3 Steps To Get New Customers (FULL MASTERCLASS)

So many of you that go to school have been trained to do Visual Arts you don't learn this part and so for the rest of your business life you're going to suffer so if you're in the business of doing things and selling the doing of things you may be in trouble and you may be threatened by what is coming if it's not already here all right you ready yep okay hey if you're having trouble getting clients and making more money This master class is just for you it's an hour long and you're not going to

miss this video cuz we go over the three most important things you need to know to get more clients that make more money sales is change management you guys are helping someone to go from A to B what we'll say is their current state where they are now to a desired future state where they'd like to be you guys understand the the game of sales here so in order for me to make a sales I need To know where you are and we'll call this like The Benchmark or the Baseline I'm sorry we'll call this

the Baseline Right Where You Are and where' you like to be luckily it's already a be there it's the Benchmark how will we measure success how will we know we got there and these are very basic concepts that once you master these Concepts your conversations around sales will be much much easier but unfortunately a lot Of uh design institutions we we Define our own benchmarks and so we don't know how to have a conversation about it with anybody else that's really the challenge here okay so many of you that go to school have been uh

have been trained to do creative Visual Arts you don't learn this part until for the rest of your business life you're going to suffer so we're looking for big problems where problems are are opportunities to make money the bigger The problem the more money you make so often times we're reluctant to talk about money because money feels gross to us I'll go over here okay money feels gross to us because it makes it feel uh transactional right I I make you art I'll try and draw a frame here you know like on an easel for

money and it feels gross to us but I'll tell you the thing about money is this money is a measurement for the Amount of transformation you create I'll give you an example that we can relate to I think the reason why some people who are in this room have agreed to pay $27,000 a semester is because the kind of transformation they see is greater than the amount of money they're going to give up assuming that you're responsible for SP spending that money or I'm sorry assuming that you're responsible for paying back that money now some

of us Are very fortunate to have very wealthy parents I don't blame you it's not your fault that you're rich you know it could be worse that someone else else is fo in that bill so you don't even care if you're even getting the value but assuming that you're responsible for the money that was spent you have already made the decision it's worth more if it's worth the same the decision's harder if it's worth less you probably will not buy unless you were pressured To buy which in some cases are people in this room what

do I mean by that well um you're a loser if you just get out of high school you don't have a degree you're a loser if you go to a third tier Arts school so now you're pressured to go to where people believe you should go and you haven't made this decision that you're getting more value than you than you're paying so it's an exchange so money is nothing more than the scorecard or the metric against the transformation The positive change you're going to create so in order to talk about money we should talk about

the transformation then now money has context okay so I'll I'll tell you what I mean if I were the the uh sales and marketing person for a school like this what I would say hey go to Art Center you're going to graduate in four years and you're going to get a degree in design how compelling of an offer is That not very good what if I said to you go to Art Center I don't even talk about the four years I say you will be leader in the design industry you will hold an executive director

position and we find that most our graduates graduates earn six figures plus they earn three times more than their contemporaries that go to different school that might be a little bit exciting to you and then I would then hit you on the emotional front and say not only that but we Attract the top 1% of creatives in the industry so your classmates and your teachers are working professionals you know the big promise and you're like well this is feeling pretty good and by the way here's evidence of us doing this over and over again here's

one one graduate after the other and you notice that whenever you go to Art Center or a school like this how do they attract new customers new students the student Gallery so if you walk in and you're Like sucks sucks dog trash no good you know cliche you're going to say we're not going to school so that's how they know how to Market to you and there's a lot that you can learn if you just look at that and you can see where they could be better and you can see where they're killing it right

I have this theory about Harvard Harvard is one of these schools where if you could just tell anybody you went to it's like oh my God you went to Harvard and They have done something beautiful and this is another concept I'll share with you okay there are way more applicants there are way more buyers for the Harvard Business School than there are Supply right so this is the demand and the supply is a few so demand is far greater than Supply so we don't know if it's a good school we just don't but the percentage

of acceptance is very low and we're like Okay and then we hear about all the people who have dropped out of Harvard Bill Gates Zuckerberg um Tony Shay all billionaires like shoot they're doing something right they don't even need to sell you on the program anymore so what happens is when when you're successful and you have a track record you don't need to Market anymore when's the last time you saw an ad from Harvard Business School do they even need to recruit you At this point probably not and so here's the really interesting thing I

think about the Harvard bubble which is they attract the best students and their genius is they know how to pick them their main job is to pick the right students because you ask yourself this question if all these billionaires graduated or dropped out of Harvard were they great before or after Harvard my argument is they were great before cuz many of them don't even go Over there very long and then what what Harvard promises is first of all status okay identity I went to an IV league and network that your classmates uh your teachers are

probably going to be industry Titans what can we learn from this and Daniel Priestly describes says an over subscribed State there is greater demand than there is Supply over subscribed and you can use this Principle also in the marketing of your business you understand everybody okay so one thing that we have to do is if we want to achieve this we have to be able to create something that generates more interest in what we do than what we can than we can physically meet the demand for and usually that's through something that I'm a big

fan of it's content Market marketing and I'll explain this a little bit later okay content marketing so now there's a lot of interested Eyeballs on what you do then you have to communicate limited capacity you see I'm following the Harvard model here okay and then you have to have uh what we'll call case studies or examples and case stud is just a fancy word for proof that I've done this before I've done it many times and there's um a process that I use to get a certain result McDonald's genius is not in that they make

great hamburgers it's That they've made it super consistent it's this much ketchup and that many pickles and it's made this way so that you don't have a varying experience when you go to McDonald's does that make sense and so the way that you combat that is you have to have systems and processes and you have to communicate that there's another Blair ends line that I remember which is low variance in process equals low variance in Outcomes does that make sense low variance in process equals low variance in outcomes and so what clients want to buy

from you is the outcome and the way they understand that is I have a clearly defined process in which all things go through in order for this outcome to happen so if I have a really defined process what I'm doing is I'm removing uncertainty you know when you go to Starbucks not always or McDonald's not Always you will most likely get something that you expect you go into a no-name place you're not quite sure the quality of food the portion SI all there's just so much variance so you could say that they've stripped the humanity

out of making this stuff but what they've done is they've made it better for the customer yeah so we also know that if there's low variance an outcome you're reducing risk and friction it makes it easier for People to buy so I'm I'm just going to poll you guys right now how many of you have a clearly defined process okay not that many that's okay today is about awareness highlighting a problem and the one person who raised her hand do you communicate that you have a clearly defined process yes okay so this is very good

for you so you'll have a friction Point somewhere else okay does that make sense this is why it's important for you to sit down and Say okay what are what are the first things we always do to make sure the project is good well there's a diagnostic phase then there's a rapid prototyping and then we do um maybe um user testing and then based on that we we go back and we we review what works and what doesn't and then we propose a final model we prototype one more time we do a final test and

then we go and build that's where we're going to go dark for A while client and then what we're going to do is we're going to have two check-in points I'm not drawing I'm just pointing to nothing here like my guy's like what are you doing bro I'm like no there nothing there's got no pen here okay then you'll have an opportunity to do final proofing copy check and making sure everything works and we're going to deliver it but the Project's not done we just delivered it then we're going to stick around for three months

to do Quality assurance Q&A make sure because something inevitably breaks we can't cover everything and then after that I think you might want to sign up for for maintenance schedule with us for a year and we to give it to you at such a good price it's so it' be silly for you to say no okay so when we can communicate our process we reduce the risk we we give a clear preview of what's going to happen So we need to do that when we say we have limited capacity what I mean is we can

only take on so many clients so if you're the studio owner over here up front the shy couple they can only handle so many clients we all think we could handle 100 clients but realistically we cannot so we should say externally that there's a wait for our services if at all possible okay there's a wait for our service we can only take on 10 clients a Year and in March uh we know there's an opening so if you'd like to be considered please get on the wait list and people who don't even want to buy

from you all of a sudden it's like wait a minute we need to make a commitment now just in case we need it it's the same concept of putting a reservation in for a restaurant that is very popular so we want to communicate to the outside world make sense everybody okay so that's just a preview here so all right Let's get into okay so we want to be able to get clients and then the clients that we get should be the right kinds of clients so the first question is who okay who who are we

trying to go after and this is a big question it's not an easy one and it's the lack of commitment to who you want to work with that is the the bane of your existence I think creative people we're Divergent thinkers we like variety because Repetition makes a a boy go crazy you know it's just nuts and we don't want to do the same thing over and over and is that need for excitement and newness some of us have ADHD some of us have a lot of fomos so it's like every new opportunity is the

