55. How to Market Your Invention for $0 in 2025

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Transcript

0:00

when you do a lot of that marketing and sales work yourself you learn like "Oh

0:05

okay well what does it take to get quoted in a magazine my customers have heard of?" I can promise you that when

0:11

Mark Cuban's in a meeting with an advertising agency in the ad agency coming up with some BS campaign he can

0:18

say "I know people aren't granking on this i know where people are at right now cuz I've talked with them myself."

0:24

That kind of firsthand knowledge is so critical i don't really have I mean personally I don't have a ton of respect

0:32

for people who have not done the zero dollar work i would not spend my own

0:37

money on my own invention until I got to the point where I knew I I I have to do

0:44

the 0 work even if I have $10,000 yes that you invented something is an

0:49

important first step but it's just the first step the second step is good morning inventors and how are

0:56

you look just a quick note before the show season two of the Invent podcast is

1:01

brought to you by the Invent withMe Patreon odds are you've been listening

1:06

to the show for a while now and you need more information i don't typically agree with a payw wall unless it's a situation

1:14

in which there's not enough time in the show or there's just more tender love

1:19

and care needed to get you to the successful point with your invention where you want to be the sign up process

1:26

is incredibly straightforward just go into the show notes click on the link for the Patreon and sign up via their

1:32

safe payment platform $6 a month connects you to the Discord which is

1:37

stacked with current inventors as well as other professionals and myself and together all of us are going to make

1:44

sure that your dream becomes a reality all right guys remember I took the punches so you don't have to and enjoy

1:51

this episode brought to you by the Patreon thanks hello guys and welcome to

1:57

the Invent withMe podcast where each week we guide aspiring inventors and product creators to turn their

2:02

innovative ideas into reality learn valuable tips insights and success stories from people roughing it in the

2:08

field of inventing so that you yourself can make your mark in the world i'm Grant inventor of Torque Strap a killer

2:14

new spring-loaded cargo strap a strap so easy to use you just pull and with me in

2:19

the studio today my new friend Jason Voyovich Fractional Chief Marketing

2:25

Officer with over 100 product launches under his belt jason is an expert in

2:31

being disruptive and breaking the norms that separate good inventors from great

2:36

inventors and today what we're going to talk about Jason you brought this up I love this idea is how would we market

2:44

with zero dollars in 2025 and then we're going to talk about what if we have a

2:49

hundred bucks what if we have a,000 bucks and what if we have $10,000 but before that how you doing my

2:56

man i'm good i'm good good to be here crossed Alligator Alley to get here yeah

3:01

fantastic awesome man well I'm glad you made the journey uh Jason you were on episode I think it was 39 how inventors

3:09

can use history to beat the odds yeah that's right and we had so much damn fun i said "Jason would you come back and

3:15

let's do another show?" Well here he is everybody so Jason um let's let's kick

3:22

this off man uh is it as simple as asking you how would you market with

3:27

zero dollars or do we need a little bit of preface do we need to build up to this yeah here we go let's let's prep a

3:33

little bit first when we talk about marketing and we all know this right that there is marketing that looks like

3:39

marketing and there is marketing that you know is uh you want to call it

3:45

like false marketing and what's we all know the examples of maybe false

3:50

marketing I bought business cards I built a website and what you got to

3:57

understand about marketing is marketing is all about I have my message in front of my target audience they are listening

4:04

listening to you so advertising is marketing you know but creating the advertising is not even though some of

4:11

those things might be necessary precursors to marketing we want to make sure that we're not taking that let's

4:17

say we're at that thousand level we're not taking that and saying okay well I'm going to build my website and now that's

4:24

not what we're going to be talking about with marketing but to that point you

4:29

might be at an early stage with your idea and your journey and there just are not dollars on the table and what do we

4:37

do with that how if I don't even have any I don't have a website i don't have business cards i don't have money for

4:43

any of that stuff how do I how do I get my message because the core of marketing

4:48

is getting your message in front of your target audience how do I do that at different price points because uh what

4:55

what inspired me for this was a show you did on one of the best ways to waste

5:01

money as an inventor that's right is marketing and I thought as a you know marketing person myself you might think

5:08

well no I'm going to come on the show and push back on you on that uh couldn't be further from the truth i have seen uh

5:16

I have seen people go broke marketing so this is going to be another show where someone just agrees with me i I thought

5:22

we were going to come in here and put the boxing gloves on man yeah i don't know i I've seen you you've seen me i

5:27

mean you can see us on camera that I I I wouldn't go boxing up against Grant i I got to tell you that well I I'll go

5:34

toe-to-toe on marketing anytime but I do think that we're kind of aligned i didn't mean to cut you off there but All

5:40

right let's agree a bunch but I'm going to do my best to to add friction yeah no we're going to we're going to push back

5:45

i think at each level we'll we'll argue and I think the benefit of that will be you who are listening to really say like

5:52

oh do I what is my situation and what perspective makes the most sense i'm

5:58

also kind of assuming that you do have some basics even at the $0 level that you have an email address you have basic

6:06

social media accounts you know Meta Twitter X LinkedIn if that's applicable

6:12

to you Insta you know whatever like you've got those things uh you've got a

6:18

smartphone with video and photo capability you got some basics uh and

6:23

you're willing to put in the effort and the time you know if you think that like hey I'm gonna put you know I'm going to

6:30

get into crypto or I'm going to get into some you know affiliate kind of program here that's not what we're talking about

6:37

you're willing to put in the time you just can't like boy I just can't put in any

6:43

money right now or I've only got a really limited amount of money we There are strategies in how to get your

6:50

message in front of people at any price point we just got to talk through them well let me let me throw a wrench into

6:57

that because yeah you have all those resources theoretically uh at your

7:03

disposal but I'm just going to kick you the scenario very real because I've been through it and I know you've been you've been through it too i have zero dollars

7:10

for marketing which usually means my product still sucks my images suck the

7:16

product itself kind it's a first round manufacturer no one has given me feedback so I haven't worked out the

7:22

kinks my email list is three people two of which being my mom and dad uh my

7:29

Instagram is bland i've never been a selfie guy okay so when I have zero

7:35

dollars that it's not just how much how little I have for marketing it's a representation of how virgin I am in the

7:43

entire space of product development yep so that's to me the zero dollars the

7:49

ground zero so let's talk to that person first who's like "Damn it was everything

7:54

I had to get this thing manufactured." Um 10,000 units i I took I took out a

8:00

credit card uh 0% APR credit card for 18 months i'm making payments on it uh put

8:07

in a $20,000 order with China there's nothing left in the

8:13

budget where do we go yeah well let's uh let's take a look let's uh let's make it

8:19

you know let's go from kind of the theoretical to let's look at something like all right we're talking about a

8:25

manufactured good let's pick something okay just to make it manufactured good plastic weighs less than a pound uh easy

8:33

to ship Amazon friendly uh it helps improve your golf game got it okay

8:39

that's that makes sense so all right I've got I've got no money for that i

8:44

presumably have product in hand at least prototypes in hand i've got something

8:49

all right i'm thinking you got your first order like on the water it's going to be here in a week and you're in panic

8:56

mode cuz you know you got to move units soon yeah you got to move units now if I'm developing a golf product even

9:03

though it might not be there might be kinks in it there might be issues with it whatever the case may be I'm not

9:08

inventing a golf product if I don't know how to golf right or if I'm not out there if I'm not that's not part of my

9:14

life already so the number one thing if I had zero dollars and I had a golf

9:20

product and I was kind of developing this in my garage but I'm out there I'm playing

9:27

golf i got clubs i've got you know a handicap number that is respectable uh

9:32

that's probably true or at least like hey I'm not you know I I know where the I know where the courses are i know

9:38

where the public courses are or I know where the you know the private courses are the first thing I would be doing is

9:44

I'd be playing a lot of golf and what I mean by that is hey if I know that product's coming in in a week I need to

9:51

be meeting every person I possibly can on every course I can saying basically

9:57

talking up that product z is all bellyto belly it's all effort so if let's say

10:04

I've got the product coming in in a week I probably have some prototypes yeah you know I I bet that I do so I'm out i'm

10:10

playing and I am walking up to every single person in that clubhouse i'm walking up to every single person on the

