Bill McGowan | How to Speak, Memorably: The Art of Captivating an Audience | The Speaking Coach of Choice for Rob Lowe, Alex Rodriguez, Fortune 100 CEOs & the Former TV Anchor ABC’s 20/20 & CBS On How to Speak Effectively

Audio Transcription

Transcribed with Cockatoo

(Speaker 8)
One of the problems, and I know I used to have this, is it’s just like, my company does this and this and this and this and aren’t we so cool? And that is akin to telling them nothing.

(Speaker 1)
Well, I laugh at some of these elevator pitches, or I find them amusing, because you’d need a 200-story building, you know, for the ride of the elevator to get all of that out, you know. And this is something I call the pasta sauce principle, where, you know, if you have a pot of sauce on the stove, the idea is if you boil that down and you reduce it, it’s gonna have a lot more flavor. The same is true for speaking.

(Speaker 1)
I think there’s this purge of, I want to get every detail out there. You’d be a lot better off strategically thinking, what are the two things that would really land

(Speaker 5)
with this person and compel them to want to hear more. Some shows don’t need a celebrity narrator to introduce the show. But this show does. In a world filled with endless opportunities, why would two men who have built 13 multi-million dollar businesses altruistically invest five hours per day

(Speaker 5)
to teach you the best practice business systems and moves that you can use. Because they believe in you. And they have a lot of time on their hands. They started from the bottom. Now they’re here. It’s the Thrive Time Show starring the former U.S. Small Business Administration’s Entrepreneur of the Year,

(Speaker 5)
Clay Clark, and the entrepreneur trapped inside an optometrist’s body, Dr. Robert Zunder. Two men, eight kids co-created by two different women, 13 multimillion dollar businesses.

(Speaker 7)
We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, and we’ll show you how to get here. Started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. Who’s the Clyde? Started from the bottom and we’ll show you how to get here Started from the bottom, now we’re here We started from the bottom, now we’re here

(Speaker 3)
We started from the bottom, now we’re at the top Teaching you the systems to get what we got Colton Dixon’s on the hooks, I break down the books The C’s bringing some wisdom and the good looks As the father of five, that’s why I’m alive So if you see my wife and kids, please tell them hi. It’s the CNC up on your radio, and now 3, 2, 1, here we go!

(Speaker 7)
We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, and we’ll show you how to get here. Started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here.

(Speaker 3)
We started from the bottom’s show we’re interviewing a two-time Emmy-winning TV anchor and a celebrity about a topic that he knows about and a topic that we all need to know about. Everybody watching today’s show, including myself, we all need to learn more about the art of captivating an audience. What does that mean?

(Speaker 3)
It means when you are on an airplane and you’re sitting next to the person next to you, are they paying attention? Are you paying attention? Are people paying attention to you? Are you paying attention to people? When you have a product, you’re trying to sell it,

(Speaker 3)
is the consumer listening? When you’re having a staff meeting, is anybody paying attention? If you’re a pastor and you’re teaching to your congregation, is anybody watching? Is anybody paying attention?

(Speaker 3)
Are you actually engaging with your audience at people and I could not be more excited to take notes. And with that being said, ladies and gentlemen, without any further ado, the speaking guru, Bill McGowan, welcome to the Thrive Time Show. How are you, sir?

(Speaker 1)
I’m good, Clay, how are you? I’m glad you’re bringing the energy that we all like to see.

(Speaker 3)
That’s what I do. I only have one gear. Now I gotta if you can, a little bit about your background for those that maybe don’t know your history previous to today’s show.

(Speaker 1)
Sure. My career primarily was as a journalist. And I was a reporter on air or a producer for, I like to say every network but CNN at some point. And when you’re in that kind of job, you are taught how to tell an engaging story

(Speaker 1)
in a minute and a half. And you learn how not to have any excess content, any extraneous material. In fact, when I was producing at 2020 at ABC years ago, the morning after your piece aired, the piece that you produced,

(Speaker 1)
you got called into the executive producer’s office and they had their, what were called the minute by minute ratings. And back in 2000, that was kind of a cool thing. I’m sure the analytics are much more sophisticated now, but they were able to determine

(Speaker 1)
just how many viewers dropped off at every minute of say your 12 minute piece. And so you came under this brutal microscope of them saying, you see when you introduce that character at the three minute mark, you lost people there. And so it was a tremendous training ground as to how to keep people’s attention and how to make them remember the story you’ve told. And years later, I parlayed that into founding my company, Clarity Media Group, where we apply those principles to people doing media interviews.

