Beyond Better: How to Stand Out in a Crowded World With Sally Hogshead

Sally Hogshead
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Sally: [00:00:00] for now, it's important that we own our personal brand. Our personal brand doesn't own us.

Like, I'm not my personal brand's bitch.

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Allan: Welcome to the Lean Marketing Podcast. I'm your host, Allan Dibb. Today, I'm joined by Sally Hogshead. She has some incredibly insightful views on how to fascinate, how to capture attention, how to create charisma. And very, very happy to have Sally. She doesn't do many podcasts, so we're very privileged to have her.

Welcome, Sally. How are you?

Sally: Oh, I'm great. I am great. Thank you for holding my hand slowly, gently through the process of reentering the podcasting world. love the work that you have been doing. I love your new book, and so I'm honored to be able to be here with you.

Allan: Thank you so much. I'd love to talk to you about your new book. Different is better than better in a moment. But for maybe the few people who don't know [00:01:00] about your work already, give a bit of a background about what you've done and your whole process around being fascinating, essentially.

Sally: Yeah, thank you. I, for the last decade, have been studying you. Why Does somebody become invested in you? How do you get your raving fans? Why are some people fanatics and some people are apathetic? Why do we fall in love with one brand and not another? Why do we vote for one person and not another? Why do we become obsessed with a certain TED speech?

Why do certain countries have brand? why do we eat certain foods that we know we shouldn't? We're on a diet. Why do we cheat on our spouses? Why do we buy cars we can't afford? And more importantly, how Can we harness those innate qualities that are within each of us? Whether we're an entrepreneur, an organization, a brand, a nonprofit, how can we identify the traits that are going to make people most likely to become fascinated by [00:02:00] us?

Not by changing who we are. But by becoming more of who we are and for nobody is this more important than for somebody who doesn't have the biggest marketing budget or who isn't the most famous. If you're not the most famous in your category and you can't outspend the competition, then you pretty darn well must be the most fascinating.

But as you describe, Allan, there is a system to it. It's not just a spray and pray approach, especially for small business owners or marketing departments. We need to strategically get back to who are we at our best? How are we most likely to over deliver and outperform? It's true for individuals.

It's true for brands. It's true for any organization. And so, essentially what I did is I took the model of focus group, you know, ~a focus group. ~Coke doesn't care how Coke sees the consumer, right? Coke only cares about how does the [00:03:00] consumer see Coke? And more to the point, how does the consumer see Coke as being different and better than Pepsi or the other competition?

And the same is true for you. What makes you different so that you can stop relying on trying to kill yourself by being better?

Allan: amazing. So having a framework for how others perceive you, because often, I mean, we're kind of shooting in the dark. We're just trying to figure out what we think others think and I mean, obviously there will be different people who think different things. So, what's the framework for like really understanding at a deep level?

How do we come across? And, you know, we've all come across people who have very little self awareness. They think they're perceived one way and they're really perceived in a completely different way. So, like a Michael Scott from the office sort of things.

Sally: Yeah. Yeah. And you know, we all have blind spots, of course, but one of the biggest mistakes that we make individuals is that we try to be all things to all people. Okay, I'm going to go into this [00:04:00] meeting and I got to be the funny one or I'm on a date. I want to be impressive as the powerful one. And the reality is that we are already going to be perceived according to very specific treats.

And these treats make us intensely valuable in specific situations. I'll give you an example. I wouldn't necessarily want to be best buddies with somebody who's incredibly aggressive. I wouldn't necessarily want to marry them, but I. Sure. As heck want that. If I'm getting audited by the IRS, I want my CPA to be very aggressive.

There are times when a lot of us during covid, we saw this, that we would have a winning formula at work at the status meeting or on the zoom calls that we were the funny one. Well, valuation of funny plummeted precipitously during covid because we shifted into a survival mode. But here's the thing with these qualities say you're the funny one or you're the aggressive one.