10:17

course saying "Here is what I've got and you know what I want Grant i'd love your

10:22

feedback on this product right now i've got this product coming in but talk to

10:28

me about it let's like how would you use it what do you like what do you not like?" knowing that yeah holy crap I've

10:36

got a thousand of these coming in and I've got to sell why am I asking for feedback at this time well you should

10:43

have been asking for feedback earlier but setting that aside let's say they're already on the water they're coming you

10:49

know people who get approached like that you think like well they're going to

10:55

tell me my baby's ugly and they're never going to buy the product because it's not as good you'd be surprised yeah and

11:02

say "Wow I want to support this guy." Yeah like he's coming out there he's you know he made a personal connection you

11:09

know what that product you're coming in is 20 bucks you know what i'll buy it to

11:15

support you at that Z level what you're really thinking about is it's a personal

11:21

relationship at that zero level when you're trying to kind of get yourself off the ground think like well gosh I've

11:26

got a thousand of these to sell am I going to meet a thousand people who are going to buy it maybe not but those

11:32

hundred people that you met you made an impression on they're going to want to help you they will kind of what what

11:39

you're looking to do with those kind of personal relationships you build on the course is they're the people like "Hey

11:44

Grant I need your help i got a thousand of these coming i'd love it if

11:52

you bought one and you worked with it and you tried it out and if you like it

11:57

like help me make it better." Mhm like engage them in the process you know uh

12:03

that sort of thing at that's zero marketing that just takes effort and it takes courage mhm and it takes like wow

12:11

I want to be you have to be honest with people because you know what if you're if I'm walking up to you on the golf

12:17

course with some product some janky you know piece of plastic prototype that's

12:22

still got the 3D printer marks on it everything and I'm trying to talk with you about it you know that I'm not like

12:30

we're grading on a curve yeah like this like like if you try to tell them that you're kind of at this high level you

12:37

know you're this Jack Nicholas guy uh no one's going to believe that right you

12:43

say "This is what I'm trying to do." Because a lot of the people on the golf course they're heavy business people on

12:50

the course uh these are people who kind of understand the entrepreneurial vision they will help you but you got to get

12:57

out there you got to get over that fear of talking to people these things don't sell themselves and at the zero level

13:03

you are the marketing like there's no ad it's you yeah i I love that you brought

13:10

up that there's that group of people who will support you i actually call them the crazy 100 because in the beginning I

13:17

find that there's always a crazy 100 who are going to back you half of them are going to be like direct friends and

13:23

family uh the other half are going to be people who just like to try get throwing

13:29

you a shot throwing you a bone rather uh seeing what you can do with their

13:35

support they like to be a part of that that's what Kickstarter is built on and we'll talk about that in a bit um and

13:41

and yeah zero dollars to get face to face with people now people may be saying "Well that's not marketing." Well

13:47

damn it it is because you're you're adding to your tool bag you're getting

13:52

the feedback you're understanding what people are or how they're going to object what barriers you're going to

13:59

come across and that's going to arm you for if I may kick off my tangent about

14:05

social media because I am a introvert and it's hard

14:11

for people to imagine because I do a podcast and I have to bring in guests and blah blah blah but as soon as I go

14:16

outside my skin melts right not literally but I just I prefer uh I

14:22

prefer the solitude of kind of engineering from behind the desk or behind the phone i think it's really

14:28

cool i think it's clever like why i used to climb telephone poles for 12 hours a day so if I can find any way to be in

14:36

the air conditioning and be efficient uh I'm going to do that and so social media really spoke to me but it's not much

14:43

different with social media uh a as what you're describing on the

14:49

golf course 100% you have no followers so when you DM someone and you ask them

14:55

would you represent my product on your YouTube channel uh you can't come at it

15:00

like well this is here here it is here's my bit here's my plan here's my uh uh

15:05

content creator agreement please sign here and I'll send you the pro like that's not what this is you have to be

15:11

so relational be be ready to build relationships with these people be very

15:17

humble be very candid and reach out in a genuine way so we're starting our social

15:23

media with no followers uh look at what other products are doing

15:31

and more than looking at what other products are doing I mean literally get on their social media and look what they're doing and I can tell you that

15:37

odds are if you get on someone's page that's really popular like let's say I always go to t u um

15:44

Tide products I have no idea why they must have really good marketing tide laundry detergent right you get on TID's

15:51

social media uh it's a heavily orchestrated expensive extremely expensive highly campaigned social media

15:59

that is not you for forget about what they're doing let's find someone who's

16:05

uh a little bit more in the trenches like you are uh find a local brand a buddy who owns a successful HVAC shop in

16:14

town whatever what are they going to be doing well it's probably going to be kind of the run-of-the-mill

16:19

quintessential hey everybody it's your monthly reminder to change out your air filters you know like things that give a

16:26

hair of value but have no viral potential in them whatsoever

16:31

so let's ignore him too let's ignore Tide let's ignore the service business in town let's find the people who are

16:37

just going viral let's literally just enjoy social media just thumb through it

16:43

what is making me smile what am I sharing with my with my wife what's what what's bringing any type of joy to my

16:50

day now stop on those videos and hyperfocus on them what happened in it

16:56

and then hyperfocus on what's the call to action here read every line in the

17:01

description odds are they're pushing some type of product at the end of the day product drives social media maybe

17:07

not directly maybe through affiliate links what have you uh and odds are they kind of shouted out that product or

17:13

maybe not in that video but if you go on their page maybe five down is oh this is how they're making money and they're

17:19

they're shouting out this new tape measure with a new magnetic end on it whatever the case is that's how you can

17:26

market with zero dollars and I I don't mean you can afford that person or that

17:31

influencer per se but you can start to make content like what you see online

17:37

this can be faceless this can be you talking to camera pick your level of comfort and then start to work on that

17:44

now that that's humbling uh that's difficult but so is going door to door selling solar panels so is going out on

17:50

the golf course and having people say "Excuse me I'm about to tee off here will you get out of my box?" That's

17:57

that's my entrylevel advice on on the social media aspect of zero dollars i

18:04

think it's uh important to there are a couple of things you said uh you know there's a way to use social media in

18:11

exactly the same way we were talking about on the golf course it's just like hey you know maybe the people aren't on

18:16

the golf course it's a different product where here are people on social media who are you know who are you imagine

18:24

golfers or imagine you know mechanics or imagine someone else you can find those people on social media you know if it's

18:31

a businessto business product uh LinkedIn is perfect for that you know LinkedIn is very kind of onetoone uh but

18:41

even in the like hey I'm going to be putting content together that is valuable that will help boost followers

18:47

you know and you have a lot of videos on this which is which are great there's a great video you should watch if you

18:52

haven't watched it on you know how to really put YouTube content together on that uh hugely valuable all

19:01

of those I there are a couple of points I'd make one is you know you'd mentioned

19:07

before there was a little confusion between like hey that's not marketing that's sales marketing and sales are the

19:13

same thing they just operate at different scales marketing is one to many sales is one to one mhm but they're

19:20

the same activity mhm you know so when you think about like well that's not marketing that's sales we're really just

19:27

talking about the same thing i am getting my product in front of a buyer am I getting my product in front of a

19:32

100 buyers a thousand buyers a million buyers or one and there's an old saying in marketing that you don't you're not

19:39

really doing marketing unless it works onetoone you know does that work with

19:44

one person talking to one person so you're actually going to learn a lot about what will make you successful at

19:51

the $10,000 marketing level if you don't get what it takes to market at $0 you

19:58

will not understand what it takes to market at $10,000 those things won't work and that's where you will waste a

20:04

lot of money and you will spend a lot of money this is actually hugely valuable and there are clients that I have that

20:11

have money they do have budgets and I tell them not to spend them right get in

20:16

front of a real human being and sell it if you can't or if they tell you "Hey uh

20:22

I like it but I won't like it unless you change this or change that." Well like yeah your product might

20:30

suck right now the only way it's going to get better is by hearing from real people and it it stings you're going to

20:36

deal with a lot of rejection that's just something you have to get right with uh as an inventor as an entrepreneur uh if

20:45

if you're not comfortable with that if you don't get comfortable with that if you don't reframe that in your own mind