(Speaker 1)
We apply those principles to people who have to give presentations in their companies, have to speak at conferences. All of these scenarios that you open your mouth to talk is an opportunity to motivate people, persuade them, influence them. And if we’re not doing that, then it’s just wasted breath.

(Speaker 3)
You know, and I’m going to try to wow people for a second here, folks. I’m going to read you a list of some of the people you’ve worked with throughout your career. I’m going to read a list of folks of a few people that Bill has worked with throughout his career. And I don’t want anybody to become a fainting goat and pass out as you hear these names. These are real names that Bill has actually someone says, what?

(Speaker 3)
So I got to ask you, when someone like that reaches out to you, and I know there’s a certain client confidentiality sort of thing, but when a Kim Kardashian or a Rob Lowe or Alex Rodriguez reaches out to you and says, excuse me, my name is Jeff Bezos and I need some help becoming a better communicator to captivate my audience,

(Speaker 3)
how does that kind of coaching work or what kind of work do you do to help these household names reach a bigger audience faster?

(Speaker 1)
The one common denominator all these people have is that they are relentless at self improving. They appreciate the fact that you can always get better things. And they have absolutely no reservations about bringing in coaches and experts to help them improve as a person. And in the case of Kim Kardashian,

(Speaker 1)
she was somebody who acknowledged, yeah, no, I’ve never been coached before. My family’s never been coached before. I think this would be a really valuable thing because we’re just out there so much being interviewed by people.

(Speaker 1)
So you approach those sessions very individually and you really ask them, what is it that I can shore up for you that would make you feel supremely confident and incredibly prepared for any kind of situation? And so I don’t put them through some template program that I would put a mid-level manager at a company through. I try to personalize every single session,

(Speaker 1)
understand what are the needs of this person, and what tools can I give them to be better at communicating.

(Speaker 3)
So let me ask you this here, if you’re sitting down with somebody who’s a business owner of some kind, our audience is largely business owners, could you maybe share a pro tip for what are the most common, terrible, horrible things we should not be doing as business owners? Do you have a pro tip or a common denominator

(Speaker 3)
where you say, stop doing that?

(Speaker 1)
Most people overcomplicate communication and what I like to say overstay their conversational welcome, meaning they are not exercising brevity. And one of the chapters in the book Speak Memorably is about what I call the verbal diet. And on average, we speak something like 16,000 words a day. Now imagine if somebody came along and said, okay, Clay, today you’re confined to 12,000 words.

(Speaker 1)
Imagine how much more selective you’d be about what comes out of your mouth for fear that you will use up your allotment at four o’clock and then you’d have to pantomime what you wanna communicate to people for the rest of the day,

(Speaker 1)
until midnight when your supply replenishes. So brevity is a big part of it, but also there’s this corporate jargon and cliche expressions that everybody leans into that they use because they think it makes them sound smarter. Everybody’s doubling down on this and double clicking on that and everybody’s on a journey

(Speaker 1)
and laser focused on this. It just makes business owners sound like everybody else because everybody’s using these banal, overused, tired expressions. We put our consumer at the heart of everything we do. If I’ve heard that once, I’ve heard it 5 million times. It doesn’t mean that you don’t communicate that thought, but find a different, fresh way of saying it. Don’t repeat what everybody else says.

(Speaker 1)
And that is really the goal of when I coach people. I try to give them a fresh, original way of saying the things that are necessary to say in business.

(Speaker 3)
Now, you at a certain point, you know, as an expert of a given subject, you gather so much information, you teach so much information, you research so much, and at some point, it can fester or bubble into or manifest itself into a book. And you’ve decided to write this book, Speak Memorably, the art of captivating an audience what motivated you to to distill your decades of wisdom into a book form.

(Speaker 1)
Wasted opportunities I see every single day from people who have this opportunity to motivate or inspire people or inform them of something important and they squander that opportunity because they’re speaking in a bland, boring and forgettable way. Getting in front of a room of people is a gift and you have to capitalize on that. Otherwise, what’s the point of talking? And so I see these pitfalls that people fall into all the time. One of them is not enough practicing. One of the dangers of getting incrementally better

(Speaker 1)
at public speaking and communicating is at some point you will say, ah, you know, I got this. I’m good at this. I don’t need to rehearse. The people who you would think

(Speaker 1)
and are regarded as the best at communicating are relentless preparers, are relentless rehearsers. So make sure hubris doesn’t come into the mix here and you don’t think you need to prepare. Also, I think business leaders need to invest in these skills because the acumen they bring to internal communications

(Speaker 1)
is directly tied to the productivity of their people. And there’s some really interesting studies that show that poor communication is the result of just lack of preparation, and it’s directly tied to a decrease in productivity. In fact, effective communications

(Speaker 1)
increase team productivity by 25%. And we all know every company wants to be more productive. They wanna be more efficient. Conversely, poor communications has been cited in business journals as being the reason for $1.2 trillion of loss in the business world.

