606 – Business cards can make money: Tom talks Business Card Trick

Episode 606 – Business Card Trick
[00:00:09] 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 606 of Screw the Commute podcast? Today I'm going to tell you a business card trick. Well. Let me think about that. I really shouldn't call it a trick. It's more of a technique that hardly anyone does. And this will get you way more website traffic from your business card than fancy paper stalk and cute pop up designs that cost you a fortune. All right. So we'll get to that in a minute. Hope you didn't miss episode 605. That was Brandon Neely. This guy teaches you cash flow and how important it is. So that's episode 605. And of course, when you want to get to it back episode, you always go to screwthecommute.com and then a slash. And then the episode number. His was 605 and today is 606. I'm sure you're going to want to pass this on to colleagues because it won't hurt you, but it'll certainly help them and they'll love you for it. All right. Pick up a copy of our automation e-book at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. It allowed me to handle up to 150,000 customers and 60 excuse me, 150,000 subscribers and 65,000 customers without pulling my hair out. So grab a copy of this very comprehensive book at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. It's all yours for listening to the show. We sell this for 27 bucks on my website. All right. Hey, I just thought of it. While you're over there, pick up a copy of our podcast app. It's screwthecommute.com/app. And you can put us on your cell phone and tablet. Take us with you on the road. It has all kinds of cool features and we have video and screen capture instruction on how to use it.

[00:02:12] All right. Let's get to the main event. Let's talk business cards now. For my entire career, I've only had funny ones. I kind of looked at it that if I'm the big shot of an event, then people know who I am and they have numerous handouts and videos throughout the event that tell how to get hold of me. And I thought, it's pretty cool not to have one. Now. The funny ones I did have were for Fatso Tennis, which is my crazy tennis site, which was round and it looked like a tennis ball. That was a lot of fun. Then I had a holographic one for my nickname, which is King of Kaching, where it had a computer monitor and when you tilted the card, dollar signs appeared to fly out of the computer. So then I also had them way back for my practical joke company Prank Masters, where I had my trademark logo, which was a little devil sticking his tongue out at. So I had lots of fun with these cards, but none of them really gave me lots of website visits. In fact, the prankmasters was before there were website visits.

[00:03:25] So but when I learned this technique that I'm going to tell you about today. Wow, did things change? All right. Now, before I tell you the technique, you've got to think about the theory and principle of why this technique works. It's called the zig zag principle. Now, if you've followed my copywriting training, you would know that this is an extremely important principle. Bloom is a Gornick was a Russian psychiatrist and psychologist who uncovered the principle of the human mind that it cannot stand unfulfilled curiosity. We use this all the time in subject lines of emails to increase your open rates and in the body of the email to increase click thrus to your website. I mean, you really should listen or read listen to episode 13 on copyrighting that screw the Comic-Con slash 13. I mean, I've coined this as the number one skill in my entire 45 years in formal business. And even when I was ten years old doing kid side hustles. So listen to that. Episode 13. Now I'm amazed that more people haven't embraced better copyrighting, and especially the zagazig principle on their business cards. So here's the idea that we'll get you tons of website visits coming directly from your business card. So you can't just put your domain name on there and think people are going to rush home and they can't wait to go visit your website. That's kind of arrogant and ridiculous. So what you do is you develop a question that, you know, will raise the curiosity of those in your target market.

[00:05:19] Then you put a Web page on your site that answers the question. The only way someone looking at the question can get the answer is if they visit the Web page listed on your card. Now, this question can be on the front or the back of your card. Now, if it's too long, you probably should put it on the back so as not to make the front side of your card look too busy and hard to read. Now you can also put a QR code. With the answer if your market is more tech savvy. But I would still put the actual URL in case someone doesn't know how to read a QR code. Also please for all your business card stuff, leave off the https coal and slash w w w. It's just taking up a bunch of wasted space. Trust me, people know that it's a website if you put a dot com or a dot something, right? It really isn't necessary to do that. It just takes up space that could be better used. Making your curiosity question larger to read or more in depth. All right. So here's an example, and then I'll have an advanced technique for you in a minute. So let's say you are a real estate agent. You could put a question something like this. Do you know ten ways to increase the value of your home by 20%? To find out visit let's say Tom sells real estate dot com slash ten ways.

