What’s actually important when it comes to the Dennis Yu’s pedigree is not what most people would say is important. Dennis says the best measure of his authority is the thousands of successful students and clients who are “killing it” in online business following the Facebook ads strategy he developed.
From national spelling bee competitor to high school dropout, Dennis decided early on he was going to be a successful entrepreneur. He’s done quite a good job of making friends and influencing people in the process, considering one of the clients whose Facebook strategies his team manages is the Golden State Warriors.
In today’s podcast, Joe and Matt dig into the three-step Facebook funnel that delivers “magical” results following a simple, proven process. If you’ve ever felt the overwhelm of figuring out how to drive new traffic through the know, like and trust phases of growing a business, this is the episode for you. If you want more insight into social ad strategies check out this LinkedIn episode with Trevor Turnbull and this Pinterest chat with Stefan Ciancio.
The best things in life are free, but the second best things in life are really expensive.”– Dennis Yu
Some Topics We Discussed Include:
- What do chocolate cake and running a successful paid Facebook strategy have in common?
- This is where the real power in your business lives
- Why the opinions of your target audience’s friends matter
- How love enters the online marketing strategy equation
- The most powerful building block to creating a Black Friday sized line to your business offer
- Who should ultimately be in charge of working on your personal brand
- What is peacocking?
- Use this simple and cheap system to skyrocket your online “cred”
- The magic number of touches required to reach your conversion goal
- 3 steps x 1 minute each = a jackpot Facebook video funnel strategy
- How being like Harry Potter translates to success in business
- Red light, green light, and gorging to sell tickets
- How to leverage rational ignorance and why it matters
- Dennis’ answer to the question about his mom’s ROI from Gary V
- Brand value and tomato trees…Interesting
- How to be considered an authority and be featured in large national publications
- The best technique to make friends and appear in many more places outside your own blog ecosphere
- Five ways to make your Facebook ads more appealing to your viewers
- Did we just witness a tech specs bait and switch to social etiquite?
- Don’t be the two-headed dragon
- How a sci-fi writer is like an entrepreneurial Nostradamus
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Contact Dennis Yu:
- Connect with Dennis and his team on Facebook
- Catch quick videos from BlitzMetrics on YouTube
- Check out his services on the Team Blitz Nation website
References and Links Mentioned:
- Blitz Metrics
- Blitz Metrics workshop
- Team Blitz Nation monthly membership
- EdgeRank
- Social Media Examiner
- The Creative Curve by Allen Gannett
- The Standards of Excellence by Logan Young
- Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
- Hustle & Flowchart Masterclass #20 with Trevor Turnbull
- Hustle & Flowchart Masterclass #67 with Stefan Ciancio
- Interview With Chris Mercer – Learn how to dial in your tracking
- How To Buy Twitter Followers
- See how we’ve taken Facebook ads and combined them with Google to skyrocket our own audience growth. Check in here to learn more.
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Interview Transcription
Dennis Yu: Hey Matt and Joe. Pleasure!
Joe Fier: Yeah, man. So what? We had I think it was two months ago maybe at a workshop in San Diego, and that was our first introduction to you. I think it was our buddy Dan Ryan was like “Hey, Dennis Yu. He’s got some good stuff going on when it comes to Facebook ads and just using content in such a creative and leveraged way.” We’re like “Okay, we got to get there.” Because that’s exactly our- That’s what we’re trying to do all the time.
Matt Wolfe: Yeah, no I’ve got to say that event you put on in San Diego as far as value for the money, just mind blowing how much value you provided for what we paid to be there. I mean it was just crazy. So I just appreciate so much how much you share so freely.
Dennis Yu: Thank you. Can I quote you on that?
Matt Wolfe: Absolutely. Take the recording and share it around. Yeah, so give us a little- so for the folks that haven’t heard of you. I know a lot of people have heard of you, but might not have heard your strategies and all that stuff. Give us a little scope of you know, a little short of what you’ve done prior to getting to the point where “Eh,” Who you’re working with, and we’ll dig in.
Dennis Yu: So let me tell you what people think is important, and then let me tell you what actually is important.
Matt Wolfe: Sounds good.
Joe Fier: Do it.
Dennis Yu: So what people `think is important, is that I’ve spent a Billion dollars on Facebook ads. I used to run analytics at Yahoo, I have multiple degrees from fancy places, I know a lot of important people, but that’s not what matters. All of the success that our clients and our young adults, and people in our community have had, like you guys. Using the Dollar a day strategy, setting up analytics the right way, it’s not based on tricks. It’s not based on magic, it’s based on simply following recipes in the same way that you might have a favorite chocolate cake recipe. And you know if you have the ingredients, and you follow the directions, you will get what you want. And thus we have put the majority of our effort into building these checklists, which you saw from our workshop. And anyone who decides they actually Want to put in the time to follow checklists, and this is the Asian in me who’s good at math coming out. You know I like solving math problems. I used to compete in math contests. I used to fly around, I was number five in Math Counts.
Joe Fier: Oh my God.
Dennis Yu: I actually went to the national spelling B, representing representing California in 1988. I went to Washington D.C. That’s how competitive I was, and I thought it was all about studying and checklists, and this kind of thing, and that has caused me and our team in the last 20 something years to put together all these recipes. Every time we learn about how something works, we want to understand how to turn that into a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, process. So naturally, learning how search engines work and to get rankings, there’s a process on how the search engine decides what goes into the crawl and what gets indexed and what shows up in the search results. Same thing for what drives conversions. It can be mechanical. Let’s say you’re selling through Shopify or you have some kind of shopping cart where you’re generating leads. There’s a process on getting in front of a customer, getting them to watch, to click, to fill out a form, and then to buy. And you can trouble shoot every one of those pieces step by step.
Dennis Yu: So if you have the recipe book on how to do that, and I’m not here trying to like sell this secret recipe. You have it. You guys went to our workshop. You have that. That’s what people miss. They think it’s about the glam and the sizzle and the flash and the magic trick because “Facebook made this one change and now you can do this. You can chat bots.” Or “Now you can’t do workplace targeting.” They think it’s this technical thing, but everything balls back to simple things like you guys know that- Like we give gifts out to people. And in the mail soon, Matt and Joe, you guys are going to get socks with your faces printed on them.
And I’m ruining the surprise, I know, but you’ll get them, and it’s still interesting nonetheless. And that’s because there’s a process on how any time we have an event, or a checklist, or a new client, that kicks off something for someone else to do, and then all of these recipes, they flow together. We happen to run our business on Infusionsoft. Not that Infusionsoft is a magic tool, but we put our recipes in there, and we put our recipes in our dashboard, and right not Christian and I, we’re working on this 300 page thing that we call “The Master Presentation.” You can’t see it ’cause it’s a podcast. But it has tones and tones of diagrams like what you saw in our workshop in San Diego.
Dennis Yu: And this is what we consider to be the treasure, because that’s how we run our business. You know the value of McDonald’s ads, to real estate, or hamburgers, but it’s in their process on how they get French fries crispy and delicious every single time, and that’s the way I see it too. Any kind of business you Want to scale, you want Evergreen Profits, you’ve got to be able to systematize your knowledge, so that other people can follow those same checklists, even if they’re not as well educated, or have the network, or as experience, or as literate, or whatever, they should be able to follow the recipe and make chocolate cake.
Dennis Yu: So we put the most valuable things out there, and people don’t think that they’re valuable, just like people are afraid of reading books. They’ll buy books, but they won’t read them. They love to go to events. It makes them feel good. Tony Robins and all that kinda stuff. But the power, guys is in the checklists.
Joe Fier: Yeah, and that’s exactly what we’ve done with our business is first, start check listing and SOP-ing everything that we can ourselves, and then obviously higher someone like a project manager, ops manager, and then you just expand and expand upon those. And like you said with McDonald’s, I mean they higher you know, minimum wage workers to produce the same consistent quality throughout the world.
Dennis Yu: Yeah. And instead of McDonald’s because people will think “McDonald’s quality.”
Joe Fier: Well yeah.
