Hi everyone, this is George. Welcome to this unique conversation. I'm here with Peter Rubin and Tom Buford and actually the guy who brought us together was Peter in terms of this project. He had this idea of what if we put together a just we collaborate on a resource that that gave our opinion on all the different marketing methods out there that could serve our that could be useful for our clients and our audience and so Peter started the spreadsheet that you're going to you're going to see on the screen soon and and then Tom and I went in and added some of our own ideas in there and then we scored it Our scores may differ if given giving our own experiences with what's worked for our clients ourselves as well as our audience so Just take it take it take it How you want it and then there's a total score column You'll see that adds us together so that hopefully we're going to start talking about the marketing methods that we collectively scored the highest first and But let me actually allow Peter Tom you guys to introduce yourselves Just from for who I am I have been in the marketing coaching industry for for seven years and My focus these days has been to create a lot of content shared on social media and what I particularly like to how I differentiate myself with a lot of my previous peers These not these guys on the line, but my previous peers I would say I'm I like to focus on authenticity in marketing having integrity and really serving people Doing really right by by our conscience and by the people we're serving in our audience. So anyway, that's a bit about me Peter, can I turn it over to you? Yeah, thank you George I Guess first I'll share that this idea came to me because many of my clients are confused about what marketing methods to do and it's really understandable There are so many different options. I think we came up with 35 or so different marketing methods And even if you're in the industry and you're a business coach It's a lot to keep track of and I wanted to put some brilliant minds together and And have a recommendation because I find that my clients do best when they pick one maybe two methods and stick with it Rather than chase after the next new periscope so So that's why I want to do this and who I am. I'm a business coach I help visionaries give birth their business My partner is a midwife. So I think of myself as a business midwife Helping with that messy early stage of taking your ideas and then realizing them in the world and Marketing is a huge part of it because without marketing. No one knows what you're doing So I'm looking forward to this and and it's Tom Yeah, so my name is Tom Buford and I met George Well, but how long ago George? Yeah five years ago something like that. Yeah, yeah So I've been doing doing online marketing about the same amount of time. I started in 2007 actually following up a bankruptcy So I had a painting business way back when doing automotive paint repair did well with that But had health concerns got out of that went into real estate Started doing real estate in 2004 or 5 or 6 really bad time if you look back It's history tells us so hindsight is 2020 and Got out of that and realized, you know, I've made some mistakes But I've had a lot of experiences that I can share So I started getting into business coaching and started developing products and one thing led to the other and and I started really getting into the online marketing and George and I found ourselves collaborating on some referral partnerships promotional partnerships and Both kind of took a step back. I think you did before I did but that's something we realized Kind of the way the industry was going so it's one of the reasons you and I connected through this is just having pretty candid conversations about What's working? What, you know, a lot of things work that maybe we shouldn't be doing and But there are plenty of things that we can do out there that that are Still keeping our clients in mind first. So yeah, so I'm really Part of this conversation and I would say that what works in the short term doesn't always work in the long term and What works in the long term sometimes doesn't work in the short term and so What's interesting? I mean Tom you and I we've we've seen Probably a number of our joint venture partners their businesses kind of go away because maybe they were using some of those short-term tactics that was was not as As within as much integrity as it could have been and people eventually find people always find out eventually So all right without further ado, let me just share the screen And what I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna let me make it a little bit bigger. So it's easier to see and Not people can I have you intro this or however you want to? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah So what we've created here is Let me see I can't scroll on it, right? Oh, yeah, you know what? Let me give you access Scrolling here Now you have it. Oh very cool So really simply this is a list of marketing methods that we created collaboratively and and We distilled a lot of information into very pithy descriptions of what the method is what category it's in And a brief description about what it is and why you might want to use it and As George mentioned we each gave it a score from one to five Five being this is one of our top recommendations for clients and one being we don't recommend it for whatever reason So what I was thinking we do is just go down the list spend about a minute or two on each one And give just like the most cliffnotes version of the marketing method and in our thoughts on it Some of these we could spend you know a week teaching, right? So we're just gonna give you a little pointer and the idea is that if you feel some resonance with it You can check out our websites or do a Google search and learn more about it And how you might how many you might actually implement it for your business Awesome Cool. Let's just grab the ones that are speaking to us Maybe maybe the person who added it someone who rated it highly could talk about it. Okay, so I added this online networking one Where I'm not even gonna see which ones I I'll just kind of jump in here the The the reason I added this is because there was there's another line later Which you'll see which is networking and networking typically is thought of as and this is actually important to address networking is Typically thought of as in person you go to a meet-up event you go to conferences Maybe you go to association meetings trade shows that kind of thing And more even just parties you go to and you kind of meet people. I Have I've never been good at that personally. Maybe that's why I ran ever I rated online networking hire I've always been kind of stuck with one person in a party Yeah, I can't get away from them because I'm just too nice and the one like the conversation and so I get stuck I'm not great. I'm not going a personal networking in person So online networking works well for me because I get to choose who I want a message I don't have to feel like I have to be right there and I we can have a basically like an email conversation or Facebook message and conversation and there are so many ways of doing it, but Basically, it's reaching out to me the way I think about it's reaching out to kindred spirits who Doesn't matter they could be become a potential client or client They could be a a colleague a referral partner or simply a new friend and someone to encourage one another And so that's how I think of online networking Great, any anything else to add? Yeah, one thing I'll add is it We'll talk about Facebook groups later on. Yeah, but when you keep it in the Facebook group It's hard to develop a real connection with someone, you know You could be messaging with them for months and not really get a sense of them So what I love to do is invite people to a virtual