Episode 68: What's the one thing you're not doing that's costing you business?

Kendra Corman: 

Welcome back to another episode of Imperfect Marketing. Super excited, I have Gary Geiman here. He's a serial entrepreneur and business owner. He has a 30-year career that has spanned owning multiple businesses in developing sales and marketing plans to assist other business owners in growing their business.

Today he owns and operates DMN8 Partners, a digital marketing and consulting company that helps business owners dominate their competition and market. 

Thank you so much for being on the show!

Gary Geiman: 

Thanks for having me, Kendra. Looking forward to it. 

Kendra Corman: 

So, let's go ahead and just start off with helping small businesses convert their sales.

So, you talk a lot about the foundations for converting sales strategy for small businesses. Tell me more about that?

Gary Geiman: 

Yeah, so I, I'm primarily in the services space, so professional and home services. You know, if you're in the e-commerce space, this might not all transfer, but some of it definitely will.

In those spaces though, professional services and home services, answering the phone is critical. I have conversations multiple times a month with business owners doing decent amounts of revenue three, four, 500,000 up to, you know, almost, almost eight figure. And they struggle with that one thing of consistently, constantly answering the phone during normal business hours.

I don't know about you, Kendra, but if I search a local service online and I call them and it's during normal business hours and there's a voicemail, I don't leave a message. I go to the next listing. 

And when you're putting a lot of effort into driving traffic, related to search, especially money, time, whatever those resources are. Cuz to get traffic driven via search, you're spending one or both of those consistently and constantly. You have to answer the phone, someone has to answer the phone. And if you don't, you're, you're losing out. 

So the number one foundation is the communication. And it starts with answering the phone and then it continues along the sales cycle with communication.

Kendra Corman: 

I love that. So just to tell you a little story about that. So one, I have an answering service cuz I hate picking up the phone. And if this rings in the middle, like it actually forwards to them. So, because it is so important to answer the phone when you're in professional services or home services. People are just gonna keep dialing.

But I actually have a client that I have declined doing any other Google ads for them because we recorded the line from some Google ads, and people were calling and it was going to voicemail. It was going to an automated system. Nobody was picking up, and none of the voicemail options, like when it went into the automated system, none of those options actually went into anything that went with the campaign. 

Gary Geiman: 

And I'm gonna guess it was all your fault. 

Kendra Corman: 

No, actually, shockingly enough. This one wasn't. A different one was. 

But I played them the recordings, right? And I'm like, so there's 17 leads that you paid for and lost on because you didn't have somebody picking up the phone.

Gary Geiman: 

It's painful. It's painful. 

Kendra Corman: 

And it's not that expensive to pay someone to do it if you don't have enough stuff to do it all yourself. Right? 

Gary Geiman: 

Yeah. Yeah. 

So, we do call tracking as well, and that's a that's a sticking point when we have strategy sessions. I have two clients that do multiple millions of dollars in revenue annually.

And both of 'em, at some point in our, I've been, I've been doing business with both of 'em, probably close to four years. But at some point during that period, we've had to have conversations about that. Answering the phone. 

We're talking about, you know, 300, $400,000 a month in revenue. Probably 40 to 50% of it comes from search, either pay per click or optimization for Google Maps and SEO and phone trees, which are the worst.

And like you said, ones that don't even go anywhere, are horrible too. Or just a voicemail and then. Let's get past that. Cuz you could beat, we could beat that horse dead. Like answer your phone, right? 

Second piece is the person answering the phone needs to have some sales skills because every conversation with a customer or a prospect, I should say, even a customer, like someone's being sold every time.

You're either being sold or they're being sold. So the person answering the phone has to have some sales skills. And what And what's the number one skill someone needs to have for sales? Listening. 

Listening. 

Many times, and I, and I hear this a lot with people that maybe it's their first time like being in a sales position.

And if you're, if you own a business, you're automatically now a salesperson. Congratulations. Right? 

And so people that are new to that don't understand that telling isn't selling. They don't get that right. They want to say everything that's great about what it is they do their features and benefits.

When every prospect in the world listens to the same radio station, what's in it for me? And they want you to play them the song of what's in it for me. And you are only gonna know what that song should say if you listen to everything that that prospect has to say, they will tell you what their pain is if you just listen. 

And then the next step of that is asking the right questions and shutting up.

But those two pieces, as you sit here and talk, it sounds easy. It sounds simple, but those get done wrong the most by a majority of businesses, and we have 90 clients at any one time. I've probably in the last five years, worked with close to a thousand clients, and I'm telling you, it's a large percent that struggles with this one piece. 

