Lead Nurturing | Changing The Way You Think About Client Relationships

[00:00:00] Welcome back to another episode of the six-figure creative podcast. I'm your host Brian Hood. I'm here with my big bald beautiful well lit cohost.

Christopher J. Graham. How you doing today?

I'm doing equally as well as you are, because You are also also well lit.

You got me on the, you got me on the gear loss world of good lighting, man. I spent like 350 bucks on new lights. After last episode,

yeah. So the story with that is we went to Nam, which is like this, professional conference for media people. And we were there and we met, a rep from this company called aperture and we struck up a conversation. They gave me some lights

they didn't give me any lights. What the hell

are you? You're like repping. You're repping a brand right now. And I haven't seen it. I paid money for these.

They're hard to get ahold of our guy is amazing, but he doesn't respond that often. And so I just went out and bought like their big freaking

video light.

that's their strategy. They connect with people, the young upstarts, like us, that gets you excited with the prospect of free [00:01:00] gear, maybe free gear. And then they just, they leave you dangling. So you're like, I can't wait anymore. I'm gonna go buy it myself with my own money.

Not to be fair. I did get free gear.

Here you go. Yeah. You got little square lights thing. It's fine.

It's like you for anyone watching on YouTube right now, it was like a pack of cards. He just held up. It's like, it was a nod to lighting,

indeed. But yeah, so we got, and I think we've had, this is such a weird conversation because we're both geeking out about it, but you see on like YouTube or videos where someone's making a video and they have this huge giant, like half of an egg that glows and it's like three feet wide. It's a dome. And the thing about a dome light that I think is important for creatives and people that make videos to know about, is it a dome.

light

Anyone, listening can just skip ahead. Like probably four or five minutes, Chris, how long

you going to go on this?

I'll be like four or five seconds. Brian and I have glasses. And when you have glasses, you get weird shadows all over your face. We're trying to make a video and it makes you look like a psychopath or

It's true. If you watch any of my old videos, YouTube or anything before mid [00:02:00] January, it is a glasses shadow. I look kind of creepy. So Chris got me on this train. I bought this light. I look, I look way better. I'm not going to lie. It was a good investment of my time and money. But yeah, so there we go.

If you're watching YouTube, you see the beautiful difference between before and after me and Chris both look great, but I also notice one thing that also makes Chris even more beautiful is that his mustache has gone. Chris, I just now like, literally just now noticed you don't have a mustache anymore.

And we've been talking to for like two hours today,

I know what the hell man. Yeah. I just sort of on a whim shaved it off over the weekend. My daughter and I have been like pretending to have salons at the apartment and like, I'll do her hair. She gave me a haircut and I had my, in my

mind, I was

pretend haircut by the way, because you don't have here.

no, no, no. She, she shaved my head. It was awesome.

you actually get the little shaver thing to shave your

Yeah. I gave her the buzzer thing. Like you can't possibly hurt someone with my shaver, the Phillips one blade, shout out to Phillips. We're not sponsored, but dear God, what a good shaver. And I had in my mind that like, she was gonna, I was gonna let her cut [00:03:00] my mustache off. Cause I thought like that's a memory for sure right there.

And then she didn't want to do it. And then I was like, well, I kind of had my hopes up. So I just went ahead and did it.

this is the six-figure salute to Chris grams, mustache being gone, eyes fully supported.

my kids, when I came out with my mustache shaved off, they said, you look like a 20 year old who gets in trouble all the time.

That's my summation of Chris Graham, although maybe a couple of years older than 20, but you know what, I'll take it. That's great. Well, let's get an episode today, cause this was extra long today and you know, it's good. It's going to get back to that old it's like the old days, you know, the golden years of the six figure home studio podcast, today's episode, we wanted to bring a topic up that we, you know, to my knowledge, we have not done a proper, I'd say deep dive on this yet.

And it's the subject of something that the technical marketing term is called lead nurturing. The real life term is making people like you and want to work with you. And we're going to go into deep dive with this today because I think this is an area that people neglect in their businesses.

And especially creatives, go ahead.

Go ahead and just interrupt me on my intro. That's [00:04:00] fine. Yeah.

well, your, your intro is better on our outline than it is and what you just said right there. You said like it blew my mind the way you explain this, what is lead nurturing? It's the actions you take Between when someone becomes a lead and when they become a client, how do you get them to move from lead to client that is lead nurturing

Yeah. And it's the area that so many people just hope it's like, it's like, uh, most people just do hope marketing, which is like a help paper come to my website and fill out my form and pay me money. But I don't know how it's, it's the same thing. They like, they finally get a lead of some sort, someone fill out their quote request form, or someone reached out to them through word of mouth to their limited pipeline of, of deal flow is I call it and then they get the lead in.

