Today's Guest

Mark Newsome (a.k.a. Mr. Marketing) is a small business marketing consultant who routinely helps semi-cash-strapped small business owners generate or discover previously hidden profit centers within their business. Mark joins the show to discuss proven and innovative marketing strategies to help cash-strapped businesses generate red-hot prospect lists, stay ahead of the competition, and systematically increase their gross profits with strategic email marketing. 

Resources Shared

• You Can Market Online Now!
• Thryv
  

Episode Transcript

(Please excuse grammatical errors due to transcription)

Gordon Henry:       This is Gordon Henry, Winning on Main Street and today we're lucky to have an expert in small business marketing. Mark Newsome, AKA Mr. Marketing. Welcome, Mark.

Mark Newsome:      Hey Gordon, thank you so much my friend. I have definitely been just frothing at the bit, looking forward to this.



Gordon Henry:       Excited to have you. Quick bio on Mark. He is known as Mr. Marketing as I mentioned. His goal is to help small business owners profitably market their product or service for pennies on the dollar. He helps small business owners who are finally ready and committed stop struggling and start consistently earning their share of the enormous and growing internet marketing pie. Considers himself a cashflow generation specialist, routinely helps semi cash strapped small business owners and/or service providers on and offline generate or discover previously hidden profit centers interesting within their business or service by strategically maximizing once considered it's completely dead and/or grossly underutilized nontraditional assets and/or resources.

                  So what will you learn in this episode? Mark says his specialty is helping you, the small business owner, consistently earn higher gross profits without you having to constantly do more gross business. So let's put him to the test and see if he can leave listeners with at least one proven way to achieve this goal of achieving higher gross profit. So Mark, again, good to have you. I'd like to start off simply by asking you a little bit about your journey to how you got here. Where's home for you? How did you get to where you are today? And how'd you become Mr. Marketing?

Mark Newsome:      Excellent questions. I'm a recent transplant from the snowy East Coast to the Midwest in Texas now. And my journey began, believe it or not, Gordon, I was in a specialty of real estate investing. You remember, I'd say, the heyday of the nothing down real estate evangelist, creative finance? You're up one or two o'clock in the morning, there's some guy flashing bling in a fancy car and all that. Anyway, the short of that, when they would ask a property seller to facilitate the sale by participating in financing some of their equity, the institutions, the major institutions by the way ladies and gentlemen, that I helped, we would in essence create those transactions or go down to the courthouse, find them and send a postcard to these people and say, "Do you want to liquidate?" Either what we call a partial or a full liquidation of that income producing asset.

                  And the slang of it is that you probably already know, Gordon, it's called paver, but it's just a fancy way of saying debt that's secured by real estate. So I got above, man. After attending all these workshops, I said, "You know what? I'm going to write my own book." So I self-published a workbook, believe it or not, and the premise of it was to show BizOps seekers, here's a part-time thing you can do, maybe 1% of you out of 100 are going to get it done, but here's an opportunity for you to go out find those transactions or create your own and I've got the big buck lenders behind me, they'll write the checks, they'll do the closing costs. As long as it's investment grade and I taught them what investment grade was in this book, and they call it flipping notes, I don't like that term, but helping them liquidate it.

                  The problem with that industry, Gordon, then and now in my opinion, the marketing was just archaic. They were in the Flintstone era and it was this Jetsons era. So out of desperation, I started looking around trying to learn about marketing direct response. I didn't even know what direct response was at that time. And I started finding the likes of late great Gary Howard copywriting, direct response marketing expert, Jay Abraham, Dan Kenny, just opened up a whole other world to me. Long story short, a good friend of mine named Bill, who was in what we call the car paper financial business, meaning when these non-franchised car dealerships would accept financing, he and other local investors would cash them out. And he said to me one day, "Man, I know you think this paper industry the bomb." He said, "But Mark, I'm telling small business and service providers are struggling. They could use this exact stuff that you're talking about."

                  Had never dawned on me. And as I started to go into businesses Gordon, I realized that oasis was practically untouched. Even with all of the gurus out there, [inaudible 00:05:21] huge market for local businesses. And then of course this thing came along that I totally did not anticipate called the internet. And I said, "Yeah, I'm home now."