That's how you are pre designed to solve problems, but [00:05:00] specific problems. And uh, here's what I mean by that. At my highest and best value, I am passionately creative. it's my job, whether I'm an individual or a brand, I have to make sure that I'm looking for opportunities where passionate creativity is going to solve the problem differently and better than anyone else.

I don't want to work with clients that are looking for meticulous follow through. When I have clients like that, you know, it's a huge drag on your business to have the wrong client that they're trying to get you to solve their problem in a way that is simply not how you are primed to succeed.

so I in my business, we don't do expense reports. We don't do line item invoicing. It's not how my company, how to fascinate. It's not how we add value. And so it's crucial for you to be able to take things off the table that you either outsource or don't do in order to attract the clients who are going to love you and champion for you, that are going to [00:06:00] evangelize for you for doing more of what you're already doing.

Right.

Allan: love that. So being super clear around what we will do and what we won't do. So many people just feel compelled that they, you know, everybody does it this way or, my industry always does it this way or whatever else. And I had a workshop, in fact, yesterday, I'm currently traveling, I'm in San Diego, but.

I had a workshop and a big theme was that a lot of success is subtraction, not addition. So simplifying your product range, removing features focusing on those one or two products or services or whatever that will, generate most of your revenue and you're being distracted by the other 80 percent of stuff that

you're probably

Sally: that.

Allan: really good

Sally: Yeah. Like I'm having, you know, that feeling when it's like a combination of yeah, I know. I know. I, because we, I'm going to associate we're entrepreneurs or we're small business owners. We're marketers, you know, we're creative. We love adding. I mean, [00:07:00] generating is fun.

Implementing, you it's not for me, but yeah. Yeah. And that's crucial. I mean, that's why we need a one page marketing plan and not a 40 page marketing or 400 page marketing plan.

Allan: True. A lot of people love simplifying. So, one of the things I'm working on, so ~I'm going to,~ I'm going to use this interview selfishly to improve myself.

Sally: Bring it

On!

Allan: I mean, I've got, I've got Sally Hogshead here, so, uh, I'm going to take advantage of that. So, one of the things I'm trying to improve is my speaking, my communicating.

So, I feel very comfortable as a writer, behind a screen working with technology. Where I feel I need improvement is my speaking on stage, my presence, charisma, all of those sorts of things. How would someone like me go about Because, I mean, there are people who just walk into the room and they just command attention and there's just like a charisma and is that a learnt skill?

Is that just innate? How would someone like me improve that if they wanted to?[00:08:00]

Sally: That is such a terrific question. And I want to talk about the question behind the question, because it's not a function of who you're being on stage. It's about getting on stage in the first place. So if we're looking at speaking as a business model and not going in front of, you know, your religious organization or your second grade classroom um, if you want to be paid and valued for being the topic expert that you are, don't focus on the audience.

focus on the audience before the audience. In other words, the decision maker. A big mistake that a lot of us make is we, especially for trying. If you want to be a professional speaker in any context, if you want to get on those big juicy stages with you know, basically a mosh pit for you. crucial that you have a topic that very clearly solves a problem.

And if I may, I'll tell you how I did it very wrong.

Allan: I'd love that.

Sally: I'll tell you how to do it right. You know, when I started in branding. in, In advertising. God, I loved being an advertising copywriter, [00:09:00] creative director. It was just hot fudge Sunday every day, solving, solving a company's business problems by helping them identify what makes them different.

Well, I wanted to make a leap after you know, those very dark days of the Great Recession 2010, and so on. That you know, the first thing that gets cut is the branding. budget. The second thing that gets cut is like the high level business concept budget. And I was really struggling single mom, two young kids on the road constantly.

And I just, I couldn't figure out why I wasn't able to make enough per speech to cover like plain fare babysitter. It's just ragged. So I'm like, okay. I, supposedly, according to the fact that I was the number one most award winning advertising copywriter in the world when I was like, 22, 23 I thought, well, like, I need to stop thinking like an agency.

