Today on the More Cheese Less Whiskers podcast, we're talking with Stu Swineford from Boulder, Colorado, where they have an agency that helps nonprofit and purpose-driven businesses with their marketing.
We had a great conversation about selecting and narrowing to a single target market. I love that they're crystal clear on who it is they want to work with, and we talked about how they can get more involved in that community in a way that would start providing engaging content for them.
There are so many opportunities, including a nice content marketing strategy involving podcasting, and if you're looking for ideas to connect with your potential customers, this is a great episode.
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Transcript - More Cheese Less Whiskers 203
Dean: Stu?
Stu: Dean, how are you?
Dean: How are you, my friend?
Stu: Very well. Thanks for having me on the show.
Dean: Well, I'm very excited. It's...
Stu: Oh -.
Dean: I love when I wake up in the morning and I've got a nice, little evil-schemes hatching session on my calendar.
Stu: Nice.
Dean: The bright spot in my day.
Stu: Well, me too.
Dean: I've got my remarkable tablets, got my coffee. I've got my ... Just about to sit in my comfy chair. And we've got Stu, so everything we need for a good evil-scheme hatching session.
Stu: Absolutely.
Dean: Where are you calling from, Stu?
Stu: I'm calling from the woods, west of Boulder, Colorado. We've been working at home, obviously, like the rest of the world here who are fortunate enough to be able to do that. So, I live at about 9,000 feet up here in the woods, between Nederland and Black Hawk.
Dean: I was really ... I live ... Well, I happen to live very close to the highest point in Florida, which is 182 feet above sea level.
Stu: Yep.
Dean: Yeah. When I went to Durango, to visit my friend Jeff Walker he was over there, they're at about 7,000 feet I think, something like that, and I was surprised. We were going out for dinner and we parked, and then it was slightly up a hill to go to this restaurant, I was feeling like, "Wow, why? I know I'm out of shape, but this seems unusually out of shape, I seem a little winded here." But, I forgot about the altitude it makes a difference.
Stu: Yeah, there's significantly less oxygen up here, and yes, you're coming from sea level it's a big difference for sure.
Dean: Wow. Okay. So, tell me about what you've got going on here, and what we can chat about.
Stu: Cool. Really, I'm a co-founder of a digital marketing firm called Relish Studio, and we like to say we help good people do great things, and that really means to us that we serve leaders of ... - leaders of purpose-driven businesses, and help them-
Dean: What does that mean to you, when you say purpose-driven businesses? What does that mean?
Stu: Well, that's a great question. Really, we'd like to help people who have ... Giving back is baked into their company ethos it's not just an afterthought, but it's part of their mission. So, think of people who run B Corps, people like Patagonia would be a great example of a business that has something more than just making money. They really want to give back to their communities and to all their stakeholders, and those are the type of people that we like to serve most, or at least influence people to have that same mentality, that doing business can be more than just making money.
Dean: Sure. Got it. Okay. That makes sense. Okay. So then, what?
Stu: So, then we provide them with services to try and help them build relationships online. I have really been trying to think of marketing as more than just convincing someone to buy something, and really trying ... it's really trying to create relationships, and whether that's a quick-win relationship, buy this widget type of thing, that becomes a transactional relationship. But, ultimately a lot of our clients have bigger ticket items that they're trying to sell, so they're selling larger ticket B to B services for example. And that sales cycle tends to be a little longer than just, "I found you online and I'm ready to buy this thing." And so, how do we help them nurture those connections into real relationships that are long lasting and very powerful.
Dean: Okay. And so, how do you do that? What's the core of the kind of services that you offer that you get paid for?
Stu: Yeah. So, our bread and butter is really conversion focused WordPress websites. We've been doing that kind of work for quite a few years now, and really looking at opportunities to help people figure out what they need to do, what their messaging needs to be, what their site needs to do for them to help get them into those conversations that then facilitate that relationship building. Lately, we've been ... During this pandemic, I'm not sure when this episode will come out, but currently we're still in the midst of an economic conundrum here. And so, we've always held the attitudes that we want to do what's right for our clients and our consumers, and when people come to us and say, "We need a new website," a lot of times we look at what they have, really try and focus on, "How can we just make this work better for you as opposed to doing a full scrape?" I use a housing metaphor where right now we're doing a lot more remodeling than having that full scrape and rebuild.