(Speaker 1)
So this is incredibly important and it comes at a time where there’s so much noise out there, so much distraction and we need to have language and ways of communicating thoughts that are fresh and original and sticky in order to cut through that noise.

(Speaker 3)
I don’t know if people know this, because I probably haven’t mentioned it yet, but you have worked with Fortune 100 CEOs. You’ve worked with White House Chief of Staffs. I mean, you’ve really worked with the who’s who. And I just, I think that if we’re not careful,

(Speaker 3)
some people watching our show have different political worldviews. You might toss out some of the names that we mentioned because, you know, they’re a Democrat, they’re a Republican, they’re a Libertarian, whatever. But let’s toss all that out for a second. There are some universal super moves that everybody can use that are in your book. And so I want to focus on it for the guy watching today’s show. If he’s leading a staff meeting today And he wants to become a more effective leader when it comes to leading a staff meeting not a not a thousand person audience

(Speaker 3)
But a staff meeting with 50 people. What does your book? Tell the average listener out there about how to lead a staff meeting more effectively

(Speaker 1)
You want to make sure Everybody in that room leaves with something memorable, with something sticky that they’re going to act on. And there’s a chapter in the book called the Magnificent Seven. And that chapter refers to seven techniques that you can use to create memorable comments, memorable remarks.

(Speaker 1)
It’s everything from using analogy and metaphor to wordplay to making sure that when you cite data or cite metrics that there’s context behind that. There are all these different devices that people can use to not sound run of the mill and storytelling is another one. I think most people start meetings or start keynotes with the most dreaded thing on the planet.

(Speaker 1)
And that is the agenda slide. I don’t know anybody who’s ever gone to a bookstore and bought a book and said, wow, I can’t wait to go home and rip open that table of contents. In the history of reading, nobody has ever said that. And so starting out with an agenda slide

(Speaker 1)
is an immediate snoozer. And I really ask people to craft the beginning of what they have to say, because there’s a theory we talk about in the book called the primacy recency effect, which statistically and scientifically has been proven that what you say in the first minute and what you say in the final minute

(Speaker 1)
is disproportionately more important than what you say in the middle. That people are more engaged and have greater retention around those things. And sometimes, or most times, I ask clients, is there a metaphorically connected story we can tell here that engages people’s attention right from the get-go, and then you can segue into the point

(Speaker 1)
of why I’m talking to you today? And I often get this reaction from the people I train, when they say, yeah, but like, isn’t my audience just going to kind of be bewildered if I just start going off on this random story that sounds completely disconnected? It’s like, yeah, that’s engagement. You’ve got their attention. Now you’ve got the mentally chewing on something. They’re going to sit

(Speaker 1)
there thinking, wow, how is Bill going to get from point A to point F? I have no idea. But like, let me stay tuned, find out. And so when we do one on one coaching with people, we find stories that work for them, that will feel very natural for them to tell.

(Speaker 3)
Now, I’m going to tee up this question here and I’m almost afraid to even tee it up, but I’m going for it. To be fair, if you look at Howard Stern, shock jock on the left, you look at Rush Limbaugh, may he rest in peace, let’s say talk radio guy on the right, you look at John F. Kennedy, may he rest in peace, President Kennedy there. You look at him and he’s on the left and you look at Donald Trump on the right. These four people, you think about

(Speaker 3)
Donald Trump, you think about JFK, you think about Rush Limbaugh, you think about Howard Stern, they can captivate an audience and there are principles that can be applied to regardless of the political spectrum. These people know how to interest an audience. And I just feel like there’s somebody out there that’s going, tell me what I need to know to communicate like my favorite political leader.