I need to get back. And so, I took a step back and I looked at what are the levers that drive how much somebody is worth, how much they are paid as a speaker. And this [00:10:00] is like classic corporate Speaking world where you're given a check and there's not a there's not a back end and so I was like, well Is it what are the value drivers?

Is it having a New York Times bestseller? Is it having a huge following? Is it having being a household name? Is it having deep industry expertise? And I began looking at what are the ways that people Are able to establish how much they're worth not just on stage, but so that they become a premium prestige speaking brand.

And one of the first things that I, realized was I went to the speaking management websites where, you know, it's like Amazon, you're shopping for a speaker, whether you know them or not. And there's the speaker's name. Then there's the topic like politics, education, humor, then there's the fee.

And I wanted to understand what's the correlation. Between the topic and the fee and of course somebody, you know, like a former president, you know, that look price is irrelevant. But one of the first things I noticed was I looked at two categories,

[00:11:00] innovation and creativity. I want you to think to yourself, what is the difference between innovation and creativity?

Would you agree? They're pretty synonymous, right?

Allan: Yeah, I would say so, yeah.

Sally: Like I'm an innovative person. I'm a creative person. Well, the speakers that had the category innovation were earning 5, 000 per speech more, which adds up very quickly because the more you're paid as a speaker, the better your AV quality, the higher quality, the audience the greater influence, the more likely that you're going to have a broader reach, better awareness.

And you can continue to increase your fee. And I thought, well, what is it about what the decision making process is that has people write a bigger check for one topic than another, and this is classic branding. Innovation solves a problem. It solves a pain point. and what I realized that I was doing wrong as I was positioning myself as a speaker is I was putting myself in the branding category.

first of all, what is this speech on branding? Like, what are you actually talking about anyway? What problem is that solving? Branding doesn't [00:12:00] solve a problem. and then I thought, okay, well, my topic is fascination because, you know, I've done all this proprietary research on the science of fascination.

Well, fascination doesn't in the mind of the decision maker doesn't solve a problem unless you're on a first date

or at a networking event. And went back into the research, I realized that I was identifying what high performers were doing differently.

High performers have very specific traits. And when I began researching this, I thought high performance were going to succeed by being better. But in fact, Individuals just like brands, they don't succeed by being better. They succeed by being different, by having a specialty, by being known for very specific traits, by identifying projects, assignments, people, scenarios in which they have a much higher chance of over delivering.

So as a topic, what high performers do differently. Is much more valuable than how to create a world class brand. He, do you see

[00:13:00] what I mean?

Allan: Yeah, so you're saying, showing up differently is much more important than just being better or trying to compete in someone else's sort of lane and try to be better. Is that what?

Sally: and that, essentially like, you know, you've already caught on to what the actual speech would be, but imagine you're a decision maker, you're a chief marketing officer, you're an event planner. You're a committee that you have a nice fat paycheck for a speaker. Are you going to choose the one with the most credibility, like the most New York Times bestsellers?

Are you going to choose the one who has the biggest Instagram following and so on? But your topic has to identify what is the problem that you are solving for the person writing the check. In other words, the audience before the audience. If you don't get on the stage, it doesn't matter if you have the greatest speech in the world.

It doesn't matter if you're the most charismatic speaker, you have to get the speech in order to give the

[00:14:00] speech.

Allan: of course. so using speaking as an example, so getting the speech, great. Okay. We've got the speech because we've differentiated. We've solved a problem for whoever's booking the event or whatever else. I've never had trouble getting that, but one of the things that I've been really analyzing

Sally: be honest. You are you, you remember when I said like most famous or most fascinating, I mean, you check both boxes. We can't all

Allan: But one of the things I've been looking at is what are the traits of, you know, world class speakers and, you know, I used to think it's, they're full of energy, they're like a powerhouse. So, you know, people who come to mind are like Tony Robbins, you know, it's just a high energy whole thing. And, To me, I'm just not that right.

That's not me. I, if I was doing that, I would just be putting it on just for as a performance or whatever else. But then I noticed there are other speakers who are just world class speakers who are just. Quiet, low energy, but they

[00:15:00] absolutely, I think the word would be fascinate or just capture the audience.