Dean: New paint, new carpet, and clean it up? Yeah.
Stu: Yeah. Or just looking at an opportunity for some conversion focusing, and a lot of sites really are just missing calls to action, or they're missing the, "What do you want me to do now?" So, really helping people to figure that out and put a plan in place to get people to do the things you want them to do on the site.
Dean: Right. That's great. And a lot of people don't realize that, they think they need a new website, but if nobody is coming to your website, having a new website isn't going to solve the problem.
Stu: Exactly.
Dean: It's not that. In the early days, back in '98, '99, when things were just getting started online, I identified and used a formula that I would say, "It was eyeballs, plus emails, plus hearts, equal faces." And that would mean essentially, first you've got to get eyeballs to your website, and then the next most important thing is that you get emails from the people who come to the site. And then hearts are bonding with them, winning their hearts and minds, and then equal is an offer that gets them into a collaboration with you face-to-face or together. So, focusing on that formula was a way to identify where the problem was. If people were getting lots of traffic, lots of eyeballs, but nobody is leaving their name and email there's no engagement on the site, that's one thing. But, if they're not getting any eyeballs then we don't know whether what is on the website is the problem, that's not it. So, that formula still really holds the way I think about things like that.
So, how much would a typical engagement with you ... What would be the revenue that you would generate, in the typical engagement? What's your largest check, or your average ticket, or the relationship, how that works out.
Stu: Well, we're still doing some tactical things for people, so that comes in at a lower price range. But, I think that the ... going back to that bread-and-butter stuff, really we're in the $7,500 to $12,000 range, it's also the pre-typical rebuild, or a new site type of engagement, and so those are the things that fuel our regular revenue. Certainly, we've done stuff up into the six-figure range with a fully -
Dean: Ecommerce and all that.
Stu: Yeah, just all of that stuff. And then, I'd say a lifetime value for a client is probably two acts of that initial engagement, and certainly we have some clients that have contributed... We've been in business actually almost today, 13 years.
Dean: Wow.
Stu: And we have a couple of clients that are in the mid-six figures in terms of lifetime value, but I would say the average is probably closer to ... And probably if we were to be smart about that, and discount those one or two clients that are huge, I would say between 15 and 20,000 is our LTB.
Dean: Okay. That's great. And how do you get these clients now? What's your best strategy for getting new business?
Stu: Well, historically like a lot of people I would say we lean really heavily on word of mouth and then networking. It comes in that second bucket which is a little bit of the same thing, but ultimately just getting in front of people and making connections and being authentic and sharing information. Networking has got away a little bit, or we've had to pivot that a bit, and so right now I've been very focused on building connections on LinkedIn. So, we're doing that LinkedIn prospecting and trying to just provide the -. As well as, trying to continue to build our email list and I'd say our list is in the 500 to 600 person range right now, and my LinkedIn following has crept up into the 3500 range at this point.
Dean: Okay. So this is great, the emails... when you start looking at your communication ability here, you've got 500 people that you could literally send an offer to right now basically. You could push out things to them, you're not depending on getting them coming to your website or doing anything. How often, if I'm one of the 500 people on your email list, what's my experience? How often am I getting emails from you, and what am I getting?
Stu: So, I would say we neglected that list for quite some time and in the last six months or so, we've been very intentional about going back to that list and really trying to provide valuable information. We were doing these standard newsletters, here's a bunch of stuff and chose your own adventure thing, which we have decided to take a different tact, and so in the last three months what we've really started doing is emailing out our most recent posts directly to that list. So, instead of forcing someone to click on a link and go to the site and read that there, we're basically saying, "Hey, here's our latest bit of information, which we hope you find valuable and if you need more help reply here." And, that's been our tactic. We've been emailing that stuff out on a regular basis, which is about once a week.
Dean: Okay. Perfect. So once a week you send out an email, and that's a smart way is that it's all self contained, everything that's happening right there along with the opportunity for them to respond.
Stu: I also have a super signature there to that gives three -
Dean: Perfect, look at you.
