The Three Marketing Methods ALL Freelancers Need to Know About

Brian: [00:00:00] Welcome to another episode of the six figure creative podcast. I am your host Brian Hood, and I'm here with my big bald beautiful, sexy cohost. Oh, Christopher Graham. That's the first time I've ever dropped the S bomb. You do. How do you feel?

[00:00:13]Chris: [00:00:13] But we'll get back to

[00:00:15] Brian: [00:00:15] that later because you didn't have shirt on today, which you usually do.

[00:00:19] You have a black shirt on today, which makes me feel sad. I was wondering why I felt a little weird today is because you have a black shirt on with your like dark background. It's true. I'm blending in for those who don't know, the six-figure creative podcast is now a video podcast as well. So if you're watching this on YouTube by chance, then you see Chris's sexy self and his black shirt.

[00:00:36]If not, you just see. The photo of that's on your podcast app right now, whatever it is. So there's that banter banter. Let's talk about it. No. Okay. So skip to probably eight minutes of this podcast. If you want to skip all banter, here we go. Go ahead, Chris. I

[00:00:49] Chris: [00:00:49] got a kitten. His name

[00:00:51] Brian: [00:00:51] is. Well, I'm never going to talk about your dumb cat.

[00:00:54] I hate cats. It's amazing.

[00:00:56] Chris: [00:00:56] It's NASA, all capital letters, just like the

[00:01:00] Brian: [00:01:00] space organization. That's the best name for a cat I've ever heard? I know I knew it doesn't change. The fact that the cat sucks.

[00:01:07]Chris: [00:01:07] It literally, it sleeps on me all night long

[00:01:10]Brian: [00:01:10] plotting to kill you. That's why.

[00:01:12]Chris: [00:01:12] It's cute enough that I might let it.

[00:01:14]I'm not going to lie. It's so nice.

[00:01:18]Brian: [00:01:18] It was a long and great life, but killed by stupid NASA. The kitten, he,

[00:01:24] Chris: [00:01:24] I seem to think it was worth it. Oh man. Yeah, she's fantastic. I got her at the humane society and the humane society named her NASA. And I was like, okay, I'm going to get this, this freaking kid. His name is NASA and my kids were by

[00:01:37] Brian: [00:01:37] default.

[00:01:38] Yeah. I could have gone for a dog and I would have still gotten that cat just because of its name. Now I would have, like, I would have hated the cat my entire life. I would have yelled at it and like pointed my finger and shamed it all the time, just because it's a cat, but I haven't taken it home. Cause I don't want a cat called NASA is stuck at humane.

[00:01:52] So good for you at least for like adopting a cat instead of like buying one from some, some hoity-toity cat breeder or cat breeders or thing like dog Raiders, by the

[00:02:00] Chris: [00:02:00] way they are, I almost bought. A ragdoll cat, which is like a bunch of money, but like you pick them up and they just go limp and let you like

[00:02:08] Brian: [00:02:08] wholly cat will do that.

[00:02:10] They're so stupid. I hate them. I love dogs. Just so you know, anyone just like Brian has no heart. No, I forget love dogs. The only reason we don't have a dog, because like we want to travel. We want to see things before we're like, and not be tied down to the, you know, you know,

[00:02:23] Chris: [00:02:23] it's great for that is a

[00:02:24] Brian: [00:02:24] cat.

[00:02:25]No cause the cat will like poop everywhere. I don't know what a cat had. The litter box, the cat literally doesn't care about you. You're there to serve the cat. The dog is there to serve you. That's the difference? Dogs and humans, cats tolerate humans. You've probably read in the story. I have

[00:02:42] Chris: [00:02:42] a robot that cleans up my cat's feces.

[00:02:45]Brian: [00:02:45] What'd you name it?

[00:02:47]Chris: [00:02:47] Oh, it doesn't have a name yet.

[00:02:49] Brian: [00:02:49] Yeah. Our, our robot, his name is Tippi. He's a little circular robot and he goes around tipping shit over on our house. And he's great.

[00:02:55] Chris: [00:02:55] Oh, we've got w. It's a vacuum cleaner named will Palmer.

[00:02:59]Brian: [00:02:59] All right. So you got your three minutes of banter. Christie. Is there anything else you need to get off your chest before we actually get into a valuable episode?

[00:03:05] So somebody actually gained some, some sort of information that helps their business.

[00:03:08] Chris: [00:03:08] There's so much opportunity for banter right now. I had a brain scan

[00:03:12] Brian: [00:03:12] yesterday we can talk about, okay, so let me just, let me just say why we're doing this is because this is the first time Chris and I have really gotten to.