I had a home service business for about five years. We ended up selling it after we achieved a revenue goal to a private equity company. The first three years, everything forwarded to my cell phone. I'm sure my wife was annoyed because I answered that phone Monday through Friday, 8:00 AM till seven or 8:00 PM. Saturdays, sometimes Sundays. 

And then once we got to a certain revenue space, then I backed it down to just regular business hours. Unless it was Christmas lights, cuz we did Christmas light installation as well. I kind of went, you know, we would go overboard cuz we wanted to talk to as many people as possible cuz conversion was really low.

But I answered the phone and I answered the phone. Like until we got to a certain revenue capacity to be able to bring someone on, I was answering the phone. 

Because think about with your business, who is the best salesperson typically for your business, when you're small starting out, you're fledgling, you're getting your footing, like you have the passion. It's you. 

And as much as you know, social media is talked about, the word branding. And I believe in branding wholeheartedly. As you sit here and look at my logo that you know, DMN8 is a license plate for dominate. I'm all about branding. If you Google my company or my name, I'm gonna show up five, six pages of Google cuz of branding. 

But, you are who they are going to do business with. It's you. I mean, if you want to get to a point to where you wanna scale and then you know, sell the business and you remove yourself, that's about creating systems and SOPs to be able to do that. 

But until you get to a couple million dollars a year in revenue, and even after that, I got a friend of mine who's a glass company and they're pretty big. Like they have three locations. They do eight figures a year in revenue, and he's the president of the company and he answers the phone probably 70% of the time.

I scratch my head at that, but he knows he's the best salesman. Right? And that communication piece is very, very important. And we, as business owners, you have to get that right.

Oh, the rest of the sales process is just gonna be broken. We, I looked at, I looked at these three things as being the currency of every business. And this falls into this process. Speed. Price and product can be beaten by other companies at any time. I got the best product, best service best price.

Those can all be beaten. They can all be beaten. But if you're first to do everything, it's hard to get beat. We, we're always told in our first or second follow up. I'm still waiting on other quotes. 

We already had our quote out. We were following up. We were in that process, and we would play on that in our sales process.

They take, it takes that long for them to get you a quote, just think how the service is gonna go. And we would try to convert as many of the of that as possible because of our speed. That's our value, that's our currency to our customer. 

And then the second one is, a little bit more, less tangible. Speed isn't a tangible thing. It's more, it's intangible for sure, but this one's even less tangible. And that's reliability. 

And the reliability piece comes to us answering the phone, responding. We have a rule here, one of our core values here, and it was at every company I've ever owned, is we respond to customers within 24 hours, same business day. 

Now, that goes even further internally, like I want to respond to customers, within the hour. It doesn't mean we're responding with an answer, it just means that we are communicating. 

There's nothing worse than trying to get a hold of a vendor, a provider, a supplier and you gotta send 'em a message on their website or you gotta go to chat. 

Like we splurged last year, and I don't know if you've seen the spin coffee maker. It is this coffee maker that it uses less beans. It uses centrifugal spinning to create like a frothy coffee. And we're coffee nuts in our house. And so we buy this right? 

And it's great. You have an app, and the app controls everything on the phone. It does the work like it's a little bit more maintenance than a regular coffee pot, but a lot less maintenance than like a Keurig and taste incredible. You can make regular coffee, lattes, like the list goes on and on. Right? 

But when you have to communicate with spin, and this is annoying to me. You have to go into the app, you have to click on support, you have to figure out who the support is you gotta talk to, and then you type your message and you wait hours. Right? 

That is not communicating with your customers. Thousand dollars coffee pot, like I should get direct answers, you know? And that's, that's the way you gotta think about your business. 

Am I making it easy for my customer to do business with me? And am I making this whole process easy for the customer to pay, to be able to, to provide, you know, feedback. 

And so easy, ease of use is that third piece that every company has to look at as being the value that someone is going to see to hire them. So it's speed, reliability, and ease of use. 

If you can nail all three of those, You'll dominate your market, you'll dominate your competition. You'll be able to grow at the heights that you wanna grow at.

Kendra Corman: 

I agree with that 100%. That reliability is key. The speed is really important. And I would say, you know, definitely on the website, I was just recording one of one of my other imperfect marketing briefs this weekend for release in January. 

And when I was recording it, I was talking about websites. And the, one of the key marketing trends right now, is improving the user experience.

 I was listening to a story brand podcast and they said, look at your website. Is it easy to do business with you? Can somebody figure out how to do business with you if they go to your website? 

