Ep# 120: Welcome to the Marketing Rebellion! Why the Most Human Company Will Win.

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Go check it out right now, visit LOKestudy.com and download your free copy today. Welcome to Mortgage Marketing Radio. Brought to you by the Mortgage Marketing Institute, your number one source for truth in mortgage marketing. Hey, listeners, what's up? This is Jeff Zimfer, your humble host, Chief Truth Teller here at Mortgage Marketing Radio podcast. Welcome back. If you are back a returning listener, I appreciate you. If you're the first time here, hey, let us know. Give me a little shout out on the inner web. You know where to find me on the socials, Facebook, Instagram. You can always email me if you want to email me personally podcast at mortgagemarketingradio.com and either way, I appreciate you. If you're up for leaving us a review, you'll like what you're hearing here. Guess what? I got a free t-shirt in exchange for your review. Here's how this works. Leave me a review wherever you're listening to this podcast or over at the Facebook page, Mortgage Marketing Radio podcast. And once you do that, tag me, let me know that you've done it and I need to get your mailing information and your t-shirt size. So if you've seen this t-shirt swag, we're bringing them back. We're bringing the swag back. How's that? So that's your incentive. If you're liking the podcast, love that review. This is a thank you in exchange for five minutes or less that of your time for that review. So look forward to seeing you guys come in and I'll be giving you guys a shout out on the podcast for those of you that do you take me up on leaving a review. All right. So this episode, as always, is brought to you by Mortgage Marketing Institute and the Mortgage Marketing Pro membership. What is the pro membership you ask? It is the place. If you are looking to get more success with real estate agents and build a predictable stream of purchase money referrals delivered to you every single week, every single month like clockwork. And how do we do that? We do that by largely equipping you to teach agent classes and do it in a way that hasn't been done before because look at classes and something new, but how you do classes, right? How you get butts in the seats, the content you teach, how you promote the class, and most importantly, how you leverage that platform as a thought leader to attract, capture and convert the right realtors to referral partners. That's what makes it different. And that's where we come in at Mortgage Marketing Pro membership with our built-in platform called my agent classes. Imagine this every single month, you get a brand new class, turnkey delivered to you, PowerPoint, video tutorial, handouts, speaker notes, done for you, custom flyer, souped and that's teach you how to get butts in the seats, teach you how to present confidently and teach you how to convert agents to attend your classes to meetings and referrals. And if that wasn't enough, hey folks, we're not forgetting, we're combining the online with offline, keeping the human touch with high tech. And that is inside the pro membership is also an ongoing growing library of self-paced tutorials on social media, video marketing, personal branding, Facebook ads and more, helping you get consumer direct business, including templates, quick wins, case studies, et cetera. Folks, it's your one-stop shop. If you're looking to take up your game, level up your skills, plus we do weekly coaching calls and all that stuff. So, want to learn more? There's a short video I posted. You can go watch it at mortgagedmarketing.pro to learn more and see if that is for you. All right, onto this week's special guest. All I can say is, you know, it's an honor and a privilege to have my special guest on this episode. Let me just read you a little bit about a bio about my special guest here. Mark Schaefer is a globally recognized speaker educator, business consultant author who blogs at Grow, that's his blog, it's one of the top marketing blogs in the world. He also has a podcast, his podcast is called Marketing Companion, it's among the top one percent of podcasts in business shows on iTunes. He's among the world's most recognized marketing authorities and minute keynote speaker at conferences, including social media week, London, the National Economic Development Association. My gosh, she goes on and on, the word of mouth marketing summit in Tokyo. He is a faculty member of graduate studies programs at Rutgers University. He studied under Peter Drucker while studying for his MBA and if anybody's listening doesn't know who Peter Drucker is, you need to Google him, kind of the grandfather of modern marketing, if you will. And he's been in marketing and positions in sales for more than 30 years and executive director of his own US based firm, Schaefer marketing solutions. And the list goes on in terms of his clients, their global brands like Dale Johnson and Johnson, Adidas, US Air Force and mom and pop startups, small companies as well. If that's not enough, he's also the author of six best selling books, the Tower of Twitter, social media explained, return on influence, born to blog content code and known, which are two excellent books and his brand new book called Marketing Rebellion, the most human company wins. And we talk a lot about relevant things for you as a listener on this podcast. We talked about the rebellion that's happening from the consumer side, right? What do I mean by that? Well, we're going to talk about some of the pillar concepts in Mark's book, the end of control, the end of loyalty, for example, and how it's not the most automated company or the best technology that's going to win or, you know, the most awesome sales funnel that's going to win. Here's who's going to win in this disruption. The most human company will win. And so I hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I did, lots of learning lessons in here. We put links to everything in the show notes, marks, books, websites, his blog and podcast and all that kind of stuff. So enjoy this