Stu: - Some kind of ideas.
Dean: Okay. So there's the thing is that, whenever you're ready here's three ways we can help you. So what would be the offers in your super signature then? What's ways that people can reach out for you?
Stu: So, the super signature currently, and of course I don't have it memorized so I'm going to have to look it up -
Dean: That's okay.
Stu: So it's basically, we have three main offers in terms of ways for us help, and one is an offer of a site assessment. My internet is running a little slowly so I apologize. One is, I'm calling it, "Move the Needle", where we don't review your websites, social media accounts and then share the number one thing you can implement right now, to help move the needle for your business. It will be unique to you.
Second one is what I'm calling the "360 Degree Review", and that's more of a robust site assessment and provide a custom consultation report detailing ways you can improve, and then the third is what I'm just calling "Trends and Trash" which is "Do you want to know what I'm seeing on the front lines of marketing. Grab some time and we can chat about what's happening in the world of marketing today."
Dean: There you go.
Stu: Those are the three ways to engage, and all of them are free of charge, we're really trying to move, and educate and find the right -
Dean: So part of this thing... once you get into that rhythm and the cadence of that, of sending out the weekly things, you've got your super signature there, the great thing would be to get to 5000 people on your list-
Stu: Yes, exactly.
Dean: Instead of 500 people. So, are you doing anything, list building, what's your strategy for getting those emails?
Stu: So again, I've been doing a bunch of outreach on LinkedIn to build my base there. I have currently an email that gets auto generated to new leads on LinkedIn, just basically saying, "Hey, I'm not trying to bug you, or sell you anything here, just wanted to give you another opportunity or another way to get in touch with me if you need to." And, I think I need to retool that email to actually have it ask about -
Dean: Yeah, you never, ever want to say... don't ever go from your heels. Don't ever back away, just treat everybody like they're a five star prospect. By default, what you're saying to people there is, you're trying to guard against the people who might be upset by you emailing them or whatever. And, that's then 100% of the people are being treated like they're not five star prospects, which only plants that seed of that thought in the people who may not have otherwise thought that. If you treat everybody like they're a five star prospect, and be okay if the bottom 20% of them are turned off by that or not interested in that, that's fine. You got to be okay with it. But, don't rob the top 20% of your very best intentions and efforts because you're trying to protect against the blow back from the bottom 20%. That make sense?
Stu: Yeah, for sure and it's something that I realized just last week, "You know, this is not the way I should be doing this."
Dean: Right.
Stu: So we need to fix that particular outreach. The main goal of this whole campaign is really to get people engaged in conversations.
Dean: Yes.
Stu: And so, I'm really leveraging mostly the messaging within LinkedIn currently to nurture and get people into a conversation. I think I'm missing an opportunity there to continue to build the email list and so I need to come up with a new offer which I then put out in LinkedIn.
Dean: And part of that may be... are you targeting specifically B Corps or who are you targeting on LinkedIn? Who are you trying to speak to?
Stu: Unfortunately, LinkedIn doesn't have a great mechanism for targeting B Corps so we're doing some other things to get a list of those types of people. We are a 1% for the Planet partner, so we have an offer out to other 1% people, and we've been trying to build our 1% connection list as well, both on LinkedIn and then... I think the thing I'm missing here is transitioning from that platform to getting them on my list. And so, I think I need to come up with some mechanism by which I'm attempting to move in that direction as well.
Dean: Yeah. A book is a great idea for that in terms of something that's valuable, but is also your philosophical approach so that people resonate with that, are going to be attracted to it. And, you've been doing it for 13 years and you've probably got some good case studies and field reports and things, how people are doing well by doing good, and that might be a good opportunity there. Do you have a podcast or do you do anything like that, that would be a media based type of thing?
Stu: That's a great question. Currently, we have several content offers, tools, and informational items that we've produced over the years, that we could use as giveaway stuff. I don't currently have a podcast although, I've been contemplating that. I've been trying to guest on podcasts, one of the things that I see is a real challenge in the podcast world, is how do you build that audience because it's so crowded and noisy right now.
