Introduction to the Marketing Lyfe Podcast Ep. 22
Episode number 22 of the marketing life podcast. This is your host, Taylor Timothy. And today on the show we have the guy by the name of Mitchell Levy. This guy was on Ted. He used to do some SEO back in the day, but he dropped some serious tips and tricks on expectations with your clients on how to become an Amazon author and some tips and tricks on Seo. So let’s not waste any more time and dive right in.
Introduction to Mitchell Levy
Taylor: Okay. Mitchell Levy. So let’s dive in and tell us, tell this audience your backstory, how, how you got into doing what you’re doing today.
Mitchell: Well, I worked for companies, uh, up until 1997. So at the time I was working for Sun microsystems and I was a, when I left sun, I was running the ecommerce component as send supply chain. So the cool part about that is if you’re in a high tech firm in Silicon Valley, prior to Marc Andreessen developing mosaic, you knew about the unit APP before the rest of the world did. So, you know, there were a number of technologies out there, uh, including email and, and FTP and other, other elements. And so what was nice is seeing the world and seeing where things were going. And as soon as really I think what Andreessen did with mosaic is allow us to see, to see it in such a way that it could actually reach the consumer level. And so I’ve been actively involved with, with the Internet and, and, and now the web, uh, for quite some time. And I’m in Silicon Valley, so I get to see and participate in and be part of a number of startups.
Taylor: That’s awesome man. Why don’t you tell the audience a little bit too about the real aha stuff.
Mitchell: So, you know, what’s fascinating is the importance today, whether you’re in the online world or physical world, if you’re going to do business where people, and this is what I, what I, I did a Ted talk it, you can always Google my name Mitchell Levy, Ted talker and we reference it also on, on a couple of sites. But we do business with those we know like, and trust. So you’ve gotta be known online marketing. You have to be liked that one is you. You have to decide how you make yourself likable. Um, Taylor, you’re certainly likable just just from watching you senior, your smile listened to at least one or two of your podcast. It’s easy for people to like you. Well, I’m mean, I try, I try so well. You recognize the importance. If you’re, if you’re a jerk, people don’t want to hang out with yet, right?
They don’t want to hang out with you. They won’t do business with you. And then, and the important part on the trust is how do you get trusted? So we actually have found the easy button for book publishing. So the companies on how the app.com and for anyone who wants to have a book, I would say don’t waste your time writing. Don’t waste your time publishing. We typically save an author 310 hours and we can from beginning to end deliver a book that specifically demonstrates that you’re the expert in your space. It will be an Amazon best selling book and it’ll be done in less than four months.
Global Credibility: “You’re an expert and the more people in your community that know you as an expert, the more you become recognized.”
Taylor: That’s awesome man. That’s a great story. Thanks for sharing that with us. So tell the audience kind of like what you’ve specialized in nowadays. So like where are you an expert in a credibility. Okay. So, so we’ll, we’ll global credibility that, okay. So let’s dive a little deeper here into global credibility. Like the, how did you become an expert in that specific industry of global credibility?
Mitchell: I’m not sure if credibility is an industry by itself. The uh, if, if, uh, if you take a look and see what’s happened in the world, we used to, and like I said, that Ted talk is absolutely worth watching because then we’ll dive into a number of interesting elements here. We used to be given our thought leaders, so in the past who are are credible experts. Well, it was who the publishing company has decided we were going to read because they publish their books. It was who the broadcast media decided we were going to see on the big screen or the TV. And particularly who’d we see on the news stations. Remember there’s only three channels way back when, right? And and it was, it was intro. Oh, and the recording studios who we were going to listen to, these were our thought leaders and because there was a small number of publishers who are helping us see the world, they decided who owned a particular space and they spent money making that happen.
And the publisher dictated to us who we were going to listen to. And subsequently those thought leaders were people that when they say jump, they’d say move in a certain direction. Everyone would just say, okay, how high? Well, given the advent of the Internet and the web and everyone having the ability to have a microphone and a camera, now what happens is those thought leaders are not delivered to us by those three sets of companies. But rather we make them, you have the ability, anyone listened to this can become a recognized expert. And I use the word thought leader and recognized experts synonymously. Anyone who wants to can be a recognized expert in your space. So first a define what is an expert. An expert is somebody who you pay or you get paid to provide a service. I simple, most basic definition of the expertise possible because you know, if you do it once and you’re horrible, the word of mouth gets out there, you don’t get to do at many other times he’d be do it over and over again.
You’re an expert and the more people in your community that know you as an expert, the more you become recognized. So I’ve been actively involved in marketing, uh, marketing companies, marketing experts, uh, dealing with thought leadership. Uh, so during the Dotcom days I’ll is, I was called mystery commerce by some of the big growers out there. Um, subsequently went into thought leadership as a publisher. We publish over 800 books, uh, as somebody who’s written courses for universities have created over 71 courses at universities. And so, you know, the thing is, for me it’s always been exciting to see where the world’s going and to provide a tool or set of tools, whether it’s courses at universities, conferences that I’ve run or other things to get people to say, Aha, I get it. I know where we’re going, I know how to fit into that world.
