00:08:51 So I'll say that I don't have the negative visceral reaction
210. 00:09:00 to marketing that it sounds like you did or do
211. 00:09:05 and I get it.
212. 00:09:07 However, I worked prior to going independent
213. 00:09:10 for a digital marketing agency
214. 00:09:12 and I realized that marketing,
215. 00:09:15 when you work with good people who are selling good products
216. 00:09:21 it's not the used car salesman.
217. 00:09:26 You're just trying to make the sale.
218. 00:09:29 You're able to help people by solving a problem
219. 00:09:35 that they're experiencing.
220. 00:09:37 And so that was kind of my frame of reference
221. 00:09:39 for marketing in general.
222. 00:09:43 I have read lots of marketing resources.
223. 00:09:47 I think probably all the way on the other end
224. 00:09:50 of the spectrum would be a guy named Alex Hormozi.
225. 00:09:54 Do you know who that is?
226. 00:09:55 - Only because you've said the name,
227. 00:09:57 but I have no other knowledge but that.
228. 00:10:03 - Go look him up on Instagram and tell me
229. 00:10:05 if he's not exactly what you were picturing.
230. 00:10:07 - Okay.
231. 00:10:08 Based on the way you've prefaced it, I have a feeling.
232. 00:10:11 - Well, let me just say, I actually really like Alex
233. 00:10:14 Hormozi's stuff and I have bought both of his books
234. 00:10:18 so far, I think $100 million offers and $100 million leads.
235. 00:10:21 There's some really good stuff in there.
236. 00:10:24 However, it's very different than simple marketing
237. 00:10:30 for smart people, I think.
238. 00:10:32 And honestly, going back through it this time,
239. 00:10:37 I found myself, I think I kind of land
240. 00:10:40 somewhere in the middle, probably more towards
241. 00:10:43 the Billy Broads simple marketing
242. 00:10:45 and if I had to pick like one end of the spectrum.
243. 00:10:47 - Okay.
244. 00:10:48 - But I do think that just because you've got a countdown
245. 00:10:53 time around something doesn't mean you're a sleazy marketer.
246. 00:10:56 - Yeah.
247. 00:10:58 - I am really kind of nervous about this conversation,
248. 00:11:02 to be honest.
249. 00:11:03 - Why?
250. 00:11:04 - Because I don't know, I have an idea
251. 00:11:10 based on the description that you just shared with me
252. 00:11:12 of what perspective you're coming from
253. 00:11:15 when we're gonna talk about marketing.
254. 00:11:17 - Yeah.
255. 00:11:18 - And I don't know, yeah, I don't know
256. 00:11:21 where this is gonna end up basically.
257. 00:11:23 - So I'll foreshadow here.
258. 00:11:25 Let me ease your concern or nervousness or whatever it is.
259. 00:11:31 When they started referencing marketing as education,
260. 00:11:34 I was like, ah, these are my people, right?
261. 00:11:37 Because, I mean, that's what I do, I educate, right?
262. 00:11:39 For a living.
263. 00:11:39 So I was like, oh, this actually makes a ton of sense
264. 00:11:42 the way they pitched it.
265. 00:11:43 So if you're okay with it, let's just roll right into it.
266. 00:11:46 And we can roll right into the intro of the book.
267. 00:11:48 All right, so we start off and very, very early in it,
268. 00:11:52 and this is a thing I have bolded in my notes.
269. 00:11:55 It's all, or it's about education, right?
270. 00:11:58 Like so in my mind, I put the word all in there.
271. 00:12:00 It's all about education.
272. 00:12:01 And I was like, oh, okay.
273. 00:12:02 So they hooked me from the beginning of like,
274. 00:12:05 what are we doing when we're marketing?
275. 00:12:06 When we're marketing, we're educating people about something.
276. 00:12:11 And I was like, I can resonate with this.
277. 00:12:13 This makes total sense to me.
278. 00:12:16 Then they doubled down on that.
279. 00:12:18 Again, this is all still in the introduction.
280. 00:12:20 They doubled down on that.
281. 00:12:21 And they say, all of the other stuff,
282. 00:12:23 the tactics, whether you use this tool or that tool,
283. 00:12:26 or whether you use a countdown timer,
284. 00:12:28 or whether you use giveaways or whatever it might be,
285. 00:12:31 that's the icing on the cake.
286. 00:12:32 That's the cherry on top.
287. 00:12:34 That is not what marketing is all about.
288. 00:12:36 Those are ways that you market once you understand
289. 00:12:40 what you're actually trying to market,
290. 00:12:41 and you've developed a way to educate people.
291. 00:12:44 All of this was like, this is what I need to hear.
292. 00:12:49 And this was in the first, before we even hit chapter one,
293. 00:12:53 and I was like, okay, this makes total sense for me.
294. 00:12:55 So hopefully that quells your concerns about this.
295. 00:12:59 I loved the approach that these two guys took
296. 00:13:03 in terms of marketing, 'cause it wasn't that
297. 00:13:05 like over the top, try this, do this kind of a thing.
298. 00:13:10 It was much more of a get back to basics kind of an approach.
299. 00:13:13 And that really, really resonated with me
300. 00:13:15 from the beginning of the book.
301. 00:13:17 - Yeah, so I don't think it's quite that simple.
302. 00:13:23 - Okay.
303. 00:13:24 - My impression after rereading it again
304. 00:13:26 is this is a very smartly packaged,
305. 00:13:30 and I think there's a lot of good stuff in here.
306. 00:13:35 But just like hearing you describe this as education,
307. 00:13:40 you gotta be careful because if you attach to that,
308. 00:13:43 I don't think you're gonna be doing a very good job
309. 00:13:46 as a marketer because marketing is much more
310. 00:13:49 than just educating your potential buyers.
311. 00:13:54 Most people are not gonna give you the amount of attention
312. 00:13:58 that you would need in order to educate them about anything
313. 00:14:02 because there's so much information
314. 00:14:04 that is constantly coming at them,
315. 00:14:07 which is where some of the hooks and the things like that,
316. 00:14:11 that's not necessarily a sleazy used car salesman tactic,
317. 00:14:15 I don't think, you should have good hooks
318. 00:14:19 in your subject lines.
319. 00:14:20 And like I'm on YouTube and I know
320. 00:14:23 that I need to up my thumbnail game,
321. 00:14:26 there are certain things that you do with the thumbnails
322. 00:14:29 to get the clicks that doesn't necessarily mean
323. 00:14:33 that you're duping somebody or you're tricking somebody
324. 00:14:35 in order to get them to click on your video.
325. 00:14:39 But if you don't try to get people to click on your video,
326. 00:14:43 they're never gonna watch your video.
327. 00:14:44 - Yeah, yeah, that makes sense, it makes sense.
328. 00:14:47 - So, yeah, I think, and maybe you can change my mind
329. 00:14:53 by the time we get to the end of this.
330. 00:14:55 The first time I went through this,
331. 00:14:56 I think I was like, oh my gosh, this is revolutionary,
332. 00:15:00 breath of fresh air, people really need to read this.
333. 00:15:02 And the second time through, I was kinda like,
334. 00:15:03 well, I see where you're coming from.
335. 00:15:06 But I also think that you are applying
336. 00:15:11 some marketing sauce here by making it super, super simple.
337. 00:15:15 So.
338. 00:15:17 - I definitely got that impression too,
339. 00:15:18 that like the marketing was done in this book.
340. 00:15:22 You know, like this book is a form of marketing
341. 00:15:24 for, you know, more so for Billy, I think, than for Tiago.
342. 00:15:29 - So let's mention that real briefly
343. 00:15:31 because there is a whole nother thing
344. 00:15:34 that Billy Bres does, he's a marketing consultant,
345. 00:15:39 independent contractor.
346. 00:15:40 So he worked with Tiago as his marketing guy.
347. 00:15:45 He mentions, I think, a course in this book,
348. 00:15:50 but he doesn't even tell you what it is.
349. 00:15:52 I've signed up for it, I dug around, I found it,
350. 00:15:55 it's called the Five Lightbulbs, I think it's like 500 bucks.
351. 00:15:58 And it's a good marketing framework
352. 00:16:01 for putting together messaging.
353. 00:16:04 I don't think it's the be all end all framework
354. 00:16:07 for all marketing.
355. 00:16:09 And even some of the stuff about like all the channel
356. 00:16:12 doesn't matter, the channel does matter, you know,
357. 00:16:14 they get into some of that nuance later in the book,
358. 00:16:17 but right up front, you know,
359. 00:16:19 they're trying to build the beliefs
360. 00:16:21 as they talk about in the book a certain way,
361. 00:16:24 and they make some statements as kind of like,
362. 00:16:26 "Hmm, not so much." (chuckles)
363. 00:16:29 But I love the fact that Tiago was involved with this
364. 00:16:33 and shares a lot of, you know,
365. 00:16:35 here's how I did it personally.
366. 00:16:38 There's some issues I have with some of the examples there too,
367. 00:16:42 which maybe we'll get to.
368. 00:16:44 But I do think that Billy really knows
369. 00:16:47 what he's talking about.
370. 00:16:50 Just I think with anything marketing related
371. 00:16:53 and probably with any book that you would read,
372. 00:16:55 the perspective has to be what of this am I going to take
373. 00:16:59 and what of this am I going to discard?
374. 00:17:02 You can't just assume that, oh, this is the playbook.
375. 00:17:06 - Yeah, so you alluded to it there.
376. 00:17:09 Essentially the way this book is structured
377. 00:17:11 is certain chapters are written by Billy,
378. 00:17:14 and they're like the fundamentals,
379. 00:17:16 the here's what you need to know kind of chapters,
380. 00:17:18 or here's this framework that we're gonna use.
381. 00:17:22 And then other chapters are written by Tiago,
382. 00:17:25 and Tiago would then say like,
383. 00:17:26 and this is how I applied that.
384. 00:17:27 Like this is how I applied that when I was building,
385. 00:17:29 you know, second brain or how this concept, you know,
386. 00:17:33 changed the way I thought about, you know,
387. 00:17:34 whatever it might be.
388. 00:17:35 So like there's a back and forth there,
389. 00:17:36 and then some of them are written,
390. 00:17:38 I think there's one, at least one that's written
391. 00:17:39 by both of them, but I can't remember off the top of my head
392. 00:17:44 whether that's true or not, is that true?
393. 00:17:46 No, it looks like--
394. 00:17:48 - So I have multiple versions of this.
395. 00:17:51 I have the paperback version that I bought initially.
396. 00:17:54 I have since then also bought the Kindle version,
397. 00:17:58 and also the Audible version.
398. 00:18:02 The Audible version is actually kind of nice
399. 00:18:05 because it's written by both of them,
400. 00:18:07 and it's very clear when one person is talking
401. 00:18:09 and when the other person is talking.
402. 00:18:11 Especially 'cause I know Tiago's voice really well
403. 00:18:13 from all the time that I've followed building a second brain.
404. 00:18:17 So that was kind of interesting to experience it that way.
405. 00:18:23 Again, I don't think the first time through the book
406. 00:18:27 that I would necessarily recommend,
407. 00:18:29 you just listen to it.
408. 00:18:30 Although there were some things
409. 00:18:32 that hit me a little bit different
410. 00:18:34 when I listened to it as opposed to Reddit.
411. 00:18:38 And I've actually gone through this book,
412. 00:18:39 I think probably three or four times since I bought it.
413. 00:18:44 I actually went back and read it again,
414. 00:18:47 but then also listened to it
415. 00:18:48 because I saw that it was available.
416. 00:18:51 And I just wanted to see how it hit different.
417. 00:18:54 And there were definitely some things
418. 00:18:55 that when I heard them talking about it
419. 00:18:58 as opposed to reading it on the page,
420. 00:19:01 raised a few more questions, let's say.
421. 00:19:04 - Okay, so I'm ready to move on to chapter one.
422. 00:19:07 We'll give you one last thing from the introduction
423. 00:19:10 that says they say marketing can be human first,
424. 00:19:14 education driven, creative, fun, and yes profitable.
425. 00:19:17 And if you're interested in that, this is the book for you.
426. 00:19:20 So if you're thinking about whether or not you wanna read
427. 00:19:21 this book, you're thinking about whether or not
428. 00:19:22 you're even interested enough in marketing
429. 00:19:24 to read this book or interested in their take on marketing,
430. 00:19:27 they're trying to make marketing human first,
431. 00:19:30 education driven, creative, fun,
432. 00:19:31 and then profitable as well.
433. 00:19:34 - Yep.
434. 00:19:34 - All right, so we'll roll into chapter one.
435. 00:19:36 Chapter one is called The Achilles Heal of Smart People
436. 00:19:40 by Billy Broass.
437. 00:19:41 So the nature of this chapter is to try to call out
438. 00:19:44 this idea of smart people.
439. 00:19:46 Now, I personally don't like the phrase smart people,
440. 00:19:50 I think it's an annoying and frustrating phrase to me,
441. 00:19:54 but I understand why they wrote it this way.
442. 00:19:56 They basically wrote it in a way like I think you could say
443. 00:20:00 the Achilles Heal of Content Creators.
444. 00:20:03 The Achilles Heal of people who are focused
445. 00:20:06 on producing the product.
446. 00:20:08 Like I actually think that our products creators
447. 00:20:10 might even be a better way to say that, right?
448. 00:20:12 Because what they're driving home in my mind
449. 00:20:15 in this chapter is not marketers.
450. 00:20:18 The Achilles Heal of the people who create the thing
451. 00:20:20 but aren't the marketing people
452. 00:20:22 who are gonna then go and market the people.
453. 00:20:25 So they're laying out this idea,
454. 00:20:27 this, they'll refer to it as a double-edged sword,
455. 00:20:30 that the thing that gives them the ability
456. 00:20:31 to create good content is also the thing
457. 00:20:33 that makes them bad marketers.
458. 00:20:34 So they overthink the thing.
459. 00:20:36 They go in there and they're like,
460. 00:20:37 "Ah, well, I'm overthinking the marketing.
461. 00:20:39 I need to be focused on this thing
462. 00:20:40 and I'm down in the weeds on this other thing."
463. 00:20:43 So the analytical mind,
464. 00:20:44 they talk about it in here
465. 00:20:45 and the fact that you can deep dive into something
466. 00:20:47 but then the struggle is you dive into two deepest stuff
467. 00:20:51 and then people aren't abstract enough
468. 00:20:53 to actually understand what you're doing.
469. 00:20:56 They try to get into activities too fast
470. 00:20:58 and they don't focus on the background core message too much.
471. 00:21:01 So essentially the nature of this chapter is,
472. 00:21:04 I mean, for lack of a better way to put it,
473. 00:21:06 like all the stuff you're doing wrong, right?
474. 00:21:08 Hey, creator of a thing.
475. 00:21:10 Here's all the stuff you're doing wrong in marketing.
476. 00:21:12 That was kind of my gist and my takeaway from chapter one.
477. 00:21:16 Kinda, I don't think it's quite that confrontational maybe
478. 00:21:24 but I do think that there is a tendency for quote-unquote
479. 00:21:30 smart people to get too into the weeds.
480. 00:21:34 That's the thing that they're trying to warn you against.
481. 00:21:39 The thing I have issue with here though,
482. 00:21:42 is essentially what they're trying to say is
483. 00:21:49 you need to focus on the critical parts of marketing.
484. 00:21:54 You need to not over-complicate things.
485. 00:21:56 And then over the next several chapters,
486. 00:21:58 they're gonna lay out their framework
487. 00:22:00 for creating these different beliefs
488. 00:22:03 and then tying this all back later on,
489. 00:22:06 they mentioned like all of the things that you share
490. 00:22:10 should be tied to these core beliefs.
491. 00:22:13 Now, put yourself in the shoes of somebody
492. 00:22:16 who is just starting.
493. 00:22:19 You know, I mentioned the small group coaching
494. 00:22:22 I wanna do with folks who want to make and sell
495. 00:22:26 their first digital product.
496. 00:22:27 So that's who I have in mind.
497. 00:22:30 They have no idea what their product is going to be.
498. 00:22:34 And if they're going to try and build the belief ladder
499. 00:22:39 for something that they have no idea
500. 00:22:42 whether this is the right product for the market.
501. 00:22:45 Like they can spend a whole bunch of work
502. 00:22:47 building all these beliefs
503. 00:22:49 and they're just gonna be shouting into the void.
504. 00:22:53 I think there has to be a balance
505. 00:22:55 between doing the backend work
506. 00:22:59 of simplifying the messaging
507. 00:23:00 once you know this is my thing.