episode, share it with somebody you care about, share it with somebody else in business and without further ado, let's get into this week's show. Mark, Shane, for welcome to the show, I'm delighted to be back here with you. Always great to hear from you. Yeah, man. Great to connect with you as well. And thank you so much for making time. I know you're incredibly busy. I'm surprised that I was able to catch you. I've been enjoying and reading digging into your book, Marketing Rebellion. And, you know, unfortunately, we don't have time to talk about everything in the book, but that's why we're going to encourage people to go buy it. It's sort of a vast book. It is. It is quite a vast book. I was digging through making notes and I'm like, there's no way we have time to talk about it. Yeah. So what I wanted to do is pick out some of the highlights and I want to start with the title because it's obviously it's a thought provoking title. Is there really a rebellion, a rebellion underfoot? Well, that was a hard title to come up with, by the way, because some people didn't like it because rebellion sort of hints at something negative and violent and that is not me. And that's why the subtitle is the most human company wins. And someone asked me, well, what is this rebellion? What's the point of this rebellion? And if you open up the book for the people that buy the hard cover, the paper, back book, then even the Kindle book, when you open up the cover, the first thing you see is a photo. It's a picture. And that's very unusual. Most books don't do that. They have a, you know, an author page or something or a title page, there you go. So he's showing this picture to the people looking at video, if it's audio, you'll just have to imagine this. There's a picture of a lady holding up a sign that says, respect me. And I said, I think that's the rebellion is that people are just fed up with robo calls and spam and getting their mailboxes filled with direct mail that's littering the environment and people are saying, just stop it, respect me, respect my time, respect my life, respect my privacy and the companies that figure that out and treat people the way we want to be treated. He just put yourself first as a human being and a customer. Those are the companies that will eventually win. The most human company wins and I believe that with all my heart and that's really what the rebellion is about. Yeah. It's interesting. I'm definitely feeling it, right? And I'm going through some things because it's oftentimes like, you know, and I teach in this industry and teach like my, you know, loan officers that we've got to, you know, deliver that human touch that. I deal personal experience and then I'm out in the field right now. Let me give you an example. I'm actually shopping for a home here in Las Vegas. So I am now my customer, right? And I'm going through the process that a normal customer would go through and my experience is not good, which is kind of shocking and surprising to me. I mean, not good to the point where I fill out an online app on a Saturday because I'm trying to get a pre-approval and Tuesday comes and I get an email, no phone call, no nothing, right? And I'm thinking we're talking about a significant size transaction for somebody here and two business days goes by and an email comes, you know? Right. Now, are you telling me they couldn't pick up the phone? Right. That's the call. And say, oh my gosh, you know, please forgive us. We respect your time. We're going to make it up to you. That's all it would take, really. And I think what you're bringing up here is really an excellent point. And that is, Jeff, we're even before we started recording, we were talking about this balance of automation, which can help us be more personal, more tuned in. We can be more responsive. But when we over rely on automation, then we're abusing people and we're pushing them away. We're using technology as a barrier. We should be using technology to reduce barriers between us and our customers. So in that example, it's a perfect example. People are using technology in a way that is turning you away instead of bringing you closer. And that kind of segues to a couple of key points you've got in your book in chapter one, you talk about the end of control. And I definitely feel like, you know, I was looking for the best experience, the best easy, easiest use, right, as a consumer. And of course, when a consumer process is broken, like we just described, right, they dropped the ball. They didn't follow up. The online process wasn't great. And so I'm in control. I can easily just cut ties and go find a better solution. Well, even more than that, Jeff, you could have mentioned them by name on this show, right? Right. I don't want to do that, but yeah, you can, you can leave a review on, you know, on their site or on an industry site, right? You can write a blog post about this. You could talk about this on LinkedIn. Now, maybe you're, you know, a gentleman in an industry leader and you don't want to do that. But most people will. Right. Right. Well, they don't have the stakes in the grid that like I do, yeah. Yeah. So, you know, the customer is in control. The customer is the marketer today. So in your case, they could have won you over and you'd be singing their praises and recommending them to everybody, right? Yeah. So they've got the mindset today is two thirds of our marketing is occurring without us. We can't buy our way in like we used to in the old days with advertising or PR or whatever or coupons, right? We have to find a way to be invited to that two thirds because here in this perfect example, that customer could have made you an advocate and people aren't seeing their ads. They see their ads, they don't believe their ads, but they believe you, especially you because you're, you know, a voice of authority in the industry. Now, here's another interesting example of that. And I know in the book, you may not call it out exactly like this, but you know, kind of a, the personal is a, well, you talk about people want to feel that they care, that they matter, right? Yeah. And