tea where I have an online Scheduler and say, you know click here and let's talk for half an hour and I'll do that if I feel resonance with someone online And if you do one of those, you know one of those a week you have 52 new connections over a year Yeah, so yeah one thing to I would consider this right here one version of online networking So it can look a lot of different ways and and four days ago Peter and I hadn't been introduced in George put this together or well They put this together initially through Peter and then George asked me to join along so You know, it's a great way for Peter and I to connect and develop our own Relationship to moving forward so it doesn't have to be just to a client or a potential client or referral partner or something like that It just be someone you can collaborate on ideas in business and it really helps if you're stuck behind a computer all day doing this So that you're getting with people who understand what you do if you're a coach you probably explain your spouse Probably still doesn't know what you do so Yeah, and of course we can thank you for that and and we can take online networking offline as well I've met some people after years of messaging with him online We finally meet in person and it feels like an old friend. Yeah, so that's great. Yeah. Yeah Hey Tom, I'm gonna send this to have you start on this. Okay Yeah, so email newsletters as anyone watching this you probably get inundated with your newsletters and they think you don't want to do your own But I think it's you know curating it down to the ones that are most important to you because there's a lot of great information being shared through newsletters a lot of Bs too, but you know you filter through it and you get down to the ones that you want to read But for you as the the thought leader the business owner it's really important to stay in touch with people and An email is one of the easiest ways to do that even people that teach social media marketing are telling you to get people off of social media and onto an email list because if Facebook disappears tomorrow, which it won't but You know, you can't connect with those people anymore. So you're relying on on these other Networks so when you're building relationship with people you get people that are interested and you can continue to build To deliver value and that's the the critical part is don't just pitch people You know deliver value build a relationship Statistics show that people need to get between seven and nine High value low risk touches from you before they're you know going to commit some people commit sooner Some people never will but it really is a good way for you to do that. It's also easy to share So and it keeps you focused on, you know, I think Creating content on a regular basis and getting it out there to your newsletter list. So I think that's one of the keys to Yeah, right on Peter you want to say anything about? Yeah, I'll actually George something I like about your newsletter is that you don't take a lot of time writing it You just have you know links to your blog articles, right? And one thing I do is that they always say to do email newsletters consistently and for me It's just not a top priority for my business. So I've given myself permission to write an email when I have something to say Yeah, and for me just treating it like any other relationship, you know And reaching out when I feel inspired I have something to celebrate or something to teach To me that feels more aligned with my energy and it makes it go from, you know marketing chore to something really authentic I like it. I guess I went out today celebrating three big things that happen, right? So I don't you know, I don't sell very much at all just a way to reach out and to connect. Great idea. Yeah, great One thing I'll add about email newsletters is this the analytics that come with it. So with With, you know, you were able to see How many opens you get for an email? I mean, I use MailChimp and so you can even see who clicked on on on the links And you can even see who opened it the most and one one idea that Done, but I think I will reach out to the people who Opened my emails the most right and that's that's one idea to say. Oh, these are my fans These are these are people I want to build more more of a relationship with so That's one Peter do you want to yeah, I'd love to speaking is if I were to pick one You know to give us four of six who would be speaking So the way I think about it is that there are two factors to look at in our marketing one is Volume how many people we reach at once and two is intimacy. So how deeply can we touch someone and? Speaking does both right because it's it's not a one-to-one thing. It's a one-to-many thing We're in front of a room of you know, 10 20 30 a hundred people And when you're in person with a room, they just get such a good sense of who you are I Love speaking in 2014 speaking was my my only marketing method. I didn't even have a website I had literally one page website with a newsletter sign up and I had a waiting list coaching practice by speaking twice a month No Some of those were my own meetup some of them were through partnerships with educational organizations So what I'll say about speaking is whenever a gig comes my way And and the audience is aligned if the audience is aligned with who I want to serve I say yes to it. Hmm. There's another way of using speaking where you're actually going out searching for gigs You know reaching out and that's more that's more involved. It's not something I do personally But that's another a whole nother skill set is how do you find those speaking arrangements? Yeah and Peter how have you been able to get people to attend your in-person events So them and I said the main thing I do is I speak at other people's venues So so usually, you know, I'll put a post on Facebook. I'll write my newsletter You know, maybe I'll get a third of the people to show up But two-thirds of the audience is from someone else's community. You're there at their newsletter One thing I'll also say about content is Speaking is not as hard as it seems, you know, people say it's your number one, you know, it's a number one human fear Yeah, you know somewhere up there in your death, right? But I think of it as teaching more than speaking. Yeah, I go up there. I have, you know, three or four things. I want to teach And I just share it I share it freely and I have exercises and I have it be interactive So I've and I help my clients speak in a way that's authentic to them Yeah, some of them are more like motivational speakers others are more facilitators. Yeah, different people have their own flavor of it Awesome. Yeah Well, I guess what I want to add is I totally agree with you that speaking I would say is probably on this whole list the number one way to gain new clients Now the reason why I ranked it a four instead of a five is I'm a contrarian. No, it's because I I find it very time time and energy intensive for me To do speaking, you know, I love it. I so love being on stage And also I find it challenging to well It's it's I probably need to spend more effort and time doing this But I find it challenging to actually get speaking gigs So, you know, I end up doing like two or three a year Just just not even reaching out and people reaching out to me and inviting me But but in terms of getting a something regular going Peter I really admire that you've been able to do that. Yeah, Tom. Anything you want to add on this? Yeah, I mean, I would have to say I agree 100% if you have to give one of these a six speaking is probably it because it's As he said he filled his practice by doing one thing without having a fancy website It can be fearful to do it But if you just share great information and just share something from your heart gives, you know Three four tips that people can take away.  