Building Direct, Action-Oriented Account-Based Marketing Programs For Leading Advertising Agencies with CEO Peter Levitan on Episode #0237

Peter Levitan [0:00]
Hi, I’m Peter Levitan, I run Peter Levitan and company and you are listening to EA Interviews.

Intro [0:07]
EA interviews, Episode 237. inspiration, transformation, success stories and the imperfect action round seven days a week. Join Mario Fachini for today’s Expert Authority Effect Interview.

Mario Fachini [0:20]
Do you want to get your company out there? Do you want to create more brand awareness? Do you want more people that know about your services? Well, I’m super excited to have Peter Levitan on the show today. He’s an author, speaker and CEO coach to help you grow your business. I’m gonna bring them up right after we thank our sponsor.

Sponsor – Free Business Book Publishing Course [0:41]
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Mario Fachini [0:56]
Here he is. Ladies and gentlemen, Peter Levitan. Peter, how are you feeling today?

Peter Levitan [1:00]
I’m groovy.

Mario Fachini [1:02]
I like that word. Also, I have not heard it in a while. But it’s a good one.

Peter Levitan [1:07]
We need to go backwards sometimes to go forwards.

Mario Fachini [1:10]
I agree. Well, I’m glad you’re here today. Because I know you’re a wealth of knowledge. And why would you say PR and advertising is so important for companies

Peter Levitan [1:20]
When you got to get the word out. And I’m going to say I’ll maybe say this more than once during this conversation, it is even more difficult to get the word out about your business, your product,existence of blogs, podcasts, it’s very difficult. So advertising works, because you can target people and get them to know who you are and what you’re selling.

Mario Fachini [1:44]
What do you think most companies are doing wrong when it comes to the PR and advertising side of things?

Peter Levitan [1:50]
I know, they wake up in the morning and say I want to be unignorable and it’s a word I stole from a great agency in Canada. So let’s think about what unignorable means. It means that people are going to pay attention to you and I always say what is the alternative and that’s ignorable, and it’s,, I think it’s an objective very few companies actually utilize, let me use a huge company Apple as an example. You cannot ignore Apple. And there are reasons.

Mario Fachini [2:18]
What do you think those reasons are?

Peter Levitan [2:20]
Well, obviously, there’s a brand, there was a personality, this is something a lot of companies lack. They don’t really have a personality or a leader that can get out front. And it’s not that it’s easy. But let’s just go with personality. Just the idea, let’s think of Geico, who woke up one day and said, You know, we’re like a lizard. And it’s hard to ignore anything Geico does. So they decided that they’re going to be on a girdle. And if you think about the insurance business, all of the other major insurance companies kind of follow. They’re all doing kind of wacky, crazy advertising. And you can’t do it just to be wacky and crazy, but they’re getting their messages across they want to be unignorable.

Mario Fachini [3:02]
Now, would you when you talk about Steve Jobs and Apple? How important do you think the personality pieces versus the brand?

Peter Levitan [3:12]
Well, you have to sell the brand. And you know, there are guys, I’ll use an example, Gary Vaynerchuk, some of your audience may know of him Vaynerchuck, and Gary is a personality, he is not really selling his brand as much as he’s selling his personality. And he’s quite successful. So he’s the best example I have of right now of a guy that is selling personality versus a brand that we can turn that around. But essentially, when you have a spokesperson, a CEO, somebody who’s great and compelling, it just helps to drive the business forward. And most people are not either good at it or are not super comfortable at it. I’ve been lucky in my career that I’ve worked with some great people who can do that.

Mario Fachini [3:55]
Do you think it’s somewhere that people should be starting? If they’re the first 5, 10 years in business? Do you think they should be starting trying to develop that personality, the brand or do you think it should be something else?