best opportunity so we keep chasing things instead of getting really good at doing one thing and the key to your success is your ability to focus focus on everything like one service one client one product One funnel one offer so it's the rule of one so if you and here's a great question that came from Hero's book $100 million leads he ask this question he goes imagine tomorrow you wake up and all your clients are gone you have no more clients and you can you are going to be able to design your business around one

client and only by servicing that client and the referrals that you get is the rest of your business who's that client and what Service have you provided to them so such that they're happy and enthusiastic to refer you to other people I think that's a beautiful question to ask and it's a way for us to prioritize what are we doing so if you had one client that all your new business is going to come from from referrals what client do you want to work with this is a very telling thing because many of us are

unfortunately just desperate for any Kind of client that we we become indiscriminate in terms of who we want to work with and in his book Ronald Jay Baker uh implementing value pricing he goes one of the biggest problems is we're not discriminating not in terms of relationships and being Prejudice but we're not discriminating saying we only want to cater to this type of buyer okay so let's ask ourselves what is the one client in which you're going to build your future business on who are they What sector are they in and there's some criteria that

we need to consider because some people say I love working with nonprofit orphaned children well there's a problem number one are they Hungry For Your solution do they have the capacity to pay you so we need two things the desire so we're going to call it hunger so are they hungry for a solution do they experience enough pain point that it's Going to move them from a state of inaction to action because anybody who experiences pain knows that the only way they can Remedy or solve the pain point is by spending money we all know

this already even though we might not know it intellectually we know it instinctively you have a headache what do you have to do take a tiing off if you have migraine you got to go see a doctor your cars noten working take it to the mechanic we know every time we experience some kind Of pain severe enough that we desire a solution we will spend money for that the problem is a lot of you are trying to manufacture pain you come in and this is horrible it's a horrible practice please don't do this a perfectly

good business you come in and say your logo sucks oh your menu is inconsistent I notice the sign above the door and the menu and what is behind you is all different but they can't they can't service customers fast enough so you are Trying to invent a problem that they experience no pain on and then you try to climb up this hill and it's very hard to do right it's like you're trying to go in and break up a happy marriage shame on you shame cut to the clip from Game of Thrones Shame Shame yes

okay so they have to be hungry because the pain is so severe and the pain that they can experience is not on one dimension it's Multi-dimensional it's personal it's professional it's emotional it's Financial so you can see the more pain that they experience in different dimensions the more they're going to seek a solution for this and I'll tell you the most common pain in in life and and as it relates to entrepreneurship and you'll understand why so they have to also have the capacity to pay you and there has has to be enough of them

so there's a a fresh Supply of new clients all the time okay um I think in his book $100 million offers same person Alex Heros it's like offers and leads he said that you might do something beautiful like editorial design for magazines and newspapers and they want the solution but the problem is that industry is going down so the capacity to pay okay they want it sort of but they're losing ad Revenue you know that every magazine you read now is thinner and thinner There's almost no ads in them anymore is that there's not a

fresh supply of new clients that's the problem so if we can understand this you know there's a hunger and a pain they're existing it on a on a multi-dimensional graph their capacity pay is good and there's a fresh supply of them then we know that we have somebody the problem is many of you want to run a charity and not a business you just don't tell yourself that you're willing to subsidize these Projects for people who can't pay so that you can starve with them I don't understand that cuz you also must like pain but

I don't so that's the first decision so let's try to understand this now let's applyed in your life and your business so all of us would like more clients so we we're going to begin the exercise what client is that so Mark you're here you want more Web projects right who's going to be your web client it would be Um Health you know like Alternative Health industry why does that matter to you uh because it reflects my own personal values uh that the medical system is limited okay could do so your dream client and we're

going to use that word dream client yeah is Alternative Health that would be the the uh canopy I mean that's the that's fine industry okay so thought you said cannabis or a second Alternative Health okay no no that's where my mind was Alternative Health medicine or something Healthcare I just don't know if they have the money but almost all Healthcare has money okay you know why cuz I'll die if I don't use it anything that solves that kind of problem usually has a lot of money like the epip pen you guys know the whole disaster

Fiasco with EpiPen right horrific my child will die if he doesn't have the EpiPen so they're going to charge $100 a shot and they can charge $1,000 a shot I still have to buy It I don't really have a choice okay there's one other thing that I want to introduce to you as a new observation I had so we'll tap into like what's been on my mind when the person who pays is not the person that needs it there's an amazing Market there I'll tell you what I mean okay so let me try to explain

this okay when the person who who whips up the credit card who assigns a check is not the person who receives it it's much easier to sell to okay right now Most of of you are students you're not really paying for this because you have no money your parents are footing some percentage of this bill if not all of it for some of you not all of you okay and I'll give you the story okay my son uh he was going to uh a very good private art a private school to to study um writing

very good school but he wanted to get into Ivy League school and he didn't when he when he graduated high school so he calls me Up and he says Dad I need to uh consult with experts uh essay people for IB League schools and I said well why why cuz I want to get in there it really matters to me I said well how much is it he's like it's $10,000 I'm like $10,000 boy you need to work harder like that school is pretty good what do you need to get he goes Dad I'm like

have you done your due diligence he goes yes I've talked to a lot of people which means like he looked on the internet I'm Sure of it and and then I asked my wife what should we do and she goes I don't know I'm really torn I'm like I'm thinking School Hard Knock You got to earn your way through life who cares go to Community College I don't care and she goes but are we being bad parents I'm like maybe she goes we had the money I'm like yeah but I didn't buy that computer I'm

going to get this for him it's 10 grand what if it doesn't work so I was saying I think we need to make a Deal with him if it works we pay if it doesn't work you pay you pay I never said it to him I just said it to myself I'm like fine and I I spent the money it's nothing to him and now it's playing on my guilt and my obligation and wanting the best for my children fudge going to pay it better get in that school thank God he got into school so

I'm like okay it all worked out just fine but it made me aware of something okay I'm going to tell you the second Example so you really understand what I'm talking about second example is this I go to a YouTube education conference it's called educon and it's in New York and there's just a bunch of Educators that are on YouTube I'm talking to these Japanese guys and they seem so like light meaning like they they're like walking on air what I imagine what it's like to be Prince When you walk walk in a room artist

formerly known as or whatever okay and I asked him like what Do you do he goes and very sheepishly he like I teach English and I was say I was talking to him like your English is not even that good you have an accent bro and you're teaching English he goes yeah on YouTube and he explains to me what he's doing right and you know how much money he's making as a YouTuber a year stupid amount of money $10 million and they say education doesn't pay and teaching something really boring I'm like how's this possible

he said I've used the money that I've made to buy schools and I publish my own books and the books alone sell for a million dollars a year so he's created like a little Monopoly he brings people in through the YouTube channel they enroll in his program so they buy courses he buys physical brick and mortar schools and then guess what you have to buy my books to be able to do this what an Incredible Empire he's building and I thought to myself who who the heck is paying for this stuff he says his average

customer pays 10 grand there's that number again like what kid can pay that no kid can pay that freaking parents again when someone else pays for the thing that isn't the consumer it's easy to sell last example I'm going to give you right um Matthew comes to me Matthew's one of my former creative Directors no longer working with us he's like hey Chris I I I saw this program on how to launch courses and how to design courses I think we should buy this when he says we he means me so he goes yeah it

was really good she's amazing teacher I'm like okay three grand write the check you see if you can Market to the ultimate buyer of something that's not the end customer it's much easier to sell we have a huge problem at the Future we sell to end buyer and they're all broke that's why we're not doing $10 million a year I had to figure out how to solve that problem right so let's get back to this your dream client is an alternative Healthcare company if you can understand who's really buying it Market it to them because

we can be more generous for others than we can to ourselves that's the real concept there we're more generous to others than we are to Ourselves so if you sell Massage packages don't sell to the person sell to their wives their husbands their parents their siblings their children sell to them give the gift of healing versus buy the gift of healing for yourself because it turns out money can buy happiness money can buy happiness when you give it away they've done studies on this right I give you 10 bucks you go spend it the Happiness

goes away really fast but if I give you 10 bucks with the rule that you must give it to someone else you get way more joy so every time you spend that 10 bucks to buy the same thing your joy decreases over time but every time you give 10 bucks The Joy if anything it e either is the same or grows okay you wanted to ask something yeah just had a question when you said markets the person who's trying it but potentially if you can if you can but in The two examples you gave the

person came to you so you paid so your employee or your creative director he knew about it somehow he got marketed then you paid same your kid right so maybe can you mark it to the person who's benefiting from it yes yeah I'm sorry yes so Johnny Cupcakes he wants to do these workshops and they're kind of pricey he goes convince your employer yeah that's that's so he understands that he's leap frogging right so we have a couple Different scenarios here so there's Johnny okay Johnny wears a hat and then there's a buyer and he's

talking to the buyer they have a relationship but the buyer has no money so what he does he's like you I'll give you materials so that you can then convince the person who spends the money here's the bank uh I should draw a pig now that's a horrible Pig but you guys get it it needs to be a little Rounder okay there we go okay that's how it goes so if you can think about that so even in Creative Services the person who makes the decision is not the one who writes a check it's the