[00:03:17]Do an episode like the old school days like this, this is the return of the six figure home studio podcast, essentially. Like we missed eight months of our podcast because of just delays and life and circumstances that came up our way of things

[00:03:31] Chris: [00:03:31] like SBI will probably be involved in,

[00:03:33] Brian: [00:03:33] but we miss like 50, we missed like 50 episodes of the podcast. This is just a free episode. You get that came out between one interview and another interview. And so we now, too, this is my hope that we can make up for the 50 episodes we missed out on. Eventually. I don't know what the timeline will be, but eventually these little in-between episodes we'll be making up for those.

[00:03:52] So do we. Skip the brain scan thing and get into the topic of today's episode. Or do you want to talk about the brain scan thing?

[00:03:58] Chris: [00:03:58] Yeah, the brain scan. It probably. Isn't very important to talk about it didn't show anything yet. So yeah, we

[00:04:04] Brian: [00:04:04] can skip it. I mean, I'm only saying that because the brain scan came back, claim spoiler alert, your brain is fine.

[00:04:10] Can

[00:04:10] Chris: [00:04:10] we skip the brain scan?

[00:04:12]You prickly son

[00:04:13] Brian: [00:04:13] of a gun, Brian. And that's why we, that's why we worked somewhere together because you're so lovable and I'm so hateable, and it's just a good class. And this year we're back on doing just you and I episodes for uh, between interviews. So let's talk about, let me tee up today's episode today.

[00:04:26]Today, we're going to talk about three different types of marketing that created. Should know about, at least you should all know about these types of marketing, but to me, one, maybe half of another one, one and a half of these are ones that I think most creatives should be actually utilizing at least at scale.

[00:04:42] So let's, let's talk about what we mean by this. Chris, do you want to say anything before we get to this topic? Brain scan.

[00:04:48] Chris: [00:04:48] Okay.

[00:04:50]Brian: [00:04:50] We're going to be so rusty today, by the way, we have not like we used to have a really good weekly flow. We had a good workflow, like we're relearning. How do they actually be good podcasts?

[00:04:58] Those together again against is true. All right. So let's dive into what we're going to talk about today. So there's three types of marketing for creatives or really any business in general. The first one of these is the most obvious of all of the types of advertising you've ever seen or marketing.

[00:05:12] And we're going to use this word interchangeably right now, even though there are some differences for creatives, we don't have to get a new show of this, or we're just going to really stick to the. Using this as a lump together term marketing and advertising, but the first type in the type you see almost everywhere, the type that we're bombarded by is just simple branding, advertising.

[00:05:28]This is the type of advertising that you see on billboards. It's the type of advertising you see on commercials. And Chris looks like he wants to say something. So I'm going to let him his little, his little, he's doing his little finger thing for those who can't see. Well, I think before

[00:05:40] Chris: [00:05:40] we get into this, it's worth mentioning that when we talk about markets, Or anybody talks about marketing, most creatives have a little bit of an allergic reaction and there's this sort of idea that like, wow, if I market myself, that means I'm trying to build my career on something other than my talent or passion or skill or fill in the blank.

[00:06:05] And boy, that's, that's such a problem, No matter how good what you are selling is no matter how talented you are marketing, I think is your duty as a creative it's you letting people know about your special sauce? I think a perfect example of this. I'm gonna get this. I'm the sort of tell a true story, cause I'm going to forget parts of it.

[00:06:23] But back in the day they came out with a smallpox vaccine and by back in the day, I mean like 1780 or something crazy like that. And people didn't want to tell you. And it wasn't until I think it was like the queen of France got her kids and Nakia waited for smallpox that people were like, oh, wow.

[00:06:39] Okay, cool. Yeah. I'll I'll get the smallpox inoculation. And it was, it was like the first, one of the first types of, of influencer marketing where people understood. Boy, we really need to get everyone to take this vaccine. It's going to save so many lives and the queen made a big deal out of it.

[00:06:54]Hey, I'm going to get it and my kids are going to get it. And then people will feel okay. Getting it. Even the smallpox vaccine required marketing bruh, your, your doodles or your photos or your audio needs

[00:07:07] Brian: [00:07:07] marketing. Okay. So just to kind of like bring Chris's point to a even better point, just kind of add on what you said, Chris, because you make a, you make a very good case here, here, here.

[00:07:16] And here's what Chris is saying is if a simple shot that can save. Hundreds of thousands or millions of lives over, you know, decades takes marketing then so does your creative service, whatever that is, you're not even saving lives. So if you think that you can just get on by the, the skill alone you are, you're mistaken.