508. 00:23:03 For example, how many different things did Tiago try
509. 00:23:07 before he nailed down building a second brain?
510. 00:23:11 That's a rhetorical question.
511. 00:23:12 I have no idea.
512. 00:23:14 But I'm sure it wasn't the very first idea that he had.
513. 00:23:16 At some point he decided, you know,
514. 00:23:18 there's enough signal here
515. 00:23:19 that this is the thing I really wanna put the wood
516. 00:23:22 behind the arrow.
517. 00:23:23 And so I'll build out the beliefs
518. 00:23:25 around building a second brain
519. 00:23:26 and I'm able to see the results
520. 00:23:28 that he talks about in this book.
521. 00:23:29 But if you don't know what your voice is,
522. 00:23:34 what your thing is, you have to try a bunch of stuff.
523. 00:23:37 I made a comment, I think, in the last episode.
524. 00:23:39 It's something I say all the time.
525. 00:23:41 Make noise, listen for signal.
526. 00:23:44 And the lesson that I learned was
527. 00:23:46 whenever I talked about productivity,
528. 00:23:47 whenever I talked about creativity,
529. 00:23:49 now I would get some people who would respond
530. 00:23:51 and like and whatever.
531. 00:23:52 But the minute that I started talking
532. 00:23:53 about how I did that stuff using obsidian,
533. 00:23:56 I got 10 times more engagement.
534. 00:23:58 So obsidian is the thing for me
535. 00:24:00 and I wouldn't have landed on that.
536. 00:24:02 In fact, I didn't try that at the beginning
537. 00:24:04 when I went independent.
538. 00:24:06 I was trying to do the general productivity stuff
539. 00:24:08 that I had done when I was working
540. 00:24:10 with Asian efficiency and the sweet setup
541. 00:24:12 and all that kind of stuff.
542. 00:24:14 So I don't know, like there's truth in what they're saying
543. 00:24:18 but I also think it's dangerous to just blindly go into that.
544. 00:24:21 You have to be willing to diverge
545. 00:24:25 and then converge repeatedly.
546. 00:24:28 - Yeah, so I think, so this ties back into the work
547. 00:24:31 that I've done in the entrepreneurial space, right?
548. 00:24:33 - I think what you're, where there's a disconnect here
549. 00:24:36 is the product market fit.
550. 00:24:42 There's a difference between the product market fit.
551. 00:24:44 Sorry, the reason why I laughed y'all,
552. 00:24:45 is because we're in a Zoom call and the balloons just came up
553. 00:24:48 because I made some hand motion that made balloons pop up,
554. 00:24:51 which, you know, technology, what are you gonna do?
555. 00:24:54 So there's a difference between product market fit,
556. 00:24:56 which is what you just described, right?
557. 00:24:57 Like you described the idea of we're trying to figure out
558. 00:25:00 what is the product and where's the market for that product
559. 00:25:03 and how do those two things connect?
560. 00:25:04 And then there's marketing.
561. 00:25:05 Once I've figured out product market fit,
562. 00:25:08 how do I market that to them?
563. 00:25:09 I think Billy and Tiago wrote this book
564. 00:25:12 as a we've got product market fit figured out.
565. 00:25:15 Now they don't ever mention it.
566. 00:25:16 If I'm remembering correctly,
567. 00:25:17 they don't ever mention the idea of product market fit
568. 00:25:19 and like actually doing in the world that I worked a lot in,
569. 00:25:23 we would do a thing called customer discovery, right?
570. 00:25:25 Like so your whole process where you were figuring out
571. 00:25:28 what, you know, what should I be doing
572. 00:25:29 and where should I be doing it?
573. 00:25:30 And then you landed on obsidian.
574. 00:25:33 That was a big part of a customer discovery process.
575. 00:25:35 And then you discovered, you know,
576. 00:25:37 oh, there's this whole pool of customers
577. 00:25:38 that sit inside the obsidian world.
578. 00:25:41 Okay, I'm gonna go there
579. 00:25:42 and then your marketing can focus now in on
580. 00:25:44 the belief building ladder and doing the things
581. 00:25:47 that you need to do for that group.
582. 00:25:49 So that would have been a good thing, you know,
583. 00:25:51 as we're processing it out loud.
584. 00:25:53 This is one of the reasons I love doing this podcast
585. 00:25:55 is because as we're processing it out loud,
586. 00:25:57 there could have been a clear distinction between,
587. 00:26:00 hey, there is customer discovery,
588. 00:26:02 there's product market fit section
589. 00:26:04 and then there's marketing
590. 00:26:05 and we're gonna focus maybe more
591. 00:26:06 on the marketing section of it.
592. 00:26:08 'Cause he was, he's talking about, you know,
593. 00:26:09 one of the backdrops to this whole book is,
594. 00:26:12 Billy will refer to his beer brewing course.
595. 00:26:16 And that's kind of what got him started on all of this,
596. 00:26:18 is he got into beer brewing
597. 00:26:19 and he realized, oh, I could develop a course for this.
598. 00:26:21 And then it's the whole process of like,
599. 00:26:23 how do I market that, that beer brewing course?
600. 00:26:25 And that's what kind of got him into marketing.
601. 00:26:27 But he kind of had the product market fit
602. 00:26:30 already figured out, is there are people out there
603. 00:26:31 that wanna learn how to brew beer
604. 00:26:33 and I'm gonna help teach them that.
605. 00:26:35 And that was the, you know,
606. 00:26:36 he already had his target audience, I guess.
607. 00:26:39 - Yeah, I think though that marketing is not something
608. 00:26:44 that you put on the back burner
609. 00:26:46 until you have product market fit.
610. 00:26:48 It's something that is part of the process.
611. 00:26:52 And just like sales, by the way.
612. 00:26:55 Anyone who says that they are not a salesperson,
613. 00:27:00 but is married is a liar
614. 00:27:01 'cause you have sold yourself at least once.
615. 00:27:05 So we tend to have these negative stigmas
616. 00:27:08 that are attached to these terms
617. 00:27:11 of sales and marketing specifically.
618. 00:27:13 They're not the same thing,
619. 00:27:14 but like that's not really for me.
620. 00:27:18 And I think this book does a good job
621. 00:27:21 of maybe breaking down some of that stigma,
622. 00:27:23 making it more approachable.
623. 00:27:25 But I also at this point in the book,
624. 00:27:28 I'm realizing that this isn't something
625. 00:27:31 that you put on the side until you're ready
626. 00:27:34 and then you tackle it and this is the system.
627. 00:27:38 And that's sort of how it comes off to me the second time
628. 00:27:43 through this and especially hearing you describe it,
629. 00:27:46 you know, as the first time
630. 00:27:48 that you've encountered this material.
631. 00:27:50 - Yeah, I can see that.
632. 00:27:51 So chapter two is I Can Relate.
633. 00:27:53 So this is a chapter written by Tiago
634. 00:27:56 where he basically talks about, you know,
635. 00:27:59 essentially being a smart person
636. 00:28:00 and trying to market something.
637. 00:28:02 And then he goes through what he's doing.
638. 00:28:05 He talks about the fact he's got to juggle a lot of balls,
639. 00:28:07 trying to do an online business
640. 00:28:09 and that, you know, communication is key here.
641. 00:28:13 He goes through his three mistakes.
642. 00:28:15 So his three, you know, they quoted smart person mistakes
643. 00:28:18 and mistake one was thinking the product will sell itself.
644. 00:28:20 Mistake two was making incorrect assumptions about success.
645. 00:28:24 And then mistake three was seeing marketing as inherently bad.
646. 00:28:27 So they outlined these three mistakes
647. 00:28:28 and give some details there.
648. 00:28:31 Tiago offers this mindset shift.
649. 00:28:32 He says, nothing about sales or marketing is inherently bad.
650. 00:28:35 It's how they're done that's often bad,
651. 00:28:36 which that really, really resonated with me
652. 00:28:39 that like marketing is necessary.
653. 00:28:40 You have to do marketing or you're just
654. 00:28:44 not going to sell a product, right?
655. 00:28:45 Like, so you can not do marketing
656. 00:28:48 and you're not going to sell anything
657. 00:28:49 or you can do marketing.
658. 00:28:50 And then thinking about it as later on down the road,
659. 00:28:54 really where it's the tactics that tend to give us
660. 00:28:57 that bad taste in our mouth.
661. 00:28:59 And then they kind of, he doubles down here
662. 00:29:02 on the think of marketing as teaching.
663. 00:29:04 You're teaching people how to value your product.
664. 00:29:06 You're teaching people, you know,
665. 00:29:08 the value of your product and where it goes from there.
666. 00:29:11 So this chapter, you know, I thought did a good job
667. 00:29:15 following up on chapter one
668. 00:29:17 because it gave clear and tangible examples
669. 00:29:19 of how Tiago, you know, resonated
670. 00:29:22 with what was covered in chapter one.
671. 00:29:24 - Yeah, the mistake number one in particular
672. 00:29:28 really resonates with me, the product,
673. 00:29:29 thinking the product will sell itself.
674. 00:29:32 That's never going to be the case.
675. 00:29:34 And I think it's easy to fall into that,
676. 00:29:40 especially when you spend so much time making something.
677. 00:29:46 Life HQ is the thing that comes to mind for me.
678. 00:29:50 And the reason that that was a successful launch
679. 00:29:55 wasn't because I built this incredible,
680. 00:29:59 done for you, Obsidian Vault,
681. 00:30:01 although there got, you know, a bunch of reviews
682. 00:30:05 and feedback from people who have said as much.
683. 00:30:09 But the reason that it was successful
684. 00:30:11 is because I wrote, I think, 10 to 12 emails
685. 00:30:15 that I sent out to the list
686. 00:30:17 prior to launching the product.
687. 00:30:19 And that's the hard part.
688. 00:30:23 And it's easy to think like, well,
689. 00:30:26 I don't really have the time or the bandwidth
690. 00:30:28 in order to pull this off.
691. 00:30:29 But I know that if I hadn't written those emails
692. 00:30:31 that, you know, there'd be a handful of people maybe
693. 00:30:34 who discovered it, but most people wouldn't.
694. 00:30:39 And that's sort of where I find myself
695. 00:30:40 with the cohort currently.
696. 00:30:42 You know, I mentioned that I made it available,
697. 00:30:44 but the back of my head, I'm thinking,
698. 00:30:46 you know, maybe I can just, you know,
699. 00:30:48 throw it out there and people will sign up
700. 00:30:50 and I don't have to write the emails.
701. 00:30:51 Like, no, you have to write the emails.
702. 00:30:55 There's no way, no way around it.
703. 00:30:57 And it's not a bad thing.
704. 00:30:58 That's the other thing, mistake number three,
705. 00:31:00 seeing marketing as inherently bad.
706. 00:31:03 That's the other thing I learned from the Life HQ launch
707. 00:31:05 because I wrote all those emails.
708. 00:31:06 And I was talking about the frameworks
709. 00:31:09 and kind of my approach to the way that I built things.
710. 00:31:12 And I realized that, you know, there were a lot of people
711. 00:31:17 who, whether or not they were interested in Life HQ at all,
712. 00:31:20 they got a lot out of reading the emails
713. 00:31:23 because I was trying my best to write things
714. 00:31:28 that were valuable and helpful.
715. 00:31:30 So yeah, recognize, you know, that you gotta do it,
716. 00:31:33 but also like, it's not a negative thing.
717. 00:31:37 And people aren't just waiting to get that one last email
718. 00:31:42 that you sent them that's gonna push them over the edge
719. 00:31:44 and now they're gonna unsubscribe.
720. 00:31:46 You know, it's hard when you have a newsletter
721. 00:31:48 because every time you send it,
722. 00:31:49 you get a bunch of people who unsubscribe.
723. 00:31:52 And it's like, man, if I just would have never sent the newsletter,
724. 00:31:56 my list would be bigger.
725. 00:31:57 But no, it's good to have people identify, you know,
726. 00:32:02 either this is for me or it's not for me.
727. 00:32:04 And the people who unsubscribe,
728. 00:32:05 they're basically saying, this isn't for me, well, that's fine.
729. 00:32:07 You know, maybe they'll be back, maybe they won't,
730. 00:32:09 maybe my thing just isn't for you and that's fine.
731. 00:32:12 I hope you find what you're looking for.
732. 00:32:14 That's ultimately a good thing.
733. 00:32:16 All right, so my second one, mistake two,
734. 00:32:19 that was one of the ones that got me
735. 00:32:21 was incorrect assumption about success.
736. 00:32:23 I'm intrigued with what you think about this, Mike,
737. 00:32:25 because you and I have kind of talked about this loosely before
738. 00:32:28 and I wanna hear you pontificate on this point.
739. 00:32:33 So production values don't matter until later, way later.
740. 00:32:37 If you invest money in the business,
741. 00:32:39 whether it be a fancy video, a new website,
742. 00:32:40 a sophisticated graphic design,
743. 00:32:42 does not automatically mean it will pay off.
744. 00:32:44 I think the second half of that is accurate.
745. 00:32:47 Just because you put a bunch of money or time
746. 00:32:50 or whatever into making something look cool,
747. 00:32:54 it doesn't mean it's gonna be successful.
748. 00:32:56 And this is where I think we get into a chicken and egg problem.
749. 00:32:58 You need something of value to market
750. 00:33:02 and then you also need good marketing for that thing of value.
751. 00:33:07 So what do you, like, how do you balance doing both of those
752. 00:33:11 where it's like I'm trying to develop the thing that's valuable
753. 00:33:14 and I'm trying to figure out how to market the thing
754. 00:33:16 that I just made that's valuable.
755. 00:33:18 And this is where I think this one really stood out to me
756. 00:33:22 as like, yeah, that's actually really hard.
757. 00:33:24 That's really hard to do.
758. 00:33:26 - Yeah, so having just redid my sales page,
759. 00:33:31 I think the big thing that gives me is it looks professional.
760. 00:33:38 I don't know if other people are gonna feel the same way,
761. 00:33:41 but I think it, because it looks so professional,
762. 00:33:45 it sort of validates the offer.
763. 00:33:49 However, I know that there are lots of data points
764. 00:33:53 to share that that doesn't really matter.
765. 00:33:56 I remember hearing a J. Klaus Creator Science podcast
766. 00:34:02 where he was interviewing, I think it was Johnny Miller
767. 00:34:05 who does the like nervous system mastery.
768. 00:34:10 It's this big cohort essentially for high achievers
769. 00:34:14 who want to have a better mental handle on things.
770. 00:34:20 Okay, that very oversimplified.
771. 00:34:23 He would probably cringe at that description.
772. 00:34:26 But I remember him saying that when he put it together,
773. 00:34:29 he had a notion page that he published for the first cohort.
774. 00:34:35 And then he worked with a designer developer
775. 00:34:38 and made it look way more professional
776. 00:34:40 and actually got less people to sign up for that cohort
777. 00:34:44 than the crappy notion version that he had out there.
778. 00:34:48 And so I think there is a lot of nuance
779. 00:34:51 that goes into why maybe the sales weren't as high
780. 00:34:56 for the third one, I think,
781. 00:34:57 when he launched the new sales page.
782. 00:35:01 But the lie, I think, is that you need to have something
783. 00:35:06 that looks uber professional in order to stand out
784. 00:35:08 for everything else.
785. 00:35:11 Ultimately, I think if you have a good message,
786. 00:35:15 if you are solving a problem in an interesting way,
787. 00:35:19 then people will give you a shot
788. 00:35:21 whether or not you have some fancy website.
789. 00:35:24 - Okay, good.
790. 00:35:26 Thank you for your take.
791. 00:35:27 You ready to move on to chapter three?
792. 00:35:29 - Let's do it.
793. 00:35:30 - Okay, chapter three is an essential metaphor for this book.
794. 00:35:34 So chapter three is called the upstream downstream
795. 00:35:37 marketing metaphor.
796. 00:35:38 And I would say behind belief building, right?
797. 00:35:43 The idea or the concept of belief building,
798. 00:35:45 this is probably the second most important idea
799. 00:35:48 that they present in this book.
800. 00:35:50 So they say a picture or a river,
801. 00:35:52 you've got the upstream section,
802. 00:35:54 you've got the midstream section,
803. 00:35:55 you've got the downstream section,
804. 00:35:57 and your core message occurs at the upstream
805. 00:36:01 and it then flows into the midstream and the downstream.