Marketing Campaign Fail: Build a Trusted Partner Network
Taylor: Gotcha. That’s awesome. Great Story. As far as is that goes like the thing is like you’ve come from an older time then you know, then I have, you know, I started in 2008 and so you’ve seen a lot of change that has been happening. So it’s really cool hearing how you’ve come to where you are today. So thank you. So let’s dive in a little bit farther. So what’s, during this time, you know, you’ve been growing, you’ve been learning what’s kind of like a marketing campaign that’s kind of gone south on Ya.
Mitchell: Ah, so you know, there are many I can give from like personal tool chest. I’ll even give one more more. Uh, we don’t give them as opposed to a client. I’ll take one, I’ll take, I’ll take the bullet myself. You know, we all have at some point in time had somebody come to us with a silver bullet and say, you know what, all you have to do is give us money and something will happen. So this was a number of years ago, but I had a Facebook guy come to me and say, listen, I’ll build a funnel for you and your phone is going to be so amazing. It’s gonna the conversion rates are going to go through the roof. It’s going to be better than any of my other clients. Right? And so what was interesting, and this was before we did that done for you book service.
We basically were a more traditional publisher waiting for people to come to us and give us their books. And, and so what happened is he was trying to automate something which didn’t have a clear cut manual process and subsequently there was a ton of money spent that went absolutely nowhere. Right? So my, my lessons learned, we’re very simple. If you don’t have a manual process, something you’ve tested, proven works in the real world, you can’t automate it, right? There’s no, there’s no funny, there’s no funny numbers, there’s no funny solution based on automation and it’s just simply you take a look at what works in the real world and then you optimize it to work in a way that can automatically happen for you. And so we’ve spent a lot of money in that. And I basically, I think I spent the money so I could tell this war story.
Uh, it was two fold by the way. And for those people who do, who do work for clients, the one thing that I hadn’t realized at the time is when he was done spending the money to build the set of funnels for us, he then said, hey, where’s your credit card? Cause I need to spend money on Facebook advertising. And I said, well how come you didn’t tell me that up front? His answer as well, this is industry best practice. This is what we do. I have to tell you guys, this is not best practice for a client to find out after they paid the money to then be able to be given a, a request for a credit card. So right now I’m working with uh, two other Facebook companies. I’ve got to linkedin companies, I’ve got somebody on Instagram. Essentially I look for partners that I could work with that can then take our authors and help bring them business.
Three things to be clear on when communicating with clients
And at the end of the day, it’s very, here’s what I, uh, a nother lesson I took away. And something to think about when you’re talking to a client, you have to be clear on three things. A, what is the service you’re delivering and what’s the price to, what is the KPI, what does the key performance indicator that’s going to measure success for you? And three, what are the ramifications if you don’t hit your KPI? And so anyone who’s part of this, I’m building a trusted partner network. I’ve got 25 partners in at the moment. Anyone who part of my network, they will have those three elements and it will be very easy to plug. And play different people in a component. Does that make sense?
Taylor: Yeah, that makes total sense. Yeah. Some of the things I took away even from this was, you know, if it doesn’t work in the real world, you know, like you said, it’s not going to work online. And then like you’re clear expectations up front with your client. You know, you had a lot of failures because of that. You know, you need to make sure you have, you need to, you said you need to clarify the service, the price, the KPI, and the ramification of what happens if the campaign fells. So
Mitchell: can I give you a couple of examples of people I’m working with? Just things they do.
Taylor: Oh yeah, yeah, totally.
Example: Amazon Bestselling Author and Speaker
Mitchell: I’ve got, so imagine now. So here’s what, here’s what we do. Tell her you’re going to love this. You press a button and you can be an Amazon bestselling author. So what I wanted to do, because here’s the interesting part, the Oh, let’s also be clear the book that you write, that the focus of the book is the pain point that you solve for your prospect. So you had somebody online and you talked about coaches and consultants. The title of the coach or consultant book should be the pain point of the problem they solve. Right? Makes Sense. Cause guess what? If you’re an Amazon bestselling author of a book, that’s the pain point that their clients have, then all of a sudden, guess who the expert is, who we assume is that credible, right?