CEO who writes a check the CFO but the chief marketing officer is the person you need to convince so you have to give them materials or an argument as to why we need to work with Mark or Mary or Kate whoever it is that's what we need to do if you can tap into that this is a very Compelling way to sell I currently do not sell this way it's an observation I've made recently that's what's on my mind it's much easier to sell you know what they never ask for a refund because there's a

disconnect between the person who sold and the person received the goods they're like it wasn't all that I thought but it wasn't my money I didn't even care and they don't want to go back to person Pap yeah because I'm telling you right now As a boss I sign checks not all the time but sometimes when people ask me to learn something enroll in a program and and I always think what did you learn you have changed nothing you've changed nothing you haven't changed the company has not made more money I can't get my money

back but if I bought it hey customer support hey what's going on uh yeah I didn't really get what I wanted I want to refund okay it's a powerful concept Probably nothing you've heard at Art Center right it's like you got to sell to this other person if you can you'll do really well but not everything is that easy it's not that linear but so I sell to people so I say come to my workshop I've yet to do one where convince your boss to send you to this thing and here are the benefits and

so he's brilliant Johnny is a brilliant marketer okay so you have a dream client and are They hungry are they in pain do they experience pain in multi-dimensions do they have the capacity to pay and is there fresh Supply I believe yes to most of these things we have a question about capacity to pay okay how big are these companies what is their annual revenue what do you think dep on who the company is um if it's a large you know relatively large company that let's say hosts does an app on like behavioral Wellness uh

you know they could have a fair amount of money I mean they're not going pharmaceutical but they're going to be yeah you know they're going to be pretty decent okay yeah okay almost everybody that needs to make an app knows there's money involved we we can't make apps for free so you have that working for you versus like hey can you just take a picture you know yeah it's like everybody can take a picture right well I don't know anybody that makes an App so yeah people who make apps there's already kind of money involved

in that process already so I think they're probably either startups if they want an app or they're established companies that need to kind of either launch a new product or reinvent themselves I mean if they're a startup company my experience is that they they're trying to get invest investors yes and so they may not have that much budget for let's say websites Or things like that you know things that are appropriate it might not yeah so then you have to put conditions on the Alternative Healthcare company they cannot be startups okay they have to be

established or funded or seated or whatever they call that or series B orc that's who you need to work with so there's a friend of mine he does branding work he goes I don't do branding work I only do rebrands a Rebrand suggests you run a Business you know how your business works and you need help making it better versus I just started okay I am generally allergic to two types of clients artists because you have an unhealthy relationship with money I have a healthy one so we're not going to get along and two startups

because they don't have any business Experience okay they also have an unhealthy relationship with money U there's a friend of mine his name is Sean canell he runs this YouTube channel and called think media and he said scared money don't make money and and there's a lot of scared money out there you know when when um Alex rosi tells this story on stage he said his wife they're making a ton of money at this point gave him a birthday present a $100,000 coaching package with Grant Cardone it's for three calls and I'm sitting an audience

mind blown like oh my God first of all birthday present I don't get a card like my kids dad's your birthday I'm like yeah I did bring you into this world they did raise you people are giving away $100,000 gifts that are Partners I'm like dang I got like a bag of pistachios this okay there's new 100 Grand and then he says I've only done one call already paid for Itself on what scale do you have to operate where you spend 100 Grand and you already made more money scared money don't make money that's how

the rich keep getting richer they don't have that same relationship with money they just spend it because they know it makes them more efficient they buy back their time they can focus on the bigger things so you want clients who internalize that Mantra scared money don't make Money and I want to make money so I'm going to spend it so the way that Venture Capital Works generally speaking is like one in 10 of their Ventures are going to work their Investments I'm sorry nine out of 10 are going to fail and they're totally okay because

the one that works makes 100 to one okay it's like Bitcoin Bitcoin is a perfect example super volatile but I know a guy who I think bought like 500 tokens of Bitcoin back In the day he has four $4 million or something or more than that actually it's crazy but it's super risky back then but he was willing to take that risk okay so your your dream client is Alternative Health Care established growing funded something like that okay okay and then now you have to and get into it like uh what what kind of things

are they trying to get done okay so they they need we we put conditions on them they're established Funded growing launching launching new products right but we're going to stay away from startups people argue with me on this all the time they don't literally argue with me they argue with me by doing the opposite of what I tell them to do so they like I love startups I'm like you love being broke the only problem with that you know from my perspective is that companies that are already in the position like already have websites that's

right so you have To break up a happy marriage break up a happy marriage Rebrand and try to find without insulting them okay remember how I told you that all almost all companies have one problem what problem do you think they have what's the one problem all companies have it's on the board do you want to make more money yes how clients more clients more clients yeah so they have a Growth and scale problem they have the exact same problem you have so when you understand your business you understand their business so I don't know

any client where you would call them up it's like would you like more clients no do you help with scaling your team no because they're they're on the decline okay so things like recruitment delegation all those things up on this is kind of like the blueprint of what They need what you need is what they need oh they need a plan on how to create content and publish it consistent on social media damn that's my same problem Oh the the founder of the company has no personal brand no one knows who they are it's the

same problem isn't it strange oh they don't have to tell stories and do public speaking oh the same problem they literally have the same problem as you cuz we're in the in The space of running a business so businesses have business problems and you run a business you have a business problem foral retention on you know keeping the clients yes well let's let's go into another topic here that's related to this then Mark how can you how can a company make money there's only a couple things that companies can do to make money more so

how to make money okay okay more Money okay let's go through one one idea at a time okay go ahead sell more sell more okay so more more customers right more value you guys understand wait SL slow yes it's true yes more customers right so we have 100 customers if we get 200 customers we've just 2x margins well tell me just keep it real basic what do you mean margins raise prices yes higher price so look at this here there there Is some math horos does this kind of math it makes my head hurt okay

so right now out if we have 100 clients okay we have 100 clients and uh the average lifetime customer value is like $1,000 okay let's just say $10 it's a lot easier for me to calculate yeah I'm mostly Asian okay so if you have 100 clients and you make $10 uh a lifetime customer value or annual okay and what we can do there is we can just add a zero right so we have $1,000 you can't Retire on that so if we double this by two we have 200 clients now same average value per customer

okay now we have $2,000 what is our net margin on this do you guys know what I say when I say net margin what is our profitability so let's say that for easy numbers uh for every $10 that we sell we make 50 50 cents we make 50% margins okay which is very high actually okay so of the ,000 we get to keep net and this is very important we get to net half of that Which is 500 okay we're get a little wonky this is like all the designers go to sleep and people skip

this part of the video but you guys need to pay attention Okay this is net and this is gross this is gross revenue this is net margins okay so if we are able to gross double the amount using the exact same systems and processes theoretically we would make the same percentage half of that there's some economies of scale so usually we Can make a little bit more not always but let's just go with that so now we can make 1K okay okay let's say now we have the same customer number of customers but we just

charge twice as much so now we're going to charge $20 what is our net margins on $20 what do you think it is did it did it cost us twice as much to charge twice as much no so if we say it cost us $5 to do this our net margin is now 75 so it's 75% is everybody understanding this you're like dude I'm at art school right now what are you doing I'll draw a graph for you later okay I I I won't so then we're going to have gross revenue of 2,000 right 2,000

keep my mouth here people the internets get mad at me when I don't do the mouth right but we get to keep how much 75% 1500 okay thank you for somebody doing the math for me I was like brain not computing Okay so if you had your choice between doubling your clients or doubling your price which you which one would you choose if you say double your clients I'm G kill you but people do I don't know why like I want more clients I'm like okay so we can do that right so we can charge

a higher price so we'll we'll make more money so far that's the better option of the two we can then do something else how else can we make more money be more efficient lower your yes Reduce costs right reduce costs that's your usually what cost consultants and accountants like to do they want to cut your staff um they want to make it more efficient okay so if you can reduce your cost you'll make a little bit more money but you won't grow your customer base so if I had to choose between any of these and

and and is there anything else that we can do we can reduce costs by making it more efficient automation AI pay people less uh offshore the work A lot of the things that we can do that are not that popular here so in terms of ways to make more money which is the number one thing that we should do raise your price what's the number two thing you should do c you should get more customers reducing costs will make you more efficient but won't grow your customer base we want to grow our customers okay so