Peter Levitan [4:11]
Well, today, I think that it’s very important to have a personal brand. And again, I want to be very cautious here. Not everybody knew that. I mean, I’ve got clients in manufacturing that are not as savvy as my advertising agency owner type clients. But I think that you can work through it. And if you think it’ll help your brand, and I think you know, I more than think I know that brand differentiation is critical. We’re all too similar. A lot of people are doing the same thing. And personality is one of the major drivers. Can you make that happen? You’re a little bit born with it. I was lucky to grow up in New York City, which forced me to be outgoing in many ways. I think there’s enough information on YouTube channels, even watching a show like yours. Will people get an idea what it is like to have a personality and how important it is., I mean got a great tie. So, you know, let’s go with the tie today.

Mario Fachini [5:04]
Well, I do appreciate that. And, yeah, it’s always interesting because branding, I mean, I believe it’s important. And I know it adds that element that not every business has. And I think everyone should have a brand. But I also feel like in May, I might be wrong. But would you agree that some people early on, they’re trying to do too much, too quick? I think that might be a good way of saying it.

Peter Levitan [5:35]
Well, there’s definitely an issue of too much. I was working with a client this morning. And this client has a 40 page PowerPoint deck, talking about their business development program is super smart people, fantastic, very deep. And I said, Look, guys, can you get it down to five pages? If you can get your plan on one page, you’re in good shape, right? Keeping it simple. Stupid is one of my great mottos. I didn’t invent it, but it works. I think simplicity is important. Now, hopefully I’m answering your question. But it’s the goal of being unignorable and keeping your message simple, and people will hear you. The idea is to be different. And a lot of people don’t really have that as a goal. I mean, if you remember, I hate to keep using Apple’s example, and set a different campaign because they were up against Microsoft. And let’s face it, they were certainly different from Microsoft.

Mario Fachini [6:30]
Yeah. And I think you’re doing a great job answering it because I didn’t want to specifically say it or lead the question, if you will. But to the point of doing too much too soon, like you’re saying everyone feels more comfortable doing the 40, 50 page document than distilling it down. Because anyone can go on forever, but it takes. I think you need to have some sort of time under your belt, whether it’s a few weeks, or at least enough thought put into it maybe times the bad analogy. But I see a lot of companies that just they’re like, we need to build this brand, like to your point Gary Vee, we need to build this whole empire, I go, why not get your first 10 clients, your first 100, your first 1000, whatever the case may be, depending on the industry, but it’s like they’re just trying to break off this thing and be this take 20 what takes us 1020 years to develop in the first year or two. And it takes time to develop, I just feel.

Peter Levitan [7:34]
It’s good to have goals, it’s good to be aggressive, assertive, whichever word you prefer. On the other hand, you need to be a little bit patient. There are so many gurus on the internet right now. It’s not so much to get rich, quick, but it’s a side hustle. This is a new term for the past five or so years. Start a side hustle while you’re working for your company, and you know, get rich and make $5,000 a month and then you can switch over and you know, quit your job and start all over again. It’s not that easy. And the smart guys out there give you the tools. But they’ll also tell you this isn’t easy stuff. I’ve never seen anybody not work to get to where they are. And I think Gary Vaynerchuk is an example. I mean, just think of those two guys, Steve Jobs and Gary Vaynerchuk. Both very successful personalities. Both work very hard,it doesn’t come easy. That’s a song I think.

Mario Fachini [8:28]
Yeah. And to your point with the personality, because, again, instead of just focusing on the clients or customers going, how can we serve them better? which is part of your brand? You know, do you have a brand of excellence? Or do you have a brand of mediocre I mean, that’s a huge thing that goes into it, instead of actually selling, not selling, instead of just serving the clients and being known for a good service or something. It’s like, let’s do all these bells and whistles. I know one of the things with logo design and identity. You know, if you can’t do a logo in black and white, it doesn’t matter what colors you throw on it. Same with this. I mean, I get compliments all the time on the colors on the show, and this and that and I’m appreciative. Don’t get me wrong, I put a lot of time, energy and money into it. But at the essence, I could strip this whole thing down. And you can see it in the first 10 episodes, the content is still strong, and the essence of it is still strong. What would you say to someone who wants to bulk up their content and bulk up? They’re just their services? Where can we start? Like, you know if it was 100 years ago, and we didn’t have internet and all this other stuff? How did those companies succeed? What would you say to one of those companies that wants to just get right to the core?