Dennis Yu: Or you can use whatever your favorite company is. You know, Apple iPhones. Whatever you are fanatical about, you know that there is a factory process on how they deliver quality at scale. We call that “repeatable excellence.” And all the things that people know us for- Lik they’ll come to workshops. Our clients will buy consulting, and we’ll tune their ad account, and you know we figured out the thing that’s broken, and now they’re making more money. There’s tons and tons of case studies about things like that. And they’ll think it’s because we have some detailed magical understanding of the algorithm. And I think we understand it well, but what they don’t realize is that it’s all a bunch of little lightweight optimizations. Little iterations where you guys know that we see the foundation of Facebook marketing as one minute videos.
Joe Fier: Mm-hmm (affirmative)-
Dennis Yu: You’ve got to create lots and lots of one minute videos, you can take your one hour webinars, podcasts, interviews, and shop ’em into one minute things. Sequence them together, run them on YouTube as well, and the distribution and tuning, and transcribing, and modifying and recombining of content requires lots of checklists. So to be successful on Facebook, which is- As Sheryl Sandburg, their COO, who’s basically running the company, it’s not Mark Zuckerberg. She called it “word of mouth at scale.” And we believe that. Not as some Facebook corporate PR mega-giant kind of tagline, but we recognize that that’s how their system is built. The newsfeed is based on what your friends are doing. So if you as a business, an entrepreneur, a startup, you want to grow your business. You have to create word of mouth at scale, which is getting the positive mentions that other people have said about you, sharing the expertise that you have, and one minute videos, lightweight touches, just like what friends would normally say. Like, Christian had In and Out for the first time yesterday. You guys ever had In and Out?
Joe Fier: Are you kidding? We live in San Diego!
Dennis Yu: Of course! Well Christian, how was In and Out?
Christian: It was all that it was hyped up to be.
Dennis Yu: It was, but did you see any of their ads?
Christian: No.
Joe Fier: No, they don’t advertise. Well they advertise on the radio actually. It’s very, very rare though.
Matt Wolfe: Yeah. Like in San Diego you do hear it on the radio from time to time, but that’s about it.
Joe Fier: But you go to an In and Out, and you know when they first opened there was literally a line down the street. That’s not an exaggeration. And still to this day, at 10 o’clock at night they’re be a line wrapped around the building. And you’re like “What the hell is so special with these things?”
Dennis Yu: Well is it that good?
Joe Fier: I don’t think. I know Matt doesn’t. They’re good, but they’re not like groundbreaking good.
Matt Wolfe: I mean in San Diego there’s probably five other burger places I’d go to before In and Out, but whenever people come to town they always Want to go to In and Out.
Joe Fier: That’s right.
Dennis Yu: So you think In and Out’s growing because they have an amazing digital marketing strategy?
Joe Fier: No. Hahaha
Dennis Yu: Mkay. So you know that for the last five years we’ve been running ads for the golden state warriors, and we have been spending maybe a million dollars, and we’ll generate 40 million dollars in ticket revenue. Provable through ticket master, right? That looks incredible. And that’s legit revenue. Facebook will say it, ticket master, the American marketing association. All these guys, the warriors themselves, they love that revenue, right? And some people will be cynical, and they’ll say “Well if you Want to be the best social media agency out there, then you need to find the NBA championship winning team and have them as your client.” Like come on, give us a little bit of credit.
Joe Fier: Hey man, you set yourself with a good team to partner with, you know?
Dennis Yu: And so we knew that years ago, before they became dominant and Kevin Durant and all that kinda stuff.
Joe Fier: Right.
Dennis Yu: And we set up tests to show what the incremental difference was, with and without the campaigns that we’re running. And it’s the same thing with In and Out. People like it. Sorry if you’re on the East Coast. I know people like Five Guy’s. But people like it because of how they feel about how their friends feel, and it’s that word of mouth. And if you understand that the thing that powers the warriors, and In and Out is the same thing that powers your business, then that completely changes your approach to marketing. And that means you have to well- First off you have to have something people love. If people done love your product or service, you’re kinda screwed, because Facebook’s an amplifier. If you use our techniques of one minute videos and a dollar a day, that dollar a day is an amplifier, because it keeps stacking. ‘Cause you go from a dollar a day to ten dollars a day to a hundred dollars a day, you know, you have a hundred items you keep spending a dollar a day, right? It stacks. It’s a multiplier, it lives forever, it’s evergreen, it keeps going, right? Tells stories, topic will, three by three, all the techniques that we talked about.
Dennis Yu: But the thing is if you don’t start out with that sea of love, not just like “Eh, they’re pretty good. You know the double double’s pretty good.” It has to be so good that people wrap their line, you know, the line goes across there, you know. You know black Friday, people trampling each other at Walmart kinda stuff, right?
Joe Fier: Yep.
Dennis Yu: So if you have that kinda love, even from just a few people, you know that that’s more powerful than just a thousand people saying “Eh, it’s pretty good I guess.” Right?
Joe Fier: Yeah, so speak on, because this is very cool and innovative the way that you guys do this. You don’t have to create your own content. Obviously there’s a portion of that, but you leverage the folks that are really saying great things about you. And can you speak into that?
Dennis Yu: I wasn’t joking when I said “Can I quote you on that?” When you were talking about coming to our workshop and the amount of value that you got.
Joe Fier: Oh yeah,
Dennis Yu: What carries more weight with your audience? What I have to say, or what you guys have to say to your audience. To your people?
Joe Fier: It’s definitely us. Yeah.
Dennis Yu: Yeah, I mean I could go all day long about how awesome I think I am. Right? And the truth is, in the last ten years, I’ve been telling people that you shouldn’t work on your personal brand. And people are like “What are you talking about?” I’m like “Yeah, you should not be working on your personal brand. You should have other people working on your brand.”
Joe Fier: Right.
Dennis Yu: So like Christian, who’s sitting next to me, I’m working on his brand, and he and other folks are working on my brand. You know? Never work on your own brand because you want other people to be talking about you. If you’re talking about you, then you’re some self-pompous, peacocking, you know, bragging, chest beating kind of- You know. You don’t Want to be a prima dona. Right? You want the customers to do the work for you, which means you need a process to gather that at scale. So what do we do? We have young adults, and we have virtual assistants from the Philippines making three bucks an hour or more, and they’re gathering all of these mentions. So when you guys say something positive, someone is putting that into this high-tech thing called Google Sheets. And saying thank you, and creating speaker reels, and updating our marketing materials, and using all, and you know, boosting them on Facebook, or cutting out the one minute, awesome little things that you’ve said, sharing them on Facebook, and YouTube, and twitter, boosting each of these little snippets where people are saying good things for a dollar a day, in addition to sharing our advice, in addition to sharing all these other things.
Dennis Yu: If all you do is boost testimonials or accolades, then people are like “Alright, I’ve had enough of that.” Right?
Joe Fier: I get it, yeah.
Dennis Yu: But if you share your expertise, like we’re here in this podcast, we’re openly sharing, you can ask whatever question. I’ll share. It’s not like “Oh, you got to come to our mastermind to get that. It’s some secret.” Like no. There’s no secret. It’s all driven by checklists. Now can we cover everything we know about every single checklist in 45 minutes? No. But we can talk about one particular item if you want, right? It’s no secret, right?
Joe Fier: I love it. Yeah. And that’s the powerful approach, is just leveraging others, and the way you were saying, but I’m very curious, and I Want to hear your rundown, because we’ve definitely explained this to some of our own clients, we’ve referenced it with just folks we talk to about the three-part video sequence that you have for the dollar a day strategy. Let’s go into that, and explain what that is, and how folks can apply it.
Dennis Yu: Okay, so there’s a three part funnel that happens to work on Facebook, and work everywhere in digital. Facebook calls it “awareness, consideration and conversion.” Which is for the top, middle, and bottom of the funnel. We call it “Awareness, engagement, conversion,” Which is almost identical. So if you follow those parts of the funnel, that also aligns with “know, like, and trust.” ‘Cause people have to know you before they like you, and they have to like you before they can trust you. That also corresponds with “why, how, and what.” So these are all synonymous for stages of a three part funnel, and you know a funnel is sequential, so it’s like going on a first date, having a first kiss, and then getting married. Right? Whatever the successive stages are in sequence where you build a deeper relationship. And because you know that in any kind of conversion item, even selling potato chips, it usually takes seven touches. Right?
