937 – Don’t ignore your market: Tom talks Pay Attention

SUMMARY BY CHATGPT

In this episode of Screw the Commute, Tom Antion emphasizes the importance of paying attention to your market to ensure business success. He explains that even the best products or services will fail if targeted at the wrong audience or if they don’t align with what the market desires. Key points include:

Understanding Your Market

The market wants specific solutions, not vague promises or irrelevant offerings. Specificity sells, while generalizations don't.
Current Events as Examples

Using recent political campaigns, Tom highlights how addressing market priorities, such as the economy and inflation, proved more effective than focusing on less pressing issues for voters.
He contrasts clear and actionable promises with vague or unrealistic proposals, demonstrating how paying attention to what people want drives engagement and success.
Surveying Your Audience

Tom recommends Ryan Levesque's book Ask for guidance on surveying your market effectively. A key tip: avoid incentivizing surveys to ensure genuine responses.
Marketing Lessons

Avoid relying on flashy strategies like celebrity endorsements unless they authentically connect with the audience. Misaligned efforts can backfire.
Consistent messaging tailored to audience priorities is crucial.
Tom’s Resources and Offers

He promotes his free automation book, his mentorship program, and the Internet Marketing Training Center of Virginia (IMTCVA), emphasizing the value of practical, up-to-date education in digital marketing.
The episode concludes with an announcement for the next topic, celebrity endorsements, and encouragement to focus on market-driven strategies for lasting success.

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Episode 937 – Pay Attention
[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 Tom here with episode 937 of Screw the Commute podcast. Today, we're going to talk about paying attention to your market. If you don't do that, you can have the best products and services. But if it's for the wrong people, you're screwed. All right. I hope you didn't miss episodes 929 through 935. This was my Don't Waste Time series on a whole bunch of things that I do, but I don't waste time on them. That's the whole thing. I want you to use a lot of the things available to you online, but I don't want you wasting time on them. So that's episodes 929 through 935. And any time you want to get to a back episode, you go to screwthecommute.com, slash, and then the episode number. Now grab a copy of our automation book at ScrewtheCommute.com/automatefree and check out my mentor program at GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com.

[00:01:18] All right. Now, if you've been listening to this show for a long time, you'll notice that I very rarely do anything political. And today really isn't going to be, uh, uh, what you'd say political taking sides or doing any of that kind of stuff. You know, I have my opinions on stuff, but I want to show you how not paying attention to your market can really hurt you. See, the market wants what it wants, not what you tell it at once. Okay. You have to have some real serious clout to tell your market what they want.

[00:01:55] And the market doesn't like wishy washy. In fact, for years and years and years I've been teaching in my copywriting training. That's copywriting. 901 comm. The fast track to writing words that sell is that specific sells in general. Doesn't specific sells in general doesn't. People don't like wishy washy. All right. So I am going to relate this to the recent political atmosphere. And you know, all the polls were saying, okay, the economy is the number one thing. Or, you know, pretty much that was the top thing. And and even back to Bill Clinton said, it's the economy, stupid. All right. And then for most, most of the surveys and most of the polls, it went. Economy, immigration, inflation and way down the list was abortion. Now, I don't have a dog in that fight or I'll say I don't have an embryo in that fight or something like that. All right. I don't want to make too much light of that. But if you concentrate on things that are not of interest to the market, no matter how good you are, no matter how moral you are, no matter how accurate you are in your statistics and your pitch for whatever you're selling, if the market is somewhere way else from what you're doing, then they're not going to respond. And it is pretty obvious that with the landslide victory of Trump compared to Kamala, it's you know, there's several reasons you can probably point to is if the economy and immigration and inflation are the highest things on people's minds, especially, I heard I did hear one commentator say, well, you know, when a mother is at the grocery store trying to afford stuff to feed her kids and her family, she normally doesn't just stop and say, you know what? I think I'll get an abortion.

[00:04:13] Right. All right. Now, again, I don't want to make light of people in that situation. However, the the other, what they call kitchen table, things were more important. And whether you like Trump or not, it doesn't really matter. It's that's all he talked about was that kind of stuff. He only talked about abortion if they pinned him down. And he says, well, you know, I'm pro-life, but I'm leaving it up to the States. I'm not, you know, I'm not going to sign an abortion ban. So, you know, but that was just a tiny fraction of his pitch to the American people. It was all economy, immigration. Drill, baby. Drill. Get the gas prices down. Get the food prices down. Everything that the market was wanting, which is he was paying attention to the market. Now, I do understand that that was more difficult for Miss Harris because it all sucked under her watch, right? So I get that that it was hard for her to to get out there and say stuff about it.

[00:05:18] But again, back to my specific cells in general doesn't. Here's an example. So Trump says I'm going to put tariffs, the exact percentage. This is what's going to happen if they screw us over. This tax percentage is going to be for people making for companies making stuff in the United States. If not, we're going to raise it on them, you know. So very specific things that was going to do where Miss Harris was saying things like, we're going to create an opportunity market. Well, what does that mean? How does that you know, we're going to give 25,000. Now this is one thing where if you're specific and it's kind of crazy, it doesn't work either. So specifically we're going to give you 25,000 bucks for first time homebuyers. Well, all the major real estate gurus far removed from Trump don't even like Trump. Many of them are saying that's the most ridiculous thing they've ever heard. It's going to drive the prices of the home up. Who's going to pay for this? You know, all that kind of stuff. So, uh, and, you know, so specific. That's crazy. You know, outrageously crazy that you could never do probably doesn't help. You know, it doesn't mean you shouldn't push for, you know, high end goals. I mean, most of the things I've accomplished in my life, people told me I was crazy. All right. So I'm not against going after big goals, but you got to have a real plan.