we prioritize Innovation over efficiency almost always you guys are Innovative people okay so Innovation over efficiency these two things cannot exist in the same world you cannot be an Innovative efficient company it just doesn't work because Innovation is messy waste money and now you know why that's the Opposite so this is saving money okay these are diametrically opposed concept steps so when clients say we want to be Innovative then you know they don't want to save money we're going to try stuff we're going to add features that may not work we're testing things all the

time so companies like Instagram and Facebook you notice maybe less Facebook more Instagram they'll try new features new algorithmic things and they're wasting money all over the place they'll roll it Out for specific regions and then you'll never find out about it and then they kill those those initiatives because they need to be Innovative because otherwise they'll fall behind like with Tik Tok okay okay so that's how they make more money so when you talk to your your clients okay you can offer them any one of these three things and they may prioritize them differently

so an app is going to help them reduce costs Potentially gain more customers and if it's a really good app maybe there are things that can be bundled in premium features that can be made uh for more money that you can buy for a higher price you can actually hit all three that's pretty compelling to me as a buyer of services not only are you helping me with one helping me with all three that is the beauty of software is that how you sell is that how I sell yeah is that how You sell to

your clients like right now yeah no okay that's what I thought you're giving me that look like no bro yeah yeah you understand yeah okay so that's what we're trying to do here okay so we have to answer the question of who we follow this criteria and we kind of think a little bit about how we can help them and almost all companies want to make more money a few companies don't want to make more money and that's fine and those companies want to grow an Audience or grow their customer base so I I don't

know the exact stat on this but Amazon ran for over a decade while losing money every single day of the week and then all of a sudden they become the world's most valuable company or they're making or he becomes the richest person on Earth for a period is because they're playing some really long game I was on the phone I interviewed the CEO of circle and they're on track to do like 20 $30 million this year They're still running in the red and you're like 30 million you're still yes because it costs a lot to

do this but they want to be the Juggernaut they want to be the de facto standard at which point they'll make all the kind of money because they destroyed everybody okay does that make sense everybody some people actually want to build an audience but they have venture capital and they just keep raising more money that's what they do so sometimes It's not to make more money sometimes it's to uh build customer base now are investors typically their Savvy on all this what you're saying 100% okay this is Child's Play for them this little baby math

they've already been doing this like on the drive over they already know all this stuff yeah the reason why they get to be investors is they're very good with math they understand it's just a numbers thing they don't care about the little things like oh is it a pretty Office or is the design nice are we going to make money or not can I see the business model how does this play out that's why they get all this money they raise so much money because they're invested in this and they think they're going to 100x

their investment It's usually the kind of scale that they're looking at 100x it is crazy so what you want to do in your life is to grow a business so That you can make money so that you can become an investor I'm not even joking around I interviewed Gary vaynerchuk I said what is the best investment you made he's like Twitter this this and that I'm like how much you get out he goes a lot he didn't say we can just assume 100x I think 20 million I went to a marketing conference three weeks ago

and my buddy he runs an agency that now has 150 employees and he's only started in 2020 and just to give context to people in the room that are running creative services so I was like how the hell did you doing 100 people and he's like on track to do 50 million next year he's like I acquired smaller students that don't want to do this work right but are really good at the delivery work so but still have their own client base have their own you guys said it at the beginning what's your process to

process to outcome right so just like he's Saying there's investors you can become an investor I realized five what is it five years into my business that I didn't really want to run the business so I found Partners to then go into another business with so you could be thinking now knowing this could I run a studio or a shop build out a good process get good client base understand and then find a bigger business to then inject myself into where I'm not having to do lead gen I'm not having do sales But I can

do what I love to do get paid and still be part owner in the equity side just something to think about CU I didn't know about it until he said it and he's only been three years in the business so just an option okay I'm going to spend uh one more minute on this and we're going to go to number two we've only covered step one and your minds are already melted right now let's go into it so we want to kind of poke at the pain if we can find the pain point We can

Market to it we can speak to it we can tell stories we can create content that addresses the pain currently right now if you don't understand what they experience in pain the kind of content the content marketing the lead magnets that you create aren't connected to their pain so it's a totally disassociated thing you're not going to really get them as clients okay so to my friend what what is your name the British guy what angel Angel angel is like he's going to create cont content but if he doesn't understand their paino he's going to

attract the wrong kind of person that's the problem okay and I recently interviewed somebody his name is Noah Kagan and he runs a company called appsumo okay he very successful Noah Kagan you know Noah no no okay no yeah I you know I interviewed him he shared something with me that's awesome he says everybody here can start a business and Make a million dollars in a weekend that's what his book is called it's called million-dollar weekend and he goes let me take you through some of the Concepts okay he goes he gives me three things

to think about and I'll share them with you okay he goes look at what you do on a daily basis what is it that you're doing uh your tasks okay he goes just log everything you do you get up at this time and just Log everything you do and find anything that creates friction in your life anything that frustrates you anything that creates a challenge for you and just spitball ideas on how to solve those things because there's a good chance someone else when I say someone else a lot of other people have the exact

same problem solve that problem so he asked me tell me what you've done this morning prior to Skating on the call and I tell him yeah so I didn't get up on time this morning because I had a late night and then I I had to skip breakfast so I'm hungry and this I'm just going through the list he goes okay so just from the brief conversation and the podcast will drop soon maybe there's an energy subscription or energy bar protein bar food delivery service maybe there's some some kind of app that can create for

you to help you like wind down at night so You can get a better night's sleep maybe I can monitor your sleep so you have more energy so he's just spitballing ideas left and right that's how his brain works if I solve that problem I'm going to be rich go ahead can I just add one uh one thing to this to I think that that really works well with this is there's a book called disrupt you disrupt you I have that book yeah and I think that book is like perfect for Going through your daily

life and thinking of where you could disrupt something and it CS well with what you're talking about here okay so there's a book recommendation called disrupt you sol is atomic habits Atomic habits okay I w't write all the books up in there Atomic habits 100 million or a million dollar weekend okay so what it is you're doing the task that you're doing and wherever you find pain see if you can solve that okay the second thing He said is look at your credit card this one was kind of like what look at your credit card

Bill okay it's going to itemize everything that you're spending money on anything that you think you overpaid that underd delivered that's an opportunity for you to do better that's kind of brilliant actually he's Rich for a reason yeah that's brilliant just look at that he's like oh I subscribe to this and I pay a $20 service fee every month and I think that's stupid it should be $5 you created another company now they do that so he has business units that are just designed on whatever hair brain idea he has he's like make it and

they just make it he makes even more money look at your credit card debt the last one is my favorite which I shared with my my guys here right is avoidance I think this one's a big unlock for me which is what are the Things that you're trying to avoid doing it's a clue okay what kind of outcomes are you trying to avoid negative outcomes so things that you avoid doing and outcomes okay so doing and then outcomes what kind of outcomes are you trying to avoid what kinds of things are you trying to avoid

to do these are brilliant business opportunities for you now you're not going to solve your own problem you're Going to solve someone else's problem so we can use the little ux principles here we can imagine and build a customer buyer Persona based on who we want so whoever is your buyer you put on your thinking cap or you ask gbt 4.0 this is who I'm trying to Target someone in Alternative Healthcare they're established funded and they're either launching this or rebranding something you know they're doing 50 million dollar annually Plus plus they're in the United

States I want you to create a typical day and give me what they're doing morning toight detailed list please I'm giving you the AI prompt right now okay I want you to imagine the kinds of services they buy on a monthly basis and detail that out for me please you don't have to say please I'd like do it in case the robots remember who you are later you kind there's a study that said those that say are kind and more Like saying pleased they get more accurate more productive and more productive how's that they did

I don't know if they did it chat I'm just doing it so my new future Robot Masters will like we're going to put we're going to have you in the management not in the factory that's all okay and then the avoidance ask them based on that user buy a Persona what are they trying to avoid doing that gives them pain they want done but they just won't do and What kind of negative outcomes are they trying to avoid can do me a favor can you put the word Persona checks the position all that so that

I so you can remember this there's a couple of words that you can use user Persona you can use buyer profile or customer they all work okay depending if this is End Customer then use the word customer but for you it'll be use a Persona because it's like an executive somewhere okay yeah use those words we're going to be be going deep into giving you the scripts and you're going to do that work I'm not that good at it but I'm better than most of you I'm not katagi level but I'm I'm I know I'm

better than you because I practice communicating and I don't want to get into it I'll get into it [Laughter] I twist my arm yeah I have used GPT and versions of GPT some are trained on my own thinking to build full-on workshops for me it is bananas it is insane all you have to do is to say is it possible and then try Okay so I've done this before I I would tell them and you have to give it quality input there's an input output here right I say here's who I am here's a workshop

