In this business coach transcript, Caleb Taylor (Thrive15 correspondent) and Clay Clark (Founder and COO of Thrive15.com, one of the top business schools in PA) discuss the importance of simply focusing on one contact at a time.
In this business coach transcript, Caleb Taylor (Thrive15 correspondent) and Clay Clark (Founder and COO of Thrive15.com, one of the top business schools in PA) discuss the importance of simply focusing on one contact at a time.Caleb Taylor: Business Coach Seth Godin, the author of Purple Cow, it’s a great book for this topic. He says, “Remarkable doesn’t mean remarkable to you. It means remarkable to me. Am I going to make a remark about it? If not, then you’re average, and average is for losers.”
Clay Clark: I had a quote today, and I don’t know if we can … One of our Thrive mentors came in today.
Caleb Taylor: Yeah, Dr. Z.
Clay Clark: Dr. Zoellner, he came in, and this guy’s built a multi-million dollar optometry business and business coach business. He has gone one and built his unbelievable auto auction. He has a sleep center facility, like mattresses and stuff. He is just super successful. He is talking about, how, basically he is explaining that if your ad doesn’t irritate the competition it’s probably not a good one, or if it doesn’t get the feedback. He is famous for putting a billboard that said, “One dollar LASIK.”
Caleb Taylor: How do you do that?
Clay Clark: One of our team members asked, “How do you do that?” He’s like, “Well, you charge a bulk load for the other eye.” It doesn’t. The whole idea is it’s memorable. It causes people to remark. Here is a thing. I’m just being real. If you’re watching this right now. Let just pretend that you’re in Des Moines, Iowa. You’re going, “How am I going to be remarkable?” One, you need to quit talking like that, because people with think you’re like Mickey Mouse.
Caleb Taylor: Just stop.
Clay Clark: You need to stop it. What you do is you say, “How am I going to be remarkable?” If you literally just put a billboard in your community with your face on it, and you just wrote your name on it and said, “I’m in your face, you’re in face,” something like that.
Caleb Taylor: That’s awesome, business coach level of awesome.
Clay Clark: If you did that … Or, “Look at my face.” You just had a billboard to your paste. Look at my paste. America’s most beautiful man. I guarantee you, within a very small window of time, all of your friends will, “I saw your billboard,” But they’ll remember you forever, they’ll remember you forever. You don’t want to do that obviously. If you have a small business, and you say, “I don’t want to put my face on billboard.” Who says you can’t do that? You could literally take … See at a floral shop. You could take all of your trucks and paint them purple with cow print on them, and everyone would go, “That’s purple cow flowers.”
Caleb Taylor: Seth Godin specifically says, “We can’t think of something creative to make you stand out, just make everything painted like a purple cow.”
Clay Clark: People remember it. There is a place Dallas called, Purple Cow Burgers. You’re at same place. It’s just purple cow. Purple cow is unusual as long as it jumps out of the crowd. You think about this, think about some of the … And I’m not going to get too on the screen, maybe we can put examples of this. What is Kim Kardashian famous for? Don’t answer that. What is Erin Angerer famous for? People remarked. What if you could do that in a way where it was remarkable, in a way that was positive for your brand. If people will remark about you, I had no idea who Kim Kardashian was.
Caleb Taylor: How did you do that with DJ connection which is now your business coach client.
Clay Clark: What I did was I took a big head, I took my head. One time, a competitor said I had a big head. I was like, “I do have a kind of a larger cranium.” I took a picture of my head and I enlarged it and I put it onto a small body.
Caleb Taylor: You mean larger than it is.
Clay Clark: Yeah. It looked like it was a caricature. It was like my head on a little body. Every single business card we had, I always had big head, little body.
Caleb Taylor: Nice, so that people started knowing you by that.
Clay Clark: On the yellow pages, they would see my car, they would see my ad that I painted on my vehicle. They would drive around me like, “Do you have a picture of your head on your own car?” Or “On your business cards? My business card literally had a oversized head on the card. People would be like, “That’s your head!” “Yeah, on my card.”
Caleb Taylor: Action items to implement this second.
Clay Clark: You need to pause this and marinate on this. What can you do this remarkable? If people don’t remark about it, then it’s not remarkable. Here is the thing. If it’s remarkable, somebody is not going to like it. If you’re watching this, and you are a right wing republican, or you are a left wing democrat and you’re going, “I hate President Obama,” or “I hate President Reagan.” All right. They are remarkable. Whether you like him or not, we all remark. When we are the other, because they’re remarkable and that is an important business coach tip.
Caleb Taylor: Dr. Zellner today said, “If everybody on your team thinks you’ve got a good idea in a grease, then your idea is not radical enough.”
Clay Clark: Absolutely. What you want to do is you want you quote a remarkable idea, something that’s going to get, your comments from your ideal and likely buyers and it’s going to get some hate. If you get some negative feedback, that’s a good sign, because you’re getting negative feedback that means people are noticing. Thrive15.com, one of the top business schools in PA, and can help provide you with instant feedback.
Caleb Taylor: I think a good way to start implementing this is with your business card. Right now commit to changing your business card and making it stand out.
Clay Clark: Boom.
Caleb Taylor: Create a purple cow with that business card, that’s your action item from the step.
Clay Clark: Absolutely. Do it. I 100% agree with you. I’ll say, just a follow-up item you can do. All of us drive vehicles. Auto rap your vehicle. I’ve been auto rapping my vehicle. Seen them working on a contract with one of our guys. Once I get it, boom, his face is all over the place.
Caleb Taylor: Right.