Dennis Yu: People almost never buy on an impulse, unless it’s like your toilet got flooded and you need someone right now, and it’s an emergency. But for most things that are non-emergency, people will shop around, and get feedback, and word of mouth, and get recommendations, and that kinda thing. So this three part funnel of awareness to engagement to conversion, which is also why, how, and what, requires you to create one minute videos at each step. So why is talking about who you are. Like what is your why? [inaudible 00:19:03] starts with why. You can crate a series of those. It doesn’t have to be about your product. Please don’t make it about your product. Just share who you are. Something that happened when you were a child. “When I was three, I was pecked on the head at Sea World by a seagull who stole my [inaudible 00:19:17] and ran away.
That’s not my story, that’s his story. “When I was 18 I dropped out of high school. I wanted to be a professional athlete and entrepreneur.” That’s my, that’s true. That’s what I wanted to do, right? I didn’t graduate high school. Believe that or not. Look it up. No one care where I went to high school.
Dennis Yu: But there’s a whole story behind that, and that gives you some insight into who I am. And it’s telling stories in a traditional, three part story arc. You guys have heard of “The Hero’s Journey.” It’s the same thing with Harry Potter, in Star Wars, in Rocky, in all those things where you identify with the protagonist, then they have some kind of challenge where they get their butt kicked, and then at the end they win. Right? Everyone understands that three part story arc. You have to follow that same arc, even though you’re not creating a movie. You’re not Steven Spielberg. Right? So if you understand that, people have to identify with who you are. That’s the why.
Dennis Yu: So they understand your values, or “Yeah, I was once dumped by a girl too.” Or “I also had a challenge where-” Some people decide to put out these “I was hitting rock bottom and I wanted to commit suicide because I was an alcoholic.” You don’t have to have those kinds of traumatic life and death stories. It could be like “I was cut off in the parking lot by this woman, and I got mad at her and she gave me the finger.”
Joe Fier: Yeah.
Dennis Yu: It could be whatever, right? Just like a story-
Joe Fier: Anything relatable. Yeah.
Dennis Yu: People see that you’re a human, right? So that’s the why, and the how comes after the why, where you’re sharing some kind of expertise. Like Maybe we share how to tune our Facebook ads? Just one piece of expertise. Not everything, but whatever you can cram into a specific tip in one minute. Like I can give you a one minute story on “How do you order bobble heads from china that will delight people and customize them the right way, and have them not break.” Right? Like “who do we use, and how much goes it cost?” Like I can tell you in one minute how to do that. Right? I can tell you in one minute how I use Southwest Airlines to maximize the amounts of points that I earn using companion pass. Right?
Joe Fier: There you go.
Dennis Yu: And using their credit card. Right? That’s a piece of advice. So if you fly a lot, and you fly Southwest Airlines, then you might find that helpful. Right? You’re just sharing expertise. At no point am I selling anything. Right? And then after sharing expertise, which is how. Because I’ve gone from why to how, then what is what I’m selling. “Hey, I’ve got this course on Facebook ads.” “Hey, I’ve got this package where we will implement your digital plumbing, which is all your pixels and your tracking and custom audiences and all that kinda stuff.” “Hey, we have this membership. It’s $159 a month, and we cover things that you as an entrepreneur would Want to learn about. Like how do you hire people? How do you travel without getting ripped off at the last minute? How do you prepare fro conferences so you get the maximum amount of leads? How do you build your personal brands? How do you hire virtual assistants? How do you get young adults to work at scale without flaking out? We’ll teach you how to do all these things, and it’s $159 a month.”
Dennis Yu: Right? Then I have permission to sell. That’s the what. What’s the product or service? But I came out and told you right away, “Hey, we have a three day mastermind in Phoenix. It’s $7500 for you to come for three days.” Right? You’d say “Are you kidding?” Imagine that was the first touch. There was no relationship building, there is no sharing of expertise, there is no trust, there is no amplifying what other people have to say about you, I’m just some stranger. You know, you’re having dinner with your friend at wherever your favorite place is. We actually went to- what was the name of that barbecue place we went to? Rodizio Grill. We went to a Brazilian barbecue two days ago.
Joe Fier: Oh wow.
Dennis Yu: Yeah, it’s where they go around and the gauchos shave these meats at you. They have like 15 kinds of meats. Have you been to one of these things?
Joe Fier: Oh yeah. With the swords and it’s like “red light green light.”
Matt Wolfe: Oh yeah.
Dennis Yu: Yeah, the little thing. It’s red on one side and green the other, and you flip it over and then they come at you and then you have to turn it over and it’s red. The minute you turn it over and it’s green, they come swarm at you again.
Joe Fier: Yeah.
Dennis Yu: But that was amazing. Now if we didn’t know about that kind of stuff from before … Let’s just say that, you know, we’re having dinner there. Because we like to eat there all the time. I got fat from eating at places like that.
Joe Fier: I was going to say, you can gorge.
Dennis Yu: Oh yeah. But you have to because you feel like, you know, if you’re going to pay 50 bucks each and you only
eat two pieces of meat, that’s, you know … You got to when you’re hungry.
Joe Fier: Sure.
Dennis Yu: You have to eat past the point of being full.
Joe Fier: Yep.
Dennis Yu: Right? To feel like you got your money’s worth. But let’s say that, you know, us four are having dinner at this place. And then some random dude comes up and says, “Hey, you should come join our mastermind. It’s $7,500 for three days in Phoenix.”
Dennis Yu: Right? What would you do? Right?
Joe Fier: You’re like, “Bye! See ya!”
Matt Wolfe: Go away.
Dennis Yu: Let’s say that it was someone that Matt knew, and Matt’s like, “Aw, dude, I didn’t know you were in town. What’s up, dude? Can you join us for dinner?”
Dennis Yu: And then they say, “Yeah, I’d love to.”
Dennis Yu: And then over the course of the conversation where there’s a lot of trust and you guys have built a relationship over time, maybe Joe doesn’t know the guy, but let’s say Matt knows this guy who sat down and has dinner with us.
Joe Fier: Mm-hmm (affirmative)-
Dennis Yu: And in a natural sort of way, this guy recommends, “Hey, you should come to our workshop.”
Dennis Yu: Or let’s say it’s me and I say, “Hey, you should come to our workshop.”
Dennis Yu: Right?
Joe Fier: Yep.
Dennis Yu: Then you have trust, and all of us understand that that’s how selling occurs. But when it comes to online, people decide that they can just be jerks or that the real world etiquette rules don’t apply.
Joe Fier: Sure.
Dennis Yu: And then [inaudible 00:24:42] these stupid things like [inaudible 00:24:43] and spam people and have chat bots and have autodialers and all these ridiculous kinds of things. You would never do that in real life.
Joe Fier: Right. It’s that keyboard warrior, the personality, the face, you know? Just being a human just drops for some reason. You know, and …
Dennis Yu: Yeah.
Joe Fier: And that’s where the power of your video strategy, and like you said, any piece of content … You can turn that completely around if you approach it the correct way.
Dennis Yu: Want to know something ridiculous?
Joe Fier: Sure.
Dennis Yu: I studied so much psychology, but I also have a degree in economics and a degree in finance.
Joe Fier: Wow.
Dennis Yu: I’ve always thought that people were rational, calculating, logical people. It’s like they have calculators as thought bubbles above their head when they’re in a supermarket deciding whether they want the large jar of peanut butter or the small jar, and they’re calculating what the price is per ounce. I’ve always had the thought that people, when they make decisions, they’re, you know, rational, logical sorts of people. But proximity theory and other things like gang theory show that people will naturally choose what’s most familiar to them even if there’s no actual expertise being demonstrated.
Dennis Yu: For example, the likelihood of you marrying somebody, some girl who was a classmate of yours in college, goes way up if she was in one of your same classes or in the same dormitory. Just people naturally hang out with other … People will do business … It’s just … People are intellectually lazy. They’ll just do business, get married, be best friends with people that they just happen to meet.