Gordon Henry:       So that's how you got into internet marketing. Let's talk a little bit about your insights and your recommendations for small businesses today. I want to know, you're well-known for this, the magic question, what is the magic question and can you share it with our audience?

Mark Newsome:      Oh boy, am I so glad to share it. Gordon, I'm going to try this out on you right now. The audience has no idea what I'm going to say. So this is going to be super spontaneous and we're going to find out right now if this Mr. Marketing guy has goods or not, he's got a simple question for you. Is it okay if I periodically refer you new business and customers?

Gordon Henry:       Yeah, that sounds great.

Mark Newsome:      And by the same token, as long as it's done, Gordon, as long as it doesn't take away from anything we currently have going on or will have going on in the not so distant future, are you okay with periodically returning favor?

Gordon Henry:       Sure, be happy to.

Mark Newsome:      Ladies and gentlemen, I know you heard his answer, but let me translate to you what Gordon is really saying. Mark, not only will I give you access to my current resources, connections and experiences, which are excellent, but the ones down the road next week, next month, tomorrow, next year that are going to be 10 times better, you get access to that too. Entrepreneur, if you're not asking your current vendors, the ones you have on a relationship with, not the ones you walk across the street, you just heard this on some podcasts, we'll try it out, the vendors you already have a relationship with, start asking the magic question and I guarantee you it is the pendulum that is going to swing wide open going forward, and I look forward to you letting Gordy and myself know how benefited from the not so distant future.

Gordon Henry:       That's an awesome question. And a version of that could also be used with your clients. I think too many small businesses forget to ask their clients, "Does anybody you know, would they benefit from my services? And in turn, is there anything I can do to you? You must have a business of some sort, anything I can do to help you." That simple quid pro quo is a great way of building relationships. And very often, "You're doing a great job on my air conditioner. Now that you mention it, yeah, my neighbor needs a new air conditioner."

Mark Newsome:      Fabulous. Absolutely. Ladies and gentlemen I hope you're taking notes here because we're going to be dropping it like it's hot. Absolutely.

Gordon Henry:       Awesome. Turning to some of the methods you use for internet marketing, the obvious one everybody loves to talk about is social media, do you recommend social media for small businesses or should they be wary? You hear lots of bad things about social media, so where do you stand on that in terms of a small business using that tool?

Mark Newsome:      Absolutely. Ladies and gentlemen, if you're not rocking social media, you're missing a boat, but Gordon and I got to share something with you and we're not trying to rain on your parade. This is very important. Please don't forget this. You and I, don't know about Gordon, he'll tell us, we don't own those platforms. If your last name isn't Zuckerberg, or Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn, here's the problem with it, you might wake up tomorrow and your 275,000 Instagram followers, and your half a million followers on LinkedIn, gone. You are building on quicksand if you're solely trying to rely on promoting and marketing on social media. Now, what should you do? What Gordon and I do, leverage social media to the max. The strategy we'll get into in a little later I'm sure, but get them onto your own opt-in email list, because that's what you have 100% control of.

                  See, this fabulous podcast called Winning on Main Street is awesome. In fact, Gordon, I was looking at all the places you guys restream on, but here's the problem with it, this is Gordon's platform not mine. What if he decides after they go off the air and they're confirmed, saying, "This guy was okay, but I really don't think he's right for our audience." Where does that leave me? That's why I have my own blog and my own podcast, even though my podcast audience, Gordon, compared to yours is so small, you can't find it with a magnifying glass, but the point is it's mine. I like to say it like this, Gordon, Social media marketing is sleeping on your in-laws couch. No matter how much they like you, they come home one day and say, "Gordon, I love you, but you got to go." You can be homeless. Don't do it. Leverage social media. Don't rely on it.

Gordon Henry:       So build your email list. May sound like a dumb question, but how do I as a small business owner build my own email list? What do I need to do?

Mark Newsome:      I'm going to give you the simple one first, Gordon. Offline businesses, because I'm sure you hear this all the time, I hear that this is just too funny, they'll say to me, "I'm a local small business non-franchise. What do I need email for?" Oh boy, if only I had the time. So I'm going to say it like this. I'm going to use Gordon as an example. Let's say Gordon has a rocking single location retail appliance center. He's got all the gadgets. Everybody goes to Gordon when they want the fancy new gadgets. So how does Gordon take advantage of email? He puts a big giant four-way sign in the middle of his store so large with big letters, music legend, Stevie Wonder can't miss it. And he says, "Free drawing. Win a $7,000 home deluxe entertainment center." Whatever the heck that entails.

