Can’t Stop Won’t Stop | The Hard Truth About Advertising – A Knowledge Bomb

Audio Transcription

Two men, 13 multimillion dollar businesses, eight kids, one business coach radio show. It’s the thrive time business coach radio show. Get ready to enter the thrive time show. All right,

thrive nation. Welcome to another knowledge bomb edition of the thrive time show on your radio and podcast download. On today’s show, I’m bringing in a one of the regions top CPA’s. That’s the top certified public accountant in the region, a man by the name of Paul Hood to join our incredible cast of character. My name is Clay Clark. I’m the former United States Small Business Administration entrepreneur of the year for the great state of Oklahoma. I’m joined here today with the renowned business coach. Mr Eric Chop Mr Steve Currington the bowling ball of mortgages. Yeah. Alright, so guys, what I want to talk about today is advertising, investing in advertising. Now this show, sometimes when when we record the show sounds, we record a show in advance. Sometimes we have to record a show up later. We have to do to all different times because of our schedule, our busy schedules. And the reason why we have to do that is because each and every week, regardless of everyone’s travel schedule, this show’s going to run.

Got To. And why is this show going to run? What? Why would Paul Hood invest the time and the money needed to make this show possible? Why? Why would Mr. Listener, why would he do it? Because he wants to help America. That’s probably true. No, it’s because of the three piece. Okay? And I want to make sure we put this on the show notes. He wants to get his product or service in front of you. One, he wants to promote his product or service. Okay? That’s p number one. Number two, he wants to help good people. He was to help good people. Three, he wants to make a profit. Let’s repeat what one. He wants to get his product or service in front of you because he knows it can solve a problem too. He wants to get in front of good people. Three, he wants to make a profit. But what happens is a lot of people don’t grasp that idea. And regardless of your political opinions, one thing that has been stuck in my head for the last three weeks, and I hate that it is, but is it stuck in my head, is the phrase bull stitt.

Have you heard about the volstead eds? I am. Okay. So Kevin said is a guy that I would consider to be a friend or a guy who’s a strong acquaintance. I would say he’s a guy that I’ve, I, multiple people that I admire and like and think highly of, have said great things about him. I also, you know, also he started a mortgage company with a thousand dollars and is now built it into a company. Gatewayed has 1200 employees. That being said, he decided to run for governor and the other guy decided to run ads that promote, uh, that, uh, basically promote things that they don’t think are favorable about. Mr. Kevin said. And that’s so, that’s what politics are. Politics are all about both parties, both candidates slinging mud, getting deeper and deeper into the muck. And then eventually people vote. But the phrase bull Stitt is pretty incredible because chuck, do you know the the root word when you say, when you say business school without the Bs, you know what the BS stands for? No Bachelors of Science, right? Yeah. Yeah. That’s why. That’s why bolts didn’t make so much sense. But the thing is it’s like it is top of mind. And so we had him on the show and there are multiple people at the conference that came up to me and they said, dude, are you friends with pulsed it? I’m not kidding. Not Get too. People say that to me. And I said, yeah, he’s a great guy. And they go, dude, dude, those ads are like horrible but awesome.

Is he owning it? He should just own it. I am.

I’m just saying to, you know, when you’re talking about top of mind and in today’s society, people don’t take the time to educate themselves politically and they go in that voters booth. I’m not so sure that’s not a positive for him. It’s name recognition. I don’t. What do you think? I just feel like that, um, it is, it is going to be a tough road for indie candidate. And um, I honestly, I don’t have enough data. I just would say that I feel bad for that because if you’re now the kid of Kevin’s did or the family that just for this, it doesn’t stop. And I did get involved in politics for just a little bit there. I’m on a local level, but I’ll just say there’s a lot of candidates that focus on ideas and not on advertising the ideas. So on today’s show where I want what I want to share with you, the listener, I want to share with you five mega points that I want everybody to get. And if we all get these five mega points, I think we win here tonight. One is you need to set aside five percent of your gross revenue for advertising and you can never stop advertising. A concept number two, Henry Ford’s has stopping advertising to save money is like stopping your watch to save time. So I want to get your take on this. Why can people never, ever,

ever, ever, ever, never, ever stopped advertising if they want to grow a successful company? Well, we hear Dr Zellner say this all the time on the thrive time show and running a business, growing a business is like driving a vehicle up a hill and advertising is your gas pedal and if you’re driving up a hill and you let off the gas pedal, Steve Currington, what happens to your car? Um, I think it slows down. It begins to slow down. Maybe it’ll start rolling backwards. Exactly. So you have to keep that gas pedal down to keep that business going in the right direction. A Lamborghini, and then it kind of holds a

whole, whole, whole. I did a test on this unintentionally.