I mean, it sounds as simple as answering the phone, but it's not. It's, people overlook it and overcomplicate it.

I have to admit that I did have to redo a bunch of things on my website once I started thinking about it.

Gary Geiman: 

But that's part of the review, right? You're constantly looking at that. And you know, those, us marketers are gonna call that calls to action, right? But as many ways that there are that people communicate, you should have that many ways that people can contact you, especially from your website.

Like if you are working that hard to drive people to your website, are you making it easy for. One of my pet peeves with clients is like, they want to ask, you know, every piece of information on a contact form. Like, I wanted to know like what size shoe you wear. I wanted to know where you went to high school.

Like, you don't need any of this. You just need a name, an email, and a phone. And they're, and you know, most of our clients are in a home service space, so they're needing it. They want an address, so, okay. I'll cut it halfway for 'em and I'll give you a street address and a zip code.

Well, why can't I ask 'em for the city and state? Because if you have the zip code, you can put it in Google and it'll tell you the city and state. Oh, that's too hard, right? So we don't want it hard on us. We want it hard on our customer and then complain when our conversion rate is low. Well, we drove 300 people to the website this month, and only seven people gave us leads.

Well, that's because you only want people to fill out a form, right? 

So go to your website and think about this. How do people communicate? We'll break that down real quick. Phone, which probably, I don't know, Kendra, is that the number you, think across all your customers, the phone call is the number one way that people, that prospects respond.

Would you say?

Kendra Corman: 

For prospects, yes. Clients Email.

Gary Geiman: 

Yeah. Okay. That's a great point. So email next, right? A form. A chat, and you can integrate Facebook chat into your website so you don't have to pay a bunch of money. And you got your Facebook chat on your phone, so it's all right there. You know? 

And then text, like me personally, I'd rather have a text or a chat with someone immediately. As long as they're responding, then calling them or emailing 'em, that's me. But that's not everybody. But don't you? 

Kendra Corman: 

Yeah. I have to reach out to Verizon to work on some things and I'm dreading it . Because I'm probably gonna have to call them.

Gary Geiman: 

Exactly. And they're horrible to call. We have Verizon also. I have a contact, my email takes 'em a day to get back to me. Anything that you do, it's very difficult. They don't use easy as part of their process. But you know what, they're also a billion dollar company, they're getting away with that. 

Us small fries that are, you know, 6, 7, 8 figure companies we ain't gonna get away with it. We're, we gotta compete with them and we gotta be able to beat them at levels they can't beat us at. 

You know, my I have friends of mine that are in e-commerce spaces, and listening. And they'll talk about their competitors. My favorite thing to ask 'em is what's the thing that makes you laugh the most about competitors in that space?

Oh, when they complain about Amazon, I was like, so do they know there's nothing they're gonna be able to do about it, number one? And number two, do they know that they can beat Amazon's game all day long, right? They're smaller, more nimble. 

And that's what they say like, yeah, like we're able to beat Amazon at games they can't even play anymore.

And that comes back to reviewing what it is you have for that prospect or customer and how you communicate it in a way that is effective and that they can relay back what they wanna buy from you. Cuz they will if you do, right? 

And I, finishing up that question about successful, you know, the successful foundation of a sales strategy or, or foundations of a successful sales strategy.

Communication, right? Is numero uno. And then that communication is broken down in the introduction and the follow up. Sales doesn't start until someone puts a roadblock up from not wanting to buy from you. Otherwise, if you're taking orders, that's not selling. Like that's great. 

But selling is all about the follow up and the touch. We have built into our touch sequence seven touches, first 10 days. Sometimes people, oh, that's way too many times. 

The prospect will tell you if it's too many times, and I don't want them to miss what it is I'm saying. I don't want them to miss the offer, and I don't wanna have them misunderstand the offer. And we worked hard to get them to that point.

I'd rather them tell me, no, shut up. Go away. Leave me alone. Then I don't know what it is they want to. We get too afraid to hear the No when sales is all about hearing the no. And then you overcome the no with providing them information, maybe that wasn't relayed correctly or was misunderstood in the delivery.

Kendra Corman: 

Yeah, no, I like that. And there's nothing to be afraid of, of the word no. It's okay.

Gary Geiman: 

It is. 

Kendra Corman: 

I like the word no. I'm embracing it as my word of the year for 2023. 

So alright, so what's the number one marketing source all businesses owners should be utilizing for growth? 

Gary Geiman: 

You know I think the answer to this kinda goes back to what we were talking about, but you have to be looking at your customer database and your prospect database.