                  Now his hard cost is maybe half less 3,500. Now what happens? His foot traffic comes in, sees the sign, some of them are going to enter his free drawing. Now here's the beauty, only one person can win the grand prize either every month or every quarter. And Gordon's going to test to find out, which makes him more exciting, the monthly or the three month? Once he figures that out, then he'll eliminate the other one, he'll just do the one. Now here's the point. Let's say Gordon has 15,000 or 20,000 Instagram followers and half of them, 10,000 of them, are right there in his location, but his Instagram account got shut down, temporary, perhaps permanently. No worries, he's got his own opt-in email list of 26,413 and this was after 5% have unsubscribed.

                  So you know what Gordon does because he's a brilliant marketer? He makes fun of the fact. He sends an email saying, "My social media Instagram account got shut down. Power sale." What? If you go to my Instagram account right now, you'll see that my account's temporarily shut down, but that is not going to penalize you, my valued subscriber. Here's what I want you to do, follow the study, gentlemen. Gordon says, "You come along, I'll let you save 10% up to $100." Not very exciting or sexy, it's not supposed to be. However, simply for dragging a friend who's at least 18, I'll let you save up to 40% up to $2,000. And as long as your friend joins my list before they leave the store, that's called scarcity ladies and gentlemen, they can save a maximum of 30% up to 1,000 or 10% up to 100. Gordon, do you know why we call this proven marketing strategy the McDonald's technique?

Gordon Henry:       Why?

Mark Newsome:      You tell me the answer to this question. You go through the McDonald's drive-through and you say, "I'll have the strawberry shake and the quarter pounder with cheese." What does that trained cashier, all of the 16 to 25, come back and say? "Sir, would you like fries with that?"

Gordon Henry:       Would you like fries with that?

Mark Newsome:      Bingo. Or, "Would you like apple pie?" Whatever the case may be. The point is, all over the world, Wendy's, McDonald's, Jack in the Box, Burger King, that one little six question phrase puts tens of billions of extra dollars in their pocket without them having to go back on outrageously expensive local primetime television, local primetime radio, newspaper, billboard, blah blah, blah, blah, blah. They're going to get a percentage of those people to spend a little more money.

                  And Gordon, here's the beauty of the, would you like fries with that? McDonald's didn't rest on their laurels. They got their habit educated people in a room and they said, "Gordon, take this to the next level." Gordon and his guru has put their head together and they came up with a simple three-word question, ladies and gentlemen. After you and I say yes to that upsell, we call it a bump upsell. I'm old school Gordon, I call it a bump, but some people call it upsell. The point is they immediately come back and say, "Supersize you." And guess what? Another 10 to 40% of their daily foot traffic, ladies and gentlemen, says yes to that transaction. Now think about what just happened. I'm a radio executive and I'm telling Gordon, "Gordon, you're going to need between 12 and 21 what we call exposures, touches." Meaning that ad has to run that many times before the average consumer says, "What is this guy promoting?"

                  You just wiped all that out. Where do you think that difference goes, ladies and gentlemen? Back in your pocket where it should be. You can either use it to bribe your employees, bribe your best vendors. The point is, you do not need to try to emulate the Fortune 500 companies, the Nikes and the Applebees and all. Let them do that. You and I are small business. We got to be lean [inaudible 00:15:32] means.

Gordon Henry:       So what about Google? Because small businesses today think I've got to advertise on Google, not just put up a website that hopefully gets found, but advertise on Google. What do you think about small businesses, particularly service businesses, like people who work on your roof, or your plumbing, or your car, or maybe your personal trainer, service businesses, should they be advertising, spending hard cash on Google advertising? And what should they also be thinking about in terms of traditional media? Is Google too expensive? Should they be thinking about direct mail, or even newspapers, or even yellow pages?

