Book Club Discussion – Consulting – How to Get Booked by Michael Zipursky

Michael Gamonal:

Sweet. So we’re going to open with pitches just like normal. My name is Mickey Gamonal, and this is the ABCI Book Club. Today, we are discussing the book Consulting Success by Michael Z. Yeah, we’ll be discussing consulting, so this should be a good book for all of you consultants out there.

So we always open with your name and what you do. So my name is Michael Gamonal. I am of Gamonal Tutors, I’m the CEO and founder. Currently I’m doing the ASVAB Domination Program, so if you know anybody who’s taking the ASVAB, which is the Armed Service exam, so if anybody’s taking that and needs some help, let me know. And if anybody’s taking that and doesn’t need any help, let me know, and I can give them some of the extra stuff that they could use as well. A lot of resources out there for ASVAB, and I’d be happy to help you with that.

Paula Williams:

Great. And it is so cool to have somebody to talk to besides your recruiter, you know?

Michael Gamonal:

Absolutely, yeah.

Paula Williams:

That’s knows the inside story.

Michael Gamonal:

Yeah, no. I don’t know if recruiters are big fans of me as a tutor. I mean, they like that their recruits are able to finally get into the military, but they’re not stoked about how now they want to be 68 whiskeys versus 11 bravos, or whatever. You know, when they change their MOSs. Yeah, if you want to just talk Army, or any branch, just reach out to me. We can talk about it.

Paula Williams:

But it matters a whole lot more to the recruit than it does to the recruiter, what their job is, right?

Michael Gamonal:

Exactly, yeah. Recruiters, I mean, nothing but love for recruiters, I’ve met a lot of really, really good ones, but at the end of the day, their job is just to get you into the military. It’s not so focused on the placement. They have the ASVAB test for that. So they don’t necessarily think so much about what’s going to be the most beneficial to your career path 10 years from now, and nor should they. They should be trying to help as many people to get into the military as they can, because that’s what their job is. So if you want to talk to somebody who’s got a little more vested interest in your longevity and chasing your career goals, private and public sector ideas, and stuff like that. Definitely reach out to somebody different, maybe somebody who’s been in for a while, that will help.

Paula Williams:

Great. Okay, Paula Williams, ABCI, we help aviation companies sell more of their products and services and a big chunk of that is consulting, whether it’s the sales training, or whether it’s developing marketing programs, and things like that. There’s a big consulting segment to what we do.

Michael Gamonal:

Perfect. Cool.

John Willams:

And I’m John Williams, and I am the CFO for ABCI, and I second what she said.

Paula Williams:

Right, and you do a lot of consulting when someone needs something other than marketing, right?

John Willams:

Yeah, I do business consulting, and it just happened because I started answering questions for people who didn’t what marketing. It just sort of grew out of nothing.

Paula Williams:

Or weren’t ready for marketing yet, because they had to get their business in order.

John Willams:

Uh-huh (affirmative).

Paula Williams:

Right. Cool.

Michael Gamonal:

Great, so which one of you guys is the primary consultant? Do you guys have separate areas then that you focus on?

Paula Williams:

Yeah, if they need marketing, then I would say I’m their primary consultant and project manager. If they need anything else, excuse me, whether it’s setting their business up, getting an investor, doing a business plan, whatever, then that would be John.

John Willams:

Ibid.

Paula Williams:

Ibid.

Michael Gamonal:

Cool. Good deal. So we could just talk about the book. Generally speaking, I mean, it’s a pretty broad title, Consulting Success. So from what I’ve read, as far as reviews go and everything like that, it’s pretty to the point. It covers everything consulting-wise, and I’ve heard that it’s pretty good for a regular read, but it’s also kind of a drag. Is that right?

Paula Williams:

Yeah, on both counts. Very, very boring. We did this one this year, last year we did a different book on consulting, A Guide to Winning Clients by David Fields. And I thought that one was better, probably because it has cartoons in it. It was just a lot more entertaining as a book to read. It was not quite as complete, but it was sure a whole lot more enjoyable as a thing to be spending time on outside of work.

Michael Gamonal:

Gotcha, yeah, that’s makes sense. A little more fun to read. So it is pretty dense? Pretty packed with information? Or do they break down and spoonfeed you for the most part?