in this process, and we'll get back into the book here in a second, but I think in this process, what they did was they sent an automated canned video that basically said, hey, welcome to here's the next step. So it was so robotic and unpersonalized and unfeeling, you know, I mean, it was a complete turn off. Well, that's, there's a difference between personalized and personal, the company and this is so interesting, Jeff, because in the early in the book, I have this research that shows this, this chasm between how businesses think they're doing and how consumers think they're doing. So in this case, the business thinks, oh, look, Jeff signed up for this service. We sent him a video just for him about this service. And you're going, oh, my gosh, this is so lame. This has nothing to do with me. And it's a perfect example of the difference between personalization versus personal. Yeah. So personalization, they sent you a video. It was a human being of something somewhat related to what you're buying. But that's not someone making a little video. I mean, for the cost of that video, probably, they could have hired a person for a year to send you a personal video that say, hey, Jeff, hey, welcome, if you've got any questions, my name's Samantha, give me a call. Thanks so much for being our customer and you would have gone, whoa, that's personal. Right. A difference. Exactly. It doesn't even take that long in today's world to pick up your phone, you know, talking about technology, you could get a notification that you just got an application, pick up my phone, do a quick video message, you know, Hey, Mark, what's up? Just saw your, you know, your online app, you know, we'll be getting back to you as, you know, that kind of thing. That's a personal touch, too. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. All right. So let's talk about this. You say loyalty is dead. All right. How's that for dramatic? Dying. Dying? It's different. Okay. Different. I like that better than the end of loyalty. It's, it's different. And, and let me tell you something, I know a lot of your listeners are going, huh, what? And I did too. I mean, I've been in marketing more than 30 years, but the purpose of this book is to be a wake up call to say, look, you have to make your own decisions as a, as a business owner, but at least have the information about what's going on out there. And there is profound, undeniable research that shows that consumers are, you know, less loyal today and in many industries, there is no loyalty. One of the points I make in this book, and again, this isn't, the book isn't Mark Schafer's opinion of the world. Yeah. Here's the research coming from McKinsey and Accenture and Deloitte and Harvard and Boston Consulting Group that's, and they're all singing the same thing and around loyalty, McKinsey did this research that showed across 80 different industries, only 13% of our customers can be considered loyalty, loyal. And that's a dramatic difference over 20 or 25 years ago, and the big change, the change agent here is technology is enabling these hyper-powered and power consumers to just switch around. In 90% of those industries, Jeff, there was no loyalty. And I'm thinking especially in the real estate and the mortgage market, there's probably almost no loyalty. People just, you know, they want to deal. Now, here's a clue of to what's going on and how to correct that. In the McKinsey report, they said, what's happened here? Why has there been this decline because there's a lack of emotion connecting to the brand? Now, there's the solution, there's the opportunity, how do we build or rebuild that loyalty? How do we build emotion? Because McKinsey's absolutely right, and they're acknowledging what you and I have just been talking about, everybody's automating everything. And here's this company that's trying to automate things for you, they just blown any chance of loyalty that you've ever had. If they would have created a true human connection, you would have been flipped, right? So that's why, say, in the book, in the past, our businesses and brands were built through an accumulation of advertising impressions, but today, they're built through an accumulation of human impressions. This is a perfect example. This company had an opportunity to create emotion, to create a real human connection with you, and they blew it, because they over-aligned on technology, and that's exactly the problem. That's why you're not loyal, could have, if they established the emotion, but it takes work, you've got the ease, marketing, easy button is over, you've got to roll up your sleeves, and you've got to show up. And the emotional connection, too, would also have made me more forgiving, right? Oh, great point, great point. There's one of the examples in the book, one of my sort of, and I want to say, that the book isn't all doom and gloom. Everything you and I have talked about so far is chapter one, like I said. It's a vast book, but I mean, I give literally hundreds of ideas of how to overcome this, from one of the big ideas, this is idea of peak moments. Just as you said, if you have an experience with your company, with a company that makes you go, oh wow, I really like that. That's something cool enough, I would tell my friends, you're willing to forgive the mistakes. You're willing to overlook the potholes and still be positive about the company. Okay, so ideas, right? As we know, people want, listeners want kind of actionable ideas. So we're talking about concepts, and that's cool. Loyalty's dead. I think my industry gets it because technology has enabled that, which you pointed out. So it's a certain degree, double-apping, you know, let's just say at the rocket mortgages of the world, right, get a loan approval in five minutes, even though it's not really real. No, I can testify to that. I tried it, didn't work. That's amazing. It's true, man. But here's the thing though, they have trained technology advertising. It's an interesting point about seniors, we're talking about, you know, rocket. They have trained the expectations is what