709 – Doing webinars right: Tom interviews Tom Poland

Episode 709 – Tom Poland
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey, everybody. It's Hugh Jackman here with episode 709 of Screw the Commute Podcast. And you've got to be irresistible, like Hugh Jackman to get a guy, a famous guy like Tom Poland to come on this show. I got to tell you. All right. So, folks. All right. No, it's not really Hugh Jackman. It's fat, old Tom, your old buddy here. And and we got he's got to we'll tell you what that means in a little bit later. But Hugh Jackman thing. But but I like this guy. We got a lot in common. He's got this pay me later idea that I've been doing for with a kind of a variation for 25 years. So I really like the way he he handles things. So we'll bring him on in a minute. Hope you two miss Episode 708. That was low content books. Again, this is kind of funny for me to be talking about low content books when I'm known for high content books. I had one for ten years that was 1042 pages. So that's I don't think that counts is low content. But but my friend Cindy Cashman is the one that 26 years ago wrote the book What Men Know About Women. And it was totally blank. And she sold millions of them. She was like a a semi-literate a single mom broke and she she turned it all around, sold millions of books, and then sold the company for millions.

[00:01:48] I love her. All right. Make sure you follow me on TikTok, tiktok.com/@digitalmultimillionaire, and also pick up a copy of our automation e-book at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. And you will thank me for it because it's we actually estimated just one of the tips in the book we estimated saved me 8 million keystrokes. I want you to working with customers and clients and develop products and services, not fighting with your computer. So grab a copy of that, that book.

[00:02:20] All right. Let's get to the main event. Tom Poland is here. He's a multiple bestselling author specializing in the generation of high quality leads for professionals in 151 cities around the world. And he's started and sold numerous businesses over the last 39 years and has led teams of over 100 people generating more than $20 million in revenue. And he lives and works from his home on the Sunshine Coast of Australia, complete with his much loved wife, dog, tennis courts, swimming pool and private rainforest. And I got all of that except for the wife and the rainforest. So, Tom, you ready to screw the commute?

[00:03:02] Ready to rough roll. Tom We can call ourselves the drummers or something, you know? Tom. Tom Drums.

[00:03:08] Exactly. Yeah. Well, see, anybody that's named Tom has got to be a good guy. So? So we're glad to have you on. So.

[00:03:17] So listen, that's that's probably my best qualification for being on your show.

[00:03:22] Right? Exactly. So we'll get to you, Jackman, in a little while. But but this lead generation stuff, tell us how you got started in that.

[00:03:33] Well, it looks like an interesting story because I used to have a completely different product, which was a basically kind of like an MBA for entrepreneurs because there was a big gap in the market back in the day when I launched that, it was 1995, so a couple of years ago. But what happened is we were really very successful. You know, we went from a zero to a seven figure business pretty quickly and we went into so there was a demand in the marketplace. But the funny thing is, you know, so many of our new clients weren't asking me about what's coming up in the program, but they're asking me, how the heck do you do your marketing?

[00:04:06] Wait a minute, wait. So who's we and our who who are we talking about here, you and your wife? Or is this when you were in another business?

[00:04:13] Know me.

[00:04:14] Okay? It's.

[00:04:15] It's the royal way, okay? It's. It's the way you pretend to have less ego.

[00:04:21] Oh.

[00:04:21] You share the.

[00:04:23] Glory.

[00:04:24] But. Well, I started the thing in 95. No, no, it was just primarily my business. I mean, I had a team of people working there, but my wife wasn't one of them. Certainly not at the time she came in later on. So when you get to. Yeah, so. So I had so many people asking about the marketing, how we were packing our conference rooms and workshop halls and so on and so on. And when I finished with that business, which was around 2008, I think I was sitting around twiddling my thumbs. I'd moved on and thinking about the next business and I thought, Well, why don't I do something? I'll lead generation. Since that seemed to be the number one question that we got. And I went online and I had a look at surveys and survey after survey after survey. The small business owners stated that it consistently ranked in the top three and often number one spot was What's your greatest need? And it was new client flows, It was new client flows. So I decided I would kick off my next business a only generation and be online because I'd had enough of traveling and flying and hotels and so on. So since 2008 I've been 99% online, just using webinars and online courses and Zoom calls and go to webinars. And it's all been about marketing.

[00:05:39] New generation. And speaking of webinars, yeah, I've done hundreds of webinars, made millions of dollars with them. I love that. You're kind of preaching to the choir there, but tell. Tell everybody why you like webinars. And I know you have done hundreds of in-person events, as have I.

[00:05:54] Yeah.

[00:05:55] Where it's a hassle. I mean, well, I only I never liked the logistics and I think you are in that place too. But enormous amounts of risk and money and and flying and all the crap to go with it.