They're like, okay, I give them a price. I hope they pay me. And that's their, that's their lead nurture sequence. That's it. That's all of it. That's all it is.

well, and to confess here, you know, both of us did not come up through like some stupid ass business school

Oh, God. No, I, I, I barely graduated high school. I had like a tube. What? A 1.9 GPA, I think. Yeah. [00:05:00] Something, whatever. It's like barely passing.

Yeah, there was some concern that I was not going to graduate. It came down to the wire for sure. so I I'm embarrassed to say this, but like, I didn't know what a lead was until, I don't know. Maybe like I'd been in business for years before I finally understood what a lead was

the terminology is not that important. That's the thing it's like, you have to know basics, I guess, but like, to be completely honest, I couldn't tell you right to this day, I could not properly describe to you the difference between a lead and a prospect. There is a difference and it's a big difference, but I couldn't articulate what that difference is.

And so like, I'm just telling you, like, you don't have to know all these words in jargon, but we do have to do is understand the concepts behind what a lead is. A lead is someone that has expressed interest in working with you in some way, shape or form or they identify themselves as maybe a good, a good candidate to work with you in, in the form of lead magnets sometimes.

Uh, But in the context of this episode, it is someone that has expressed interest in working with you. So now the question is, what actions do you think. Between when they became a lead and then when [00:06:00] they hopefully inevitably pay you, do you have things in place? And that's what this episode is about today.

So Chris let's dive into quickly. What, why does this matter? Like we, we've kind of already touched on this, but like why, why does lead nurturing matter in the context of a creative business, a freelance business?

Well, I love the phrase that you used earlier. Hope marketing, hope marketing. I think it is really rooted in self-esteem issues. I think for a lot of creatives, it comes down to, like I told someone, I do this thing. I hope they hire me. I don't want to follow up with them because if I get rejected, it'll mess with my self identity. It will compromise how I see myself. It will compromise the high opinion I have of myself and, you know, people joke all the time that to be a creative how do you make art without being a little bit narcissistic when you make art and you share it with anybody there's sort of this, like, I hope everyone on earth likes it.

there's some dangerous roads to go down there, but it's also totally a fair and beautiful and [00:07:00] wonderful thing to do. And I think when it comes down to lead nurture the potential that somebody will reject you or tell you to leave them alone is just so scary that we, we, we abdicate, we just don't do it.

Like I'll just tell enough people about what I do. And hopefully they on their own will make a decision to want to work with me. And I don't think that's the right move. I think there are, there are things that we can do to build relationships

Yeah. So just to kind of answer the question then Chris never answered, but I do like what you said there, it is important to address the mental fears the white people avoid this, but to answer why lead nurturing matters, it's kind of the opposite of what you said. Like it builds trust. And if you fail to nurture the lead, you are failing to build trust, which means you're going to struggle to close the deal when it comes time to actually get a client.

And so the number one reason that I think lead nurture it matters is because if the person doesn't have the utmost trust in you, that you can give them what they're looking for. If they don't have that trust, they're not going to hire you and really good lead nurturing, which we'll talk about how [00:08:00] to actually do this in a bit, but really good lead nurturing builds that trust and helps them build the confidence they need to hire you.

And without something in place there between the lead and the sale, you're going in blind, you're just hoping that they, they trust you enough to, to pay thousands of dollars sometimes. And that's, if you put it that way, you realize how stupid it is not to have something in place in the lead nurture area, because to expect someone to trust you blindly without actual steps, like a process in place of some sort you're, you're smoking hopium right.

Like that's the, that's the phrase we're probably gonna use a lot in this podcast.

Yeah, there we go.

hesitate to use this illustration, but I think it's appropriate.

I don't know if you ever have to preface it with that statement. It's usually not.

But that's how we got that's how you got a bunch of foot photos in your Instagram inbox the other

day. So that's okay. Go for it.

gross. So I think that lead, nurturing that you can talk about it in, in sort of the realm of dating. And then let me preface this. I haven't dated in 20 years, so I don't know what the hell I'm talking about there. [00:09:00] We didn't, it.

wasn't that there were no apps. There were no phones to run set apps on

What a date yourself, Chris, get to the, get to the point old

man.

the point.

is that if you are on the prowl here, you can use pickup lines and hope that they work and close the deal. Or you can build a relationship and get to know somebody and try to see them for who they are as a person, and try to understand their story and, and try to have a connection with them.

Yeah, so that, that is really good lead nurturing. It is like there's a lot of skeezy ways you could do lead nurturing. You can do automated segmented sequences and like all this nerdy crap that you see marketers talk about. But like, I don't think that resonates with anyone listening right now. I think the people that are listening right now want to build that genuine connection, that deep, that deep relationship with people, not the one-night-stand nightstand and get your money and then, and then get out my door kind of thing of like a not a relationship, but a transaction.

and case in point. Let me, let me tell a story. I'm gonna change the names.

let me, let me actually compliment you. You're a good storyteller.