806. 00:36:04 So if you don't put enough time and effort
807. 00:36:06 into the upstream,
808. 00:36:08 it's not that the midstream and the downstream don't matter,
809. 00:36:11 it's the fact that you're kind of putting a Band-Aid
810. 00:36:14 on a broken arm at the midstream in the downstream section.
811. 00:36:18 So therefore, they are trying to change your thinking
812. 00:36:22 in terms of spend more time,
813. 00:36:24 focus more on the upstream section,
814. 00:36:27 that way good stuff flows down through the system
815. 00:36:31 and we can fix the issues when we get down to
816. 00:36:34 where they're less significant issues
817. 00:36:35 when we get down to the downstream portion.
818. 00:36:37 He makes a reference here
819. 00:36:38 and I don't remember the exact details of it,
820. 00:36:40 but something around cooking, right?
821. 00:36:42 Like if I use good ingredients from the beginning
822. 00:36:44 in the upstream section,
823. 00:36:45 it's easier to tweak the flavors in the downstream section.
824. 00:36:48 And if I use bad or rotten ingredients
825. 00:36:50 in the upstream section,
826. 00:36:53 I really can't fix the downstream.
827. 00:36:54 It's gonna be bad, no matter what I do
828. 00:36:57 or it's gonna be subpar, no matter what I do.
829. 00:37:01 So in the upstream section,
830. 00:37:02 he's gonna say focus on that core message,
831. 00:37:04 that central argument for somebody to choose your product.
832. 00:37:07 In the midstream section, focus on your marketing channels.
833. 00:37:11 So these are like the big things you would use.
834. 00:37:14 I would use YouTube, I would use a podcast,
835. 00:37:16 a newsletter, some sort of social media,
836. 00:37:19 something like a TV commercials.
837. 00:37:20 So channels basically is what you would call them.
838. 00:37:23 So it's your marketing channels.
839. 00:37:25 And then in the downstream section,
840. 00:37:26 it's your actual tactics, your marketing tactics.
841. 00:37:28 So this is where you start to say, do I do giveaways?
842. 00:37:31 Do I do contests, referral programs, limited time offers?
843. 00:37:34 Do I do the countdown timer?
844. 00:37:35 What do I do?
845. 00:37:36 And what he's basically, you know,
846. 00:37:38 just to drive home this point one more time,
847. 00:37:40 if my core message is off, my channels and my tactics
848. 00:37:44 are gonna be subpar no matter what I,
849. 00:37:47 whether I pick the perfect thing or not.
850. 00:37:49 And if my core message is on spot or on point,
851. 00:37:52 then I can have like a little bit of grace
852. 00:37:55 in terms of my channels and my marketing tactics.
853. 00:37:58 That being said, you can optimize all of them.
854. 00:38:00 So if your core message is good, your channels are good,
855. 00:38:03 and your tactics are good, boom,
856. 00:38:05 you're hitting a home run and everything's perfect.
857. 00:38:07 So that's kind of just a general overview of chapter three,
858. 00:38:09 which I think is one of the main sections of this book
859. 00:38:12 and the framework that they lay out.
860. 00:38:15 - Yeah, so I like this description
861. 00:38:17 of the upstream, midstream, downstream.
862. 00:38:20 The approach to this though is purely as a marketer
863. 00:38:25 and not as a consumer.
864. 00:38:26 - Okay.
865. 00:38:28 So if I were giving somebody advice about,
866. 00:38:32 you know, just use the small group coaching
867. 00:38:37 that I mentioned earlier,
868. 00:38:39 I wouldn't start with the upstream.
869. 00:38:42 I wouldn't figure out the marketing channels from there
870. 00:38:45 and then downstream focus on the tactics.
871. 00:38:47 I would say, where do you already hang out?
872. 00:38:50 And then just join the conversation there.
873. 00:38:54 So like, you don't want to, like if I'm doing this
874. 00:38:59 for my brand, Practical PKM, for example,
875. 00:39:03 the upstream, your core message,
876. 00:39:04 why someone should choose your product or service.
877. 00:39:07 I'm not, I didn't start with that and then figure out,
878. 00:39:11 well, I guess I better do YouTube.
879. 00:39:14 I went through Ali Abdall's part-time YouTuber Academy
880. 00:39:16 and I was like, oh, this seems like a good fit.
881. 00:39:18 I guess I'll make YouTube videos.
882. 00:39:20 And then by creating a bunch of YouTube videos,
883. 00:39:23 I was able to find the fit
884. 00:39:25 and then that affected the upstream and the downstream.
885. 00:39:28 So, you know, I like the metaphor.
886. 00:39:30 I think it's accurate, but again, you know,
887. 00:39:33 that's not the only way to approach this stuff.
888. 00:39:37 So I think this is a good chapter.
889. 00:39:39 It's a good metaphor.
890. 00:39:40 And the key takeaway here, I think, is to go upstream, right?
891. 00:39:45 Don't focus on the tactics.
892. 00:39:47 Well, I just got to get a quiz in place
893. 00:39:50 and then I'm going to get all of these email signups.
894. 00:39:52 If your core messaging is garbage,
895. 00:39:54 all those email signups are not going to matter.
896. 00:39:59 They're not going to stay on your list
897. 00:40:00 because they were really only interested
898. 00:40:03 in the thing that you were giving away
899. 00:40:04 and they're not interested in anything that you're doing.
900. 00:40:08 That's what you want to avoid.
901. 00:40:11 So, yeah, I just, again, like you got to figure out
902. 00:40:16 what am I going to do with this?
903. 00:40:18 It's not as simple as, well, I'll just start upstream
904. 00:40:21 and then everything's going to click into place.
905. 00:40:23 Well, and I think, you know,
906. 00:40:25 so the fun thing about this is sometimes
907. 00:40:27 Mike and I disagree, right?
908. 00:40:28 Like, so as somebody who hasn't thought a lot
909. 00:40:30 about marketing coming into this,
910. 00:40:32 this really, really resonated with me
911. 00:40:34 because like when I was thinking about, you know,
912. 00:40:36 talking to the internet, you know,
913. 00:40:37 back in the years ago when I was making that show,
914. 00:40:41 I never once thought about,
915. 00:40:45 oh, well, how should I market this to people?
916. 00:40:47 Like, I should market it as really interesting conversations
917. 00:40:51 with people who talk to the internet
918. 00:40:53 and who make things for the internet.
919. 00:40:55 Like, and that's the way I show,
920. 00:40:56 and do you want to come here
921. 00:40:58 these really interesting conversations?
922. 00:40:59 Are you looking for a new show
923. 00:41:00 where you're here about the people who make the things you love?
924. 00:41:04 I never thought of it like that.
925. 00:41:05 You know what I thought of it as?
926. 00:41:06 Well, maybe if I give away a pair of AirPods,
927. 00:41:08 I can get like more people to like click on the link
928. 00:41:10 and it's, and like, as dumb as that sounds right now,
929. 00:41:15 that is the way I thought about marketing.
930. 00:41:16 It was like, oh, just get more people
931. 00:41:19 to click on the download or subscribe button.
932. 00:41:21 It doesn't matter if they resonate with like,
933. 00:41:23 do they actually like the show?
934. 00:41:25 Do they want to listen to more episodes?
935. 00:41:27 Are you trying to catch them as recurring people?
936. 00:41:30 It was just like, no, just get them to come
937. 00:41:32 and visit the thing, you know, whatever you're doing.
938. 00:41:35 And I think that was an ineffective way to do it.
939. 00:41:38 Like, that was a, there's a wrong approach.
940. 00:41:39 - So that's what a lot of people do.
941. 00:41:41 You know, I remember when I worked with the family business,
942. 00:41:43 going to the trade shows for special education trade shows.
943. 00:41:48 And we'd have a booth and we'd get, you know,
944. 00:41:51 a handful of people who would stop by and I'd talk to them
945. 00:41:55 and they'd be interested in what we had.
946. 00:41:58 But there was always some booth
947. 00:42:01 that was giving away like a coach purse or something
948. 00:42:04 and everyone congregated around that booth
949. 00:42:08 and they had thousands of signups for their raffle.
950. 00:42:13 But nobody cared about the product or the service whatsoever.
951. 00:42:18 You know, not every time I saw one of those,
952. 00:42:20 I was like, man, what a complete waste of time.
953. 00:42:24 - Have you read anything or seen anything
954. 00:42:25 where it's like, is it a complete waste of time?
955. 00:42:27 Like, what is the, what is the better?
956. 00:42:29 'Cause I mean, you're getting, you know,
957. 00:42:32 to not do that, you're getting higher value
958. 00:42:35 but a lower number of leads.
959. 00:42:38 And to do that, you're getting a high number
960. 00:42:41 of very low value leads, right?
961. 00:42:43 And like, I wonder what actually pans out better
962. 00:42:45 in the long run.
963. 00:42:48 - That's a good question.
964. 00:42:50 I don't think it's a simple answer.
965. 00:42:54 I mean, there are probably some products
966. 00:42:58 where they just need to be aware that you're out there.
967. 00:43:01 And so mission accomplished if they signed up
968. 00:43:05 and you just spam them with email from now
969. 00:43:08 until 10 years from now.
970. 00:43:11 But I don't know, my dad and I used to argue
971. 00:43:13 about this all the time because he would want
972. 00:43:15 to just buy an email list.
973. 00:43:18 These are all the special education directors
974. 00:43:21 and whatever organization and then send out an email.
975. 00:43:24 And he, I think he kind of assumed
976. 00:43:25 that because he had their email list
977. 00:43:28 and he sent them an email because he believed
978. 00:43:31 that the product would solve a problem that they had,
979. 00:43:34 that they were going to open it and read it.
980. 00:43:36 - Hold on, what mistake is this?
981. 00:43:39 Mistake you, this is the product will sell itself.
982. 00:43:41 That's mistake one.
983. 00:43:42 - Yeah, maybe, but they're not even opening it.
984. 00:43:45 It's probably not even landing in their inbox
985. 00:43:48 because you can't do email marketing that way.
986. 00:43:51 - Yeah, exactly.
987. 00:43:52 - I kept trying to explain, well,
988. 00:43:53 people got to opt in and they got a double confirm.
989. 00:43:57 No, no, no, we just need to send them stuff.
990. 00:44:00 (laughs)
991. 00:44:02 - Well, but I mean, think about it.
992. 00:44:02 Like that's where, that's how marketing used to be done.
993. 00:44:04 You just sent it to them in the mail.
994. 00:44:06 - Yeah, exactly.
995. 00:44:06 - But you just sent them stuff in the mail
996. 00:44:07 and you didn't care.
997. 00:44:08 Like, you didn't know if they looked at it,
998. 00:44:09 but you know it was in their mailbox
999. 00:44:11 or at least you thought it would be.
1000. 00:44:12 - Right, right.
1001. 00:44:15 I don't know.
1002. 00:44:16 Personally, I have always believed, I think,
1003. 00:44:19 even before I read this book,
1004. 00:44:22 that there is value in offering somebody something
1005. 00:44:27 that is actually valuable to them.
1006. 00:44:29 They fill out the form to get the thing,
1007. 00:44:32 whether that's my free starter vault
1008. 00:44:34 or book notes or whatever.
1009. 00:44:37 I'm not trying to trick you.
1010. 00:44:39 I'm gonna make it easy to unsubscribe.
1011. 00:44:41 I'm not gonna add you to the list
1012. 00:44:43 until you click the link that I send you.
1013. 00:44:45 Just to confirm, you actually did mean to fill out the thing
1014. 00:44:49 because at that point, we've got a decent chance
1015. 00:44:52 of building a relationship
1016. 00:44:54 and I'm the right person to solve a problem that you have.
1017. 00:44:57 If I'm not, you shouldn't have signed up in the first place.
1018. 00:45:01 - Yeah.
1019. 00:45:02 - Right, so I don't know, like my email list is not big.
1020. 00:45:06 I think it's like 7,600 people-ish.
1021. 00:45:09 And I take pride in the fact that the people
1022. 00:45:14 that are on there actually want what I have to offer.
1023. 00:45:18 It's every time I send out a newsletter,
1024. 00:45:20 it's like a 6% click rate.
1025. 00:45:24 It's like almost a 50% open rate.
1026. 00:45:26 And there's a bunch of people, you know,
1027. 00:45:27 signed up a long time ago
1028. 00:45:28 and they haven't opened anything.
1029. 00:45:30 I need to actually clean that up.
1030. 00:45:32 I've got to build that automation, you know,
1031. 00:45:34 I've even opened anything in six months.
1032. 00:45:36 You sure you still want to receive this stuff, you know,
1033. 00:45:37 let me know, otherwise I'll remove you.
1034. 00:45:40 But yeah, I just think that email
1035. 00:45:43 is a really cool platform.
1036. 00:45:47 And what's interesting about it is everybody who,
1037. 00:45:50 well, if you do it the right way,
1038. 00:45:52 everybody who you send an email to has raised their hand
1039. 00:45:55 and said, "I want to receive something from you."
1040. 00:45:59 I take like I take that seriously.
1041. 00:46:01 That's a big responsibility, I think.
1042. 00:46:03 But it's also really freaking cool when you think about it.
1043. 00:46:05 Yeah, exactly.
1044. 00:46:06 There are 7,600 people who want to receive my newsletter.
1045. 00:46:10 Like that's awesome.
1046. 00:46:11 Well, and the hilarious thing is you said,
1047. 00:46:12 oh my list isn't that big at 7,600 people.
1048. 00:46:14 And the first thing I went was,
1049. 00:46:15 holy cow, you got 7,600 people.
1050. 00:46:17 And I understand there are people out there
1051. 00:46:18 with, you know, a million and a hundred million
1052. 00:46:20 and blah, blah, blah, blah.
1053. 00:46:21 But it's like, like that's a lot of people
1054. 00:46:24 that have said, I want your thing.
1055. 00:46:26 Like give me more of your thing,
1056. 00:46:28 which I think is awesome.
1057. 00:46:30 I'm a big fan of time blocking.
1058. 00:46:32 In my opinion, it's the most important thing
1059. 00:46:34 that you can do for your productivity.
1060. 00:46:37 You make sure that you set aside time for your important tasks
1061. 00:46:39 and it's critical for allowing your brain
1062. 00:46:42 to focus on the task at hand
1063. 00:46:44 so you can follow through on the intentions that you set.
1064. 00:46:47 Now the process is pretty simple.
1065. 00:46:48 You start with your meetings and appointments
1066. 00:46:49 on your calendar and then you just schedule time
1067. 00:46:51 for your important tasks until every hour has a job.
1068. 00:46:54 The key is that the time block plan should exist
1069. 00:46:57 outside your task manager.
1070. 00:46:59 And since I use Obsidian as my task manager,
1071. 00:47:01 this has always been a little tricky.
1072. 00:47:03 Fortunately, the folks at Morgan
1073. 00:47:05 have built a direct integration with Obsidian,
1074. 00:47:08 which allows you to schedule those most important tasks
1075. 00:47:11 on your planning calendar
1076. 00:47:12 and sync the completion status back to Obsidian
1077. 00:47:15 when you're done.
1078. 00:47:17 Morgan is a really cool scheduling app
1079. 00:47:19 that I've been using myself for the last couple of months.
1080. 00:47:22 It's kind of like a calendaring app,
1081. 00:47:24 but that's selling it short.
1082. 00:47:25 And while it has a lot of calendar management features,
1083. 00:47:28 what I love about Morgan is the emphasis on planning
1084. 00:47:31 and the ability to pull your tasks
1085. 00:47:33 and your calendars together into one interface,
1086. 00:47:36 which is perfect for time blocking.
1087. 00:47:39 Now with Morgan, you can easily create realistic plans
1088. 00:47:41 by seeing how much time that you have available
1089. 00:47:44 and then slotting in your important tasks
1090. 00:47:46 into that time, forcing intentional planning
1091. 00:47:49 and prioritization.
1092. 00:47:50 If you find it hard to sift through your tasks
1093. 00:47:52 or you struggle with knowing
1094. 00:47:53 what the most important task is at any given time,
1095. 00:47:56 something that I fell into a lot
1096. 00:47:57 before I started time blocking,
1097. 00:47:59 Morgan can also recommend which tasks to schedule when
1098. 00:48:02 based on the metadata that is in your tasks.
1099. 00:48:04 And those tasks can be pulled in from multiple services,
1100. 00:48:07 not just Obsidian.
1101. 00:48:08 So if you have work tasks from your team
1102. 00:48:10 that uses Notion, ClickUp, or to-do as for example,
1103. 00:48:14 you can schedule those alongside your personal tasks
1104. 00:48:17 and have all of those things
1105. 00:48:18 in one beautiful user interface.