Just share good information It's gonna be valuable and and it's I've done some speaking in the past It's fallen my way and I'm really looking to add that as one of my main probably my main I mean honestly the number one thing that I do moving forward because it has been Fun and definitely effective because you do connect people. I can think of the few times I've spoken Even starting gosh, I think seven years back when I did my first speaking gig And I still have people that I know are connected with me on my newsletter And clients in the past purchase products from from a couple of these gigs. So Definitely effective Awesome. Good and there's a lot of training out there on how to how to do it You know, there's a book that I'm reading called the message of you So it's you know, even if you're just getting started cheap You know Judy Carter has a lot of great tips on how to get started and find the gigs to get out there Right. That's a great resource. Thank you. Yeah Peter you put this on there Yeah, um It's ironic because I don't even have a Yelp account, but I put it as a five Yeah, well, so what's the reason you did? Um, the reason I put it up there is like like google business, which we'll talk about it's It takes a few steps to get your your Yelp page up um You can ask your clients who are already writing testimonials to post them as reviews on Yelp Yeah, and I've just heard a lot of people getting a lot of business through Yelp You know, it's a place people are going to search for you know coaches consultants any sort of local service People are already on there and it's really easy I know Yelp does paid advertising as well being a promoted business. They can make a video for you And I have not heard very positive things about the value of that service Right, but just having the free account Seems really easy Yeah, it's cool. Um Do we uh tom you want to jump in first? No, I think one of the things too is people They distrust advertising But they trust someone else's even a stranger's opinion So depending on the survey the research you see something in the number of 86 percent of people will trust A review from someone else a perfect stranger Yeah, so if you have the local business, I think it's important You've got to be looking at reviews and Yelp is one and then also the google reviews So and especially if you can get at least uh five google reviews And no one else is doing it that gives you the star the visual star rating So that that's important too for for local business. Nice. Nice So, uh once again, I'm the sort of the center on in this on this panel So I I think probably the reason is because a lot of most of my clients are virtual And a lot of them live in places where Yelp is there's there's no Yelp community really And so Yelp is typically I mean rarely does someone go on Yelp and search For a resource outside of their own city, right? So it's almost it's almost I think um We all three of us live in major metro areas in the united states where Yelp is very active So we're lucky that we could use Yelp and peter you're right. I probably should start Yelp account The the other thing that my other hesitation about Yelp though is when I had looked into it Um Just like on amazon reviews like we're not supposed to actually Yelp is supposed to be even more strict We're not supposed to ask people to write us nice reviews um The only thing we're supposed to do is to put a sticker on our on our on our door It says, you know find this on Yelp or people love us on Yelp or something like that So the the technical terms of service makes it You know just supposedly discourage it and and the other thing is when I look at someone with all five Yelp star Yelp reviews I get really I get really suspicious like oh, this is probably just all their friends and family You know or other clients But yeah, it's it's I I agree with you that I have heard of some people getting business from there And it definitely is worth uh worth looking to The one thing I'll add that I forgot to say is that the reason most people When people have resistance to it. I think the biggest fear is that they'll get a bad review Um, and I've had this happen to a client.  Oh, geez and it ended up being a really big ordeal she wasn't able to Take it down right So there's something very vulnerable about putting yourself out there for reviews that you're not under your control So it's that paradox of you know wanting a world where there's more accountability Yes And you know sometimes people You know take out their stuff on you so yeah and and the thing is If you have a Yelp profile and if you have You know more than a couple reviews when people google your name It's almost certainly your Yelp profile will show up in the top probably lob top five results So it's easy for people to see what your reviews are Um on a similar topic facebook fan pages have reviews as well And also you cannot take off any negative reviews from your facebook fan page I don't know people knew that but I I have a couple of people on my facebook fan page Who gave me four stars out of five stars and none of the four star people have ever used my service So it just kind of like oh, I kind of like George. I'll give him four out of five It's like, oh, okay. Oh my client's give me five stars. We're giving me five stars, you know So yeah, it's it's for people like me who are very uh, I guess You know Perfectionistic about our reviews that that can that can be harmful as well But yeah, anyway take it as as you like and uh, let's go on to guest blogging. Um, I'll jump in on this one You know Blogging people always say, oh, you got to start a blog But the problem with starting your own blog is that it's very challenging to get traffic to your blog You start writing writing writing and you're wondering if anyone else is reading it at all The the the the best way one of the best ways to get traffic to your own website to your own blog Is by writing articles for other people's blogs because other people who have already built up an audience You show up there Uh the fact if if you get accepted to write there It's it's an endorsement from that website and That's one benefit the other benefit of course is that the fact that there's an audience there The third benefit is that In your guest blog post you can include links back to your own articles or of course your own website And that link it's called link building Google finds it incredibly important that other people other websites are linking back to yours And so that's why I I like this method a lot Peter I agree. I think Um, I rated normal blogging pretty low because no one's going to see it Um, unless you put in a lot of time and energy building your community, but guest blogging I have a friend who is a sexuality coach and she developed a relationship with elephant journal Which posts a lot of articles on sexuality And all of a sudden she was getting I don't know tens hundreds of thousands of people viewing her articles and Small fraction would come to a website, but even that small fraction was a whole lot of people Right and that single-handedly made her business Wow, so so Again, like like speaking or teaching having those partnerships that enable you to consistently send articles to the same Same channel. Um, that's the key to have it be really effective And tom is uh the dissenter here being contrary on this one a little bit I think guest blogging can be great. I've not done enough of it for me to To really say I've done some guest blogging. I've seen some mixed results One of the things that you you absolutely have to be a really good writer Because you've got to if you want to do guest blogging in my opinion You've got to approach some big sites that have a lot of traffic They're not only You'll notice some guest blog posts if you go into some big blogs You'll see the person that owns then runs the blog if they're doing still quite a bit of