So the interesting part is we can now deliver an Amazon best selling book. And imagine if you wanted to be a speaker and make money as a, as a speaker. I’ve got a speaker coach now that she charges her her amount and she guarantees you’re going to make him between 150 and 200,000 a year, or she’ll book you to make that happen, right? So her price point is 10 k you’ll get, you’ll make between 150 to 200 doors, she’ll book you. So there’s a price point. There’s a KPI and a measurement and a, a result. Um, the guy I’m working with a on Facebook, he’s going to charge 3000 and $1,000 for Facebook ads. He’s going to have a particular KPI and it’s basically going to evolve around an Roi. And every month, if the client does not receive the Roi that’s promised, the $3,000 will go to zero. However, the client will be made aware that they still have to pay $1,000 in Facebook ads. Right? If it, and if you listen to this, you’re thinking, God, that sounds like basic business. And the answer is yes. Yeah, no, I totally bit just today,
no, I know I’m all about results. So I, I like how these guys are running business. It’s like they’re guaranteeing things and they’re upholding their promise. So I really liked that. The other thing you said that I really liked was just talking about if you guys are writing a book, you know, like you said, you know, write that book on that paper, on that pain point, and focus everything in that book, on that pain point because you’ll become an expert. So
I like that. Just, you know, I call it a c pop customer pointed pain. And that’s by the way, in light, if I’m going to tell you my superpower, it’s, it’s doing an interview with the author for two hours and extracting enough information to create a, a book. And I think you looked at our site, our books have there, they’re written in such a way where they’re, they, they make a whole lot of sense for the, for the online world and how we consume data and as our books have 140 bites, size quilts, and seven blog posts. So all of a sudden you’ve got a couple of quarters of social media content and you have something that’s consumable by anyone you hand it to weather that you handed to them online or in physical world.
First Online Marketing Success and Define Your Definition of Success
Taylor: Awesome. That’s great. Great. Thanks for sharing that info with our audiences. You know, talking about, you know, clear expectations and you know, how you can become a bestselling author on Amazon. So let’s dive into the next question. You know, what was one of your first little online marketing successes? You know, even talking about this, like how did you figure out that you could niche a fi in pushing Amazon books like this? This,
Mitchell: oh, I, I, I love that one. Let me do that. And then, then I’ll tell you my actual really first, first, first on online for a, so, okay, I’m cool with that. Let’s do it. The Amazon, what we do is we, we gained the system, right? People don’t talk this way and I just think when you’re talking to somebody, if you want to know, like, and trust somebody, they have to be honest. So, so it may be something that goes way at a certain point in time, but essentially what happens is if you give Amazon exclusive rights to your book for 90 days, they give you five days in which you can give book away for free at the time in which you’re giving your book. Now, this is a kindle version at the time, or what you’re giving your book away for free. You get two to 300 people to download your book and guess what?
You’re, you then become a Amazon bestselling author. Simple, simple, straight forward. So we can do that without the author being involved. Here’s what’s really fascinating. It’s not about, I mean, it’s nice to have that title for the author. What gets really interesting is now there are two times they could touch their audience or help grow their audience. The first time is when they tell the world, hey, guess what? My publisher’s running an Amazon bestselling campaign. Why don’t you pick up a copy of my kindle version for free? Two weeks later they tell the world, oh, guess what? I’m now an Amazon best song off there. Thank you so much for helping me get there. Right? So it’s, it’s really less about it in everything we do. It’s about having fun and pressing the easy button. But, but let me, let me go back to the question I thought I’d answered is what’s the first thing I ever did online? So, so 19 okay, this is really going back. Well, the other part of the question is why was it successful as well?
Taylor: So, oh, sorry. We’ll do that one first.
Mitchell: Cool.
Taylor: Why was it successful?
Mitchell: Well. So the question becomes what do you always on anything that you do, what do you define a success? And if overall, my goal is to help bring credibility to anyone. I’m working with having a title called Amazon bestselling author, or number one best selling author or international. We do this in in a couple other countries. You now become an international bestselling author and having that title. So on my business cards, one of the things it says is international bestselling author. Now I’ve written at this stage, I’ve written over 62 books. Personally, we’ve published over 800 but at 62 books, you know, it’s not as big of a deal to write your next book these days.
I have mechanical automated processes in place that had helping me write books with the processes and the things that I do. So the interesting part there, when I hand somebody a card, it says international bestselling author, they go, Oh my God, that is so cool. What book did you, right now when you’re at 62, if you’ve been smart enough to listen to, you’re talking to and they, you find out what, where, what’s exciting for them and where their world is, then you tell them about the book that is relevant to them. And, and so by definition a, it’s just one more thing that adds credibility to who they are and what they do. That’s awesome. That is so awesome. So what was your first little online marketing success though? Yeah, so I, I, there was many, many successes, but number one was 1995. Marc Andreessen came out around that time with, with, uh, the browser mosaic.