20:50

as you know I am not losing I'm learning i know it sounds trit it sounds like oh

20:57

it's kind of like some Tony Robbins BS it's true though you have to kind of

21:02

reframe that experience and I go up to the guy on the course he's teeing off and he tells me to tee off mhm you know

21:09

okay meet the next guy there's probably another guy in his foresome who looked at him and said "Ah don't be like that

21:15

you ain't got to do that don't like okay while he's while he's doing his thing show me what you got." Right and okay

21:22

hey you know this isn't really for me i get it but you know what if someone

21:27

gives you that rejection like nah this isn't for me who might it be good for who do you think it would be good for

21:33

like well you know my son is trying to learn to play and he doesn't quite have

21:39

this like I don't golf so I don't know what I'm talking about keep your head down right like keep your keep one arm

21:44

straight i think I took a lesson once where I you had to keep one of your arms straight i don't know which one uh he

21:50

doesn't really do that so you know what this little thing you did could really help him do that oh wow idea I've got a

21:58

better sense so when I'm looking at the foresomes I may be looking at you know the the ones with kids or the ones with

22:05

more inexperienced golfers okay well I learned something about honing in my target market so I can be better on my

22:12

next pitch you are always learning yeah always always always learning even from

22:17

the worst possible human beings you will interact with you'll learn mhm and then

22:22

let's talk about the ultimate goal here and I think the ultimate goal helps really drive home what's important and

22:29

that is what does my conversion look like if

22:34

I'm just trying really hard to sell two left shoes to

22:40

people eventually I'll come to the realization that if I make a left and a right it's a much uh frict frictionlessy

22:49

sale it's a much easier way to sell uh so today with with my product I'm I just

22:57

found out this year that I can pull back my marketing spend by a bunch to where the vast

23:05

majority of my sales probably 85% of my sales are just organic because finally

23:12

after four years I figured out how to make my profit look good when people

23:18

just independent and where this is a great example is being a product on the shelf think of products on the shelf

23:23

that just sell themselves they're eye level their packaging captures you uh on

23:29

the back you get all the information you need the price is right all your parameters of value are met boom that's

23:36

a sale it takes a long time to get there and it takes a lot of the conversations that Jason is talking about to get there

23:43

to hear from those golfers and say "Well this this just I don't know what it does fight a nickel for every time I heard

23:49

that phrase i don't know what it does if you I I don't like that this jacko has

23:55

to come to my doorstep and and show me how it works and vacuum my carpets and all that i just I'm I want I don't want

24:02

to be sold to i don't want to be touched i just want to see something that makes sense and buy it so with your ultimate

24:08

goal being that the majority of your sales come from organ organic the only

24:14

way you're going to be able to build a good organic organically selling product is to find out every single pain point

24:21

and address them ultimately with the product itself with the packaging and

24:26

with a few small pieces of co ads with copy that's how you're going to hit all

24:32

those bullet points in uh a fraction of a second with customers and that's how

24:38

you're going to convert at a high level so that's why this this 0 space

24:44

you you said it perfectly Jason even if you got a bunch of money I don't want to hear it i don't want to spend it i want

24:50

to live in the Z space for quite a while yeah you want to live in there a lot longer than you think and because the

24:57

amount of learning that you do when you think about you know we kind of created that arbitrary kind of logarithmic scale

25:03

right 0 100 a,000 10,000 you know it's not exactly that you get the idea though

25:09

right you know just levels you know exponential levels the learning that

25:15

happens at each of those levels decreases as you go up you know with $10,000 the

25:21

problem is that you think oh with $10,000 I can actually learn a Uh not only can I advertise and I can run ABN

25:29

tests to the nth degree I can run surveys i can hire people to do focus

25:34

groups look at all that I'll learn through all this data that I'm getting back you will not learn especially you

25:42

if you're Tide Pods or something you will learn that way and this is the problem with you know when you look at

25:49

like Tide social media or you look at Mr beast or you look at someone who's at this kind of macro level and you think

25:56

that what they're doing applies to you and kind of your situation you are in

26:02

learning mode and your product probably still sucks it's probably not priced

26:08

properly you don't know exactly what messages are going to sell it you don't know what channels to sell it through

26:14

that are going to be the most profitable you don't have a good P&L you don't know what your conversion rate is for every

26:20

50 people I approach I sell six okay got it that's about 12% okay well I start to

26:27

get a sense in my own mind of you know what that what that funnel sort of looks

26:32

like eventually you learn so much at the Z level that what you want to be

26:38

thinking is when I start to layer money into it what I'm doing is I'm trying to

26:44

accelerate what I know works i'm not learning at those levels i'm not

26:49

learning the same thing i I had a great friend who was a um an ops guy and he

26:55

said "The worst thing you could possibly do on a shop floor when you're manufacturing something is accelerate a

27:01

bad process." Yeah like you will just accelerate failure and that's really

27:06

what's happening here right beautiful yeah i think that the more money you have the

27:14

more dangerous it is when you're just starting out now if you're Proctor and

27:20

Gamble and you're making Tide and you're making a hundred other unrelated products well great they're they're all

27:26

out in the market that's all great but when you're launching a product especially when you don't know and it is

27:33

something truly new you have to be learning all the time and forcing yourself to operate at zero

27:40

marketing dollars zero advertising zero PR zero paid social it's going to force

27:48

you to learn it's going to force you to interact with people one-on-one is you will learn so much through that time you

27:56

will learn the entire marketing mix you'll learn all the regulatory stuff you need you'll learn like what what

28:04

additional things should I package my product with mhm you know uh all of that stuff you know for instance let's take a

28:10

look at that golf product this kind of imaginary golf product like okay we have already maybe learned that it's for

28:16

novice golfers okay cool well what does that tell you well maybe I should be

28:24

getting off the course and going into the pro shop to look at the trainers saying "Okay you're a golf coach this

28:31

product will help you be a coach." And now I've got a little bit of insight on the channel that I can sell so maybe the

28:37

coaches sell my product so I sell to the coaches and then the coaches use it with their clients people that they're trying

28:44

to kind of improve that all depends on exactly what we're trying to do but hey

28:49

from a pricing strategy does the coach need a little bit of a you know commission on that do you incentivize

28:56

them you don't know you don't know unless you ask unless you actually try to make it work i've never run into uh

29:04

two people who take the exact same type of deal so many people oh we just take a little bit off the middle oh well well

29:10

we're a wholesale we buy it directly it's very straightforward oh we're really complicated and I can't even

29:15

explain to you on on one sheet of paper how we do deals so you're right talk to people what motivates you how do you

29:21

guys move product what what are your payment terms what what how would you what brings your interest to the table

29:29

with this product it's just so important where you you really understand you know

29:34

you're sitting on that golf course with the guys and the women who are playing

29:40

and you cannot help but really understand why they're there what issues

29:47

they're facing what they're trying to get out of it you will learn that kind of like what surrounds your product

29:53

because yeah it's nice that your product solves a specific problem but what else

29:58

is happening around that time you know it's like hey we got four and I've got three of us are really good got a four

30:05

handicapped I've heard that's good is that good I think that's good guys yeah let us know in the comments but let's

30:10

say I want to bring along my boss who has clubs but doesn't know what a

30:17

handicap is okay well now there are three of us here who are good trying to kind of drag along this guy and we're

30:23

like well do we play best what's happening here this is going to be terrible well okay does your product

30:29

help this that fourth person on the foresome you know uh golf a little bit

30:36

more predictably maybe you know it's all those things that you will learn as

30:42

you're kind of in front of your customer trying to sell now presumably in the process of developing this product you

30:48

know what you're trying to solve you you're a golfer you kind of know the issue maybe it's like "Hey I helped my

30:54

son get from point A to point B." Awesome that's great what you'll really

31:00

that's that that helped you create the initial product but it's not going to help you market the product to a broader

31:06

group of people you know ideally that is a problem faced by lots of others and you've got an inkling of that once you

31:13

actually get in front of people and try to sell it you'll really know and you know just don't be afraid yeah you got

31:20

those thousand coming in don't be afraid of people who say "Oh well you need you're going to need to change this this

31:26

and this." Cool people you people will buy product that is clearly inferior mhm

31:35

if it's a first go and they're like "Hey those those early adopters who want to support you they'll support you they'll