[00:07:37] And so Chris is just saying like, Hey, it's the, and this is the saying that we are going to be saying more and more on this podcast. It takes more than passion and it takes more than that. So marketing and advertising is a great way to get your skills out into the world. So people are aware that you exist and.

[00:07:52]For people to then not hire the person down the road, who's going to do an even worse job than you could do. In other words, saying as a lesser job than you, not quite as great as you are at your job. So it's your duty to advertise or to market yourself services because that alternative is someone hiring someone that's inferior to you.

[00:08:09] So that's why we're talking about this today, before we get to this. So the first type of marketing that people are most aware of is this Branding branding is what you see on billboards. It's what you see on commercials on TV or radio. It's, it's the thing that is most visible to people. And the mistake that people make, especially us as freelancers and creatives, is that we see all of these things in the world that all these big companies are doing.

[00:08:33] And we say, I guess that's how I'm going to advertise my services as well. And so they go out into the world and they think, well, how can I replicate this? The results are usually the worst possible thing. And Christine, you may disagree or you may agree. I don't know. We didn't really discuss our thoughts and feelings on each of these three advertising or marketing methods.

[00:08:50] But the mistake we make is you trying to replicate these big brands is like a single solo person trying to take on a giant first world nations army in a war. every single one of the dollars that these big corporations have is like little soldiers that you're having to fight against and your tiny little big account, and no way can compete to these big, massive armies

[00:09:12]Chris: [00:09:12] when it comes to branding.

[00:09:13]There's a bill, there's a bunch of billboards here in Columbus, Ohio that I think are doing just an unbelievable job of it. And I imagine they're probably in your town too, and they are billboards for a product called oat milk. It's milk made from oats and in particular, I think it's, is it Oatley,

[00:09:30] Brian: [00:09:30] oatmeal, milk and the brand only, and the stupid, super bowl commercial they ran and all that.

[00:09:35] Chris: [00:09:35] I drink it pretty much

[00:09:36] Brian: [00:09:36] every day. Okay. I had it in my, I had in my latte today, but here's

[00:09:40] Chris: [00:09:40] the thing that's so amazing about them. Their tagline is something like milk, but made for humans. And you read that and you're like, wait, what? It's a little confusing at first. And then you're like, oh yeah, milk.

[00:09:51] Isn't made for humans. It's made for baby cows. That's such good branding. And it sticks in your brain.

[00:09:58] Brian: [00:09:58] You know, my brain thinks of when I hear that, and this is way off topic is I think of like, is this human milk? You're selling me what? That

[00:10:05] Chris: [00:10:05] it's a little bit. And I think that's what makes it so interesting is there's a little bit of a, like a human breeding.

[00:10:12]Undertone, which gets our attention. Yes, it's true. We are sexual creatures, most of us, and that sort of stuff is memorable. So this slight it's not inappropriate, but this slight hint at something that you're going to remember that involves.

[00:10:27]Brian: [00:10:27] Boobs. Well, I know exactly what you're talking about, cause I know that exact billboard on interstate 40 here in Nashville, right?

[00:10:34] Like outside of the downtown ring here. So I know exactly where that billboard is. You

[00:10:37] Chris: [00:10:37] saw it stuck in your mind. Unbelievable branding

[00:10:40] Brian: [00:10:40] But let me just say this. That is not the type of marketing that creators can replicate. We just can't do that here. And here's the problem. And this is the biggest, the biggest pitfall to brand just branding, just advertising that sort of way.

[00:10:53] The old school marketing way is because there is no great way for, for someone as small as us to properly track and understand the return on our investment of advertising like that. Not only is it wildly expensive to rent a billboard or to get a commercial on TV or radio or some of these traditional methods.

[00:11:11]Really hard, really expensive. It's also very good, difficult to track the return on investment with that. Now these big brands, they do have some sorts of things they can do to track that. And I'm going to get into that right now, but for, for creative solopreneurs, small agency owners, we don't have the means to really do that.

[00:11:27] So what does that leave us do? and that brings us to our second type of marketing for creatives. And that is something called direct response marketing. Chris. I know, you know, a lot about this because you've done so many Google ads in your lifetime, and I've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on Facebook ads.

[00:11:41] Yes. We spent way too much money to the old social media marketing world, but this is a fantastic alternative to brand marketing. If, if you wanted to get into advertising and it's not only by the way, this is not only limited to just paid ads. There are ways to do direct response marketing outside of paid media.

[00:11:58] But we just want to explain what direct response marketing it is. So you can think. Our thought process the methodology here, and whether it's gonna be right for you, because this could be one, this is why the kind of the half number that I said, I said, there's one and a half that creatives should use.