writing They're the ones getting the comments and reviews or you know the comments The the guest blogs aren't necessarily getting as many comments Uh blogs do a better job about really highlighting their guests and that that's good So if you find the right ones and I've known people that have done really well guest blogging so it can be effective But if you're not a good writer and you can't find that the uh, The sites you're gonna have I think it's gonna be a real struggle. However You can get people to help you write. Uh, it can be your idea You can have someone do some writing for you. You can record your ideas and you get a copywriter Pretty easy to find some really good writers that can help get your you know your words out So definitely ways of doing it to approach it, but I gave it a three just because of the There's some other variables in there depending on what people are getting into so and I think it's it's it is challenging to find It takes the willingness to reach out to a lot of guests a lot of blogs and hearing back from only a few Uh and and so for some people that's really hard to take Like peter's client it certainly paid off. So I mean that's And that's all she needs to do probably. Yeah, I would I would only recommend it if you're a dedicated writer Yeah, right. Yeah, if you're a writer, this is The most effective way. Yeah, you know in my mind to do it Yeah, awesome. All right facebook, um Well, gosh, all of us know know what this means. I mean, there are so many tools involved in facebook itself We actually separate our facebook groups as a separate line, but what can I say about this? I'll just say that If there was only one social network Website that I recommend for anyone who's saying well, which one should I use it would be facebook Versus twitter linkedin google plus instagram pinterest tumblr all this facebook is the one So the thing I would say that the reason I gave it a four is because I've seen a lot of my clients struggle with Feeling like they have to check in a lot a lot of my clients are introverts And so they they're they struggle with knowing how to use it in an effective way I'm a little bit introverted, but I don't mind it at all But let me turn it over to you guys Peter which yeah, I'll sure I'm a huge fan of facebook and I'm a convert I used to hate it and not know why everyone spent so much time on it. Yeah until I realized how to do it my way You know george talked about short versus long-term marketing and I think facebook mostly is long-term marketing It's it's an incredibly effective tool for being visible to a lot of people in an ongoing way Right. I actually prefer it to a mailing list Um, I I use a service called unroll me because I get too many emails and it puts them all together in a clump Um, so I actually think for reaching out to my people.  I'll post something inspiring. I'll post something personal and vulnerable. I'll share a lesson Yeah, um And it's a consistent way I posted a video celebrating my first ten thousand dollar month.  Yeah um So facebook it's where everyone is You know, I use my own personal timeline Facebook pages as far as I can tell are pretty useless Since the algorithms changed a while back. Yeah I also like facebook events a lot for either live in person events or things like teleclasses Um, you can invite up to 500 friends for free Um, and if you post on the wall every day it goes in people's notifications So you can get people to show up, you know just by creating a facebook event Yeah, um and groups will talk about more, but I just find it a very and there's live video It sort of has everything on it. Yeah, it's easy to waste time, but if you're focused Um, and you can use an app like Hootsuite to schedule your posts Right so you can spend a day generating content and then schedule it out for the next week Yeah, so there's a lot of good ways to use it Nice Yeah, I have mixed feelings about facebook. I used to spend a lot of time and and I've definitely had some some positive Effects from it. I think that you can spend a lot of time on facebook and not get anything So I I've uh, and I'm a little more guarded now that I have I have kids So, uh, in fact if you saw me looking over to the side earlier my two year old Decided to come in so that apparently no one's watching him right now, so I was full of people but Um, so I don't post anything about my kids on facebook anymore. Is this too much vulnerability there? But I and I know we're talking about business, but sometimes people have a hard time separating the two out Um, but it can be there's a lot of great tools a lot of people. I mean people are there I will say this though if you're business to consumer business to entrepreneur Uh facebook is the place if you're business to business, uh, I firmly Endorse linked in Microsoft does with them, but um That's a fantastic place to be for business to business And I think it's the best place to be if you're business to business No, and business to larger, you know like small to mid-sized businesses Yeah, yeah agreed cool Teleclasses um Well, I'll just say real quick that uh, I have done Probably hundreds by this point teleclasses and I I really like it But my preference these days is webinars whenever possible The reasons because webinars are are where people are usually at the computer or on their You know, they're more they're more they're more focused And they're able to click through the things that that we recommend and chat and things like that So I really like the chatting feature, but teleclasses are powerful to reach a lot of people And you don't have to feel like you're you have to dress up and and look great because you're just speaking into a phone And you can reach a lot of people that way Yeah, I My teeth on webinars. I mean on tele teleclasses. Sorry. Yeah, and only went into webinars when I Decided to learn the technology and wanted to add visuals But I think if somebody's getting started and they're really not comfortable with technology But they do want to leverage a message to do some teaching. I believe firmly in uh Educational marketing teleclasses are a great place to start low technology or lower technology Um people don't so that the advantage of having someone there being more engaged at a computer is true But then also the advantage of someone not having to beat their computer Can work well so someone can be driving and still at least listen. Maybe they're not just tuned in Because they're distracted, but they can still pick up on the on what you're doing So I think teleclasses are great. Good. Yeah, I want to second all that everything I said about speaking applies It just like speaking online The other benefits are that first of all you can have your outline in front of you If you're not on video you can You know, you don't have to memorize anything you can literally just I don't like it when you You can tell it someone's reading a script right but to have an outline can be a good, you know A good crutch if you're just getting started Yeah, the other thought is that teleclasses are you know They're you can record them and then give them away as You know a free giveaway or or whatever it is. It's saved for posterity There's something really nice about that Nice And zoom, you know what we're doing here a zoom recording Um, I don't know if you call it teleclass or a webinar somewhere in the middle, but I've been doing those recently Yeah, I'm inviting people to join a zoom room live and you can have the gallery of everyone's face And it's really sweet if you're trying to create something more community oriented Doing a zoom meeting is really nice Yeah Teleclasses are also good if you're doing a subject that's a little bit more taboo If it's about sexuality or if it's about Who knows something around money Sometimes it's easier for people to say yes to a teleclass or they can be a bit anonymous Show up live