I'm running in this country this is what I'm charging I Focus on mostly this Market with these learning outcomes tell me the top three things that they want to know pain points and challenges that they would feel grateful to have and they would be happy to pay in orders of magnitude more than what the workshop costs it will tell me and I say based on that designed me three typical user personas of someone who's most likely to to attend and it gives me that and the first time I did this was About uh almost a

year ago and I asked people who's here and and then they're I'm like and then I said this is what GPT told me and you're here you're here and you're here what do you guys want to learn and they tell me we go through this whole process and then I flip up the slide those are the three things I wanted to learn the most it is insane okay now I say help me design a workshop with this kind of thing with this opening thing and ask a lot of questions That get the audience to think

and he designs it for me it's not great but it's pretty good and what's good about it is it makes me think and now I have a relatively low cost brainstorming partner that is vastly more intelligent than I am we're talking about like on levels smarter than Einstein for $10 a month we're living in a beautiful time this is the time before they take over enjoy It okay there's there's almost nothing that you can't ask it to do that it won't do for you that just like oh my God so I have it reverse engineering

sales pages that I like to build a framework and then to generate proms so I can give it to my coaching community that once answered can be shoved back into the prompt to generate a sales page based on what I like how Wild is that and then I give them the prompt I say to the computer write the prompt that you Need to see in order for you to do this and it writes it it is bananas b a um Are there specific besides chat GP that you think are beneficial sources like what like other

websites things like that that are like chat GPT that aren't chat GPT there's Bard there's a bunch of new things that are getting online this Microsoft's news thing was just I think built on GPT but unlocked it's a little scary okay There's a bunch Claude CL I thought I mentioned that which is the one where you can draw a little like Circle and say it's a cat I I have that one now somebody just gave me access to it I'm like this is amazing you have you seen this have you seen these demos everybody all

you visual artists you're out of jobs unless you adapt okay this is how crazy it is give me a cat at night and you draw something like this and then it draws it For you and then you raise the Paw it raises the Paw It is insane what it can be done now and um with Runway you can now take Ms and images and animate them so for like trailer kinds of videos pretty good pretty good you just highlight areas and you say move this and he just figures it out and you know um there

were these guys um Corridor crew who made an animated film based on green screen Footage and they had to invent all these hacks to kind of keep it semi-consistent so it looks like Japanese anime you don't even need to do that anymore it's consistent without you training it now it's bananas it's like not even six months mons so the best way to keep in touch and up to dat is to be around people who are using the technology you would just say I didn't know you could do that and because they're showing you then you

use Your brain and connect it to what you're doing but right now all of you let's just call us like level one GPT 4 is more than what you need just stay with that okay I think somebody was telling me the next wave of AI is multimodal meaning you can use text to generate text video animation and editing all one that's where it's going so they're stacking the Technologies together it's already happening okay it's pretty wicked I love It okay it may be the undoing of mankind but I love it right now okay number two

step number two okay so you all understand this so now you know who once you know who this becomes much easier right if you don't know who this doesn't work you don't know what to tell GPT that's why this is the hardest thing it's the uh what Blair calls a difficult business decision who do you serve what do you do guess what that happens to be number two What what do you do and what is harder than you think and then you can probably guess number three is why why does it matter who do you

serve what do you do why does it matter those questions are connected clearly because what you do and why it matters you can't answer why unless you know who who if you know who and what but not why probably doesn't Matter and there's the disconnect now I want to tell you something creative people are usually Afflicted with this disease I'll use that word disease in that you have a world view of what you do and you bend facts data and Trends to suit what you do don't do it this way I'll tell it to you

but you'll still do it look at the data let that guide what your your solution is okay you might like to um make sweaters um what is it knit Sweaters and you're like this is what the world needs I saw enough grandmas today they want this thing and none of the data trends that way you can look at all the sales data and you're like no they want this and so you drive yourself into misery into poverty rather than that just look at what people are doing what they need today anticipate what they might need

tomorrow and solve that problem don't go the other way so this is how this works it's like Magical thinking I believe this therefore everything I'm seeing matches to this belief you've come to the conclusion before you look at the data it's like arriving on the scene of a crime saying oh it's a butler with a with a Candlestick how would you even know that you're you're blinded by your bias Kevin where would the fishing holes be for the data though where's what the fishing holes for the data so where Would you go to look at

the data like sources and stuff well you have to say I have a lot of cognitive biases uh and and prejudices based on my life experience first just tell yourself I have a problem so just by saying I have a problem you become much more aware when you're like using that filter okay and so if we get into this practice of critical thinking of saying what data supports this so is a very simple trick that you can do Okay Kevin we're getting A little bit off track here but I'll try to do this real quick

okay what data is for or against what it is that I believe and you must do both in Earnest okay so you know this anybody reading the data comes to conclusions based on their own biases always so then you go reversed you play it against itself so If I think uh and and I'll use this when we have an opportunity because we're talking about this in abstract okay I I'll tell you what therapists do and I learned this through GPT I ask what Frameworks do therapists who use cognitive behavioral therapy use to be able to

help their clients achieve success we're living in a wild time right now and here's what they said okay each and every one of you has a belief all of you have a belief right like I'm Afraid of heights let's say I'm afraid of heights okay I used to have that fear and then you say well retrace back into your life and the memory the first memory you have of when that became apparent to you it's almost always at a very young age What story did you tell your yourself okay who was around you you start

to to go back into time and understand where this belief comes from it's usually a fear something that's Holding you back positive things don't worry just keep going it's all the negative stuff you go back in time and it says okay what as an adult now looking back on that what data facts support this belief you first believe in your own beliefs it says now based on all the evidence that you have try to argue against it and just look at the list right I have a cousin who afraid of dogs was afraid of dogs

for most of her lives Her life and any dog she would just cry and even sometimes lose control of her body it's because somewhere in her life a dog scared her and she can't shake that but then you list the reasons as to why you shouldn't be afraid of dogs it's deep so then we ask ourselves the last question it's the final question is based on world view which Are we more aligned with that's it so that's how you start to become more critical thinking and Checking with your biases almost everybody comes in saying hey

I believe this therefore all the data you just look at data very selectively and you support your own argument or your own belief okay let's get into it so what what do you do what do you do um Mo and I we were just talking this with Chris Franklin about this right right before we got here so we can get into this okay what do you do okay and I'm going to give you the maybe I come up with a Different example instead of the one we just did keep working that example so when we

make it just be easy okay very good okay um there are a couple of industries that are very challenged to work in today okay and you can see it reflected in the curriculum and the majors that we have at Art Center okay one of which is photography okay there's no coincidence that the design or communication program is the largest at Art Center now right It's one of the largest and and photography is probably shrinking if not not relevant anymore becomes very tricky and photography has gone through massive disruptions that we have not adapted to so

let's all make ourselves now photographers okay sorry I'm I'm look at the walking dead right now so I'm just going to last rights okay sorry photographers okay if you sell photography you know something is happening even though there's a greater Demand for visual images the pay for photography is dropping we know that why why did that happen so we'll look back before we look forward okay why is it harder to be a photographer today than before what are the reasons I'm going to color this in red because it's going to be bloody like abundance what

do you mean there's so like everyone has a camera everyone has ability okay there's um basically you're combating this problem everyone's a Photographer because we all have what a phone I'll just say iPhone he has a better camera therey better it's questionable we'll get into that okay it's more expensive camera for sure okay so everyone's a photographer so what happened is the barrier to entry to become a photographer has pretty much disappeared we understand that right uh first it was the digital sensor it was pretty crappy for a really long time and Then it got

really good really fast Canon 5D Mark 1 beautiful DSLR shoots videos it changed the game changed the game in so many different ways it's the first consumer level camera that's affordable that can produce cinematic quality images it was a game changer okay so there is now less differentiation between one photographer and another the barrier the barrier to entry is gone you remember when you had to buy Film process in a lab and then print it and do all this kind of very expensive okay it's coupled with a couple other things some trends that are happening

it's called the good enough Revolution that we care less and less about quality and we're all guilty of this if in case you those heathens you do it too I do it too and I'll tell you right now to enter proof into the court of public opinion how many of you buy um LPS CD ROMs CDs how many of you guys will then stream music almost all of us the MP3 inarguably right is inferior in terms of its Sonic quality and Fidelity to an LP analog wavelength versus bit compressed right and MP3s are even worse

than that heavy heavy compression but we choose that because of convenience we choose it because of portability and all those kinds of Things that we love about MP3s we can share them illegally have access to them everywhere we go in the cloud and now we're moving into another Trend which is the trend towards dematerialization we pay more to own fewer things it's a really strange concept as a gen xer I had a problem with that my kids they don't know about anything about ownership they don't even have a car they don't want to learn how