Mark Newsome:      Oh boy, this is a juicy one, Gordon, thank you. It's a simplistic answer. Here's my first answer. If you do not understand how to advertise, in other words, how to write a, "What's in it for me," power headline, don't put any money into anything yet. In fact, he mentioned newspaper, ladies and gentlemen, I didn't... Gordon, you brought this out. I forgot I was supposed to mention this. I completely forgot because I got on my rant, but this is very important. Don't ever, ever, ever, I hope I'm making this clear, commit to a package of advertisements. "Gordon, we'll give you six ads for the price of three. This was our first time customer package." This is a huge mistake. "Why, Mark? I'm saving money." No, you're losing money because you haven't tested your premise yet. You don't know if the hot button...

                  Let's say Gordon is a vegetarian, here I'm trying to advertise steak in front of him. The guy doesn't need meat. You're wasting money. I don't care what you're saving on the ad. So the point is billboards, that's the worst. Once that ad goes up that billboard and it hasn't been tested, you can't change it. I call them alligators because they eat money. This is horrible. To answer your question correctly, yes, absolutely there is a place for paid advertising, Google and otherwise, but the first thing you got to know, entrepreneur, is how to write a what's in it for me type ad.

                  And if it's okay, Gordon, let me give your audience a 20-second copyright crash course. Is that okay? I want you to pretend your best customer, you're in their office and you look on their table... I mean their desk, pardon me. You see the normal stuff, certificates, pictures of the beautiful kids, either their spouse or their living significant other, whatever the case may be. And then guess what you see a picture of? You and your family. What the heck is a picture of my family doing on their... Exactly. So what are you saying, Mark? Don't write from the I, we, me perspective. That repels. You and yours attracts. I guarantee you right now if we go look at the yellow page, you're going to see... If they pay us, Gordon, a dollar for every I, we, me, chief, we're going to retire very wealthy. Don't write from that perspective. You got to learn how to write from the-

Gordon Henry:       You.

Mark Newsome:      Your perspective. And one other little tidbit about copywriting is psychology. What do you mean, Mark? I guarantee you I can put a newspaper ad in front of Gordon the print is so small he needs a magnifying glass to read it. He's not going to pay attention to it until he sees that three times as large headline. Guess what the headline says, Gordon? Every word on this page is about the great Gordon. I guarantee you he wants to read it now. Why? Because you're writing from his perspective. So if we had time to go through more, but you hopefully get the point. So the reason why I'm saying you don't want to do this with Google because see, Google is very...

                  Not just Google, Bing, Yahoo, they are very cold-hearted in the sense of they don't tell you how to write the correct ads, they just take your money. You understand what I'm saying? So it's a caveat [inaudible 00:19:50], buyer beware. Absolutely, you can rock Google. But one other thing, Gordon, can I share something? I was on a podcast a while back, and the host, I hate to say this, young lady, I won't mention to you names, I mentioned direct mail and she poo-pooed it in the sense of she said, "We don't do anything offline." Somehow direct mail is old school, has been entrepreneur. Let Gordon and I share something with you. Long before there was something called the internet and social media, direct snail mail has already proven itself up in the trillions of dollars.

                  Now, I don't say we should be using snail mail necessarily, but let's say Gordon has an offline database of 550,000. It's a lot. And he and I do a joint venture. What's that, Mark? We just work together, strategic alliance, resource shit, whatever the time is, folks' vote, and Gordon says, "Mark, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to mention in a PS your website and I'm going to drive this traffic to your website." Now, who owns the snail mail? He does. Who's going to benefit from it? In this case, I would. So there's waves to use direct mail that doesn't involve you and I writing checks up front. You follow what I'm saying? And if there is a risk, he's taking it. Yeah, he put my name on it, if it bombs, so what? I didn't reach in my pocket.

                  And that's the other thing I wanted to say about email, ladies and gentlemen, imagine this. Imagine Gordon has been running that free drawing that I'm talking about, and now his local list is 55,000 people. Let's use 50,000. And he says, "Mark, I got a little gourmet coffee shop." He says, "Mark..." Because Gordon comes in there every Monday for his Monday meeting, we chop it up about sports, women, politics, everything, all this stuff. And Gordon says, "Mark, how's it going?" "Gordon, with the pandemic and stuff still coming back..." He said, "Yeah, I hear you." He said, "Listen man, remember about two months ago I asked you that thing about would it be okay to periodically refer you new business if you're open to it?"