Peter Levitan [9:44]
Well, I’ll say a few things. One is that content development is difficult to adjust even trying to develop content. So that’s number one. Number two today it’s very difficult to break through the clutter. The clutter is unbelievable. I mean there are just So many people trying to get your attention. You know, it’s very, very difficult. The question is, you know how to do it. And I think you pay very smart marketers to help you do that. That’s one of the reasons. I’m not gonna say I’m a super smart marketer, but it’s the reason I get hired. Content is interesting, because it can be accelerated, it can be reused. Again, I was talking to a client morning, they’re going to do a podcast, which can be turned into a transcript, which can be turned into a blog post, which can be put on LinkedIn, it can be cut up into videos that can create videos from it, we have to amplify what we do otherwise, you’ll lose your mind. I’m a one person operation, the agency I was talking to is 200 people, and even they have trouble. So I said, look, everybody, let’s all calm down. I’m not trying to do everything. But when you do something, how can we amplify it? How can we cut it up and put it into different programs? I didn’t invent this. This has been ongoing for a while. But it’s again, I think that people have to realize that they have to think strategically, and also start worrying about their time, because you know, you also have to do business. So it’s not just content. I mean, you have to make a living. It is complicated.

Mario Fachini [11:17]
I want to ask you, I don’t expect you to name them as well, you shouldn’t. But the 200 plus company, what are some typical issues you see with large companies such as that?

Peter Levitan [11:31]
Well, again, I’m like a, I always say to people, I’m like a cancer doctor. I mean, nobody comes to me if they’re super healthy, and they’re not sick. So the kinds of companies I work with are companies that want to accelerate and craft their business development strategy. And over time, well, I started out working for clients like General Mills, or British Airways, and so forth. Now I work with agencies, but all of us I’m sort of other companies are kind of sneaking in and asking me to help them. The greatest issue, I think is, the people at the top have to want to be sales oriented. You can make things but if people are not buying it, you’ve got a problem. So the issue with a lot of companies, I think, is they don’t make business development, one of their core strengths, they just don’t get it. And again, I want to be cautious. These are the kinds of people that come to me, they’re not coming to me because they’re healthy. They’ve got a problem, right?

Mario Fachini [12:28]
So it goes back to those core strengths that like you’re talking about, you can have all the bells and whistles in the world, but if you have a problem internally,it is just gonna think what is the implode?

Peter Levitan [12:39]
Yeah, I mean, look, it’s very simple. In general, most companies have the vibrations and the goals and objectives and the style come from the top. And I realized there are companies with, you know, 1000s of people, but still, I mean, we know who are the great CEOs, and they drive the company. And it works. And if the guys leading the company are not oriented towards and this is my world, towards sales, it’s going to be a problem. And you know, we see a thing with a lot of companies’ sales on one side of marketing is on the other it’s insanity. It really should be one group of people all trying to do what they wake up in the morning doing. And this includes people that want to start a one person internet business selling socks. I mean, this isn’t rocket science. It works and cuts across all types of businesses, one person to 1000 people sell stuff,

Mario Fachini [13:34]
What would you say is the difference between advertising, marketing and sales?

Peter Levitan [13:43]
Well said. that’s a very good question. Because to me they meld. Often, you’ll see in a company, the marketing people are the ones that do advertising public relations, get the word out, get the messaging out, think about the website, and so forth. And they’re over here, even doing pay per click advertising on Google, and they’re driving people to the sales group. And then you have this other group of people that are receiving incoming inquiries or leads. And sometimes there, both of these groups are not talking, they’re not talking about the same objectives, a sales guy gets a lead and goes, where did this come from? Why or why is this person contacting me? So the marketing group has to make sure that they’re aligned with sales in terms of the type of customer that they’re looking for? It’s not just getting leads, for example. It’s getting the kind of lead that makes sense for the company. So when they don’t talk, and I’ve seen this often, there’s a disconnect, and it’s a very expensive disconnect.

Mario Fachini [14:43]
And how much would you say, if you were to add $1 amount to that it could cost a company for just not having the communication or having that conversation?