1106. 00:48:21 Now, if you wanna see how I use Morgan,
1107. 00:48:23 I've actually got a YouTube video I just published
1108. 00:48:25 which walks through how the Obsidian integration works
1109. 00:48:27 and how I've got it set up.
1110. 00:48:29 There'll be a link in the show notes
1111. 00:48:31 if you wanna see that video.
1112. 00:48:32 And if you wanna try Morgan for yourself,
1113. 00:48:34 you can do so for free by going to Morgan.so
1114. 00:48:38 or by using the link in the show notes.
1115. 00:48:41 And if you decide that Morgan is for you,
1116. 00:48:42 you can save 10% on a subscription
1117. 00:48:45 when you use the coupon code LifeHQ10 at checkout.
1118. 00:48:48 So once again, that's morgan.so, M-O-R-G-E-N.so
1119. 00:48:54 in coupon code LifeHQ10 at checkout
1120. 00:48:57 to save 10% on a Morgan subscription.
1121. 00:49:00 Our thanks to Morgan for making a great scheduling app
1122. 00:49:03 for Obsidian Nerds like me
1123. 00:49:04 and their support of the Bookworm podcast.
1124. 00:49:08 - Chapter four, the one question that makes marketing simple.
1125. 00:49:11 This is a Billy Broass chapter.
1126. 00:49:14 Now, this I would say is the central point of the book.
1127. 00:49:18 This is the goal of what they're trying to do.
1128. 00:49:20 They're trying to lay out this idea
1129. 00:49:22 of the belief building process.
1130. 00:49:25 So what is the one question that makes marketing simple?
1131. 00:49:28 It's what does my prospect need to believe in order to buy?
1132. 00:49:32 So that would be the one question.
1133. 00:49:34 What does my prospect need to believe in order to buy?
1134. 00:49:38 They will emphasize this point.
1135. 00:49:42 This is the only question you need to ask yourself
1136. 00:49:44 to develop your core message.
1137. 00:49:46 You'll take the answers from this question
1138. 00:49:47 and use them to create your marketing material.
1139. 00:49:50 They say this is the belief building process.
1140. 00:49:52 So when you do belief building your role shifts
1141. 00:49:54 from seller to educator and guide,
1142. 00:49:57 and then this allows you to tailor
1143. 00:50:00 kind of what you need to create
1144. 00:50:02 in order to move a person from not going to buy
1145. 00:50:07 in order to going to buy.
1146. 00:50:09 So now we actually got into essentially the crux
1147. 00:50:12 of like what are we doing as marketers?
1148. 00:50:14 We're trying to move a person along a chain
1149. 00:50:17 or up a ladder or whatever you wanna call it, right?
1150. 00:50:20 Like along this system to get them to buy a thing.
1151. 00:50:24 They actually give you a kind of an outline
1152. 00:50:27 of what you would do at the very end.
1153. 00:50:29 It's a four step part.
1154. 00:50:31 You ask the question, what does my customer need
1155. 00:50:34 to believe in order to buy?
1156. 00:50:35 Two, your answers to the question,
1157. 00:50:36 go into the core messaging document.
1158. 00:50:38 You then turn that document into marketing material, right?
1159. 00:50:42 That makes it clear, compelling, and honest argument,
1160. 00:50:44 and then your newly informed prospect
1161. 00:50:46 will understand your argument.
1162. 00:50:48 They'll buy everything will be sunshine and roses,
1163. 00:50:50 and that's their four step outline.
1164. 00:50:52 And at this point I'm gonna stop and I'm gonna turn it to Mike.
1165. 00:50:55 - Yeah, so first time I read this,
1166. 00:50:58 I was like, yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
1167. 00:51:02 I'm gonna do this.
1168. 00:51:03 - Which is the way I felt.
1169. 00:51:04 Okay, so go ahead, now they'll give us more detail.
1170. 00:51:06 - Okay, so I bought the five light bulbs, right?
1171. 00:51:10 And that is a good marketing framework.
1172. 00:51:12 I can tell you that introduces
1173. 00:51:15 a whole bunch of more questions.
1174. 00:51:16 So the one question that you need
1175. 00:51:19 in order to improve your marketing, that's a lie.
1176. 00:51:23 - Okay, okay.
1177. 00:51:25 - But that doesn't mean it's wrong.
1178. 00:51:27 This is the thing I'm trying to wrestle through.
1179. 00:51:29 I understand what they're doing,
1180. 00:51:30 and this is the one that you should pay attention to
1181. 00:51:32 at this point in the journey,
1182. 00:51:34 but the five light bulbs,
1183. 00:51:37 I got super excited about this when I went through it.
1184. 00:51:39 I went through the whole course.
1185. 00:51:41 And what I did is I actually built
1186. 00:51:43 an obsidian template for this using the Kanban plugin
1187. 00:51:50 so that I can create a new note inside
1188. 00:51:53 of my marketing/five light bulbs folder
1189. 00:51:56 for whatever product I'm going to be doing.
1190. 00:51:58 And it has the columns.
1191. 00:52:01 - You have a five light bulbs folder, okay, keep going.
1192. 00:52:03 - Yes, however I will tell you,
1193. 00:52:06 these are not revolutionary questions.
1194. 00:52:07 These are basic marketing questions.
1195. 00:52:10 This is a lot like a lot of other marketing frameworks
1196. 00:52:13 that I have been exposed to.
1197. 00:52:15 So it starts with identifying your ideal customer.
1198. 00:52:18 What's the problem or challenge that your customer is facing?
1199. 00:52:21 What are the other paths that they have tried?
1200. 00:52:24 What are the keys to success for them?
1201. 00:52:26 What's the name of your product?
1202. 00:52:27 What's the price?
1203. 00:52:28 And what's the customer's desired outcome?
1204. 00:52:31 What does their new life look like after they've,
1205. 00:52:34 they've bought your thing, right?
1206. 00:52:36 So that's all important stuff that really,
1207. 00:52:41 I think is necessary for a full marketing plan.
1208. 00:52:47 And so this is sort of like,
1209. 00:52:48 think of simple marketing for smart people
1210. 00:52:51 as the lead magnet for the five light bulbs
1211. 00:52:55 'cause I think that's really what it is
1212. 00:52:56 even though there's not a direct connection
1213. 00:52:58 that he makes with that.
1214. 00:53:00 Like I see now how this one question
1215. 00:53:03 gets you thinking this way.
1216. 00:53:05 And then you go into the five light, okay,
1217. 00:53:07 now I see how to actually apply this.
1218. 00:53:10 - Help me out, Mike.
1219. 00:53:11 You, did you tell me the five light bulbs?
1220. 00:53:15 - Just now, yeah, basically.
1221. 00:53:16 So like my ideal customer, that's the first one, I guess,
1222. 00:53:19 that's not actually a light bulb,
1223. 00:53:20 but that's who you talk about.
1224. 00:53:22 - 'Cause I was gonna say, you said seven things.
1225. 00:53:23 So I'm confused at like, what are the five?
1226. 00:53:26 - So my columns are the ideal customer.
1227. 00:53:29 And then I think the first light bulb
1228. 00:53:30 is the status quo.
1229. 00:53:32 So what is the one problem or challenge
1230. 00:53:33 that your customer is facing?
1231. 00:53:34 And then these are kind of in the five light bulbs.
1232. 00:53:37 There's this metaphor of like building the bridge
1233. 00:53:39 from one side to the other.
1234. 00:53:41 Okay, so then that's the first one.
1235. 00:53:43 The other one, the next one is what other paths,
1236. 00:53:45 have they tried?
1237. 00:53:47 Then the third one is your approach.
1238. 00:53:49 So what are the keys to success?
1239. 00:53:51 That really is a lot of the belief building
1240. 00:53:53 that they're talking about in this particular book.
1241. 00:53:56 The fourth one is the offer.
1242. 00:53:58 So the name of the product and the price.
1243. 00:53:59 Those are two different questions,
1244. 00:54:01 but they're part of that light bulb.
1245. 00:54:03 And then what's the customer's desire to outcome
1246. 00:54:05 is the fifth one.
1247. 00:54:07 The new life once they have bought your thing
1248. 00:54:10 and they've achieved the transformation.
1249. 00:54:12 - Okay.
1250. 00:54:14 All right, so I'm trying to process this.
1251. 00:54:16 So if you'll allow me to go on a little mini tangent here,
1252. 00:54:20 I thought, okay, well, let's try this.
1253. 00:54:22 Like let's put this into practice
1254. 00:54:24 and let's try to focus on this one message
1255. 00:54:27 or this one question to get to the core message.
1256. 00:54:31 So as a reminder, what does my prospect need to believe
1257. 00:54:34 in order to buy?
1258. 00:54:37 So I thought, well, what could I do?
1259. 00:54:38 Like right now, tomorrow, what could I do?
1260. 00:54:40 Well, I could, I've done a lot of work helping people
1261. 00:54:44 figure out whether or not they should be
1262. 00:54:45 an engineering major in college.
1263. 00:54:48 And then if they should be an engineering major,
1264. 00:54:50 what type of engineering they should go into
1265. 00:54:52 and whether or not they should choose a small private school
1266. 00:54:55 or a big public school or whatever that is.
1267. 00:54:56 So it's like, I just called it choosing engineering.
1268. 00:54:59 So like my product, if you will,
1269. 00:55:02 would be consulting on choosing engineering
1270. 00:55:04 as a major in college.
1271. 00:55:07 And I thought, okay, let's run through this.
1272. 00:55:08 What do they need to believe in order to buy?
1273. 00:55:11 Well, they need to believe
1274. 00:55:12 that it's hard to choose an engineering program.
1275. 00:55:15 Like I think they would need to believe that, right?
1276. 00:55:16 Like 'cause if they don't believe that,
1277. 00:55:17 then why are they even talking to me?
1278. 00:55:20 They would need to believe it's hard
1279. 00:55:21 to choose an engineering major.
1280. 00:55:23 They would need to believe that engineering
1281. 00:55:25 is only for people that are good in math and science.
1282. 00:55:28 Or maybe that's a misbelief.
1283. 00:55:29 I guess now that I'm thinking about this,
1284. 00:55:30 that's probably a misbelief
1285. 00:55:31 is it's only good.
1286. 00:55:32 Engineering jobs are good and stable jobs.
1287. 00:55:34 They would need to believe that
1288. 00:55:35 because what's the point of getting a degree
1289. 00:55:37 is to go out and get a job, right?
1290. 00:55:39 Engineers make a lot of money.
1291. 00:55:40 That's one of the things that they believe.
1292. 00:55:42 And I would say it's one of the things
1293. 00:55:44 that they're going to believe.
1294. 00:55:46 Again, now that I'm looking through this again,
1295. 00:55:48 it's like maybe there's misbeliefs and beliefs.
1296. 00:55:50 Engineers are, engineering is for smart people.
1297. 00:55:52 Engineering is hard, right?
1298. 00:55:54 Like, but I was trying to like,
1299. 00:55:55 bless all of the different beliefs that people would have.
1300. 00:55:58 I think it was helpful and I think it was very effective.
1301. 00:56:01 But maybe it doesn't hit to your five light bulbs.
1302. 00:56:03 - Well, I agree, but I also don't think
1303. 00:56:05 it's a complete picture.
1304. 00:56:07 You know, it's good for getting you to think about things
1305. 00:56:13 through the right lens.
1306. 00:56:15 But if you're really going to put together
1307. 00:56:17 a marketing campaign to get people to choose engineering,
1308. 00:56:22 you're going to get much further
1309. 00:56:24 if you go through and you answer all of those questions
1310. 00:56:28 that I gave you with the five light bulbs
1311. 00:56:30 as opposed to the one that they gave you
1312. 00:56:31 in this particular book.
1313. 00:56:33 And the things that are in the five light bulbs,
1314. 00:56:35 I don't know, I've seen this before.
1315. 00:56:38 You know, these are standard marketing type questions.
1316. 00:56:40 They are packaged in a very approachable way.
1317. 00:56:44 And I think that they are good.
1318. 00:56:46 And I think, you know, if I was really broke as,
1319. 00:56:48 this is what I would be selling to the people
1320. 00:56:51 who need to put together their own marketing
1321. 00:56:54 and they don't really know where to start.
1322. 00:56:58 I don't think there's anything magical
1323. 00:57:03 about those particular questions.
1324. 00:57:06 If anything, he's kind of simplified
1325. 00:57:08 out of all the marketing questions that are out there.
1326. 00:57:10 These are the ones that I think are going to give you
1327. 00:57:12 the biggest bang for your buck.
1328. 00:57:13 And there's value in that.
1329. 00:57:16 But it's the type of stuff that I have done many times before.
1330. 00:57:22 - Yeah, okay.
1331. 00:57:24 - And again, I like it a lot.
1332. 00:57:25 I built a template about it, you know?
1333. 00:57:27 So like, it's effective, but it's also, you know,
1334. 00:57:31 I feel like there are other paths
1335. 00:57:33 to get to this destination than just the five light bulbs,
1336. 00:57:37 if that makes sense.
1337. 00:57:38 - Okay. All right.
1338. 00:57:39 So you're ready to move to chapter five.
1339. 00:57:40 - Yep.
1340. 00:57:41 - All right, chapter five is how I use,
1341. 00:57:43 how I use belief building by Tiago Forte.
1342. 00:57:47 So basically, Tiago describes, you know,
1343. 00:57:50 how he thought about this
1344. 00:57:52 when it was presented to him from Billy.
1345. 00:57:56 I can't really tell you that I have like a lot
1346. 00:57:59 coming out of this chapter.
1347. 00:58:01 Like it didn't really, you know,
1348. 00:58:03 nothing major jumped out of me.
1349. 00:58:06 He gives some of his realizations.
1350. 00:58:09 People can be trusted to make good decisions for themselves
1351. 00:58:11 if they're presented with the truth.
1352. 00:58:13 That, you know, just making a bunch of free content
1353. 00:58:15 doesn't really help you all that much.
1354. 00:58:17 That you can derail the whole thing by missing a belief.
1355. 00:58:21 Like I think his realizations were the,
1356. 00:58:23 were the biggest, you know,
1357. 00:58:26 positive for me out of this chapter.
1358. 00:58:27 Otherwise, I didn't get a ton out of this chapter.
1359. 00:58:29 So I'm not sure if you did or not.
1360. 00:58:31 - Well, I think there's,
1361. 00:58:34 there's some important things that he shares here.
1362. 00:58:37 Like when making content, ask yourself,
1363. 00:58:40 what belief is this going to instill or strengthen?
1364. 00:58:42 First time I read this, I was like,
1365. 00:58:43 oh yeah, I gotta really just take this approach
1366. 00:58:47 to the content that I make.
1367. 00:58:49 However, since then I realize I wanna make stuff
1368. 00:58:52 that doesn't fit into these buckets.
1369. 00:58:54 And so I'm just gonna do that.
1370. 00:58:57 Like for example, I had a YouTube video
1371. 00:59:01 that I released prior to the one that I published today.
1372. 00:59:05 And it was the eight best books of 2024.
1373. 00:59:08 That video tanked, if you look at the analytics
1374. 00:59:11 on my YouTube channel,
1375. 00:59:13 because people on my YouTube channel are primarily there
1376. 00:59:15 because I talk about obsidian.
1377. 00:59:18 But I do talk about my reading workflows.
1378. 00:59:20 And obviously we got this podcast.
1379. 00:59:21 So this is an important part of my life as well.
1380. 00:59:24 And if I was just approaching this from belief building,
1381. 00:59:29 how do I get as many people to buy Life HQ
1382. 00:59:31 or join the Practical PKM cohort as quickly as possible?
1383. 00:59:34 You know, I wouldn't make that video.
1384. 00:59:36 But it's part of who I am.
1385. 00:59:38 So I made that video.
1386. 00:59:39 - Yeah. (laughs)
1387. 00:59:41 - So I think, you know, again, you gotta figure out
1388. 00:59:45 what of this you're going to apply,
1389. 00:59:46 what of this you're not going to apply.
1390. 00:59:48 And I think from the narrative that they are presenting this,
1391. 00:59:52 yeah, it makes sense to say, you know,
1392. 00:59:54 this is just the plan, follow this.
1393. 00:59:57 But I think it's also okay to be like,
1394. 00:59:59 you know what, I wanna go against the grain
1395. 01:00:01 a little bit here. (laughs)
1396. 01:00:03 - All right, chapter six then.