                  He goes, "Oh, yeah, yeah." [inaudible 00:22:02] I'm going to do next Monday? I'm going to send an email. I got my list split into 5,000, 5,000 and 40,000. He said, "I'm going to send 5,000 of these coupons that you're going to approve to this 5,000." He said, "I'm going to change the subject line," it's called AB split test, ladies and gentlemen, "And we're going to send another one and we'll going to see what happens. If one is clearly the best, then the remaining 40,000 or X doesn't get that winning headline." Now here's what I want you to understand. What if he was doing this with direct snail mail? You see how outrageously expensive this would be? He got to pay for postage every time, he's got to pay for typesetting every time. With email, you send an email. In 10 minutes, you're going to look at your statistic, oh, that headline didn't do so good. Let's just leave a body copy. Let's change the power headline. What's in it for me?

                  Send it out again. Look, it went off 14%. What was the click-through rate, CTR, click-through rate? Now, the remaining people on our list, we know which winning headline, the what's in it for me headline is going to grab more people, but I digress. The point I was trying to make is, yes, Gordon, absolutely, but here's the problem. Too many small business owners, we wear a thousand hats, copywriting isn't one of them. So you send out some snail mail... Excuse me, you write a Google pay-per-click ad, you don't get many clicks and Google says, "I'm sorry, that's prime real estate. We're going to move you further down and raise the rate for your click." You're going to get frustrated. You're going to lose money and you're going to be out of business. So learn how to write headlines and test. Don't put your whole budget into it, $20 a day, 30 a day, whatever you can afford and monitor and see.

                  And here's what I will promise you ladies and gentlemen, the better you get at knowing what your target audience wants, the more and the better responses you're going to get. That's a fact.

Gordon Henry:       Awesome stuff. We're going to take a quick break. Don't go anywhere. We're going to hear from Mark on how he can help you improve your marketing in just a minute. Don't go anywhere.

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Gordon Henry:       We're back with Mark Newsome. Really enjoying this amazing conversation about everything Mr. Marketing can do to help a small business succeed. You've heard tips already about copywriting, about direct marketing, about Google versus other methods of advertising. So I hope you're taking some notes. This is a really good masterclass in what you shouldn't be doing as a small business marketer. So Mark, you've talked a lot about tips, ideas, strategies for the small business. I assume somewhere in here we can hear a shameless plug for you about how you help the small business succeed. How do I as a small business hire Mark to get better at all this stuff?

Mark Newsome:      Very simply, ladies and gentlemen. I want you to head over to my house. Thank you so much for that, Gordon. You, Y-O-U, canmarketonlinenow.com. That's all one word, don't skip. Ask my blog. You'll see my contact page. If I happen to mention you saw me on this fabulous podcast, I'll make it even better for you. But listen, if you just want to talk, we can do that too, because ladies and gentlemen, the way I see this, being on a show like this with the exposure, it's all good. It's going to come back to you. Let me just share one other thing, Gordon, that I meant to say and if I don't say this, I'm going to kick myself. Ladies and gentlemen, I want you to picture two gentlemen driving across the desert on the hottest day of the year. Get that image blade into your mind.

                  There's no air conditioner in the vehicle they're traveling. And I want to say it's me and Gordon. Gordon's driving and I'm complaining, I'm the passenger. Finally, I roll down the window and I say to Gordon, "Man, look at all that cactus." Guess what Gordon saw? Las Vegas. How is it he and I look at the same thing, he drew a completely different conclusion than I did? What we are talking about, entrepreneur, is your vision and your perspective. So while one guy is saying, "This is horrible." Think of a teeter-totter. When one side goes down, what does the other side automatically do? It goes up. So when they're telling you this is dead... Ladies and gentlemen, if anybody tells you email marketing is dead, run, because first of all all they're trying to do is sell you something else. But here's the thing you got to understand about email... Let me share another myth too while I'm at it.