(Speaker 3)
What is it about these people that makes them resonate with an audience? Again, I mentioned some of these people because Rush Limbaugh connected with so many people. JFK, so many people, Howard Stern, some people don’t like these references. I’m just, but they resonate

(Speaker 1)
with so many people. What is it that makes their messages so sticky? For somebody like Kennedy, it’s eloquence. He didn’t sound like your typical politician. He brought a literary flair to what he was saying. For people like Howard Stern and Limbaugh, it’s being provocative. It’s daring to say things that aren’t run of the mill, that are different from what other people on the radio are saying. And so I think that you have to lean in one or other

(Speaker 1)
of the directions. And I think today what’s obviously more in vogue is to be provocative, to make declarative statements that you have a great degree of certainty around. I would say, if you want to position yourself as a visionary business leader,

(Speaker 1)
you have to have conviction. Conviction is one of the most important traits that should be detectable in your voice. And if you equivocate on ideas or you try to play both sides of it, it doesn’t really work. You have to show the audience, I strongly know that this is the direction we should go in. In fact, I’m gonna give you a peek to the other side of the mountain

(Speaker 1)
and tell you how good it is over there. If we follow my course of action, my recommended strategy. Conviction is probably the common denominator that runs through all of them.

(Speaker 3)
When I look at your book cover, I’m going to pull up your book here on the screen so people can see what I’m talking about, this book here. Okay, here’s the book here, coming out here, folks, is Speak Memorably, the Art of Captivating an Audience. I just think of so many people today that hide behind PowerPoints, they hide behind gadgets and technology, and they do it in a way where you almost go, hey Matt, put the technology down, just let me hear from you, Matt. And I love this book because this book is a return to the art of speaking, to this, the art

(Speaker 3)
of speaking. I mean, and again, there’s so much technology and I’m not hating on technology, We’re using technology now, but help us, help the listeners out there that have been hiding behind technology because it’s the way they were taught or it’s the pattern they were shown. How can somebody stop hiding behind technology

(Speaker 3)
and put themselves out there front and center using your systems?

(Speaker 1)
Lead with the story you want to tell. Too many people get up to make a presentation at work, and they see their presentation as just a series of slides that potentially are independent and thematically disconnected. And I try to get people to change their mindset. I try to get them to examine, what is the overarching story

(Speaker 1)
you’re telling me here. You’re telling a story. You’re not just presenting slides. And in fact, I forbid my clients to use the words bullet, slide, deck, presentation. Those are all off limits. And too many people relinquish dominance in their presentation to the deck. In fact, I’m sure we’ve all seen those slides that come up that are like an eye chart. If your font is less than eight, you’re in big trouble.

(Speaker 1)
It means there’s just way too much information and text on that slide. And the realities of human beings is we do not read and listen at the same time. So the more you give them to read on the slide, the less they’re listening to you, and you are not now the star of the show. So that is a big part of making sure that you are driving it, not the technology. Understand what’s my story I want to tell here, and then build your deck to just visually complement that. The other thing I ask people to do is imagine that you and your presentation are a sports broadcast team.

(Speaker 1)
The deck is the play that’s just happened. Well, imagine what would happen if in football or baseball or whatever it is, the color commentator came on after the play-by-play guy called the play and said the exact same thing. That’s what reading your slides is the equivalent of. And it’s impossible to stay engaged with that. You know, make sure that the information on your slide is not confused for your presenters

(Speaker 9)
notes.

(Speaker 1)
I’ve seen way too many people just read what I call slide karaoke

(Speaker 13)
Just reading each bullet one after the other and your audience is thinking only one thought at that moment is wow

(Speaker 9)
You could have sent me this deck ahead of time. Why did I have to?

(Speaker 12)
Take time sitting here. Yeah. Yeah, I

(Speaker 3)
watched a Household name will be very vague deliver a talk here recently where they were Surgically attached to this iPad and they carried around the stage. They had like a something where they wore it like a power glove, like it was a glove and they were running around looking at it and they never made eye contact. It was just a weird energy.

(Speaker 3)
But I want to go back. I kind of want to end this interview by going back to the beginning of your career because your success is truly epic. And I think a lot of people might be intimidated by that. We might say, I mean, just researching you. And I’m going, man, this guy’s worked with Alex Rodriguez and Jeff Bezos and the White House. And I better not screw this up.

(Speaker 3)
So when we start to look at that, we might go, I don’t even know if this guy’s human. I mean, maybe I’m interviewing like a an alien robot of awesome. So can you walk us through, how did you get started? Like, how did you even get into this world where you are now considered to be one of America’s top speaking experts?