1397. 01:00:05 Identifying your customers' existing beliefs.
1398. 01:00:08 And this one was back to being by Billy Broaz.
1399. 01:00:12 - So basically states that you want to hit beliefs
1400. 01:00:17 that will move them along this chain.
1401. 01:00:19 And one of the things they've talked about
1402. 01:00:21 throughout the book at this point,
1403. 01:00:22 and, you know, we kinda, I can't remember exactly where,
1404. 01:00:26 I think it's in this chapter,
1405. 01:00:27 but you don't want the decision to buy to be hard at all.
1406. 01:00:33 So like, after you've done all this stuff,
1407. 01:00:35 and after you've presented all this stuff,
1408. 01:00:37 the sale makes itself.
1409. 01:00:39 Like you actually don't, like,
1410. 01:00:40 that's the way they'll pitch this is,
1411. 01:00:42 if you've done a good enough job
1412. 01:00:43 at the upstream end of this,
1413. 01:00:44 the sale kind of makes itself.
1414. 01:00:46 So this is where he gets into this picture,
1415. 01:00:49 the belief someone needs to buy from you as a chain.
1416. 01:00:54 Each belief is linked as you work through the chain,
1417. 01:00:57 and therefore if you have any weak link in the chain,
1418. 01:01:00 you run the risk of not getting the sale.
1419. 01:01:02 But if you can step them through this belief chain, right,
1420. 01:01:05 and you can develop this belief chain well enough
1421. 01:01:07 that by the time they get to the end of it,
1422. 01:01:09 the sale happens and everything's good.
1423. 01:01:13 He talks about the longer belief chains,
1424. 01:01:16 the details of those, and then the shorter belief chain.
1425. 01:01:19 So longer belief chain is basically,
1426. 01:01:20 they don't even know that they have a problem
1427. 01:01:22 or that they need this thing.
1428. 01:01:23 They don't even know about potential solutions,
1429. 01:01:25 they don't know who you are, any of that.
1430. 01:01:27 The shorter belief chains is,
1431. 01:01:29 they understand what they need,
1432. 01:01:31 but they don't know if it's a good value,
1433. 01:01:32 they don't know if it's the time to buy,
1434. 01:01:34 they don't know if it's your product
1435. 01:01:36 or whether they should trust you.
1436. 01:01:37 So there's less links that you have to work them through
1437. 01:01:41 in order to get there.
1438. 01:01:43 So, you know, I liked this.
1439. 01:01:46 I liked the idea of thinking about my customer's belief chain
1440. 01:01:49 and how do I work them through that belief chain
1441. 01:01:52 and just thinking about what the rungs of that belief chain are.
1442. 01:01:55 So, I got a good bit out of this one.
1443. 01:01:58 One of the things that really jumped out at me
1444. 01:01:59 was this idea of start off by preaching to the choir, right,
1445. 01:02:03 like why go after people that are really, really hard to get,
1446. 01:02:07 go after the people and this gets to your like,
1447. 01:02:10 where are you at?
1448. 01:02:10 Like, where are you engaging in the internet?
1449. 01:02:13 Where are you engaging in social media?
1450. 01:02:14 Where are you engaging in those things?
1451. 01:02:16 Probably those communities are the ones
1452. 01:02:17 that are closest to you to buy your product.
1453. 01:02:20 Engage those communities and don't try to like go,
1454. 01:02:23 you know, have to upsell a whole bunch of people here.
1455. 01:02:26 I'm gonna stop, we can come back into the three methods
1456. 01:02:31 to develop your prospects current beliefs,
1457. 01:02:34 but what do you have, Mike?
1458. 01:02:35 Well, the three methods, just to hit on that,
1459. 01:02:38 listen for the bad questions, your customers ask them questions
1460. 01:02:43 and peek into the cycles of your prospects life.
1461. 01:02:46 Some of those are easier to do than others.
1462. 01:02:50 The visual here for the customer in the middle
1463. 01:02:53 than the hot prospect, warm prospect, cold prospect,
1464. 01:02:57 those circles, they make a compelling visual,
1465. 01:03:03 but I'm not sure how useful that is.
1466. 01:03:07 At what point does cold prospect become a warm prospect,
1467. 01:03:12 become a hot prospect?
1468. 01:03:14 I don't think it's necessarily easy
1469. 01:03:17 to identify those distinctions in any given business.
1470. 01:03:24 It's an important question to ask,
1471. 01:03:26 but I don't know, you look at that visual,
1472. 01:03:28 oh, I just gotta get people to say yes to this belief
1473. 01:03:33 and then say yes to this belief and say yes to that belief,
1474. 01:03:35 and it'd be great if it was that simple.
1475. 01:03:37 I don't think you probably know,
1476. 01:03:40 especially if you're just starting out
1477. 01:03:41 what are the specific beliefs that are going to align
1478. 01:03:45 with your customer going from cold to warm to hot.
1479. 01:03:48 You may have an idea, you may test it,
1480. 01:03:50 and you may figure out this one worked,
1481. 01:03:55 this one didn't, but working through those different
1482. 01:04:00 data points is gonna be really messy.
1483. 01:04:04 You don't, I don't know,
1484. 01:04:07 I mean, unless you get a whole bunch of people
1485. 01:04:09 to just fill out these polls that you put together,
1486. 01:04:14 you're not gonna be able to look at,
1487. 01:04:16 this is the specific data that associates
1488. 01:04:18 with this particular belief,
1489. 01:04:19 which is really what you need in order
1490. 01:04:21 to construct that sort of thing.
1491. 01:04:24 So this chapter, I think this is an important perspective
1492. 01:04:29 and we should be striving to do this just going into it,
1493. 01:04:33 go into it recognizing that it's gonna be really,
1494. 01:04:36 really messy and the better a way to do this,
1495. 01:04:40 I think is not, I'm gonna build this belief ladder
1496. 01:04:44 and I'm gonna implement it
1497. 01:04:44 and then I'm gonna see what sort of results that I get,
1498. 01:04:47 but if you could figure out a way with every piece
1499. 01:04:50 of marketing that you put together,
1500. 01:04:52 what is the hypothesis behind me doing this?
1501. 01:04:56 What do I expect to happen?
1502. 01:04:59 And then look at the results from that
1503. 01:05:02 and figure out what story is this data telling me
1504. 01:05:07 that might get you to where they're talking about
1505. 01:05:10 with the moving people between the different rings,
1506. 01:05:12 but it might also provide additional insights.
1507. 01:05:14 That's the perspective you have to have though
1508. 01:05:16 with any sort of marketing, I think.
1509. 01:05:18 You're just gonna run all these different,
1510. 01:05:20 tiny experiments, you're gonna ask,
1511. 01:05:22 what is the data telling me
1512. 01:05:24 and then you're gonna rinse and repeat
1513. 01:05:26 a bunch of different times.
1514. 01:05:29 Okay, good, let's move to chapter seven.
1515. 01:05:30 So chapter seven is identifying
1516. 01:05:32 your customers' required beliefs and it's by Billy Brewez.
1517. 01:05:36 So a couple of different things that stood out to me
1518. 01:05:39 and this one is the customer's journey,
1519. 01:05:42 they break it down into critical stages.
1520. 01:05:44 So the first stage is awareness, then consideration,
1521. 01:05:46 then they make a decision about whether to buy.
1522. 01:05:49 They break down each of those three stages
1523. 01:05:53 and a little bit more.
1524. 01:05:55 So we need to ask the questions
1525. 01:05:59 that will allow us to help the customer
1526. 01:06:01 move through those stages.
1527. 01:06:03 I think the most important thing
1528. 01:06:04 or the biggest thing that come out of this chapter
1529. 01:06:06 is this ladder of importance that comes through here.
1530. 01:06:10 So they say to do kind of an experiment
1531. 01:06:13 or to write a thing that's the ladder of importance for
1532. 01:06:16 and then whatever your topic is,
1533. 01:06:18 where the top rung is what is the success factor on that,
1534. 01:06:22 the next rung, what is the success factor on that,
1535. 01:06:23 third rung, fourth rung, fifth rung
1536. 01:06:25 and actually run that ladder to help work your customer
1537. 01:06:31 through this journey, through your product
1538. 01:06:35 in order to get to that sale.
1539. 01:06:37 And in order for you to do that,
1540. 01:06:39 you gotta have the core message
1541. 01:06:41 and you have to have done the belief building upstream
1542. 01:06:44 in order to be able to do this.
1543. 01:06:46 They do acknowledge that the process
1544. 01:06:48 of identifying these beliefs is never ending
1545. 01:06:50 so you can't ever stop this thing.
1546. 01:06:52 It's a constant iterative thing
1547. 01:06:54 that's gonna keep going forever.
1548. 01:06:56 So I think that was the crux of this
1549. 01:06:58 was really getting that ladder of importance
1550. 01:07:02 and matching that with your customer journey
1551. 01:07:05 and how do you work them through those different stages.
1552. 01:07:08 - Yeah, so this was my action item the first time
1553. 01:07:11 that I read this and I built out again in Obsidian
1554. 01:07:16 using the canvas, the ladder that they have
1555. 01:07:19 as a visual from this chapter where you start at the bottom.
1556. 01:07:23 In the visual, they have the most important factor
1557. 01:07:25 at the top.
1558. 01:07:27 I guess I did this backwards
1559. 01:07:30 because I feel like the most important factor
1560. 01:07:33 should be the foundational one at the bottom.
1561. 01:07:35 So I'm, I don't know.
1562. 01:07:37 But anyways, like they build on one another.
1563. 01:07:39 That's really the takeaway.
1564. 01:07:41 And I never finished writing this out
1565. 01:07:45 for the PKM stuff that I do.
1566. 01:07:49 I did finish building out the five light bulbs
1567. 01:07:53 for life HQ.
1568. 01:07:56 And I'm gonna take another crack at putting together
1569. 01:07:59 the ladder here, but also, I don't know.
1570. 01:08:03 I feel like the five light bulbs is a better framework
1571. 01:08:07 for me personally in terms of making this stuff applicable.
1572. 01:08:13 I don't know, like looking at this again
1573. 01:08:16 and looking at the example they have.
1574. 01:08:17 So for example, with the visual,
1575. 01:08:19 they have the most important factor
1576. 01:08:22 is an eye for composition,
1577. 01:08:23 the next most important factor working with light
1578. 01:08:26 below that next most important factor
1579. 01:08:28 is storytelling through images,
1580. 01:08:29 then post-processing techniques
1581. 01:08:31 and then finally the quality of the camera.
1582. 01:08:33 I feel like the quality of the camera
1583. 01:08:35 is the one that most people will jump to
1584. 01:08:38 if they want to take better pictures for example.
1585. 01:08:40 So I think this is a really cool example.
1586. 01:08:45 It's easy to understand how this applies to photography.
1587. 01:08:53 I guess it doesn't translate quite as easily
1588. 01:08:58 as I had hoped in terms of
1589. 01:09:00 what are the most important factors
1590. 01:09:03 for someone who wants to build a custom PKM system.
1591. 01:09:06 I had trouble with that first time I went through it.
1592. 01:09:08 But I did get through it when I adopted
1593. 01:09:11 the five light bulbs frame.
1594. 01:09:12 The five cells.
1595. 01:09:14 Yeah, that makes sense.
1596. 01:09:15 This was one of the ones I wanted to do,
1597. 01:09:16 but I never made it to,
1598. 01:09:18 and I was gonna do it around the choosing engineering,
1599. 01:09:20 like whether or not engineering should be my major
1600. 01:09:22 and kind of what college I should go to.
1601. 01:09:24 So maybe that'll be an action item for me.
1602. 01:09:26 I'll think about whether or not that makes sense
1603. 01:09:28 as an action item for me.
1604. 01:09:30 All right, moving on to chapter eight.
1605. 01:09:31 You okay to do that?
1606. 01:09:32 Yep.
1607. 01:09:33 So chapter eight and nine are two peas in a pod.
1608. 01:09:37 They're belief building part one and belief building part two.
1609. 01:09:40 And this is where you kind of got into the,
1610. 01:09:46 I guess the practical end of it is like, okay,
1611. 01:09:48 how do you actually do belief building?
1612. 01:09:52 So he actually says, first,
1613. 01:09:54 nail down what you want to say, your claim.
1614. 01:09:56 Then decide how you want to say it, your proof.
1615. 01:09:57 And he gets into this, make a claim and then prove it.
1616. 01:10:00 And make a claim and then prove it.
1617. 01:10:01 Not really monumental to me.
1618. 01:10:04 Kind of got into argument making, if you will, right?
1619. 01:10:07 Like, I can't remember if this is where, you know,
1620. 01:10:10 he ties into copywriting.
1621. 01:10:11 He talks about copywriting at some point in this book
1622. 01:10:13 and really gets into this idea of copywriting.
1623. 01:10:17 But, you know, he's kind of talking about
1624. 01:10:20 how to actually develop this belief building process
1625. 01:10:24 or the claim and your core message, I guess if you will.
1626. 01:10:27 Then he goes into in chapter nine, you know,
1627. 01:10:29 the first misconception about proof.
1628. 01:10:31 And he talks about like that proof doesn't only come
1629. 01:10:35 from, you know, the product service, it comes from, you know,
1630. 01:10:38 play, like in the buying process.
1631. 01:10:40 And there's these different misconceptions about proof.
1632. 01:10:45 So, kind of breaks those down.
1633. 01:10:48 He says, you know, what if we use the personal story?
1634. 01:10:49 What if we use an analogy?
1635. 01:10:52 We, again, get back to these ideas of, you know,
1636. 01:10:54 understanding the customer.
1637. 01:10:56 What is the proof that's gonna resonate with them?
1638. 01:10:59 Gets into the, goes back to Aristotle
1639. 01:11:01 and these three different concepts, ethos, pathos and logos,
1640. 01:11:06 you know, kind of goes into the ethos, pathos and logos,
1641. 01:11:08 argument about how those would come into to do your proof
1642. 01:11:12 and then recaps it with, hey, well,
1643. 01:11:15 what do we do in this belief building process?
1644. 01:11:16 You know, we pick a belief, right?
1645. 01:11:18 What is this thing we wanna share with our audience?
1646. 01:11:20 We make a claim and then we prove that claim.
1647. 01:11:22 So, pick a belief, make a claim, prove that claim.
1648. 01:11:25 So, if you think about like the belief building ladder
1649. 01:11:28 or, you know, or the ladder of success, you know,
1650. 01:11:30 there are these different beliefs on there
1651. 01:11:31 that we had to hit.
1652. 01:11:33 Well, now he's saying, okay, we take that
1653. 01:11:36 and we break it down even further and we say, okay,
1654. 01:11:38 well, what's the belief?
1655. 01:11:39 What's the claim that we're making
1656. 01:11:41 and then how do we prove it to our audience?
1657. 01:11:42 So, it's essentially the layer under the ladder,
1658. 01:11:46 like the foundational layer under the ladder, if you will,
1659. 01:11:49 that allows us to prove each one of those before we can
1660. 01:11:52 make it or move up to the next wrong
1661. 01:11:54 and then move up to the next wrong
1662. 01:11:55 and move up to the next wrong.
1663. 01:11:57 - Yeah, so the ethos, pathos and logos that he talks
1664. 01:12:01 about in chapter nine under the argue like Aristotle,
1665. 01:12:07 I did not really care for this.
1666. 01:12:12 I think that the summary of the belief building
1667. 01:12:14 which you touched on in chapter eight,
1668. 01:12:16 which is essentially pick a belief, make a claim
1669. 01:12:19 and then prove it, that is effective.
1670. 01:12:24 But the ethos, pathos and logos,
1671. 01:12:26 this is appealing to logic, appealing to emotion
1672. 01:12:29 and appealing to integrity.
1673. 01:12:31 This, to me, reads like a complicated version
1674. 01:12:36 of a lot of other marketing stuff which I've read
1675. 01:12:41 or experienced which is kind of like pick a pain point
1676. 01:12:44 and just speak to it.
1677. 01:12:47 Maybe this appeals a little bit more to some people
1678. 01:12:53 because I guess I can put myself in the,
1679. 01:12:58 I can get on board with the belief
1680. 01:13:00 that when you're talking about a pain point
1681. 01:13:02 that somebody has, that feels a little bit negative maybe
1682. 01:13:06 and you don't really want to be hurting somebody
1683. 01:13:09 when you are marketing but this is just a different way
1684. 01:13:12 to speak to that and I don't know,
1685. 01:13:16 like I don't necessarily myself personally think
1686. 01:13:19 that when you are agitating a pain point so to speak
1687. 01:13:24 that that's necessarily a bad thing,
1688. 01:13:26 especially if you've gone through the thing
1689. 01:13:29 and you're speaking from a place of integrity
1690. 01:13:32 and you've gone through it and you've figured out
1691. 01:13:34 a solution for somebody, you know,
1692. 01:13:37 you kind of have a moral obligation in my opinion
1693. 01:13:40 to share what worked.