[00:12:11] This is the half one. This is the one I'm kind of on the fence about because there's pros and cons to this. But let me just get into right. Response. Marketing is direct response marketing is, and you can, you can update me on this, Chris, cause you'll have, you'll probably have a way better example or way better definition than me.

[00:12:24] It's when you put a message out into the world world that can be directly measured either via clicks or. Lead net or opt-ins or dollars gained. You have some sort of metric that you're getting back immediately instead of. You just putting money into a black hole, avoid that. You're not sure how things are going.

[00:12:43] So think about this billboard. You put a billboard, you spend three grand for a month for a billboard to be up in whatever area. I don't know what billboards cost, but I just assume it's about that much. Three grand. You put a billboard up and you just. That that is paying off for you. Now, the smart billboards, they're sending it to a landing page that they can actually track and see how that works.

[00:13:01] That turns a billboard into direct response, but most people don't do that. Direct response marketing is me putting a Facebook ad up and seeing how many people actually clicked through to my website. How many people sign up for my thing or contact me, or download my resource, or how many people book a call with me, a consultation call or discovery call.

[00:13:16] Like these are all things that I can directly measure so that I know at the end of the day, Is the investment that I spent on time or, or money on this advertising that I did. Is this, is this actually worth it to me? Yes or no.

[00:13:29] Chris: [00:13:29] and here's the thing. I think a lot of people hear direct, no response advertising or Google ads or all of this stuff, all this like measurable advertising and immediately they're like, that just sounds fancy.

[00:13:40] It's not fancy. It's super old. There's a really famous book called scientific advertising from 1927 by Claude C Hopkins. And it's this basic idea of like, Hey, what are ways that you can measure your advertising spend? What are ways that you can measure your effectiveness? And one of the things that they would do back in the days, they'd be like, okay, we're going to put an ad in the back of the Sears catalog and we're going to put it in life magazine.

[00:14:07] And what we're going to do is we're going to put a little coupon code. In there. And when you send them, you tear out this little piece of paper from the magazine, put your address on it, and you send it in to get more information about moon boots or, you know, like some crazy 1950s product like kids would want to mail in for more information on.

[00:14:25] And what they would do is they'd run different versions of that ad in different copies of the magazine. So maybe half of the Sears catalogs would have this particular ad in it and the other half would have a different ad in it and they would see. Add sold more for them. And then they would use that information and then go ahead and iterate on the next version of that ad based on what they had learned.

[00:14:45] This is really, really, really old, old tech, but you can do it with new tech. You can do it with Google ads. You can do it with Facebook ads. You can do it on Instagram. It's

[00:14:55] Brian: [00:14:55] easy now than it's ever been. Like back then. It was complicated because you would have to, in order to get an ad out, you would have to.

[00:15:01]Likely hire a copywriter and they would write an ad and put it into a magazine and they try to make it look like it's part of the magazine or part of the newspaper is like an advertorial. And then in there they would have some sort of call to action to either mail in for the thing that you're, that you're doing or call into a specific number.

[00:15:16] And then they would track manually how many calls. Letters, they got in the mail for that one ad and they might test it against another version of that. So again, it was a very manual process. In today's age, you can do all of that by just launching an ad on Facebook and then measuring the results. And the Facebook's a little manager or a dashboard just tells you how many clicks you got, how many people more

[00:15:34] Chris: [00:15:34] specifically launching two ads at the exact same time?

[00:15:38]Let's say two

[00:15:39] Brian: [00:15:39] different things. Yeah. I never do less than three ads at one time. Whenever I'm doing stuff, just to test them direct against each other. And let me tie this back

[00:15:46] Chris: [00:15:46] into branding on the first one, a lot of people think, Hey, I've got it. I've got my business. I'm going to run ads on Facebook or Google or whatever.

[00:15:53] And then the leads are, all the customers are just going to find me and it's gonna be great. And it's gonna be magic. Sometimes that actually does happen that way, but it happens much more often when there's a clear brand message. When you say. Let's say I'm selling film. And I, you know, my website is black and white film.com and I'm like, Hey, the number one resource for vintage film, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

[00:16:17] We only sell black and white to have a website that only sells black and white film is a brand move. So we don't do color. It's not our thing. We don't do digital. It's not a thing. We do film and we only do black and whites. If you run ads, Based on that you have a much more likely. There's a much greater likeliness that you will actually get people to click on it because you're making a statement.

[00:16:42] We are all about this one thing. And if you are too, come on down.