And what I realized is, Hey, I could build websites and I probably in a 95 to 97 probably belt 30 or 35 websites. Uh, and, uh, what was fascinating is I created a website which sold brom statutes. And obviously I did not have a foundry to create prompts stretchers. So found a couple of foundries, uh, grab pictures from their literature, put them up on the website, uh, increase the prices by four acts, uh, took into, took in the money and drop ship the product. And it was, it was pretty amazing. And it was all about really at the end of the day was it was all about what could you do to attract attention. So a lot of Seo at that time a little bit. I mean the paid advertising, a lot of that stuff came later, although Google ads were around them, so did some of that too. But the biggest thing was, uh, doing good compelling SCL that, that drew traffic.
Taylor: That’s awesome. You know, even today, like some people say Seo is dying, but I’m a believer that you still needed to be doing it. So I like how you said good, compelling SCO is,
Mitchell: well that’s the thing. It’s good compelling Sel, which you still need. You still need some form of website or some sort of blogging. People say email is dead and that’s one of your episodes. But that’s not true. Although if you take a look at what’s hot, video is hot texting. Um, particularly the coach client market. You’ve got somebody’s cell phone that is super hot. If you text them. Good compelling content.
Creating an E-commerce Program and Public Audience Conference
Taylor: Amen to that too. Amen. So let’s, let’s dive into the next section. Uh, just a little recap there. You know, making sure you have a good website, making sure you do good SEO and using texts to actually maintain your customers, educate them via text. Super important. So diving into like your Grand Slam for success. So when I talk about this, this is like your home run, you hit it out of the park and you are, you are making it and loving it. So what was your Grand Slam?
Mitchell: It’s so interesting. I, I’ve done many, which are, which are fascinating. Probably probably the biggest one. The one that I’m terribly proud of is, uh, during the, during the Dotcom days, the, I was teaching, uh, teaching at San Jose State University. And I just ran out of time. So I went into the, uh, I went into the Dean and say, listen, I’m out of time. And you know, I never liked to quit things. So I say, listen, I got to do more. I have to do less. And the Dean said, well, why don’t you create a program for us? I’m like, oh, that’s interesting. So I thought about it. I said, give me, give me a little bit of time. I’ll come back in. Um, so I took about three weeks to think it through, came back in and I said, listen, here’s what the program will be.
Let’s wait nine months. We’re going to start it in fall. I’m going to create 30 courses. I’m, what is ecommerce? What is thought leadership? What is our online marketing is, you know, all the elements of this was in 1999. Right? So all the elements that are there. And then of course we used online marketing to drive lots of attendance. Although the, at the time, online training wasn’t as powerful. So we, it was physical attendance. And, uh, and so I said, I went in and then here’s the biggest, the most exciting part for me is I said, listen, I don’t want you to pay me anything to build the program for you. 30 courses, nine months from now, I’m going to work for free. I just want 25% of the door. And they laughed their way to sign the contract because they thought they’ve never had anyone before been able to drive such success to our program.
And we ended up selling over 4,700 core seats, took over, took over a million, a couple of, probably two, two and a half million of revenue. I mean, it was a nice, it was a nice program. And then, and then I, this is what kills me. They were unhappy writing me checks even though it was only 25%. So 75% of what came in the door they kept. And uh, that’s probably one lesson to learn there. Good contracts. As much as I like to do a handshake, having a contract with somebody really helps clarify the understanding that you have when you make a handshake. I like that. Good contracts equals good success. Um, so what would you say, well, like why was this successful though? This, this building, this course and everything? Like why overall was the successful? Oh, it’s, I think as I’m listening to your episodes, it just reinforces the stuff that you do having, having experts in their field talk about what’s happening in the world before the majority knows about it.
Find Your Target Audience
So it’s finding the early adopters who are, who can talk about what does it mean to do SEL? What does it mean to do Facebook advertising? What does it mean? Now in today’s world, it’s the early adopters. What does it mean to actually incorporate bots into your business? What does it mean to actually have a go to market strategy that includes texting at the appropriate, at the appropriate time to the right folks, right? So it’s, it’s the newest, latest, greatest, and it’s the fact that the world, what’s fascinating to me is what worked, what doesn’t work yesterday can work today. What doesn’t work today could certainly work tomorrow, but you may have to change it slightly if you’re not continually sending the appropriate Kpis, measuring and adjusting, you know, you, you, you really have, have an, an issue. And so for me it was very simple.
Uh, people needed to learn, people want it to learn. And so as long as you cast a net far enough and talk to them in the language they wanted to hear, they were, you know, whether it’s email, newsletters, physical, physical letters, uh, we did a lot of, uh, we did a lot of advertising in different sort of online and physical, physical publications. And so as long as you speak the language people want to hear and then probably another element that’s relevant. Uh, and so let me be clear. We had a credibility sponsor right in, in anything you do when you’re looking for sponsorship, you know, there’s financial sponsorship, that’s one thing. But there’s also awareness and credibility sponsorships. And so we had a creditability sponsor and that case was San Jose state or when I was doing stuff for conference companies. The conference company itself, if their knee is big enough, they’re the credibility sponsor, right?