[00:06:11] The. So if you if you look at marketing results, there's you can get them get new clients in a whole different ways. But you can summarize two characteristics of any marketing system or lead generation system, one being efficiency and the other being effectiveness. And to actually evaluate a marketing system, you have to take into account both the efficiency and effectiveness, for example. I can run a big event in New York and I can do direct mail marketing, I do advertising, I can have a team of people there to register people in the foyer of the hotel. I can get the audiovisual system set up. We can have a spectacular light display. We can have smoke going, you know, and I can walk on the stage and change my way out of a wooden box and, you know, razzle dazzle. And and we would get a lot of clients, there's no doubt about that. So that's a very, very effective. Probably nine out of ten or ten out of ten for effective way to market, but it's not efficient.

[00:07:09] Yeah, but you're the other guy. Wait a minute, Tom. You left out the fact that you could get free heroin, needles, you know, just by having an event in New York.

[00:07:19] Hell, just the needles.

[00:07:22] Yes, that's right. So.

[00:07:24] And then. And you can look at something else like, I don't know, you could do something that's really easy to do. Set up a post, an article to LinkedIn. Very efficient, but highly ineffective. And the French have a word for this. And I can't quite remember something like if a case or something. But they they have a word that combines both efficiency and effectiveness and one word.

[00:07:47] Yes. And effed up. I think that's what that's.

[00:07:50] That's what webinars give you. They give you the best of the efficiency and effectiveness. If you if you were able to subjectively give a score for effectiveness, it would webinars would be less than a live event. But if you gave a score for efficiency, it would be ten times a live event. So you combine if you if so, from my mind, if you want lifestyle and you want pretty good results as well, then online meetings trump the offline meetings. There's still a place for the offline meetings. I always had new clients start and start with the online stuff because it's more efficient. It'll get you going quicker. It's much, much easier. It's almost, almost free to do and get some runs on the board. And then if you want to do venture into the world of more complicated, more expensive but more effective meetings, then sure, you can run some physical meetings, but do that a little later. Why do low lying fruit on the tree first, rather than getting a letter out and risking going to the top of the tree?

[00:08:42] Yeah. Now, if there was one silver lining of the pandemic is I mean, I've been preaching and I've never had a job, so I've been in my own business 47, 47 years. So so I've been preaching and working from home, working from home. Screw the commute and the pandemic woke people up and said, Oh, you can work from home. I didn't know that. So.

[00:09:04] So yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah.

[00:09:06] I haven't been on a plane in three years and I am thrilled to death about it.

[00:09:12] So yeah, and that's interesting. So the paradigm shift, the way of looking at marketing meetings changed completely with with the with the pandemic because you and I were sitting there doing our stuff beforehand and other people were going some other people were going, No, you can't. It wouldn't work in my business. And all of a sudden, guess what? They made it work. So that's that's that's a little liberating breakthrough for a lot of people. And as I said, there's still a place for the physical online events. But, you know, you and I have been around long enough and we've done enough of them to go. Yeah, I don't think I don't think I want to leave home quite as much as I used to.

[00:09:46] Yeah. I mean, I'll go if somebody else sets up all the deal and makes a lot of people because I'll come home with a massive amount of money because they got my act down. But, but the thing is, is like I said, I love sitting here and now I you have a book on this. I read about three quarters of it today and.

[00:10:03] Wow.

[00:10:04] Yeah. Because, you know, I'm a continuous learner and you get one little tip can change the whole course of somebody's business. If you get that attitude, anybody thinks they know no at all. They're on their way downhill in a hurry. But one of the ways you talked well, several of the ways, I mean, you covered getting attendees and some of them were paid advertising. And and I don't think you gave great credence to that because it's really complicated to do it well and turn it into profitability. So what are some of the ways you're putting people in your webinars?

[00:10:43] So. So 90% of our attendees come through what I call OPM and people will have heard of probably OPM, other people's money. You borrow other people's money and you invest in property and you get the leverage and so on. Opc is another one other people's time. So you hire people, employees, freelancers, franchisees, licensees, and then you can leverage your results of other people's time. But OPM and for Nigel is other people's networks. And we did know we ran Facebook ads for for many years I think between about 2008 and maybe 2000 and say 2001, something like that. But we did we crunched the numbers and we we discovered, to my horror, I should say that. Someone who registered for a webinar, which is our main marketing vehicle for for reasons we've already discussed. But someone who registered for a webinar from a Facebook ad versus someone who registered for a webinar from someone else's email list. More specifically, open is the latter was 50 times more likely to become a client than the former. So someone's on Facebook and they go, Oh, this is an ad for a webinar. Well, that could be interesting. And whatever click, they're a wanderer and what I call a wander. They're kind of wandering through Facebook, checking up on friends, family, etc., having a laugh, putting something on Marketplace or whatever, and they see an ad out of the corner of their eye. They're just being wandering through and it catches kind of catches their attention. But they don't have serious intent because they never went to the network We call Facebook with an intent to solve a problem or pursue their potential.

[00:12:19] Yeah, and you paid for that terrible lead.