Peter Levitan [14:55]
Well, there’s the labor cost. There’s a time cost, there’s an opportunity cost. These are the kinds of costs that you’re seeing. Labor is obvious, you have people getting paid a salary, and they’re let’s say, they’re not functioning at, I don’t know what the optimum is, let’s call it 80%. In terms of sales, they’re not selling the right stuff. And I think the opportunity, the loss of an opportunity is underestimated by companies. If there’s a market out there that you should be talking to, and selling to, and you’re not, and it’s relatively, it’s an easier than more difficult sale, then you’ve lost an opportunity. And that’s what a CFO, COO and CEO, marketing director should be aiming towards. Easier said than done.

Mario Fachini [15:40]
Very good expert authority insight, though, because if you’re not doing they could be you know, limitless like, you’re saying the opportunity cost is huge. But, again, I don’t ever like to lead people on and be like, yeah, do these three things, it’s going to happen overnight, to you to our point earlier, you know, keep it simple. But, you know, there’s no magic bullet, you know, like you’re saying right now, again, easier said than done. I’m glad you’re sharing the framework. But I’m also glad you’re…

Peter Levitan [16:09]
A part of this is figuring out which your audience ,your market wants to hear, again, it’s rudimentary, but I’ll give you an example. I’m talking to this company this morning. And I said, Hho can you own quote unquote, the category? How can you be a category leader in this one specific category that they’re working in. And my suggestion to them was to do low cost research, we can’t do you know, we don’t do a lot of man on the street research at the moment, mask on the street, that would not quite be as interesting as it used to be. But there’s a tool I push people towards, it’s called Google surveys. And you can use the Google universe, which is like almost everyone on the planet, to run surveys and research. And if it’s compelling research, your target market will want to hear it and pay attention to it. And they’ll be interested in what you have to say. And you can do that every month. So there are a lot of things going on there. I’m a huge fan of research, it makes a lot of sense. And people pay attention to it. And you can do it at a very low cost.

Mario Fachini [17:13]
That’s a great point. Because when you have those, when you have that research, when you have the numbers, when you have the actual facts, you can act on it. And it’s not just oh, I think someone would like this, or I think someone would appreciate that. You know, there’s a big difference from arbitrary to empirical.

Peter Levitan [17:30]
Yes. And, and we’re all starved for wealth, a starve for time. Yeah, I guess we’re starved for time where with so much going on, if somebody gives you something useful, you will pay attention to them, there’s a value proposition here, give people something that helps them and they will pay attention. I always used to say that if somebody wasn’t interested in my brilliance, then I would move on to the next customer kind of deal. But in most cases, you know, that’s just me. In most cases, people are interested in information that will drive their business forward, and they will continue to pay attention to you over the long haul, if you provide that information. So let me use you as an example. I think you’re close to 200 podcasts. Is that right?

Mario Fachini [18:15]
Just over now.

Peter Levitan [18:17]
Just over. Okay. I mean, that’s miraculous. I mean, that’s an incredible amount of information. And I’m sure you’re not doing this for your health, although talking to you must be a wonderful experience for you. You’re doing it because it’s a huge amount of content that people find interesting and valuable. And that’s how it works. So whether it’s a podcast or a blog post, or research, something that adds to the target market, to the recipient will return, will deliver a high return on investment. And that’s really what it’s about. That’s marketing, if you can have a high ROI, you win.

Mario Fachini [18:55]
I love that you’re sharing that great expert authority effect insight. And I want to ask you about your beginning, because how did you get in this? Why did you choose this over anything else you could have?

Peter Levitan [19:08]
Well, I journey you know, I’m not 27 any more. So my first job was as a professional photographer in San Francisco. And I had clients like Mondavi and MasterCard, it’s every magazine when I was in my early 20s. And I realized at that point, a couple of things. One, I didn’t want to be a photographer anymore, or sanitize, because I would not have gotten those jobs had I not learned how to do at least in those days, very early rudimentary sales. So my world has been at least three or four companies that I started myself. I also spent 16 years at the world’s largest agencies. So I know big corporate and I know how to start businesses. I can tell you that if you have the right product, the right time or the right service it works. Today I do consulting, because I sold an advertising agency seven, eight years ago. And people said, Hey, can you help me? And I said, sure, let’s do it. And I am to a certain extent a nomad, a digital nomad. I can work from anywhere. And I live in Mexico. But in the good old days, like it’s in January. I know we want to be timeless on podcasts, but it’s been a few months, people got an airplane. But I used to be able to work from any hotel room anywhere in the world.