                  You hear this thrown around and I don't want to pick on any of the gurus, they say it, but almost everybody else says it. Email is the most prolific return on investment. Gordon, you've heard this, I'm sure. Now that's true, but here's what I want to preface it with. They say for every dollar you put in, you get back somewhere between 39 and 44. Now here's the caveat. That's for people like Gordon who are experts. They've tested the heck out of everything. They know they're dialed in. That is not for you the first time you send out emails. You're not at that level, but understand something. What if you go from one to six? My friend, that's 500% increase, that's still rocking it. So don't get in this thing in your mind you're just supposed to get the numbers to the guru and gurus risk it unless you put in the work they put in.

                  I'm telling you, they test everything. One of my coaches, seven figure coach, I'm a little lazy by his standards. He tests everything. You know what I mean? So he can tell you what this headline did. He can tell you the link, the whole nine. I'm just going to schematic. He can look and tell you. So my point being, don't get hung up on the fact that you didn't hit a grand slam when you are using opt-in email.

Gordon Henry:       Let's talk for a second about technology. All of this email marketing and various forms of online advertising will require some form of technology. If I'm going to have an email list, I must have some kind of email list database, like a CRM system. So talk for a second if you would, about what are the technologies or softwares that you recommend small businesses use in order to be proficient at what you want them to do.

Mark Newsome:      Ladies and gentlemen, that's such a tough question. Now there are some... I'm going to tell you that the email service provider I've been using for over a decade now, it's AWeber. Let me premise that for something, AWeber is not as sophisticated as Infusionsoft. Some people call it Infusionsoft or Active campaign. But here's where in my opinion, AWeber is the, and I hope I don't date myself too much here, Gordon, the Wilt Chamberlain, or Michael Jordan, or the LeBron James of customer service. They are absolutely fabulous. And that's what you're going to need at the beginning, that extra handholding. So I would suggest... And they have a free account, you can start off with just, but you only have one list and until you reach 500 subscribers, you don't pay anything. And ladies and gentlemen, if you ran a free drawing, let's say you're a hair salon and in reality Gordon, because... Here's one other concept too, Gordon, you got to share with your audience. Ladies and gentlemen, immediately at some point when you get off here, I want you to go to Google and YouTube and type in, "What is lifetime customer value?"

                  Watch a couple of videos, read a couple articles. Boom. You'll have this basic premise down. It basically means, what can you really afford to invest to try to generate or attract a first time customer? Because follow this. What good does it do to spend $2,000 on pay per click ads if the lifetime customer value, total lifetime customer value of your ideal customer is only $700? You're upside down. Gordon, I'm sure you've heard this, a lot of these people on Amazon that are run these ads all over YouTube telling you I made $12,000. What they're not telling you is it cost them $15,000 to do it. That doesn't make sense. You're going to be upside down.

                  So I would say to begin with AWeber is very newbie friendly. And ladies and gentlemen, I'm embarrassed to tell you this, but it's the truth, I am not that techy. I really am not. So AWeber, when I first got my AWeber account, Gordon, I didn't log in for six months. Because I was that intimidated by the service and finally I called the customer service, it's a toll-free number when you're paid customer or you got the free account Monday through Friday. And I started helping them, even though I had videos on, I have them walk me through the reality and now I'm good enough. If I wanted to outsource it, I could now, but I can pretty much do everything I need to do that.

                  Now again, if you're using something you're comfortable with and you like keep it, but I'm saying those of you who mentioned the question, "Which one should I use?" I would say start with AWeber. Because again, where they may be just a little bit behind their competitors with the super technology in advance gizmos, they blow them away when it comes to customer service. And that's what you need in my opinion, the beginning.

Gordon Henry:       So bottom line, you need a tool that has a database where you can log all your customer information and you need a capability to deliver automated email marketing, right?

Mark Newsome:      That's it in a nutshell, my friend. You're just going to write a message... By the way, you huge terms AutoResponder, well, we're talking about AutoResponder, what Gordon and I are talking about is you pre-write this message and then you have two options. You can send it right then and there, we normally call it a broadcast. That means it can go to your entire list or wherever you specify, or we pre-write what some people call a welcome sequence. This stuff is pre-written so that when you opt in, put your name and a real email address in, boom, you started getting these messages, but they were written, who knows when. So that's the AutoResponder part of AutoResponder.