[00:12:21] But yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's the that's the other thing. And I closed my Facebook account down when I got a bill from Mark Zuckerberg for, I don't know, $3,300 or whatever it was. And I logged into my Facebook account as well. So the monthly fee was due and that's fine. You know, you hire the piper, you got to pay for the tune. I close it down on that day because we because I'm exactly the same in the same almost the same breath. I opened our open tracker and I saw 869 webinar registrants from one of our marketing partners or open partners, and that didn't cost me a cent. And so here I was paying Zuckerberg and Facebook as it was back then. Now Metta thousand dollars every month for what was becoming poorer and poorer quality leads when I could get them completely free and I could rinse and repeat without cost. The audiences that I was generating month after month after month through other people's networks.

[00:13:20] Yeah. And I think I heard you say you were advertising between 2001 and 2008. I think that's what I heard you say. But probably.

[00:13:31] 2000. Yeah.

[00:13:33] You probably had a hard time converting between 2001 and 2004 because Facebook didn't start 2004.

[00:13:40] Yeah. No. Well, perhaps I misspoke. I meant to say 2008. Sorry.

[00:13:44] 2008. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:13:46] And 2008 to about 2011, 2012.

[00:13:49] And it keeps it keeps getting more complicated and more and prices going up. And they can if you don't really know what you're doing, you know, they they can tell just by the way you advertise and then they, they just take your money basically.

[00:14:05] So it's so you got to think of Facebook advertising like like a Roman amphitheater where the gladiators are fighting. And if you're an advertiser, you're one of the gladiators trying to kill the other competitors. And the king, you know, the emperor is sitting there in his chair. That's MOCK.

[00:14:23] Right.

[00:14:23] And and and it gets even worse because you're actually paying for the privilege to fight and kill the other advertisers. It's called cost per click. And you bid on the opportunity for you pay money for the opportunity to to pay more money than your competitors to Mark Zuckerberg and his team. So this is the best possible marketing model from Netta or Facebook or Zuckerberg's point of view. It's the worst possible marketing model from your point of view. In my point of view, because you're just slugging it out with other competitors and paying for the products to them. Whereas with OPM there are virtually no competitors.

[00:15:02] Yeah, and I you know, I wrote a book on joint ventures, so I'm totally in your in your field on that. But I'm wondering, you know, I've been espousing that one of the best bargains of advertising is YouTube in-stream ads. These are the ones where you can click the skip button. Have you used any of those to try to drive webinar attendees?

[00:15:25] No, no, we haven't. And we certainly continue to explore other revenue marketing sources and lead generation sources. So I've made a note of that. Thank you.

[00:15:36] Yeah, and the reason is because you can get enormous branding there. Of course you are interrupting them. They weren't there looking for you. They were looking for the other guy. But you don't pay anything if they if they don't if they click away within 30 seconds. So you can get if you front load your message and then we even in some cases tell them, hey, if you're not interested in this, click right here just to go click before 30 seconds and you get the branding, but not you don't have to pay anything. So. So anyway, now to get people to sign up, one of the most critical things that you say and I believe is the title, what are some of the tips on titling your webinars?

[00:16:23] Right. So there's there's a blend of psychology and marketing essentially is psychology, because what we're doing is we wanted to influence people. So we have to deal with the realities of how the brain works and.

[00:16:37] If it works at all anymore nowadays.

[00:16:40] Yeah, I hope, hopefully. Well, the ones that don't work so well, you probably don't want them as clients, but so so in the brain there's this thing called the reticular activating system and folks will have heard of it. They might have heard of the reptilian brain. There's lots of different ways to describe it, but it's a physical area of the brain called the RAAS or reticular directing system. And it's designed to filter out irrelevance and filter in relevance. And relevance is to I have a problem, I need to solve it or I have potential I'd like to fulfill. So any title can get cut through. And specifically it has to cut through and get through the. Raz The reticular activating system. And this is why probably most people know you have to have a benefit in the title, but it's no longer enough to have a benefit in the title. The benefit has to be expressed in a manner which is differentiated. So to get through to get through the reticular activating system and civil your your title to hit the amygdala in the brain, which is the center for deciding whether you fight or whether you fly right or whether you find find out more than your title have to have three characteristics. Yes, it does have to be benefit rich, but two, it has to be differentiated from the words that your prospects, your target market have heard in the past. Because if you just say, Hey, come to a webinar, I'll show you how to grow your business. That doesn't get through the reticular activating system because they've heard and they've heard w business in 90 days.