Joe Fier: Are you calling me lazy because I actually married a chick I went to middle school with?
Dennis Yu: That’s awesome. Those are the best love stories.
Joe Fier: No, it is. I know, but you’re totally spot on, man. This is great.
Dennis Yu: And people have only a certain amount of energy. Right?
Joe Fier: Yeah.
Dennis Yu: That’s physical energy and emotional, rational, logical, kind of calculating energy. And that’s why people go with whatever’s easier. I shop all day long on Amazon. The Amazon people come by our place twice a day. It’s like Christmas every day. Right?
Joe Fier: Yeah.
Dennis Yu: Because I love Amazon Prime, I love one-click. It’s dangerous. There’s all this stuff showing up, but when you buy stuff on Amazon, are you there reading all the reviews? You could spend a whole day doing all the research, couldn’t you?
Joe Fier: Yeah. Yeah. For sure.
Dennis Yu: [inaudible 00:27:11] just got a electric toothbrush. A Philips Sonicare, which is amazing, right?
Joe Fier: Mm-hmm (affirmative)-
Dennis Yu: You could literally … The best one there’s got 8,000 reviews. Right?
Joe Fier: Oh yeah.
Dennis Yu: And you could try to figure out exactly which one you want, but I’m the kind of guy … I’ll go on there, look at it like, hmm, this one’s got the most reviews, it’s rated 4.8 stars, it’s $79 or whatever it is. Okay, one-click. I’m done.
Joe Fier: Yep.
Matt Wolfe: Mm-hmm (affirmative)-
Dennis Yu: Good enough.
Joe Fier: And that’s the thing, yeah.
Dennis Yu: In economics, that’s something called rational ignorance. It means that people are intentionally ignorant because they’re willing to rely upon a heuristic, meaning a substitute factor, an arbitrary factor, potentially, to make that decision. Right?
Joe Fier: Mm-hmm (affirmative)- Mm-hmm (affirmative)-
Dennis Yu: Advertising and marketing is dependent upon maximizing the number of heuristic factors to leverage rational ignorance. That’s what you learn in psychology.
Joe Fier: Got it.
Dennis Yu: And me as a finance, math kind of guy, that doesn’t make sense because I Want to do whatever is the most logical thing. But people are not … When they’re in relationships … So when you Want to marry your middle school sweetheart, it’s not like you’re calculating how many points this one girl’s worth and this other point … And so girl’s like, how many points of beauty? How many points of intelligence? How many points of money? How many points … And you’re just calculating how many points each of these women have, right? You’re not doing that, right?
Joe Fier: Sure, sure.
Dennis Yu: Maybe somebody’s doing that.
Joe Fier: So the analytical guy, yeah.
Dennis Yu: Yeah, I used to do stuff like that.
Joe Fier: Well, this poses a good question because this is something that Matt and I were kind of stuck in for a while, and I think a lot of folks listening to this are probably feeling the same is direct marketing. You know, they’re trying to measure from start to finish exactly what you’re saying. You know, they’re trying to make sure every dollar spent is perfectly going to bring them an ROI, or else they’re not going to do it. Or if they can’t track it, they’re not going to do it.
Matt Wolfe: Yeah, and I think just being at the workshop that we were at, that was one of the things that we took away from that workshop was sort of breaking out of that thinking of everything we do needs to have a direct result right away, immediately. How much money in? How much money out?
Dennis Yu: Yeah, are you a pickup artist or are you developing relationships over time? We’re not saying blindly invest. Gary [inaudible 00:29:22], Chuck, and I have had a couple disagreements, shall we say. So he knows that I love to talk about analytics, and he’ll counter it by saying, “What’s the ROI of your [inaudible 00:29:31]?”
Dennis Yu: Right? To which I’m like, come on. And I’ll say … He’s so fast. You cannot get … He’s like a standup comedian. He’s so fast, if you take even a millisecond to say something, he’s already onto the next thing.
Matt Wolfe: Oh yeah, yeah.
Dennis Yu: [inaudible 00:29:45] it instantly. I don’t know how … This guy is like unlimited … It’s like verbal diarrhea. [crosstalk 00:29:49]
Dennis Yu: But what I would say to that is, to his point, is the most valuable things can’t be measured. And the things that can be measured, by definition, are not as valuable. And another way of looking at that is saying, the best things in life are free. You know, like love and respect and health or whatever. But the second best things in life are really expensive.
Matt Wolfe: That’s right.
Dennis Yu: So if you’re a direct marketer and you realize that’s the case, then you might think about how do you measure the value of your brand? Of your company brand?
Matt Wolfe: Mm-hmm (affirmative)-
Dennis Yu: Well, it’s the sum, as you learn in the workshop … It’s the sum of the positive and negative personal interactions that you, your community, your employees, customers, partners, all these people have. It’s the sum of all those little transactions. It’s like little bank account balances …
Matt Wolfe: Mm-hmm (affirmative)-
Dennis Yu: That you have with everybody. And some of them may be overdrawn and some of them may be very positive. You may have big bank accounts with a few friends because you built up a lot of trust so that if you bounce a check once in a while or you make a withdrawal of $10 you’re not going to, you know, go negative. Right?
Matt Wolfe: Right.
Dennis Yu: And so we view at scale, when you are building relationships and building your customer base, you Want to constantly be making small deposits. And you can measure what those things are. And that’s why Facebook and their newsfeed … Because how is Facebook deciding what shows up in the newsfeed? They’re using something called EdgeRank, which is the algorithm that shall not be named. Facebook gets mad. They’re like, “Can’t use EdgeRank.”
Matt Wolfe: Yeah.
Dennis Yu: Okay, well what do you want us to call it?
Dennis Yu: “Call it the algorithm. Call it … ”
Dennis Yu: You know, like, okay, whatever.
Joe Fier: The big A word.
Dennis Yu: [crosstalk 00:31:34] know whatever you Want to call it. But the point is that even Facebook is assigning who … Because Facebook can’t show you everything that’s going on with everyone. There’s just not enough space in the newsfeed. Even Twitter can’t, right?
Matt Wolfe: Yeah.
Dennis Yu: So they have to decide who they think is most … Who your best friends are, right? And who has content that’s most relevant to what you might care about based on what you like and your friends are doing and what’s going on right now next to you and this kind of thing. If you recognize that Facebook is using an algorithm to sort people and content, why would you align your marketing efforts along those same principles?
Joe Fier: It makes perfect sense, and I love the whole, you’re depositing … You’re growing these thermometers with all the folks out there who are actually engaged with you. And what Matt and I have been starting to call it is almost brand equity. So monetary, you know, you might have one line doing something, but the brand, you know … Especially with the dollar a day strategy, that can completely compound. And whereas your revenue might not be in line perfectly, but it sure as hell going to rise with it if you’re doing, you know … All the way down to the what style videos with call to actions and what not.
Dennis Yu: Yeah, it’s patience.
Joe Fier: Mm-hmm (affirmative)-
Dennis Yu: You know, it’s the difference between being a gardener, where you’re planting seeds and you know it takes time. You can’t just plant … I used to grow heirloom tomatoes. When I worked at Yahoo, I had 12 varieties of heirloom tomato. I had every single kind. Black Krim, sweet … What’s it … Sweet 1,000’s, yellow peach, different beefsteak, different cherry tomato types. I had ones that … Like Green Zebra, which are purple and green zigzag stripes on them.
Joe Fier: I’ve had those. Those are pretty crazy, yeah.
Dennis Yu: And once you have them, you realize supermarket tomatoes taste like cardboard.
Joe Fier: They do.
Dennis Yu: They’re just terrible. But the thing is that I was so careful. I bought multiple books on how you grow tomatoes, and how do you prepare the soil in the right way? You have to use room temperature water. You have to use fertilizer. You have to dig holes three feet deep so that the root system can build. Right? I was hardcore into tomatoes. Okay?
Joe Fier: Yeah.
Dennis Yu: And I understood that it took six to ten weeks for these tomato plants to grow. They would grow almost 10 feet tall.
Joe Fier: Wow.
Dennis Yu: I would yield 1,000 pounds of tomatoes from my tomato trees, basically. People would come over and say, “Dennis, those are tomato trees. Those aren’t tomato plants. What are you doing?”