(Speaker 1)
Well, I appreciate all those compliments. They’re a little hyperbolic because, you know, like everybody who tries to achieve a certain status and level of expertise, you have to commit to, nobody’s gonna outwork me. That is, I wasn’t born with some great orator gene.

(Speaker 1)
That’s not how life works. You just have to roll up your sleeves and work at it really hard. But I found in my career, in addition to just knowing how to tell a story in a very brief amount of time, I also found that when I had this office at CBS, when I was a producer, there was a couch in the office. And my colleagues would just come in, plop down on the couch, and tell me their problem. And usually their problem revolved around

(Speaker 1)
some kind of communication they needed to have with a boss or a colleague. And ultimately, they’d say, tell me what I should say here. Tell me how I should communicate this. And I was just doing it as a friend and as a favor. But after a while, I kind of realized after they bounced off the couch feeling really confident and now ready to tackle this thing, I realized, wow, this is something I’m actually decent at. I’m pretty good at figuring out how to tell people what to say that gets them the results they want.

(Speaker 1)
And that was really the genesis of that. And I started this business by accident where I was really producing a video for this woman and I had to interview her for the video. And after it was over, she said, hey, do you mind if I see how I did? And I was

(Speaker 1)
thinking, that’s kind of a weird request. But sure, let’s set up a monitor. And let’s play it back. And just instinctively, I started saying to her, you know, I don’t want to begin an answer like that, because that can lead you down this road. What would

(Speaker 3)
you think of saying this? And she turned to me and said, this is what you should be doing. Like, yeah, the production is great, and I love it and everything. But this has real value. I have to be told about this. I have just this, I could go interview for hours and hours. I know eventually you would have to leave and you because you have standards. But I have just I am absolutely excited about this topic and the subject matter. And I encourage everybody to check out your new book. I am going to put a link in the show notes so people can go find it. Again, speak memorably the art of captivating an audience. Speak memorably the art of captivating an audience. I will put a link in the description. I’ll give you the final 60 seconds, sir. You’ve certainly earned it. Final 60 seconds on the clock. What say you?

(Speaker 1)
I really want people to experience that rush when they get up to talk. I often say there are three stages of public speaking. There’s dread, there’s tolerance, and there’s enjoyment. And the majority of people I work with are either in the dread or the tolerance end of the spectrum. And there is no rush that quite matches being in front of people and feeling like you have their total engagement and that what you’re saying is going to resonate and stick with people. There’s no greater compliment than somebody coming up to you years after you perhaps talked to them and said, hey, you know, I’ll never forget what you said to us that day. There’s there’s no better compliment.

(Speaker 1)
You could be paid than that to have your ideas and what you say stick with people.

(Speaker 3)
Bill the thrill. Thank you so much for carving out time for me today. I really do appreciate you. I encourage everyone to check out your book. Hope you have a great rest of your day, Sir. Clay was really fun talking to you. Thank you. Take care, brother.

(Speaker 3)
All right, Thrive Nation, you know, we have the honor of working with 160 clients and I can tell you this, today’s guests are probably in that top 10% of clients I’ve ever had. These are people that are super diligent, they’re hardworking, they’re growing a family, they’re growing a business, they’re putting in the work and again, it’s not about what you learn, it’s about what you do. Again, success isn’t about just learning ideas, it’s about implementing those ideas. Because we all get great ideas from books

(Speaker 3)
and talk show hosts and self-help books and seminars, but it’s about implementing those ideas. And that’s what our business coaching program is all about. And we’re honored to serve these two guests. They’re having a lot of success. They run a company right here in Oklahoma, and it’s called Highwayman Signs.

(Speaker 3)
Kenny, welcome on to the Thrive Time Show.

(Speaker 1)
How are you, sir?

(Speaker 2)
Hey, doing great, Clay.

(Speaker 11)
Thanks for having us.

(Speaker 1)
And Danielle, how are you doing?

(Speaker 4)
I’m doing great.

(Speaker 3)
Now, Danielle, in the line of work that I do, I’ve been coaching clients since 2005. And just like you guys, when you install a sign, you define success by is the customer happy with the sign. With what I do, I define success as is the customer growing. Since we’ve worked with you, do you know, have you guys doubled the size of the company?

(Speaker 3)
Have you grown by 25%? Or how much have you grown total from the time we first met until now?

(Speaker 1)
Do you know as far as a rough percentage?

(Speaker 4)
I would say about 50%.

(Speaker 10)
Yeah, probably easily.