[00:18:05] I've heard it so many times and they've heard all the BS and all the hype. So all that stuff gets filtered out by the reticular activating system and it doesn't even get to the amygdala. And I can give you a classic example of how the reticular activating system works. Let's say you, you buy a new car and it's a red and a red Ford Fiesta and you discover this car because a friend bought one and you're driving back from the dealership very proud that you've made a wise purchase. And suddenly every frickin second car on the road seems to be a Ford Fiesta and every 10th one is a red one. And you'd never notice that before. You're saying, how come everyone's got a Ford Fiesta all of a sudden? All you know, you have a child and you name it a certain name and you think it's really unique. And then you take into play school a couple of years later and every second frickin child has got the same name. It's not that this suddenly this proliferation of the cars or the children with that name, it's that you're reticular activating systems going. I know this is important to us, so I'm going to let it through to the amygdala because of relevance. So your title's got to be benefit rich. It's got to contain, it's got to be differentiated and you can do that through including specifics. Let me give you an example. So here's a client does software for fast food restaurants like McDonald's, Burger King, etc. and his title for his event as it was back then, since webinars was we create great point of sale software for quick service restaurants.

[00:19:33] Come and see how we do that. We're going to do a demonstration of our software, great point of sale software. So you know, you're at the checkout counter of McDonald's and I said, Would you like fries? That's prompted by the software and the upsells are prompted and they benchmarked one salesperson against another and they can generate more sales. So. We create. Great, first of all. The owners of fast food franchises don't care if you create great software because they've already got software. So if someone reads that title, come along to our demonstration of how we create great software. The reticular activating system goes. Been there, done that. Not relevant to the problem we're trying to solve or the potential we want to fulfill. So we changed it so that it became not product centric but benefit centric. And we differentiated it and we included specifics that are the three characteristics we need in a title. So the title then read. Demonstration. How we're increasing the sales and profits of quick service restaurants. Qsr is excellent by 25% within 90 days, guaranteed. Now that gets cut through. No one had heard point. And by the way, no mention of point of sale software. Right. It's just how we increase the sales and profits in quick service restaurants by 25% in 90 days. Guaranteed. Demonstration. How you do that? So that turned it from a title that failed to get cut through and fail to hit the amygdala and activate to find out more response into an event where people were were filling the seats.

[00:21:06] Yeah. Beautiful. Yeah. It's thought, well thought out. And I got to tell you, every time I go to do one of these places, sometimes the abbreviation or acronym POS shows up on the screen. And POS also stands for Piece of Shit. So I think that's the way they're thinking of me as a customer.

[00:21:31] So inspired by your creative thinking.

[00:21:34] Well, pass it on to the people. They should change the acronyms. Now Yeah.

[00:21:40] But creative people like you would think of something else.

[00:21:43] Probably now. I was when I read that you have this, quote, contrarian view of the purpose of email, I was really intrigued because everybody that listens to this show knows that I've made a fortune on email. All the social the only people that dispute that the money is in the email are the people selling social media training. But social media to me is a necessary evil to get them off of there onto an email list. And I was real interested in this thing that you have this algorithm killer or whatever it is that can tell if a potential joint venture or OPM partner is a POS or that in their so so email. So but I didn't I was reading the book I didn't see any thing that I didn't agree with. What's the contrarian part.

[00:22:39] Well, you're done marketing for, what, 40 something years?

[00:22:42] So you're 29 and stuff out? Probably online since the commercial Internet started.

[00:22:46] Yeah. So you've probably figured this stuff out a long time before. So your mind, it may not be contrarian, but a lot of people let me, let me just touch on the the purpose of an email list, which is for many people would, would be contrarian. So most people think that they need to grow an email list so that they can offer this stuff to it. Right? Right. So that traditional thinking, I need more email subscribers so I can market my stuff to them and they'll buy stuff and I'll get more clients. So what I what I discovered is there's a far more profitable objective with an email list. So how often could I market my stuff to my my email list before I start? They start to get annoyed with me. Probably about once every 90 days. Saatchi Saatchi did 20 years of research on this and they think it's every 90 days that you should be putting an offer. If you do it more than that, people get started, get annoyed, they dropped off. If you do less than that, they forget about you. So that gives me probably to optimize the response of my email list. I've got four shots of it and lots of people will disagree with it. I accept they disagree with it, and that's beside the point. I think you can probably do it more often than that, but that's a safe bet. So if I use my emails to market my stuff to it, there's one email list I'm marketing my stuff to, irrespective whether it's every week or every 90 days, it's still one email list. If, however, I view my email list as an opportunity to look at other people's carefully curated high quality but free content to. In exchange for them promoting my high quality content to their email list. Suddenly I know I can do that at least once a week. So suddenly I'm getting my stuff marketed to 50 other email lists every year instead of how many? One.

[00:24:32] Mm hmm.

[00:24:34] And that's the contrary. Contrarian view, if you like, is I urge people to think of their growing their email list as yes, being an economic imperative, but to do so with the objective of opening up to other people's email lists so that you can have a multiplier effect of 50 times, by the way, you can still email your off or whatever that is, your webinar or your five day challenge or your free book or whatever it is to your email list every 90 days. That's no problem. You're going to get no list about doing that from that. But so you still got that opportunity. But now you've got 50 other email addresses being opened up promoting your stuff, too.