to a speaking gig or to have their face on a on a screen somewhere. Yeah, right. Right. Good point. Yeah I also Think that one another benefit, of course teleclasses you can take the audio and just podcast it if you if you want to broadcast You can transcribe and turn get articles and everything. Yeah, so a lot a lot of great And you can repurpose any information you have too. So it's good. Yeah Um Google business. Okay. I ranked it a two because um I unfortunately I just feel like google doesn't really do anything that well Except for their email their email is great and searches. They're just decent But uh, I feel like I've I've seen so many businesses on google business google local um, and they haven't really gotten much results on it, but uh But I but I do know but I I can I can see that that can be very effective for Like tom said the visual aspect of the five stars or whatever, but let me let me go to you guys Um, maybe peter what do you think nothing much to add just like yelp? It's so easy to do why not But I wouldn't it's not a big strategy and just something you might as well do right. Okay Yeah, I'll rate it one of the things I do too is I'm I do marketing for local businesses And if you're local business and you're not doing this, um, it's a huge huge mistake It's the number one thing. Uh, I call it local local boost Uh, if I'm working with a client the first thing I'm going to do is is go in and optimize And the key is optimizing the google uh places page, which that used to be places now it's business, but it's um There's something called nap in ap its name address and and uh phone number and you have to be consistent across all your Uh Your directories and everything, but if you're doing any local business any advertising just know The address you're always going to use. I mean every every letter Your phone number and your name just listed exactly the same and you put it in different directories and the google uh business page And you will that's the fastest way to get seen on uh for a local search So between that and doing uh, you know making sure that you're getting some reviews It's a real powerful way to get uh to get seen for local business again If you're coaching or working with people all over the world, I wouldn't spend any time doing this Yeah, uh, but if you're a local business and that's where you thrive. That's what you rely on I that's probably the first thing that for a client That's the first thing I would do is make sure that their page is set up and and optimized. Yeah, awesome 101 pico you want to start this? Yeah 101 outreach. Um I think this one is neglected because we're on this age of social media and mass emailing and mass communication But right in a way, I think it makes it all the more powerful to reach out to someone to someone who's referred to you or You know even calling a former client because you have something new to offer Yeah, just descendant a personal email give them a phone call or both And say look, you know, I'm offering this new program Here's what it is. I thought of you because of what you you know what you're going through Yeah, and here's what I think is possible for you. Would you like to have a longer conversation? Yeah Um, there are different ways to do it. Um, yeah, I like an email so people can Feel into it. Sometimes if I just give someone a call out of the blue, right? I don't want to put that pressure on them But to give them an email then call them two days later and and check in You can do it. I think people are afraid of pressuring someone else or they won't be welcome and just think of it as a really gentle invitation Um, this is how I started my coaching business I'd actually go to coffee shops and I was so excited about being a coach. I'd strike out conversations with strangers Learn about that and offer them three sessions First my first ten clients were one-on-one like this You've got guts Right if it takes a little bit of guts And currently I'll still do one-on-one outreach for my high-end programs um, you know, it's there's sort of a I don't know exclusivity, but there's someone feels cared for if you say look I'm having a program I'm designing. I'm looking for just the right people and here's why you came to mine Um, the other thing I'll say is you can either offer a free session or offer more of an exploratory consultation Um, and I've done both right just on the relationship Um, I'll chime in here on this. Oh and just a quick time check Let's see we can cover three more after this and then we'll jump to the foundational ones Sounds good So uh one-on-one absolutely second everything you say, um, peter I would I just I'll just add with online one-on-one. It's possible as well Or actually as you've been talking on my email, but uh, let me just say for example, linkedin People do not reach out one-on-one on linkedin enough in a thoughtful way. I've been on linkedin for Wow, I guess ever since it started more than 10 years ago And I have had so few people and I have like thousands of connections that I'm actually trying to remove That's a whole other story But I have a so few people reach out to me on linkedin or yeah on linkedin particularly In a thoughtful way where they've looked at my website They've looked at my profile and like they're reaching out in a in a truly win-win way That is relevant to me and not just some mass message and uh The few that have actually reached out to me in a thoughtful way research way win-win like hey I really believe this is good for you your audience and obviously me um, I have Oftentimes created some kind of relationship there. That's led to business for one or the other person And so People think just because it's online social media you could just blast messages and people respond. No If we reach out one-to-one, you're almost certainly going to get better results then than just trusting the mass messaging way So Tom anything you want to add here? Yeah, I want to say that I was out of my mind I was filling these in quickly and I'd looked at two things that I've made errors on the one-to-one outreach and the referrals I inadvertently did threes All to say I would be at least a four or five on those and so and and as you know, George in our last conversation I was talking about referrals. I think it's an incredibly important. So and it is something that's that's uh That's skipped over it's overlooked and I agree a hundred percent on linkedin you get people you get all these connections I was actually surprised one time when somebody I was connecting with they Messaged me and said hey listen in order for me to be a connection I have to I want to get on the phone and have a chat with you You know I was blown away. I thought that was that that's how it should be done Yet we're not doing it. It's all a numbers game and not so it's you know quantity not quality And it should be reversed and you can get far more I mean this speaks a lot to you know, peter talking about speaking where it's more intimate And the one-on-one conversations can be intimate and maybe it's not as scalable but I think again, we're Too focused on scale and trying to get it out to as many people as possible rather than actually having a A good connection because you never know who you can talk to and who they can you know They can help you with things and and make it About them as well, you know, how can you help them and this sort of conversation there? So Awesome And since this is related to them anything else you want to add on this referral part? Yeah, I mean I think uh, especially if someone's just getting started This might be one of the first things to to do if you're a coach I have some sort of the service that you're selling is to reach out and it could be through You know your social media Networks whether it's facebook or linkedin and just take somebody invite someone out to coffee Or invite someone to have a phone