[00:06:48] Not, uh, you know, hiding and being wishy washy about how this is going to work. So you got to pay attention to your market. And one way to do this for people like us is to survey your market. Now there is a book by Ryan Levesque and it's called ask. And I highly recommend the book. But however, the first part of the book is kind of him bragging about all his great results. But the second part of the book, I still to this day use something I learned from that. And that is the fact that when you survey your market, you do not give them incentive to fill out the survey or to answer the survey, because if you do, people will do it and just give throwaway answers and they don't give a crap what they say just to get the incentive. And so you get terrible information from it. So he suggested that you give no incentive and just put the survey out there to your market. And the people most interested in that topic are going to take the time to fill it out, and they're going to fill it out in a more thoughtful manner. So you get great results compared to giving some incentive. And again, this is an example of what Miss Harris did, which is get Beyonce. And a lot of this backfired, paid Beyonce a bunch of money to appear and let everybody think that she's going to sing.

[00:08:26] And then she speaks for four minutes and leaves and all of these celebrity things were, I'm going to actually do a thing in a couple of days on, I don't know, maybe it's next time, next, maybe on. Yeah, it's 938 is going to be celebrity endorsements. But it she did it to because she can't create big crowds compared to Trump in fact well on the debate stage. She tried to. She goaded him a little bit. I would have answered a little bit differently, but. But anyway, she can't possibly pull the crowds that he can pull. So she gets these celebrities and pays them fortunes. Oprah and and Bruce Springsteen and and Beyonce. And then it backfired when when Beyonce never, ever sang. She just talked for a couple of minutes. Sorry, that's not really helping you if you are, you know, doing those kinds of things. That's what we call wishy washy. You know, you're you're you're getting somebody else to to just say good things about you. But those people aren't buying your eggs, which, by the way, I just came from the grocery store before I recorded this, $10.99 for some of the eggs that were there. I'm like, are you kidding me? They're like $0.39 a dozen, I think even less than that when I was a kid. So you got to do what your market is telling you that they want.

[00:09:55] And no matter how hard it is, it's still better than giving them a bunch of stuff about things that aren't big on their mind. And again, the abortion thing, I don't have an. Like I said, I tease about an embryo in the fight. But you know the old sayings, I don't have a dog in the fight. But the thing is, is it wasn't the top of mind and it was a tiny fraction of the market. And then instead of, you know, having your own charisma and saying and, you know, addressing things that were on people's minds, she didn't. And so she got just killed. And, I mean, and a lot of the people on The View were saying, well, she didn't really get a landslide against her. Well, yeah, she did, because the the Electoral College is what counts in presidential elections. And she just got her butt handed to her in the Electoral College. She lost the. I think the popular vote by 7 million votes. And I think somebody was saying, well, it's only 1.5% she lost by. Well, yeah, but it's a landslide. When you look at the, the fact that it's the Electoral College that matters and all the swing states and all that stuff. And again, I hate politics, I really do. I think to win at the highest levels, you've got to be two faced. You can't please enough people. Right. But that's beside the point. Now back to the finding out what your market wants is that book ask is good.

[00:11:29] And then I have two different episodes on surveys. And that's episode 463 and episode 916. And, and of course, you go screwthecommute.com/463 and then screwthecommute.com/916 will give you more in surveys and then find out what your market wants. And then make sure your pitches fulfill those wants in the audience. Right. Because you have to have enormous amounts of money and branding and all this stuff to to tell people what they want. All right. And Miss Harris couldn't do it with $1 billion that she raised in less than 100 days. That's a massive record. But all that money didn't do anything to help a win. See? So you can even have tons of money and still screw up if you don't pay attention to your market, which is the title of this episode. All right. So that's my story and I'm sticking to it. Hey, besides my mentor program, I have the only licensed, dedicated internet marketing school in the country. We have scholarships, 50% scholarships for military first responders, law enforcement, nurses. And, you know, it's the only one in the country that's licensed and dedicated to that topic, run by somebody like me who has become a multi-millionaire doing this 25 years ago. Right. And still to this day, we're the only school that changes our curriculum. I mean, sometimes daily, sometimes weekly.

[00:13:08] Nobody, none of the big schools do that. And none of them are taught by people like me who have actually done it. So if you want your child or grandchild or yourself to have a high level education without student loans for the rest of your life that are breaking the bank, then check out IMTCVA.org. Email me at Tom@screwthecommute.com. There's no high pressure here. It's just if you want something good for your people that have an actual skill that's in super high demand because every company on earth needs this skill. And so we've had students making $6,000 a month before and only in the school like four months, right? Because most small businesses are clueless about this. So so there's an enormous market out there, and you don't have to go to a four year college and get indoctrinated and learn how to protest. Right? You can you can do this. We even had have had high school students doing this. We've had older people that want to retire with this. We've had military people that, you know, move all the time, you know, so it's a really a great opportunity for you. So check it out at IMTCVA.org And I will catch you on the next episode 938 where we're going to talk about celebrity endorsements and the pros and cons of them. Catch you later.