So I have a harley it of course. It’s Osu it all up. It’s hard. Yeah, it’s awesome. It’s put on a ride it much and I got to keep the battery charged up and I got one. But. So I got home last night and I said, I haven’t written my Harley this week. So I start the Harley and let it run a. Then I go in the house, I’m two hours later, I realized my grandpa was still running, but you know what happened? It ran out of gas. Oh, guess what? It wasn’t running anymore. Right? So, you know, I see advertising to clay, if you think about it this way is it’s the seed. You know, if you’re a farmer, we got a lot of. We do a lot of farm and ranch clients and if you’re a farmer, I don’t care how much land you have, if you don’t have seed to plant the crop that’s going to come up next year, the land is worthless. So if you have a business, advertising is a seed. You gotta keep planting seed.

Let me share this with listeners. Um, we talked about the car analogy going up the hill. I want to make sure we get this idea. If you have a car, view your business as a car, okay? View your business as a vehicle. That car has gas and that gas is called advertising, right? And you’re getting that car going up that hill and it is hard to get up that hill. Okay? Because you’re starting from a complete stop and you got to hit the accelerator and the big old trailer behind you, you’ve got to move into just moving up the hill. You’re moving that truck up the hill. Now if you stop advertising and you start the negative momentum and you’re going backwards where you don’t have leads coming in, try to hop in a moving truck, going backwards, being pulled by a massive trailer behind it and see how well you can stop it.

And that’s what happens to the negative. Momentum is powerful. So again, principle number two of why you can ever stop advertising. It’s advertising gives you leverage and choices. We have a great member of our team, Matt and Matt came to us via advertising. We weren’t advertising for that job. We, by the way, we never stopped advertising for jobs either at the thrive time show where the clay Clark and Dr Lindor businesses, but he heard an advertisement for, I believe it was one of our workshops and then he decided that he wanted to work with us on the team. Right? And so advertising gives you options. It gives you a better employee, candidates, it gives you, um, if you don’t like a particular client, um, Steve, you’ve seen that a lot where there’s somebody who’s not going to be a great fit for our business coach program. Right. I’m Paul, I’m sure you’ve seen that with accounting where you have a, if you have a lot of options, chip, you can choose who you want to take on as a client or not

that, uh, if, if you’re running a business out there and you’re not able to choose who you’re working with, that is one of the worst situations to in because then you get stuck working for these people that don’t care, you know, it’s not a win win in their mind. And so I experienced that run in the concrete companies, my parents and we didn’t know a lot of these systems and so we had to take every job we are. We felt like we had to take every single job. And when I started working with you, Dr z dot clay the first time that happened, like, that’s not a good fit. Let’s punt. I was like, yeah,

you could do this. Was

that the one where I told the guy don’t like him?

Maybe. So yeah, that was probably the store with a list that was rather. Yeah, the, the, the quick version is that we had a guy that kind of meeting scheduled through another acquaintance and he showed up late, but he was very upset, very upset with everybody that he talked to you about how it was our fault. He couldn’t find a place. At first it was Robert, Robert and then me. And so by the time it got through, both of us and I came up, I think in warranty. I said, hey, I don’t know if this guy’s problem is, but he’s coming in. Hi, watched. I watched him. I watched him talk to you guys. That one. Yeah. And he was just very rude, very disgruntled. And so clay, uh, walks up and says, hey, here’s this, this and gives them with this first piece of advice, he’s there to talk about coaching. And the guy argues with him and clay says, okay, resets offers it one more time. He argues with him and he simply said, I’m not, I don’t like you and you’re not going to like me, so we’re not meeting today, have a good one, and turned around and walked out and the guy was like, you could tell he’s probably the high roller. He’s not used to people to do and he was just like,

ugh.

I mean I do. The fact that they even flew a guy in from China, I think to me, but yeah, he deserved it. He deserved. It was super rude. He was uncoachable. It was like, why are you in here?