conversation and see how you can support each other and whatever you know eventually you're working on and You know that can turn into Invitation to speak somewhere or you never know where it's going to go So you don't need to alter your motive. You don't have to feel uncomfortable. You're not trying to sell anything Just connect and end the referrals um, you might even Look at that as uh invitations So you might reach out to people, you know individually and see if they want to get on board with you You know to join something else in terms of referrals. It could just be you know Hey, is there somebody that you can introduce me to um and like to have a conversation so they feel Uh, their guards lower a little bit when you're not using the term referral Totally. Yeah, and that's actually the reason why I gave gave this one to three. I think it's probably just uh, the the part specific idea of asking Current former client or former clients for introductions to more people Uh feels um, yeah feels uncomfortable to me and I know to a lot of my clients Uh, so that's the reason why but but if we look at referrals as um The way I would think about it is there are people out there who are struggling In ways that we specifically are good at relieving their pain or helping them reach a goal that they desperately want to reach And if somebody in between us and that struggling person can connect the two of us Everybody truly wins. Yeah, so if we if we frame it in that way Then referrals gets a five for me That's why I gave it a five to me I mean my entire practice right now is referral based, you know, 80 percent of it Yeah, and really what I mean by referrals is that if you do excellent work Yeah, and you know your clients get the results they want and they enjoy working with you They're going to want to tell their friends right and I see People getting in the way of that by not asking right or almost energetically blocking it So all I'm saying here is you know when you do great work It's it's a huge service to your to your friend to your former client because they get to support you Yeah It's a service to you because you get more work and it's a service to the person who's struggling Yeah, nice either. It's so easy to ask and I don't like when people ask me repeatedly for referrals Yeah, you know, I'm like, what do you have some calendar event where every month you ask me again? Um And I'd say the key to having referrals work is having a really clear niche as well Yeah, you're just a life coach. It's hard to know who to refer But if you help with a specific challenge Um, then people can easily think of referral, you know referrals to send you. That's right. That's great Um, okay webinars. I'll just you know chime in real quick is that I built my business really in the first three years from From zero to a full-time business with doing webinars Partnering with other people and that's the key why this is under categories of partnerships is obviously if you starting out You have no audience who are going to do webinars for your friends and family might join but as to support you But when you reach out to other people who have audiences who genuinely need What something free you have to offer you can start with free webinars It can it's like number two to in person in person speaking number one number two is webinars for building trust and credibility There's we could talk so much more about this here, but let me turn it over Tom and one anything you want to say here. Yeah, I love webinars. The reason I gave it a four instead of a five is that the whole You know direction webinars are going now. They're all selling and I'm fine with that. I think you should be selling Don't get me wrong. You should be selling. You're in business. This is not nonprofit It's not a hobby So never be apologetic about selling but now they're all designed to sell and that's it and and so what that means is typically People aren't giving a lot of really good information. It's kind of I don't know. It's not bait and switch necessarily But I think if someone can give really really good engaging information that someone could walk away from and use And then you have a pitch at the end. I think that's perfectly fine It can be very it can be incredibly effective, especially with partnerships Typically if you're doing it with a partnership, you're going to have to sell something otherwise They're not going to want to do the partnership right and you get into the sticky business of You know, if you if I sell it or you know promote to my folks I'll do that if you promote to your folks and you and I had the conversation about that We know where that can where that can lead. Just be real careful about the motivation. So, yeah I second that I the only reason I gave this a three is that just the added complexity of slides Yeah, yeah is a lot for people to start with So I think do webinar versus a teleclass only if there is a strong visual component to what you're teaching Yeah, if you can teach it just as well with audio only Um, I just think it's simpler for you and then people can more easily listen to it in the car You know download the audio file Yeah, I'm rather sit in front of their computer or use a lot of data to watch a youtube video Yeah You know technologically it seems a little more complex. Yeah, and you can even share a pdf and email it to someone Um, if you if you just want to do the teleclass too, which is to to peter's point Keep the technology as easy as possible for getting started. Yeah, yeah, cool. Let's let's really quickly jump to Maybe one of the foundational ones Or maybe each of us can can talk about one of these Uh, I'll just start with market research. I feel like so many So, I mean I've I've I've coached hundreds of people over the last seven years And the number one thing is if you are selling something That is in the buying behavior of society right now that people understand paying money for and want to buy It is so much like you almost don't need to do most of these marketing methods If you sell something people want people are going to buy it and so I'm just you know, there's a couple tools in here And you know, there's a lot more we could talk about but that's that's we all agree We all agree here on that one. Uh, does someone want to take, um split testing? How about you for split testing? Yeah Oh, me for split testing. Yeah. Yeah, sorry Uh Yeah split testing. I think you can uh go down a rabbit hole real quick. Um I actually saw someone that did uh an article not long ago. He did uh, he he said You know the reason not to split test he ran two different split tests two different times a day Um, and he got such completely different Results that he said it was completely ineffective and it threw him off completely So this whole thing now is you know, let's not waste time with this it can You can get some good data. You can split test headlines and see what people are clicking on and everything but Um, so I think that there's a place for it But you've got to be really into the numbers and I think everyone should be but the reality is most people aren't Um, well, if you say kpi people don't even know what that means um, so You've got to be willing To do this Scientifically and have some do it. I think to really make it effective or else I think you can spend a lot of time worrying about your headline Rather than just sending some stuff out there with really good information not worrying so much about it at first So I don't think that it's useless by any means, but I think it can be you know Again taking someone down a rabbit hole. We're gonna spend a lot of time. Um, and maybe not see Yeah real results initially. So that's Yeah, and I would agree for for my, you know, solo business owners.  