To drive that's the way of the world so we can swim towards it swim with a tide or we can swim against it so we have a lot of problems undifferentiated proliferation of a lot of competition the erosion of quality or perception of quality and to a few fol photo photographers they can tell a superior image most people can't okay and what's what's interesting is Apple sensor is not as good as that Sony not even close but Apple runs a lot of software to make A lot of predictions as to what you want and what

you care about it's good enough okay so when you try to sell photos it's really difficult okay so now let's say you're a photographer and you have a market what is the market that buys photographs everybody family portraits for for who more specifically for families not just any family have you had a family portrait done who here has had a family portrait Done only the rich people only the rich OC people yeah upper upper cross I know I mean you see those photos like they're in white outfits at the beach underneath the pier I'm like

what the fud who's doing this me it's like boys bo boys get okay oh no no no no that's that's it I ain't got these photos so you have basically I'm going to tell you right now I'm just being real with you right and if you disagree with me argue with me cuz I like to put things into neat Boxes so you can understand here's who I think buys photos sentimental rich people you have to be sentimental otherwise you don't buy photos at all and you have to have means to do this right you know

I have a friend who shoots a lot of family portraits I'm just going to put it out there they're almost all white you don't see a lot of people color you don't see a lot of Asians true true or false true maybe it's usually White cuz I look at all her feed I'm like I'm in Orange to you know verifiably true fact facts okay all right usually that okay so then we have portraits right that's who buys those things so if you are in a certain Community you have to like you know what I'm go

to Orange County that's where my market is they have a lot of disposable income they're hungry for it there's a fresh supply of white people all the time in Orange County Melanie true true true true true facts okay that's what we need we we plug it back into the formula okay who else buys portraits oh no I'm sorry who else needs a photographer W weddings weddings and events those are the big ones okay all right this is good wedding and events yes I think if you guys have been paying attention we may we might have

a breakthrough I feel one coming up but I can never underestimate the intelligence of the people in the Room okay here we go if we are shooting weddings and we have a hard time selling weddings okay what can we do to sell weddings based on some of the things you've learned here apply one of the principles that we've learned on how you can sell more wedding photography what do we need to do so who do you sell wedding photos to rich people well yes but but like okay let let's go simpler simpler couples couples who

makes the decision between The couples wife wife so you knew that already of course how come why women why do we say women I I believe you're real more sentimental could argue that we can argue what else it's also the parents who have the money okay wait hold on hold on stay with what we're talking about why do women buy the photos or decide Social Circle huh for the Social Circle Social Circles yes they're usually planning the way they're usually PL because they just care more don't Sell to the person who doesn't care if you

ask the guy and I'm being very stereotypical here there's some guys pinky finger like we're now this matters you know it needs to be like this but I'm just saying mostly the women care more about this if the guy's like I don't care cousin Johnny is going to do it you Over My Dead Body why do you think the gowns cost so much and the tuxedos are rented think about it have you heard of The father who's given his son The Tuxedo cuz it doesn't happen see what I'm saying okay you have to sell to

the people who care the most okay who cares the most Okay so we've established more often than not stereotypically and I get it stereotypical internet's going to give me a hard time my children are going to say I'm going get canceled fine okay whoever cares the most you have to sell the person who cares the most all right Now is there anyone who cares more than the bride the parents the parents how would you sell to the Parents emotional appeal yes now here's an interesting thing there two people usually in you know the modern era

who should we sell to the father or the mother mother father ah it gets really interesting it's real interesting now we knew nobody argued with me it was the the wife the bride right but why when it came to the parents it's a little split and got a Little controversial well you know me think about the dynamic that you said earlier about sell your son got sold the service that he then came to you who was the bank so maybe we sell to the mom but the bank is stereotypically going to be the father okay

in a lot which broad Strokes here everybody internet broad Strokes do not cancel me for this okay okay in a lot of families not all clearly clearly dad usually makes the money mom decides where it gets spent She's the CFO he's the revenue generator it's something like that kind of at least in my family okay so you can actually attack both and so here's the thing usually if you hit the father I care about my daughter I'll pay anything Daddy's girl I think you have an easier sell here I think you have a tougher sell

here cuz you know why cuz dads aren't that detail oriented here's the price my daughter Loves it I'm doing it mom's like what's the package what's does it look like we oh it's little micromanagement now I was like you heard of bright Zilla and father mother of the bride they're B on some kind of Truth there so you can sell to both I would focus on selling to the father so from a pure marketing point of view if you were in The Wedding space focus on dad give her the gift that will last a lifetime

Zils you know you do those Christmas spots you know driving through the snow what we and then they turn the corner like who's ever done that I know no man who's ever done that in my life Christmas lights around a tree in the forest like shut up get out of town that is a commercial design to get the the woman to tell her husband go do this for me and to make us feel guilty and less than you know what's interesting is you've been talking to us About the importance of data and overcoming CA bias

our own business and yet it seems like you're appealing to that when you know you're like focusing on the dad and the mom is that true or are you focusing on what's real that's a very good question mark this is just my observations I do not personally believe this meaning like I've spent no time thinking about this I have no daughters my my boys are too young to to be married I I don't know but I'm looking Around I try to be a good Observer of life you know I asked Seth Goden how do you

describe what you do you know Seth Goden has written 21 books he's written a blog post every day for 20 years Seth Goden top of the pier top of the pyramid okay not the pier top of the pyramid he goes I notice things I'm like damn that's what a writer says I notice things so I observe things I pay attention to people so I'm just looking at like how does society work I'm trying not to bring a a conclusion before I look it's hard to do okay this is a a guess and we'd have to

test this hypothesis by trying campaign to see if we get more dads than moms to click I could be wrong and people hate me because I notice things and I say this is they're no no no you can't put this in boxes like that but I have to I have to start to figure out patterns I'm a I'm a person who pays attention to patterns anyways so if you can sell Photography you know give the gift the last of Life Time BL whatever the campaign is you may sell more photo wedding photography services at a

higher price point and look just by adding One customer profile you've doubled your Market size and here's the cool thing if you position yourself right not only to to attract uh Brides but Fathers you may be moving into uncontested territory there's the red ocean where everybody competes and there's blue ocean where no one's at I'm not inherently doing anything different in terms of the work itself but I move where there's less competition it's wide open but you know the thing is if you um if you notice fishermen we're very superstitious when one person catches a

fish all the boats just descend on on That same hole I'm like yo our lines are get tangled what are you guys doing here find your own spot that's how we work but it's human nature to go wher everyone else is going so sometimes you just turn the corner and it's just wide open no Tangled lines and all the fish they move they don't just sit in one spot that area might be overfished okay so let's get into events okay now if we were saying uh people who take sentimental Portraits how often do they have

this need how often is it reoccurring I guess I was thinking like Christmas time yeah you're talking about a different kind of photographer you must be really rich there's Orange County white rich and there's like Indian Rich maybe I don't know is there usually it's not that often so when we say and this is an important con concept here a fresh Supply the person wants to buy this over and over and over again so you might Find that shooting um portrait is difficult unless family portraits unless all the their friends live in Orange County and

they're like oh my God you got to hire Melanie she takes great portraits and they just and it spreads like well now I got to keep up with the Jones they're doing it we need to do it but you're selling to a new customer every time the best way is to sell more at higher price to the same customer not new customers because There's a cost to acquire new customers there's a cost to offboarding customers make sense everybody okay all right so so when we get into like um weddings versus um family portraits well do

we get married more than one time not if we're smart not if we're committed but maybe we get married a couple times unless you're like you know certain former president it's like a lot of times but still that's still not a lot it's like three three times three times Is okay so if I'm a photographer I would prefer to probably shoot weddings cuz I have different people to buy and yes you can sell Grandma's package to like like take the family portraits of your grandson or granddaughter that works see how we're opening up the market

now that works okay and we probably can sell more wedding photos or but but it's like hm but events when you talk about events who's buying Event Photography Business yes and we have a name for them I believe they're called event organizers right planners or planners okay they run the event they need photography and you know there's emerging New Market who might want to buy photos at events who is that who's the buyer of that social media influenc publicity speakers I'm noticing now I'm one of the few I'm feeling like a minority now in more

ways than one when I don't have a dedicated Photographer videographer following me around everywhere it seems strange because there's like a whole bunch of photographer videographers with me today but that's not my normal life but when I go to speak I'm like oh you have everybody has a person right right okay so we're going to talk about public speakers okay I don't want to label them as influencers so there's potential two buyers there's probably more than that But let's just say there's two buyers right okay the cool thing about events fresh Supply they happen all