I always say the gold lies in those hills, which is a reference back to, you know, the gold rush of the 1800s. There's gold in them there hills. Well, there is gold in your database and unless you're extracting that gold, you're never gonna get it. 

How do you extract it? Communicate, provide offers, provide can't miss offers. Look at ways that you can structure your services and the offer without reducing your income, but increasing your income. 

The value of the customer has to be completely understood by you and hopefully your organization so that you know what value still exists from that customer giving to you, right? 

If you listen to Alex Hormozi, who wrote the book, $100M Offers, young, young entrepreneur and he was in the gym space and now he's building a, basically a private equity firm, and his goal is to get to a billion dollars. He has a podcast and he is kind of documenting that along the way.

He talks about the structure of the offer and the structure of the offer is really key to getting your customer to buy more from you. There's two things about the structure. There's either the term or there's the price. So you can make the term really attractive or you can make the price really attractive.

You can't make both really attractive, but you have to figure out what it is that your customer wants to buy from you. So like, one of our go-to-market strategies, we used to always sign our customer up. They start paying us monthly and we just keep on rolling. 

Well, we figured we're probably missing out on a lot of businesses that are below a revenue threshold that maybe can't afford 15, 25, 30 $500 a month. So we started putting together what we call Sales Boost. 

And a sales boost is just setting up things and getting their marketing set up. It's not managing it, it's not optimizing it. It is getting them to that starting line and show them how to press play, show them what they need to do. But then we're done.

90% of those people come back to us at some point and wanna buy something else, right? I never would've gotten those, the, that revenue piece, if we just looked at people that were willing to start paying us monthly at a larger contribution and want it to marry us. Right? 

Because that's basically what I call it, entering into a contract or marrying us, right?

Some people just wanted to date us. Some people weren't ready for that long-term commitment, revenue, their mindset, whatever that issue is, right? So we, so we kill a couple birds with that stone of that offer. We get rid of the long-term commitment issue that some people don't want. We get rid of the, I've always been screwed over by marketing agencies.

We get rid of that cuz okay.

Kendra Corman: 

Oh my gosh, I think I hear that one almost every day, if not at least twice a week. 

Gary Geiman: 

You're not on Facebook if you're not hearing it every day. Right? So we, we get rid of that piece of it, which is more of a trust type factor. Marketing doesn't work. We get rid of that because we give them five or six sources of potential leads that they can develop from that.

And really it is a huge revenue boost for us. We don't spend a lot of time or third party service money to be able to get them set up. And if they come back to us, we already got the set up ready. We already did it. 

And you have to look at your business in ways similar to that of how you can get other revenue. I used to really balk at one-off type stuff because I wanted the r r I wanted that recurring revenue. Right. 

But the one-off type stuff is helping us now to achieve revenue numbers monthly, that this time last year, it was a part of my goal slash dream, right? 

And I went to that one-off stuff and, and our monthly recurring is still 70 plus percent of our revenue, but that one-off type stuff started adding fuel to the fire as well as creating leads for monthly customers. 

And you have inside of your business something that you can offer as a way for people to try or test you out. And if you're not doing those things, you're not testing the market. And marketing is nothing but testing. 

Test. 

Did it work? 

Yes. Let's keep adding wood on that fire. 

Test.

Did it work? 

No. 

Okay. Let's try and change something to see if we can get it to work.

Like saying marketing doesn't work just means you gave up. I can take any marketing source that someone says didn't work. I can show you where it did work. 

Kendra Corman: 

Yeah. I looked at my offers this year and redid my whole offering for 2023, so I'm excited about that. 

But I did, I added, instead of just the monthly recurring, I added single VIP Days with an opportunity to get one-to-one coaching on and help hold them accountable and stuff like that. Where it doesn't all have to be a big ticket item to outsource and have me do it. 

And as we work into different, Economic times, being flexible is gonna be important cuz different people are gonna have different appetites for what they can and cannot do. And I think that's super important. 

I also loved what you said about using your database to get growth. And I think that that's so important. I think one of the words that you used there was database. That means it implies that you have a database. 

I encourage you to have a database. I don't care if it's an Excel worksheet. It doesn't have to be a fancy CRM. I don't know, I'm guessing you guys at DMN8 have a CRM system that you're utilizing. 

Gary Geiman: 

We do. We do. And we're always looking for the better version. But you have to have something. You're right. 

Kendra Corman: 

You have to have some, and again, it can be an Excel worksheet if you're just starting out.

But I was talking to a client and I said, okay, well let's start your email marketing program. Let's just start with your clients. 