Dennis Yu: I had these wire mesh cages, these trellises, that they would grow on because they were so heavy, they needed to be supported. Right? With these poles and all this. That’s the way I view growing relationships and growing the brand equity that you’re talking about. Because if I was just impulsive and I need sales right now and I’m a direct marketer and every dollar in, I need to see a dollar back right away. Well, fine. I’m just going to go to Whole Foods and buy something right now.
Joe Fier: Yep.
Dennis Yu: I’m not going to plant tomatoes. Because these impatient direct marketers, they’re basically … They’re like, okay, give me the dollar-a-day strategy. Alright, I put the seed in the ground. And then I pull up the seed an hour later, and I’m like, I don’t have any tomatoes yet. [crosstalk 00:34:38]
Joe Fier: Well hurry up. Come on. Speed up the tomatoes, bro. No, I’m kidding.
Dennis Yu: I literally had, I kid you not … This has happened to me 10 times where these guys that are gym owners,
okay? Maybe they own five or six crossfit gyms or whatever it is, right?
Matt Wolfe: Yeah.
Dennis Yu: And people come in over their … January because they have a new years resolution that they Want to do whatever, right? They come into these gyms. Of course, the gym owner, the instructors, have to say, “Hey, you’re not going to get six pack abs by next week. Okay? It’s going to take a little bit of time. We’ve put a program together.”
Dennis Yu: Right? But these are the same … Remember, these are what the gym owners are trying to do to set expectations with these new customers coming in. These very same gym owners come to us and then we tell them, “Hey, we need to build a funnel of awareness to engagement to conversion. We need to sequence people through this different kind of content until eventually they get to the [inaudible 00:35:31] content. We can sell them when they are ready to buy. Not when we happen to want them to buy.”
Matt Wolfe: Yep.
Dennis Yu: And then they get impatient after a few days, and they’re like, “Hey, I’m not seeing sales. I can’t afford to just willy nilly spend money in building my brand and getting more fans and getting more reach or videos. I need to see sales right away.”
Dennis Yu: And I’ll say, “Okay, you know that advice that you give to Aunt Sally who’s 43 years old and she’s coming in and she wants to lose weight? You should take that same advice for your digital marketing. [crosstalk 00:35:57] We’re all about driving sales, but you can’t behave that way, okay?”
Matt Wolfe: No, I love that analogy. That’s actually a perfect analogy.
Joe Fier: It is.
Matt Wolfe: I mean, there’s so much [crosstalk 00:36:07] with business and fitness that you could tie the analogies together, and that’s just a perfect way to do it.
Joe Fier: Well actually, interesting enough, I think Matt has used the tomato analogy before we ever knew you were a tomato grower. The fact that you said that, I was like, hell yes. It’s coming to real life.
Matt Wolfe: That’s awesome.
Joe Fier: No, yeah, go ahead Matt.
Matt Wolfe: So I have … How are you looking on time?
Dennis Yu: We’re good.
Matt Wolfe: We’re good? Okay, I’ve got two little rabbit holes that I think would be kind of fun to go down. One of them, when we were at the workshop, you kind of had a little bit of a system or process for getting on the radar of publication. So if there’s people out there that maybe Want to get featured in an Entrepreneur Magazine or an Inc. Magazine or at least their website or something, you had some tips for people on how to get their attention so that you potentially be featured on some of those platforms. Is that something you wouldn’t mind discussing real quick?
Dennis Yu: Of course. I’ll tell you all the secrets.
Matt Wolfe: Sweet.
Dennis Yu: You guys probably know that my co-founder Logan Young was interviewed on CNN. And they interviewed him about the whole Facebook thing where, you know, Mark Zuckerberg went to Congress, and he said, “Senator, we run ads.”
Dennis Yu: Right?
Matt Wolfe: Yeah.
Dennis Yu: So CNN asked Logan his opinion on whether Facebook was in trouble. Does this mean doom for advertisers? What’s going to happen with the government? Are they going to regulate? Asking him all these questions as the authority on all this Facebook stuff. But how did he get there? Why would CNN pick this guy who, three years ago, was driving for Pizza Hut for nine bucks an hour and didn’t even know who Mark Zuckerberg was and had no digital marketing expertise three years ago?
Matt Wolfe: Mm-hmm (affirmative)-
Dennis Yu: Why would CNN today ask him to be the guy to ask questions about?
Matt Wolfe: Mm-hmm (affirmative)-
Dennis Yu: Live, in front of millions of people. Right?
Matt Wolfe: Yeah.
Dennis Yu: Why?
Matt Wolfe: I’m assuming because he somehow managed to get on their radar using unique Facebook ads.
Dennis Yu: That’s right. That’s because he was featured three or four times on USA Today.
Matt Wolfe: That’s amazing.
Dennis Yu: USA Today asked him all these questions about, “Hey, so these Russians that had 170 million impressions and bought ads, how does that targeting work? And what kinds of ways did they structure their ad campaigns? How does Facebook … How does their algorithm work?”
Dennis Yu: And all this. And the way that he got on the USA Today was because he’s taught workshops.
Matt Wolfe: Mm-hmm (affirmative)-
Dennis Yu: And because he’s taken pictures and videos of himself at Facebook’s headquarters multiple times. And he’s been to Facebook’s offices all over the world. He’s keynoted at conferences all over the world. Right?
Matt Wolfe: Mm-hmm (affirmative)-
Dennis Yu: Could be Social Media Marketing World or Traffic & Conversion Summit or any of these other big ones. You know what the names of them are [crosstalk 00:38:56]
Matt Wolfe: Sure.
Dennis Yu: He’s spoken at all these, and that’s created authority. Speaking at the conference is not enough because what are we taking at these conferences? One minute videos. And we’re boosting them for a dollar a day against the people who work at CNN and The Wall Street Journal and USA Today and all these other places. And we’ve created audiences of all the people that work at these places. Not the people who read USA Today and watch CNN, but the people who work at these companies, right?
Matt Wolfe: Yeah.
Dennis Yu: And when we’ve done that over time, just like our whole tomato, working out to eventually get six pack abs analogy, over time, that results in media mentions. So some people will say, “Oh, okay. I got your dollar a day strategy. I’m going to target all the media, target influencers, target people in my industry, and these really tight audiences of people who are influential. And so I tried that for a week. You know, I boosted one post, and I wasn’t on CNN the next day. [inaudible 00:39:51] Your whole system’s a scam.”
Dennis Yu: Right? Yeah, so if I do as many crunches as I can … Let’s just say I do as many crunches as I can for four hours, will I have six pack abs ? Tonight?
Matt Wolfe: Unlikely. You’re getting closer, but not there.
Dennis Yu: Alright. Your exercise program’s a scam. I tried it. You see, it’s just the unrealistic expectations and then they don’t have good content. So then the next thing people say is, “Okay, yeah, fine. So you’ve got pictures of yourself with Mark Zuckerberg and hanging out at Facebook’s headquarters and doing all these important looking sorts of things. You know, flying first class and eating at fancy hotels. But if you are not? What if you don’t have those connections?”
Matt Wolfe: Right.
Dennis Yu: “What if you’re not keynoting at a conference?”
Matt Wolfe: Mm-hmm (affirmative)-
Dennis Yu: Right? They’ll say, “Yeah, it’s easy enough for you to say because once you’ve made your first million dollars, it’s easy to make another couple million dollars.”
Matt Wolfe: That’s right.
Dennis Yu: “It’s easy for you to talk about all these things that rich people do because you guys already have a lot of money.”
Dennis Yu: That’s the approach. What you do is you interview other people. So if you’re not on those shows, then find people who are B list celebrities. And this is when people say, “Oh, well, I Want to get an interview with Richard Branson or Gary Vaynerchuk or Elon Musk.”
Dennis Yu: I’m like, dude. You don’t start there. Start with someone in your community. Start with somebody that’s approachable. Start by, you know … People who have podcasted are really small, right? And then start to build that influence up. And when you do the dollar a day strategy … Here’s something that one of my favorite mentees, Mark Lack … I love good students that apply what we teach because it works. And then they come back and say, “Wow, it worked.”