Um, really simply it's essential right if you can't communicate about what you do in a way that um, resonates with the hearts and minds of the people you're Speaking to and and want to you know sell something to Um, you're sunk. It doesn't matter what method you use You just need to be relatable and We could talk all of us could talk for so long about what makes copywriting good I personally like it when it tells a story and it's authentic and it's Um errors on the side of of love and openness And the underlying message is you don't need me.  We could go on together And here's something that I think would really be helpful for you And I think every year on the the benefits lighter on the you know pain shame and struggle Yeah, and I think I think a good way of ending is I would encourage everyone watching or listening to this to go to our websites And and look at our copywriting because I think we each have different styles of it And everyone everyone needs to find the style that matches them and their audience the best Peter Rubin's websites Peter Rubin coaching.com My website's george cow.com and tom is tom buford marketing.com One last thing i'll say is that we were just emailing before this and all three of us are under the weather And we decided to go ahead with this anyway, and then the lesson I want there is Execution is more important than anything than just knowledge So it's like even when we're sick. We're just go ahead and do this anyway And I really appreciate you guys showing up and and doing this. Thank you Well, thanks for inviting me guys and thanks anyone that's watching this Don't get discouraged by this long list of things find a couple things, you know, like copyright A great copywriter find someone that's a friend a family member that can help you with copywriting I think that it is a skill Like Peter said you've got to learn copywriting at some point, but there's people that love to write copy And as long as they can get your message, maybe you just talk have a transcribed and give it to somebody And that that can help have someone interview you so there's a lot of ways of doing it But get out there and find the things that really resonate with you and just do it Awesome one more one more thing if you made it to the end of this video first of all Congratulations, you're definitely committed And I would encourage you to comment on this video Yeah, and share one takeaway one thing you learned and what is one marketing method you want to explore more deeply Nice, I mentioned this before but I think we can get so distracted And the people I know who are successful at marketing Pick one at a time and get really really good at it Because what separates success from mediocrity is is practice practice practice practice That's right. Awesome. Awesome guys. Thanks guys for doing this. Thanks everyone for watching. All right. Have fun Take care. Bye for now


Items that you're both familiar with, both of which I think, but I wanted to make certain. One, the crash of the B-52 carrying nuclear weapons late yesterday afternoon. During the night, our people and states worked with representatives of the Danish government on a news release, which is scheduled to be put out at 10 o'clock this morning, which simply acknowledges that a B-52 carrying nuclear weapons, all of which were on arm, crashed, and we anticipate no danger from it. At Christ, as you probably know, seven and a half miles from Tule Greenland on the ice, it burned at either all or in major part fell through the ice to 250 feet of water. The Danes have an election tomorrow. Today is the last day of the campaign. The statement made is sensitive in relation to the election. I think the Danes and state and we are on complete agreement on what should be said. I'm told by our people, inclusive of Harold Brown and others who are familiar in detail with nuclear technology, there is no danger from this. Kevin? First item. Second item. You undoubtedly know that we think that the long expected attack on K-San in South Vietnam has been initiated, substantial artillery and mortar fire and ground action has taken place there. Westmoreland believes he is fully prepared to meet it. I have nothing further to add. What do they have? Very heavy casualties. The enemy there yesterday I heard on radio had 450 in the Viet Cong killed 17 Americans in November. I'm just very skeptical of that size. Our reports indicate an extensive action but they don't indicate that large a number killed. Good. Anything else? No sir, that's all. Looks like George Wilson over there is really living in that Pentagon with damn stories. He's getting about half right. That's a hell of it. And I don't know quite what to do about it. I talked to him to the post about it a week ago. You may have seen we issued a very strong denial of one of his stories. He was absolutely wrong. Yesterday he had one on the barrier, this morning he had one on the 211, that's right.  I've got to do something. I don't know quite what. But Phil Gulding and I have talked to him and we'll take some action. Good. Well, I'll talk to you about it. Okay.


From Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering Open Systems. The future is crystal clear with security and SD-WAN. Brought to you by Open Systems. Welcome back to Las Vegas, everybody. My name is Dave Vellante, and you're watching theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. We go out to the events, we extract the signal from the noise. We're covering the Open Systems event, networking event. They're here as part of the two Gartner events here this week. On the heels of AWS re-invent, a lot of action going on in Las Vegas. Steve Garcin is here, he's a president and founder of SD-WAN Experts Consultancy in this space. Steve, thanks so much for coming to theCUBE. Glad to be here. So tell us a little bit more about your background. Okay, I've been in the networking space since about 2007. And initially, my company was called MPLS Experts when companies were migrating to MPLS and not understanding, well, what carrier should I use? And I helped companies re-engineer their WAN back then. And as that developed, then WAN optimization came into the scene, and I helped companies evaluate the right WAN optimization solution. And then I had the foresight to see the potential of SD-WAN. And I pivoted the business, called it SD-WAN Experts, and started writing for Network World and blogging in my own site and with a number of other websites. I've been helping enterprises worldwide re-engineer their network, make a WAN transformation that's secure and supports easy management and save a lot of money. So, awesome. So you have a practitioner's background, right? That's fair to say. Okay, good, so you know your stuff. Let's get into it. So let's talk trends. I mean, at a high level, we always talk at theCUBE about the cloud and how that's affecting network traffic. Going from north-south to east-west has a major impact on security and performance. What are the big trends in the market space that you see that are relevant? Well, we see consolidation, obviously. I mean, obviously, moving to the cloud is a big driver. The WAN has been designed for a data center with an MPLS network. And that's a hub-and-spoke architecture that really doesn't make sense anymore. Companies are moving to Office 365, to using salesforce.com, to using all kinds of software as a service. And that just doesn't work for the data center. So what companies have traditionally done is they have regional secure gateways and they're sending the traffic from an office to a secure gateway and now they're going to the internet and it just is convoluted. The traffic is tromboned and the latency is higher than it has to be and they're spending more money for these expensive circuits that ultimately they're going to the internet anyways. So there's a lot of technical debt out there. So how does a company go from point A to point B? Without spending a zillion dollars or bringing in a huge SIs to re-architect everything, is there a