31:42

buy your inferior product people think "Well they told me to change this they'll never buy that thing." False

31:48

they'll absolutely buy it because they want you to be successful it's kind of funny people want to help you just have

31:53

to ask like how many people if you you know it's funny like uh people doubt

31:58

that and then go into Walmart Target Publix Wegman's whatever is near you and

32:07

go in and just ask someone like "Hey like would you reach up and get that?" I

32:13

I get asked that even though I'm only 5'7 I get asked to reach things you know

32:19

but watch like "Hey can you can you help me pick out this or you know what you're

32:24

looking at these what's the difference between these two things?" Don't ask an employee ask just another random person

32:32

you'd be surprised how helpful people want to be yeah that's true you know it

32:37

like oh it's going to be scary once you do it a few times i promise you if you're on the golf course you're like

32:43

"Oh I'm a little nervous about reaching out to the first forsome." Yeah by the 10th this will be old hat right and

32:50

you'll actually be excited to reach out and you'll kind of get addicted to that feedback you'll get addicted to going up

32:57

to people and wanting that kind of information and you will learn hey what's the right type of feedback what

33:04

is valid feedback what's invalid feedback what should I take what should I politely just

33:11

ignore you won't know unless you do it but I promise you you will love it

33:16

you'll just love it it if I had this this scenario

33:21

uh if it were me personally I wouldn't like until I had $10,000 to spend I

33:29

probably wouldn't be doing a lot of marketing yeah it's just I' I I'd wait until I had enough money to really you

33:37

know kind of make something happen because I'm just so addicted to that learning process yeah yeah well let's

33:44

skip ahead so we we've covered zero really well i really don't think there's any subject matter around a hundred

33:49

bucks frankly I don't think there's any subject matter around a,000 bucks but I

33:54

Well let me push back on that let me uh let me push back on that let's say that

34:00

especially at that $1,000 level maybe even that $100 level let's continue with that golf analogy okay let's say that

34:09

the the course it was a good course you knew your target market was there because you've spent a lot of time on

34:15

the course talking with people who are playing so you know of the 10 courses

34:20

you've been walking around at this one course has tends to attract the type of

34:26

people who are going to be your customer you'll only know that by going to all 10 and talking with a bunch of people but

34:31

you know this is the good course for you they've got a clubhouse they've got a maybe it's not the best it's not the

34:38

worst you kind of know that they tend to attract let's say they're having an

34:43

event where they're going to kind of bring in a bunch of people and you know you have an opportunity for 500 bucks

34:51

you can have a little table there where you can you know you can meet everyone

34:57

who's coming through the door and you're kind of sponsoring them and you're there and you you know you you can talk with

35:04

people about the product it's a little bit more legit if I had $500 and I knew

35:09

that my target my customers were there and I was going to attract them all at one time that $500 is probably money

35:16

well spent mhm because of the amount of concentration remember at the Z level

35:21

I'm walking around the golf course all flipping day you don't even have a piece of paper in your hand yeah it's you're

35:28

going to be spending a lot of time it's a lot of effort but if I know through

35:34

that learning I know that this is a good place to learn and a good place to find new customers and I have an opportunity

35:40

to spend a few hundred dollars to get a table at that golf course and meet instead of it taking two weeks of daily

35:49

visits i can get everyone in an afternoon and I have a little bit of money to spend that's the way to spend

35:56

money but remember you didn't spend that you didn't get that $500 table that fee

36:02

without knowing that that was the table you should get right it wasn't that like

36:07

oh wow I've never talked with anyone before i'm going to get a table at the

36:13

golf course if if that were the case even if I had that money I'd say don't get that table

36:19

do the Z thing for 3 months and get the next table that comes around you want to

36:26

make sure you're not spending $500 and you're at the wrong golf course no one's

36:31

there in fact what I would probably do is Yes i'd know who was coming but I might not

36:38

invest in that table the first time unless I had been to that course and I

36:43

had seen the number of people coming cuz sometimes you know you can have an event how many events have you been to where

36:50

no one shows up mhm you know and you spent the 500 bucks and you're sitting there and four or five people walk by

36:58

mhm you're like man like you just realize you wasted a bunch of money mhm

37:03

but if you knew like say you know what that $500 table you know what that

37:08

sounds good but I'm I'm tight you know I'm still working on it yeah you have that money choose not to spend it mhm

37:15

that go to the event and see do the people actually show up and if it's

37:20

crowded you know you might even be able to kind of sneak in like hey like you

37:26

see it's starting to get crowded and people are coming in like hey guys do you make sure you have whatever

37:31

materials you have in your trunk because you might be able to say "Hey you know can you help me out i was a little tight

37:38

before but I've got the cash can I can I sneak a table in on onto the end here?"

37:44

Sure sure and they you know again people are willing to help you out be transparent with them like I can't

37:50

afford to be here and people don't show up right right you'd be surprised they might even say "Well you know what if we

37:57

get fewer this this number of people I'll refund it for you." You know there

38:02

it's kind of funny when you are transparent and honest with people how much more how much better information

38:08

you can get than if you're trying to kind of put on these airs like what was that movie like American Pie you ever

38:14

watched that movie it's like and there was the the king the realtor the the king guy he was like that there were

38:22

there was some crudess in there so this is not a family film everyone who's listening uh but basically he said like

38:29

hey if you're successful you need to create this image of success at all times you have to dress you have to act

38:37

you can't let anyone like it's this confident facade the problem is when you're an inventor

38:43

and you've got a clearly janky 3D printed thing in your hand you are not

38:50

successful yet right so you need to own it you need to be a successful inventor

38:57

is not a successful you know established business person a successful inventor is proud to

39:04

carry around the 3D printed mockup of their product because they are proud of

39:09

being an inventor you just got to kind of shift your idea of like hey I am as successful as this person i don't have

39:17

to kind of create these heirs you know but you know being able to talk with

39:22

people about that and say "Hey I don't have a lot of money to spend." And if I spend $500 on this and no one shows up I

39:31

can't afford to waste my money and I'm inclined to tell you no Grant mhm how can you work with me on

39:37

that you might be surprised at how they say "Well you know what because you're a new business we'll let you have a table

39:43

here." You might be surprised you get that table that you would have spent $500 on for free

39:50

you know like hey we want you here and hey when you're successful we'd you know like we'd like

39:57

a little consideration and wouldn't you do that of course you would yeah of course you would

40:02

well so yeah I think there is a little there is You proved me wrong damn it okay so let me go on my $500 tangent as

40:09

long as we're bending the rules and going from 100 to 500 uh but I do think you're right that's a good number

40:14

because you inspired me and I'm going to play obviously if you can't tell by now I'm going to play the digital marketing

40:21

side uh the behind thescenes side you're going to play kind of the boots on the ground bellyto belly as you call it type

40:27

of marketing yeah both are really valid by the way and ideally you'd do both of what Jason and I are going to riff about

40:33

at once but you only have 500 bucks so if it was me

40:38

personally now I've got a product now I've got 500 bucks let's say it's kind

40:44

of like a $500 a month type of budget you feel comfortable

40:49

with definitely build your website uh I don't care what platform you use Wick

40:55

Shopify whatever who cares build out your website generally speaking you can host a website for 29 39 bucks a month

41:04

uh this better is better but as far as what you can build yourself for free keep it

41:10

simple put the product offering at the top of the website put your logo at the top of the website tell them how to buy

41:17

it and then in the product photos make sure those represent what it's going to do for the client why it's better and

41:23

why they have to buy it don't do a bunch of fluff in your website well let me tell you the story about the first time

41:30

I thought of the the Golf Buddy Max and yeah that's all great in the about us

41:35

page yeah but don't frustrate clients they want to know imagine you get on

41:40

Amazon imagine if getting on Amazon you search for cargo straps and they put you through 5 minutes of fluff before you

41:47

see any cargo straps do what makes sense people all right so we got our website that was

41:53

only 39 bucks a month with the other 500 what I would do now that you have

42:00

your website you can collect emails and we're going back to kind of what Jason talked about in the very very beginning

42:08

it's not the easiest thing in the world but eventually if you've been working on your social media like I said at again