Paula Williams:

Well, just as an example, there is a really good list of 10 Things Clients Hate and How to Avoid Them, that I thought was a really good gem that was kind of buried in this slog of a book. Really quickly, the 10 Things Clients Hate and How to Avoid Them, that way you don’t have to read the whole book yourself.

Michael Gamonal:

Nice.

Paula Williams:

Right, one is a generic approach, so approaching a client and treating him like he’s everybody else, instead of taking his circumstances into account. So being generic when they’re paying you to be specific. Two is overselling, everybody hates that. Three, long slide decks, you know, death by PowerPoint. Four, wanting immediate results, five, not respecting their time. Six, overreaching. Seven, surprises. Eight, going over their head. Nine, making them look bad. 10, not delivering.

And so, I think if we applied any of those to what we do or what you do, because you’re basically a consultant who works on behalf of the recruit, instead on behalf of the Army, you know. A recruiter works for the military, you work for the client, but you’re a consultant, really.

Michael Gamonal:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Paula Williams:

Yeah. And they all want to be treated as an individual, and specific, and everything else, and not just told the same thing you tell everybody, right?

Michael Gamonal:

Yeah. No, that’s true. It seems like it’s really hard to strike that balance, though. I mean, if you’re trying to scale your business and work with a bunch of different people, doesn’t that make it a little more difficult to not be so generic?

Paula Williams:

Right. I think that’s true. You have some proven things you know work, but I think it’s in the way that you communicate that to the specific person. If you say, “Look, we’ve got some things that have worked seven out of the seven times that we’ve tried them, then I think it will work for you because … ” and here’s some specific things about your circumstance that makes you fit into that category. As opposed to just rolling it out on them, and just saying, “Here’s what we’re going to do, because we do this with everybody, and it’s going to work.”

So if you can give them some specific reasons why this is also going to work for them, it’s just kind of a matter of tailoring the sales of that solution. You’re selling a solution, even if you’re like a doctor trying to get somebody to lose weight or whatever, you have to sell the solution to this person. And say, “This really is important for you, even though this is what I tell everybody who walks into my office,” you know? That’s kind of thing.

Michael Gamonal:

Yeah, that makes sense.

John Willams:

And that’s fine, but you’re approaching it as if all the consulting you do is via this particular media, rather than in person.

Paula Williams:

Not necessarily, I think you could sell it in person to someone and say, “You know what? I visited your business, we walked through your turbine shop, and we think that we should do a video series because you’ve got all of this excellent material. We know a video series works really well as a marketing plan, and we know because we just walked through your shop. Here are some things that will work really well for you.” You know what I mean?

Michael Gamonal:

Yeah, what do you think, John? What do you think is more … In person, what do you think the big changer would be, the difference would be?

John Willams:

I think you need to go up a level, meaning rather than get specific … It depends on if you’re talking with the guy that’s actually doing the work is one thing, but when you’re consulting, you need to be selling as high up in the organization as you can. Those guys take a different approach, they don’t want the specifics. They’ve hired you already, so they expect the specifics to get done.

Michael Gamonal:

Nice.

John Willams:

And then it becomes the attitude. In my case, I don’t know how many years I’ve consulted, maybe 20, whatever. But I learned very quickly that if everything went right, on whatever the project was, then you tell those people … And I told them before we got to the finish of the project, “If it goes right, you are going to take credit for it. If there’s a problem, then you’re got to lay it on me.” Okay, because they’re going to live wherever they are when you leave.

Paula Williams:

They’re stuck with these people, and you’re not.

John Willams:

Nice.

Paula Williams:

The reason they hired a consultant, in a lot of cases, is so they have somebody who can take a risk that they’re not willing to on their own. And say, “You know what? We need to change things from the way they’re going right now, so let’s bring somebody in with some fresh thinking or whatever. And then, if it doesn’t work, we can blame them.”

John Willams:

It happens all the time. It’s the politically correct way to do things in business.

Paula Williams:

And it’s part the value you bring to the table, because you don’t have to be with them for 20 years. You don’t have … This is not your only job.

John Willams:

You can even say and do things they don’t like after you got a track record with them. And if they don’t like it, and you’re getting results, they nay-say you all the way down to writing a check.

Paula Williams:

Yep. “That gosh-darn consultant.”