Thanks, man.

I think our [00:10:00] audience appreciates that. I appreciate that. I'm not, I tend to not be a great storyteller, but go ahead. My dude. Tell us your

story.

I'm working on it. I just, I want to be better at it cause it's what a beautiful thing storytelling is. So I had a friend years ago we had like a small group at our church and this guy started coming to this small group and he developed a crush on somebody in the small.

And he knew he had to ask her out, he was so nervous about it that he just wanted to ensure that he would get a no, the maybe was scary for him and the no was so he shaved his head in his eyebrows and he showed up to our small group and he asked the girl out and surprise, surprise. She said, no,

She was a

bit

weirded out, Chris. she was a

bit weirded out.

but it made it easier for him.

He didn't have to wonder about if he was going to get accepted or not.

This is called self-sabotage Creatives are bad at this people. Self-sabotage in so many ways where it's like, if I set up the failure so that I fail, then I don't have to [00:11:00] face real failure. Cause I'm the reason I failed. And I know it because I sabotage myself. That's actually a real thing. People do, it's weird, but they do it.

They will shave their eyebrows in their head and ask someone else. So they know they'll get rejected, that we don't have to face real rejection. They just face the fact that they're weirdo rejection, which is they're their own kind of weirdo. So.

Exactly. And I think for a lot of people, they don't nurture, because they don't want to face the music. They don't want to face the reality that they, I think there's a lie baked into this and this, you weren't good enough. And that's why they didn't hire you versus you. Weren't a great fit, which doesn't mean anything.

It just means that you're really good at other stuff.

Yeah. So that actually brings up my other point for why, why goodly nurturing matters is that it weeds out the bad leads. Like this is the same as dating, like in some cases like it's, oh, it's better to get to the, the route that you're not compatible sooner than later. Like in most cases that's the case.

I don't know. I don't know about many people here, but I would rather find out that I'm in cat incompatible with someone on [00:12:00] like date one, then date 100 or day one, then day 100. Like I would rather not waste a hundred days of my life with the wrong person. If I could have just found out day one, because I actually asked hard questions.

So goodly nurture, weeds out bad people. And it actually we'll talk about this later. Attracts the right people to you.

well, I think Brian, I think you're bringing it really, really great points. And I think what this comes down to when you're weeding out the bad, the issue that's at play there is when you are a creative and you do a project, that project is now part of your portfolio. And when other people either see that part of your portfolio, because you've shown it off or they see it by word of mouth.

That most likely you're going.

to get more clients like the client that you didn't want to work with in the first place. So in all businesses, bad clients, beget, that means create more bad clients and good clients B get good clients. So you want to have a good nurture sequence because that allows you to make sure that [00:13:00] you're working with the greatest possible customers that you CA you can possibly have.

And back to the dating analogy that could mean, Hey, don't date, the person that you don't like, and that you don't have any intention of having a relationship with, because that makes it harder to be with, somebody that you would really like to be with, who is a good fit, because it makes you look like a turd bird, band, turd bird.

Thanks, dad.

let's move on to the, how, the, how this is an important part of lead nurture, because you don't listen to this podcast to just hear the what and the why the, how is this is the really important part, because most people here don't know what lead nurture is.

They don't know how to do it. They don't know how to get started with it. And I want to address one important thing really quick before we dive into the how, and that is automation. If you were to look up lead, nurture online and, and do it like typical marketers, do they automate everything?

They have like advanced segmenting and they have like AB sequences and they have like a marketing automation set up that like sends emails out and, and to

be fair,

people with red hair, get these emails automatically and people with [00:14:00] darker hair. Get these emails.

And to be fair, I do that with a six figure home studio and the six figure creative I do. I'll do all of that. And so I I'm guilty of that myself, but it's because it's a different business, different business model, as creatives, as freelancers. This is not the way to do it. I don't believe this is the way to do it unless you're working with so many leads that there's no possible way that you could do this manually.

And Chris, you were, you've kind of experienced this in your past with your mastering business. That was more of a high volume at one time. At least it's more of a high volume business where you had a lot of leads coming in and you had to automate a lot of things, but you were talking to me before this episode of how your mastering business grew when it became more.

So automating your leads and automating the nurturing of your leads. So I'm the systems guy, right? I love automating stuff. And I'm fascinated that you can create simple automations that make you into a better creative, a more creative, creative, a happier creative.

Like, I love all this stuff, but when it comes to lead nurturing, ultimately we need to take a step back [00:15:00] when we were talking about automating this sort of thing, because we're talking about relationships and the problem with that is because you are a creative, you have high standards, your dream, if. 99% of creatives.