42:14

at at $0 and you kind of know how to engage an audience we're talking like

42:20

sub 100 people sub 1,000 people right but you can kind of work them you get some buddies interacting your buddies

42:26

are sharing to their buddies and all of a sudden you're making mutual friends and connections and you went from uh 50

42:33

followers on your Facebook to now you got 300 followers on your Facebook and you're growing and you're working let's

42:38

build that email list and how I would do that is I would build out a meta

42:45

campaign just designed to get emails so what that would look like very roughly I

42:52

won't get into details is hey I pick the I've been posting for two weeks straight

42:58

and one of my videos for some reason just really got people's goat got a lot of comments got a lot of engagement uh

43:05

got a lot of views i'm going to run that video as an ad and the call to action is

43:10

going to say learn more and when they click on that button it's going to take them straight to the email signup list

43:16

on the website that email signup list is going to make them a promise or an offer

43:21

they can't refuse you don't have much to offer maybe you're actively selling the

43:27

product and you can just right then give them 20% off 30% off maybe your

43:33

product's not here yet you're not ready yet you haven't launched you can still give them a percentage off or you can

43:40

offer them uh hey first 1,000 subs on the email get the free bag with it and

43:46

you just go source some bag you know it's it's fluff uh try to give value but you don't have a lot of money so we

43:53

understand make that offer that someone can't refuse get that email you will

43:59

find that with a good video running on Meta and a good offering on your web

44:04

page for that email address you can easily get emails at a cost of a dollar

44:10

an email so with the remainder of our budget we could easily get 450 emails

44:16

well we're going to be paying Yeah we could easily get somewhere in the I'll say 450 is when you're running at like

44:22

100% efficiency but you could potentially get 300 emails a month for several months this is happening while

44:29

you sleep on the back end meanwhile you're doing what Jason's told you to do and you're arming yourself with the

44:35

knowledge the copy the uh the the know how to speak to the customer to start

44:41

email campaigning these people when you have the product when you're ready to close and that my friends is what I

44:47

would do with 500 bucks and I saw you taking notes i I'm I'm curious i I love it a few of the notes just to add in

44:55

more techniques you know because you said like well I I don't really have the

45:00

product yet you know or I'm still early in that process and remember we were talking about on my side bellyto belly

45:07

i'm part of what I'm doing is I'm asking for feedback it's kind of that old advice if if you want a job like like

45:16

ask for advice or ask for a job if you ask for advice you like if you ask for a

45:21

job you'll get advice if you ask for advice you'll get a job you know uh this is if you ask for advice you'll probably

45:28

get a sale if you ask for a sale you'll probably get advice right you know so one of the things you can do if you

45:34

don't have the product yet is like hey do you want to be part of a beta test

45:40

feedback group like that can be an offer it's free and not everyone's going to

45:45

take you up on that but they might give you the email anyway and hey if you're interested in that I'll send you another

45:51

email and you can you can sign up for that that's a way to get even more feedback and what you're doing is you're

45:58

kind of h you're laying a little bit of a trap for those people who are willing to kind of try new things because you've

46:05

got a new product you want to really identify so when you think about your email list that after 6 months might be

46:11

1,500 people which is an awesome list i mean email email email's still king

46:16

everyone i just I sorry me and my wife talk about it all the time like how is this so important but then we do the

46:23

math it's like if if one in 10 people enjoys opening an email from a company then it's worth it right there yeah it's

46:30

gosh you don't even need one in 10 and the beauty of it is you know it's a onetoone kind of situation right that

46:38

you know you know exactly uh you know exactly who that person is

46:44

and you can tie that to a funnel so I've emailed them they buy the product I can

46:49

connect that and I can start to get a sense this is kind of the issue with Amazon right that if I push people to

46:55

Amazon and they buy at Amazon Amazon knows who my customer is if they buy

47:01

from me or if I at least collect their email address before I send them to Amazon if that's where I want to do that

47:07

I know who they are first like knowing who your customer is just critical so I

47:13

think that's a strategy kind of pre-order as a strategy feedback as a

47:20

strategy take a survey as a strategy there are lots of things you can do that provide value and provide engagement

47:27

opportunities i think the uh you know meta is key uh but don't forget about

47:34

things like the the most boring social network out there LinkedIn mhm you know

47:39

if I know that I have any sort of a B2B sort of product or even if I have a

47:44

consumer product that is like boy you'd be surprised how you can go on LinkedIn

47:51

and you can say oh I'm interested in people who are golfers on LinkedIn people will put

47:58

golf as a as an activity if they are really into golf you'd be surprised you

48:04

could say they've got a little tag for golf you as the person for free can make

48:10

a connection request yeah to that person and say "Hey I'm inventing golf products

48:15

i know you really love golf i'd love to connect with you it would be great if I could you know kind of show you what

48:21

I've got it's totally brand new stuff." Uh and again you know exactly who that

48:27

person is now if they connect with you on LinkedIn their email address is in

48:33

their contact information and you can get the you can get the email address so you can take it off of LinkedIn then now

48:40

you know if you have a little bit of money could you run like LinkedIn inmail campaigns and things like that i

48:46

actually think Meta is more effective uh for generating that sort of email opt-in than LinkedIn you can spend a lot of

48:52

money that way but again if you are comfortable with the onetoone the Z work

48:58

Mhm on LinkedIn uh there are ways to maybe add in a little bit of money there

49:04

are tools you can get that will help you automate that connection process for

49:09

2030 bucks a month so it's another way to kind of layer in that you just want

49:14

to think about a number of different possible paths it's all about where your audience is

49:21

that's that's really the question it's like the first thing you got to ask what about a marketing tactic

49:27

is I I heard it described to me once probably best about should you go to this trade show or not the only answer

49:35

to that question is are my customers going to be there if the answer is yes

49:40

then try to find a way to afford it if the answer is no it doesn't matter how cheap it is no you're right you know so

49:48

I think there are a lot of good ways to spend what I'd call kind of that $100 to thousand

49:54

range you know where okay you've got a little bit of money and what you're really trying to do is you're trying to

50:01

use that money to gather email addresses that you can market to you know in the

50:07

future when the product is ready mhm uh I would say though that yeah doing

50:15

you know doing that uh uh if you're even if you've got that

50:20

$500 to spend and you're spending it monthly you know as Grant talked about uh you should still be doing the Z

50:28

marketing see a lot of people who skip they they stop doing the kind of

50:34

bellyto-belly work and they stop doing that kind of creative work they stop doing kind of the hard work is well now

50:41

I have a little bit of money and I can you know you know I can kind of let the

50:47

you know let the marketing engine just kind of do that and I don't have to learn anymore no you're still early you're still early

50:54

stage can I tell you a story about that yeah i pay a sales guy full-time uh

51:01

almost a hundred a year when you factor in all his commission and stuff i pay

51:06

Amazon for PPC i pay Meta for to run ads

51:12

i pay an Amazon guy to manage my Amazon store and run the PPC so I'm paying

51:18

double on that all that to be said uh 3 days ago I

51:24

took a old video I inverted it posted it again on social media same video just

51:30

flipped with a new title uh it's like uh 700,000 views in a day and a half i made

51:36

more money off of that video than ever all these vehicles that I'm paying uh

51:42

lots of money daily weekly monthly uh still it's the Z marketing that prevails

51:49

it's not a guarantee it's not a constant those employees didn't come into play

51:54

until I had a system built that I knew if I put a dollar in this end I get $4

51:59

at the other end of this machine so yes absolutely uh praise be to what you're

52:06

saying still think always live in the Z mentality uh it never goes away mark

52:14

Cuban I just watched an interesting video with him he said uh when when he bought what was the sports team he

52:20

bought uh the Mavericks I think so was that the Mavericks yes he said when he bought the Mavericks ticket sales were

52:27

down he and this wasn't him when he was young this is when he was billionaire Mark Cuban you know I don't know when he

52:33

bought it but he was he was to buy it yes he stayed up all night for a week

52:41

not literally but he late nights for a week individually calling customers people on an email

52:48

list people on a ticket list whatever it was saying "Hey this is Mark Cuban new owner of the Mavericks would you like to

52:55

purchase a season ticket?" Literally oneon-one and someone said "Well why would you can't you pay?" He's like "If

53:01

you're not willing to do it yourself even just to prove a point even just to prove it to your staff to yourself uh

53:07

still do that zero boots on the ground work because you can argue oh I can pay

53:13

somebody to do that." Well yeah I can pay an accountant but if I don't know how to talk to my accountant then that

53:20

that accountant could tell me anything that's that's the thing I want to I want to kind of double down on that i two

53:27

things one if Mark Cuban will do it so will you yes so like if if you think

53:33

you're more successful than that God bless you there are probably 10 people who can make that claim uh I'm not one

53:39

of them so uh but the other thing is where I see people waste a lot of money

53:46

in marketing and it's kind of heartbreaking because I see it i'm like "Oh man you spent $6,000 a month on PR."