advertising in that context has done is the expectations now around technology has been that it should be simple, but here's the thing. It's also to our point here, removed the emotion or connection from that and that people are, what advertising is saying to them is everything should be able to be done right through your laptop or your phone. And I want to, I want to make an important point here that you still have to deliver the goods. Okay. So, expediency matters today, you know, let's not kid ourselves, removing friction matters today, becoming a habit matters. So I mean, if you use one mortgage broker or one real estate agent and you have a positive experience, you're likely to keep using that because you just don't want to change, people are sort of inherently lazy. I had an experience where I was looking to do a real estate investment and the bank that I wanted to use for the mortgage said, oh, we've got this new process where you can do all this online. So basically the old process was you gathered all your documents, all your tax returns, all your, you know, all your forms that would talk about your income, blah, blah, blah, blah. So you're mortgage broker, your lender, and you would hand over these documents and they would look them over and make some copies and say, okay, great, sign this and you're done. Now, here's the online process. You take all these documents and you scan them into the app. Wow. It's worse. That's real efficient. It's terrible. It's worse. It's not online. It's not digitized. They're basically saying, oh, no, you do the work. So it's like, you got to be kidding me and they're so proud of this, Lord, you know, that goes back to your point earlier that said, the companies think they're doing well, but our experience of is they're not. No, no, no, no, and it's, so, so efficiency matters, reducing friction matters, delivering the goods matters, then you can be human. You know, one other quick story about that that's relevant is that happened to me recently as well as I did something I hadn't done a long time. I walked inside a bank because I think what did I need that cashier's check or something. Anyway, I walked inside a bank and literally I'm like looking for the people. There's nobody there. They've got these two like machines embedded into the wall that are supposed to be completely self-service. And I'm like, where's the people? I just need to quickly get in and out of here, right? And the funny thing about it is there's a guy standing at that like a kiosk, whatever, and the tellers behind him because he had to come out and help him. And all he's doing is expressing his frustration with the process. Yeah, that's the worst of everything, right there. I'm thinking, I'll clue the heck invented this thing, man. I'll touch, can you be? Anyway, it just, it's, you know, it happens in the rural world every day. All right. Yeah. So end of control, end of loyalty. End of secrets is the third one. End of secrets. So talk about that briefly. Well, you know, I talk about that, you know, we're in this third rebellion. I mean, but we've had like this, the series of consumer rebellions for a hundred years. And here's one of the things I thought was just so poignant when I was doing research for the book. The first television remote control was invented in 1950. Wow. It's like the, the first TV's came out and immediately what people wanted to do was skip the ads. All right. And so, so there's been this continuous rebellion against marketing and advertising that's annoying and interruptive and not respectful. So we have to listen because the consumers always win. And if we can get ahead of that curve and say, okay, we listen to you. We know we've got to change because we know you're going to win. Then eventually, you know, we'll be, we'll be preferred. That technology has really reduced the end of secrets and look, Jeff, I mean, I, I was my career. I was right in the middle of that, you know, back before the internet, most businesses made money on the secrets. They made money on stuff that people didn't know. That's how we sold loans. That's how we sold vacations. That's how we sold cars, how we sold insurance. It was, you know, the, the fine print or the stuff that people didn't know today, you can walk into an insurance agent, you can walk into a car dealership and you can know more about their products than they do. So the cut, this is a, this is the evolution of how now the, the customers are in control because there are no more secrets. And so we, we have to give up control, you know, many, many companies still think about controlling the marketing message and controlling the sales funnel, controlling the customer journey. Come on, we're not in control. Look at that, you know, that lead generation pipeline that you've got on your PowerPoint presentation. It doesn't work that way anymore. Customer journey is a tangled mess. Google came out with research last fall that showed people, even people searching for the same thing on the internet got there in unpredictable ways, in hundreds of different ways. The customer journey is just this tangled mess. And back in the days when we did have control with our marketing messaging and our advertising because people didn't have a choice, a brand was what we told you today, a brand is what we tell each other. The customers are in control, right, customer because there are no more secrets. Yeah, you know, there's a lot of learning just in here right now that people listening, you could pull out some nuggets. And I mean, the customer is clearly in control because of access technology, but I don't want to also overlook the point about the human connection because I think relevant to like my audience and specifically is that people forget that a lot or they don't feel comfortable being human. Yeah. So do you have any, maybe, you know, tips on how people can be more human in their communication? Well, I mean, I think there's a couple easy steps that any business can do. First thing is look around at your marketing and your customer touch points. And if you're doing stuff that people