He yelled it to members to members of our staff and then this is what he says. He says, I want to make my this particular business. I want to make it the online category leader or something. And I said, well, to do that, you know you’re going to do. Are you familiar with how Google works? And he says, what? He didn’t say. It nicely goes what? I said, well, to be the top you have to have the most content. So for you, you’d probably have to do just doing the research. We’ve done something like 8,000 pages of content to to win big $96,000 of content writing. I don’t know if you want to spend that kind of money, but I would not advise that as a strategy, you know, and he says, are you. And he again was just mean and so I just, I had to wrap it up and again, I would just say that if I wasn’t advertising, I wouldn’t have that option exactly.

Now, the third really powerful reason for advertising is it always gives you the swing vote. Let me give you example. If somebody is considering using hood CPAS. All right, let’s say you’re out there and you’re on a scale of one to 10. I want you to rate the satisfaction you have right now with your current, your current accountant. On a scale of one to all the listeners out there, rate the rate, your happiness, your satisfaction with your accountant on a scale of one to 10, 10 being the highest, one being the lowest. Uh, I’ll give you a second here. Oh Wow. I just, it’s hard for me to do, to struggle sometimes to make decisions. Okay. Okay. Okay. Time’s up for someone’s has seven. Someone said. Okay, great. So what does a 10 look like to you? If an accountant is the right fit for you, what does that look like?

Like what? What? What are you looking for from your accountant? Rather rather handsome. So then what I’d like you to as an action item today is I’d like you to go ahead and schedule an appointment to meet with, at least to me with two different firms. Okay. Scheduled time. Obviously I’d love it if you met with hood, let’s meet with hood and then somebody else. Let’s meet with two firms. Okay? But when you’ve heard Paul on the radio and you’ve heard him on the business coach podcast and you’ve heard him at a conference and you’ve seen them over and over and over again, advertising allows you to have a familiarity with your audience. They feel as though they know you more than the other guy. Thus you get that swing vote. If the, if there’s five people voting in two or four, two or against, and it’s like, well, but we do.

I kind of feel like I know the guy. It really does make a difference. People do business with people that they know and trust. So the next notable quotable I want to tell the listeners is from Rod Stewart. Chuck, do you remember Rod Stewart? I, yeah, I mean not totally, but I’m not at all really? No. If you won’t my body and you think I’m sick. Sick sitcoms, Yoga, let me know. Yesterday and now I am the night tonight. Remember I’m not a big music guy and the river run my heart beating the drum rolling off tone there. That Rod Clark, everybody’s a former soccer player. Turned broadside. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember Rod Stewart played soccer professionally and he was very good, but it wasn’t the best and after the games they would go out and party at these local bars and pubs and he would rock the mic and they were like, dude, you’re good.

And so he retired from soccer to become a pop star. It’s a cool exit strategy from your professional snow. He came here, he brought the energy. Now here’s the deal. Here’s the deal. Rod Stewart said, half the battle is selling the music, not singing it. It’s the image. Not what? Not what you’re saying. I think a po Po. Do you remember Rod Stewart? You’d make Rod. Stewart guy. Alright. I remember Rod Stewart. I have that tattoo on your arm either. I had that removed. Weird. Really Weird. I, yeah. You know, I, I kind of like his music, but yeah, I’ve got a very diverse taste. And have I told you that I love you. You met the kids. I can’t believe you guys. Don’t love Rod. Rod is probably the best. What singer of all time? Probably the best. I’m not sure. Best of all. Senior of Alto.

I’m not sure. I’m not sure by what standard. He’s the best. And Rod we trust hot and legs. Legs. I mean just. Gosh, Rod Stewart. Just. Wow. I hope he performs at a local casino soon. I’d love to go see Rod. That was career right now. He’s in the casino performance phase of his life. But if you’re out there and you’re saying, you know what, I don’t want to go see Rod Stewart and concert, but I do want to see an accountant that can be proactive. Go to hood CPAS DOT com today. That’s hood CPAS DOT com. Schedule your free consultation. You’re one hour consultation and they’re going to give you a copy of Warren Buffett’s only authorized biography. That book is called snowball. It’s a written by a wonderful person who has total access from Warren Buffet. Stay too.

What would Paul Hood take the time out of his schedule and the money out of his pocket to to have this show host this show, to promote this show to be on this show every week? Well, it’s because advertising works and it does. It works in a great many ways. We’re going to cover the big five today, the Five Principles of why you should never stop advertising. Principle number one, for those of you just tuning in, recapping if you want to set aside five percent of your gross revenue, five percent of your gross revenue for advertising. That’s principle number one. You should, no matter what kind of business you have, you should set aside five percent of your gross revenue because as a, as a minimum, by the way, because as you grow, that budget should grow and if you look at the world’s biggest companies, a Nike, Mcdonald’s, apple, we all clearly know that they exist, but yet apple does not stop advertising. Chip, why does apple not stop advertising? What does it apple turn their Amazon for a week and then turn them off, turn them on for a quarter, then turn them off. Why do they keep advertising?