"Oh, I don't have all their information." 

I'm like, they're your clients, but they don't have all their information. It's nowhere to be found. All they have are the accounting department emails in any type of system. Cause that's in their QuickBooks. 

But for marketing, it's individual outreach. They're not even mass email. I'm like, okay, we need to fix this. So we're working on ways to fix it right now. But you need to have that database so that you're able to reach out to those people because there is, there's a ton of gold in your database.

Gary Geiman: 

Yeah, yeah. 

Kendra Corman: 

People that weren't ready to work with you two years ago might be ready today. People that weren't ready to work with you three months ago might be ready today. Just depends on where their, where their level of pain is, right? And they're gonna tell you that.

So you gotta stay in front of 'em and reach out to them. Otherwise you're missing out. 

Gary Geiman: 

Yeah. And you're giving an opportunity to your competitor, which is the biggest. You know. Losing revenue is huge, but giving that revenue to a competitor so then they can then take that revenue and use it to beat you? I mean, that, that's a tough lesson. 

Kendra Corman: 

It is. 

Gary Geiman: 

When your revenue is stagnant and the, and this, I mean, I'm doing a quick inventory in my head thinking about this.

Like when I talk to a company, and they tell me, you know, revenue has remained flat the past year, two years, whatever. The first thing we dive into is that database re-engagement. 

Like, have you engaged? And if you haven't, then we're gonna, we're gonna do some database re-engagement. We're gonna structure some offers, we're gonna put some things together. 

And you know, unfortunately, Most people, when I say offer, they think discount. That's not, that's not an offer. Like if you package an offer together correctly, you can sell your services for more than what you get for them today. You just have to package it correctly. 

I make more, if we break it down per hour, I make more on the one-off stuff than we do off to monthly. It's not a whole lot of difference, but it is more. So We're not like doing something cheap.

It's just I don't have a long-term relationship yet. I'm building the trust. I'm asking their dad if it's okay to take 'em on a date, kind of thing like that. It's that type of process and you have to look for the, the more offers you have to provide, the more revenue opportunities you have.

And I think if you are struggling, like you've mentioned. You know, there's, everyone's gonna have challenges and they always do. We get, you know, couple years ago we got challenged with something that had never happened before. 

Now, you know, in the business cycles we're getting maybe it's not as gonna be as open, wild, and crazy economy that we've been used to.

I went through the recession in 2008, 2009. I'm 50 years old. I made it through. I didn't die, made it through, right? 

Went through a downturn in the economy in 99, 2000. I'm here. I get it. You are not going to die because of the economy, right? Probably either health or your surroundings are gonna kill you first, like all of us.

So we can get through it. So figure out, okay, how can I present differently to the customer base? How can I show something that is valuable to the customer base? 

And you have to be thinking about what's valuable to them, not what's valuable to you. 

Kendra Corman: 

I love that I'm always harping on people about their target audience.

You need to understand your audience and it's always what's in it for them. Always. Doesn't matter what you're creating, email social media posts, offers. And again, I love offer does not equal discount. It is just your offer. It's the package you're putting together that's gonna entice them to want to work with you and buy from you.

So one other question for you here, how do you recommend, since you're a digital marketing agency, businesses using social media to grow? 

Gary Geiman: 

Yeah, I mean social media is why I grew the home service business where we were, were able to sell it. 

Quick side note on that, we never showed a profit on tax returns and I sold it to a private equity and got a lot of money because of our database. That's not a lie. That's total truth. 4,500 customers, 7,000 prospects. That was what we negotiated on, and that's why they bought the company. 

But Facebook was kind of where I started. I remember 2015, I think it was about halfway through that life cycle of that home service business. Early 2015 I was paying attention to a mentor of mine online and he was talking about live video. 

Which, that was like the genesis of live video on Facebook was about that time. It might have started a little bit before that, maybe in 2014, but this was, I remember February, 2015, I'm in my dining room. I did my first live video.

I was scared to death because I didn't know kinda what I was gonna say. I didn't have it planned out. 

Now, if I go on now, if I do a live video, I have the content planned. I know what I'm gonna say. Like it's easy. I get on stage all the time. That's simple. 

But on February 2015, it wasn't that simple. And I didn't start with a guide or, I had an idea that was it, but I wasn't, I didn't have bullet points I wasn't gonna cover. And I just started going live. 

And I remember getting a call from someone not long after that video and they asked me, Hey, what's your goal for that? What your goal for this live video that you did today?

And I probably had done like two or three of 'em before I got that call. And honestly, I didn't have a goal for it. I was told to go online and talk to your audience, and so I did that and I kept doing it and kept doing it, kept doing it, kept doing it. 