[00:16:46]Brian: [00:16:46] I don't know if I agree with this because now we're getting into the territory of like niching down and being part of a niche

[00:16:51] Chris: [00:16:51] we are, but here's, this is my, this is my experience with running ads. If you do not make a. Proposition and say, I'm awesome at this one thing, it's really hard to get people to engage with those ads.

[00:17:03] What a lot of creators, what we'll do is be like graphic design services. Whether you need a logo or a letterhead or wedding invitations that doesn't work, you can't like write a paragraph of all the things. One size fits all graphic design. Nobody

[00:17:15] Brian: [00:17:15] will click on that ad, but now we're getting kind of down a rabbit hole of what makes a good direct response ad.

[00:17:21] And, and just to quickly clarify kind of what you're it is a good ad has one specific angle, one specific call to action for one specific result or. And so if you are just to go for the photography thing, it could be like every, a free resource you're giving away for people that are interested in black and white photography, and then you're getting an email address and then you're selling them on people.

[00:17:43] So you know that anyone downloaded, this is interested in black and white photography, or it could be. People that are looking for black and white photography film or something. I don't know what it is. I'm just kind of pulling from your example, but th the key takeaway here, that's a little off topic, but still we're talking about is don't try to have multiple things that you're trying to sell or pitch or, or talk about in any direct response ad.

[00:18:02] It should just be one thing, one specific thing. So you said like letterhead or blah or blight, it should just be one specific thing in the ad is, is, yeah.

[00:18:11] Chris: [00:18:11] Yeah. Well, for example and feel free to edit this out. If this is too far down the rabbit hole. If Oatley to bring this back to our previous example, if only we're running ads on Instagram or Facebook, and they were really clear, it's not milk that contains lactose there's, there's a much better chance of people clicking on that rather than them saying, like all different kinds of milk,

[00:18:34]Brian: [00:18:34] milk alternatives, and

[00:18:35] Chris: [00:18:35] real milks than whole milks that doesn't work.

[00:18:38] There's not a brand message there. Can run ads because they're so clear about like hate almond milk, try Oatley. Like there's so many things that you can do by committing to just being clear. And Hey, we're all about this one thing. And what's funny about that is I say that I struggle with it so much. I have so many businesses that are unconnected to each other.

[00:19:00]And I send, even on this podcast, I send a weird, loses the software developers, the mastering engineers, a business coach to business coach and a business coach. That's the main job now, but I'm doing too much stuff and I'm diluting my brand as a result of that. And man, it's challenging, but it's something we should all be wrestling.

[00:19:18]Brian: [00:19:18] Yeah. So that's, that's kind of the second, the second advertising or marketing method is direct response marketing. And this is if you're going to do any sort of marketing and you don't even know about the third thing we're about to talk about now, that would be what I would suggest to just focus on direct response things that you can directly manage or measure the results of so that you can make informed decisions that will ultimately set you off the right direction, because here's, I'll give you an example.

[00:19:41] You you do. And by the way, this doesn't have to be paid ads, by the way, like this can, you could do direct response marketing on your Facebook page, on your Instagram page, on Tik TOK. You can do it on any medium and like any, any medium, like you could post something on Facebook where you're talking through like, Hey, I had this issue and then I did this.

[00:19:58] And by the way, if you're interested in learning more about how I did this click here, that's literally a direct response because people clicking here actually Instagram, you can't Dre click in the, in the post, but I digress. You're asking for them to take a specific action, maybe to DMU, or maybe a poll on an Instagram story.

[00:20:11] All of these things are directly. People are directly responding to something you're bringing up or something you're saying or something you're asking. And so you can do this on any medium, but this is the way you want to do it. Something where you can try something, see the response from people and then make an informed decision of where to go next.

[00:20:26] Do you double down on this? Do you shift to something else? I'll give you an example on eventually, am I going to tell you when or how or whatever the six-figure creative will be on Tik TOK? We have somebody who's helping us get some clips and what we're doing. One of our strategies and things that we're trying on Tik TOK is pulling small clips from our podcast episodes to test on Tik TOK.

[00:20:45] Now, I don't have any grand aspirations about what Tik TOK will do for us, but what I do know is this a great place to test little bite-sized piece of information to see what sort of stuff. With different audiences. So the, we can get feedback and determine what stuff we talk about in the future. So it's more of a feedback and measurement tool and direct response tool than it is a way to grow our brand.

[00:21:05] At least right now, that's just one small exam. Lots of ways this goes, but the key takeaway for direct response marketing is having one clear thing that you're trying to get across to somebody that they directly respond to in some way that informs you of whether or not it's going to work from here on out.

[00:21:21] Do you need to make a decision to go left, go right, or stay on the same path? That's basically direct response marketing. Anything else to add to that before I move on to number three here, Chris? No. Beautiful. So the third and my favorite and the thing that I suggest and the thing that I've built my blast decade of business, off of.