Mario Fachini [20:32]
Yeah, and that’s the great thing about technology nowadays, you know, the last couple of decades. None of this is new. Some people approached me and they’re like, oh, my gosh, you’re you’re live streaming the show. I’m like, this is nothing new. We’ve watched the Olympics for how many years, it’s the same thing. But what’s cool about it is, anyone can be doing it now. It’s not costing $1,000 a second to broadcast it over 28 or 56k dial up or the early days of cable modems where you could barely get a one Meg file transferred. It’s limitless, what’s at our fingertips now, which I think is great. And to your point of working from anywhere, there’s no reason not to, I mean, as long as you can get the result. And you’re competent, you know, you can stay on a schedule and work with the team.I got team members for EA Interviews all around the world. I like looking for the best of the best people who are going to support and can capture that vision, not just, I don’t want someone who’s just going to punch the clock from nine to five at night. It doesn’t even resonate. It actually irritates my personality, to be honest,

Peter Levitan [21:44]
There are people and companies around the world that are working 24 seven, to help us give you a couple of examples. I get my transcripts done by a company. And while I’m sleeping, they’re making transcripts and podcasts. I have in the Soviet Union, and that helps me do virtual voiceovers. I type it into their application and it creates a computer voice.

Mario Fachini [22:17]
Oh, that’s cool.

Peter Levitan [22:19]
Yeah, they’re there. That’s an interesting come. I’m trying to think of their name. I can’t right now. If people listen to a couple of my podcasts, they’ll hear an AI voice talking. And it’s a day where I just don’t want to do the intro to the podcast. And I have these strange things and you can pick the language. Do you want an English sounding person and Australian sounding person? You could even do it in Russian, though, can translate into Russian, which is not necessarily a huge market for me. But it’s funky and interesting. And again, I’ll go back. I tried to be unignorable and it’s slightly unignorable. Tell me if you’d like me to mention one other thing, which is kind of funny.

Mario Fachini [23:00]
Oh, please, please don’t wait. We got time.

Peter Levitan [23:03]
Okay. All right. I work with a company and anyone can work with this company. I’ll name them Cameo, as in chemical. Yes. And you pay celebrities or comedians. I use a person that has delivered a couple of people actually have delivered videos to me. One is Donald Trump saying I’m fantastic. I’ve got a couple of those. I have Mahatma Gandhi from India, saying that Peter Levitan is fantastic and I just had someone do a Bharat piece. So I’ve got Bharat saying you should work with Peter Levitan. And these are 60, 70, $80. Now you can also I think, at Tyson to say something, that’s a different story. That’s borrowed interest, but I love that I can get impersonators to be Donald Trump who says I am the smartest person in the world, except also for Peter Levitan. McDonald, and as you know, a short period of time might be doing those as well to get him on cameo.

Mario Fachini [24:07]
When I heard about that, there’s, you know, I saw the entire cast of the office, I think was the very first people I got to add from Facebook or who knows where or whatever. But yeah, it’s funny when you can get any one. And again, not just being able to livestream, not just being able to work from anywhere, but you can literally get anyone in the world. It’s funny that it’s so easy to access them now. Because you can there’s all these social, a lot of them really are run by those people. Facebook pages or something different, but I found with Instagram and Twitter, it’s usually the person running doing it. And especially if they do live streams. They’re probably not hiring a stunt double to do their live stream. You know what I mean? They might have someone automating something on Facebook or LinkedIn, but I found with Twitter and Instagram, it’s pretty easy to cut through the clutter. Like you’re saying and with a cameo, there’s all the people that you know, 20, 50, 100, 200 bucks or whatever, and you get access to them. That’s miraculous, you’ve never had that ever that I can think of, I remember writing actual letters in the mail, back in the day from people in the 90s that I saw on TV and what you know, this was writing them letters and stuff. And it’s surreal now that some of them are on the list to be on the show, and I’m half wondering if they ever got it, because I was reaching out to people 20, 30 years ago, and it’s just cool. Now you don’t need to go through all those hoops, but you can still get access to them.