John Willams:

Yeah, “But somehow or another he made it work.”

Paula Williams:

Right. “So we’ll keep just keep paying him and keep griping about him, but we’ll keep going with that.” And that’s fine.

Michael Gamonal:

I like that, I like that. I never really considered how a consultant, I mean, even in my profession, as much as I try to put ownership on the students that I teach … Yeah, I’m sure. I’m absolutely positive that a lot of them are like, “Ah, this tutor is going to take all the liability.” Especially if the parents are paying, they can always be like, “Well, my tutor didn’t teach me,” you know? Which is absolutely ridiculous to say, right? Especially when you have recordings of the videos of me saying, “If you have any questions?”

I think that is one of the biggest things for consultants, especially if you’re taking on that extra liability, is that you need to be covering your ass. Because there’s going to be a time, if you’ve been consulting for any amount of time, where someone is going to say you didn’t deliver on what you promised. That’s going to happen.  And you have to be able to challenge that, you have to be able to show you did deliver. You, in fact, did exactly what you said you were going to do and everything was pretty crystal clear.

Paula Williams:

And you’ve got the receipts to prove it.

John Willams:

Once you’ve got the client, and they’re happy with you, and you’re marching along good in whatever it is you’re doing, rather than try to sell them on more, I take a more subtle approach and keep my ears open. And when they say, or I hear a discussion, “We need this project over here.” And I just catch them over coffee or whatever and say, “You know, we can do that. If you want anymore information, let me know.” And I leave.

Paula Williams:

Right. You know, I think to your point, Mickey, about blaming the consultant, it’s kind of like when I was doing physical therapy. I kind of had this love/hate relationship with the guy that was doing physical therapy with, because he was doing his job. And I hated going, because it’s painful, and it’s arduous, and it’s awful, and everything else. So he’s a great guy, I totally think he’s fantastic at what he does, but I was grousing about him all the time. You know, “That guy’s going to make do this, and do that, do the other thing,” and that’s just human nature. To have somebody to blame things on, especially if they’re unpleasant. It’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s probably the same thing with your tutoring, right?

Michael Gamonal:

Oh, absolutely, yeah. And I think one that becomes really clear, like I just hired a personal trainer, and I can’t stand the guy. [inaudible 00:14:25] do, but he’s telling me I have to log every single thing that I eat. It’s just like, “Everything. What do you think I’m doing? I’m just trying to exist, man, and I work hard.” [crosstalk 00:14:40]

Paula Williams:

“Did I eat this crap?”

Michael Gamonal:

Exactly. Like this is my one indulgence, bro. Like, shoot.

John Willams:

Oh, good.

Paula Williams:

But, you know, you can have your indulgence, you just have to tell the guy about it, then you can blame him for it being unpleasant.

Michael Gamonal:

That’s true, that’s true. Cool. Well, no. I like that, I like the liability. I feel like that is something I definitely overlooked. I never really considered … Because the way I always thought, “I’m just helping people reach their goal, I’m helping people reach their goals.” I never considered helping people fail. Helping people to not reach their goals, which I guess-

John Willams:

They don’t fail, they just kind of know the way not to do it.

Michael Gamonal:

Yeah, exactly.

Paula Williams:

Well, they’re not failing either. I mean, you’re not enabling them to fail, you’re actually just enabling them to work harder because they have an outlet for that. So they have someone to blame it on, even if it is unpleasant. People will do any number of things as long as they have somebody to blame it on to besides themselves. They’ll go through it, and they will do the work, and they will bitch about it every step of the way, but then they’ll do the work. They will get the result, and then they will be thrilled they got where they were supposed to go.

John Willams:

Yeah, and they’ll complain, say, “Well, this’ll never work, but he said to do it, and I’m supposed to do what he says, so I’ll do it.”

Paula Williams:

Right.

John Willams:

At the end of the game, and work, they’ll say, “I’ll be damned, I never would have thought that would work.” But you got the end result, everybody’s happy.

Paula Williams:

Right, so you get to help them with, what would you call it? It’s the whole accountability situation. The reason people hire a personal trainer is for accountability, right? I mean, because he’s probably not going to tell you anything you don’t already know, because you know quite a bit about physical fitness, and what you should be eating, and all that other stuff already, right?