[00:25:09] Yeah. And just, you know, like my book didn't really concentrate on that. My book concentrated on the fact that if you know how to approach a large list owner, you could have zero as long as you approach them properly. And most people don't. You know, I have to tell them to take a hike because I get 20 people a week trying to get me to promote their stuff. So. So it's different than what you're doing. You're swapping basically, and mine. And I totally believe in that. Absolutely. It's harder to swap, though, when, you know, I've got 100,000 and people have 50, you know, so so I don't do as many.

[00:25:54] So, yeah, no, 100%. I get that totally. So for a lot of people listening to this, they've either got a no email list or a very small email list and the question on their mind maybe, well, well, I don't have anything to swap with. How do I get started? And look, I, I walked out of a a well unsold and started a new business and I think it was 2008 the is blur but that's anyhow whenever it was seven or eight I started with an email list of eight people we grew it to currently around 27,000. We grew a lot larger than that, but we culled it back. So the important thing is to start and you start with people who have small emails that you do swaps with people. Other people have got eight subscribers, but how you grow your email list is not just from the few webinar registrants or downloads you get for your free book or your, you know, you need something to offer in terms of free content. Otherwise you fall into the trap of Hugh Jackman marketing, which we can come.

[00:26:53] Back and get to that.

[00:26:56] So, so you need something as to give folks the opportunity to dip their toe in the water with your brand before you make the offer of becoming a client or talking about becoming a client. So that said, you've got something developed, assuming you've got a free content piece and you start doing cross promotions, open swaps, if you like, with people who are small emails. So you get subscribers that way, a few trickle of subscribers, but you do what, 99 point percent of people in the job market, joint venture market don't do, which is you put into place a quality control piece after you've done the swap. So that's a Zoom Call meeting where you meet with the person who promoted your staff and you promoted their staff and you say to them, Was it good for you? And if it wasn't good for them, you make up for somehow. But you have that person walking away wanting to do the same thing in a year's time when they have grown their email list a bit more and you've grown your emails a bit more. But at that point you can refer that individual to three other people that you know who might want to do a swap and just do your Google research and reach out to people and get Tom's book and figure out how to do this stuff. The other time, I mean. But the debrief meeting, the other partner will refer you to three of their contacts. Now. If you're doing this once a week, you'll have three of these meetings a month because one will drop out or won't show up or whatever. That's just 25% don't turn up. So that's still three people you're doing debrief meetings with.

[00:28:26] You're doing swaps with you're doing debrief meetings with. And so that's nine referrals again. Take three of them out because they won't fire. That's still six more people that you're getting referred to to do swaps with every single month. So this is this is the only marketing system I know of that is self feeding its growth. You just do the swaps low numbers to start with. But of the three that you get referred to from each partner, one will have a larger list than your partner. On average, one will have about the same size list, and we'll have a smaller list. So every month you're working your way up the email food chain, you're getting a larger list and you're getting referred to people with larger lists and you're doing the debrief. You're making sure everyone's happy. And the number one thing that mature marketers are concerned about when you do a swap with them is that their subscribers come back and thank them for the introduction to your content. So the number one thing I look for is not the email list size that's important, but it's the quality of the content that I'm going to be introducing my subscribers to because I want my scribes to be really happy with the introductions. So don't get hung up on the size of your email list. What I'm saying is we're all born naked. None of us came out with an email list. You've got to start somewhere. Everyone starts somewhere. So start. But make sure that as you grow your list, the quality of your content is world class, because that's what's going to open the doors to open.

[00:29:50] So there you heard it first, folks. The famous Tom Poland said that size does not matter. This is the age I watch.

[00:29:58] My wife disagrees, but I'm sticking to that.

[00:30:01] So. So, yeah. So that's a way that I haven't really been doing for years and years. But it's a very, very solid way to grow your list. What I've been promoting is you have to have an affiliate program to do the, the one that I promote and then go for a much bigger fish. So you can do both. There's no nothing stopping you. So but do something. Do something.

[00:30:24] Good point. All right. And that that and that's the affiliate program that you just mentioned, Tom, is something I should have mentioned. But it is a great equalization of strategy. If you're starting with the smallest and you want to tap into someone's life versus you're going to offer them an affiliate commission or you can offer to promote their free thing with three emails and only promote one to yours. So there are ways you can tap into larger lists, even if you've got a smaller list. But the underlying thing is you've got to have good quality content.

[00:30:53] Absolutely. And you have to know what to say if you're going for the big fish. All right. So tell him about the Hugh Jackman story.

[00:31:02] So, I mean, I'm in my kitchen and my wife and I having a coffee and. I don't know where it came from. I had some sort of brain sneeze and. And I said to her. You know, I mean, I'm like 65 years old and wrinkled, right? So I'm not exactly the greatest catcher in the world. But for some reason I said to my wife, who was exceptionally pretty. Who would you say is the world's most irresistible man? And she fluffed around with George Clooney and Roger Federer. And then I but I wasn't convinced because I didn't see your eyes light up. And then she goes, she puts a copy down. She goes, Oh, I know. And our eyes go wide open. And she goes, Hugh Jackman, that, you know, that Australian dude has got the six pack and you know, he's, he's got a body Adonis would die for. He's a philanthropist, he's community minded, he's charitable, he's he's got a private jet, he's got houses in Monaco and New York and the Bahamas, and he is the world's most complete human beings. He said, I would rate Hugh Jackman as the world's most irresistible man. So I thought, Yeah, I get that. I can see your faces all lit up.