53:52

I was telling you this off air that I did the amount of money spent per word

53:58

that they got in publications no one had ever heard of was like 500 bucks a word

54:04

you know and and things their customers weren't really reading it was just kind of an ego trip and it was just a good

54:11

way that their salespeople the PR company's salespeople were really good uh what's so critical about all of these

54:18

things is that when you do a lot of that marketing and sales work yourself you

54:24

learn like oh okay well what does it take to get quoted in a magazine my customers have heard of well I'm going

54:30

to call up the editor i'm going to try I'm going to figure out how to do that

54:35

i'm going to fail i'm going to make a fool out of myself a little bit but I'm going to kind of learn how to do it uh

54:41

if you have an accountant great it's it's great to have an accountant but if you don't know how to open QuickBooks

54:48

you don't know how to track your own expenses you don't know how to hire that service well because it accounting

54:56

public relations advertise all of these services you are going to eventually hire uh as a business are valuable you

55:04

you're going to need them but where you're going to waste money is if you don't know what you're buying

55:10

and it just so critical there's so much to be learned from actually doing that yourself that even if you're like "Well

55:18

I might not be the best at making videos." Cool do it

55:23

anyway learn how so that when you when you see like "Hey I've done my own videos i know how hard it is i know how

55:31

to kind of manipulate the like okay here's what's you know what's hard

55:36

what's easy and what not to pay for." Yeah and you know if you can if you can

55:42

do that you'll feel so much more confident going to your accountant and saying "Okay you know what i don't need

55:48

you to be in my QuickBooks file putting a receipt in for a transaction that I've

55:53

linked to my bank i don't need that." Right what I need and you know what i don't even need you to do the quarterly

55:59

returns because that's just a you know you basically hit a couple of buttons on that i've done that

56:06

you know what i really need you to look at these numbers and help me do tax

56:12

planning cuz tax optimization is a little hard i've been through a couple of cycles i know that I've probably

56:19

overpaid here overpaid here overpaid here i want your help and making sure

56:25

that I am being more tax efficient mhm cool then your accountant really knows

56:30

like okay this person knows what they're talking about they're not going to overcharge you because they you know

56:36

they know that you know what to buy same goes for advertising same goes with

56:42

video production same goes with pretty much everything you're going to buy that

56:47

Z mentality will serve you even at the $10,000 level i got my butt whooped on

56:55

uh on losing the Z mentality at the end of last year if you guys go back I think it's two or three episodes it happens to

57:02

all of us by the way thank you it's good to hear it does i I did a solo episode for you guys where I was really candid i

57:09

had to lay a guy off uh the P&L from 2024 was trash the profit and loss uh

57:16

you know doing this for three and a half years and and and facing all those

57:22

realizations i lost the Z mentality and we just talked about it with Mark Cuban

57:27

i don't even care if you're a billionaire keep that Z mentality that should be a whole episode in itself

57:34

let's pull back to I I want to jump we're at an hour so I want to jump to

57:39

3500 bucks a month and I'm saying that number for a very specific

57:45

reason i run into a lot of inventors for those of you who need

57:50

waking up I run into a lot of inventors uh who maybe want to be on the show they

57:56

maybe their PR person approaches us uh and they tell me what they do here's our

58:02

website blah blah blah i look at their website it's fair it's polished uh I

58:09

assess the email that I received it's clearly a PR email it was something that they paid someone to do and then I have

58:17

a intake call with this inventor this product developer whatever they are and

58:22

I get to know them and then I did maybe even do a show with them and then the truth kind of comes out that yeah we

58:29

wanted to come on your show to like say "Hey look this is how I did the journey." But in reality I always end up

58:34

I always get down to it i find out that they're only selling four units a day

58:40

and then I ask them how they're marketing and they say "Well I hired a marketing company and I'm not too happy

58:46

with them." And I can guarantee it's because they thought I can afford 3,500

58:51

bucks a month so man there's there's a lot we could

58:57

say that could be redundant there because how you lost your Z mentality from the get-go off rip you you never

59:05

had one you had a $3,500 mentality no one is going to care as

59:11

much as you do no one's going to have skin in the game uh- a and you from the beginning are

59:18

running into people who know bigger words than you who know how to BS you who know how

59:26

to jiujitsu you into submission to just keep paying that bill in the hopes that

59:32

one day they're going to make you $20,000 a month off of the $3,500 investment i can tell you

59:39

that that day usually never comes because you are not facing the reality

59:46

of how much your product sucks head-to-head you're not facing the reality of the fact that your website is

59:52

not converting because ah that's their job i'm sure if something was wrong they would tell me right

59:58

right you're not facing any of the realities of your business and your

1:00:04

product so if I had 35 this is more of a what I would not do if I had 3,500 bucks

1:00:11

a month I would put it right back where it came from not touch it and keep

1:00:16

advertising at the $0 mentality so with that maybe we should

1:00:22

jump to when where's the tipping point Jason is it 10 grand can we start paying for something now please i think the

1:00:31

uh what I think about on the and I'm going to hold on the marketing firm because it's a good bridge to the

1:00:38

$10,000 level uh because at that level you can finally when I think as kind of

1:00:44

as as a mass marketing person there's some things I know that the marketing person you hired for $3,500 just didn't

1:00:53

have the guts to tell you which is attention of your target audience is

1:00:58

your most scarce resource like just getting them to think about you and your product for a moment is the

1:01:07

hardest thing that needs to be done it takes more repetition it takes more creativity it takes more money than you

1:01:14

think at that advertising level now if you're in front of someone face to face you are shortcircuiting all of that

1:01:20

because you're in their face and it's personal but when you cross over into

1:01:26

mass marketing it's no longer personal you know you've got to rely on ad copy

1:01:32

you got to rely on creative videos you got to rely on other things that are not

1:01:37

you physically in front of their face and there's a lot of competition is your video going to be better than Game of

1:01:43

Thrones uh maybe i mean maybe for a few seconds that's great uh but the point is

1:01:51

that when I think about that $3,500 spend there there's kind of two ways to

1:01:57

think about that am I spending the $3,500 not knowing what they should be

1:02:03

doing not knowing what I like like the accountant remember we talked about like hey because I have a whole bunch of

1:02:10

experience doing my own accounting when I hire an accountant I know exactly what I want them to be doing and I know

1:02:16

exactly how I want them to kind of turn the dial from like 7 to 12 like I know

1:02:22

what I'm doing you got to have that same idea with marketing that at that

1:02:27

$3,500 if I don't know what I'm doing I don't know what converts I don't know what scales I I don't know what messages

1:02:34

are working and I'm going to spend that i'm going to hope that the marketing company will figure it out you'll wait a

1:02:41

long time that's kind of the dirty little secret in in there is maybe

1:02:46

they'll figure it out maybe they won't i will let you know when I find one that figures it out at that at the kind of

1:02:53

rates that an inventor is able to spend now if you're tied and you're going to

1:03:00

throw a couple million bucks at it you you know you'll get that top talent to figure it out you know but not us no not

1:03:08

at the inventor level it's not you so if I've got the now I'm at that $10,000 level and say "Okay would I spend a

1:03:16

certain percentage of that on someone who's going to work on the ads for me?"