So when you’re doing business, if you’re working with a no name individual or company, then part of what you need to do is you need to actually build the credibility, which will help drive the awareness. If you’re working with a company whose brand is already established and in place within the community that, that know them, you already have the awareness component. So you do a different strategy to reach both are existing and as, as you mentioned, one of your things, uh, basically targeting people who’ve already seen you in a past to doing a slightly different ad. That’s pretty powerful because they already know you. So if people already know you, it’s a different marketing strategy to get order to buy your next product and then if they don’t know you. And so it’s important in sending up your strategies overall to figure out who you’re dealing with and how best to reach the audience that they, that basically need the company or the individual to service them. And then how to quickly a established credibility if they don’t have it and then be produce a product, ensure a product that’s so compelling. They can’t say, no,
Speed Round with Mitchell Levy
Taylor: I like that. That’s awesome. Find your target audience, serve up an ad that serves their need, established credibility and then give them an offer that they cannot resist. Love it. That’s awesome. Thanks for sharing that info there. So, um, diving into this speed round, um, you know, I always do this with all my, all the guys I interview. So like what do you do for fun when you’re not working?
Mitchell: They both start with P. I liked to play poker and I liked to play Pokemon.
Taylor: Okay. Like Pokemon go like, or were you talking to go?
Mitchell: It, it, it gets me, it gets me walking around and gets me out of a, I, I’d been working out on my garage since 1997 so when I’m not traveling it gets me out of the house.
Taylor: Okay. Pokemon go. I’m poker, Huh?
Mitchell: Absolutely. That’s awesome. Well, I, you know, it’s hard for me to say this when I say a friend’s family and all that stuff. It’s, it’s really for me, work equals fun. Or if you’re lucky enough in life, that work equals play. You could play all the time. And so for me, everything, when I can have, I do, sometimes I have 10 to 18 calls a day, mostly video chats. And when I can help somebody see their world in a completely different way or give them a tool that just helps them be more successful, to me, that’s fun. And, and guess what, I get paid for it too. So I get to get paid to have fun. I mean, I can’t think of anything better in life.
What Would You Tell Your 20-Year-Old Self?
Taylor: Yeah. I can say amen. But that too. I do enjoy what I do as well, but you know, sometimes we got to do other things too. So my response is, Oh yeah, I like to, uh, go mountain biking or workout. But yeah. So I’m going to ask you this question. This is kind of off script a little bit, but what would you tell your 20 year old self?
Mitchell: Yeah, I, I, uh, you know, I, I’ve done really well in the stock market and, and uh, and, and okay. On real estate because I live in Cupertino, which is where Apple’s headquartered. So even if you don’t work for apple, if you own a house, uh, your real estate has gone through the roof. So I probably would have said to my 20 year old self, uh, two things, uh, by the way, when you, when you buy Yahoo, make sure you sell at the right time. When you buy apple and Amazon hold, even if you had catastrophic returns because they’re going to keep going. Um, probably the other thing I would have said to myself is remember playing the game monopoly where you buy real estate and then you, you could rent it out and you make money. When people land on your properties and you buy, you put houses and hotels, well that game is really appropriate because it’s, it works in real life.
So those people were really successful, really, really successful. They either made their money through the stock market, typically, uh, not just investing like a Warren buffet, but because they worked for a company that went public. You know, when, when a company like Facebook goes public and in Silicon Valley you’ve got thousands of millionaires that are cloned overnight, but also people who have invested in real estate and had a nice we Kering revenue stream happen day or date, date, day over day. And I probably would have said, hey, buy little bit of real estate earlier and then there just give me a five companies to buy and hold.
Updates in your Specific Industry
Taylor: That’s awesome. I like that advice. That’s one of my goals is don’t a few properties so I can maintain a steady income of, you know, to retire at some point. So I liked that. Invest in real estate. So what are some updates in your specific industry?
Mitchell: You know, I, I think what’s fascinating to me is the, in my interesting, we’re looking at book publishing, there was a point in time where the word self publisher was just, you never wanted a self published book. You never wanted that. Those are acceptable. Now, not only that, those are not only acceptable, so many people are doing. Um, and because so many people are doing them, they’re not generating the returns that people have had. And so for those people who write books, typically it takes about 120 hours to write 120 page book. I like 120 pages because, uh, the spine sizes good. Uh, it takes about 200 hours to publish your books. That’s 320 hours. So the biggest thing that’s interesting in my industry is people coming back who have self published and go, oh my God, what a waste of time. And they go, yes, we could solve that problem.