It's like, man, I just want to work on awesome projects all day everyday for the rest of my life. I only want to work with cool people with cool, our own work on stuff that I'm proud of. And that's easier said than done. Especially starting out. People have to take on all kinds of projects, which can create problems down the line, because if you're not excluding bad leads, you end up getting bad projects.

And if you get bad projects, you get more bad projects. So this conversation about automating your lead nurture has to start with the first question, which is, do you want to be friends with the people that you are working with? For me, that's a big 10, four buddy. That's an a hundred percent. I'm a creative I got into into the, into this industry, these industries, everyone to say that because I wanted to [00:16:00] work on stuff that I thought was fulfilling.

And so guess what? I don't want to work with people that aren't fulfilling. My lead nurture strategy is two per friend. That's it the questions I'm asking about systems, or should I do this, or should I do that all come down to, what can I do to be better friends with this person as not that I'm trying to use them?

It's that? I think it would be fun to work with them. And I am a child, not a grown-up on my insides. And so I only want to do fun things. So I generally only pursue working with people that I want to be good friends with. And that makes this, this whole conversation a lot easier. I think it's really simple to look at this conversation and be like, now, what is the most efficient way to nurture my leads, to take the people who have expressed interest and then try to sell them something?

What systems can I put them through and how can I save time? I almost never think

Yeah, people want people want formulas. They They want simple [00:17:00] formulas that I can deploy over and over again. And it's, it's, it's really tough to do now that you can put process behind it. You can have similar things you do with each lead that help things out. But at the end of the day, it's still about building relationships.

It's not about, this certain sequence. You put people through that, like does this mentally to them and then like it torches them in this area so that they feel like they're indebted to like, no,

no, no.

no.

Yeah.

That's skeezy. We are the opposite of that on this podcast. And I, so I'll share what my system is. My lead gen says my lead nurture system, when it comes to a project or a client that I want to work on, that prospect fills out a form. it's the shortest form I can come up with.

What, what is the simplest thing that will help me generally get an idea of, is this person a good fit? And if they are, it might be like, how many songs do they want to work on? Or how many clients do they have each month? Or, you know, a question like that.

Is your cat planning to kill you, Chris?

Hold on a second. She has to go to the bathroom.

[00:18:00] Oh my God. Here it is guys. You see it here on the podcast for us, Chris Graham, getting up from his chair up from his chair, leaving the podcast behind for his cat to go take a

NASA. Well, did I leave the podcast for NASA or did I do it selfishly so that she wouldn't and piss on my carpet.

Yeah, well it's to avoid the fiasco that happened with your

with your

automated

stupid, like

a sweeper vacuum thing where it just smears, poop all

over the house.

pool up the poo CAPA lips. So let me get, let me get back to my point here. My system is have people that are interested, fill out a.

And there's a couple of really simple questions on that that I think give me a good indication of immediately is there potential with this person? And if there is potential with this person, my system sends me a text message that includes their phone number and their name and a little bit about them.

And then I manually text them and say, Hey, it's Chris Graham, let's talk. And then we find a time to talk and we just kind of [00:19:00] hang out and I get to know them. And if I like them and I feel like I can create wins for them wins that they'll be able to tell other people, dude, Chris Graham freaking set up the system for me and he taught me how to automate this part of my business.

I'm saving like four hours a day now, like then yes, then I'll go on that road. But the system is basically who should I have a human conversation with?

Yeah, and this actually leads to a good point, which is there's their candy automation within a. Your system and and it honestly, shouldn't be done. It's called lead qualification is this, is this lead, even qualified meet the minimum requirements for me. And this is really hard to do when you, when you have no leads coming in.

So this is a conversation for more our, mid and advanced people, but it's important stuff to have because the more you ax, the more you exclude, the more you attract. And what I mean is like, you don't want every person that comes to your door to be a client like that. That's people think they want that, but you don't want that.

That's how you end up with those projects, that underpaid, that's how you end up with those projects, that people that [00:20:00] complain and nickel and dime you and try to negotiate with you. And then they leave you a one-star review on every platform. They can find those are the nightmare clients. And so when you can have a good filtering system in place, and the only way to afford that is when you have enough lead flow to come in the door to where you have the, the luxury to exclude people.

But by excluding, you really attract the right people, because there's this weird thing that happens when you say. This is who I'm looking for. This is who I'm not looking for. Those people who are in the camp of being that's, who you're looking for, the people in that camp for more attracted to what you're offering, because they're like, this is exactly what I'm looking for.

This is the person I'm looking for example is if you are a music producer for country music and everything on your website is speaking to the country musician, and it's excluding any other genres. And even if you're not acknowledging them or outright saying, we do not work with other genres. And you just say, we only work with country musicians because of reasons X, Y, and Z.