(Speaker 4)
Easily, 50%. Of course, each week it fluctuates a little bit, but I would say it’s a pretty steady 50% since we’ve started working with you. I know our staff has doubled.

(Speaker 2)
Yeah, we’ve doubled our staff. Our profits just for this year alone are up over 100%. So it’s been very fruitful.

(Speaker 3)
Now, Kenny, I, every month, I pay an accountant and I pay an attorney. And I’ve had all the same people for over a decade. And it really helps me knowing I’m paying a flat fee of, let’s say, $3,000 a month to an attorney, or $4,000 a month to an accountant, or $4,000 a month to an accountant.

(Speaker 3)
And I have kind of a set flat fee. And that really helps me, A, having people on my team for over 10 years. But also, it helps me on the budget perspective. Final question I have for you, Kenny, is for people out there that are thinking about spending $1,700 a month for a coach or paying $250 to get a ticket to a workshop, how would you describe the value that someone would receive

(Speaker 1)
or what would be your thoughts on that monthly cost?

(Speaker 2)
Well, it’s been a huge value. I’ll be honest with you. And if you break it down, I look at everything like that, that’s a monthly fee and the services that you provide and I break it down to an hourly rate, right?

(Speaker 2)
I’m a business owner. I’m thinking, okay, I’m thinking, okay, I’m hiring a company, but it’s just like hiring an employee, right? And so I break it down by an hourly rate and it’s less, I mean, it’s like minimum wage is what you’re charging

(Speaker 2)
and you’re offering so much. I’ve paid thousands of dollars to have websites built that aren’t even a fraction of what we have now. And it didn’t come with the coaching that you provide and just the advice that you give us. And not only that, you’re pushing us every week

(Speaker 2)
to make sure that we’re hitting our goals and that we’re constantly driving things forward. And that’s what we need. It’s like, you’re like a personal trainer. If you go to the gym, sure, you can pick up some weights here and you can jump on this machine and you can

(Speaker 2)
run on the treadmill for a little bit. But having somebody there giving you advice saying, Hey, you know, where do you want to go? And you know, who you know, who do you who you want to be in six months, a year, 10 years, and, and actually kind of building that personal track for us so we can hit those goals. And it’s been very, very, very helpful. And it’s a huge, it’s a huge value, I’ll be

(Speaker 10)
honest with you.

(Speaker 1)
As far as the hiring process, so many people say it’s impossible to find good people. And we’ve taught you the hiring process. And you guys are implementing the group interview, and you’re continuing to bring on better and better talent. For anybody out there that doesn’t know about the group interview or maybe how that’s helped your company, tell everybody about the hiring process there, Danielle.

(Speaker 4)
Yeah, I actually I love it. At first, I felt really abrasive towards it just because it was something new and different. And I definitely put you on the spot as a business owner and somebody who is looking for a good candidate. But at the same time, you’re really, you’re saving yourself so much time.

(Speaker 4)
If there’s anything that I can speak to as far as hiring new people and being a business owner, it’s that you can’t get your time back. So it’s very important to us to continue to do these group interviews. So I set up weekly group interviews. I invite anybody and everybody who applies. The last thing that I want to do is not encourage somebody to come for whatever reason. I give everybody an opportunity.

(Speaker 4)
And then during that group interview, I kind of just really get to know each person that’s there, both professionally and then personally, to make sure that they’re a good fit for the company. And then even further, to really make sure that they’re a good fit for the company, we then shadow. So we invite people to come back for about an hour or two and shadow with us. And if they are a good candidate, and they like the position as well, then we bring them on board. Now, Kenny, people ask me all the time

(Speaker 3)
as a business consultant, they say, what’s the most important part of growing my company? I say, well, it’s hiring, it’s marketing, it’s sales, it’s accounting, it’s legal, it’s management, it’s online ads, online reputation. I mean, it’s all of that.

(Speaker 3)
It’s not just one thing. Marketing, let’s talk about marketing for a second. When your website there is really looking sharp, and it’s never done. I mean, we’re always updating it, you guys are always supplying new before and after photos of projects, new customer testimonials. Can you talk about the process of working with you guys over the last couple years on developing

(Speaker 3)
the website?

(Speaker 2)
Yeah, absolutely. Your team’s been instrumental in that, you know, we’ve had, for years, I tried to get just third party people to build us a website, and you get a landing page or something like that, that kind of looked like what you wanted. But your team has always been above and beyond and have always gone, taken my idea and made it better. And so obviously, we have a gallery now that we have hundreds of photos on that customers can go look at and actually see.