hate, stop it. Just stop it. You would hate it and don't do it. That's a good first step. And then you have to think about what do people really love? What do they really need? What are they crying out for? And that might take getting out there and talking to people and listening to people, which again is part of the sickness in marketing today. We're too reliant on automation and dashboards and, you know, we're, we got our heads stuck in dashboards instead of really listening to people. So listen to people and think about what they want. And one of the things I've proposed in my book is to connect with the constant human truth or the constant human needs that don't change. Today, I think part of the problem is we're preoccupied with technological change. We feel overwhelmed. We feel like we're falling behind. We're stuck. We don't know what to do next. That's not what's important. What's important is that we have to sell the real people and the real customers. And their needs probably aren't changing. They want to protect their self-interest, right? They want to make smart decisions with their money. That's the way it was 50 years ago. That's the way it's going to be 50 years from now. It's not going to change. People want to be acknowledged. They want to be validated. They want to belong. It was that way 50 years ago. It's going to be 50, that way 50 years into the future. So let's not let the tail wag the dog. The focus shouldn't be on the technology. The focus should be on these customer needs. And then maybe there's technology that can help us serve those needs. So those are a few easy steps. You don't have to be an extrovert. You don't have to be a public speaker. You don't have to be shaking people's hands. Just look at those things first to have a more human presence. And then another simple thing that any business can do. And this is especially a problem in the banking industry and the mortgage industry. Is look at every customer touch point and just think, how could we make that more real? How could we make that more human? Step one, stop using stock photos. You know, here's whenever you use a stock photo, Mr. Lender or Mrs. Mortgage Broker. Here's the message that you sent. Even we don't care. Right. Use real people. Use real clients, right? Use real customers if you have a picture of one of your best customers on your website. What is what are those people going to do? They're going to send everybody they know to that website. That's true. Right. So I mean, it's just not that hard. It's a lot of it is just common sense. Yeah, when I took away from your five constant human truths in your book, quick summary, people have the need to feel loved to belong. You protect self-interest, find meaning and be respected. I think that's so true. And what I took away from that was, which is what you're alluding to, is architecting, you know, your process, your customer experience, so that it hits on all those buttons. Think how simple it would have been, Jeff, in the negative case that you provided a few minutes ago, to hit those buttons, to hit those buckets, to be acknowledged. It just takes some intentionality and some thought. Yeah, to be validated, to be respected. I mean, it just wouldn't have taken that much, but that's all you really want. That's it. That's, no, it's so true. Yeah, feel loved, feel respected, right, that the eye matter, and that you're not treating me like that, that we're ignoring all that. You know, it's so funny about this, though, and I think this is kind of your overall point, is those types of attributes for desires, I mean, setting the advertising conversation aside, but isn't that how the way business was done back in the day, right, face to face, kind of, you know, mom and pop shop stuff, right? Yeah, I had thought about this for a long time, but I've taught at Rutgers University for 10 years, and there was a, I used to teach this module on social media, and I used to use an example of my grandfather. My grandfather was a plumber, is a plumber from 50 years, and I said to really understand how the digital world works, you need to understand my grandfather, who never was on social media. I mean, he was, he was buried before we ever had the internet, but he understood that the only thing that mattered was his reputation, was what people would say about him, because his customers were his marketers. Yeah. And if he did something that was a wrong or a problem, he had to fix it right away, he had to acknowledge the problem, he had to get out there, and he had to fix the problem, because he had to protect that reputation, because what the customers say about him, is the only thing he had going for, he went out of his way to validate people, to create, to help them. If someone couldn't pay, he would do a plumbing job for a chicken, or for some sticks of wood, whatever it took to help these people. And he also knew that there's sort of a social aspect to this, that people buy from people who they know and they like, and they trust, and it wasn't unusual for my grandfather to end a plumbing job, sitting down with his customer and having a shot of whiskey. Yeah, right. And so those are simple lessons, those are simple human truths that have not changed in our hearts, have not changed in our DNA, and this world of technology has created this fog, that has walled us into this sense, this false sense of security, that we know what we're doing now, and we don't, and we need to remember the lessons of my grandfather. Yeah, you have something you say in the book, I'm trying to find the exact quote, but basically it's like, it's not the most automated company we'll win, or the perfect sales process, to your point. Again, I love the tagline, it's the most human company that wins. Absolutely, and Jeff, I believe that with all my heart, I really do, that this is the big, big message that, if you're the most human company in your industry, people will flock to you, and it's not easy, but we have no choice. Yeah. I mean, advertising, it's not seen like it used to be seen. I mean, I watch more TV than I've ever watched, but I never see