So, people who come to mind like that would be Jim Rohn. He was an incredible speaker and there's a lot of white space and he's just speaking slowly, low energy. He's not, you know, jumping around and shouting and all of this sort of thing. Another example would be like Malcolm Gladwell. Like, you know, if you've seen one of his TED Talks, he's just quiet uh,

Sally: Jeff Walker, Pat Flynn, they're, they're not like, yay,

Allan: Yeah, exactly. No rah, no

Sally: yet they're extraordinarily compelling.

Allan: So, and I can't put my finger on it. What is it that, you know, there's a few things that I thought things like there's a lot of white space in their speaking. So they'll drop a point and then there's a bunch of white space.

They're very deliberate with their stage presence, but it must be more than that. What else am I missing?

Sally: Proprietary content the number one key, once you've actually made it on stage, you must have proprietary content and ideally proprietary research. If you could take a [00:16:00] section of your speech and put somebody else's name. on it and it works. It's not proprietary. And the problem is that too many people are generating content in the same way that AI does.

They're drawing upon what already exists. They're not making new connections and they're not really delivering epiphanies. The single greatest way to make sure that you will always have a job as a speaker is to develop an idea, a big idea. That is seemingly counterintuitive, so you're going against the grain of conventional wisdom and you're delivering it with material that can't be googled, sourced by somebody else.

Of course we can, you know, we all throw in an Abraham Lincoln quote now and again. But too many speakers rely on being dynamic. Or entertaining. Or even educational. True thought leaders have developed their own thoughts. They're not just thought leaders, they're

[00:17:00] opinion leaders. You are as valuable as your opinions.

and your opinions by definition are not facts. Facts are irrefutable. That means you're standing on stage reciting the encyclopedia. You must have counterintuitive opinions. Yeah.

Allan: One of the things we were discussing was

exactly that AI at the workshop. And one of the things that is very clear is AI has kind of this flattening effect, meaning that it's fine tuned to give you the median response, right? So it's not going to give you a crazy opinion one way or another.

I mean, there are little tunings that you can do, but it's going to give you the median response. It's not going to give you an opinion. It's not going to give you. A personal story. And so as everything becomes more commoditized, easier to create content, all of that sort of thing, and we're already seeing it.

We're just seeing a ton of what I call AI swap, like tons of content, but it's just really mediocre. it's clearly got no

[00:18:00] opinion. It's just like the median. And so I think in that context. People who have original stories, ideas, opinions, contrarian responses. I think they're going to be the ones who are going to stand out on, not just on social media, but just as thought leaders, as people who are in, leaders in their industry.

So, I think it's absolutely critical that we develop our storytelling ability and People, especially in conservative industries, are scared to articulate an opinion or take a stand for something. And I think they're really going to be the only people who stand out going forward. And I think going forward, strong brands are going to be derivative of strong personal brands.

So we're already seeing this, you know, whether you like him or not. Elon Musk is a very strong personal brand. And as a result,

Sally: Yeah,

Allan: Tesla, SpaceX, we've seen the same with Richard Branson, you know, with Virgin and all of that Steve Jobs with Apple, so a lot of these big [00:19:00] brands are essentially derivative of a very strong founder and very strong personal brand, so I think we're still early in the personal brand game, but I think we've had the era where you can be like a faceless logo brand and now, That's cool.

A lot of it is going to be derivative of a personal brand. People follow people on social media. People follow, you know, authors, thought leaders, all of those sorts of things. And I think that's going to be much, much more important.

Sally: I mean, it's crucial for you to be known for specific qualities. If we look at former guests of yours, you know, like Chris Do, you know, he is known for not just what he does, but who he is and what he believes. There's an upside to having an incredibly strong community. personal brand is I was able to take a two year sabbatical where I wasn't speaking.