the time renewing Supply this is a beautiful thing public speakers if you're any good you're doing it all the time this is a good thing okay so now we're going to enter into the I I think I'm going to land the plane here cuz I'm noticing the time what are they buying how do you sell to them okay we'll explain this model and then you'll have to kind of Extrapolate to what you sell and hopefully you're smart enough and you'll say oh that gives me an idea okay uh you're all aware of mle's hierarchy of

needs right uh there's usually like physical feelings of belongingness love all that kind of stuff it's kind of hard to remember I'll just help you out here okay reading horos book he says there's three reasons why people buy primarily health wealth and Relationships so we're going to use that and I'm trying this idea up I want to say it's a fairly original idea I'm going to mash the two together and help you remember things as to why people buy at the bottom will be Health up next will be wealth up next will be relationships okay

and there's two rungs above that when I say health it means like food clothing shelter you will not live medicine those kinds of things you need but we as a modern um first world Country kind of we we we start to move up third world or developing countries they are still stuck at the bottom they don't have clean water they don't have toilets and they have lots of problems when we say wealth I don't mean money but I mean things like security we have a home we have a job right we talk about relationships like

connection right like we belong to community we have people that we love and people who care about us friendship Those kinds of things there's two things above this and I'm just trying this out the next one above this is status that motivates a lot of people today and the the very one on top it Maps closely to maso's hierarchy of needs is identity who am I what is my potential self-actualization so when we sell it turns out we don't make a lot of money at the bottom it's really weird we need these things to survive

but we don't Spend a lot of money there we spend the most amount of money up here or the most of our energy up here so what we want to do is when we talk about a service like photography we we have to see how it relates to this and here's what I mean you need water to survive you can starve longer than you can go without water we know that so why is it water is sold at so many different prices it's really weird because they've understood how to sell water as part of Status

and identity okay you guys know Voss water Fiji Water some of the most expensive Waters per per ounce or whatever right because why they've sold you an idea and you know there's another drink that's being sold as water from a art center Alum it's called liquid death liquid death is not providing you status it's providing you identity you're a punk rock water Drinker doesn't even make sense to me it's Stupid it's so stupid murder your thirst okay what that's the product of Genius okay now Rory southernland who has an excellent Ted Talk Ro Rory Southerland

it's like a tongue twister for me he says what we should do is instead of focusing on the quality of the product because at this point quality is expected you cannot differentiate via quality focus on intangible value this is a really radical concept perceived intangible value this is what the work Of Genius marketing does liquid death LD perceived in I don't know why but it's crazy they're the fastest growing water brand it's wild the water tastes exactly the same okay and Rory Rory Southerland talks about this in his he's got a book called Alchemy I

haven't read it yet but I watched a TED Talk he says that aside from a very small group of humans they cannot tell the quality of the wine at All and the greatest predictor of your enjoyment of wine is the price perceived intangible value and price is communicated usually be through three things literally the price the bottle shape itself and the materials and the label and guess what designers do they do these two things what do marketers do they figure out what price we should sell it at so that you feel like it's a really

good high quality wine and then there's things Like copyrighting which increases the experience in Seth godden's book all marketers are liars we're complicit in the LIE we we taste the wine before we actually drink it we already know what it's going to taste like you know and they do like um pen and tellers uh BS their show about like fine dining they're like serving people food from a tuna can and the guy literally telling you I told you the stuff was good and they described it as Some exotic fish or crab or something and they

came and tell the difference so we know this we tell ourselves a story we're complicit in the lie so you as a brander and a Storyteller helped them tell the story you close the imagination gap for them okay perceived intangible value and this is the example that Rory gave and I'm going to screw up the the details of this this is British Railway wanted to increase customer satisfaction so they Spent like $1.8 billion or something like that to improve the railway so it would get there a little bit faster so they spent a lot of

time and money to change the rail system so that it can get there like 20% faster yeah he goes if you were to give the people the customer survey in terms of their satisfaction their increase in Joy it's pretty flat he goes you could save 8.8 billion if you just hired superm models men and Women to walk the train in really like nice clothing and just give free bottles of champagne the increase value or perception of value goes up so you really need to focus on perceived intangible value these are Concepts some of the world's

richest companies have already understood so if you study lvmh and everything they do top to bottom you'll understand why they're the first Louis Vuitton is the first brand to Break $20 billion in sales becoming the most influential profitable brand luxury brand in the world fashion brand 20 billion status and identity who am I when I buy this who do I associate myself with how do I have stories about self-acceptance and success or to say to whoever I told you I was going to do it and you didn't believe in me you can buy a bag

at Target for like one 1,000 of the price when you stay down here getting Back to this we're going to land the plane here on the on photography okay if you're going to sell photo or video services for an event what do you have to sell okay think about this so if we go into like any one of these things like the too the credit card or the avoidance right what things are they trying to avoid doing and what negative outcomes are they trying to prevent from happening okay I'll write them over here And we'll

brainstorm them together okay I've done this before like one hour before coming here so still fresh in my mind okay remember let's just use this prompt here to make it simpler okay what kinds of things are event organizers or public speakers trying to avoid doing or negative outcomes okay I can only write so so fast so have mercy in my pen okay so here we go go ahead and List It Bad photography okay bad photos okay keep going perception of the Event as those boring boring events I'm an event organizer what kind of outcomes am

I trying to avoid or things I'm I'm avoiding doing like low attendance yeah okay low attendance what does that mean like you want it to look like a lot of people are there oh okay low attendance okay I see what you're saying now if you're stuck try to think about this as outcomes are trying to avoid that have nothing to do With what we do notice something this is beautiful I love this okay remember we sell photos and videos so all our problems are around photos and videos but what kind of other things are they

trying to avoid if you look at um this personal professional emotional Financial or this all things that they want to do build customer base you know or how to make more money try to look at it from a business point of view now see what happens remember it's not what you Want it's what they want so if you're a speaker what do you want or what are you trying to avoid so you can take what you want just flip it to the negative and you say I'm trying to avoid this okay so got little lower

prices they they want higher prices so they want more quality okay so there I think there's like a lot of words in there already like lame event you know professionalism all that kind of stuff right as a speaker or organizer okay you're a speaker what do You want I want to capture the Great Moments not lose them so just having someone document everything like can then grab those and why is that important again for marketing or content or okay uh angel you're a content creator right what is the most difficult thing about content creation I

okay you know you know easy just whatever is the most natural thing who here creates content uh AO regular what Is the most difficult thing about creating content guys what to Poe having enough to Poe keeping people engaged because the event happens once but we have to be able to keep talking about it as if it it's like this long lived thing you understand there's things about like inconsistent in quality like hey it's off brand for me I don't have any good shots with me interacting with the fans like if I threw something at you

and it's a moment Did anybody capture that no would you just see another head shot of me that's not so what I need a lot of stuff so I can keep talking about it event organizers need that to happen because they want the experience to last as long as possible they might uh miss a moment when they get a an emotional breakthrough with somebody they need to do that so that becomes part of the community that they build and also be Able to promote and generate interest in future events so what they do is they

cut together a Sizzle reel of all the emotional highs so that you get excited about it so they're trying to really avoid a couple different things um they they need to sell out so not selling out is is a disaster for them okay because once you book The Venue and the food and all the staff you spent all your money until you get to a certain point you're going to go in the red so everybody Understand that now okay so now without writing all that stuff up here here's how a typical photographer would approach them

you want to buy photos do you need photos for your event and usually what happens there it just dies just dies but if you had a conversation with them and say um how much social engagement did you get before during and after your event and they're going to describe during Peak after none before not a lot okay so first you focus on what they want which is oh so during the event it's Peak what is peak for for you we never take for granted what Peak means they're like uh 100 people posted and how many

people went 4,000 so by my math that's like you know2 2.5% is that good for you that gets them to think it's not good for me don't tell them it's not good just ask them is that what you want is that good For you like no no no it' be better if it was what 400 at least what could you do to promote people sharing while they're at the event now you get into a brainstorming session with them and eventually you know what they're going to say we need more photography we need more video and

we need to be able to share it with people right away that's interesting are you openminded to exploring this with someone like me Absolutely tell me what you got this is where you need to show the receipts so here's what I did before and after here's what I did before and after the numbers and we were just talking about the day of but here and you use the one of those magic word phrases most clients like you start to understand that they want the event to last longer now what we do is we have a

media package and we give them your team your attendees here's what I've noticed In some of the events I go to where they're thinking like this they have a QR code they have a professional photographer or photographers and they're shooting all day long for an entirety of the event you no longer have to worry about that as an attendee you go on the site and you pull those images down guess who's sharing their photos on LinkedIn on Twitter on Instagram you're getting people to Market for you to their communities that's valuable photography is the vehicle

in which I do that but I'm not selling that I'm selling social engagement before during and after I'm selling soldout events and venues that look premium that's what I'm selling then now then they don't even care what cameras you're using or how many guys or gals you have on your team or what lenses you're using because You're selling them what they want Mak sense okay so a lot of you are going running around selling website design logo design uxui every but that's not what we want so we're trying to avoid bad outcomes and if you

can think about that or avoid doing things right now I'll tell you something if somebody's like hey Chris you want to hire um a video editor to cut your social media things I'm like n not really like how much of a pain in Asset for is it for you to do and not be consistent oh I bought that but people are selling me video Services all the time which I reject all the time make sense reframe it through this lens of health wealth relationships predominantly hopefully focus on the top three use the prompt of things