ads, unless this may be a live sports program. I watch all my TV on Amazon and Netflix, all of it, you know, Game of Thrones and the office and Breaking Bad and all these shows that we love to binge radio, I'm in the car all the time with different meetings and stuff. I listen to radio all the time, I never hear ads, never. I listen to serious XM, I listen to audio books, I listen to Spotify, I never hear ads, but I'm listening to a radio, I'm using air quotes there, podcast listening, and same with my new stream, right? I think on the New York Times, I sometimes see banner ads, but, you know, nobody really pays attention to banner ads, they're invisible, they're the worst form ever of advertising in the history of the human race, so essentially a new stream, and one third of Americans have ad walkers on their smart devices anyway, right? So people don't see ads, they don't believe ads, we have no choice, we've got to adjust our mindset to this new world and stop trying to hold on to what worked ten years or even two years ago, because it doesn't work anymore. We have to acknowledge our customers and acknowledge the power that they have. All right, let me ask you a question then, because we're talking about loyalty and emotional connection and attachments, our lack of loyalty there. So a couple of notes here, does personal branding matter then in this context of this discussion? Well, I mean, it depends, I would say, usually it does, especially in a personal services industry like real estate or mortgage lending, it's just this simple. So it's different for this and then a pizza? Well, maybe, but I mean, I think you could also establish, I mean, actually there's some great case studies out there about restaurants and chefs and local business people who have identified great personalities. Like Domino's was a great example that way they admitted their pizza sucked. Yeah, but I mean, let's say, well, here's an example, here's a precise example and I'm going to use a pizza example, you can also think about this in terms of real estate and mortgage. Okay, so I actually work with a local pizza chain and I went, we went on a Twitter and you can save searches on Twitter. So I said, let's look in this geographic area, five miles from your store, everybody who's talking about pizza. So we just did a search for something about I'm hungry or pizza and we were getting 20 to 25 hits a day, something like, oh, I'm so hungry and I just dropped my pizza face down on the floor. What would happen if the owner of that pizza shop said, hey, send me a direct message, we're going to bring you a new pizza, even though you didn't even buy it from us. That's how you become a legend. That's emotional connection. That's building a personal brand that transcends pizza or ads or social media or SEO, right? You're becoming legendary. You can do that. And I'm not saying that specific technique. Sure. You will buy off of the people they know. If you're known, which is the last book that I wrote is called No, and how to build your personal brand, I think that's probably the last time you were like, talk. So if you're known and the other people aren't, you get the business, right, there's some trust there. Right. Not to interrupt you, but also cognizant of time because I want to get as much out of you as I can. So what to be, and by the way, your book known, awesome, man, for those, for me, it's like a Bible and kind of crafting my own, like becoming known strategy. What do you want to become known for? And let's do that in the context of, okay, fine, modern marketing because you taught, you mentioned today having an effective social media presence is a life skill. I thought that was pretty brilliant. So what should we, what should we become known for in our space? Well, that's a very personal thing. It's a very personal decision. It's a very important decision. And so really, that's, as you know, and I appreciate your kind words about the book, is the first step is to really think about very carefully what you want to be known for. And obviously, you could be the most, the kindest servant in the real estate business in your area, or the most knowledgeable, or how do you become legendary, really, in your little niche. And then you have to have sort of a relentless process, a consistent and relentless process to create value, to get on people's radar screens, you know, over and over and over again, so that you become trusted. There's that emotional connection and you become known. But I mean, I've got lots of exercises in the book to help people think through that. Probably, it's probably the most important step in the book. Yeah, I've got some notes from that, actually. So for people who want more, you've got to go by the book. We'll put links in the show notes, obviously, to all this kind of stuff. But I think like in the context of our listeners, right, that is critical, like you said, because then a personal services space, what else do they have to go on? Because they're not going to, what you say here is, can you become loyal to a company? And I don't know if it was you who used the example of Elon Musk versus Ford? I, well, I, I did, you know, you think about Tesla, the higher market value than Ford. Yeah. Who's been around for 10 years? How is that possible? And I think a lot of that value is built into people have this love and this, and this trust in this visionary entrepreneur and they want to be part of that. Who do you love at Ford? Who do you love? Yes. Who do you love at Chevy? Yeah. No. Now, who do you love in the real estate market in your city? Not a billboard. Who do you love and is it possible to become that person? Yes. Of course it is. It happens all the time. Plenty of examples of that. And that's really the idea to break through, not through Facebook ads, not through billboards, not through direct mail, but on it. But where is the emotion? You cannot build a motion to direct mail. Remember the lesson of McKinsey. The reason people aren't loyal is because a motion isn't there. A motion is lacking. So you've got to roll up your sleeves and find a way to