I wasn't working. I just went and wanted to really spend time as a mom and a wife and be part of my family. Having a strong personal brand allows that [00:20:00] flywheel to continue working for you while you're not. it's an annuity. It's like having a back end where you can just keep cashing the check even if you're not in the store.

The downside of having a really strong personal brand is when you are associated with, very specific traits, it makes it more difficult for you to grow and expand and evolve and change because the world has an expectation of you. And something that I found when I came out of my sabbatical recently is I felt something that was almost like a golden cage.

Okay, great. There was like It would be people could say that's on brand for me. That's off brand for me. And my team was able to do that. But then it's like, but I don't want to talk about that. I don't want to, I don't want to talk about those things anymore. Or, you know what? I've grown. I'm not always necessarily going to be upbeat, relentlessly optimistic.

Sometimes I'm like, you know, Sometimes there are things in our lives and in our businesses that suck. Going out of business sucks. having trouble with your kids sucks. But we need to talk about that in order for us to be able to impart our wisdom. Wisdom is not a [00:21:00] personal brand.

Wisdom is something that transcends that. It's so much, deeper than that. Simon Bowen was talking the other day about the conflict between wisdom and AI. And I'm going to paraphrase what he was saying, where he's we're part of a group named Archangel and he said, so here's, you know, like the starting gates, here's the baseline, you know, like you're not winning, you're not losing anything above the line has to be experiential with connection.

Allan: Yeah.

Sally: AI is not above the line yet. AI is still below the line of reporting on what's already there. Can it get there? Maybe by tomorrow. You know, who knows, they just released their whole new version. but for now, it's important that we own our personal brand. Our personal brand doesn't own us.

Like, I'm not my personal brand's bitch.

Allan: Nice. Simon's an incredibly insightful person. Actually, he was here last week at the

Sally: Oh yeah?

Allan: that I went to. [00:22:00] Yes. Very smart guy. And I'm going to have

Sally: you Aussies. Yeah, he's one of my favorites.

Allan: well, we've seen exactly that. Like, we've seen like our mutual friend, Pat Flynn. So, he's someone who has very successfully done that pivot where he was known as the online business guy.

Then he's launched this Pokemon channel, which is very left field. And that, that was part of the conversation I had with him ~last week, sorry, not~ last year is. How did you do that? I mean, you're known in this field and that you kind of know, now you're known in this completely different thing completely.

So, I thought that was interesting. So I had him on the podcast and he talked about that a little bit, but it's just about really following your curiosity, following the thing that you're passionate about and just doing it. And essentially he felt like his audience was. segmented, there wasn't really a big crossover.

So the Pokemon people knew him for Pokemon, the online business people knew him for online business, but there may have been some little crossover, but mainly he was starting from scratch again.

Sally: [00:23:00] And,

And um, to add to that, a target audience can be different, but the core of So it's not what you're doing, it's who you're being. Dan Kennedy taught me a great principle. At the highest level, you're not paid for what you do because what you do is a commodity. Who you are is irreplaceable. And the more that you build your business and your brand around who you are What I've observed since Dan taught me that is that you can pivot.

so imagine this, we talked earlier about how if somebody is the funny guy in a weekly meeting during COVID, that wasn't adding value because we needed, but humor comes from kind of a, And an ability to see things in an ironic way to have a little bit of kind of intellectual friction.

If you're funny, you also can probably find untraditional solutions to different types of problem. Similarly Pat. Created a new business model, but it still sort of [00:24:00] comes back to those aspects of him that it's so intellectual, so forward thinking Pat had a Tesla before they were even I think before they were even like on the market.

And I was like, your car drives itself. How does that work? So what I encourage is we're thinking about our businesses and our brands is that when we make a change, if it still comes back to your core think of it not as a north star that points in one direction. Think of it as a beacon that shines in multiple directions.

It's like I would wear something different to a cocktail party than I would like to work out. But the same person still picked out those two different things. Your personal brand is a wardrobe,

Allan: Yeah, I agree. I mean, obviously, How you show up to your personal friends is different to how you might show up to your clients. It's different how you might show up to your partner and so on. So there are variations of your personality.