Dean: Well it doesn't matter, part of the thing is, there is so many other things that are valuable about a podcast. I think that it would be better if you could not even have access to see what the audience for your podcast is, let's not even think about that. The thing that's the most valuable about the podcast, is the positioning for you of being authority in the field, in the category. What would be the category that you are... is it social responsibility, is it corporate social responsibility, is it... what would be the category that somebody would identify with, that you're a part of?
Stu: That's a good question. I think that coming at it from a corporate social responsibility with the marketing slant in terms of here are ways to get your message out and further your CSR. That might be a good area of discussion.
Dean: And part of the thing... are you working with... you're probably in a hot bed of that in Denver and Colorado in general, of companies per capita that are that way oriented are probably more plentiful in Colorado then maybe in some other places. Are you-
Stu: Boulder, at one point had the densest population of either B Corps or one of those, I'd say that it's certainly on the radar here.
Dean: Yeah, yeah. So when you look at that as your... are the majority of your clients local like that or are they all over?
Stu: Well, that's something that we haven't managed to nail yet, is this differentiation piece, and when I do my 80/20 analysis, and I did one recently, it made me really happy to see that in that 20% of our clients making 80% of our revenue, we did have a bunch of non-profits in there, so that was really thrilling to see and this was over the last two years, the last one I did was in that zone. And so, we are getting traction in that space and that's certainly the direction that we would want to go. The rest of them were a bit all over the place to be completely honest, they were everything from construction companies, to service providers who have high ticket items, some professional services, et cetera. So, it was a little unfocused and that's one of the things that we've been trying to fix.
Dean: What about the geography of them, are they Colorado-
Stu: They were mostly Colorado and therefore mostly Denver.
Dean: That's fine. That's fine, because this is that thing that we're looking for here, is to identify your single target audience. I always have to go back to the definition, because when I look at everything I'm overlaying on top of any business situation, is the 8 Profit Activators. So I'm looking at that, and the meta-context of the before unit, the during unit, and the after unit, and so your during and after unit are strong. You do great work, you've got great clients, they stay with you, they're happy. It's all working, if somebody shows up at your door you've figured out how to do the work. Right? So this is a before unit situation that we're looking to grow.
Now, the advantage of the before unit is that we get to go out and select who it is, but the challenge that people have when we get to selecting a single target market is that people often misinterpret that as... their mindset is still trying to get to a point where they want to let people know what they do so that they can be selected, as opposed to proactively doing the selecting. So what I'm talking about is going out, and you select a single target market. So if we say nonprofits, that's different than B Corps, but the B Corps are another category of potential clients for you, and so you've got traction with nonprofits, you've got some great ongoing relationships with them and so it gets into this whole idea of... have you ever heard me talk about weshootbottles.com?
Stu: I don't know that I've heard that one, so tell me more.
Dean: Okay. So weshootbottles.com, if you're online you can check it out, but weshootbottles.com is a commercial photographer in the UK and they have a website, that's their website weshootbottles, and the only thing on the website is bottles. And, they show all the different bottle work that they've done, so if you've got a product that is packaged in a bottle, and you've got a choice of going to a commercial photographer who does the entire spectrum of types of photography or going to a photographer who seems to have a specialized program specifically for bottles, you're going to be much more attracted to that right?
Stu: Absolutely.
Dean: Even though, they have a sister website called weshootcans.com, and so you look at all they do is help people who package things in cans. If you were to think about creating a division of your business that is nonprofit oriented, if you think about it as a nonprofit brand that you put yourself in, the Proctor & Gamble situation where you're running, you've got different brands that are appealing to the different spectrum of people that you are working with. Proctor & Gamble has 23 individual billion dollar brands, underneath Proctor & Gamble right? If we look at it that your opportunity is with nonprofits you've got a visible prospect now. So, if you look that there are, in Colorado, how many nonprofit companies are there. Nonprofit organizations that are, what would be the characteristics if you were to say, "This would be our ideal." Even if you were just mirror the characteristics of the ones who are already your top 20%. What would that look like? What would make somebody... if we were going to send them Austria and clone them, what would be the genetic makeup of these best clients that you have?
Stu: Right, so typically we do our best work for clients in that top line revenue, or I suppose for a nonprofit it would be donations in the one to five million dollar range with the sweet spot being in that two and a half million. And they've been in business for a while, they've had their organization going for a while, and this isn't their first rodeo.