So, so, so the, the, what’s nice is that the industry has moved to the place where I knew it would get to a, the democratization of the book publishing and then be the recognition that it’s not about the book. It’s about having good compelling online marketers that use an asset, whether it’s a pdf or an ebook or use a free plus shipping offer to grab the addresses of people they want to market to with physical mail. And, uh, and so we’ve moved to the stage where where people recognize that the book is just a tool to help people be successful. It’s just such a powerful one. And so I, the other things I’ve mentioned during the show texting works really well. Video video is phenomenal. Short videos, short compelling videos, uh, of uh, helping to demonstrate your expertise, how helping to demonstrate your credibility, helping to have your audience sort of remember who you are. Those are really powerful. It had been for a while, but they’re just growing in popularity.
Taylor: Yeah, I totally agree to that.
Mitchell: I said that like, basically the books are nowadays that’s like key to credibility. Everyone’s always like, oh, you wrote a book. Oh my goodness. Like you must be famous. You’re an expert. So, and tail, I’ll tell you one thing and I’ll just, I’ll do it with mine. When I stand in front of her group, I’m holding my hardcover book and, and I say, I am a international best selling author and I’ve done a ted talk called being seen and being heard as a thought leader. Wait. So I don’t need to say anything else. Right. I don’t, I don’t need to sell myself. And if somebody is in the room where somebody hears that and they go, I want to be seen and be heard as a thought leader. Like maybe I should talk to Mitchell Levy because he wrote the book.
Favorite Marketing Book
Taylor: Yeah, that’s awesome. No, that’s, that’s a really good advice. You know, just making sure, you know, you build your brand around success, you know, such as Ted talks and books and, and getting into those different spaces. So what’s your favorite book?
Mitchell: And I can’t say any of mine. Let’s do not yours. And then you can, you can drop it. I, uh, there’s, I have two favorite books. These are sort of change in, they’re both older, older books. They’d been around for awhile. Uh, one Geoffrey cocks did a book called selling the, if you guys think there’s only one and only one type of salesperson you’ve got to read sounding the wheel. It’s a fable. It’s an easy read. And it talks about the four different styles of salespeople. Um, the second is Michael Gerber did a book called the e myth and, and he’s got subsequently a number of versions of varieties of that, but it talks about how everyone is not an entrepreneur and how 80% of people claim there are really aren’t. And so those are, those are really to favor. That completely changed my, my thought process. Okay. Now, now tell us about your favorite book, why you’re so passionate about the book that you wrote. One of the 60. Do you know? It’s my fact, my fact the, let me not, let me not uh, use mine. Let me use somebody else. Guy By the name of Bill Wallace. Uh, Bill runs a group in Dallas called success now North Dallas.
He’s been running that for over 30 years. He’s the biggest servant leader I have ever run into my life. And he has a book, it’s called being a catalyst for success. And when I want to do it, I’m just going to read one of the Aha messages of the book. Because when you hear this, you see yourself, man, I want to be this person. I want to be like that and that’s what an Aha messages. The goal is to get somebody to to think or crater act and so here’s our number three from bill’s book it says, living a good life is identified. Sorry. Living a good life is determined by the smiles that appear on the faces of others. Every time they see you and they keep that smile after you’ve gone.
How cool is that? I like it. Right? It’s, it’s really the, it’s an anything in do in life. You know mine from the being seen and being heard as a thought leader is, is similar but different. It says good thought leaders are at the top of the mountain. Great thought leaders are at the bottom of the mountain, helping others climb up right when you like, when you hear an Aaha message, if it inspires you to take action. I think of this as good, compelling marketing quotes that are, that can be heard or read in three to five seconds. That’s what we do with our, our program. That’s why I love the Aha. That platform. Oh, I didn’t tell you. It’s free to use. Free to share. So anyone who wants to go to [inaudible] dot com there are 47,000 pieces of content you could use today and share on social media for 47,000 guys. That is a lot, a lot of content.
Favorite Thing About Marketing
Taylor: So that’s awesome. Thanks for sharing that as well. So diving into the next little question, favorite thing about marketing or on my marketing? What’s one of your favorite things?
Mitchell: Oh man, I experimentation I think, I think for me what I love doing is conceptualizing an idea and then trying to make it work. Now at some cases in online marketing, if you could try it and it doesn’t work and then you know really quickly after spending some amount of money that hey, this is not working or you can make it work. And then for me, what I love doing it, I love making it work, making money and then hiring, you know, and then I document, right? I put a process in place and then I hire somebody to run the process and then I moved to the next thing. So for me it’s, it’s like the perfect world. I, I, I have a playground I could play in and try new things and I’m always looking for people to, to run experiments in play to play with because it’s us that online marketing is a great playground and you could do any anything you want. And as long as you’re having fun, obviously it’s ethical, ethical, having fun, making money, man. It’s a beautiful world.
Favorite Marketing Podcast and Ted Talks
Taylor: Amen to that. So favorite marketing podcast for favorite podcast in general?