                  And that's going to save you a lot of time. Here's the other thing too. I got to say this. I learned this from the brilliant Seth Go. And Gordon, I know you've heard this a bazillion times, but best share this with your audience. Gordon, what do you think the odds of a person walking to a bar or associate setting, meeting the complete stranger and 30 minutes later they leave the bar on their way to the courthouse to get married. How well do you think that relationship's going to last?

Gordon Henry:       Not too long.

Mark Newsome:      Not too long. So you say, "That's a semi-interesting story." What [inaudible 00:33:14] simply this, if you're driving completely cold traffic, a stranger to your sales page, that's the equivalent of meeting a stranger saying, "Well, you married me after 30 minutes." They don't know you. They don't know anything about you. You got to get to know them. How do you get to know them, Mark? You date them. How do you do that online? Email. That's why you go for the opt-in, the email equivalent of, "You want to get a cup of coffee sometime?" It's not too threatening.

                  What's the carrot? Whatever you know your target market audience wants. Don't give them a novel 390-page special report. Give them a tidbit. You know how [inaudible 00:33:59] we go into the grocery store? They got stuff attractive young ladies of the aisle with the little shish kebab thing. They offer you a sample. "That's good, by the way, what's your name?" But the point is, you built rapport. So you give away something of value. That's why I said Gordon has offering, pardon me, the $7,500 deluxe entertainment system, which cost him half. That's a carrot that's going to be hard for us to resist. You don't have to go that high, but don't be cheesy.

Gordon Henry:       Got it.

Mark Newsome:      Don't be a tightwad. You got to know, "How much can I really afford? What does this customer worth?" And then put yourself on the other side and say, "If this offer was in front of me, would I take it?" If the answer's no, go back to the drawing board.

Gordon Henry:       We just have a few minutes left, Mark. This has been awesome, and I just want to ask you one or two quick questions before we cut out. First of all, what does the future look like for Mark Newsome? What's your next steps in your business? Where do you see yourself in 6, 12, 18 months?

Mark Newsome:      Excellent question. What I'm focusing on, Gordon is trying to get on as many power podcasts like this as possible, my friend. If you've got a rocking podcast, entrepreneurial based, and you think what we shared would be of value to your tribe, by all means contact me via my blog on the contact page. Let's talk about it. I'd love to be a guest on the show, but to answer your question directly. Here's the term, I heard this, Gordon, they call it power networking. Don't rely so much on what you and I have in your pocket, cash, credit. Try to leverage what the other players have. See, my audience is nowhere near as established, as big as Gordon's. So figure out a way to get on Gordon's show that benefits him and we say, "Let's have this person on because they're offering value to our audience."

                  And one other thing I got to share, Gordon, because I messed this up. Ladies, gentlemen, you've seen these gurus, I don't want to name this one guy's name, but he runs a multi hundred million dollar company called Something Funnels. I think you know who I'm talking about. He has what he calls a book funnel. Now imagine this, he sends out that book, we opt in, give him all our credit card information. He mails out a book. Do you not realize if Gordon and I are on side A and side B of a flyer that's market tested, we insert inside the book and we're selling some low end product because our backend is coaching and consultant $25,000 program, we can say to this particular entrepreneur, "We'll give you 80% of the costs above our hard costs just for putting this insert in your book as a flyer." What does that mean? There are people who are delivering packages via truck. There are companies that take phone orders. Your low cost order giveaway should be one of the bonuses you offer them to offer to their crew, and you can do more business, I guarantee it.

Gordon Henry:       Makes sense. Makes sense. Leverage right along, right along. Before I go, I got to ask you, I heard a previous podcast of yours, and I know you're a big sports fan, growing up I know you're a big sports fan. So I want to ask you a quick question. I know you started out on the West Coast, you moved to the northeast, upstate New York, and now you're in Texas, I think you said in the Dallas area, maybe?

Mark Newsome:      About three hours south of Dallas.

Gordon Henry:       Three hours south of Dallas. So who's your favorite sports team now?

Mark Newsome:      You know something, man, you see that there's no more hair on the dome? I don't even... I still love sports, but I don't cheer for any one crew anymore., Gordon. Because the ticker won't take it. So I watch, but I'm not shelling for any one group. No way.

Gordon Henry:       Well, I heard you recount the great story of the Immaculate reception.