And I created two audiences. I created the audience of local people that bought our services, and then I started creating an audience of other business owners who had issues that I had, who faced problems that I had. Who wanted to know information that I had learned because I failed at doing stuff multiple times and then, oh, I'm not gonna do that again. 

And they started following me slowly but surely, I never monetized that audience until 2017. For two years, two and a half years, cuz it was September of 2017. The first time I monetized that audience, that I monetized the business owners who were following me.

Didn't set out February of 2015 to create a marketing agency. That just happened. But what I did set out to do was put value into the world that other people could use. I wasn't selling anything. 

And in fact, the majority of the time that I go online, there's never a quote unquote sale in what I say. I usually am giving something away. 

I like Facebook groups. If you can build a Facebook group that contains your, as Kendra said, your perfect customer, your audience. And you can give them funny things, engaging things educational things. Then you become the expert. 

Hopefully it doesn't take you two and a half years to become an expert where somebody wants to give you money, but be prepared for it to do that.

This company, we you know, we we're a seven figure agency. We run ads for branding, not for leads. I get all of my leads because of either speaking, doing podcasts or being on social media. And being on social media is the largest source. 

"But Gary, you don't have the same kind of business as me. Facebook doesn't work for me."

Okay. That means you haven't tried. Because literally, literally, literally, literally. And if you don't believe me, when you get done listening to this episode, go to Facebook to the search button in groups and search what it is you do and see how many freaking groups show up.

Or search your audience. I mean, I know for a fact like if your audience is moms, there's a million mom Facebook groups, right? 

Kendra Corman: 

Oh my gosh. There's a ton. You can actually do that by geography and narrow it down.

Gary Geiman: 

There is an audience, there is a group out there that is your audience. There are people on Facebook That is your audience.

Now in today's multi-platform world, don't get stuck on one. I have younger people that work for me that post a TikTok. I don't even know what those numbers look like right now. It's just, let's do it. Be consistent. 

And so, number one, you have to start. Get the fear outta the way of being on camera.

Gary, I can't do video. 

Yes, you can. Me, ginger, overweight. I just found out I'm almost blind by my eye doctor who said, "do you wear eyeglasses every day?" 

I'm like, no. 

He goes, "well look at this." 

I'm like, crap. I need to wear eyeglasses every day.

If I can be live on Facebook in front of a camera, you can be live on Facebook in front of a camera. You just have to provide value. 

Next thing is be consistent. Like you can't do it one time. Man, that didn't work, cuz you're right. It ain't gonna work one time. I was going live three and five times a day in 2016 and 2017. Like I would say the same things probably over and over again, but I just wanted my face out there.

And a funny thing happened in mid 2016 because of my videos. The industry that we were in puts on multiple trade shows, conventions, that type of thing. I got asked to speak on one of the stages, August, 2016. 

It's funny. 

And then all of a sudden, three more speaking engagements that year, and all of a sudden I'm becoming this expert and this credible person in this industry that I'd only been in for about four years.

Started speaking on more stages. I think 2017 I spoke on seven or eight stages. I usually do probably about 10 speaking engagements a year, although that's a goal of mine to do more next year. But it all started because I wasn't afraid to go live on video and to give value, give free stuff away.

I mean, I give stuff away, like negative keyword lists for Google Ads for your industry. Give you a 4,000 negative keyword list for your industry from Google Ads. 

You know why I do that, Kendra? Because I want to give somebody value. 

And you know what? If they know how to use it, great. But I know that most people aren't going to do the work to figure out how to use it.

So guess what they're gonna do? When they said, man, I got this valuable tool, but I don't know how to use it. I wonder who I should call. Gary Geiman. I'm gonna give DMN8 Partners a call. We give away our Google Map strategy playbook. Here's what you do, step by step every day, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

Sounds easy. Are you willing to do the work? 

See, that's the problem people fail at social media with, is they don't wanna put the time and effort into it. I asked this question to every prospect when we have an initial call. I had this conversation yesterday with a prospect. 

How many times do you post on social media? First answer is always, "oh, post all the time." 

What I'm doing is I'm looking at their Facebook page as they're telling me. I said, okay. So where do you, where do you post all the time at? Please don't say Facebook. I'm thinking in my head because I'm already looking at Facebook and it ain't all the time.

And of course Facebook. Okay. Do you know? And this was yesterday, December 19th. Do you know the last time you posted was December 5th? You posted three times that day, then you posted it on November 30th once, and then you posted three times on November 26th, and then you didn't post again until November 1st.