Dean: Yeah, they're not a startup.
Stu: Yeah, and they know that they need to invest, and they have a desired outcome for that investment. So those would be three things, so we try and sort that out by either head count that gets you into that range, so more than five less than 25 probably. Those are usually the things we're looking for.
Dean: Okay. That's great.
Stu:- I could think more about that but-
Dean: And would you say, "No, it's a good start, but now what we're doing is we're going to overlay some unique stack of knowledge here." So, when we look at it, how many nonprofits in general do a good a job of marketing?
Stu: Oh, a lot of them are very sophisticated actually, and then a lot of them are very unsophisticated.
Dean: Antiquated, right?
Stu: There's a wide range in that space, I would say that we are able and desirous to work with both ends of that spectrum. I should probably just pick one though, truth be told.
Dean: The great thing is, these are all visible prospects. So, if you look at this, if we were to... how many would you guess there are in Colorado that would fit that profile?
Stu: That's a... a lot I would say probably in the... the sophisticated ones, there are probably 100 and the other end of the spectrum there are probably 1000 or more.
Dean: Yeah, so that's the thing when you look at it... so if we say I was looking to see is there 1000 of these, that this is the thing, if there was an audience of these as a 1000 of them... that where I said all of that you're to get to this point, where this is where I was talking about with the podcast now, is that the value of the podcast is not about building a big audience, it's about building the right audience, but more importantly it's about gathering the right content for it. Right? And so if you've got a podcast that is, and I don't know are there... I haven't checked out the landscape of this, but if you look at it, how many podcasts would there be that are focused on cutting edge marketing for Colorado nonprofits?
Stu: Oh, probably none, I'd be surprised if there were anything that specific.
Dean: Exactly. Okay. So you've got the opportunity to be the podcast for Colorado nonprofits that are interested in marketing. That's your overlay, that this is the only podcast, this is the place for forward thinking marketing for nonprofits. You start to - what would be the words that would make that enticing. Then, you start to look at who are the people who are the shining lights in this? Who are the people who are doing it the best? What are they doing that is working? Who's the leader of these, that divisionary for these nonprofits, the voice, the vision, the energy of it, the driver of it. The best nonprofits are not committee, there's somebody whose being a leader for them. Right?
Stu: Right. Right. I think I see where you are going with this.
Dean: And now... yes, but if you've got a podcast that is highlighting those, if you're doing an interview with those people talking all about what is going on, the lessons they've learned, the advice that they would have, their philosophies, the story, letting them tell their greatest hits of how they overcame some of the problems, what would be the most valuable things in the story of this particular nonprofit? You get to... because you've got a vehicle like that you've got a way to now interview those people. You take the top 20% of them, 200, and you've got a four year runway of one of these leaders a week. And, you may be able to turn part of it into the... you start with the top ones, and then you turn it around to do maybe a more "Cheese Less Whiskers" type of podcast where you are working with a nonprofit to share the best strategies, or your best advice, or answering their questions about marketing, which is a great model for you to demonstrate your expertise in this topic.
Stu: Love it. I think that's great and it's interesting that you mention that because I have been in talks with another guy, and we were at one point going... it was a choice we started talking before all this shut down happened and then things got weird, but we were talking about doing something like this, but one of the things we just could never figure out was, "What's the angle part?" So this is super helpful.
Dean: Now, what you've got then is that, that is the most important thing out of this, and it doesn't matter whether anybody listens to the podcast, let's say that with... of course you want people to listen to it, but that's not the most important thing because what you get out of this is first of all, you get a connection with these 1000 people. You get a connection with the top ones that you show up on their radar. They might not even know who you are, right? If you're going to build a business around working with nonprofits to apply great marketing, and great marketing assets to their business or their approach, then they have to know who you are.
Stu: Right. Right.
Dean: So what a great way to serve them, right? So you show up on their radar and it'd be easy for you use that as a thing, saying, "We're starting a new podcast series for Colorado nonprofits, and I've always admired what you have been doing and I would love to have you in the series." So you maybe think about it as a mini-series when you're first talking about it, that you're going to interview 12 of the leaders of Colorado nonprofits, and you'd love to have them be part of it. They've never been asked to be featured on something or recognized for their accomplishments.