Sally: And there are commonalities. Like if I'm very playful at work. When I'm in a situation in which the client doesn't want playfulness, I'm probably not the right. You [00:25:00] know, speaker or partner or agency. Yeah I'm different. I'm playfully different with a room full of CEOs than I am you know, I'm out with my kids at the movies.

Do do you find that too? That who you are, here's it, here's you, you know, the core of you that it, as long as it keeps threading back, you know, that you're still on brand because you're being congruent.

Allan: Yeah. Yeah. I remember a quote from Seth Godin. He, the people here, he was saying don't worry about being authentic, worry about being professional. And I don't think he meant it necessarily exactly literally, but meaning that, Hey you know, authentic might be like, Hey I'm scheduled to speak today.

I don't really feel like it. So I won't go. And you know, you can't do that. you know, if you're scheduled to speak. Whether you feel like it, whether you're feeling like I remember I was scheduled to speak for like a three hour workshop for hundreds of people and I was sick as a dog. I was just like literally,

you know,

Sally: sick, give us the [00:26:00] details.

Allan: well, basically straight after I checked myself into hospital for five days, I was uh, on antibiotic. I, I'd just come from Bali and I was I'd been, yeah, I don't wanna describe the details, but , it was pretty bad, so I was. I was on, but there was, I was going to be carried off dead or before I let down, you know, my friend who had invited me to speak and the audience who was there to see me.

So anyway, I got through it with a lot of hydration and a lot of help from my wife who was behind the scenes, you know, giving me water and I don't know, all sorts of concoctions and things like that,

Sally: you did it, you did. You know, it would've been more damage. I guess. It, like, I remember one time we were going to an Elton John concert, and of course, you know, it was here in Orlando. It was a huge amphitheater, and he canceled 20 minutes before he was supposed to walk on stage because he had an ear infection.

Now I get it when the standards are that high, you don't want to deliver like an off key performance, but which would be more brand damaging, like a bunch of like really. Upset people.

I let's come back to that [00:27:00] word authentic for a minute.

Allan: yeah.

Sally: Okay. I have a love hate relationship with that word.

And we use the word authentic. Like we use the word unique. It doesn't mean anything. You can be an authentic asshole.

worked for a year on the Jägermeister brand and the leading, I was doing something called, it was called Project Fascination for Jägermeister.

And the word that everybody was that keep, they keep using is it's unique. But the way there was a great British strategist who described it to me and we all never forget, he said, the word unique is a vessel that holds what you're really trying to say. It's not the word itself is bad, but you have to. The vessel is empty if you're only using that word. And so I think for all of us with our brands people need to stop, put it, stop describing themselves as authentic or trusted or dynamic or unique, just like those words have already been co opted. They don't mean anything anymore. The word trusted.

It's like, well, great. You're a financial advisor. You're [00:28:00] like, you're bragging about being trustworthy. That's like price of entry. You know, that's like in a room full of Harvard grads who's smart.

Allan: Very

Sally: a commodity.

Allan: Very true. Well, that's a good segue to your new book, so different is better than better. So I'd love to understand some of the key concepts in the new book are and how we need to think about being different.

Sally: Wonderful. And I love that we're talking about the book as though it's already out in the world. The concept is out in the world, but we were talking a moment ago about Harvard and just using that as a kind of a an easy reference. Cause we can all associate what we mean for the class of 2023 of those.

who applied to Harvard. So the high school seniors who are applying of those who had 1600 S. A. T. Or a 4. 0 GPA. So in other words, perfection,

Allan: Yeah.

Sally: They were rejected. 90 percent were rejected. The world doesn't need better.

[00:29:00] The competition has risen so much that being better is a commodity. Trying to be better than your competition is extraordinarily expensive.

It say you're an agency. You have to hire more people. You have to work more hours. You have to invest more time. You have to have a bigger budget. Let's say you're an already established brand. Maybe something you did differently in the past allowed you to become better, but if you don't keep honing, modifying, evolving that, then you very quickly get on that downward spiral of obsolescence to becoming irrelevant.