John Willams:

Right, yeah. Absolutely. I mean, most people who’ve been alive know what feels good to eat and what feels bad to eat. Like an hour from now that cake’s not going to be as great as it was when you were eating it, I’m pretty sure.

But I think when you’re talking about getting them to actually do the things that you’re consulting them to do, that, I think, is one of the major challenges of being a consultant, right? Like if this is the list of things that your clients hate, generic approach, overselling, slide decks, expecting immediate results. As a consultant, one of the toughest things is convincing someone that they need to do what you say. I mean, that’s probably one of the toughest tasks, I think. Does the book have an answer for that? Or do you guys have an answer for that?

Paula Williams:

Well, the book is full of checklists, and I think, that’s kind of the problem and the solution as well. Because I think clients expect you to have a magic wand, and you show up with a checklist. So you have to sell the checklist. You know what I mean? Your entire job is … Sales is consulting, and consulting is sales in my mind, because you have to sell them on every step of the way. We have to do the checklist. We have to do every step even though you feel like, “We can just skip to step five. I can promise you that if we don’t do step one through four, something’s going to go wrong with this campaign, and you’re not going to get the results you want. So we got to start with step one. And it won’t be as bad as you think, but we got to do every step.”

And so, I think the problem is that there’s no magic in the world. The solution is that there is no magic in the world. There’s got to be a checklist, right? Yeah, as a consultant, they like to think you’re bringing them … They’re throwing money at a problem and expecting it to be solved, and they still have to do the work. There are things that you can do for them, but a lot of things are collaborations. You still have to get their effort. Engage their effort into the process, and that is a sales job as much as anything else.

John Willams:

You just have to make sure that you’re selling it at the right level.

Paula Williams:

Yeah.

John Willams:

Because if you’re down on a level too low, then what you’re saying isn’t going to work anyway.

Paula Williams:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Because the responsibility is here, but the accountability or the authority is here. So maybe they’re responsible for making it happen, but they don’t have the authority to be making decisions that you want them to make.

Michael Gamonal:

And that’s why having that checklist would become so valuable, right? If you’re telling them that A needs to happen, then hopefully they can go to whoever has that responsibility, whoever has that level of authority with a little more intention. Which is, I guess, is exactly what you guys were talking about in the beginning with that liability thing. Like it’s a permission to do what you need to do to get things done. An opportunity.

Paula Williams:

Right, exactly. And then that also kind of helps you drive … “Okay, well if you don’t have the authority to sign off on this, then let’s go to who does.” And we can both sit in the room and present that if we need to, to get the answers that we need to proceed. Otherwise, we’re at an impasse. So that kind of takes the onus off their back, and says, “Okay, well we need to do that, and I’m not bugging my boss. You’re bugging my boss.” So, that’s cool.

John Willams:

And when you do an onsite visit, or if you’re consulting onsite … Back in the day, there used to be a secretary that would stop you from seeing the ultimate boss, the VP, the SVP, or the president. Nowadays it’s calendars, right? But even today, I would go by the guy’s office, just like I always did, and if he was one the phone, I’d keep walking. If he wasn’t on the phone I would stand there outside the office door till he looked up, he said, “Can I help you?”

I said, “I would like 60 seconds of your time.” And I’d only have one question, and I watched my watch, and at about 50 seconds I’d get up, say, “Thank you very much.” And be starting to walk out the door, if he or she chose the to keep me in the office, that’s on their time. And then I got many, many, many half hour conversations by that pledge.

Paula Williams:

But you kept your promise, it was 60 seconds-

John Willams:

That’s right.

Paula Williams:

… or it was their choice.

John Willams:

And between the three things I just talked about I built the revenue stream for the company I was working for from about $200,000 a year up to $15 million over two years.

Michael Gamonal:

Geez.

John Willams:

So I know it works.

Michael Gamonal:

This’ll do.

Paula Williams:

Yeah. A lot of the folks listening to this podcast are probably using consulting also as a sales tool. And I know you do that in your business, Mickey, and John and I do it in ours as well. We have free consultations as a step in the sales process, right?