Stu: Right.
Dean: And so, that's an easy thing for them to do, but now they know who Stu is. Because Stu is the guy who's recognizing them, he's recognizing their accomplishments. Right? So, now when you do the interview... you interview them for an hour, you talk about the whole story, you talk about the background, the greatest things that they did there, their advice to people who are emerging nonprofits or trying to get traction. They get to share some of the lessons, the thing that they wished they knew when they started out. You can really structure the way that you frame the interview so that you get future content that you can use as well. Because, the most important thing is that you are now digitizing this content. Meaning that you're there, you're having these conversations and they're being recorded, as soon as you record it now you've got an asset, because you can take that recording, and you get it transcribed and from that you can write articles.
So, I send out three emails a week, to everybody on my list, and those three emails are all 100% derived from things that I've said on the podcast. So, when I'm doing podcasts and we get into a conversation then I'll... there'll be periods where I have clarity for someone and I'll talk for longer than normal, I'll go down a path to get a concept or an idea out that I've conveyed to you. So, I have a writer who takes the transcript of every podcast and finds two or three of those in every episode where a concept, or an idea, or an articulation that I used to share something, and then she'll turn that into a 300-500 word article.
That becomes one of the emails that I send, and then each week there's a new podcast so the announcement of that podcast is the... so every Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday you get an email from me that is bringing value, because it's a 100% content, it's a new concept, a new idea, a new podcast and it's a carrier for my super signature, and the PS where I can say whatever I've got going on right now. "PS, I'm starting a new email mastery program this week."
Stu: Right, right.
Dean: Those are the kind of things, but I'm always leading with value, always leading with content.
Stu: Yep.
Dean: Now, that's an easy way for you to get that content, and by the way when you're doing... so this "More Cheese Less Whiskers" approach, which you could do just as well, is a great way to constantly fill your podcast. Right? When you look at it... I didn't call you up and say, "Hey, would you, I need you to be a guest on my podcast." You, at some point, saw a super signature that said, "Hey, be a guest on More Cheese Less Whiskers podcast." And at some point you thought, "Hey, that'd be a good idea." And you went and submitted the form, and then Lillian called you up at some point and said, "Hey, how about Thursday morning?" And you said, "Perfect." And then you show up on my calendar on Thursday morning, and that's the first involvement that I've had in the entire process. Right.
So, when you look at that, once you get that established you've got a way that... Wow, this is something that you can continue, it gets its own momentum.
Stu: - Yeah, I really like the idea.
Dean: Now, what this also allows you to do though, is you can create a monthly field report, or journal, or 10 times a year you could create a PDF piece that is pictures, transcripts, all these articles that you sent, plus more in depth things or the transcript of your... or the show notes from the podcast that you've had. Plus, some featured case studies, some news that affects non profits in Colorado. Where you become the defacto media outlet for nonprofits in Colorado.
Stu: Yes, this is really cool.
Dean: Yeah, all that content created from the podcast. And, all of that... you're really getting a great thing. Did you ever see Tim Ferris's book "Tribe of Mentors"?
Stu: That's funny you mentioned that, that came up in a conversation I had yesterday, and I have not read that one, but it's really interesting how when you would start to have conversations, you started having the same conversations over and over again. It's cool.
Dean: Right. But then you look at in one year you do 50 of these podcasts, a combination of interviews with top leaders of nonprofits and aspiring or emerging nonprofits are seeking your advice, and you have at the end of the year this great volume of both, insights from leaders, and advice that you've given to people to create a book from that.
Stu: Yeah, that's fantastic. Yeah. I really like the idea of how this all just builds on its own without... it's scalable in that you're not recreating the wheel every time, you're creating one thing, but then you serialized, or that's not the right word, but you know what I mean.
Dean: No I get it, but you're building on it, that's exactly right.
Stu: Right.
Dean: And all the while you're the host of that, so then you start... it's an interesting thing that you can start then... you're positioning yourself as a leader in the nonprofit community.
Stu: Yes.
Dean: It's just adding value right? And then, "By the way, we have all of these marketing, all these services to help you do all the things that we talked about if you need help with that."