connect on a human way that builds that emotion. Are we then proposing that aside from being face-to-face in person, because there's lots of tactics, right? To be active in your community and things like that, that to your point earlier, having an effective social media presence as a life skill, is that like one of the primary channels through which we can create that? It can be especially if your customers are very active there. Just think about what you're doing, Jeff. You've been creating this podcast, and we've got this video series now, for a long time, and tenacious. You've been resilient. You've been consistent. You're delivering great value, and you're fighting hard to bring the best guests onto your show. But you're also showing your face, and people hear your voice, and they hear your intelligence. That is going to pay off because you're becoming known. And people are going to create an emotional connection to you that others aren't going to have. It does take time. It does hard work, create hard work. You couldn't create five podcasts and expect to make a difference in this world. But you've been doing this for years, and it's going to tip. It's going to pay off. So you're a great role model in this space, and a great example. I appreciate that. Thank you. It's a labor of love, as you know, like writing a book, and you know, it's just like you write a book because you see a problem, and you want to help solve that problem. I started a podcast because I saw the problem, and people needed help, you know? Right. One of the things you find in this book was that you were surprised at the importance of face-to-face meetings. Well, I guess that's sort of embarrassing to it. It still works. It's real. It was, but it was sort of just kind of hit me in the face. Maybe it was just a reminder that, you know, as I interviewed these companies who are really doing it in a new way, it was important for me to present a lot of case studies in the book to inspire people, to say, wow, look at how this small business or do is doing it, or look at how this big business is, is how they're making the transition. And as I was interviewing a lot of the leaders from these inspirational companies, I kept hearing this theme. They said, when we brought people together, everything changed. Because what's more human than that, it's the difference between listening to a song on the radio. Maybe you'll be aware of that, maybe you'll like it, and seeing that band live in concert with your friends. Now, it's an experience you never forget. There's an emotional bond there with that band that will never go away. And I remember, I used to have my own conference. I had my own event, and I can remember this amazing experience. The first day of the first event I ever had, someone was checking in, and I said, I didn't know the person, and I said, well, where are you from? He said, Pittsburgh. I mean, that was a Knoxville, Tennessee. I said, oh, what brought you to Tennessee? He said, you, and it's like, whoa, whoa, it was just an amazing feeling and for me, that really helped propel my brand. I stopped having the event a few years ago, and now I'm sort of interested in doing something again. Yeah. But nothing replaces that emotional bond of actually seeing a person and hearing their voice and seeing their smile. Well, and you talk about that in the book as well, as a matter of fact, you have, I think, a kind of a fun recollection of like that. The original marketing book was, was it the three P's or four P's, right, product, price, placement, Dr. Kotler's book? Yeah, and promotion. And promotion, which I think I remember taking that class as well at a marketing class. But, you know, what you're, what you're pointing out there is that, again, to, to not to like get this, this horse dead, but I don't think we can overlook it because the influence of technology, the outsourced and automate everything is, is that high touch, high tech, right? Or the combination thereof, I should say, the world is, we want the blend of both. And people are missing satisfaction of real relationships, but really matters. It was really one of the most amazing experiences I had writing the book. It was almost like divine intervention. It was like, like, you know, do do's like this, you know, this rainbow came out where I was just thinking about Dr. Kotler's writing, and I, you know, I took this class more than 30 years ago, and he's saying marketing is psychology, and sociology, and anthropology is all things human. Well, Doug Gunnett, he's still alive. And as I was writing this chapter, I heard him on a podcast, and here's what he said, and I used this quote in the book. He said, what's missing today in marketing is emotion and this human connection. Brands and businesses don't have a human voice. People want to hear something that's real, something that's authentic, and even vulnerable. What a powerful word. It just, it took my breath away to hear this great man who really had influence on me more than 30 years ago. Here he is today. He's still teaching us. He's still putting, trying to get us on the right path. Marketing is all things human. We were off the path. Marketing is sick right now, and we need to get back on the path. And remember that marketing is all things human, and what would that even mean to be authentic and to be vulnerable? What kind of power would be that? How many businesses can you name that are vulnerable today? Not that many, but those are probably the ones you're going to remember. Yeah, transparency reminds me of that. I forget where I heard it, but principles don't change tactics do. So we can leverage to you, which is what we opened up with, I think, as we can leverage technology to, if used in the right way, you can create more human. Like this, for instance, right here, a video. I mean, would you consider this a face-to-face meeting? Yeah, this is a perfect example of how you're using technology to lower barriers between you and your fans and your customers, because here I am. This is me, and I'm going to give it all my all, and you're, you know, and so you're creating