(Speaker 2)
That’s given them ideas as well because sometimes with our line of business being signs, it’s cast such a wide net that people sometimes don’t know what we offer. It’s been great to say, hey, go to our website and check out our gallery, check out our services and see if there’s anything there that catches your eye. And so like channel lettering or vehicle wraps or anything,

(Speaker 2)
and people have looked on there and be, oh my goodness, I love this sign. Can you make something like that for us? And that’s been huge. Just having that page and having such a professional job that people go on there and they’re like, wow, this place is the real deal.

(Speaker 3)
Now, I have a, this is not a backhanded compliment, but I’m going to go to Kenny on this one here. You know, you have people I find in business that have a really awesome website, great print pieces, but their service is terrible. The product is terrible.

(Speaker 3)
Or I find people that have great products and great service, but their online reputation doesn’t communicate the level of quality that they provide. I think you guys were guilty of the latter, where you guys had great products, great service, but we just didn’t have a whole lot of testimonials,

(Speaker 3)
didn’t have a whole lot of reviews. How has the online reputation management impacted your sales kenny?

(Speaker 2)
Well, it’s huge. You know, we’re getting a lot more out of town interest. Now, we’re getting a lot of national sign companies that are looking for local installers. And the first thing that they do is they’re going to Google. They’re checking out who’s the best around, who’s the best in

(Speaker 2)
this area. And so the reviews and getting our Google reviews and our video testimonials out there for other people to see has been like, okay, I can trust this company because I’ve seen their products, they look great,

(Speaker 2)
their website looks great. Now I’ve looked on there, their customers are saying great things about them. And so that encourages people to call, make a phone call or send an email and reach out to us. And then our staff gets, you know, gets right on board where

(Speaker 2)
we answer every phone call every email, and try to take care of, you know, every person we can. Now, again, I think I got that right. But I think you guys have

(Speaker 3)
said you’ve doubled the profits. Is that is an accurate? Yes, this this year is double the profit. And then to that. Yeah. You guys are a couple. And working together, I’d say maybe 10% of our clients, maybe 15 or 16 of our clients, are a husband and wife team. And probably the other clients, 90% of our clients, it’s where the woman owns her own business,

(Speaker 3)
or the guy owns his own business. And you two work together. And one of the things you have to do is you get more sales is you have to manage people. I’d like to get your thoughts, Kenny, on just the management processes, because I really do believe this is the most challenging aspect of growing a business is managing people on the planet because you have some great people, but we all know this. There are certain people

(Speaker 3)
on the planet that will not do what they’re told to do. They just won’t. And so we’ve worked with you guys to implement merit-based pay. And I could be wrong, but I believe now the merit-based pay is turning out to be very effective, and it’s kind of changing the culture to being very productive. I’d love to get your thoughts on implementing merit-based pay

(Speaker 3)
and some of the management training that you guys have been receiving.

(Speaker 2)
Absolutely. Well, managing people is a lot like parenting. I mean, they’re like children and we’re kind of the parents. But what we’ve implemented in just the last few weeks and months that we’ve worked on this is what we’ve done is we’ve actually broke down pretty much all of the tasks to basically like a dollar per hour. And so what we’ve seen, we have a base pay that’s that’s fairly modest to get people on board. But just with the way the landscape has changed over the last few years, you know, you can get paid 16 $17 an hour for flipping

(Speaker 2)
burgers, right? And so we’re like, okay, well, I can’t prove that they’re worth that when they come and we hire somebody right off the bat because we’re dealing with a lot of people’s business and their livelihood. And so we need to make sure that we get their products right so that their business can succeed. And so what we’ve done is we’ve like said, we’ve broken down some of the tasks by a dollar per hour. So even though they have a base pay of say $12 an hour, we give them a chance to make upwards of even $20 an hour

(Speaker 2)
if they’ll just do the things right and make sure that they’re correct. They’re getting their Google reviews. They’re also making sure the customer’s product is entered in correctly and all of their notes and making sure they don’t miss anything with the customer.

(Speaker 2)
And all of these things are broken down. And I’m like, every week I’m telling my employees that you’re showing me what you’re worth by doing this. You know, this week, it’s like, you didn’t do any of these items on your merit list. And so you’re only worth $12 an hour this week.