Allan: Yeah.

Sally: So, here's what I propose. It's good to be better. It's good to have the 1,400, 1,600 the 4.0 GPA. That's good. It's just not enough. Different is the new better. This wasn't necessarily the case 10 years ago. We lived in a world that was less distracted, less competitive, less commoditized. here's a quick easy example.

There's a little kind of [00:30:00] sleepy surf town here in Florida where I live.

And they have a restaurant named Gnarly's. Gnarly's Surf Shack. Gnarly's had a really tough branding problem. They did not have better food. They didn't have better service. They didn't have better drinks. And worst of all, they had a terrible location.

The location was at the base of a drawbridge. Ding ding. And they never knew, nobody ever knows when a boat is going to come through the drawbridge. So it's not like you can time it. So they did something brilliantly different. They put out a chalkboard and they wrote bridge up, beer down. So if the bridge is up, beer is 25 cents. When the bridge is down, it's, you know, like seven bucks, whatever. So they took they took a disadvantage and they turned it into an advantage. And as a result, when people are sitting outside and they hear the first ding, they're running to the bar, even though toxic fumes from the cars and the motorcycles are filling in.

So the question is, [00:31:00] what do you have? That's a seeming. disadvantage that is actually in the right scenario for your ideal client becomes a massive advantage. And this is the new positioning. The The positioning is not who do we want to talk to? And therefore, who do we become? We have to flip it. What are you already doing? Right. That you're not getting recognized and rewarded for it. And who is your ideal client that that's exactly what they need.

Allan: That's so much of the work that we're doing with clients. you know, like let's say we're working with a law firm or an accountant or whatever, why do you think people buy from you? They're like, they're almost always, ah, we've got great service or we've got great support or we do a really good job and all

of that. And

Sally: that's your starting point. And if you don't have that, just shutter the doors.

Allan: Well, exactly. But then we'll interview their clients and it's almost never those things that the clients mentioned, you know, like the clients, yeah, they've got [00:32:00] great service, but the reason we buy from them is, and it's usually something that they're not expecting. And it's usually something completely.

Peripheral to the product or service that they're selling. So it's usually not about accounting. It's like, I mean, I think of myself, I've switched accountants maybe three times in my business career, maybe four times and it's never been about. I moved to a better accountant, you know, the next accountant was working with the same tax laws was, you know, doing tax returns in a similar way, had the same bag of tricks for saving money.

But this guy returned my calls when I called him, this guy responded to emails quickly, this guy helped me, you know, capitalize on opportunities quickly and all of that. So really I was buying speed from that

accountant. Whereas the other one would take a week or two to respond or whatever. So it was never about him being a better accountant or that sort of thing.

It was like something that I really value is speed. And this guy responds quickly, is thorough, all those sorts of things. So nothing to do with accounting, which[00:33:00]

Sally: And the more specific the benefit, the more immediately your ideal customer or prospect, whether it's, you know, like, a networking event or your enterprise organization, the more specific you make it, the easier you make it for them to understand how you are the ideal solution to the worst problem they have.

we don't know what differentiates us in a very. tangible way that is almost polarizing Lee opposite from the competition. If we don't know that we certainly can't expect our ideal customer to

Allan: And yeah, and like I said, it's almost never about the actual thing you do. It's usually just something that you think is. in your industry or just peripheral to what you do. But people will often make a buying decision, not based on the actual thing you do. Cause that's usually commodity

Sally: wait. What you do is a commodity.

Allan: Yeah, exactly. So, with identifying how you're different or creating that difference, what are some frameworks or mental models [00:34:00] that you would use with somebody to, to help them differentiate or help them identify how they're already different?

Sally: Well, I have an idea and I would say I'm creative, but the word innovative is worth 5, 000 more. So I'd like to, I'd like to suggest something innovative, which is Allan, what if we created a code? That allows people to take the fascinate test, which is measuring just like a focus group, exactly what makes them different so that they can identify the situations for which they are ideally suited.