1694. 01:13:43 You just got to be careful I guess
1695. 01:13:44 with like when you're sharing that stuff
1696. 01:13:46 that you're not making outrageous claims
1697. 01:13:48 that you can't back up but that has nothing to do
1698. 01:13:51 with ethos pathos or logos necessarily.
1699. 01:13:53 - Yeah and I thought about, I think about pain points
1700. 01:13:55 as different like pain points
1701. 01:13:56 or something they're already experiencing
1702. 01:13:58 so they already have this thing that's causing them pain
1703. 01:14:00 and you're really trying to, you know,
1704. 01:14:04 explain to them or prove to them
1705. 01:14:06 why your thing alleviates that pain point.
1706. 01:14:09 So it's like for your, for life HQ, life HQ would be like,
1707. 01:14:12 oh, like my notes in my, you know, journal
1708. 01:14:17 and my daily organizational structure, right?
1709. 01:14:20 Of all the knowledge that comes into my life
1710. 01:14:22 is just completely chaos and out of whack,
1711. 01:14:24 well here is life HQ.
1712. 01:14:25 This is a system for you to organize all of that
1713. 01:14:28 and to make it actionable and to keep it, you know,
1714. 01:14:31 driving life forward.
1715. 01:14:33 Oh, that's a pain I have, right?
1716. 01:14:35 A pain I have is, you know,
1717. 01:14:36 everything's all discombobulated.
1718. 01:14:37 Like that makes sense to me.
1719. 01:14:39 So I thought about pain points a little bit differently
1720. 01:14:41 maybe than the way I heard you describing them.
1721. 01:14:43 - Well, I think the pain points,
1722. 01:14:45 they could fit into this ethos pathos and logos though.
1723. 01:14:49 So for example, the ethos appeal to integrity,
1724. 01:14:53 talk about expert opinions or authoritative figures
1725. 01:14:56 in the field, testimonies from individuals
1726. 01:14:57 have benefited from your product,
1727. 01:14:59 data taken from research studies that support your claim,
1728. 01:15:01 third party reviews that lend an external voice of approval.
1729. 01:15:04 I mean, you don't need to understand ethos, pathos or logos
1730. 01:15:09 to incorporate that sort of stuff into a marketing page.
1731. 01:15:12 Pathos is sharing stories that evoke empathy, joy
1732. 01:15:15 or other emotions using imagery that symbolizes
1733. 01:15:18 deeper sentiments or values, writing words that are vivid
1734. 01:15:20 and stoked the desires of your prospect.
1735. 01:15:22 So these are the things like having just gone through this
1736. 01:15:26 with the cohort, for example,
1737. 01:15:27 transforming chaos and clarity.
1738. 01:15:29 Do you feel overwhelmed with all your notes and ideas,
1739. 01:15:32 you know, that are just sitting there
1740. 01:15:34 and you're not getting as much value as you thought from them?
1741. 01:15:37 And then the logos appealing to the logic,
1742. 01:15:39 explain the mechanics of how your product or system works,
1743. 01:15:41 map out a clear and coherent path that shows your prospect,
1744. 01:15:44 how you get them from problem to problem solved.
1745. 01:15:46 These are the frameworks, the PKM stack,
1746. 01:15:48 the creativity fly will give a clear demonstration
1747. 01:15:51 of the value of your product at seedless cost.
1748. 01:15:53 You know, this is a framing of this sort of stuff
1749. 01:15:59 that the second time through specifically
1750. 01:16:02 I was kind of like, eh, I don't know.
1751. 01:16:04 You know, the first time I read a ethos pathos and logos,
1752. 01:16:06 maybe there is, you know, a super smart person
1753. 01:16:10 who loves stoicism and minute that you drop the name
1754. 01:16:15 Aristotle, you're like, oh yeah, man,
1755. 01:16:17 I've been waiting for the stoic approach to marketing
1756. 01:16:19 and this just clicks with me, but, you know,
1757. 01:16:21 it didn't for me.
1758. 01:16:23 - Yeah, yeah, understood, I understood that.
1759. 01:16:26 - Everything up until that point,
1760. 01:16:27 I feel like I can get on board with,
1761. 01:16:30 but this is, you know, even the first time that I read this,
1762. 01:16:33 I could tell that the ethos pathos and logos
1763. 01:16:35 were like important concepts that they were gonna try to anchor.
1764. 01:16:39 So I wrote them down in my, my my node file,
1765. 01:16:41 but even then I was like, I don't know.
1766. 01:16:45 - Yeah, I can get that, I can see that.
1767. 01:16:47 All right, chapter 10, so now we get into creating
1768. 01:16:49 some marketing content, this is a Tiago Forte chapter.
1769. 01:16:53 So basically, they give an overview or an outline
1770. 01:16:57 of what they're gonna do here,
1771. 01:16:58 and then they're gonna actually give examples
1772. 01:17:00 of the things they did.
1773. 01:17:01 So nail down what you wanna say, the claim,
1774. 01:17:05 then support your claim with proof,
1775. 01:17:06 and then use ethos pathos and logos to mix
1776. 01:17:09 and match the proof element, create the content,
1777. 01:17:13 and make it compelling as you go do that.
1778. 01:17:16 And then they give examples of this.
1779. 01:17:18 - So if you don't mind, this is the spot
1780. 01:17:20 where they lost me when I was listening to the audible version
1781. 01:17:24 because Tiago was talking about this,
1782. 01:17:26 and he's using the example of Leonardo's notebook,
1783. 01:17:30 and all you gotta do is find these images
1784. 01:17:33 and make sure that they're, you know, not copyrighted.
1785. 01:17:35 And I'm listening to him describe it,
1786. 01:17:37 and he's framing it as, you know, this is the approach,
1787. 01:17:40 you just fill in the blanks, and I'm like,
1788. 01:17:43 that is a ton of work.
1789. 01:17:44 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1790. 01:17:47 And I was like, okay, at this point,
1791. 01:17:49 like I understand what you're doing,
1792. 01:17:51 and I understand what you're saying.
1793. 01:17:52 And it's interesting to me because a lot of,
1794. 01:17:54 there's a lot of overlap between the practical PKM stuff
1795. 01:17:56 and the building a second brain stuff, to be honest.
1796. 01:17:59 I don't think it's, you know, 100% overlap,
1797. 01:18:02 but a lot of the stuff that he was talking about,
1798. 01:18:04 and I was like, oh yeah, I guess, you know,
1799. 01:18:05 I could, I was already thinking, like,
1800. 01:18:07 how do I do this stuff for like the practical PKM stuff?
1801. 01:18:09 And this is where it's like, okay,
1802. 01:18:11 just hearing you talk about this, you lost me.
1803. 01:18:14 Yeah, yeah.
1804. 01:18:15 You know, I can, I can very much see that.
1805. 01:18:19 So they give us three examples, you know,
1806. 01:18:21 he gives a belief and he talks about how it turns into
1807. 01:18:23 some sort of marketing content.
1808. 01:18:24 He gives a belief and talks about how it turns into
1809. 01:18:26 some marketing content.
1810. 01:18:27 Then he kind of does what he did before where he's like,
1811. 01:18:30 okay, and this is what, you know,
1812. 01:18:31 I took away from this, and this is what I learned.
1813. 01:18:34 You know, I learned I had to sell every click.
1814. 01:18:37 You know, I had to, you know, do these,
1815. 01:18:41 I decided I was going to do these things,
1816. 01:18:43 or I wouldn't do these things.
1817. 01:18:44 So no unethical high pressure sales tactics,
1818. 01:18:46 no complex funnels, right?
1819. 01:18:48 And it's kind of just Tiago's taking of what Billy's
1820. 01:18:53 talking about and turning it into his thing.
1821. 01:18:56 So it's essentially we get a window into the consultation
1822. 01:19:00 sessions and then how Tiago like actually acted on it.
1823. 01:19:03 And you get, you get this kind of a,
1824. 01:19:06 I guess it's, it's almost like a motivator.
1825. 01:19:07 Like look what I did.
1826. 01:19:09 Now here's how I took this content and I actually did
1827. 01:19:10 this thing and here's what it turned into a tangible thing.
1828. 01:19:12 So I think it gives a good example of how you can take
1829. 01:19:15 the stuff that, from the previous chapters and make it,
1830. 01:19:17 make it applicable or actually turn it into something.
1831. 01:19:21 - Yeah, so this is, this is interesting because
1832. 01:19:25 I've followed Tiago for a long time and I've also heard him
1833. 01:19:29 share some of the stuff about like the book launch
1834. 01:19:33 and how that actually cannibalized
1835. 01:19:37 the building a second brain cohort.
1836. 01:19:40 He doesn't do the cohorts anymore.
1837. 01:19:43 So I would love to pick his brain about how he actually
1838. 01:19:49 sees the stuff being applied.
1839. 01:19:53 Like what's his belief building ladder right now?
1840. 01:19:56 And what is the thing that he's actually trying to sell?
1841. 01:20:00 Like what is the culmination of that for him?
1842. 01:20:04 Because I feel like the stuff that he's talking about
1843. 01:20:06 in the simple marketing for smart people,
1844. 01:20:08 this was sort of anchored in getting people to join the
1845. 01:20:11 cohort and then he just sort of accidentally maybe
1846. 01:20:14 blew that all up when he wrote a really great book.
1847. 01:20:18 And the stuff that he talks about in here,
1848. 01:20:22 this is not stuff that he's doing to promote the book.
1849. 01:20:26 This is stuff that he did at one point to promote
1850. 01:20:29 the cohort or the course.
1851. 01:20:32 But I feel like it's all kind of up in the air for him
1852. 01:20:36 currently YouTube has been a point of emphasis.
1853. 01:20:41 And the examples that they share here are kind of like
1854. 01:20:44 the historical Instagram X slash Twitter.
1855. 01:20:50 And I kind of feel like it's stated
1856. 01:20:54 and it didn't really age well,
1857. 01:20:57 given what I know of where Tiago's at currently.
1858. 01:21:00 So it'd be interesting to hear how it all fits together.
1859. 01:21:02 That doesn't invalidate anything that he shares
1860. 01:21:05 from the section, I think.
1861. 01:21:07 But also it plants a seed of doubt when he's sharing
1862. 01:21:12 the examples as to, oh, well, this is what I did.
1863. 01:21:14 And this is how you can do it.
1864. 01:21:15 It's like, well, if it worked, why aren't you doing that still?
1865. 01:21:21 - Yeah, that's interesting.
1866. 01:21:22 And I don't have enough current knowledge of his activities
1867. 01:21:26 to identify that.
1868. 01:21:28 So that did not stand out to me.
1869. 01:21:29 So that's good insight.
1870. 01:21:32 Are we ready to go to 11?
1871. 01:21:33 - Let's do it.
1872. 01:21:34 - Okay, we're rounding it out, folks.
1873. 01:21:35 So spot the pattern.
1874. 01:21:38 So this is another chapter by Billy Baras.
1875. 01:21:41 He gets into this idea of commodity product versus,
1876. 01:21:44 so he'll do fancy eggs and commodity eggs.
1877. 01:21:46 And basically, if you're dealing with a commodity product,
1878. 01:21:48 essentially that everybody understands
1879. 01:21:50 and everybody's gonna buy,
1880. 01:21:51 then the real major negotiator or differencing
1881. 01:21:54 you have between other products is price.
1882. 01:21:56 But if you're selling fancy eggs,
1883. 01:21:58 now you can really drive home
1884. 01:21:59 and you can really produce the copyright
1885. 01:22:03 or not the copyright, what am I trying to say?
1886. 01:22:05 The copy edit, like the content
1887. 01:22:08 to really sell that fancy product
1888. 01:22:09 and explain to them why your non-commodity product
1889. 01:22:13 is valuable and why you need it.
1890. 01:22:15 He has a section here where he goes through
1891. 01:22:17 a couple of exercises to understand the relationship
1892. 01:22:20 of the complexity to messaging needed,
1893. 01:22:24 like same product.
1894. 01:22:27 Are these other things from a basic product
1895. 01:22:30 to a premium product?
1896. 01:22:31 He has those.
1897. 01:22:32 He gives a list of factors to determine
1898. 01:22:34 how much education and belief building you should do
1899. 01:22:36 based on your price, based on the complexity,
1900. 01:22:39 based on a bunch of different things.
1901. 01:22:40 So this is where I think he gets into,
1902. 01:22:43 or he tries to get into a little bit more of that.
1903. 01:22:46 Let me help you figure out how to differentiate yourself
1904. 01:22:50 in the market or make belief building core messages
1905. 01:22:54 or make content that helps separate you
1906. 01:22:58 from the rest of the competition.
1907. 01:23:00 Yeah, I don't really like the whole metaphor here,
1908. 01:23:05 like it's effective, it gets you to decide
1909. 01:23:09 what are you selling commodity eggs or fancy eggs.
1910. 01:23:13 There are a lot of marketing resources out there
1911. 01:23:18 which would take a different approach.
1912. 01:23:21 They would just tell you,
1913. 01:23:22 stop trying to sell the commodity eggs.
1914. 01:23:25 And if you're going to sell fancy eggs,
1915. 01:23:27 this is how you differentiate from the commodity.
1916. 01:23:32 As I'm thinking about this,
1917. 01:23:34 I kind of think for me personally, you, I don't know,
1918. 01:23:39 let's just take practical PKM as an example.
1919. 01:23:41 Maybe you can help me go through this thought exercise.
1920. 01:23:44 Okay, obviously I want to be fancy eggs,
1921. 01:23:46 not commodity eggs in terms of PKM.
1922. 01:23:49 But at some point, you have to speak to the people
1923. 01:23:54 who are viewing you as a commodity
1924. 01:23:56 and offer them something, right?
1925. 01:23:59 So my commodity eggs are maybe like the starter vault
1926. 01:24:05 and the fancy eggs are the life HQ.
1927. 01:24:07 And there's going to be only a small segment
1928. 01:24:10 of the people who just want the commodity eggs,
1929. 01:24:13 the free resources that are going to upgrade there.
1930. 01:24:17 But you kind of have to do both maybe
1931. 01:24:20 for at least the stuff that I do, I'm thinking,
1932. 01:24:24 you can't just be like, oh well, obviously I'm fancy.
1933. 01:24:28 And these are the reasons why I'm so much better
1934. 01:24:31 than your standard commodity eggs.
1935. 01:24:34 Like you have to embrace the commodity
1936. 01:24:37 before you can make yourself fancy, I think.
1937. 01:24:40 - I think in your world, you're right in terms of,
1938. 01:24:44 there are people who are going to want to come in
1939. 01:24:46 and they're going to want to learn.
1940. 01:24:47 They've heard about knowledge management.
1941. 01:24:49 They've heard about this idea of you can get more
1942. 01:24:52 efficient and effective with your time and knowledge
1943. 01:24:56 if you do certain things.
1944. 01:24:57 And I think they're going to want a product at a level
1945. 01:25:02 that allows them to dip their toe into it,
1946. 01:25:04 see if they like what you're doing,
1947. 01:25:05 see if they like your system and your approach.
1948. 01:25:08 And that's the commodity product, right?
1949. 01:25:09 Like so here's this thing and here's the commodity product.
1950. 01:25:11 And then there's going to be a much smaller percentage
1951. 01:25:15 of that like you described who are going to say, Mike,
1952. 01:25:18 I want to work with you every week to make the best system
1953. 01:25:24 I can that fits my needs the best possible.
1954. 01:25:28 You know what I mean?
1955. 01:25:29 - Yep.
1956. 01:25:29 - And I think of this as a good example of coaching, right?
1957. 01:25:33 Like so I'm a business leader and there are the people
1958. 01:25:36 who are going to want just the general cohort.
1959. 01:25:39 There's 30 people in the group
1960. 01:25:40 and I'm just looking for general coaching,
1961. 01:25:42 just generalize coaching.
1962. 01:25:43 And then there's going to be the people who are like,
1963. 01:25:44 nope, I want the premium edition.
1964. 01:25:46 I want to spend $50,000 a year for you to be my personal coach.
1965. 01:25:53 And it's like, okay.