[00:06:59] That's right on your card. That will get you way more visits than ever. Just Tom sells real estate dot com. Then nobody's going to go there at all ever unless they're ready to sell their home and they happen to still have your card. But they will go pretty quickly to go see how to increase the value of their home by 20%. See what I mean? And then you get him to your website. That's the whole point of this. So all you have to do is think up some curiosity generating questions and make a page on your website that has the answer. Now when you get them to your website, you can sell them stuff or convince them to take you on as their agent or whatever you happen to be pushing. Now, here's an even more advanced way to do this. I mentioned earlier just the last paragraph, basically that I used questions, plural, instead of question. So if you can think up several of these questions, here's an advanced technique you can use. Many business card companies allow what is called a split run. So maybe you have five different great curiosity generating questions. You put one on each card. Let's say you have five different ones. So you do a split run of maybe 1000 cards and then you have 200. All the fronts look the same, but maybe the backs have different questions on them.

[00:08:36] So you have 200 of one question, 200 of another and so forth. That's called a split run. And then maybe you give your cards out in bundles of five. And you tell the person there's a cool question on each one of the cards and encourage them to check out all the questions and encourage them to give away four of the cards to people that may be interested in your products and services. I like that. That's a really cool way. And you will start seeing I mean, if you give out a lot of business cards, you will start seeing actually seeing in your analytics, more visits to your website and you can track those exact pages to see which question is getting the most interest from people. And then maybe you quit doing split runs and you just do that question if it's if it's far above the other questions. So there's all kinds of good things you can do with this, but for very little money, you can add something to the back side of your card. That's the Zagorin principle and get tons of website visits. And also keep in mind what kind of cardstock you use, because the first run I had on this podcast, I wasn't in charge of doing it. I told one of the guys here in the office to do it and the card was beautiful, but they thought, Oh, we'll save some money and they just put it on regular stock, and then they'd be in my pocket and the ink would wear off and they'd look all scuffed up.

[00:10:07] Terrible. So make sure you use glossy something that's not going to wear off and look shabby in your pocket because that's, again, part of your your reputation. If your business card looks all shabby, like like it's been run over by a truck, you don't want that. So that's that's the business card technique. And hey, if you want training on all kinds of stuff, I mean, there's thousands of things you need to know to have a successful business. And I've been doing it successfully for 45 years. So I know, I know pre-Internet stuff plus Internet stuff, publicity, all kinds of things I've done to very high levels. And it would love to help you with it. And my mentor program, which is at greatInternetmarketingtraining.com and also, you know, I have the only licensed, dedicated Internet marketing school in the country certified to operate by the State Council on Higher Education in Virginia. But you don't have to be in Virginia. It's a distance learning school. So if you want to save tons of money and have your kids or you not be in debt for the rest of your life with a crappy education where you're competing for jobs at Starbucks. Check out the school at IMTCVA.org. And here's another cool thing. If you are in my mentor program, you get a scholarship so you can join my mentor program, gift the scholarship to your child or someone close to you and save them a fortune.

[00:11:38] And being off the workforce for four years and getting their crappy degree, they'll have a marketable skill in as little as six months. And actually we've had people making money long before they graduated because of the skills that are in so high demand, because every business on earth needs Internet and digital marketing. So check all that out and contact me directly. There's no pressure here. If you have any questions about anything, you know, get set up an appointment. Just email Tom@screwthecommute.com and give me a couple of days and times you can talk and what you want to talk about. And I'll be glad to help you out. All right. That's my story. And I'm sticking to it. Be glad to see. Hey, send me your business card when you get him. I guess I should have turned off my cell phone, but I didn't. And we're almost done anyway, so don't worry about it. But anyway, yeah, I'd love to help you out with this stuff, but I'd love to see if you have a business card. Email me and I'll get you to send it to me and I'll put some kind of showcase up. All right. That's my story. Now I'm sticking to it. We'll catch you on the next episode. See you later.