Michael Gamonal:

Yeah, I mean, funny enough, I actually just released an ad because I’m ready to go full-time starting next month. So I’m looking at alternate streams, so it’s not so ASVAB focused. I did a Facebook ad based off of my location, within three to five miles of where I’m at. Basically just looking for tutoring gigs. But I am charging for the consultation, which I think is going to work out pretty well. I’m charging $20 for a consultation, where I’ll just figure out where they’re at, what they need, da-da-da-da-da. And I think that that, at the end … I’m all about free consultations, but especially with tutoring, what I’ve found is that knowledge is free, right?

Like that’s one of the toughest things about being a consultant nowadays, is that anything that anybody wants to know about anything, true or false, they can find right away. Whether it suits their beliefs or it doesn’t suit their beliefs, or is counter to their crazy uncle. Whatever argument you’re trying to make right now, you can make it. You can Google it and you can cite a source. So that was one of the things with tutoring, especially for general education. There’s a million ways to teach addition on YouTube, totally and completely for free. But I think the issue is people want to put a little more skin in the game. I think, especially, with a tutoring consultation you want to know you’re a level above. You’re not doing the free thing and hoping that works out. Maybe I’ll find another free consultation next week, right?

That’s what you find a lot of times, people who will jump from consultant to consultant in the same arena, because they think they’re going to find something that works even better. But usually the difference between consultants is really small. You know, that’s not much that sets one consultant apart from another. So they end up doing commodity consulting, right? So they’re looking for the cheapest price. And if you’re looking for the cheapest price you can find, free every time. You can always find free.

Paula Williams:

Oh, yeah. The world is awash in [crosstalk 00:24:53]-

John Willams:

Quality goes with the price though.

Paula Williams:

Yeah.

Michael Gamonal:

Oh, yeah. Quality comes with a price. And that’s the reason students are overwhelmed. It’s like, sure, you could sit your kid in front of fraction videos for six hours a day, for the next 10 days, will they be able to do fractions a little better? Maybe. But more than likely they’re going to hate fractions with every fiber of their being. Is that the objective? If that is the objective for your life-long learner, get them to hate everything to do with research and education, there’s a conflict there, an issue there.

Paula Williams:

Exactly. So what they’re paying for is, number one, somebody who’s going to listen to them, and say, “Here’s why I don’t understand this, here’s the part where I am having trouble with. I don’t want to do the whole hour-long video when I want to focus on this for five minutes, and see if I can solve this problem.” That’s thing number one, the tailoring. Thing number two is the relationship. So they feel like, “This guy gets me, and he gets how I learn. And I can ask him questions. I can spend the same amount of time, and learn five times as much as I would going through those generic videos, because this is specific to me, and what I need and what I want,” or “What my kid needs or wants.”

Besides the fact that it’s just cool to meet with the same person every day and have that interaction, and have that incentive to show you, “I figured this out, and I had that light bulb come on. I want somebody to know that.” So that’s a cool thing about consulting also, that I think helps with the long-term relationships.

Michael Gamonal:

John, do you have something on that?

John Willams:

Well, no. I was just thinking about you mentioned fractions. I went back a few years to when I was growing up. I didn’t get fractions at all. Period, end of subject, next subject. Didn’t work. And I really thought I was never going to be able to learn them. But my mom refused to let that die. And it wouldn’t have mattered if I had sat in front of a video, they didn’t work. She kept at me, taking it apart, showing different ways of doing this and that, and pretty soon the light bulb clicked. And when it did, I said, “Oh.” I mean, and then after that, she made me memorize all possible combinations of numbers up through 10, and when I did that it was 20, then it was 50, then it was 100. And then we started working on 1,000. And you know, your square roots and all that stuff. Fractions, it became not a problem. It was like something happened in my brain, but that wouldn’t have happened if I had been watching YouTube videos. There ain’t no way.

Paula Williams:

Right. That specific … Everybody learns in a different way. You can’t just park somebody in front of a video and expect them to learn the same way everybody else does.

John Willams:

That’s the piece a consultant does, is he digs out what approach to take for any given individual, or organization, or part of an organization. And then he takes that lead and makes it work.

Michael Gamonal:

Right. No, I mean, if videos and entertainment could do it all, we’d just watch Wolf of Wall Street, and then we’d all be done. We’d just be like, “All right. I’m a millionaire now, you know.”

John Willams:

That’s right.

Michael Gamonal:

Like it doesn’t work like that though. Yeah, the magic bullet idea. What I really liked when you were talking earlier about the 10 issues. You said, “Immediate results is one of the things that customers … They hate immediate results.” Is that what you meant?