Stu: Yeah, I actually looked in to your book writing service, and I don't remember exactly why I didn't move forward with that, but certainly it's really interesting.
Dean: Well now that you know what the intention is, it will be easier for you to have that. If you've got a guideline that maybe that's your thing is that you do the first 10 of these... if you were to rank the nonprofit leaders out of those 1000 that are there, you could get the highest profile 10 that you could and do the first 10 episodes like that and create a book from that. If they've been... because I imagine if some of those people have been running nonprofits for more than 20 years.
Stu: Yeah, they're some pretty good sized opportunities just in the state for sure.
Dean: If there are, then that's your thing that that could be 250 years of nonprofit leadership advice, top 10 things, that would be a really great opportunity for you I think.
Stu: I like it.
Dean: Yeah.
Stu: So going back, I mentioned early on creating a book, in our conversation today, then we pivoted to the 52, take each week, but that requires me to do this for a year, so now we've got it down to 10 weeks of -
Dean: I think that's just the kick start. I still want you to do it for a year. I think you should think about doing this ongoing, all the time.
Stu: Yeah. Yeah. What I was curious about was when you said book early on, before we started talking about podcasts and all of that, what do you feel like a book "is" in terms of volume-
Dean: Well I think a book is just a way to say, to start a conversation. I'll give you a perfect example. So I have a real estate community that we built called - agent, and what drives that is I wrote a book called "Listing Agent Lifestyle". And, those are power words for - that's what people want, they'd love to be a listing agent, but they want to have a nice lifestyle too. They often seem to go counter to each other, the success in real estate often seems like you have to sacrifice your lifest -. Be a strong listing agent and have a great lifestyle, and there are eight elements of the listing agent lifestyle.
There's five business elements of... if you're going to have a listing centric business, you've got to have a way to get listings, so we focus on getting listings, we talk about multiplying the listings, we talk about getting referrals, and converting leads, and finding buyers, and then we talk about the lifestyle elements of daily joy, abundant time, and financial peace, And so, those eight things make up the contextual frame work of what the listing agent lifestyle is all about, and it's an introduction to the concept, to the ideas. So it's a small book, it's a 90-minute book to engage in a conversation with people who recognize, I'm interested in that idea, because it doesn't make any difference whether the book is 50 pages or 250 pages, to trigger that recognition that I'd like to be in that conversation.
Stu: Okay.
Dean: If a real estate agent sees an ad coming through their news feed with an offer and a cover of a book called "Listing Agent Lifestyle" they know that that's something they would love to have a conversation about. Its easy for them to do that. They make that decision without knowing whether that book is 50 pages or 250 pages, it doesn't matter, they say they want it. Now, as soon as they... as soon as when you're using a book like this, somebody says I want that and they leave their name and their email address, now they're a visible prospect, and the book has largely done its job. That's Profit Activator two, the only reason that I'm using the book is to facilitate identifying the people who want to have that conversation. It's a gathering, it's a calling card.
Stu: Right, right.
Dean: Anybody who's interested in this, come on over here. And then, that's where the podcast comes in. The podcast is a Profit Activator three tool, for educating and motivating people. And as a carrier, for our Profit Activator four offers, the cookies, your super signature, the thing that you're offering to people to help them take the next step in your journey.
Stu: Right. Profit Activator one would be the outreach or - whatever.
Dean: Selecting the target market. Colorado nonprofit, over a million dollars.
Stu: I got it. -
Dean: Now those are visible prospects, because they have to be registered, there's transparency in all of it. Right?
Stu: Right.
Dean: So you can identify who they are, now the other thing that you want to book into this of course, is you're going to be online trying to get all of them, but the opportunity that you have when you have visible prospects is you can send addressable meeting. Meaning you can send post cards to these people. You can send a post card that has a really great article or imagine it's essentially like having your magazine.
Stu: Right.
Dean: Where you can send something to them showing and giving them, here's the links or the addresses for the podcasts, you can use QR codes to see who's responding to stuff, all of that and carry your super signature on the post card as well. If you look at that, that maybe you send, you identify 1000 of them and if you look at it, if you spend a 1000 dollars a month for a year doing these because the great news about it is that these are the 1000 nonprofits in Colorado. There they are. So they either have a need right now, or your planting the seed of the discussion of a need and at some point that need will present itself and the only reflex that they will have we need to talk to Stu.