But he posts all the time. All the time is posting three to five times a day using short form video, using live videos, using stuff that's funny. Maybe a little irreverent. 

We're creating a secondary brand more along the one off type stuff for. Our target audience is 25 to 40 year olds, first time like hustlers. Think Gary V. Followers that just getting started, right? 

Lower end type service slash products in terms of cost, but higher end product. And so we are creating this brand and it is totally irreverent. Like if you are offended, you don't wanna look at our content, but it gets all kinds of engagement. All kinds of engagement.

Like the first TikTok reel that we put out, brand new TikTok channel, first reel within an hour had something like six or 700 views. It's irreverent though, Gary. I mean, it's a good thing my mom ain't on TikTok cause she wouldn't appreciate it. 

Because I think like something was, I think something that they produced was like do you want Jesus to bring you a website for Christmas?

You know, oh my God, I can't believe you did. I can't believe you said that, Gary. I mean, it's funny and I love Jesus. Most of, most of the, you know, any, other person. 

Like, it's not a knock on Jesus. It's a knock on you that you don't have a website. And it's funny, right? And that was one of the less irreverent things that we post it.

So are you willing to get attention? Like, are you willing to get attention? There's a reason why Kim K makes all the money that she makes, and that's because she gets attention. You may not agree with it, but she figured it out and she capitalizes on that. The tune of millions and millions and millions of dollars to the point she's almost a billionaire, right? 

Her little sister keeps going back and forth over that line of being a billionaire. Attention, and if you can't get attention, and Alec Baldwin said it, the best, a I d A and attention. is the beginning of that before you can get someone interested to make a decision to take action.

It's all about attention. If you're not using social media for attention, your brand is all like, you know, Stepford wives all tucked up and we wear a suit every day and all that stuff. Like, that's boring. 

If you're boring, you're not making money. If you aren't boring, you're probably making money. So I would challenge anyone that owns a business to look at and audit your social media.

Are we using it consistently and continuously? Are we getting people to laugh? Cause I don't know about you, but the thing that I like to do most every day is laugh. 

Kendra Corman: 

That's good. 

Gary Geiman: 

And if you make me laugh, you probably can get some of my money, right? 

Kendra Corman: 

Yep.

Gary Geiman: 

Dave Chappelle gets a lot of my money. Every comedy special he puts out. If he's close by, we're spending money. Cause he makes me laugh. 

You too can make people laugh. Be valuable, be entertained, be educating. And if you're doing that and you're being consistent with those things, then you begin to create revenue for yourself. 

In that social media revenue that you're creating, it becomes foundational to where all of a sudden you create a foundation and it gets wider and wider and wider and wider to the tune to where all of a sudden now you have something that's hard for someone to take away from you.

And I think you have to do that audit consistently with social media to make sure that you are doing those things. But you're doing it continuously and you're doing it because you're trying to put out value, not trying to make money. Because if you do it with the thought of, I'm gonna make money if I do this, you're a long way for making money.

But if you do it with, I'm gonna provide value, I'm gonna be helpful, I'm gonna make somebody laugh, I'm gonna give somebody something that's educational. You do that, then people begin to see that value and you become valuable to. 

Kendra Corman: 

Yes. So I always preach value and consistency. Those are two of the key pillars for good marketing on any channel.

Doesn't matter what it is, because if you're consistent, then I can even, I can trust you more too. Because you're doing what you say, not just telling me to, to do what you say. You know, not as I do type thing, which is what I tell most people with my social media, but I'm being more consistent and you know, again, I think it's, it's about helping people.

I love to help people. That's why I got, I went into business by myself, was to, to provide value and help people where I could. Help them grow, help them learn. Because there was a huge hole in gap for small businesses with people that knew what they were doing when it came to marketing. They needed to pay a million dollars a year to get good quality marketing and, and that was a struggle.

So let me go ahead and jump to what I asked all of my guests, cuz this show is called Imperfect Marketing cuz marketing is anything but perfect. I loved how you highlight that testing is being so important cuz it really truly is a big part of marketing cuz it's not perfect. 

So what's your biggest marketing lesson that you've learned?

Gary Geiman: 

My biggest marketing lesson that I learned is one of our core values, which is production over perfection. I will, if I'm in your market doing the same business that you're doing, I'm gonna crush you because I'm going to beat you to market. 

I have a good friend of mine who owns a healthcare software type business, and for the last six years, his revenue has been just flat. Doesn't, like he'll lose a customer and he'll gain a customer to replace that, but he is never growing. 