Paula Williams:

No, no, no, no. When the consultant is expecting an immediate response. So, “I am going to give you this checklist, and I expect you to have all of these items completed by Wednesday.”

Michael Gamonal:

Gotcha.

Paula Williams:

You know, so I expect everything to be all set up for me when I come in. And there is a certain amount of that, you can say, “Look, it’s going to be a whole lot more efficient if we can get these things prepared before we get started.” But, this is the real world, and people do have a real job besides working with me. So I totally get that, and I don’t expect people to drop everything and work on this while we’re working together. That’s just part of their jobs.

John Willams:

It occurs to me that a consultant also has to know when to be assertive, yet not aggressive versus when to, “It’s okay, whatever.”

Paula Williams:

Yeah, when to … If something else as a priority, and you know that, and you’re not going to win.

John Willams:

Well, even beyond that, sometimes, as an example, I was in a group situation where these people were all considered to be a team. And they could not make a decision. But we had to have a decision made by a certain time. So I said, “Okay, you failed to reach a decision, so I’ll have to make one.” They said, “No, you can’t do that.” I said, “Really? I just did.” “Well, but that’s not the way this company works.” I said, “Well, then you go complain.”

Paula Williams:

How to win friends and influence people.

John Willams:

Yeah. But the point was what are we going to do? Say that the team failed to make a decision? No. I’m on the team, that ain’t going to happen.

Paula Williams:

You have to go for it.

John Willams:

Yeah, so I made the decision. We went forward and I never heard a word from anybody.

Paula Williams:

Right.

John Willams:

That happened on more than one occasion, too, by the way.

Paula Williams:

Right. And as a consultant you can do that, because they could always fire you, but then it’s on … That’s a decision that they could make. And clearly, you can’t do that, because if he gets fired, he’s fired from his job, his primary job.

John Willams:

Exactly.

Paula Williams:

And that’s not cool.

John Willams:

So like I said, they all complained all the way up to the big boss. He would come talk to me, and say, “Why did you do that?” And I would explain to him, but he never … That opportunity, that’s conversation never happened.

Michael Gamonal:

That’s the beauty of it if you’re a consultant. Like I’m not saying I can solve somebody’s every single Army woe in their military career for the rest of their life. I have specific purpose. So if you want to reach that goal, you’re going to listen to me. I’m not going to tell you how to set up your retirement account-

John Willams:

Exactly.

Michael Gamonal:

… I can give you a hint for the blended, what is it? Blended retirement program that the Army, the Thrift Saving Plan, or whatever, but at the end of the day … Yeah, that’s the beauty of being a consultant, is you get to be singularly focused which can lead to that generic approach, right? It can. If you were doing the same thing for every single person, it can make it tough, but I think it’s something most good consultants want to do is to tailor make their [crosstalk 00:32:49]-

Paula Williams:

To specialize. Yeah, there is one other thing I wanted to share from the book. And that is the marketing secret of seven. And I think we’ve all heard this in different formats before, but I like that the way that he put it. So of the whole book, and I swear I slogged through the entire thing, and these are the two things that were worth the time. This is not my favorite book. This is my least favorite book this year, I’d have to say. But, anyway, so I’m just going to read a little bit, so I apologize, but I think this is worth reading.

“In 90 to 95% of cases, you’re first marketing communications with a perspective client will result in a no, or a no new business. In fact, it’s been proven that it takes seven or more contacts to turn a potential client into a paying client. Here’s some interesting points of data from consultant and author, Grant Hicks.

‘Five to 10% chance of having a person become a client after one contact. 10 to 20% chance of having a person become a client after two contacts. 20 to 30% of having a person become a client after three contacts. Most advisors give up after three tries. 30 to 40% chance of having a person become a client after four contacts, 50 to 70% chance of having a person become a client after five touches. Numbers soar after five touches. 70 to 80% chance of having a person become a client after six to seven contacts. In total, 50 to 80% of all new business developed is after the fifth, sixth, and seventh touch or contact.’

Herein lies the big mistake that most consultants, and I’m going to say, business owners of any kind, make. They run one ad, do a text or an email blast. Send a brochure in the mail, and expect the phones to start ringing. They don’t, and the consultant decides that what they’ve done isn’t working, so they give up and either stop marketing or abandon ship.”