It’s that consistency that builds confidence, so when people see you all the time, you remain top of mind and that’s the whole key to advertising is whenever you think of a product or service, you want your product or service to be top in that person’s mind and if you’re turning it on and off, turn it on and off. People aren’t going to be able to get there. You’re also, there’s new people coming into the market. There’s people that are coming of age to now have cell phones to have itunes accounts and all this stuff, so you have to reach those people too.

It’s really, really important that if you’re out there today, you ask yourself honestly, how much of your gross revenue are you spending on advertising? Cause it. Number two, advertising gives you leverage and choices. Paul, have you have you had a client that’s come in recently from the radio show or the podcast where you thought to yourself, wow, this person is awesome. I’m so glad I met this person and I would not have met them if they didn’t, if they hadn’t heard of me on the podcast

for the radio show. Absolutely. You know, it’s creating top of mind now. Now, clay, if I might, I want to add something here because you know, I am an accountant and one of the things that we do for our clients try to help them save money. I want to put a little caveat on the advertising thing. First, you’ve got to measure your results of the advertising. Um, and so if, if you’re, uh, because it’s not just throwing five percent out the window, the second thing is you’ve got to have guidance on what to do because people that are, that are a good plumber or a good accountant or whatever, we don’t know really are, most people don’t know where they should put their advertising dollars. And so I would recommend, um, they, they need a coach. You need somebody like you because you’ve set up a three legged stool for me and, and we’re measuring the results of those, of that marketing. And if it works, we keep it. If we don’t, we’re still going to spend. I spent just over, I’m a little bit of an overachiever. I spend well over five percent of gross revenue on marketing,

but it’s very directed and it’s measured. You’ve got to measure the success of, of everything you do. And so you, you know, I, I rely on you to say go here, go do that. And then we measure the results. Uh, Michael Levine, I’m one of our thrive time show mentors. He is the PR consultant for Nike, for Pizza Hut, for the Clintons, for the bushes, and he explains in great detail all the fast growth companies in America. He’s ever worked with fortune 500 companies. They all average just a hair over 10 percent of their gross revenue on advertising and the companies that never grow are stuck at two and three percent. So Steve Currington, you had a hot take on advertising. I was just saying, Paul, when you say measure, are you saying that I should stop spending $50,000 a month on the little signs that go on the side of the road that are written in Sharpie?

Is that a hard thing to measure? Pretty close the advice. Here’s the advice. Every new client you get, you need to ask him, how did you hear about us? They heard about you or what? You buy that little sharpie sign. I say you increase it, so maybe that works. That’s how I got started. That was my big move there. Do you guys feel like advertising big billboards at the new, at the next Rod Stewart concert and it local casino is a good way to promote hood cpas. I mean if you think about like go back, want all the listeners to go back to your early kind of mid nineties and remember Rod Stewart where he would hop on the radio and he’d say, have I told you lately that I love you? Have I told you Paul, there’s no one else above you who you’ll feel my heart.

We’re glad he can almost barely not get the notes out because he’ll feel gladness. Takeaway. Oh my. He’s my troubles that you need. I mean, is that a good way to advertise? No. No one. We don’t even like Rod Stewart. We already told you that. I don’t even know this guy is. I don’t give away Raj and it’s yours and it’s like the sun, the sun. So there’s a love that’s like the sun. I don’t get it. Ended up the day. Paul, we should give thanks and praise. Hey, please make it stop to have the one pause button. We’re still slapped myself. I told you, I mean the thing with this guy, oh my God, can I just say though, barely get out the word. His voice was so wrapped. He does every troubles that ha ha.

Hey, everyday someone calls you though and they want you to advertise and that’s what Paul’s talking about is like, you know, you want to go on the pharmacy bag and the local cvs, you want to go in this advertising the inside of the resource packs and it’s only $240 a year. Right? So you think bottom of the milk jug? No, no big deal. Right? But all the little $240 a year, they add up and you, you know, sometimes you’re just literally throwing money out the window. We call it nickel and diamond Rod Stewart’s performing at the elks lodge. And Claire was buying tickets to that. My business coach Body. And you think come sex? No. What about Warren Buffett was speaking more? That one more targeted me. Hey, I’d put out some signs for that. Hey, speaking of wanton, that body. Okay. Now, let’s last week though for Hood Cpas. I’m going to give you a number.