Mitchell: Nah, I dunno. I I like, there’s so many that are, there’s so many that are interesting. Neil Patel has a, uh, a podcast, I think it’s called marketing university. Um, I liked the guys that do marketing over coffee. That’s kind of a, that’s kind of a fun one. I haven’t heard anyone. Yeah, I try to think of what else I listened to. That’s, that’s fine. I, I, I honestly, this may not be podcast because it’s video cast, but Ted has, if you actually go to ted.com you can actually put in your preferences and get videos sent to you every day. They’ll send you a new video that, that uh, that is along the lines of what you’re looking for. I love Ted talks because what, what you’re doing instead of something that’s 60 minutes long or even 30 minutes, I mean, I liked the podcast, which is 30 but I liked the Ted talk, which is eight t any anywhere between 10 18 minutes because you have somebody who’s passionate about something they’ve done in life, spend enough time to do it in a way that’s compelling in a short period of time. And even if it’s not in an industry or excited about, it’s just fun to see what people get passionate about.
Favorite Online Marketing Tool to Use for your Marketing Business
Taylor: That’s awesome. Yeah, I’ve definitely watched a few ted talks in my life and it’s definitely opened up my mind. So I do recommend always checking those out as well. So go subscribe like, like he, like you said, so what’s one of your favorite online marketing tools?
Mitchell: Oh, I have to say, ah, ah, that okay. I can respect that. You, one of the things I’ve done just, which is fascinating is at Aha that we also have something called an Aha blaster. So we can actually share on Twitter a entire book and we have a calendar in there that will share an entire book of 140 quotes in five days. So last event I went to, they were showing a wall of people who are sharing the most content and essentially I took a book, put in the appropriate Hashtag and I shared for five days and I was in between Ya. There’s a lot of people selling. I didn’t, I mean sort of sharing their content on social and I wasn’t doing a whole lot because it happened automatically and my, my name and picture kept coming up to the top of the other ranking. It was pretty cool.
Taylor: That’s awesome. So if someone wants to subscribe to Aha that, how much is it? A month?
Mitchell: Oh, it’s a, it’s a great price. It’s a very compelling price. It’s free. So Aha. That is free to use and free to share. And they’re just, you know, the con, the reason behind that is I’ve decided at this stage of the products evolution to monetize based on the authors and the authors are paying us to ghostwrite a book for them. We then take their content and we put it on Aha. That and every, every on message, every unique compelling thought leadership bite also gives attribution back to the author. So when you’re sharing content, the author gets excited about it. So please go to Aha. That’s a common share. Other people’s content, you are getting recognized by sharing other people’s good quality content and they are getting the benefit of having your network see the stuff they wrote about.
Taylor: Love it. That’s awesome. So diving into this last couple of questions here, what advice would you give to like any online marketer in the world?
Mitchell: It’s credibility through the eyes of thought leadership and being seen through the eyes of the individual. We are moving, we’re in this huge transformation. And actually this, this is really the reason I did the Ted talk, uh, from the industrial age society to the Social Age and between 1920 and 2019 we’ve only made it 50% of the way there. Now in the next decade or two, we’re going to make it the other 50%. So if you think transformation has happened, has been crazy over the last 20 years, man, wait for the next 10 or 20. And, and so what, what’s really happened today, and the reason I call it the social age is we don’t want to do business with this amorphous company that we don’t know there. We don’t know who they are and what they stand for. We want to deal with individuals who are the recognized experts in their space, who are the, who are the thought leaders. And so you’ve got some really big companies recognizing this and helping to bring out the characteristics and the names of people inside the company. And then there are companies that really are, you don’t know anything about them and you don’t know who they are and what they do. And these companies are disappearing over time. So I end marketers, uh, make sure you show the brand of the individuals, not just the CEO and the c suite, but of the recognized expert, the experts or the company who need to become recognized in the industry.
What Advice Would You Give to a Company and Why?
Taylor: I liked that. I liked that a lot. Definitely like highlight other people inside the business, not just the CEOs. So definitely thanks for sharing that. So last question. If there was like any company out there in the world, just like looking at a company, what advice would you give to that company and why?
Mitchell: Try that again, since I didn’t see that different than the other question. So ask me in a different way so I can answer it properly.
What Advice Would You Give to Your Online Company?
Taylor: Okay. So the first question’s geared towards the marketer. The second one is geared towards an online company. What advice would you give them?
Mitchell: Oh, it is a great question. This is such a loaded question. Don’t necessarily try to homegrown your talent from inside the company. There are such amazing humans around the world who are spent time and energy, crystallizing their expertise and they probably can deliver service. And solution to you for less money than if you did it internally. So whatever go to market strategy. You have, make sure you use a combination. If you have a lot of people inside, you could use people inside, but using this project managers and have your, your true talented experts, the online marketers who are really good at what they do, hire from the outside because that’s what they get paid to do, is to learn to grow, to be up to speed and not to fall into the sort of the malice that typically happens inside of companies. He kind of, you get, you get dumb fat and happy and uh, you don’t have, if you’re, if you’re outside, you’re independent consultant and you making stuff happen, man, you’re, you’re continually up to speed, otherwise you’re going to disappear. And so that’s what I’d say. Hire smart people from outside figured out a way you can make that happen. Companies like upwork, companies like fiber. Oh, here we go. Sorry, I backed into my answer. Anyone who is in any position at all where they’ve got lots of stuff to do, give them a budget on that they could spend on fiber so that they can outsource the stuff that’s really low level and or stuff that’s really high level and meaningful that they don’t know and they could focus on the stuff they’re good at.