1:03:21

You know someone who's going to optimize the ads and then the rest of that money is going to be ad spend great and the

1:03:28

reason I say that that would be a better spend is you that's assuming you have already

1:03:35

run your own ads you know how hard it is you already have a pretty good sense of what converts you already understand the

1:03:42

like if you're on Amazon you understand the Amazon PPC interface you understand how Meta works like you're not going in

1:03:50

ignorant the worst thing you can possibly do is go in and say "I don't know how to do this i'm hoping that

1:03:56

you'll help." That's just a recipe for someone to take your money yeah and I've

1:04:01

done that for years and I can say you can still run a business but say bye-bye

1:04:06

to profits kiss getting a loan goodbye all those opportunities because to now

1:04:14

I'm at a point where I do look at my my money as uh or or any effort any

1:04:20

investments I make I love to call them investments we all love to call them that right because that means it's a good idea it's not generally but any

1:04:28

investments I make I ensure that it's $1 in $4 out $1 in $10 out $1 in even if

1:04:35

it's $2 out but Never never will I enter a situation

1:04:40

where it's $1.50 out and there is plenty of those yeah that those are actually

1:04:46

the most common you know when you when you think about it you know those are those situations you know happen all the time

1:04:54

and if it were only a dollar in 50 cents out that'd be good a lot of times it's a

1:04:59

dollar in zero out right it's a complete wash where nothing happened so you know

1:05:06

at that $10,000 level I feel like for most inventors with most products that

1:05:11

we're talking about here and the most of the people who are listening will be able at that level and only at that

1:05:18

level are you finally at the point where you know what you will be able to advertise with enough frequency and

1:05:24

enough reach to be and enough time take it over enough time where you will be

1:05:30

able to start to get that return you know people think like well you know I can advertise on Google with as little

1:05:36

as 20 bucks you can you know if you're comfortable taking that $20 and flushing

1:05:42

it down the toilet you just won't have I mean think of how many searches are done on Google think of how many searches are

1:05:49

done on Amazon or on YouTube and you think like well I only need one i It just won't work and it's it's

1:05:58

tough you know I how I think about how to explain it to people is advertising is a lot like kind of an ocean and

1:06:08

people think well I I start advertising at kind of the surface of the ocean and I'm kind of going up from there you know

1:06:14

I'm kind of climbing out from there that's not how it is you start at the bottom of the ocean the the surface of

1:06:22

the waves is the minimum point at which you start to get attention

1:06:27

interesting so if you don't if you're not spending enough money with enough frequency in advertising advertising is

1:06:33

just a different animal if you don't spend enough over enough time with the right audience you never break the

1:06:39

surface of the water so yeah I was on the surface of the ocean way under the water i spent my 20 bucks and I was able

1:06:47

to hop up a little bit i'm still floating but I'm nowhere near you know the water line so I can't

1:06:54

get my head above water and I'll drown down there you know so it's f like you have to

1:07:00

spend enough money to do it and that at that $10,000 level with a narrow enough

1:07:05

market and you know through that Z mentality and spending hey I I've

1:07:12

strategically spent my $500 here $500 there when it really made sense you will

1:07:20

know what will convert at the $10,000 level kind of then and only then will

1:07:26

you know mhm and then when once you're there think of how much more confidence you have that hey listen I've got uh you

1:07:34

know I've run these ads for a while i know I'm getting You can go to your your

1:07:40

Amazon person say "Okay my return on ad spend is 310% so for every dollar I put

1:07:47

in I get $310 out what I'm looking for you to do is to optimize my goal is 9x

1:07:56

like I want 900% let's talk about how we get there so it's not a question of like hey will

1:08:02

these ads work at all like no I know what works and I'm not judging you on getting from zero to one i'm judging you

1:08:11

on like you have to do better than I am and if you can't do better than I am

1:08:16

you're you're done you know or if you look at it and you tell me you know what that's probably where you're going to max out

1:08:23

perfect you you have so much of you have a much better idea of how you're spending your money and how this is all

1:08:30

about smart buying of services right not just advertising and marketing but you

1:08:36

can think about this from your accounting to your you know your banking

1:08:41

to uh cost of goods sold legal fees you know everything in there you have to

1:08:48

know as an inventor you don't get a pass on not knowing some aspect of your

1:08:53

business mhm mhm you have to have done it yourself even if it's like well it's not ideal you know fine but unless

1:09:02

you've done it you don't know how to hire it simple as that amazing amazing well I'm going to go on my tangent about

1:09:09

10 grand and I have a lot of opinions on it and um a lot of methods to it but I

1:09:15

can tell you right now if you're thinking "Oh if I just had 10 grand and I could just inject it to this one spot

1:09:21

where would you inject it Grant where would you put it Jason?" Well I'm going to say that it's not that simple

1:09:30

a lot of people may have heard what Jason was just talking about and saying "Well yeah okay so we'll we'll get

1:09:35

Amazon PPC to where we dial it into a rorowaz of six a rorowaz of eight

1:09:41

rorowaz of nine uh and then we'll put the whole 10 grand into that." Well

1:09:46

there there's a diminishing return at some point okay there's a lot of factors with a product it sometimes you could

1:09:54

inject so much ad spend into a product that's just not ready for that much ad spend because it only has five reviews

1:10:00

on Amazon right so that's that's where returns can diminish the same thing can

1:10:05

happen with Meta and the same thing can happen with giving away your product for free

1:10:11

so if I had $10,000 the assumption is I I'm a few

1:10:16

years into my product it's pretty well dialed in the images the copy everything sells well i would probably put uh let's

1:10:24

see I would I would put somewhere around $2,500 a month into meta once I know I

1:10:30

have a rorowaz of three or better rorowaz of three on meta is it's

1:10:35

it's um it's respectable because they can't track all the data they don't really if it's in reality if you have a

1:10:42

rorowaz of three on meta it's probably more of like a real life rorowaz of six because of all the iOS updates and

1:10:48

things they can't account for okay so 2500 bucks in a meta if I know how to do it right maybe another 2500 bucks in

1:10:57

Amazon PPC if my listing is good and I know it converts we have some ratings

1:11:02

let's say we have more than 50 ratings and we're sitting at more than 4.2

1:11:07

stars with the remaining $5,000 I would leave that as

1:11:12

miscellaneous uh float money meaning uh giveaways you

1:11:19

never want to give your product away for no damn good reason but you will have so many people come out of the woodwork so

1:11:25

many influencers so many YouTubers hey just send me a set and I'll see what I come up with

1:11:32

and pump the brakes on them be sure that there's an agreement have a phone call with them that's my favorite thing to do

1:11:38

yeah absolutely you look% if they're a YouTuber and they have 100,000 subscribers

1:11:44

uh honestly it's a great investment to just give them a product but honestly if you just send them a product with no

1:11:51

conversation they're probably never going to get around to the video because at the end of the day they open it and they think "Okay well this this

1:11:57

just gave me basically 50 bucks what am I going to go do put them in front of

1:12:03

40,000 people tomorrow for 50 bucks like I know my worth." So have very personal

1:12:09

conversations with influencers and YouTubers and just like Jason said earlier be very transparent hey look I

1:12:17

know what your time is worth i know what your channel is worth and I think it's worth a lot the problem I've had lately

1:12:22

is if I try to assign or if I take your uh uh take if I take your advice on what

1:12:29

you think your channel is worth I'm probably going to take a bath but if you and I can work out a relationship where

1:12:35

I give you this product and you just try to make some content around it first of all see if you like it do you have fun

1:12:41

with it do you even enjoy filming yourself while you're using it if it if not throw it in the trash that's your

1:12:46

call but if you do like it and we find that that video does convert well then

1:12:52

absolutely I'd be an idiot not to pay you every single month to put me in your videos that's a much different

1:12:59

conversation than yeah just send me your address yeah this that's that whole theme we've

1:13:06

been talking about the whole time is you have got to be comfortable just having those kind of one-on-one conversations

1:13:12

isn't it funny that even at that $10,000 level where you're starting to approach influencers with a h 100,000 500,000 a

1:13:20

million followers on YouTube that you're still having one-on-one conversations where you're learning you're transparent

1:13:28

you're not like some high up inventor like yeah you might have a few years

1:13:33

you've got some sales maybe you've got a quarter million in revenue that's great grand scheme of

1:13:39

things you know you're still starting That's great you've seen some success you've got a little bit of money uh to

1:13:46

put that doesn't mean you can kind of you can kind of stop that kind of

1:13:51

diligent kind of look i can tell you even for my corporate life working at like much much larger organizations and