Peter Levitan [25:42]
I’ll say that one of the most underutilized tools in 2020, 21. Moving forward is mail. And we can kind of get worried and say, Are people getting mail if you send it to their corporate headquarters, but it is getting forward, getting a letter now a number 10 envelope with a stamp on it, to me that kind of looks personalized. It’s like a Christmas present.We’re so digitally oriented, that if you can break the mold, and send something to somebody, I use a company in the UK that creates sort of mini newspapers for me and I use it actually for my sort of photography. And when I go to a place like India and photograph people I make a newspaper out of it and send it to them. You could use this for your sales program. The goal is just to know how you can be different because the problem with things like blogs, and I started very early is that when I started people, I will find it’s very difficult now to get found. Because it’s just this, the amount is overwhelming.

Mario Fachini [26:48]
Yeah, like you’re saying all the clutter out there.

Peter Levitan [26:50]
On paper. Yeah, so does paper. No one’s gonna be paper. Send them a present. If Christmas is coming. You know, I think…

Mario Fachini [27:01]
One of the things I tell my author clients and audiences, whether they have a book or not all the more reason to do a business book. You can send it in the mail, and they can physically hold it in their hand. You can write a note in it. I mean, if you’re going to pay for direct mail pay for copies of your book. I mean, that’s a huge one.

Peter Levitan [27:23]
Absolutely.

Mario Fachini [27:24]
Handwritten letters are also huge.

Peter Levitan [27:26]
I don’t think anyone… Yeah, go forward, send him a T shirt. You know, be creative. We know that there are companies that make the New York word “ tchotchke you know little things come in the mail with your logo on it. Those breakthroughs and they used to break through I think their breakthrough even more now because people are not getting things. I mean, it’s just all the only thing people are getting is almost like a joke is takeout food.

Mario Fachini [28:02]
Yeah, I’m glad you’re talking about this because so many people forget it.

Peter Levitan [28:05]
Forget that you can actually get the lift. Again, I want to say it’s like any Christmas presents. Who gets mail? I mean, it’s so weird, you know, you get your ballot in the mail. Okay, now, let’s get past that. Everybody we know that works when most of us think it works. And now let’s send something else. I mean, just try to break the mold, even if you’re a small company, and all factories make lead paper. I don’t know if they make lead pipes anymore. They make pipes. You can break out of it does work.

Mario Fachini [28:46]
Absolutely. I’m really glad you’re mentioning this, because everyone was doing everything physically. And then it was like, email came out 20 some years ago, whatever 25 don’t fact check me on whoever’s listening, but catch the concept. You get the email, and then everyone’s like, oh, my gosh, it’s so much cheaper. So they stopped doing the direct mail. And everyone’s like, oh, you know, emails not working anymore. So send something. And the cool thing is no one’s doing a very small percentage other than us doing direct mail. It’s a wide open playing field. Like you said, who gets stuff in the mail anymore? And if they do it some stupid advertisement a bill or that’s basically about it. You send them something good in the mail. I mean, why do you think Amazon’s doing so well? Oh, good,my orders here are some fun stuff.

Peter Levitan [29:37]
Yeah.

Mario Fachini [29:38]
Let’s make the mail fun again.

Peter Levitan [29:41]
I was talking to a client this week. And I told them that I had done some research on positioning for my company, what’s the next thing we should talk about? And I used there I wanted to do the research and ask the market what they thought and let’s say I had 50-50 potential clients on my list, right? And that’s important to have a good tight list. We sent them a paper and a digital questionnaire and told them if they answered they would get an Amazon gift card. Very simple.

Mario Fachini [30:12]
Nice.