1966. 01:25:54 Like, and I think that's the world you live in.
1967. 01:25:56 You live in both of those worlds.
1968. 01:25:57 You make fancy eggs and you make commodity eggs.
1969. 01:25:59 - Well, kinda.
1970. 01:26:00 So like you can't sell fancy eggs
1971. 01:26:05 until you know exactly what people value
1972. 01:26:10 about those fancy eggs.
1973. 01:26:11 And I guess in the back of my mind,
1974. 01:26:13 I'm thinking that this is not either
1975. 01:26:16 or a great decision at this point.
1976. 01:26:21 And the example I'm going to use
1977. 01:26:23 is a product called Right Message by Brennan Dunn.
1978. 01:26:26 Are you familiar with this?
1979. 01:26:27 - No.
1980. 01:26:29 - Okay.
1981. 01:26:30 So if you go to a website like the Suite Setup
1982. 01:26:33 or Creator Science, you'll see a little survey box
1983. 01:26:37 in the lower right hand corner
1984. 01:26:39 and they'll ask you these different questions
1985. 01:26:41 about whatever topic that this website speaks to.
1986. 01:26:47 - Okay.
1987. 01:26:48 - Okay, and when you answer those questions,
1988. 01:26:51 what it does is it logs that basically with the cookie
1989. 01:26:56 when you go to the website.
1990. 01:26:57 And then if you do sign up for the email list,
1991. 01:27:00 you basically have in your email service provider
1992. 01:27:05 the person, you know, this person really values X.
1993. 01:27:11 And it could be like,
1994. 01:27:13 I'm actually working on implementing this right now.
1995. 01:27:16 And so all of my stuff is like,
1996. 01:27:20 what is it about obsidian that you're,
1997. 01:27:23 you know, how are you trying to use obsidian?
1998. 01:27:24 Is it you want to manage your tasks and projects?
1999. 01:27:27 You want to be more creative?
2000. 01:27:28 So people answer these questions
2001. 01:27:30 and then you can customize your marketing messaging
2002. 01:27:34 when you send them emails, you know,
2003. 01:27:35 because they've told you,
2004. 01:27:37 I really want to be more creative with obsidian.
2005. 01:27:40 I can say, you know, obsidian is the tool
2006. 01:27:42 that's going to unlock your creativity
2007. 01:27:44 and allow you to go from chaos to clarity.
2008. 01:27:46 Most people who don't care about creativity,
2009. 01:27:49 like that message doesn't matter.
2010. 01:27:50 So I'm going to say something different to them.
2011. 01:27:53 But for this person who has already told me like,
2012. 01:27:56 this is what I want, now I can say,
2013. 01:27:58 hey, I can help you get specifically what you want.
2014. 01:28:01 Those are the fancy eggs.
2015. 01:28:03 But I have to have some sort of messaging
2016. 01:28:06 to sell the commodity eggs just to get them to come
2017. 01:28:08 to the website to watch the video,
2018. 01:28:10 to download the starter vault, whatever,
2019. 01:28:12 before we can have those conversations.
2020. 01:28:14 And they tell me this is specifically what I'm looking for.
2021. 01:28:18 Does that make sense?
2022. 01:28:19 - It does and I would think that,
2023. 01:28:21 Broaz would say, okay, well,
2024. 01:28:24 then there's different channels.
2025. 01:28:26 Your commodity message goes on different channels
2026. 01:28:28 that are much more likely to be seen,
2027. 01:28:30 to have you seen by people who don't know you.
2028. 01:28:32 You know, it's their first time interacting with you.
2029. 01:28:34 So like I would think like general raw YouTube, right?
2030. 01:28:37 Like you pop up in the algorithm for somebody.
2031. 01:28:39 They see you and they are attracted
2032. 01:28:41 by your commodity egg and they go,
2033. 01:28:43 yep, I'm gonna click through.
2034. 01:28:44 And then once they become part of your newsletter subscription,
2035. 01:28:47 now they're the fancy egg people.
2036. 01:28:50 - Kinda.
2037. 01:28:51 So there's a really good book by Brendan Dunn
2038. 01:28:54 called This Is Personal.
2039. 01:28:56 And he's the guy who made like the mastering convert kit
2040. 01:29:02 course and that I bought it and it's really complicated
2041. 01:29:06 and I'm still trying to work my way through it.
2042. 01:29:09 So I'm just like tip of the iceberg
2043. 01:29:11 when it comes to this kind of stuff,
2044. 01:29:13 but I understand the value here.
2045. 01:29:17 And so I think this is a more direct
2046. 01:29:21 and honestly better approach to making compelling marketing
2047. 01:29:25 that speaks directly to the pain points
2048. 01:29:27 that people are solving than trying to figure out
2049. 01:29:30 all of these different beliefs.
2050. 01:29:32 And it's not an either or.
2051. 01:29:36 The best version is probably a combination of these things.
2052. 01:29:39 - Yeah, okay.
2053. 01:29:40 - This is the one that resonates with me more than,
2054. 01:29:44 are you gonna sell fancy eggs
2055. 01:29:46 or are you gonna sell commodity eggs?
2056. 01:29:49 - Yeah, yeah, that makes sense, that makes sense.
2057. 01:29:52 Okay, we probably need to move on.
2058. 01:29:53 So chapter 12, it's a next steps chapter.
2059. 01:29:56 So Smart Next Steps by Billy again.
2060. 01:30:00 It gives five action steps here, so step one,
2061. 01:30:04 revisit your current audience
2062. 01:30:06 and think about your current audience.
2063. 01:30:08 Step two, complete your core messaging document.
2064. 01:30:11 Action step three, create new marketing material.
2065. 01:30:14 Action step four, find more opportunities
2066. 01:30:16 to incorporate belief building and action step five,
2067. 01:30:19 make the most of other trainings you've taken
2068. 01:30:22 and how do you incorporate those into there?
2069. 01:30:25 So I think there is a,
2070. 01:30:27 there's a little bit of a acknowledgement
2071. 01:30:29 in that step five that says,
2072. 01:30:31 hey, we're not the only approach.
2073. 01:30:33 Like how do you leverage these other tools
2074. 01:30:37 that you've done into the system?
2075. 01:30:41 I think, and I don't remember them ever saying this,
2076. 01:30:43 but I think like, so I'm gonna go back
2077. 01:30:46 on that smart people.
2078. 01:30:47 I think if this was like simple marketing
2079. 01:30:50 for novice marketers,
2080. 01:30:52 I don't think that's as nearly a catchy title,
2081. 01:30:54 but I think that would be a really good,
2082. 01:30:56 almost a better title for this book, right?
2083. 01:30:58 Like, because this is presenting a good framework
2084. 01:31:00 for the people who don't know anything about marketing
2085. 01:31:03 or know very little about marketing,
2086. 01:31:05 but are interested in learning more there.
2087. 01:31:08 And I understand why they did it, right?
2088. 01:31:09 Like the smart people tied into Tiago, I think.
2089. 01:31:12 You know, and kind of made that like as his the example,
2090. 01:31:15 he's the, you know, the quote unquote smart,
2091. 01:31:17 you know, incredibly intelligent person
2092. 01:31:18 who makes this thing who then is gonna put it out there,
2093. 01:31:21 but doesn't know anything about marketing.
2094. 01:31:23 So I think these action steps do a really nice job
2095. 01:31:27 summarizing all the stuff that's been in the book
2096. 01:31:31 for the novice marketer who says,
2097. 01:31:32 here's how you start, just start by doing these five things
2098. 01:31:36 and then see where you get and kind of roll into that.
2099. 01:31:40 So I think for the audience that the book was intended for,
2100. 01:31:44 I think it's a good, it's a good chapter 13.
2101. 01:31:47 It's a good wrap up to the book.
2102. 01:31:48 Or sorry, chapter 12, excuse me.
2103. 01:31:50 - I agree and I like the,
2104. 01:31:54 make the most of the other trainings that you've taken.
2105. 01:31:56 That is an interesting item on the list
2106. 01:32:00 because like you said, it assumes that this isn't
2107. 01:32:02 the only thing that you've gone through
2108. 01:32:05 and this isn't going to probably anyways,
2109. 01:32:10 completely upend everything else that you're doing.
2110. 01:32:13 You're gonna figure out how to slot it in
2111. 01:32:14 with some of the other stuff.
2112. 01:32:18 The one I think maybe I don't like going through
2113. 01:32:21 the second time is the complete your core message document.
2114. 01:32:25 And I think, I don't know what to do with that.
2115. 01:32:29 On the one hand, I do like it because if you've never
2116. 01:32:31 done that sort of thing, you need to do that sort of thing.
2117. 01:32:34 However, the core message document I think is
2118. 01:32:38 maybe not the most effective way to do it.
2119. 01:32:40 As I mentioned, I took the five light bulbs
2120. 01:32:42 and I made a Obsidian template out of it
2121. 01:32:44 that's been more effective for me.
2122. 01:32:47 And these are just questions and really like tools
2123. 01:32:52 to get you thinking a specific way.
2124. 01:32:54 This is really the intention behind everything
2125. 01:32:57 that I've done in Life HQ is to get you
2126. 01:32:59 to think a certain way.
2127. 01:33:01 It's not, you gotta follow this specific process
2128. 01:33:05 or this specific system.
2129. 01:33:08 The real value is in asking the questions.
2130. 01:33:11 So I don't know, maybe that is good enough.
2131. 01:33:15 But yeah, I like this as chapter 12
2132. 01:33:19 and then chapter 13, I have one specific thing from there.
2133. 01:33:24 But this is essentially the beginning of the end of the book
2134. 01:33:26 and it's a good way to end it, I think.
2135. 01:33:28 - Yeah, so chapter 13, a final word of advice
2136. 01:33:31 for smart marketers by Billy.
2137. 01:33:34 This is really like a motivation,
2138. 01:33:36 go get 'em kind of a thing.
2139. 01:33:38 So like there's a whole section on,
2140. 01:33:40 stop being quiet, get out there.
2141. 01:33:43 Just tell 'em what you wanna tell 'em kind of a thing.
2142. 01:33:46 Like go, go out there and do it.
2143. 01:33:48 And then there's a whole 'nother section
2144. 01:33:50 of like do's and don'ts, right?
2145. 01:33:51 Where they kinda, they list this whole series of,
2146. 01:33:54 do this, don't do this, do this, don't do this.
2147. 01:33:57 I won't go through those 'cause at this point,
2148. 01:34:00 you're either gonna like that or not.
2149. 01:34:01 So I think that we'll save that for
2150. 01:34:03 if you wanna read the book.
2151. 01:34:04 But it's a different way to pitch, I guess,
2152. 01:34:07 what they've written about in the rest of the book.
2153. 01:34:11 One of the examples would be don't get caught up
2154. 01:34:13 in building these complex, confusing marketing systems.
2155. 01:34:17 It's much more simple than that.
2156. 01:34:18 So it's just a summary of what they've talked about
2157. 01:34:20 before written in a different way.
2158. 01:34:21 So Mike, what was your takeaway from '13?
2159. 01:34:24 - Well, I have an action I'm associated with this,
2160. 01:34:26 but I wanna just double click on something
2161. 01:34:28 that you mentioned, don't build the complex marketing systems.
2162. 01:34:34 I kinda feel like you do need to do that,
2163. 01:34:37 even if you subscribe to this,
2164. 01:34:39 because how else are you gonna test
2165. 01:34:42 the different beliefs that you're trying to build?
2166. 01:34:45 There's really no way around that, I feel.
2167. 01:34:49 So it sounds nice and for the entrepreneur
2168. 01:34:53 who is really who they're going after,
2169. 01:34:56 they've maybe not thought about marketing for a long time
2170. 01:35:00 because it feels complicated.
2171. 01:35:02 And so maybe that's necessary in order
2172. 01:35:04 to get them to take the first step,
2173. 01:35:06 but I think it's also maybe a little bit misleading
2174. 01:35:08 if that's really what they're trying to say.
2175. 01:35:10 - And let me focus in on something to see if you agree
2176. 01:35:13 that I actually don't even think
2177. 01:35:15 it's just the entrepreneur, I think it's the solo-preneur.
2178. 01:35:17 Like I think their target audience is really that solo-preneur
2179. 01:35:20 who's created that thing,
2180. 01:35:22 and then they're trying to figure out how to market it.
2181. 01:35:25 - Yeah, I think you're probably right.
2182. 01:35:28 The action item that I have from this
2183. 01:35:30 goes with the stop being so quiet.
2184. 01:35:33 Essentially what that means to me is you have to be present
2185. 01:35:37 on the social media platforms.
2186. 01:35:39 And this has been something that has been on my to-do list
2187. 01:35:42 for a very long time, 2025.
2188. 01:35:45 I am committed to figuring this out.
2189. 01:35:48 And I want to start sharing more frequently
2190. 01:35:51 on social media.
2191. 01:35:54 And the argument could be made
2192. 01:35:56 that I should have been doing this already
2193. 01:35:59 given that the Practical PCAM cohort
2194. 01:36:02 is launching in just a couple of weeks.
2195. 01:36:04 But yeah, I want to do this
2196. 01:36:09 and I'm willing to share this publicly
2197. 01:36:11 and be held accountable to this.
2198. 01:36:12 I've got a couple different things
2199. 01:36:14 that I've been thinking about with this.
2200. 01:36:16 The tool that I want to use for this,
2201. 01:36:19 I think is a tool called Hyperion.
2202. 01:36:21 The reason that I want to use that one
2203. 01:36:22 is that as a built-in thing which allows you to take the text
2204. 01:36:26 and then create these like text images
2205. 01:36:28 that you can share on Instagram as well.
2206. 01:36:30 I know a lot of people who are,
2207. 01:36:33 they've had success using Instagram,
2208. 01:36:36 but you can basically just schedule your content.
2209. 01:36:38 You can write it once and then publish it multiple places.
2210. 01:36:41 And that one allows you to publish everywhere
2211. 01:36:44 that I want to be with the exception
2212. 01:36:47 currently of blue sky.
2213. 01:36:49 I don't know why they have not added blue sky yet,
2214. 01:36:52 but the minute that they add blue sky, that's my tool.
2215. 01:36:55 And so I'm currently kind of messing
2216. 01:36:56 'cause I have subscriptions to multiple of these things
2217. 01:37:00 tightfully, currently.
2218. 01:37:02 'Cause that you can actually publish to blue sky.
2219. 01:37:05 You can't actually publish to Instagram from tightfully.
2220. 01:37:08 It's just text.
2221. 01:37:09 But that's what I'm using at this exact moment,
2222. 01:37:12 but I'm hoping that by the time this goes live,
2223. 01:37:15 I can be all in with Hyperion.
2224. 01:37:18 - Okay, very, very cool.
2225. 01:37:21 All right, so Mike, that wraps us up on the book discussion.
2226. 01:37:26 Let's move on to action items.
2227. 01:37:28 I had two action items come out of this book.
2228. 01:37:32 So I want to apply belief building to CCU engineering
2229. 01:37:35 and to the choosing engineering kind of like little prototype
2230. 01:37:39 that I had, you know, like what would it look like
2231. 01:37:41 to help people figure out how to choose engineering?
2232. 01:37:45 And then I want to develop the ladder
2233. 01:37:47 for this CCU engineering and choosing engineering.
2234. 01:37:51 So for both of those, and really what I'm trying to do here
2235. 01:37:54 is I'm trying to practice these.
2236. 01:37:55 See like how well I think they would work.
2237. 01:37:58 I'm not committed to going through all five
2238. 01:38:00 of the action steps, but I really want to do these two things
2239. 01:38:04 and see how that pans out as I move forward
2240. 01:38:07 with both of those areas of life.
2241. 01:38:11 How about you, what action items did you have?
2242. 01:38:14 - All right, so I had two specific action items.
2243. 01:38:18 One was to build out the ladder of importance for my topic
2244. 01:38:23 and that's kind of a carryover from the first time
2245. 01:38:24 that I went through this.
2246. 01:38:25 So I don't know if I'll actually do that or not,
2247. 01:38:28 but I'm gonna give it the old college try.
2248. 01:38:31 The other one, which I just mentioned,
2249. 01:38:33 I'm just gonna put get social.
2250. 01:38:34 So I want to start publishing multiple times per week
2251. 01:38:38 to social media platforms.
2252. 01:38:41 And I've got the content, I'm already writing it.
2253. 01:38:44 I just need to repurpose it and share it more consistently.
2254. 01:38:50 - Nice, very nice.