This is my background is what I've been doing my entire life. This is what all of our gears about all of our [00:21:00] equipment is like,

You only need one reason to only work with country musicians, Brian. And that reason is America

myrica that's right? Yeah. And I'm a Lez Atlanta, the frayed, how I want the bribe and I, and because of that, I own it. Dope country music.

Yeah, man.

I say all of this to make a point, which is the more you exclude, the more you attract. And this is an important part of lead nurture, because lead nurturing should be looking for reasons to exclude. As much as it is as to reasons to connect with people, because part of building trust is knowing your lane.

This is, this is a really important concept. Now, part of building trust with someone building that relationship is knowing your lane, your place in this world as a creative and the more you veer off that lane, and it attempts to mold yourself to someone else. That's not a good fit. The more you're going to struggle as a freelancer.

And that's because those projects never turn out the way you want to. There's always something wrong with them. And then, so when those projects go out in the world, you start attracting more people like that. You start getting more of the wrong people and your portfolio reflects the wrong stuff. You're unhappy [00:22:00] with your work.

People may not even think it sounds or looks that good anyways, but the more people you, if you stay in your lane and you do a really good job in the nurture sequence to weed out the bad people and really take care and build relationships with the good people that match you, then you're going to start attracting more of the right people to your business.

And people really struggle with this because they, they work from a place of scarcity. They're constantly feeling like they're missing out. If they don't say yes to that project. And because of that, they're gonna get more leads. And it's this downward spiral it's really hard to get out of this cycle.

man. It's so true. It's so true. And I, I think back to when I was first learning about lead nurturing, and first learning about, you know, that there are different parts in a customer's life in relation to my business. They hadn't heard about me. They'd heard about me. They'd reached out to me. They'd made an, like, I gave them a quote.

They made a purchase. I provided a service. They asked for a revision. I gave it to him. Then I asked for a five star review. Like there are all these different stages in that life. [00:23:00] I didn't know any of that when I first started out and I made a lot of missteps,

by the way, we should have an episode about just customer journey, because that's when we haven't really talked about it. That's a good one to talk

about. Cause you just kind of described customer journey for that business. That.

Yeah. I think that'd be great. And I think I made a lot of mistakes early on in my career in regards to lead nurturing. And I started trying to introduce automation too early in the process and it would bite me in the butt. And what I would find is that when I was just trying to have phone conversations with.

And get to know them and ask, I had certain questions that I asked them. I always start with, you know, tell me your story or tell me the story about the project that you're working on. I want to hear a story. I love story. All I want to do all day long is just hear people telling me their stories seriously.

And what I found was that my business. grew the fastest when I was having the most conversations about people's stories. And then I would start to be like, okay, cool. This I'm kicking butt and patting myself on the back and feel [00:24:00] great about my business growth. I'm hitting numbers. I'd never dreamed. I mean, I remember like a few years into building my systems out.

I made more in a month than I made the first year I was married that blew my mind, like, absolutely just like rocked my socks off. And I started to think about okay, I'm going to automate more of. And then, so I'd automate more of it and then sales would slow down. Cause I was doing less as being less personable.

I was building less relationships and then I'd be like, I'm not making enough money. And then, so I would start being relational again. And it was this funny thing where would keep thinking, well, I want to be as efficient as possible. So I'm going to automate and build systems, but sometimes doing something faster or not doing something actually makes it less efficient.

And often in my opinion, when it comes to lead, nurturing That.

you want to be as manual as possible. And if you want to get into figuring out how to exclude people within your lead nurture sequence, do it on the phone, figure [00:25:00] out what questions to ask them. And even if it's just like you have a list of like, tell them your story.

What's your favorite movie. What's your favorite band? Which what the hell is my cat doing?

Yeah, I'm seeing lights disappear. I'm slowly seeing lights disappear behind you. I thought the battery died, but I realized your cat's just attacking

lights.

it's it's, she's opening the door. Blinds, blinds. I don't have drapes Yeah. She's she's fighting the drapes right now. She's wrestling it. Give

him hell

let this be a cautionary tale for anyone listening or watching right now that cats are evil and there's no reason to have one.

let the record state, this is the second time Chris has gotten from his chair and gotten up in the way from the podcast mic. This episode for that stupid demon in his arms with a wonderful name called NASA and a terrible creature called a cat.

I'm gonna get so much hate mail from cat lovers.

I love this cat man. Love him so much.

For the record for anyone wondering, I don't really hate cats that much. I just give Chris, Chris crap about

It's just content.

its content guys. Don't worry. I'm excluding to attract. I don't want cat lovers in my life.[00:26:00]

Well, and that brings up a great point. Let's talk about excluding. I think that everyone's belief is that if you want to be an influencer or famous or whatever, that everyone that meets you has to like you, that everyone that meets you has to agree with you. And that is actually the single most sure-fire way to fail.