I mean, in the grand scheme of things, the guy's doing about 25 million a year, but his. Because it's a SAS company, he wants to get it up to nine figures because then, you know, PE looks at it, he can make a variable, blah, blah, blah.

But he can't, but he can't get past that. So he hired me for about nine months because that's about all I could last because we would schedule video shoots to create content, photo shoots, like all that stuff because they have no content. 

Like we, you know, this was four years ago. If you, if you had went to his Facebook page and I don't look at his Facebook page anymore. But and we're still friends, but if you would've looked at his Facebook page then like there was garbage on there. 

Like you would get a post every once in a while and by every once in a while, every 90 days, like nothing. And he was one of these guys like, well, pH book, what's not where my customers live?

So you mean to tell me doctors aren't on there? Right? Nurses aren't on? 

Because those are the people that hired 'em, you know, practices hired. And so we would do video and we'd create 20, 30, 40, like two, three minute snippets of video around, you know, FAQs about questions that people have. And he's gotta approve everything, right?

He's gotta approve every video. So we would edit it, chop it up within a week. Gotta have him all those cuts back. Hey, take a look at these. Let me know what you think. 

A week later I'm emailing him. Hey, do you have anything? A week later, hey, do you have anything? We'd go 30 days, come back. 

"I think we need to do another shoot."

Why's that? 

"Well, I don't really like any of these videos. I was turned one way. I, my shirt didn't look good against the background." 

I mean, it was every freaking reason not to post the content. We did this for eight months and finally I was like, you're throwing your money away cuz you don't listen to anybody.

And as your friend, I can't do this anymore, taking your money, it's nice, but like you have to do something. And I talked to him. Tried about six months ago. Revenue is still the same. Like it's great. That's great, but you are not going to win in that industry when it's about growth. 

And so production over perfection means you don't put out bad stuff. You don't put out stuff that doesn't look good. You don't put out stuff that isn't accurate. But you produce and you put stuff out and you can fix anything later. 

Quit worrying about if your hair's not right. I didn't brush my beard down correctly today. Didn't use any product in my hair. Oh my God.

That's all things that you care about. If you put content out, then the content will come back to you in a way that provides the opportunity. But if you're not putting content out, you don't get opportunity. 

And so I always say if I'm in your market and we do the same exact business, I'm going to crush you.

Why are you gonna crush me, Gary?

Because I don't have those problems of how do I look? Does my shirt not match to the background? Wear black every day, it'll match. Did I not say a word correctly? I pronunciate it a little different than I should have. I sound dumb when I talk, and these are all true things about me, but I don't care.

I'd rather put content out and be producing content consistently instead of trying to be perfect. But Gary, your brand image. My brand image is Gary Geiman, and you either like him or you don't like him. And if you don't, that's fine. 

I'll find somebody else that does, and they will give me their money. If you're constantly worried about perfection, and I love the name of your podcast, because imperfect is what marketing is, because if it was perfect, you could take it and duplicate it all the time for everybody.

And marketing wouldn't be a science that also is an art. It would be a science. So don't worry about being perfect and just produce. And if you do that, you will beat your competition. But if you don't do that, your competition will beat you. 

Kendra Corman: 

I tell people that all the time. I say progress, not perfection. A friend of mine actually has a posted on her computer that says, do B+ work.

I heard somebody say once in a presentation, they said, she goes, I don't care if your hair is outta place. To be honest with you, you're really not that important to me. 

So again, they're not looking at that. Yeah, they're not. They're not looking at you the same way. You're looking at you with that super critical eye.

 That doesn't mean put out junk. Exactly what you were saying. Put out quality work, put out B+ work. Make it work. Make it happen. Yeah. Be provide that value and be consistent. And you can't be consistent if you're constantly going after perfection, cuz you will never, ever reach it or retain it.

So Yeah. I'm, I'm with you a hundred percent on that. Yeah. 

Thank you so much, Gary, for joining me today. I appreciate it. We'll have some links in the show notes of where some people can get some of your value and connect with you for sure. And learn more about DMN8 and your new brand and whatever else you'd like to share, with our audience.

But be sure to check the show notes for that. I think we got a lot out of this presentation. I appreciate so much what you had to share. And I am 1000000% on board with everything. Answer the phone, provide value, be consistent, you know, and as one of my friends says, don't be an alligator. You have two ears and one mouth, you should be using it to listen. And I think that that's a really great takeaway. 

So thank you again, Gary. I appreciate your time and for everybody else that's listening, look forward to seeing you on the next episode of Imperfect Marketing.