Mark Newsome:      Did you have to go there? That is the shame. Young people may not know it, Gordon, but there was a football game between the Oakland Raiders time I lived in Oakland, California and the Pittsburgh Cedar, and to sum it up really quick, Oakland had lost to Pittsburgh the opening game in Pittsburgh on the road. At that time, the Raiders had never lost to the same team in the same season. They make the playoffs, got to go back to Pittsburgh. This is Pittsburgh's first playoff appearance. The late great Frank Harrison was a rookie from Penn State. I followed him in college, thought he was awesome. He gets drafted by the Steelers. Anyway, the point is the last play of the game, Brad Shaw takes the height, scrambles back, the pocket completely collapses. He almost gets tackled. He wrestles away. He throws a bullet right down the middle of the field, Frenchy Fuqua, Charles Fuqua, they call it Frenchy.

                  He was a running back for Steelers. He went to catch the ball. Jack Tatum, strong safety, he came up, they collided. Tatum starts to walk away thinking the game's over. Ball ricochets. All of a sudden the camera goes over like this. A young rookie named Franco Harris picks up that ball maybe six inches from the ground. The crowd starts going crazy. Franco heads down the sideline, Skip Thomas lost the angle. Franco stiff armed him, went into the end zone. The fans poured onto the field like there was gold out there. The short of it is, I don't know if I told this part of the story, Marv Hubbard, who was a running back to the Raiders, number 44, swears as he was coming into that tunnel, he heard the referee get on the phone and said, "How much security can you give me? Because I have to go out here and tell these people this was an illegal play."

                  He said, "That's all?" He hung up the phone. John Madden, Shelly going up and down sign, "What is the call?" Meanwhile, the fans are tearing down the goalposts and all going crazy. The goalposts used to be in the middle of the end zone back then, ladies and gentlemen. That's how far back I go. Anyway, the short of it is the referee comes out and puts his hands up, touchdown. What else is this guy supposed to say?

Gordon Henry:       Absolutely.

Mark Newsome:      The point is, when that play happened, I was so deflated. Emotionally, I just couldn't go there anymore. I said, "Man, I'm done with this." I was a little kid.

Gordon Henry:       I got it.

Mark Newsome:      So that's why I don't... [inaudible 00:40:29].

Gordon Henry:       That's hilarious. Well, thank you for sharing that story. You do an amazing job of recounting the whole atmosphere. That's fantastic.

Mark Newsome:      It's still in there, man.

Gordon Henry:       Fantastic.

Mark Newsome:      Last thing, Gordon, let me share this one last thing since I've already dated myself. Ladies and gentlemen, when I was a kid, it was a Saturday morning cartoon that came on. I'm sure if you go to YouTube and put it in, you can find, it's called H.R. Pufnstuf. The cartoon was wacky and goofy, but here's what I loved about that Saturday morning show. The theme song had this one line, Gordon, to this day I live by that and I hope some of you will adopt it too. The guy says, "Can't do a little because I can't do enough." That's it my friend. That's the serving mentality. Start serving your audience, your tribe, and you won't have to worry about competition.

Gordon Henry:       Well, Mark, this has been a fantastic conversation. Thank you so much for joining. And one last time, tell people where to go to find you.

Mark Newsome:      They have two places. You can go to spotify.com, put in the Marketing Minute. That's my podcast. And even though I don't have any updated episode, there's a ton of them in there. Anyway, you'll see the Marketing Minute, Mark Newsome, M-A-R-K N-E-W-S-O-M-E, or you can come to my cyber home. You, Y-O-U, canmarketonlinenow.com. If you have a retail furniture store, retail jewelry store, I'd love to help your business blow up.

Gordon Henry:       Fantastic.

Mark Newsome:      Please reach out to me.

Gordon Henry:       All right, Mark, well, thanks again for coming on the show. We're excited to share all of this with our audience and your audience. And I want to thank our producer, Tim Alleman and our coordinators, Diette Barnett, Daniel Huddleston. They do a great job for us, and if you enjoyed this podcast, please tell your colleagues, friends and family to subscribe and please leave us a five star review. We'd really appreciate it helps us in the rankings. Small business runs better on Thryv. Get a free demo with thryv.com/pod and check out our new free product command center at thrive.com. Until next time, make it a great week.

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