That's hard for certain people, certain personality types to

understand because people deathly are afraid of rejection and not being

enough Chris. Think about the first time you ran at. Yeah. Have you ever run Facebook ads or do you only stay on like YouTube?

no, I ran tons of Facebook ads.

Comments, on ads or some of the most atrocious humans on earth. And actually more recently a Tik TOK comments can be some of the most atrocious humans as well I've found,

Have we gotten some,

oh yeah, for sure. I mean, we have over 2000 . Followers now, so

we've gotten like

got 11, we hit 11,000 last,

Woo, cool. Let's go. But anyways, like I have really thick skin, but for some people, some of the things people say in those mediums are detrimental to your mental health. Like you will not be able to [00:27:00] recover from that. And, and, and so just, just stating that, like it is, it is tough to understand that not everyone's gonna like you and the more you exclude to attract the more hate you're going to get.

Depends on how you do it though. Like, I admit I'll be the first to admit, cause I have an abrasive personality.

You know what? You're right. I'm just now noticing there's like a prickly thing that you do sometimes.

You're just now noticing this or are you just

Ha

I hope you're joking. Okay. You're

I'm totally joking.

Okay. It's like light. Oh my God.

have had lengthy conversations about that topic.

That's why I'm like, wait, do you know this crazy? But, so, yeah. So I get my personality will repel certain types and that's okay. Honestly, for my brand. That's okay. But for, for certain people, even if you are a perfectly pleasant person, if you do anything to repel in order to attract, you're going to get pushed back in some way, shape or form.

Now, let me give you some pushback on that.

oh, dude

do tell Chris,

this may or may not be [00:28:00] appropriate for the episode, so we'll cut it out or not. But,

it's

going to be funny when we cut right there and then people are

like, wait, what was he going to say?

So I'm not going to get into the details because this is not the time or the place, but for those of you guys that know my story, you know that in the past year I was on the front page of the newspaper here in Ohio and all over the news, because of something that happened to me when I was an author server at church, right.

I hesitated to come. Because I knew that I would not get universal support. I knew that was like a whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, man. One, that's a lot of information and two, like, you're coming here. Are you going against the Catholic church? Like what the hell man? And the crazy thing to me is I, I thought like I was bracing for impact.

And like the journalists were like, don't even go on the webpage and read the comments on the story. Like promise us that you won't do that. Like, it won't be good for you.

They were warning you the way we're warning our audience right now. Like there are some horrible humans that are hurt. This is hurt people is what it is.

It's her people, [00:29:00] you know, what's crazy. I didn't get a single negative comment

anywhere.

Oh, you must not have see my texts that I'm just joking. Actually. That's not appropriate to joke about. did not text you in anything that

but I, I think that's one of the funny things that I want to point out here is that we are naturally averse to getting critics. And that comes down. I forget the guy's name, but there's a rule that if you want people to be the most effective, they can be, you want to have them in groups of people, less than 150.

So in our militaries throughout the world, generally speaking, it's like groups of 150 people. And we find that that number just tends to be the best like, if we ever do like a big conference or something like that, like 150 people would be at the perfect first number

for us.

Yeah. I've been to multiple conferences of different sizes and that kind of shakes out.

yeah. Yeah. Th there's the most sense of community.

And I think the reason for that is that humans naturally survived as hunter gatherers the best in groups, about [00:30:00] 150, but for generation after generation, after generation of generic generation, it also conditioned us to be terrified of being kicked out of that group of 150 people. Because if you were kicked out as a caveman 10,000 years ago, you're pretty much.

You P you had zero options. You were not going to survive in the land of saber tooth tigers without your tribe. And that inclination I think is still very much alive and well for us. It causes us to be overly cautious when we perceive that the risk is that we might lose potential relationships or that people might judge us.

And Brian, do I have that same issue when we started this podcast, the first time that you said to me, Hey man, I've got this blog six figure home studio. I want to do a podcast with you called the six figure home studio. I immediately was like, Ooh, business. You're not supposed to talk about that in our industry.

I could lose all my clients. If I talk about business at all in a podcast, there's a first thought I had. And then it was like,

[00:31:00] I want to hang out with Brian and I thought I was like bracing for blow back when we

first started this podcast.

None.

So we're, we're kind of getting a little off, off the topic for lead nurture, but I think this point is really important to kind of understand, because there are mental elements that we have to deal with as humans, not just create us as humans that are going to hold us back from doing some of these things that we know we need to do.

and so just addressing that, I think as, as part of working towards the solutions to that, I don't think it's the only solution, the only way to get

solutions to that, but it's definitely working towards it.