John Willams:

And that’s not only true from the perspective of digital marketing, then all the major marketing clients that I’ve worked in my life, that was the same thing. I mean, more than seven, I don’t know how many times I actually contacted people. I interviewed, in Salt Lake City, for a client twice. I told my bosses to send me somewhere else. So she’d wait till Monday, and then Monday send me back out here again.

Paula Williams:

For a third interview?

John Willams:

Huh?

Paula Williams:

For a third interview?

John Willams:

Yep. And that’s how I met the gentleman [inaudible 00:35:49] my work for, and it all work.

Paula Williams:

Right. And I think that’s true. I mean, postcards, or Facebook ads, or anything. People expect one to work and it almost never does. And I know everybody gets discouraged. Go ahead.

John Willams:

The company, by the way, had sent Mike out here three times to interview as well.

Michael Gamonal:

Geez.

John Willams:

And it ended up they hired me, and then I said, “I’m going to need some help.” They said, “Go ahead,” so I hired Mike.

Paula Williams:

So he ended up working with you anyway.

John Willams:

Yeah, but I told him, I said, “You’ve already talked to Mike, why didn’t you hire him?” They said, “Well, we just thought we liked you better.” All right, fine. “So I need Mike to help, because you expanded our scope by this much to here.” He said, “That’s fine, bring him on.”

Michael Gamonal:

I bet.

Paula Williams:

Yeah, so don’t stop. And I think, in our course we teach a top 10 marketing strategy. You know, you make a top 10 list and you go through those top 10 over and over and over again. And the reason for that is you can’t advertise to thousands of people and keep connecting with them on LinkedIn, and sending them messages, and sending them emails, and picking up the phone and saying, “Happy Birthday” or … I mean, you can’t do that with 100 people, but you can do that with 10 at a time. Then keep going until you get a yes, no, or not yet. And then drop them off the list, add another one.

Michael Gamonal:

No, I think that’s true. I think, I mean, personally, as a marketer I’ve been very discouraged. I think anybody who’s got any modicum of success, anyone who has successfully marketed anything has been super discouraged, at least once or twice. You pour your heart and soul into a sales letter or a video or a graphic ad or something like that. And the reason, I think there is a tendency for us to think that this one is going to work, is because as consumers, I always feel like it’s just one thing.

I always feel like if I’m going to buy new shoes, it’s because of one ad they did, or if I’m going to this gym it’s because of the one time I saw them. And that’s because I don’t think about all of the previous effort they put in, right? As a consumer I just think about that one ad, and I’m thinking, “Well, my ad is way better than the ad that got me to spend this much money. What’s going on here?” But at the end of the day, yeah, it’s that consistent effort. It’s just like studying math or working out. It’s just a grind.

Paula Williams:

Yeah. Habits matter 1000 times more than any brilliant execution. I mean, you can have the most brilliant ad in the world, but if people only see it once, you’re going to get a very low response to that.

John Willams:

And your idea of your 10 most wanted … Let me give you an example of one of them. I was laid off in the middle of September one year, is that right? No, it was the middle of August, but from when I was laid off, because of the way circumstances were, I had six weeks of pay coming. Which meant two or three more paychecks. Well, I put myself in the business of finding a job, and back then there was basically no internet.

So I would scour newspapers every day. Because that’s all there was, classified ads. I’d get the New York Times, I’d get the major papers from all over the country. I spent probably $50 a week on newspapers per day. I mean, a stack of newspapers. And I’d go through all those things and I’d call them, and then they’d say they were going to send me this, and I’d say fine, and I would throw them away. And I just kept doing it every day, every day. I ended up with five requests for interviews. I flew to five different job offerings, and turned down three of them. One of them said, “You won’t take this job, but it won’t be for the money.”

And drew this up, because what I did was after I got offers from all of them, I presented to the family and said, “We have to leave. Apologies for that, but we have to go to one of these five places.” And then they chose the one they wanted, and I accepted it. But the point is I didn’t stop with any one of them. I just kept going until I started getting … In fact, I kept going all the up until I took the job, actually. Because I didn’t know if it was going to work like I wanted to.

Paula Williams:

Right. And I actually don’t know if it was you or if it was someone else who told me, you’re always, always, always looking for a job. And you want to keep recruiters calling-

John Willams:

That was me.