I'm going to create a code of, Hey, person taking this code. It's just hot out of the oven. What would you like your code to be?

Allan: Oh, let's just make it lean marketing.

Sally: Okay. Lean marketing, all one word. And so, they're going to go to howtofascinate. com how to fascinate, and there'll be a login

Allan: Perfect.

Sally: and the code that's going to say, do you have a [00:35:00] code? The code is, as we know, Lean Marketing.

Allan: Awesome. And we'll link to that in the

Sally: um, And then, and Allan, I would love to invite you to be able to do it too, so that you and I can pop in the comments, because it's always, you know, we might find out that your audience has people who are intensely innovative Or we might discover that they are more thoughtful, for example, you know, one page marketing plan, lean marketing.

There's a minimalism there. It's not about the flourish of more. It's about less. So your audience is probably different than Louis Howes or Marie Forleo's or or you know, Seth Godin's even. I'll be very curious to see.

Allan: Totally. Yeah. As I said in the beginning, I very much believe in subtraction rather than addition. That's been very much key to a lot of my successes, my client's successes. And yeah, I'll, I'm definitely going to take that fascinate test and figure that out. [00:36:00] That'd be great. And we'll link to that in the show notes as well.

Sally thank you. You've been very generous with your time. Anything else that I should have asked you that I didn't ask you either about your new book or your current or past work?

Sally: Well, I actually have a question for you when you talk about subtraction. I feel that pain that you're talking about where it's sometimes you suddenly realize, oh my God, we're offering 20 products and how do we decide what to first eliminate?

Allan: So one of the simple exercises I often do with clients is I'll say, all right let's export from either your accounting system or your CRM system or whatever either your various clients or your various products that you do, and then let's do a very simple exercise, sort them by most revenue or most highly profitable to least profitable.

Then we look at the top 20% and. Almost always the top 20 percent are generating most of the revenue or most of the profit. They're usually the most fun to work with, they're usually easy, they pay on time, they don't [00:37:00] complain, they don't leave bad reviews, they don't ask for refunds. Then we look at the bottom 20 percent and they're always the painful clients or the painful types of, or the products that are so

Sally: where's that invoice with the line items?

Allan: Exactly. We've got to chase them for payment. They always want to speak to the CEO. They're difficult to work with. And one of the simple things we'll say is like, what if we removed that bottom 20 percent or sometimes even the bottom 50 percent or sometimes the, and we redirected all the energy that we put into chasing and appeasing and all of that sort of thing into those.

Top 20 percent type of clients just that alone, we don't need to get any new leads, new revenue, new clients, just that alone will usually double, double the revenue of a business, if we just refocus on the few things that are going really well and that you're usually neglecting because you're fighting fires with the, that bottom so,

Sally: the stuff that burns your team, you know, your key [00:38:00] talent leaves and it comes back to what we were describing earlier about what do high performers do differently? And the answer is they have a specialty that they hone. So there it is. Maybe I need to take my own medicine and do that, too.

hopefully you'll be in that top 20 percent something to me.

Allan: so.

Sally: Hey, I'm doing an experiment. I'm changing up my social media kind of, I'm opening the door to that golden cage that we talked about and flying out. And I'd love for people to be able to join me and let me know how it's going.

I'm on all social media at Sally Hogshead.

Allan: Amazing. Amazing. That'd

Sally: Crazy that was available as a handle, right?

Okay.

Allan: only one Sally Hogshead, right?

Sally: God, I hope so. It was hard enough. I wouldn't wish it on anybody. Oh, Allan, what a pleasure to see you again.

Allan: It was a pleasure speaking. Thank you so much, Sally. You've been very generous with your time and your knowledge. I appreciate that. And um, yeah, I hope to see you maybe later in the year.

Sally: Yeah, Yeah, we could see each other this summer. [00:39:00] I'm looking forward to it. Uh, Thank you.

Allan: Thank you so much, Sally.

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