Well, and good luck solving it. Good luck. Figuring out how to nurture leads. If you have a fear of rejection,

you got to deal with that fear of rejection.

yeah, because part of, part of lead nurturing is staying top of mind. And so just to be fully transparent, this podcast is lead nurture. It's a formerly nurture. We build trust with people every week we are on in your earbuds between your, between your ears like once a week for like an hour.

Sometimes if you listen regularly

that sounded [00:32:00] so

gross, man.

sure, sure, sure. And, uh, yeah. And so listening to the smooth tones of my voice, but, it is, it's a form of lead nurture because we're staying top of mind with people there's no good way to do that. If you can't get past the fear of rejection, podcasting is terrifying.

If you have the fear of rejection, it's going to hold you back from doing it. YouTube. Same thing,

Worse. I think YouTube is worse than podcasting. It's way scarier for me.

Oh. Is okay. Not for me, actually. They're both the same. I don't know. I think.

I am taking a class from Casey Neistat.

Oh, I'm familiar with Casey Neistat. Anyone who's

who's ever been on

YouTube.

started yesterday. It's a month long class and I am ecstatic about it.

Sweet. I can't wait for your content. When are you going to post?

I've got 30 days in the course. We'll kind of see How that goes and how that shapes, but

soon

How much was it

250 bucks.

as cheap? Okay. So it's

like a, it's like a mass, a mass consumer course at that

price point.

Yeah. Like it's not like we're sitting one-on-one with Casey, you know, in a zoom call or something like that. We're watching videos, great videos. I've got [00:33:00] three hours of Casey Neistat videos to watch tonight.

Woo.

this just brings up another topic and we're going to get back on topic here. I promise. But it's when Chris and I, we haven't talked since the holidays. So when we do this, this is the kind of stuff that comes up. So if you're new to this podcast, this is not how this typically goes, but we need to have an episode on just like educational resources that we, that we love, like courses and stuff.

Cause I just joined a whole community membership site slash course thing for click up. And it was, it was like, it was like $800 and I paid for an entire year of, up for like 150 . Stuff.

Dude, I'm so excited that you did that because we use click up to track. It's.

like our whole, our entire project management to do list system is completely through click up and I'm obsessed with it. It is. I literally woke up this morning and my morning ritual is to open quick up and to go through my morning ritual and click up before I actually get to work.

And this is actually really Cool.

I built an automation last night, actually, so that when I sit down to work, my iPad is plugged into my work computer. And if my [00:34:00] iPad is plugged in, it opens, click up and click up, stays in front of me all day as I work so that I can make sure I'm prioritizing well. If my iPad is not plugged.

And my computer is smart enough to be like Hey Chris, click up is an up on your iPad. Do that before you start working. So you don't get distracted

by silly

for anyone who missed out episode 180 1 that was a couple of weeks ago, I think two or three weeks ago. It's our fi our favorite tools for building a six figure business. In 2022, we talked about click up, which is why this conversation is kind of coming up now. But just to back to keep us on topic, let's just, we just seeded a future episode for you for you listeners right now.

Cause we'll definitely be bringing this stuff back up, but to bring us back on topic here back to lead nurture really good lead lead nurture keeps you top of mind and just to even do basic manual outreach. To stay top of mind, whether it's reaching out for an, a lunch meeting, a coffee meeting to just catch up, to see how they're doing, to see how the projects come along, to see like anything to just reach out for any reason, to be helpful, to be valuable, to just say anything takes getting over that fear of [00:35:00] rejection, because the number one reason people don't follow up and stay top of mind is they don't want to bother people.

And the reason they don't want to bother people is because they think that that email or that text or that DM bothers them. And it's that fear of rejection that's driving that sort of thought process. It's not anything in reality. I've never been reprimanded for following up before. At least not in a non-automated way.

I've gotten plenty of hate emails from people because we let them know that this episode of the podcast just came out and that it ruined their life, but never in a real one-to-one session.

Well, let me, let's break that down a little bit more. I think a lot of people, when they think about lead nurture, what that means to them is they have a single sentence, that they send their clients over and over and over again. Just checking in to see if we're ready to start working yet.

Ooh, that doesn't build trust it doesn't help the relationship out. doesn't, it doesn't accomplish it. It does. It does keep you top of mind. So at worst case scenario, you're at least top of mind. So that's better than nothing. I will say that,

It's better. it

is absolutely better than nothing, but, you know, perfect [00:36:00] example. I was sharing this with you before we recorded. This episode is there's this delightful human being that I work with sometimes. And I really wanted to work with her really, really. bad. And she is a cat lover. And so in lie, but at the time, you know, I was, you know, going through all these life changes over here.

I didn't have a cat. And when I got a cat, it made me think of her. So, you know what I did, I sent her a picture of the cat and said, Hey, I got a new cat. How's pumpkin, her cat.