Dennis Yu: Yeah, it’s because, you know, you follow the recipe, you get chocolate cake.
Matt Wolfe: Yeah.
Dennis Yu: My buddy Mark Lack, five year ago he was basically a brat. He’ll admit that. And he went around and hung out with rich kids and he was a … basically like a professional paintball player, but didn’t have any kind of career or anything like that. And he started … But because he was hanging out in L.A. with all of these rich Hollywood kids and this kind of thing, you know, the kids of all these rich parents. Because his dad’s got money.
Dennis Yu: Then he realized that he could interview these parents. And he also started to interview with people that were well known like, you know, John Lee Dumas or whoever it might be. He’d interview with all these people and get 100 views or 200 views on these interviews [inaudible 00:42:20] podcasts and YouTube videos and this kind of thing, but it wasn’t getting traction, and he wanted to be the young Tony Robins, which he now is.
Matt Wolfe: Mm-hmm (affirmative)-
Dennis Yu: He wanted to get his TV show, which he has now. He wanted to speak at conferences, which he’s done now. And it was from taking those interviews of B list people and boosting them for a dollar a day against their own audiences. So the thing that really broke through for Mark was that he interviewed Tai Lopez.
Matt Wolfe: Mm-hmm (affirmative)-
Dennis Yu: And he said, “No, why would Tai Lopez agree to this?”
Dennis Yu: “Because” he said, “I guarantee that our interview together will get at least 100,000 views on Facebook, and all you have to do is let me film you in your office and in your garage with your books and the Lamborghinis and all that. And I’ll be in and out within half an hour. Our guys will do the set up. We’re not going to hang around. We know exactly what we’re doing. Half an hour, I guarantee you 100,000 views.”
Dennis Yu: So what did Tai say?
Matt Wolfe: Hell yeah. Let’s do this.
Dennis Yu: Hell yeah. So that’s what he did. Filmed a good interview. Did his research. Didn’t waste time.
Matt Wolfe: Right.
Dennis Yu: Knows how to talk. Both of them know how to talk. I would argue that Mark is a slicker talker, but Tai has more money. And then he took those interviews on Facebook and boosted them to Tai’s audience.
Matt Wolfe: Yes.
Dennis Yu: And got these things up to two hundred, 300,000, half a million views. Tai saw that, but guess who else saw that? Grant Cardone and Naveen Jain and Gary Vaynerchuk and Tony Robins and Tilman Fertitta and … Now, Mark’s had interviews with tons of billionaires. So why does he even care with having, you know, interviews with millionaires when he can have interviews with billionaires?
Matt Wolfe: There you go.
Dennis Yu: He’s interviewed most of the Shark Tank people. He’s got a really good one of Daymond John. We’ve cut that into a few different segments and boosted that out there.
Matt Wolfe: Mm-hmm (affirmative)- Mm-hmm (affirmative)-
Dennis Yu: So all you need’s that one piece. Even if you don’t have any kind of fame, you can approach someone who’s B list or even A list. I don’t recommend approaching an A list person if you’re not a pro at interviewing because you’re going to blow it. You don’t Want to blow your first one.
Matt Wolfe: Right. Right.
Dennis Yu: It just looks bad, okay? Learn how to speak. Don’t just go try to keynote … Well first off, these conference organizers won’t let you keynote unless you’re a proven speaker. Right?
Matt Wolfe: Right. Yeah.
Dennis Yu: Speak at a webinar. Speak on a panel first. Speak on a solo session before you Want to be the keynote walking around making a fool of yourself. So, you know, get something that is medium authority and boost it so that people can see. Just put 100 bucks against the thing. Edit the one minute versions. Find something that’s working, get that cost per 10 second view down to a penny, and then you can generate tens of thousands of views that gives you the perceived authority. Which then you take that post and you can re-boost it to the media. Right? You can boost it.
Matt Wolfe: Oh yeah.
Dennis Yu: Mark Lack could boost that initial interview to Tai Lopez or to his fans and that’ll generate tons of views because it’s 18 year old males in California, which people aren’t targeting so you get that traffic super cheap.
Matt Wolfe: Right.
Dennis Yu: And then once that thing’s generated lots of social proof, meaning lots of views, likes, comments, that kind of thing, then he changes that boost or creates a new ad targeting the media or targeting the people that are going to be at the National Association of Chiropractors or whatever. Let’s say he’s speaking at that conference next, right?
Matt Wolfe: Mm-hmm (affirmative)-
Dennis Yu: You can take any of the content you’ve created … As you learned in our workshop … You can take any content, even if it’s years old, and show it fresh to anyone that you want using the dollar a day tactic. You have to advertise. There’s no other way to do it.
Matt Wolfe: Right. And that’s absolutely amazing. I think that’s what we loved the most at the workshop …
Joe Fier: That’s absolutely amazing. I think that’s what we loved the most out of the workshop, is because Matt and I have always been big proponents of repurposing content. But the way that you can now put any eyeballs you really want in front of that content, connect the two to open up doors that you never thought was possible with sticking with, “I’m just going to grow my email list, and blah blah.” No. Leverage Facebook, and I believe you can do this on LinkedIn as well, is what you’re doing as well. Right? Another platform.
Dennis Yu: Yeah, you can, but you can’t do it off a profile. It has to be a company profile. It’s minimum $10 a day. The cost is too high. You can still do workplace and job-title targeting. A lot of that is being pulled away from Facebook, unfortunately.
Joe Fier: Got it.
Dennis Yu: Principle of a dollar a day against one-minute videos is evergreen. It’ll last forever. It doesn’t matter what changes Facebook has. Yet 99% of people, they’ll listen to this podcast, if your audience is like any of these other audiences, and they’ll say “Oh, that’s really interesting.” And not do anything.
Joe Fier: That’s right.
Matt Wolfe: No, that’s true. Yeah, I mean, when we went to the event, one of the things that was a big takeaway for me … we boost a lot of content, we run Facebook ads all the time, but it’s always our content. Right? It’s always the stuff that’s on our website. It was always very focused on getting more people back to our website. And one of the things we started doing after your event is we started rounding up in a spreadsheet anywhere we’ve been mentioned; any other podcasts we’ve been featured on; YouTube videos where people interviewed us. And we rounded all those up into a spreadsheet, and we started boosting content or boosting posts to other people’s websites, other people’s content that sort of boosted our brand, boosted our awareness, boosted our credibility. We started boosting that stuff and stopped focusing as much on boosting stuff on our own website.
Dennis Yu: And what have you noticed?
Matt Wolfe: Well, one thing I can tell you that we’ve noticed is pretty much anytime we go to any sort of networking event or conference or anything like that, we get people coming up to us now saying, “I see your ads everywhere. I know about you guys because of your podcast.” And up until two months ago, we didn’t know. We’d never really heard much feedback about our podcast. But just in the last couple months, it’s just constant. Anytime we go anywhere, people seem to know us from our podcast. Even though we’re boosting our podcast less frequently, we’re actually boosting content on other people’s site more frequently.
Dennis Yu: And that’s the trick. If I had a choice of boosting a blog post that’s on blitzmetrics.com versus a guest post that I’ve written on Social Media Examiner, I will spend money to boost the Social Media Examiner post. Meaning, and I’ve had this argument hundreds of times, I prefer spending money to send traffic to other people’s websites. And then, they’ll say, “Why would you do that because then you don’t get to fire your Pixel?” And then, “You want to send them to your site because then you can sell them consulting and packages and all that.” And like, “Yes. But we have to move through the cycle of know, like, and trust. We have to establish credibility. We have to educate them. We have to show them that we know what we’re talking about.” And if they want to hire you, if they want to reach out, believe me, they will find a way to reach out. It’s not about your landing page design. They will find you if they want to find you.
Matt Wolfe: Yeah. And not to mention, too, the more you do that kind of stuff where you boost to other people’s podcasts, the more podcasters want to have you on because they know you’re going to drive traffic back to them.
Dennis Yu: Yeah. And so we are going to spend our money to boost your podcast and send traffic to your site. Why wouldn’t you like that?
Matt Wolfe: That’s right.