[00:21:36]Is a term we're going to borrow from our previous guest that we just had on episode 1 53, the author of the book, the Go-Giver, and I'm calling this marketing method, the Go-Giver marketing method, there is a recall. This is if you've read the book, you kind of already have a feel for what that is, but this is essentially the content marketing approach, but would you agree or disagree with that Chris percent agree?

[00:21:58] Yeah. So the Go-Giver marketing approach. Essentially you're taking content that you've created. That's helpful for your ideal customer or client, whatever word you like to use there that is helping them reach their ultimate end goal, whatever their ultimate end goal is. And you're helping them all along the way.

[00:22:13] That's, that's how I kind of do things. So for good fortune media, my podcast agency, creating content for business owners. Have their eye on a podcast. They're too busy to do a podcast, but it's helping them inch along the way of ultimately launching a podcast. That's the kind of content I'll create. And oh, by the way, if you need help with your podcast, good fortune media is there to take every single thing off your plate.

[00:22:34] So all you have to do take one questionnaire, one kickoff call. We handle the rest. That's kind of like the path to a sales conversation from there, but all along the way, I'm helping them without asking for anything in return. It's just, if you need help with something, I am there to help. My company is there to help.

[00:22:49]there's other strategies to do with this, like with six-figure creative, this so does a piece of content marketing. This is Go-Giver marketing. We are creating free with our own time. That is helping you with your business, ultimately grow and fulfill your business with no strings attached. We're not selling anything on this episode.

[00:23:04] We're not pitching you really anything on this episode, there might be some advertisements that we put on this episode for some of the things that we are doing, but again, you don't have to ever buy or listen to those. You can skip them, whatever you want. That's Go-Giver marketing. We're just freely giving information that we.

[00:23:16]Learned and done from trial and error and from people, we found the podcast and from friends and our masterminds over the years to help grow our businesses freely to you. that's, Go-Giver marketing in a nutshell, it's, I'm telling you anything I possibly can about a specific thing or something that helps.

[00:23:31] She reached her goals.

[00:23:32]Chris: [00:23:32] And boy, let me tell you what When I first found out about this, it was through a book called trust agents by Josh Brogan, I think is his name never heard of that book? it's older, but the bay, it is sort of a bleeding edge content marketing book. And it basically talked about like, Hey, go help a bunch of people by making content that helps them and building trust with them.

[00:23:56]Do that first and then try to sell it to them.

[00:23:59]Brian: [00:23:59] Let me actually go back on what I said a second ago. Cause this is, this is an important point that it's, this is not just a content marketing approach. Content marketing is a fantastic way to use Go-Giver marketing, but in the reality of the situation, like go give her marketing's more than just content example.

[00:24:14] Like if I'm having lunch with some. that's kind of go give her marketing if I'm helping them with their business. If it's like a student or if it's like somebody in our niche or somebody that just needs help from me, that's gonna give her marketing me, helping someone one-on-one with no strings attached.

[00:24:25] And what's funny is like, someone will, like, I have a lunch link that I send to people. If they want to have lunch with me here in Nashville, hit up my assistant. He'll send you the link if you're here in Nashville. And I always buy the lunch in that situation, and they're there to ask me questions. That's Go-Giver marketing because I know that eventually.

[00:24:40]That will pay off in some way, shape or form. And that's not even why I'm doing it. I just do it because I love helping people. The result of that is it pays off tenfold. You don't know it doesn't pay off 10 fold every single time, but in the grand scheme of life, if you are, if you set your business up to be a Go-Giver, you're giving more than you're taking, you are freely giving with no strings attached.

[00:24:58]It comes it's counterintuitive, but it comes back to you tenfold.

[00:25:01]Chris: [00:25:01] Now I think there's a place where people often go wrong with this. I can imagine that there are people that are listening right now. Man. I am so good to my clients. I give them so much, like I go over the top, I bend over backwards and they just stomp on me and take advantage of me and ask for ridiculous revisions.

[00:25:17]Brian: [00:25:17] Well, there's, there's, there's a fine line between being a Go-Giver and being a pushover. Yeah, there's a big difference. There's a big difference, but a fine line. So let me, let's talk about that for a second. A pushover is the one that they let their clients walk all over them because they have no policies in place in their business.

[00:25:32] They have no boundaries up in place, and they're just bending over backwards to make a client happy. They ask you for something very unreasonable or something that's outside of the bounds of what was in your client agreement. And all of a sudden you're the bad guy because you didn't do it. And now you feel bad about it.