So now if you're listening, you know, that Chris was just lead nurturing, you would, that would that

Right. Well, but it was genuine. Like when I got the cat, I was like, man, friggin, I'm not going to name drop or anything, but. I was like, I need to tell her, I got this cat and I sent her a picture and it was like this adorable interaction that we had that I really enjoyed it. So I think I really good system is work with people that you want to be friends with.

And then when you see things that remind you of them, it could be a YouTube video or an article that you read. Hey, I read this [00:37:00] article today. I use apple news. I actually love it. It generally keeps only interesting news in my inbox about cameras, the stuff. But if I read an article that reminds me of a friend of mine, then I'll, I'll send them an article.

I'm going to, I'm going to notorious article sender. And even that, it's just like, Hey man, I read this. It's kind of similar to what you're talking about the other day. This is awesome. You should check this out. That top of mine you're providing value, but you're also showing them the, like I'm thinking about.

When I'm not with you or when I'm not talking with you. And that I think is the very foundation of a relationship is that you are thinking about that person when you're not with them, that they are top of mind for you. So if you want to be top of mind for them, when you are, when they're top of mind for you act on it, just shoot them a text.

It doesn't have to be something crazy.

And Chris uses apple news, which is so frustrating. Cause when he sends me articles, it tries to open an apple news, which I've deleted from my phone because I hate it. And so I don't ever read anything you ever send me. So stop sending me stuff through apple news, Chris,

I know that's the biggest shortcoming of apple news.

[00:38:00] Admunson me constantly,

Yeah. But anyways, like the point remains that he is, he's actually adding value by sending other people's content to his leads.

And, and that ha that that's a way to add value that he doesn't have to really do anything other than think like, oh, this actually would help this person out a lot or this would be interesting to that person.

And there you go. It's

that brings up a real good point because you know, what are, you know, what,

the people listening to this podcast could do,

oh, they can share our episode

with someone that could really use

lead nurturing and their business. Oh gosh.

Or just anything we talk about marketing, we talk about sales. We talk about mental health.

Or like maybe if you have a friend that's a photographer and you want to share an episode with them. Maybe you show them our episode with Ben Hartley. Who's the photography guy. Or maybe if they're a copywriter, you share one of our copy writing episodes.

Racial green from green chair stories. Yup.

yeah, it's almost as if Brian and I planned this from the very beginning as a growth

Oh

anyways.

All right, Chris. So just to kind of wrap this episode up with a nice and neat bow on this, [00:39:00] any, any last minute words on lead nurturing things to think about with it, anything that our audience needs to kind of hear as encouragement moving forward with this new found the hope of like nurturing leads, building relationships, building trust, and having some path from this person has lead to this person is a customer and it's not just smoking hot.

Absolutely. I think the number one thing that I want people to take home from this episode is that a great creative works with people. They think are awesome. They work with people. They like being a creative is about having freedom, right? You, you got into this business or you're trying to get into this business, or you're trying to start a business because you want to do what you want to do on your own terms.

And that's the coolest thing in the entire world. I think that there is an element of responsibility to you pro you should try to have your own business. Like you should at least explore that. Maybe it's not for you, but if you can be on your own, I think you can provide more value to the.[00:40:00] On your own. In many cases, it's not true in all cases, obviously like, you know, if you design, you know, Mars, rovers you should probably go work at NASA or space X or something like that.

You probably shouldn't be trying to do it on your own. But ultimately the point I'm trying to make here is that if you are picky enough to only want to work on the types of projects that you want to work on, that are artistically satisfying to you, I think, you should also be picky enough to only work with people that you like.

And that makes this lead nurture thing really easy. I want to work with people that are, that are cool. I want to have a good time hanging out with them. And so I nurture the people that I want to be friends with, and that makes this whole thing real easy. I don't have to be a skeezy business person be like, how can I create a sense of urgency?

Or like, what can I do to, convince them that they are not enough?

Yeah, I think, I think if you're, if you're a segment, this like internet marketers are the pickup artists and creatives are the, like the nerds in the corners who just want the [00:41:00] genuine relationship,

but need a lot of help.

They're the, they're the nerds who got in the friend zone and then accidentally fell in love and got married. Right. that's how you should be doing lead nurturing. It's just be friends. And a lot of people provide value for as many people as you can. And if you want more on this, we talk about it all the time, but go read the book.

The Go-Giver it's fantastic. But it talks about just this mentality of like go and provide value. And if you're providing value, you're going to be top of mind because you've got, you know, some sort of strategy about like, Hey, I'm going to help this person. I'm going to hook them up or I'm going to send them an article or I'm going to buy them a book, just simple stuff like that makes this so much less complicated because here's the.

If you are successful in befriending them, but you fail and turning them into a customer. You still one?