(Speaker 2)
Even though I know last week you were doing $20 an hour, you know, worth of work. And so it’s like, show me what you’re worth every week. And I’m not having to yell at them. I’m not having to berate them every week. Like, hey, I need you to come in and do your job, even though that’s what you’re paid to

(Speaker 9)
do.

(Speaker 2)
It’s it’s the, you know, our chart is basically making that our standard is making that pay available to them. And all they

(Speaker 1)
have to do is hit the standard. So now, Danielle, one of the things we try to do for all of our clients is provide, you know, the weekly coaching, but then we also behind the scenes do the photography and the video and the web and all that. And we have that weekly meeting to really prevent drifting. So if you could go back and say, okay, for anybody out there that’s that’s maybe thinking about becoming a client or coming to one of our workshops, how would you describe how having a one on one business coaching relationship

(Speaker 3)
with our team has has changed your business?

(Speaker 4)
Oh, it has changed it drastically. I mean, when it comes down to it, you think that you know exactly the way that your business should be operating, right? But in fact, you only have your own perspective. Even if you are husband and wife working together, you still only have your own perspective. So having somebody that you can bounce ideas off of and really start to implement new tasks, new projects, new things that we’re trying to do

(Speaker 4)
to help our business grow and our people grow. Having that extra person to help you with that has been immeasurable completely. There’s so many things that I have learned throughout the last couple of years here that I would never have had the time

(Speaker 4)
or the energy to seek it out, to try and find these things. I feel like I probably would have had the time or the energy to seek it out to try and find these things. I feel like I probably would have been butting my head against a wall constantly.

(Speaker 3)
Well, you guys have been awesome to work with. And I could have referred you now to quite a few people because people have asked me, they say, where’d you get that blockbuster sign, man? That’s an awesome blockbuster sign. And people come to our workshops.

(Speaker 3)
We include the workshops with our business coaching. So people come to the workshop and they go, where did you get that massive blockbuster sign? And I tell them about you guys or people ask me, Clay, who’s the sign company that you would recommend? And without reservation, I tell them Highwayman Signs.

(Speaker 3)
Kenny, tell us for the listeners out there, most of our listeners are all over the country,

(Speaker 1)
what markets can you service and what markets can you not service at this point at highwaymansigns.com, sir?

(Speaker 2)
So we are servicing all of Oklahoma. Obviously, we’ve done we’ve done jobs up as far north as Topeka, Kansas, Joplin, Missouri, as far south as Dallas and Arlington, Texas. So we do about a six, five to six hour circle around Tulsa. But if there’s something that you’re needing done, if you’ve got a branch that’s out of state, we can make all of your signage here in town

(Speaker 2)
and get that shipped up to you. And we will find a local installer. We’ll work with the local government office as well to make sure your permitting and everything is legal, all your electrical permits or whatever it needs to make sure that it’s safe and legal to go up.

(Speaker 2)
And we’ll do all that for you. You don’t have to worry about any of that stuff. So we do it everywhere in the country.

(Speaker 1)
Well, guys, it’s been a blessing working with both of you guys. And again, folks, we try to only work with diligent doers, people that are willing to put in the work and you guys put in the work every week, you’re growing a business and growing a family. I know it’s tough to do. And it’s an honor to serve you guys. We consider

(Speaker 1)
you to be friends again, folks, it’s highwayman signs.com. If you’re listening right now, and you’re in the Dallas area, the radius of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Check out highwaymansigns.com. I highly recommend their service. Guys, thank you so much, and we’ll talk to you next week.

(Speaker 2)
Awesome, thank you.

(Speaker 1)
Take care, guys.

(Speaker 6)
This is Brent Sturts with United Slending from Stewart, Florida. To give a shout out to Thrive Time Show and Clay Clark. We’ve been with them for, what, three years now. We’ve been working with them to help us with our systems, get our arms around our numbers, get some great systems in place as far as marketing, working with our Dream 100, holding us accountable, and so actually hooking us up with a lot of fine vendors

(Speaker 6)
as well that save us a lot of time, and those referrals really helped us out as well. But we’ve seen tremendous success putting those in place, getting our Google reviews, our video testimonials, all of those things coming together as a full marketing plan has really helped us out. So we can’t say thank you enough for Clay Clark, Thrivetime, and Andrew Bloomer, who’s worked with us for three years now.

(Speaker 6)
So wonderful job, guys. So wonderful job, guys.

(Speaker 9)
Thank you for all you do.

Transcribed with Cockatoo