Contact Information for Mitchell Levy
Taylor: I can say amen to that 110% so definitely look into other channels and avenues. Hire freelancers. Amen to that. For sure. So last question, sometimes I forget this one, but I definitely remembered it. So if someone’s looking to hire you, if someone wants to work with you, read all 62 of your books, where can they find you?
Mitchell: I don’t know about 62 by the time they go for it, it’ll be 63 but um, the, the, to simplify it, you can go to Mitchell Levy three sixty.com. So it’s just my name, MITC, e l l last name l e v y three sixty.com. And it has all of the social media and connect to me on the platform that’s relevant for you.
Taylor: I liked that. So linkedin, Facebook, you’re all, yeah, sorry. Yeah, I normally do the whole, I typically hang out on Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, snap, Pinterest. I know I fell Google plus if that store around right. It’s, it’s trying, it’s trying to make it’s way up there, but I don’t think it’s doing so hot. So. Awesome. Well thank you for being on the show today. Any last questions? Any last, last thing to say on the show?
One Last Thing with Mitchell Levy
Mitchell: No, my pleasure. I love the, I love the stuff that you’re doing and where you’re focused. Uh, I liked the energy you have in particular areas. I might actually recommend that you, you go out and just like you had the guy who helped build our online tools for coaches and consultants, I might recommend you go out to different verticals and find an expert in each area and use that for shows. I, I you, you would, uh, quickly become a potentially one of my favorite podcast to listen to if you did that.
Taylor: Okay, I’ll, I’ll take that into note and a go see what other, other people I can find out there. So some people are scared to, I will say some people are scared to share their secrets.
Mitchell: Uh, you know what the problem is? That’s old school, old school, old school is when people, are you ready for this? Over my career, I’ve had five people leave voice messages that say I need to sign an NDA before they’ll tell me the concept of their book because a book is going to sell more copies than the Bible. And you know, I, I, it’s even hard to return phone calls when people do that, when their expectations are so out of whack. Any idea you have, any process you have, anything you do, there’s at least 10 other people doing it. And so the more people that can know about it, the more people that can recommend you, you keep things close to the chest and buttoned up. Someone else’s come to come by WHO’s, who’s a little bit more gregarious and a little more forthwith and what they do and they get to take over your business and you’re going to wonder what’s happened.
Taylor: Yup. No, I say full amen to that. So that’s why I wanted to start this show is I wanted to educate everybody about all my marketing because you can re and the reality is you can find it out there. So, um, but yeah, I just want to make myself an expert in this and this expertise. So that’s why I started my show. So,
Mitchell: and, and I, I, like I said, you, uh, it was nice to listen to what you’ve done with some of your past shows and, and, uh, and this one, thanks for your questions. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Taylor: Yeah, not a problem. If you have any questions, you can reach out to me, text me, I’ll shoot you a, uh, an email here with all my information so we can keep in. That sounds great. Okay. And vice versa. Sounds good. Thank you again. Take care.
Conclusion
Wow. Guys, if you guys didn’t learn anything today will, I will tell you what I learned from this podcast. So first thing I want to talk about is how he talked about clear expectations up front. You know, making sure you are very clear with what your services, how much it costs, and talk about your KPIs. So for you, new guys out there, Kpis, Stanford key performance indicators. So when you’re working with your clients, make sure you tell them what your key performance indicators are going to be. You know, how much do you want to get a conversion for what you’re shooting for there. And then the last thing he talks about is the ramification of that. So if you are not hitting those key performance indicators, then you need to have clear expectations with your clients. What the next game plan is to make sure that is happening.
The next thing I took away from this podcast is if you’re going to write a book, make sure your book title is the pain point of what you are solving with your service. So I think that is super important to realize that, you know, even back next thing, even back in 1997 when he was doing SCO, you know, you need to be doing SEO. He also talked about doing paid ads back in 1997 they were still doing SEO and paid ads. So in my opinion, you still need to be doing that for your business in 2019 so continue to do that. It’s important to build credibility with your clients, and that is basically my big things that I took away from this podcast. So go back, listen to it again, find out what you need to do and what you need to apply into your business. The last thing is, guys, I’m coming along with this course. Hopefully it’ll be done. Like I said, keep in touch with me on this and don’t forget to smile today guys, and peace.
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