[00:32:07] And I said to her, Well, let's just say there was a knock at the front door right now and you put your coffee down. This is me asking my wife. And you went to the front door and it was Hugh Jackman, and he even had a shirt off, you know, And he dropped to one knee and he and he and he looked up at you and held a small red velvet box up and and flip the lid. And it was $1,000,000 diamond ring. And he said, Look, you don't know me. I know, but but my name is Hugh Jackman. Would you make me the happiest man on earth? Would you run away with me right now and marry me? And we'll we'll fly to the Bahamas on my private jet, and we'll make love on the beach and under the moonlight and. What would you say to Hugh Jackman if you proposed to you right now? And my wife flatters her eyelids and she has a copy down. And she says to me, well, she told me, you know, I love you, right? And I'm thinking, Yeah, I know what's coming next. He said, Well, I'm sorry you asked, but it's Hugh frickin Jackman. I'd run away with the guy.

[00:32:59] You know.

[00:32:59] To be honest. And so I wiped I like to tear out of the corner of my eye. And I thought, Well, that was a pretty stupid question. I probably deserve that answer. And I said to her. Look, I don't think you need to apologize. She said what? I just told you I'd run away with another man. I said, Yeah, but look, it's Hugh Jackman. And honestly, if there was a knock at the front door right now and it was me, Tom and I went to the front door and I opened it and it was Hugh Jackman, and he dropped to one knee and held up and he proposed to me. Hell, I'd run away, and I'm not even gay. I mean, it's Hugh frickin Jackman, you know, just fake until you make it or something. But the moral of the story is that a lot of people do their marketing, like the commercial equivalent of Hugh Jackman. It's you meet someone at a business networking meeting and you hand out a business card and you go, Would you do you need SEO services today? And it's just too soon. It's like proposing marriage at first sight. And, you know, there's probably only Hugh Jackman and George Clooney can get away with that. The rest of us poor saps have to ask people out on a date first. You know, to understand that we are three out of ten physically, but, you know, maybe we could be a nine out of ten fund wise. So maybe that's going to spin you.

[00:34:10] So what we need to do when we marketing services, particularly consultancy services, coaching services, training software as a service, we are effectively it's far more like we're proposing marriage than it is selling a hot dog or a washing machine and people are buying into our relationship with you. So you need to get them on a first date before you propose anything, before you propose meeting to talk about their business needs, before putting their personal needs. Whatever it is you're selling, give them a first date. And the perfect first date is the webinar. Because it's low skin in the game, they can disappear out of the room any time they want and no one knows if they don't like your body odour or whatever, digitally speaking. And but it's enough time with you. It's like it's like dinner out on the town, right? They're not committing to a proposal or marriage. You're not going to even. But. But it's just enough time for them to get to know you. And that's that's what I love about the webinar. It's like a first date. And at the end of the webinar, that's when you pull out the ring. That's when you say, Hey, look, if you have an interest in taking this any further, there's the link. Go ahead and buy or there's the link, go ahead and book a time and we'll we'll, we'll have we'll have a chat about your needs and see if I can help.

[00:35:30] You know, it'd be funny if if you know, I know you've told this story lots of times if somebody's listening, you know, tags Hugh Jackman and he shows up at your door.

[00:35:43] I'd still go.

[00:35:45] Well, it depends on who answered the door, I guess. Yeah, well.

[00:35:49] One population, one house would go down by 50% either way.

[00:35:55] So we got to take a brief sponsored break. When we come back, we'll ask Tom what's a typical day look like for him and and in his screw the commute world. So folks are about, oh, about 25 years ago, I kind of turned the Internet guru marketing world on its head and that people at my level were charging 50 or 100 grand up front to help them with their small business and online marketing stuff. And I knew a lot of these people they'd be hiding out in Tasmania if you if you gave him 50 grand upfront and they'd never see him again. So so I said, you know, that's too risky. I'm going to turn this on its head. This is a little bit different than what Tom has done, but. I said, I'm just going to charge. An entry fee is about ten times lower. So I tied my success to their success. And for me to get my 50,000, they have to net 200,000. Well, people like this and 1800 students later, it's still going strong. It's the longest running, most successful, most unique mentor in Internet digital marketing program ever. And I always put I triple dog dare people for years to put theirs up against mine, and nobody will because they'd be embarrassed.