[00:25:47] That's not necessarily the situation go being a Go-Giver. Yeah. being a pushover. So that's an important thing. So if you struggle with being a pushover and they're the kind of person that like does everything that the client has ever asked you to do, that's not what we're saying here. Like that there's needs to be.

[00:25:59] There needs to be boundaries in place, reasonable boundaries that are fully communicated to the client so that when they ask you for something outside of what the client agreement. You can make the decision whether you want to help or not. But when it's, when it goes above and beyond like when it puts you in a bad spot, because you're going out of your way to help this person.

[00:26:14] That's where I, I think it's, I think it's, would you disagree Chris?

[00:26:17] Chris: [00:26:17] no, not necessarily. I think one of the things that you can do that I I'm a I'm a fan of is when somebody asks for something that's above and beyond something that was unforeseen.

[00:26:26] What I like to do. If there's an opportunity to do this, this is like, yeah, no problem. I can do that. I can go above and beyond. We didn't talk about that, but just FYI, like the next time this happens, I would have to charge additional for it, but this, this time, no problem.

[00:26:39] Brian: [00:26:39] Yeah. But here's the thing is you, you make that decision, you get to make that decision when you have policies in place to do this, of what happens.

[00:26:45] And I think the biggest issue that most pushovers have, and maybe this is another episode in and of itself, but most pushovers, they don't have those policies or those boundaries in place in the first place. And so they get the situation where someone asks for something that they feel like is. But isn't really reasonable, but it's your fault because you didn't communicate ahead of time.

[00:27:02] What was reasonable and what wasn't reasonable. So that's really, I think the pickle people put themselves in well, and I think

[00:27:07] Chris: [00:27:07] that we as creatives experience this differently than most other professions do, because when you're doing creative work, there's often this element when you're working with on creative projects with creative clients, often there's an element of.

[00:27:21]Self-actualization or the client is doing something or you're doing something that's part of your legacy. And when there's an issue like that to say no is to say, I don't really, I'm not into your self-actualization or your trying to improve yourself, or you're trying to like leave, leave a legacy and it gets offensive.

[00:27:43] It gets weird. And we're where Brian and I come from the music. When a client asks for something that's outside of the scope of the arrangement and you say, no, you're saying I don't give a crap about your music or you I don't give a crap about your soul because I want to do this extra thing on your project.

[00:27:58] And that gets really problematic to communicate that in language or the client will not get offended. You know, they feel like a lot, a lot of cases in the music industry, they feel like you are. Obligated to just like, Hey, whatever you have to do to get this over the finish line. I don't care if it's 10 times the work you thought it was going to be like we're in this together and we're doing something great together.

[00:28:21]that's not untrue all the time,

[00:28:24] Brian: [00:28:24] Well, cause I want to say this, like, there've been plenty of times in my life as a freelancer that I have been the person that's been walked over and I go out of my way to make them happy, because I know that at the end of the day, that's going to be better for my reputation of my brand.

[00:28:36] Now those situations came up because of exactly what I talked about. I didn't have policies in place, but I just wanna make sure we stay on topic here, like, and just say. Being a go giver is not being a pushover. That's not what we're saying back on topic. Now, Chris, because this is again a kind of a different conversation how much is too much.

[00:28:51] And we can maybe have an episode on that in the future if people want that. But I will say that being a Go-Giver is kind of just, it's not just a marketing method. It is. It's more of a mindset. And I'll give you an example. We have a uh, a barbershop here in Nashville that I used to go to, and the owner is very much the antithesis of what a Go-Giver is.

[00:29:09] He's very, For lack of a better word, sell snippy. Okay. There you go. He's selfish. He's closed off. He's not willing to share information freely. I'll give you example. He, my barber, he's a buzzer. There you go. My barber worked at the shop, but it was not the owner of the

[00:29:23] Chris: [00:29:23] shop. That was quality.

[00:29:26]Brian: [00:29:26] I'm trying to stay focused in the near puns. John. That's the last one you get, man. Okay. I'm gonna, I'm gonna kick you out of this room if you do it again. I'm just

[00:29:34] Chris: [00:29:34] taking these right off the top of my head,

[00:29:37] Brian: [00:29:37] like a barber, but you're bald, so, okay. All right. You have nothing left. Okay. Literally, let's talk about this.

[00:29:43] This guy was the antithesis of a gun. He owns a barber shop. He has three people working for him at this barber shop. One of those is my barber. He would go get training at these fancy facilities and then share none of it with his own employees. Like that's how that's how close off he was. And the keys has been quoted for saying when someone wants to learn something from him, he says, I don't, I'm not in the business of training my competition.