Joe Fier: Absolutely. And that’s the exact same thing we do with other podcasts we go on. So I love it. Yeah.
Dennis Yu: Because you’re in the media. You have to think of your … this is the whole Inception thing, the whole thing behind dollar a day, which is the dream inside the dream inside the dream … you know, Inception, the movie?
Matt Wolfe: Sure.
Joe Fier: Uh-huh.
Dennis Yu: In order to influence the media, you have to become the media. You have to treat yourselves like the media because you have authority instead of you’re just some salesperson, “Buy my stuff. Buy my stuff.” And that’s the shift. When people have that bit shift in their mind, everything in Facebook opens up. And they realize that the authority comes from them interviewing other people on high-power stages or high-power events. Right?
Joe Fier: Right.
Dennis Yu: And it’s the sharing of that where you’re trying to make other people look good that they then reciprocate. So nowhere here do I want to talk about myself. But I know that if we share our knowledge, and I give you our checklists, and they’re good checklists, and we know that if you try these recipes because we’ve tried them many, many, many times and they work, then you’re going to do our marketing for us. And that’s when we want to boost your content. Because I want to boost the things that you’re saying that are good about us, which has always been good. Right?
Joe Fier: Yeah. Take that, direct marketers. No, really, it’s a perfect combination if direct marketers can wrap their brains around this and bring a little patience to their lives, put some money behind that. You pair this strategy along with some great strategies of firing Pixels and all that. You’re just going to exponentially help everything in the process.
Dennis Yu: Yeah. And then, just like you talk about with Evergreen Profits or building systematic, repeatable, hands-free, residual income kinds of, four-hour work week kind of stuff, this is exactly in line with that. Because the things that are producing us revenue today, most of them are seeds that we planted 10 years ago, plus. We could stop making content today, and everything would work just as well as it has. We don’t have to make new content. We love to because we’re addicts and addicts can’t stop, but. I think they must put crack inside the In and Out hamburgers.
Joe Fier: That’s amazing. And one little thing, too, I remember you saying with content creation, a lot of folks tried to kind of over-complicate that stuff. And you made a really good point of when you get an idea for a piece of content, you just whip out your phone right there, and I think you said you do an audio recording of the concept or at least get it out. Get it out of your head while the idea strikes.
Dennis Yu: Yeah. Same thing with brainstorming. Don’t overthink it, or don’t say, “Ah, I’ll do it tomorrow. I’m busy right now.” You would not believe the number of blog posts I’ve written from the toilet.
Joe Fier: I believe it.
Dennis Yu: I’ll just dictate something. Right?
Joe Fier: Yeah.
Dennis Yu: Because you got to get it done. Like, if you’re in the shower … Most people, they have their shower thoughts, right, where they get some kind of realization. But then by the time they step out of the shower and they’re off to go to work or do … they forgot about their thing and then, by then … by tomorrow it’s too late. Right?
Joe Fier: It’s done. Yeah.
Dennis Yu: Yeah.
Matt Wolfe: Yeah, yeah. We actually set up a little automation where we make these videos with our iPhone. They automatically go into a Dropbox. When they go into Dropbox, we use a tool called Zapier, which sends it to Rev.com. So in our Dropbox folder, there’s the video with the captions and the transcription. So now, just by recording that video and throwing it in Dropbox, we now have video content; we can rip out the audio and have audio content; and the text is automatically transcribed from Rev, so we have written content. And then, we actually hired somebody in the Philippines. literally, we did this the next day after leaving your workshop. We hired somebody in the Philippines to load that content on a daily basis for us into Facebook.
Joe Fier: And Instagram. CutStory. I mean, so many automations, not just boosting our posts as well. It’s like a-
Dennis Yu: That’s right. And you should pay her more too.
Joe Fier: It’s one person.
Dennis Yu: Start them off at like 3 bucks an hour. Then, when they learn how to boost posts and learn how to actually optimize, move them up to 4 bucks an hour, which is still nothing.
Joe Fier: Yeah.
Dennis Yu: Right? We have someone-
Matt Wolfe: Oh, man. She’s raking us over the coals. We’re paying her 6 bucks an hour.
Dennis Yu: 6 bucks. Wow. She must be pretty good. You can give her our training too, right, so she can level up.
Joe Fier: That’s actually a very good point.
Dennis Yu: How many VAs do you have?
Matt Wolfe: Well, VAs, as far as social media, we’ve just got the one. We also have an operations manager. And we’ve got a customer support person. And we’ve got a couple sales people. But as far as VAs for handling that kind of stuff, from the Philippines, we just have the one right now.
Dennis Yu: Oh, man. Once you get past three VAs or four VAs, you start to tap into magic because then you have VAs that are managing and hiring and screening and training other VAs. Right?
Joe Fier: Yeah.
Dennis Yu: So this one girl, she’s amazing. See if she might be able to train up other people. And then, you could, provided that you’re a sharing, kind of non-greedy person, you can kind of farm her out to some of your friends and have her set up their stuff. And then, hire a couple more people. And then she’s managing a team of people doing this across your clients.
Joe Fier: That’s funny you say that because we were literally just talking today of how we were going to start doing a lot more done-for-you type setups, partially like-
Dennis Yu: Because people-
Joe Fier: … and use her as, to farm her out. But this is perfect. Yeah.
Matt Wolfe: Absolutely.
Dennis Yu: And then, use our … So send me an email, and I’ll send you our VA hiring guide and our processes. And it has all of our canned notes on what we send to our VAs at every step of the process. And that includes our training too.
Matt Wolfe: I love it. I love it.
Joe Fier: Wow. That’s awesome, Dennis. Thank you. We will.
Matt Wolfe: Now, I had one last sort of quick question I wanted to ask before we wrap up here. And it was going back to Facebook ads. When we went to the event, you gave some really cool tips. I remember one of the tips was when you post your Facebook ad, start using the feelings. Right? I’m feeling happy. I’m feeling excited. And it seems like that kind of helps give a little boost. Are there any other little quick tips, little quick hits that people can do that might improve their ads?
Dennis Yu: Oh, yeah. So the reason why you do the feeling … I like to do feeling inspired, feeling happy, or feeling angry as my favorite emoticons that I like to use. I can use traveling too or other activities, celebrating a birthday. The reason why that works is that’s the kind of thing that a friend would say as opposed to a brand or someone trying to sell you something would say. So the more you can make your stuff not look like an advertisement, the more it’s going to pass that initial screen. And that’s why the one-minute video shot on your iPhone will often outperform the $50,000 professionally produced cinematography kind of stuff that you see made. Because that stuff is obviously a commercial.
Dennis Yu: So let me tell you four or five things that fit in that same kind of mindset on getting ads to work because it looks like something from a person.
Dennis Yu: One, is have it come from a public figure page, not your brand page. So it’s your face. It’s your name. It’s not Joe of Evergreen Profits; it’s first name, last name.
Dennis Yu: Two, set up a chat bot. We really like Mobile Monkey. And a chat bot will deliver messages and simulate what it’s like to have a chat with a friend. If you have lightweight touches where you’re not trying to sell … Maybe you collect an email address. Maybe you share a link to something. Right? So your simulating what a true friend to friend human interaction would be like.
Dennis Yu: Three, is you share photos with short little captions, not paragraphs and paragraphs of stuff.
Dennis Yu: Four, don’t use hashtags. This is not Twitter or Instagram. Right?
Matt Wolfe: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dennis Yu: Five, do not put links inside your posts because then it looks like a brand trying to promote stuff. Right?
Joe Fier: Right.
Dennis Yu: Have everything look as human as possible, as if a user had put it out there. And then, boost it to the people that you want to see. So that even though it’s going to say sponsored in gray, which means it’s an ad, if you have enough social proof where it says Matt and Joe and Christian like this, that’s what people are going to see, and they’re not going to see the little gray sponsored thing.
Joe Fier: Right. I love how you have to describe to us how to be human.
Dennis Yu: Isn’t that funny? So people come to us for tech geek stuff, and here we are telling them about social etiquette. And then they come out of these workshops saying, “Oh, my goodness. My mind was blown. It was amazing. It was all this technical stuff about the algorithm.” No, dude. Just act like you would with your friends if you were eating at the pavilion barbecue where they’re slicing steaks at you. Act like you would act there. Okay?