Stu: Right. This is great stuff, thank you.
Dean: So much opportunity there. Tell me, how's this landing? I'd love to hear your interruption now because I can't believe we're already at the hour here.
Stu: I know it's amazing how fast these go. Well, I think that most of the time people like myself tend to get focused on the perceived success measure of everything we do, when in actuality there are other components that are just underlying that are way more important than the perceived success, and so one of the things that stopped me from doing a podcast earlier this year, or creating a podcast earlier this year was, "How am I going to get an audience." What if no one listens to this thing. And so your advice that that doesn't matter, that the content is what's important and how to then leverage that content into other -
Dean: Well, listen I can't tell you how many times... I just got an email this morning from someone who said I just found out about you yesterday, and I've been listening to your podcast nonstop since I found out. That was somebody about the Listing Agent Lifestyle, just literally this morning I got that email, and I get those all the time. So it doesn't matter whether anybody's listening right now.
Stu: Right.
Dean: If I can get people to put a black box over the stats, and just commit to doing it for a year.
Stu: Yes.
Dean: At the end of the day if each one of your clients is a 12 or 15 thousand dollar LTV, you're certainly going to get more than one client out of that kind of focus on serving them for a year. It's pretty amazing.
Stu: For sure. Well then you have a bunch of other mechanisms in there that should create revenue in terms of... I'm assuming you sell the book for something even if it's a very low cost.
Dean: I don't.
Stu: Okay. You just give it away.
Dean: Yeah, absolutely. Yep. It's a PDF of the book. But that's the whole thing, I want to maximize because I know that the value of the email address is much more.
Stu: Right. Right. Well, I think I need to start a podcast that's the big takeaway here.
Dean: Why wouldn't you?
Stu: Yeah, a hyper focus. And then, we discussed a few other sectors, and you just do the same things in each of those so tackle one and you get some traction, and then if that either dries out or we get big enough that we can handle all that that's bringing to us, then just spin and do it again, right?
Dean: Yeah, just think the more you can focus on for one year, one audience, one approach there, that I think that that's... you've got a lot of opportunity there. Because certainly once you get to... those under your belt, that's a real established thing.
Stu: Absolutely, the other piece that I love about this, I've had a lot of discussions recently about an imposter syndrome and I think that that would be the other thing that has been holding me back is just the whole, "What right do I have to talk about any of this?" But, the thing that I love about this approach is that I'm not the expert in the room. If I'm interviewing all of these people who are amazing and do great stuff, and so it just becomes a thing and then obviously you spin it into the more cheese component because clearly I do have expertise here.
Dean: Absolutely.
Stu: It's fantastic.
Dean: I love it. Well I can't wait to see how it all unfolds.
Stu: Well thank you for having me on, it's been a pleasure and I'm certainly one of those people... you've been on my radar for a while, but then I have definitely experienced the, "I'm going to binge listen to a bunch of these episodes."
Dean: And here we are.
Stu: Yep and here we are, and I really appreciate the time and all of the insights, and thanks for having me on.
Dean: Okay, awesome, I'll talk to you soon.
Stu: All right, bye-bye.
Dean: Thanks Stu, bye.
And there we have it, another great episode. Thanks for listening in, if you want to continue the conversation and go deeper in how the Profit Activator's can apply to your business, two things you can do, right now you can go to morecheeselesswhiskers.com, and you can download a copy of the "More Cheese Less Whiskers" book, and you can listen to the back episodes of course, if you're just listening here on iTunes. Secondly the thing that we talk about in applying all of the 8 Profit Activators are part of the break through DNA process, and you can download a book and a score card, and watch a video all about the 8 Profit Activators at breakthroughDNA.com, and that's a great place to start the journey in applying this scientific approach to growing your business. That's really the way we think about breakthrough DNA as an operating system that you can overlay on your existing business and immediately look for insights there.
So that's it for this week, have a great week and we'll be back next time with another episode of More Cheese Less Whiskers.