[00:37:09] I mean, you get an immersion weekend where you actually live in the house with me and in this estate home in Virginia Beach, we have a TV studio. We shoot your marketing videos, you get a scholarship to my school, which is the only license dedicated Internet and digital marketing school in the USA. Probably the world. And it's all one on one. There's no group stuff here. I group is great for some people, but for me, you know, I have to dummy stuff down so that for your advanced and I'm talking to a beginner, you're bored if you're a beginner and I'm talking advanced your loss. So it's all one on one with me and my entire staff. So so if you're interested in something that that kind of hand-holding, like I said, it's the longest running ever in this field. So check it out at greatinternetmarketingtraining.com.

[00:38:03] Let's get back to the main event. We've got Tom Polen here. He's one of the luminaries from from our friends from Down Under. And so Tom, what's a typical day look like for you? Well, I.

[00:38:15] Start Tuesday morning and I work with three day week, so that's the first thing I think that's important to me. Yeah, that's nice. And so typical day for me is I have maybe a team meeting with with one of our group's marketing team or the production team or operations team. So I'd have probably, I guess, average one of those per day out of the three days. I don't do any direct client work and this is by special request. Every single client we have, regardless of what price point they come in to, has my mobile phone number in case they need me. But, you know, I get maybe one call or message on that a year because we have a good support team in place. So it could be the support team I meet with do interviews. I do maybe two or three interviews a week. So that's sort of meeting and most of my time is development. So I like thinking about the marketing and like to switch that up. I like to develop products. So the biggest things that occupy my days, so I'd say over three days, the ten hour days, but over in any given ten hour block, therefore is probably about 3 hours of meetings with one subscription or another. And the balance of the time is me thinking and developing and plotting.

[00:39:25] So what do you do the other four days?

[00:39:30] Well, there's.

[00:39:31] Nothing like give us more of the insight. Do you get up early? Do you have a morning routine? Do you? What do you eat to exercise?

[00:39:38] I typically get up. I typically get up around 6 a.m. just because I'm an early riser, not because I'm particularly well disciplined. And then it's into the pool to wake up and then it's into the espresso machine. I have a bunch of espresso machines. I'm an espresso obsessed, tragic. I have a coffee roastery, so roasting some beans and then tennis. We have a tennis court here, so I play a lot of tennis and there's a lake. So I walk around the lake with the dogs and that's that fills the. And honestly, by the time Monday afternoon comes around, I can't wait to get back to work. And I like that. I like to want to go to work because I've had enough time off and my mind needs a challenge now. So. And Tom, we you know, we have grandchildren come to visit and they play on the front lawn and chase ducks around the pond and use the guest house. So, you know, on the weekends, often we've got one family or another with the grandkids here. So and my wife loves that. I mean, I'm always really happy to see them come, but I'm really happy to see him go again.

[00:40:39] Hey, do you know do you know why grandchildren get along so well with grandparents?

[00:40:47] Why do they?

[00:40:48] Because they have a common enemy. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:40:56] Well, that used to be me stuck in the middle of that sandwich, but, yeah, no, it's a delight to have them here. And we've got. We've got the space for them to run around like lunatics. And so. So they do.

[00:41:07] They do. So, are you good at tennis or are you where My site FatsoTennis.com.

[00:41:14] No, I'm not.

[00:41:15] Yeah, Yeah, I have the I have the dubious distinction of being the largest person ever to have created and starred in a tennis training video. So you can see that. Fantastic. You can see the trailer. I'll have to check that out. Yeah, You can see the trailer at the Fatsotennis.com where I'm playing tennis and eating pizza at the same time. That is probably the.

[00:41:38] Best combination in the world I've ever heard. Playing tennis and eating pizza is almost as good as making love and eating burgers at the same time.

[00:41:46] Yeah. So yeah, we, I created a two DVD set and some of it is hysterical and some of it is.

[00:41:54] Just just so fun.

[00:41:55] It's just is real about how the angles of the court and everything. How I run the young people to death before I drop dead. So.

[00:42:06] Yeah, well, you and I are two peas from the same pod because that's, you know, I'm 67 years old and our kids come up and in their early thirties typically and, and yeah, they still can't beat me so I just like you side to side. Yeah. Shoulder angle halfway up the court. And the greatest joy I have is not hitting the flat winner, you know, like a, like a Roger Federer shot. It's just having them run, having them run, having them run. And eventually they.

[00:42:33] Just I'm.

[00:42:34] Just anyway, that's just my super ego controlled trip there. But it's I've got to say, it's still fun.

[00:42:42] Oh, yeah. And I got the first part is all these gadgets for fat people. And so if you can picture the butt of your tennis racket and there's a suction cup you can put on there so you never have to bend over to pick the ball up, you just push it. And then I got to look at this and then when I if I play it at public court, I always play in the middle court. I don't want to be near the fences on the sides because if I'm sucking air, I go to pick the ball up and I accidentally kick it on purpose and it goes clear to the fence and I can suck air while I'm walking gently to go get the ball. Oh, that's so funny. Yeah.