Paula Williams:

… and working at a job.

John Willams:

I had people calling me, wanting to place me in other companies.

Paula Williams:

Right.

John Willams:

And to that end, during my productive part of corporate America, I changed jobs 14 times. About every two and a half years, but every time I’d change jobs, I got anywhere from a five to $10,000 annual pay raise. And I got more responsibilities, I got nicer this and nicer that, so it all worked. So I always had recruiters. I had several that I liked and I said, “You just keep calling me.”

Paula Williams:

Yep. You’d never say, “I’m happy where I am, let’s stop.”

John Willams:

That’s right.

Paula Williams:

Yeah, and we got some clients like, Avion Trace, like Sherry, she is pretty close to capacity, and she’s still marketing because you want to have that waiting list. And you want to have that ability to expand beyond where you are. There’s always going to be some attrition, just because of companies getting bought and sold, and crazy things happening in the world that you don’t know about. So even if you do a perfect job, there’s always stuff happening where you’re going to need a new client or you’re going to need a new student or a new whatever unexpectedly. So you want to keep that pipeline full, right?

John Willams:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Paula Williams:

Yeah.

John Willams:

Or better to have a waiting list than to have you waiting on somebody.

Paula Williams:

Right, be on the right side of that equation.

Michael Gamonal:

True that. Well, cool. I mean, I think overall then, we got your two favorite points out of this long-

Paula Williams:

Out of this entire book. And this is not a thin book, either. This is a … Well, anyway. Not my favorite, but yeah, that’s why we’re doing the survey to get people’s opinions on books for next year. So hopefully we’ll get some better ones, because we’ll get people to take a look at that and share their opinions on the book survey.

Michael Gamonal:

Hell, yeah. Hopefully. I’m wondering if … Do you, as far as the book survey goes, is it going to be a really broad selection? Like if we say, Gone With the Wind, or something …

Paula Williams:

I think there is like 25 books on the list. It is on the survey gizmo, and we’re going to pick 12, and people can also nominate other books and I’ll add them in as they nominate them. But we’ve got 25, so we can discard more than half and still have 12 books for the year.

Michael Gamonal:

Sick, cool. I’ll have to go check the survey. John, have you done the survey yet?

Paula Williams:

He has not yet.

Michael Gamonal:

Oh. Okay.

Paula Williams:

Oh, yeah. I just launched it yesterday, so that’s cool.

Michael Gamonal:

I wasn’t trying to put you on blast, I was just wondering what we’ve seen, what’s your honorable mention moment? What are you looking forward to most next year?

Paula Williams:

As far as the books?

Michael Gamonal:

Which title? Is there a title that stands out to you?

Paula Williams:

I would like to see more authors, I guess, Seth Godin, and we almost always include a Dan Kennedy, and we almost always include a Covey book. So I would like to see that continue as themes. Because those are always, I think, consistently good selection. But even when we pick a terrible book, there’s still some good stuff in there. I think it’s the interaction and the practice of reading one business book a month, that matters more than a particular title, so I’m not going to express a huge attachment to any particular outcome. What ever the group chooses is fine with me.

Michael Gamonal:

So diplomatic. That was pretty good.

Paula Williams:

Well, we got smart people, so they made some really good picks. And some really bad picks, we’ve had some really good picks, too.

Michael Gamonal:

Cool. All right, cool. I guess we’ll sign out. Does that work for everybody? Anything that anybody wants to add to today’s session? All good? Okay, cool. So my name is Mickey Gamonal, ASVAB Domination. If you need any help with anything in the military, or an MOS, let me know. Gamonal Tutors, Gamonal Tutors on Facebook or Instagram. Instagram is full of testimonials and all that.

Paula Williams:

Absolutely. Paula Williams, ABCI. If you are a client or in any of our classes, please do complete our book club survey. So that we will have much better selections next year. And if you are not a client or in one of our classes, why the heck not?  We help the aviation industry make more sales so they have more revenue and better quality of life for everyone and so on. So why not, you know?

John Willams:

[inaudible 00:47:15].

Michael Gamonal:

Cool. Well, good deal guys. All right, you have a good day.

Paula Williams:

Sounds good.

Michael Gamonal:

See you guys.