path that you can advise customers or is it just every situation's a snowflake? Most, you could probably define half dozen different basic situations that are snowflakes. But essentially, you're moving to, if you have an MPLS network, companies typically will need more bandwidth and instead of getting more MPLS bandwidth, they'll add internet connectivity and using SD-WAN, the route traffic over the internet that's supposed to go to the internet with things that are still required on their MPLS network will stay in play. When those MPLS contracts expire, then there's a question of, do I need MPLS? And that's a complicated question to answer. I will not say that you can eliminate MPLS. I'll always say it depends. It depends on the latency between pass on your network. I presented a paper at ONUG a few weeks ago in New York in which I analyzed with a lot of empirical data. Latency, packet loss, and standard deviation of that latency between pass, like from Tokyo to New York, you might have a 200 millisecond latency, but your standard deviation over the internet might be 200 milliseconds. So that means potentially if you're using only the internet, you might have 400 milliseconds latency. Can your application work appropriately? Yeah, if you need 200 guaranteed, you've got a problem. Right, exactly. In a situation like that, you might want to use MPLS or there's a new category of connectivity called SDCore, which is an MPLS network in the cloud that you access through an IPsec VPN to POPs that are typically within 20 milliseconds. So you get that stability, but you cut the cost dramatically. Now the edge just confuses us even further, right? IoT, the edge, I mean, certainly a trend everybody's talking about. From your standpoint, how real is it? Is it here today? Is it coming? And what is the effect going to be on all these trends? You mean the edge? Yeah, the edge, IoT. It's a complicated thing. I mean, the edge. The industrial internet. Yeah, I mean, when people talk about the edge today, the edge used to be their router, and SD-WAN devices are supplanting the router. And Gartner has indicated that by 2023, nobody's going to be buying routers. Everybody's going to be using an SD-WAN device which will route. Yeah, so Amazon, as I said, we were re-invent last week. They might even look at the data center as the edge, but I digress. Let's talk about the horses on the track. Layout sort of the competitive environment right now. We're here at the Open Systems event. Where do they fit in the market landscape? Open Systems is a very unique company where people will say, well, who's Open Systems competitor? And they really don't have a competitor because you're unique. Open Systems is a company that has a secure SD-WAN which means there's a full security stack with SD-WAN. So you have the benefits of SD-WAN, but instead of having to deal with all these different security applications like CASB and data loss prevention and IPS, IDS, authentication, VPN integration with active directory, they do all of that. And it's all managed. So it's a very unique offering. So the competition is do it yourself, right? The competition is do it yourself or use a managed service provider who probably doesn't have all the pieces that work together. And Open Systems been doing this for 25 years. So they have developed what the customers want. I went to one of their global customer meeting and they called a CAP meeting last year. And each year they get input from the customers as far as what kind of enhancements they want to see and they actually take that input and the following year, the customers, I was amazed, the customers just are thrilled that the company listens and the company implements what they ask. So again, I've mentioned a couple of Gartner shows going on this week. So it sounds like Open Systems really wouldn't fit cleanly into a magic quadrant. They don't, they don't because they're not an edge device. They're a complete edge security solution that's managed. We talked about this in theCUBE, John Furrier has brought up several times that the magic partners will have to evolve as these managed services, the cloud certainly affects that as more and more things get co-opted by the services economy. But your thoughts on magic quadrants, how customers are using them. My understanding is today you heard a talk from a Gartner analyst that was helping people understand the dos and the don'ts of a magic quadrant. Your thoughts. Yeah, well what Gartner was talking about today is how many people use the magic quadrant inappropriately. They think this tells us which companies we should look at. And really what it's telling you is how that customer strategy fits in with the marketplace but you really have to look at what your requirements are. You can't just say, okay, I'm going to look at quote the top three SD WAN vendors. You know, what are your requirements? So that's what my firm does as a consultant is we help companies figure out what the requirements are to find out what's the right solution. A story I love to tell is a company that spent a year evaluating SD WANs and they were about to make a decision and the CIO basically told the committee after a year of evaluations, hey, before we sign a contract, let's get an independent sanity check that we've made the right decision. And I met with the company, spent a couple weeks assessing their requirements and I know all the major technologies and I knew that what they selected wasn't correct but you can't tell a client that they made a mistake. So we set up a meeting with the vendor which was a carrier and their technology provider in the committee and I asked the hard questions that the vendor couldn't answer which made it really clear to the client that this was the wrong solution. They went a completely different direction. Say them a lot of money, I love those stories. What's your website? SD-WAN-experts.com. All right, Steve, thanks so much for coming to theCUBE, sharing your knowledge. Awesome stuff, really appreciate it. Pleasure. Keep it right there, we'll be back from Las Vegas Cosmo Hotel Open Systems Networking Event watching theCUBE.


Some aggrieved senators have concluded plans to challenge the emergence of Gasola Pabio to a Senate president in court. The lawmakers are challenging the outcome of the Senate president's election on grounds that the ballot papers used in the election were seriously back-ordered. However, Senate Chief Whip Senator Oji Ozu-Kalu debunked the claim by his colleagues, saying there was no funny business conducted on the floor of the Senate during the June 13 which produced a Pabio as Senate president. Former governor of the state, Adams Oshomole, has said that his opponents would have harassed him out of the North if he had failed to win his senatorial election. Oshomole, who is today based during a post-inauguration Thanksgiving party at his country home in Iyaho, Osaka West, looked government aid of the state also revealed that he was ready to sacrifice his senatorial ambition for President Bola Tinumbo to win his presidential election. Oshomole, a former national chairman of the ruling APC, while thanking the people for overwhelmingly voting for President Bola Tinumbo during the elections, has showed that President Tinumbo would change the face of Nigeria and as president would make Edo state better. Over 360, if I'm not even right, because of the manipulation by the opponent, that is such that they would call my left my small now and break my small bone. But you said no. And I have a message from the President. Yesterday he was hosted by Lagos Decombe and their friends and they he is his host to celebrate his Edy Kalu. He has particular interest in Edo state because from the primaries Edo people were with him through Edo candidates and in the elections Edo people were with him in the manner that they voted. So he's very very appreciative.