Matt Wolfe: Now, I have a quick follow-up question based on what you said. Is there a place for the actual brand page? Because, obviously, Joe and I, we’re business partners, so I have a personal page, he has a personal page, and then we have
the brand page.
Dennis Yu: Of course.
Matt Wolfe: So right now, almost all of our social media content is going out through the brand page because that’s sort of our combined effort. So I was wondering what your thoughts on that are.
Dennis Yu: See, you guys are a two-headed dragon. So you should have a public-figure page for each of you. Don’t be like those people that have Facebook profiles where you can’t tell … it’s like there’s two faces in the profile picture, and you can’t … You know what I’m talking about?
Matt Wolfe: Right.
Joe Fier: Right, right, right.
Dennis Yu: The little girlfriend and her boyfriend’s there, but then their both equally in the picture, so you can’t tell whose, like which one. Don’t do that. Have one public-figure page which is not a profile. One public-figure page for each of you. And then, you guys are sharing … Remember we talked about why, how, and what?
Matt Wolfe: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dennis Yu: So that’s top, middle, and bottom of the funnel. You’re going to share your why and your how content from your public-figure page. The stuff that you’re selling, which is the what, you’re going to have that on the Evergreen Profits brand page. So you’re going to sequence people there. You can remarket. We don’t really have time to talk about how you set up remarketing, but, basically, people who watch video one or engage with a particular page, then tell them about this particular product or service or consulting or whatever you have. Right?
Joe Fier: Makes perfect sense.
Matt Wolfe: Yep.
Joe Fier: Yeah. All the relatability stuff comes from the public figure pages. You do all that engagement, get them hot and bothered. Get them interested in what you’re doing, and then you hit them with the EGP, which is still our brand. But then that’s the-
Dennis Yu: Exactly.
Joe Fier: Yeah.
Dennis Yu: You don’t send them straight to the brand page because that is a hard sell. You got to warm them up, like you said.
Joe Fier: Yeah. I love it. No, that makes perfect sense. That was the debate we had, and I’m going to have to adjust a few things. But that’s okay. We’re pretty close. Cool. Well, Matt, did you have anything else?
Matt Wolfe: We covered so much ground.
Joe Fier: I know.
Matt Wolfe: This has been amazing. Are you doing more of these workshops? If people listening are interested in maybe seeing you speak and diving deeper on this, are you doing more of those?
Dennis Yu: Yeah. We have workshops every month. Our next workshop … which you guys should consider coming; we’ll give you a sweetheart deal … is August 23rd to 25th in Phoenix at Infusionsoft’s headquarters. It’s three full days.
Joe Fier: Wow.
Matt Wolfe: Oh, wow.
Dennis Yu: And you can find out about it at blitzmetrics.com/workshop, or you can go to teamblitznation.com. And you’ll see that we have a membership, which is $159 a month. And if you get the VIP, you get to go to both of the three-day workshops, which are in Phoenix, in person. Hang out with our team. It’s an implementation workshop, not like a conference. It’s a mastermind, plus we bring our people to help implement everything.
Joe Fier: Love it. Yeah. No, you guys are the real deal. And anyone listening, definitely, the workshop is worth every penny, even if you don’t take up the VIP thing. But definitely do that because it will take a lot of weight off of your shoulders. You’re already doing enough. Dennis, any books or anything that you like to reference on an ongoing basis that you’d like to recommend here, too? And business related or if it’s outside of business, something that inspires you?
Dennis Yu: Yeah. I’d say three of them. One is my good friend, Allen Gannett, he wrote a book called The Creative Curve. And it talks about how you build creative power and talent and ideas inside your organization at scale, and how creativity is not about some moment of genius, but comes through repetition, comes through imitation, comes through having mentors. And it really aligns with the way I think about how do you be successful instead of like Beethoven sits down at the piano, and all of a sudden this masterpiece comes out. That’s not how genius works. So it’s interesting. The Creative Curve by Allen Gannett.
Dennis Yu: Number two is The Standards of Excellence, which is by my co-founder, Logan Young. Which is how do you optimize and figure out whether your Facebook marketing’s working or not? So if you’ve got lots and lots of ads, you’ve got lots of campaigns, you got lots of creative, how do you figure out what’s working or not? Which kinds of things should you kill versus tune up and keep it going and try to figure out if you can make it better and put more money against it? Or maybe it’s just not working because it’s the wrong audience. Or maybe it’s the content sucks but it’s the right audience. How do you figure that out. And that’s at blitzmetrics.com/soe, which is for Standards of Excellence.
Dennis Yu: Number three, my last one. I’ve read 4,500 books in the last 40-something years.
Joe Fier: It doesn’t surprise me, by the way.
Matt Wolfe: I’m surprised that you actually know that number of books specifically.
Dennis Yu: I have apps to track these sorts of things.
Matt Wolfe: Nice.
Dennis Yu: And I’ve also done so much moving that when I hire people on Craigslist to move my boxes of books, they don’t like that. That’s okay. They’re being paid 10 bucks an hour.
Dennis Yu: But I’ve read a lot of books, and I’m very picky about the kind of books that I’ll read. The recommendation I’ll make to you guys is Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. And it talks about what the world looks like in 10 or 15 years where everything’s automated, and technology and AI has caught up to the point where everything can be for free because we’ve figured out how to produce things at mass production at no cost. And there’s now a currency … it’s kind of like Whuffie and Cory Doctorow of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. But people are living in the Metaverse, and they’re able to engage … And you see how humans behave in a combined virtual and physical world.
Dennis Yu: And I view science fiction as entrepreneurs that are just too far ahead of their time. Right? Entrepreneurs are like five years ahead of current reality because they have to bring things to market within a window that’s just ahead, like Crossing the Chasm, early adopters, Geoffrey Moore. But science fiction folks, the good ones, are twenty years ahead where it’s too early to commercialize something. And so the way I learn about marketing, about what’s going to happen in business, I do not read business books. I think they’re crap. I’ve read so many of them. I think they’re almost all crap, including the management and consulting books.
Dennis Yu: I’m very selective. I read certain kinds of science fiction, and that’s how I learn.
Joe Fier: That makes perfect sense. And I love the analogy, the whole, the sci-fi being really far out there. Because, I mean, yeah, we’ve talked to a lot of folks where they might … I talked to a guy yesterday. He was like, “10 years ago we were doing SAAS stuff. We were trying to do all these analytics and tracking and all that, but no one knew what a SAS was. Tracking was like way before anybody was thinking about that kind of stuff.”
Dennis Yu: Because it’s more science and fiction.
Joe Fier: Yeah. And that’s exactly what it was. And this guy’s … yeah. It’s pretty amazing because now he’s like, “Yeah. I see old people, and they’re 65, 70 years old talking about SAS.” And he’s like, “What the hell?”
Matt Wolfe: Yeah. No, I love those book recommendations. One of my favorite books of all time was the Ready Player One book. Somebody told me once, “If you love Ready Player One, you got to pick up Snow Crash. You’ll love that too.”
Dennis Yu: Oh, yeah. And every time you hear about a movie, don’t wreck it by just … because the book’s always better. And you hear that, right?
Matt Wolfe: Right.
Joe Fier: Oh, yeah.
Dennis Yu: And it’s true. It really is true in this case.
Joe Fier: Awesome. That’s great, Dennis. And to wrap it up, head over to www.teamblitznation.com.
Matt Wolfe: Awesome. Cool. We’ll link that up in the show notes, for sure.
Dennis Yu: Cool.
Joe Fier: Awesome. I think that’s about it, man. Well, we’ll definitely keep in touch. And you’ll probably start seeing our faces more and more showing up in …
Dennis Yu: I see your pixel on evergreenprofits.com, so I assume I’m going to get re-targeted.
Matt Wolfe: There’s a good chance. Yeah.
Joe Fier: You will. You will. Alright, Dennis. Well, thanks so much for your time, and we’ll be in touch here.
Dennis Yu: Cool. Thanks, Matt and Joe.
Matt Wolfe: Thank you.