2255. 01:38:52 All right, so next is style and rating.
2256. 01:38:54 It's my book, so I will go first.
2257. 01:38:57 You might have been able to tell as I consider myself
2258. 01:39:01 a novice marketer, right?
2259. 01:39:04 I will not say a smart person.
2260. 01:39:05 I consider myself a novice marketer.
2261. 01:39:07 And what I will tell you is,
2262. 01:39:09 this book really resonated with me.
2263. 01:39:10 Like I like this book a lot.
2264. 01:39:11 I thought this book was written well.
2265. 01:39:14 I thought the examples provided were really, really good.
2266. 01:39:18 For someone who has very little AKA no marketing experience
2267. 01:39:23 and who came into it with the idea of, you know,
2268. 01:39:26 marketing is sleazy and I don't like it
2269. 01:39:30 and it's just a bunch of gimmicks
2270. 01:39:32 that try to get me to push go.
2271. 01:39:34 The way they pitched it, the way they framed it,
2272. 01:39:36 the tools that they provided
2273. 01:39:38 and the frameworks that they provided,
2274. 01:39:40 I really resonated with this book.
2275. 01:39:43 I liked the fact that I think I could take this book
2276. 01:39:48 and I think I would want to do another reading through it.
2277. 01:39:51 But I actually think I could develop a fairly decent,
2278. 01:39:54 I want to say marketing plan,
2279. 01:39:56 but at least a fairly decent marketing foundation
2280. 01:39:59 based on the concepts of this book.
2281. 01:40:00 And then what it would let me do
2282. 01:40:02 is it would let me, you know,
2283. 01:40:03 through talking to people like you
2284. 01:40:05 and through working these ideas,
2285. 01:40:07 figure out where I would need to go research more.
2286. 01:40:09 Like, oh, okay.
2287. 01:40:10 So I've decided that this is the core message
2288. 01:40:12 and this is the channel that I'm going to use.
2289. 01:40:14 What are the best, most effective tools for that channel?
2290. 01:40:17 And then I would go and I would actually know
2291. 01:40:18 where to look and know how to look.
2292. 01:40:20 Whereas right now I might put, you know,
2293. 01:40:23 the cart before the horse, if you will.
2294. 01:40:24 And I might start looking at the channels
2295. 01:40:26 and looking at the tools for the channels
2296. 01:40:27 when it's like, wait,
2297. 01:40:28 you don't even know what you want to say to these people
2298. 01:40:29 and how you want to say it and why you need to say it to them.
2299. 01:40:32 So I like the fact that I think this book
2300. 01:40:35 lays a really, really strong foundation
2301. 01:40:39 that you can then build upon moving forward,
2302. 01:40:41 especially for someone who has very little
2303. 01:40:43 to no experience marketing.
2304. 01:40:45 So I'm going to rate this book a four out of five, right?
2305. 01:40:51 So I think it was a four star book.
2306. 01:40:52 I would recommend, especially for people
2307. 01:40:55 who don't have a lot of marketing experience,
2308. 01:40:57 you know, I think you could get a lot out of reading this book.
2309. 01:41:02 I think the book works better
2310. 01:41:03 if you actually have an example of something
2311. 01:41:07 that you're trying to do
2312. 01:41:08 and that you actually want to try to market.
2313. 01:41:10 Like I think having that in the back of your head
2314. 01:41:12 and as they're throwing out these ideas,
2315. 01:41:13 you're running through those examples in your head
2316. 01:41:15 or you're trying to develop these things.
2317. 01:41:18 I think that actually would help this book a lot.
2318. 01:41:21 So, or sorry, help you as you read this book.
2319. 01:41:24 It's not something that I think they needed to do,
2320. 01:41:26 but something as you read this book.
2321. 01:41:27 So four out of five, Mike,
2322. 01:41:29 what's your summary on silent reading?
2323. 01:41:33 - Oh man, well, I have to rate it something, don't I?
2324. 01:41:38 - You do.
2325. 01:41:40 - I am very conflicted because as much as I shared
2326. 01:41:46 the things that I did not like about going through it
2327. 01:41:51 a second time in this podcast episode,
2328. 01:41:55 I still feel like this is the best marketing book
2329. 01:41:59 I have ever read.
2330. 01:42:01 - Wow, I would never have thought
2331. 01:42:02 you would have made that statement.
2332. 01:42:04 - Ever. (laughs)
2333. 01:42:05 - Yeah, so I feel a little bit bad.
2334. 01:42:08 Maybe I was a little bit harsh on some of the nitpicks
2335. 01:42:11 as we went through it.
2336. 01:42:13 I don't think that the system for lack of a better term,
2337. 01:42:20 and I don't think they really pitch it as a system.
2338. 01:42:22 So that's an unfair characterization, maybe in a lot of ways.
2339. 01:42:27 I don't think that, you know, I read through it again
2340. 01:42:30 that I'm like, okay, I'm just gonna apply this.
2341. 01:42:34 It's a tripwire product.
2342. 01:42:37 This is designed for the people who really should be interested
2343. 01:42:42 in the five light bulbs, in my opinion.
2344. 01:42:45 That is the logical next place to go from this.
2345. 01:42:49 It's not very clear that that is the next thing,
2346. 01:42:53 as I mentioned.
2347. 01:42:54 I had to do some digging and I eventually found it,
2348. 01:42:56 and I really enjoyed going through that,
2349. 01:42:59 that particular course.
2350. 01:43:02 And I've recommended that a lot of different times.
2351. 01:43:05 I've recommended this book a lot of different times.
2352. 01:43:07 I think for a lot of people who want to understand
2353. 01:43:11 marketing a little bit better,
2354. 01:43:13 reading this book will give you some things to think about.
2355. 01:43:18 It'll give you some valuable questions
2356. 01:43:20 to ask with your teams.
2357. 01:43:22 And you, there's a very good chance
2358. 01:43:24 that you won't need to go any further.
2359. 01:43:28 I think if you're an entrepreneur or a solopreneur,
2360. 01:43:31 like me, this isn't the be-all and all.
2361. 01:43:39 And that's completely okay.
2362. 01:43:43 I'm torn between four and five, to be honest.
2363. 01:43:47 What am I going to rate this?
2364. 01:43:49 You know what?
2365. 01:43:50 I'm just going to do it.
2366. 01:43:51 I'm going to rate it five stars.
2367. 01:43:53 With all the caveats that I shared that for some people,
2368. 01:43:57 this isn't going to go deep enough,
2369. 01:43:59 but that doesn't mean that it's not a great resource.
2370. 01:44:04 I think for someone like me who is really trying to figure out
2371. 01:44:10 how do I dial in the systems of my business,
2372. 01:44:16 this isn't going to be enough.
2373. 01:44:18 And there is going to be some things that I'll take from this
2374. 01:44:22 and I'll figure out how to apply some of the things from,
2375. 01:44:26 you know, I mentioned that Alex Gormozi books,
2376. 01:44:28 I actually did really enjoy $100 million offers,
2377. 01:44:32 I think was the first one.
2378. 01:44:33 I haven't gone through fully $100 million leads yet.
2379. 01:44:39 I think marketing is one of those things
2380. 01:44:41 that you can continue to study it and learn about it.
2381. 01:44:45 The rest of your life,
2382. 01:44:47 you will never completely master this.
2383. 01:44:50 However, you know, there's a lot of resources
2384. 01:44:55 that are shared in the marketing space is like,
2385. 01:44:57 "Oh, well, you got to read this, you got to read this."
2386. 01:45:00 Billy Ross actually mentioned in here at one point
2387. 01:45:04 an older book on marketing.
2388. 01:45:08 Did you catch the name of that?
2389. 01:45:11 Is it the one I have highlighted here?
2390. 01:45:14 Give me a second.
2391. 01:45:15 Does he mention the author, like it's a copywriting book?
2392. 01:45:18 Yes, I found it.
2393. 01:45:20 You can't get it on, like Amazon,
2394. 01:45:22 I think has one for like 300 bucks.
2395. 01:45:23 I found it on eBay for like 50.
2396. 01:45:25 So I ended up buying it.
2397. 01:45:27 Nice.
2398. 01:45:28 I haven't, I haven't gone through that one yet,
2399. 01:45:29 but those are the types of books that, you know,
2400. 01:45:32 I hear those recommendations and that tells me, you know,
2401. 01:45:35 that this isn't the original definitive source.
2402. 01:45:39 This is a newer version of copywriting principles
2403. 01:45:41 that have been around for a long time.
2404. 01:45:43 Everything's a remix, nothing's completely original.
2405. 01:45:46 I think if you are interested at all in marketing in 2025,
2406. 01:45:51 this is the book that I would recommend that you read first.
2407. 01:45:54 It's not the only book that I would recommend you read.
2408. 01:45:57 And you'll probably have a bunch of questions
2409. 01:45:59 if you really want to master this stuff going forward,
2410. 01:46:03 but this is the place to start.
2411. 01:46:06 I've also recommended this to a bunch of people
2412. 01:46:08 who wanted to get into marketing
2413. 01:46:11 and they have all thoroughly enjoyed this book.
2414. 01:46:16 So I think it's, it's an easy read.
2415. 01:46:19 It's a entertaining read and it's in the title, right?
2416. 01:46:22 Simple marketing for smart people.
2417. 01:46:24 It's not going to be insulting anyone's intelligence.
2418. 01:46:26 It's not going to be, oh, you just got to do this one thing,
2419. 01:46:28 you know, and then everything's just going to magically
2420. 01:46:31 click into place.
2421. 01:46:32 Like there is none of that.
2422. 01:46:34 You know, it's, it is a tripwire product,
2423. 01:46:37 but it is not salesy in the least, you know,
2424. 01:46:39 you could very, very easily get through this
2425. 01:46:42 and be like, what else does Billy Broass do?
2426. 01:46:44 I don't even know what I should be looking for next.
2427. 01:46:47 So for some people, that's, that's going to be a really good thing.
2428. 01:46:50 All right, I'm not going to, I'm not going to talk about a lot,
2429. 01:46:53 but you, you changed my mind.
2430. 01:46:54 It's a five book. It's a five-star book.
2431. 01:46:56 You're right. I changed my mind.
2432. 01:46:57 Oh, so you're labeling a five now.
2433. 01:46:58 Okay. Well, then, then I think I have to bring it down to a four.
2434. 01:47:02 Just because I don't, I don't think I can live
2435. 01:47:06 with this being a double five-star book.
2436. 01:47:10 That's the thing. Like, I don't think this is a double five-star book.
2437. 01:47:13 I think it is a very good book,
2438. 01:47:16 but I don't think I want to put the gold bookworm seal on this one,
2439. 01:47:20 be like, hey, everybody, go get this one.
2440. 01:47:22 All right, then for certain people, this is amazing.
2441. 01:47:25 For other people, it's, it's good.
2442. 01:47:27 That I, that I have to, I have to say, I need a five.
2443. 01:47:30 You need a four because that's just the way it has to be.
2444. 01:47:34 This is the way it has to be.
2445. 01:47:36 All right, Mike, next book.
2446. 01:47:38 So let's talk about our upcoming books.
2447. 01:47:40 You have the, you have the book that's coming up next.
2448. 01:47:43 What are, what are we reading next?
2449. 01:47:44 Yeah, the next book is Poor Charlie's Almanac by Peter Koffman,
2450. 01:47:49 I believe. Poor Charlie, it talks about Charlie Munger,
2451. 01:47:52 and he's, was Warren Buffett's right-hand man.
2452. 01:47:56 So I've heard a lot of great things about this book.
2453. 01:48:00 I think you mentioned one of the blurbs is like,
2454. 01:48:02 there's a billion dollar education in this book.
2455. 01:48:06 I have not made as much progress with this one
2456. 01:48:08 as I have wanted to because I've been sick,
2457. 01:48:09 but I did start it and it's been pretty entertaining so far.
2458. 01:48:13 Did you find the online version of this book at Stripe.Press?
2459. 01:48:18 I did not, no.
2460. 01:48:19 Okay, so you need to look at the online version of this book, Mike.
2461. 01:48:22 I know you're an analog through and through,
2462. 01:48:24 but I'm going to, I'm going to send you it in the chat right now.
2463. 01:48:27 And we'll put the link in the, in the show notes for people.
2464. 01:48:32 So Stripe, like the Stripe company, you know,
2465. 01:48:36 payment processing type company,
2466. 01:48:39 they take like really, what they think are really good books
2467. 01:48:42 and they like publish them in a really, really creative format.
2468. 01:48:49 Like a really creative format.
2469. 01:48:51 So take a look at that, tell me what you think.
2470. 01:48:54 I'm intrigued to have us talk about that in that style of publishing next time.
2471. 01:49:00 Sure. Yeah, I think this is a different version of this, but yeah.
2472. 01:49:04 So like the first one, first chapter here is the Harvard school commencement speech.
2473. 01:49:09 The first chapter of the book doesn't get into that, but.
2474. 01:49:13 No, no, no. So click on the, click on the top.
2475. 01:49:17 You'll see that they break it into, you know, chapter one is a portrait of.
2476. 01:49:22 Oh, right. I clicked on the wrong one.
2477. 01:49:23 Yep. Yep. You're right.
2478. 01:49:24 Okay. No, it's actually hard to navigate, but at the same time,
2479. 01:49:27 once it looks really cool, it's really.
2480. 01:49:30 Because they pop up images and different things.
2481. 01:49:32 So I thought, I thought you'd, you'd have a fun time looking at that.
2482. 01:49:35 I randomly stumbled into that when I was trying to find the book.
2483. 01:49:38 Very cool.
2484. 01:49:39 Okay. So I'm the book after that.
2485. 01:49:41 We're going to read The Courage to Be Dislight by Ichiro Kishimi and Futaki Koga.
2486. 01:49:49 That book came out of one of the books, one of the recent books we read,
2487. 01:49:53 where I want to say it might have been anti-time management,
2488. 01:49:56 but I can't remember which one it actually came out of,
2489. 01:49:58 but there was this idea of like, don't be afraid to be disliked.
2490. 01:50:00 And then here's this, this good reference.
2491. 01:50:02 And I looked into that book and I think it'll be a good one for, for us and for our audience.
2492. 01:50:06 So those are our upcoming books.
2493. 01:50:08 Mike, are you reading any gap books right now?
2494. 01:50:11 I am not. I am hoping to get Poor Charlie Zominack done on time.
2495. 01:50:16 Yep. Your sickness really, really threw a, threw a wrench into that.
2496. 01:50:20 Yes, it did.
2497. 01:50:21 Okay. So I said last time I wasn't going to read any gap books.
2498. 01:50:26 And I actually was able to make it through like two or three different gap books
2499. 01:50:30 over, because we were on semester break.
2500. 01:50:32 So like, I mean, I was just powering through.
2501. 01:50:34 Now, granted, I wasn't like reading Word for Word.
2502. 01:50:36 I was listening to some parts of it and reading other parts of it.
2503. 01:50:39 So it's like, it wasn't reading like I would read for Bookworm,
2504. 01:50:42 but I made it through a couple of different gap books.
2505. 01:50:43 And that was, that was a lot of fun.
2506. 01:50:45 I'm intentionally not doing any gap books right now,
2507. 01:50:48 because the semester started back up and all of my additional reading
2508. 01:50:52 goes into prepping for classes.
2509. 01:50:53 So there are no gap books right now and there are,
2510. 01:50:56 there will not be any gap books for the foreseeable future.
2511. 01:51:00 All right. All right, Mike.
2512. 01:51:01 So let's put, oh my gosh, I forgot the name of the book.
2513. 01:51:05 Let's put simple marketing for smart people on the shelf.
2514. 01:51:08 Let's pick up Poor Charlie Zominack for the next one.
2515. 01:51:11 If you all are interested in more of what we do, we do a pro show.
2516. 01:51:15 So for the pro show on today's show, we talked about journaling.
2517. 01:51:20 We talked about meditation. You can get that by going to patreon.com/bookwormfm
2518. 01:51:27 and checking out, subscribing there at $7 a month.
2519. 01:51:32 So not only do you get the pro show, but you also get a wallpaper,
2520. 01:51:37 you get book notes, you get an ad-free version of the show.
2521. 01:51:42 So there are some perks there and it helps us support the show.
2522. 01:51:45 It helps us keep things going and pay for the different miscellaneous things
2523. 01:51:50 that come up and make in the show.
2524. 01:51:51 So if you're interested in doing that, patreon.com/bookwormfm
2525. 01:51:55 and pick up Poor Charlie Zominack.