[00:30:05]an anti Go-Giver. That's somebody who is holding it all in grasping on for dear life, the scarcity mindset. And because of this. His business is failing. All his barbers have left him he's got a very bad reputation in town. People don't want to even work with people that are associated with that place.

[00:30:20] So my barber, is launching his own barbershop, much more of a Go-Giver he's willing to share information he's willing to help when people ask for it. He's there for people he's there to train his employees. Like he's very much a Go-Giver and his, because of this.

[00:30:33] I already know his barbershop will be successful. So that's just like a complete outside of our freelance creative world. Actually not completely. Barbers are kind of their own freelancers too, but that's beside the point. That's right. That's what can happen. It's a creative,

[00:30:45]Chris: [00:30:45] Creative, freelance service provider job.

[00:30:47] Yeah.

[00:30:47] Brian: [00:30:47] Kind of is. I'm not really going after them specifically, but Ryan, if you're listening, you could, you could get a lot of this podcast probably, but let's, let's, let's get back on topic here. Being a Go-Giver is a mindset. It is not. A strategy that you employ in order to make more money why Go-Giver marketing is different.

[00:31:02] From direct response, you can do direct response marketing and be a go getter. But you can be also a direct response marketer and be a scarcity mindset, holding it all for yourself. Hoarding information for yourself, not doing things that you should be doing, not doing things you don't necessarily have to do because you're, you're holding it all close to your chest.

[00:31:18] So you don't want to lose anything. And you're that, you're that person that's. That's leaving everyone else from the tab. You can be, you can't, you can be one and not the other, but you can't be a Go-Giver. And be that way as well. So that's, that's the, that's the third and the, the way that I think most people should run their businesses.

[00:31:31] If they want to be a marketer, who's going to. Or not even a marketer. If you want to market your business, your creative services in a way that is an eggy in a way that builds friendships, builds relationships makes you look like somebody who freely gives when everyone else in your, in your arena might be holding and withholding and hoarding.

[00:31:47]It makes people feel better about you. That makes people feel indebted to you because you genuinely helped them in some way, shape or form. You have them through content. You help them through services, through additional things you did for free. helped them through answering questions that they have.

[00:31:58]Where everyone else is just saying to the sideline saying, it's not my problem.

[00:32:02]Chris: [00:32:02] Yeah, man, it's weird. You don't want to work with stingy people. You don't want to go to a restaurant where the soup Nazi, like that's not how you grow a business.

[00:32:11]Brian: [00:32:11] You know? Well, people who are too young to remember, that's a, that's a Seinfeld reference.

[00:32:16] Yeah.

[00:32:16]Chris: [00:32:16] So yeah, in the Seinfeld, there's a Seinfeld episode where there's this guy. And he makes really good soup and it's in New York city and you have to walk in and stay in line and have correct change. And like only say certain things. And if you break any of the rules, no soup for you and he kicks you out of the store.

[00:32:33] Yeah. And the, the hilariousness of this episode is that there's a line out the door all the time. People are obsessed with the soup. And despite the fact that the guy's a jerk, he has this thriving business in New York city. And you can't be a soup Nazi, creative. Woo. That's kind of nice. You can't be a soup Nazi, creative.

[00:32:51] You have to develop relationships and friendships and be kind and be trustworthy. And people like you, there's such a better opportunity for them to tell people about you.

[00:33:02]Brian: [00:33:02] So, and here's, here's kind of one thing as we kinda wrap this up is people who aren't go-givers they look at their competition as something to be crushed, something to be stepped on as you get to your goal.

[00:33:13]And I think that's why so many creators are allergic to marketing is because they think that's what marketing and advertising is. They think it's stepping on others to get them to you. Your goal go givers. Don't have competitors go givers, have collaborators well that they can be friends with and learn from and grow with and, and refer work to when your calendar is full and get work referred to you when their calendar is full and teach us other things, they'll give us a collaborative.

[00:33:36]Go getters, I guess you could say that's what they say in the book. And the Go-Giver go getters are the people who are stepping on others to get to, to try to get ahead. It's kind of that nineties, eighties, and nineties business mentality that they used to have back in the day that just doesn't . Yeah.

[00:33:49] Now that you have the, the, the transparency of the internet and people can freely communicate with each other, how, how stingy or bad people can be. It is a lot harder to be an old school business owner who steps on people to get to where you want these days doesn't mean it doesn't happen. You can always show the exemption exception to the rule, but as a creative, as a freelancer, as somebody who values my relationships in my life, I don't want to be known as a person who stopped, stood on the corpses of others to get to where I wanted to go.

[00:34:14]