that human connection, and believe me, I've experienced this firsthand. There are people out there you've never met, and you've never heard of who are listening to your show, and they're watching your show, and they're building a connection to you, and they're building trust with you, and you don't even know they're there. A couple of years from now, they're going to say, hey, Jeff, I've been listening to your show for a couple of years now, and I just want to let you know that, you know, here I am, one of your fans. Absolutely. Let's do some business together. Yeah. In town, they're like, hey, can you get together and all that, so that's, it's, it's awesome. So I want to kind of close out with this, maybe put the cherry on. First of all, you've got to get the book everybody. I mean, if you're looking for kind of an encyclopedia, not only that, but also I think a tearing open of the, you know, right here, I'm picturing this and tearing open the chest, the heart of like, look, like you said, what is marketing really, right? It's all those elements from Dr. Cartler, and this is, this is a great exercise in that. What jumped out for me in a unique way was you featured this conversation with Jeff Bezos in there. Yes. And I was blown away by, do you want to go ahead and take that and kind of talk through that? Well, it was sort of the, the, the inspiration for the whole book to be honest with you, because what Bezos said was he was answering a question. Someone asked him, what's the new thing that you're excited about? He said, well, that's a good question. But the more important question is, what's the thing that's not changing? What's the old thing that's not changing? And he said, people want a low price, fast delivery and bass selection. It would be impossible for me to think that in 10 years, someone would say, I love Amazon Jeff, but I want to pay higher prices. So this is the model is putting the human first and then, and then taking the technology to serve that human, to make the prices even lower, to make the selection even better, to make discovery even easier, to make the delivery even faster. He's got those constant human needs right in the middle of his business. And that's what we all should be doing. And when I, what I extrapolated from that specific to, to my industry is, that's relevant to things, it's, it's, it's process. It's customer experience. You use the phrase earlier, remove the friction and, and we've talked about elements and examples of friction and, and looking at where's it broken and how can you create that ideal experience that's human, but also efficient at the same time. Yes, exactly. I mean, today, all those things, Jeff, ease of doing business, quality of product. If you're in retail, it's, you know, what's your return policy, that's, those are given today, right? I mean, saying, thinking that we have great service as a point of differentiation is not a point of differentiation. Everybody has a high level of service today. Those are table stakes, that's a survival skill, you know, you need to go up above and beyond that, to stand out in the world today. And that's where it gets down to working on these constant human truths. Yeah. And a couple of points about that, this is from your book as well, as you asked some relevant questions there. It's like, how can you invent a customer meeting, right? A service call, a sales presentation, et cetera. Think about architecting that entire customer engagement from point one before, during and after. Yeah. Absolutely. Just to think about, how can we be more human? How can we, how can we create a peak moment in that experience that people will remember? And let me just give you a quick example of that. And it's, it seems sort of mundane, but I've got a friend who has an agency in Atlanta. And, and, and this point in my book had a, had a big impact on him. And he has people from all over the country come to visit him in Atlanta. And when the meeting is over and it's time for the customer to go to the airport, he has a limo waiting with snacks and drinks in the back to take them to the airport. And that's the last thing they remember about that visit. That's something they're going to talk about. That's a peak moment that gives us lasting emotional connection to that agency. So I mean, it doesn't have to be the most creative thing or the most bold thing or the wackiest thing. It just has to be something that's connected to the needs of your customers. Absolutely. It doesn't have to be a lab or expensive. It's just that little human touch, little connection. Awesome. Well, listen, I know you're busy. And I appreciate you so much for being here. It's wonderful to connect with you again. I'm just thrilled that I've had that opportunity for us to cross paths and you are making a positive impact in my life. And I think the ripple effect from those listeners to this podcast, it's only going to continue to grow. So I appreciate you. Thank you so much, chef. And thanks for the great interview. And being so well prepared today was a real, a real delight to be here with you. I mean, we'll put links on the show notes, but any particular, I know you have a podcast. It's called Grow, right? And it's like one of the top 1% of podcasts in the world. Yeah. You can find everything on my website is businessesgrow.com. And I've got a blog there. I've got a podcast. I've got my books are there and lots of free resources for businesses of every size. Yeah. And like I said, we'll put all that in the show notes. So again, Mark Schaefer, thank you so much for being here. Thank you, listeners. As always, we appreciate you for tuning in. If you like this episode, you know what to do, leave us a little love out on the webs, a little review, and we'll see you on the next one. Hey, guys, what's up real quick? You've heard about the mortgage marketing pro membership before and I just want to quickly remind you of that you're in a place in your business where you simply need more purchase loans. You need to fill your pipeline with purchase business. 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