[00:43:29] Fatsotennis.com.

[00:43:32] I'm there and I'm going to Duval. We've got a pizza oven so I might even do a pizza and eat the pizza while I watch you.

[00:43:40] Well, you know what I think I'll send you I'll get Mark to. I mean they're DVDs. I think he has them digitized. I'll send you the file if you want to watch.

[00:43:50] Fantastic. Yeah, I'll show the kids.

[00:43:53] So, how do people get ahold of you?

[00:43:57] Look a couple of ways. First of all, I do try to respond to all emails. So Tom@Leedsology.Guru. So blog y like psychology except for leads or marketing Tom it leads ology object guru, but if they want some piece of content which could really help them, the most prescriptive book I ever wrote step by step on how to use OPM, how to use webinars, people can get a free copy of that, gettomsfreebook.com, and when they download the book, they'll also have the opportunity to come along to one of our webinars or just sit, sit in the grandstand and see, see how I run them.

[00:44:36] Yeah, And I got to tell you folks, what's the name of the webinar book I got today on Kindle.

[00:44:42] Marketing, Mock marketing webinars.

[00:44:43] Yeah.

[00:44:44] So going to get new clients who want to help a month.

[00:44:46] Yeah. So if you're really interested, I mean I have my method, but if you're it's not as detailed as Tom's, I tell you, it really goes into the nitty gritty of the psychology of stuff and titling and, and the value of it and oh, it's just, it's a, it's a really great, great book. I have one on how to get more people to attend your webinars. And so and the one interesting thing is I've had really great luck on show ups with sending one email the day of and I've seen some of yours where you were send in a week in advance. So tell us about the difference there.

[00:45:29] It's changing, you know. When I when I started doing webinars, I think it was 2008, we would send the first email two weeks before. Now we send them five days before and two days before. But because our partners are sending the emails, you know, they sometimes they send them.

[00:45:46] Yeah, that's.

[00:45:46] Right. Yeah. So that our recommendation for them is, is five days before and two days before. Once they've registered, we have, we have reminders that go out, We, we, my, my business manager is a data scientist by profession, so he crunches the numbers and we've done a lot of a lot of testing and refining in terms of how many emails is optimum. And it's it changes. You know, you can change probably every two years. We're sending a different number out at a different time on a different day. We have figured out the sweet spot of time for running a webinar, which is 4:00 PM, Wednesdays Eastern. And bear in mind, we have a global audience. So I'm here in Australia for PM right now. You guys are not on daylight saving at time of recording, so that's 7 a.m. mine the next day. So that's a reasonable time for me to be out presenting a webinar. 4:00 pm New York, 1:00 pm LA and I think about 10:00 pm in Europe, Western Europe. So yeah, it's kind of, it's kind of the sweet spot for.

[00:46:48] People have to test. I mean, because, you know, I have had great luck on Sunday nights sending one email. Wow. Sunday morning. Because remember, it's just my list. So I can't send 12 emails promoting one webinar.

[00:47:05] Yeah. And it's a big list. But that's very interesting Sunday night because it's a commercial product. It's a business product, right?

[00:47:12] Yeah, And, well, various ones. But but I get enormous. I get 70 plus percent show ups with one email. And so.

[00:47:22] Yeah, that.

[00:47:22] Is and almost all of mine have been evening webinars because a lot of my lists are, you know, they're still the dreaded job so they can do stuff in the evening, right. Yeah.

[00:47:33] And what time Sunday do you run them.

[00:47:36] It depends on the, if it's daylight savings time or not. If it's in the summer, it's 9:00 PM, so it's already dark. If it's in the no excuse me in the in the winter it's Yeah in the winter it's 8 p.m. because it's dark, it's been dark for hours but in the summer.

[00:47:56] People are.

[00:47:57] Outside. So I go, I go to 9 p.m.. Yeah. And still.

[00:48:01] Yeah. I gotcha. So it's after, after dinner kids are in bed.

[00:48:05] Yeah.

[00:48:06] Yeah. Hopefully there's nothing too compelling on Netflix. That's very.

[00:48:10] Interesting. Yeah. So I mean, like I said, it's, it's everybody has the test. That's the whole thing. No, no one person can tell you what's what's right if they do. And you better watch you guard your wallet and run. You know, you have you have to stick in there and see what works for you with your offer and your audience and your people and so forth. So if were sports stuff, you might be might be Friday night or, you know, for Saturday college games and Sunday pro games. I mean, just depends on the topic and everything. So. All right. Well, thanks so much for coming on, Tom. It's been blast. Really appreciate it. You got some cool stuff going down on there and in Australia. And I want to I want to say those things again getTomsfreebook.com will lead you to a free download and also you'll see how to get on one of his webinars to see the real thing in action and email Tom@Leadsology.guru. Thanks so much man and.

[00:49:17] Privilege being here. Thanks for the invite, Tom.

[00:49:19] Okey doke. We'll catch everybody on the next episode. See you later.