I'm trying to avoid through the lens of the buyer and not through yours how have a conversation with them to see what They're trying to Avid think about who's really buying it and if you can find someone who signs a check who's not the actual buyer even better open up your Market less competition those are good things for you to do and the goal for you is sell more to the same clients at a higher price so you have to get really smart about oh what kinds of things are they doing all the time and

you invent Solutions based on whatever problems you encounter if you can do that I think You're going to be able to to get more clients and to make more money okay I didn't cover any of the other topics completely I dip my toes in there before I get out of here Mo's going to ask us a question so my question to you is how do we get better at brainstorming and not fall victim to answers that aren't really going to move us forward so if we said what is a public speaker trying to avoid doing

and what is a public speaker Avoiding negative outcomes that might have helped help you you just have to remember this is not about you it's about them so the number one thing that we said is who and then we write what we do the service that we provide relative to who what matters to them okay um I'm sort of lactose intolerant I try not to eat carbs and sugar and I don't drink alcohol or smoke if you sell me any of those things I'm not buying You're well people love sugar they love ice cream my

kids are like Dad we want to go to the $12 ice cream store I'm like okay I'm buying see but they're like don't you want something no look at all these flavors no you don't understand so that's like you selling your creative service to someone who can't buy it you have to understand what motivates them okay now here's the really cool thing maybe you heard a concept today you're like wow that's Really cool I didn't know that I need to think about this and you're you're not going to to read the the 10 or 12

books that I've read to get here you're not interviewing those people but you could just ask gbt hey I heard this concept today I don't really fully understand it explain it to me in a way that you would for a fifth grader and give me plenty of real world examples please do not make up anything right and then you can ask it like what is the Harvard Business School take on this what is what would Seth Goden say on this what is you just need a little bit of information to ask it it would teach

you teach me this concept create a playlist of articles books um videos that I can watch so that I can learn this in four weeks and I have an hour a day to dedicate it'll create a custom curriculum for you this is the nuts part of this right all you have to do is know what to ask it will do it for you okay so I think what we do Is here's the reality of it um if you're a man woman non-binary if you're a person of color if you're white hispan whatever it is you

think all the world thinks like you and that's the first mistake that you make I believe I can sell to white women in Orange County clearly I'm not one I also think I can sell to this group because you just watch them You observe you pay attention and you have to do what we Think creatives are really good at but I think they're terrible at this empathy that's a valuable skill but we don't apply it we think empathy is something else what is it like to walk in their shoes to look at the world through

their eyes and feel what they feel if you can do that this is not a problem so your instincts are just to pull it to your world pull it to your world what what is I what I want and if I do premium photography guess what the aners They want a premium event it just works like that okay so if you can help them understand what their pain points and challenges are and you address it you're going to do really well I'm going to give you this one last thing as you're you're trying to like

create content and marketing materials let me use a green um green marker here okay when you're creating content if you can do these three things you'll do really well and this is from Heros Book $100 million leads number one can you help them understand what the problem is you highlight the problem you magnify it okay how does that look in the in the world of Event Photography or videography um the problem is uh I don't know how to use it but like what's the opposite of Sol that undersold undersold tired of undersold Events yeah you

know did you know the conversations happening on social before during and after and the photos and and assets look like this you want to avoid that outcome so you just really talk about the problem and the Geniuses that are marketers who do purely un perceived intangible value um the example I love to share with people is Dr Squatch is a soap that I never considered buying and then they ran these super funny viral ads and they they there's a guy in the Woods and he takes a plate and he throws it on a rock goes

you're not a dish you're a man and I'm like what kind of nonse is that of course I'm not a dish he goes but you know what these body washes use chemicals like this this and that they're commercial detergents they're they think you're a dish I'm like damn it I'm not a dish how dare you put these detergents on me I want soap and I never buy soap they created a problem that doesn't even Exist we make soap the oldfashioned way the way soap was made 2,000 years ago and then they created a new problem

don't let big soap tell you what to do I'm like damn it what is Big soap and they're not going to tell me what to do I'm a mad I'm mad now it's big soap what Irish Spring what are you doing to me Irish Spring Dove Fu and so they they use language that we're familiar with big tobacco big Pharma Big Oil apparently if you put the word big in front of anything at least in America you're evil they're co-opting language so they're like big soap mother freaking big soap and now I'm two years into

subscription I have more bars of soap than I know what to do with my wife's like what are we doing here why do I keep getting these bills babe I'm not a dish please don't treat me like One I smell this thousand- yearold recipe so create a problem highlight the problem make them feel the problem as soon as I know the problem guess what I want a solution cuz remember the pain what is the pain and if you touch on the right person they know the pain already they automatically say yes yes you don't have

to convince him about anything okay so problem number two is give them a sample uh we we refer to as like the Costco Effect you know like when you go to the Costco and they give you a little sample and you wind up buying more stuff than you need because once you taste something you want a little bit more of it because now we feel like we're like losing if we don't get that so there's there's a lot of examples of this like premium with like uh level up you know where you can buy premium

features and the Baseline is free so give people a Sample of the product in the book harosi illustrates it this way like if there's steps one through eight give them step one for free okay number three is give them a tool so problem sample and a tool a tool is almost always the digital thing so you can you can use it like a shot list uh for your next wedding or event and by filling out the shot list you're like oh my God I don't want to do any of this work I have a problem

now that I I'm Trying to avoid this is why videos that are super technical create customers we're going to teach you how to automate your whole pipeline using JavaScript and you're going to be able to do this and this and you show them all the fancy stuff they can do like oh my God this is great Step One open up your uh command terminal like I'm out bro I am out right now warning you may destroy your computer so make sure you follow exact every instruction and make Sure you back up your whole hard I

don't want to do that I'm going to call Johnny Tech right now I don't want to do that so give them a tool it usually is digital so think about your industry your studio whatever it is what kind of tool can you share with them it's probably a part of your process so now what you can do is you can design a beautiful funnel okay the beautiful funnel looks like like this awareness you have this Problem if you have this problem guess what we have a sample to provide to you all you have to do

is use this word sample me or something like that and I will follow up with you in your DMs I'll DM you the resource the tool or sample that you're going to get by experiencing some of that they're going to desire like what's the next thing I don't want to do all this work I'm going to hire you that's how you can do this so that make sense and It's the easiest permission-based non-aggressive nonviolent way you can turn strangers and friends and Friends into customers The Stranger is like I have a problem I'm not a

dish guess what you want a small sample buy one get one buy three get three whatever it is we'll give you three bars of soap wow freaking amazing get me on a subscription I don't have to go to the store anymore I'll tell you one last little Thing and I'm going to wrap it here is I went to a dermatologist in Santa Monica where I used to live on the west side and the pharmacist had done something I'd never experienced before not the pharmacist the dermatologist had done something I'd never had experience before after the

doctor checked me out wrote the prescription I I go to do my co-pay or whatever it is and the person behind the desk like would you like us to ship this to you of course never in My life has anybody ever asked me that I have to go to CVS or something we'll ship it to you be there in two days would you like us to give you refill in six months fudge Shaquille you know what I'm talking about who does that they just found a problem and solved it for me so I don't have

to think so then I become their marketing mouthpiece and that's what you do imagine again if you had one customer what would you have To do for this one customer such that they fall in love with everything you do that they become your biggest Advertiser that's the second part to this question that Alex had asked if you could only have one customer who is the source of all future customers how would you have to serve them what would you have to deliver how much above and beyond would you have to go such that they're so

delighted design your business around that most of us don't Want to do that because of one thing we just don't charge enough so that we can't afford to and we feel taken advantage of or we're we're like you know doormat people are stepping all over us but if you charge a Louis Vuitton price a Christian Dior price you can provide any kind of service at that point they're going to be so happy to get it from you and they tell all their friends and their friends tell friends and their friends have Friends and you just

keep going like that you can only service so many really good clients in a year anyways do this right the first time you don't have to worry about this funnel you don't have to worry about much of this anymore okay all right thank you very much everybody thank you thank [Applause] you [Music]