Last week we had 706 people who listened to this show or through some other form of advertising that went to the website for the first time. We know this to be a fact. That’s awesome. We also know that two of you out there reached out and said, hey, I would like to get a free copy of Warren Buffet’s book snowball and one hour of Paul hoods time, and so you scheduled a time to meet with his team and he has different financial planners and accountants. They, they. So they’ll schedule an hour with you and to give you a book. And so two of you decided to do that directly from the radio. Then four of you went from the radio to Google, then went to the site. So six people last week. Now when Paul works with a client, the average lifetime of a client relationship with Paul extends beyond five years.

So if he works with you and your business, it’s not like a, uh, one time, uh, let’s, let’s meet. Let’s us sell you a Burrito. No, it’s more of like we’re going to meet and we’re going to help you every month. Look at your finances to stay proactive. And so again, if you’re out there, uh, you know, every business is different, but you’ve got to make sure that you are advertising and you’ve got to track, but it’s so important. It’s like I could say what Paul, I think the ads are working for you or I can say Paul, I don’t think the answer work at all, but if you look at the numbers, that’s how you know, you absolutely have to track. The final couple of principles I want to make sure we share again is advertising will always get you the swing vote. It allows you to own.

When a customer is trying to decide between you and the other guy, they’ll rather go to the typical go with you if they’ve heard your name more. And that happens with elections. That happens with advertising, with a business transactions. It just happens a lot forth. You always want to stand out in a crowded marketplace. There’s a lot of accountants out there and check, this is what I hear when I meet most accountants, Wah, Wah, Wah, Wah, Wah, Wah, Wah, Wah, Wah, Wah, Wah, Wah, Wah, Wah, Wah [inaudible]. I don’t know what they’re saying, but they’re saying a lot of words, but they’re not numbers. No, I mean, I met with a lot over the years. I’ve met a lot of accountants would say hundreds of them from speaking events or chamber events or whatever. And I have no idea who they are. I don’t remember them at all because they don’t stand out to me.

I just think there’s nothing about them that’s memorable. Uh, they’re not bad people. I just don’t say it out right. So the only one I think when I think about CPAS, the only person I think about is Paul Hood. So when I think about cps, I think about Paul. What’s that top of mind awareness? And the final principle I want to teach today is people are always moving in and out of your market. So you want to make sure that you don’t become entirely reliant upon word of mouth, because over time you’ll run out of leads. Now, Steve, you’re a mortgage guy. Yeah, educate the listeners out there. There’s a lot of mortgage people you’ve seen who started the business and they work their warm market, which is just friends and family. Why does that eventually run dry? Unless they’re a polygamist? Will you run out of friends and family?

I mean you just. You can’t. And not everybody’s going to, regardless of the fact that your friends or family with them. People have relationships. They have things that are already established and you’re just not gonna. You don’t. There’s not enough people in your family that are going to sustain your business over time. It just takes a lot of clients. Now, this is a. This is. If you’re out there and you are Dennis Rodman’s, biological father, if that’s who you are, then you should just work your warm market because he has 47 kids. I’m not kidding. Dennis Rodman’s father has 47 kids, so I thought, no, I’m being serious and put that on. Put other shown incentive, that’s a fact for you. His Dennis Rodman’s father has 47 kids and you thought it’s unbelievable and it’s because the guy’s got all different women in all different places and he’s just one of the most shady characters of all time. Dennis Robin’s father has 47 kids. If you did this, robin’s father, don’t advertise. Just work your warm market. That’s how you got it.

It’s something that’s happened to us is a almost a hundred percent of the people that come into us end up being becoming clients for us because if we can get them in the door, they can see the difference, but the fun thing is is I just picked up a new client, a new doctor client out of Florida, and he was referred to me by somebody that through you clay, but the person who referred to him as an a client, yet he’s not ready to be a cocktail hour of the podcast. So he is out promoting other people promoting my business in Florida, Florida, and he’s not even a client yet, but I’m getting clients from him because of the marketing and the and the outreach that we’re doing through our system. So it’s sometimes it’s not the people that go to my website may not be ready at this point in time for somebody, but you know what? They send me people. It’s blown my mind all the time.

Yeah.

Thrive nation. We typically end with a boom and we just started with the boom, but we’ll end with another boom as always. Three, two, one.