1:13:59

thank the Lord God that I'm out of there but I can tell you that the executives

1:14:05

who are successful even at the largest organizations are the ones like a Mark Cuban who are not afraid to pick up the

1:14:10

phone and call a Maverick's season ticket holder and say "I haven't seen

1:14:16

you here in 6 months what's going on?" Yeah and just listening to some guy some

1:14:22

rando tell off Mark Cuban like being willing to do that and really learn i

1:14:28

can promise you that when Mark Cuban's in a meeting with an advertising agency and the ad agency is coming up with some

1:14:34

BS campaign he can say "I know people aren't granking on this." Like I know

1:14:41

where people are at right now cuz I've talked to them myself that kind of firsthand knowledge is so critical now

1:14:49

you had mentioned something kind of an assumption here that like hey I'm at that $10,000 level because I've been out

1:14:55

for a few years i've got revenue i've got this and that i know people as I've

1:15:00

reasonably involved in the kind of the VC community who are basically not doing any of this

1:15:08

work until they kind of have this idea in their head that well the first thing I need is I need angel funding or I need

1:15:16

VC funding it's usually angel because you know if you're pre-revenue it's all angel okay well I need

1:15:22

$150,000 in angel funding for engineering for this for that for that and for

1:15:28

advertising before they have done all that other work and there are you know

1:15:34

so they're thinking about how am I going to spend that $10,000 without doing that other work and I can tell you a little something

1:15:40

about angels and VCs especially but angels for sure they want to see the Z

1:15:48

mentality they want to see before they're giving you like because why in why in the hell would I write you a

1:15:55

check for $150,000 if you if I know your customer better than you do right like you

1:16:01

haven't you being able to say I have talked with 3,000 golfers over the past

1:16:07

6 months and I have been selling this product to them onetoone and I've done

1:16:12

all this stuff and I've grown this business i know what I need to use that money for now it is crystal clear I need

1:16:19

these product improvements i know how to like I'm going to use this on meta

1:16:25

advertising because I've tried it at the small scale i've used I've reinvested what I had and I know at the small scale

1:16:32

it works i need to scale it this is what I'm going to use your money for then you

1:16:38

are a lot more likely to to get the money i just see too many uh too many inventors who approach angels way too

1:16:46

early and they're really frustrated and they'll say to me like "Oh well no one wants to give you money unless you're well connected unless this unless that."

1:16:54

Like the reality is that they're not telling like like you're kind of

1:17:00

externalizing the c the own issues a victim mentality type yeah you're taking

1:17:06

kind of a victim and like "Oh I no one can get money right now good businesses always get money there's

1:17:13

always money out there oh yeah always i can promise you that that like oh I need

1:17:19

$10,000 that money is easy to get if you have done the Z work you can get $10,000

1:17:26

within a week or two mhm someone will pay you that you know someone will invest because they know hey if I put a

1:17:34

dollar in I'm going to get $8 out i'm going to take a couple dollars of that i'll take a little shave of equity for

1:17:40

that okay i believe in this person because I know that they've done the hard work i don't really have I

1:17:47

personally I don't have a ton of respect for people who have not done the zero

1:17:52

dollar work it's not because I I don't think they have promise or I don't think their invention has value it's that I don't

1:18:00

know i don't know any more than they do because question mark well that's that

1:18:05

difference between kind of invention and innovation right the invention is I

1:18:10

created something in my garage and I've patented it or whatever innovation is

1:18:17

okay someone else is buying it and using it they're two very different things they're related but they're not the same

1:18:23

so what I'm looking for is like yes that you invented something is an important

1:18:28

first step but it's just the first step the second step is is someone going to use it and adopt it and part with money

1:18:37

for it part with time for it if they do that then okay you got something

1:18:43

absolutely they want to see that you got your butt kicked that's the sad reality any investor wants to see that you have

1:18:50

learned the hard lessons because there's no easy lessons and there's no cheap lessons it's all transparency right that

1:18:56

if you go into an investor and I've been in these conversations where you go in and you say "Hey this is this kind of

1:19:05

normal hockey stick and look look at what's happening here." Like just been kind of just trudging along and doing a

1:19:12

little bit better every month i mean that just smells like BS i mean who who

1:19:18

listening to this right now has had that experience i have yet to see it i've been doing this for damn near 30 years

1:19:24

yeah i have not seen it yet i'll let you know when I find it but everyone has had

1:19:29

hiccups everyone has really fallen in their face that's what any investor is

1:19:35

going to want to know so it's almost that like hey that 10,000 what's at that

1:19:40

$100,000 level and that's usually where inventors start to look at outside

1:19:46

investors and equity folks but even at that $10,000 level that I see that

1:19:51

mentality kind of slip in that like oh I need the $10,000

1:19:57

and I need I need an investor to get me to that point i most uh most inventors

1:20:05

that you know actually most angels I talk to say they they're not really interested in anyone who is not

1:20:11

bootstrapping to get to the point where they are ready cuz they're like well you know it's you're taking all the risk out

1:20:19

of it and it's like well isn't angel investing supposed to be really super

1:20:24

risky stuff yeah it's it's risky but it's not completely throwing money out

1:20:31

the door you know if you get to that point this is that whole thing where what the angel investor is looking for

1:20:37

is I want you to get through that point where you have figured out that stuff

1:20:43

okay you're still early you need capital okay it's It's still not a sure thing

1:20:49

but you're not the guy who has the golf thing in his garage and has never

1:20:55

actually been on a golf course with it mhm like I'm not interested in that guy well you said in the last episode you

1:21:01

were on that generally speaking the CEO that takes you from zero to a million is not the CEO of a million to 10 million

1:21:09

and with the mentality of I just need investment what you're saying is f being f practicing being a CEO i

1:21:18

want to jump straight to being the $1 million CEO right it if you think you're

1:21:23

going to skip a step uh think again yeah you know you have to and that's why you

1:21:29

know when you think about like hey well what if I have enough m like I have money from my

1:21:38

bank account or I have I'm a successful this and that or I can borrow some money

1:21:44

from my dad or my mom and I can jump right to that $10,000 number right away

1:21:50

i would still tell you don't have that money kind of ready like hey

1:21:56

mom you know that I know you got that $10,000 i know you want to give it to me

1:22:02

that's great i'll ask you for it at the right time but I've got some steps to go through first that's very respectable

1:22:08

yeah i got to make sure that I'm here so that when when you when you give me that

1:22:14

money I know that I can put it to use and that you know like hey maybe it can

1:22:21

be a loan mhm you know instead of just like here's here's a gift of money i'll

1:22:27

tell you that it will help the relationship with your family immeasurably to do that like you don't

1:22:34

want a situation where you were at that 0 level you didn't make the hard choices

1:22:39

you started acting like the $10,000 level without knowing that you kind of

1:22:44

like I'm going to buy a new truck because I need a new truck with you know

1:22:50

and I need this fancy website and I need all these kind of trappings of success without really having success that'll

1:22:57

last a few months and then all of a sudden well someone's going to ask the hard question how many

1:23:03

have you sold and it's going to go nowhere like think about that conversation on Thanksgiving yep because

1:23:10

the thing that starts to happen is mom starts giving you advice when you are asking for money yeah and

1:23:16

that doesn't work like that that's going to get awkward and it's not helpful and it will really strain the relationship

1:23:23

you have uh with your family so even if you're listening to this you're like "Well I've got family or I even have my

1:23:30

own money that I can tap i would not spend my own money on my own invention

1:23:35

until I got to the point where I knew I I I have to do the Z work even if I have

1:23:43

$10,000 you know don't be thinking you can skip well Jason that's an hour and 20

1:23:51

minutes of a lot of knowledge that's about all our audience can take so I

1:23:56

want to thank you again for coming in today had a lot of fun i hope you guys understood a word this guy just said i

1:24:02

certainly did not and uh without further ado this has been episode oh I don't

1:24:08

know 54 55 how would we market with zero dollars uh listen guys if you're

1:24:14

watching on YouTube subscribe if you're listening leave a little rating on the show hey what the hell go for it come on

1:24:21

show a little love and uh remember Jason and I took the punches so that you guys

1:24:26

don't have to we'll see you guys on the next one where there