Peter Levitan [30:15]
And you know, what everyone, because it was as much research as it was business development, everyone got an Amazon gift card. Everybody was a winner, because I wanted those 50 people to love us. And as it turned out, we got Harrahs Casino as a client. Because the client, we said to the client, thank you, the the marketing director, thank you so much for answering our questionnaire, your gift card. And she called me up and said, who are you? Who are you people? So that was just one very specific example of breaking through clutter and getting my agency allows because a casino was a client. And I love that story, because all it took was a $10 amazon gift card. And I got to talk to the marketing director of Harris, who said, who are you, works?

Mario Fachini [31:01]
Wow, that’s a great story. Well, I have one more question for you before we thank our sponsor, and come back for the imperfect action round and still with the Wheel of Whatever. So we’re gonna see where this thing ends up today. Alright, so my question for you is what is a company you would love to work with that you haven’t yet?

Peter Levitan [31:28]
I’ve never sold cars. So I think the idea of selling cars is interesting. Because here’s why one they spend money. Two, they have to try to create some form of us to certainly differentiate up Ford Bronco in the 70s. It’s now probably worth $150,000. Everybody wanted I should say everybody wants to form or just relaunched the bronco. And I think it would be just fabulous to sell it, I think to actually to a certain extent that they’ve sold out because the market wants it. So marketing products that sell out is its own unique problem, right? You know, because you want to make sure two years from now. So I’d love to sell Ford Broncos. Plus I’d get one for free.

Mario Fachini [32:17]
That would be great. And I did notice that they just did bring them back. And I remember those from years ago. So it’s interesting to see what disappears, then comes back. And to your point of the personality and the brand. I don’t think the bronco or Ford Nessus, Henry Ford is the personality that strikes out to me, but that was 100 some plus years ago, but the brand of the bronco even when you take it away I’ve noticed when companies take it away for whatever reason, the customers just they’re like, absolutely not. We’re not having this. You got 12 months to bring it back basically kind of thing.

Peter Levitan [32:56]
Right. Well, the Bronco, they messed it up, you know, they took this great looking box, and then they turned into they wanted to make it a little bit sweeter and nicer. And if you think about the bronco brand, unfortunately, one of the essences of the bronco brand is O.J. driving from the police or you know the chase on the highway for hours for those of you and if you don’t know what I’m talking about oj in the bronco. Just go go search on YouTube, O.J. Simpson in his Bronco for an hour and a half driving down the LA freeway. I’m not sure that was a good commercial for the bronco. Branding sometimes happens to you as they say it just happens. I won’t say the word but it happens. So life can be like that, right?

Mario Fachini [33:42]
Absolutely. Well, we’re gonna thank our sponsor, we’re gonna come back for the Imperfect Action Round.

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Mario Fachini [35:20]
And we are back with the Imperfect Action Round. Peter, are you ready to take imperfect action?

Peter Levitan [35:26]
I am so imperfect.

Mario Fachini [35:28]
Alright, these are 60 second or less answers. I got a couple questions for you. The first one is what is the fastest path to the profits?

Peter Levitan [35:40]
Well, I hate to say this, but controlling your costs. I mean, it sounds insane. But I would say one of them is controlling costs. And the other is saying something that is more unique and interesting than the next guy. Cuz you’re rarely alone. Even if you sell socks, you know, there are companies that make a lot more money than others have cool socks, I’ll use that as a metaphor.

Mario Fachini [36:05]
Nice. Number two, what is the biggest problem you see your prospects making and the fastest way for them to fix it?

Peter Levitan [36:12]
Well, it’s getting the attention of your market, whoever you are, and that is a problem that many, many people just cannot solve. So I suggest, some of the solutions are, as I mentioned earlier, solutions, skim ideas, actually, that one, you know, spend a half a day looking at what everybody else does to the success of the successful people and steal from them. There’s a great book I love called Steal Like An Artist. I’ve been doing that for years.

Mario Fachini [36:43]
All right. Number three, what is the best way to maximize customer lifetime value?

Peter Levitan [36:51]
Well, you used the word earlier. And I know there are critical problems with email. But if you have an email list, and you can mark it out to them, obviously you can do things on LinkedIn. And there are other tools, but I am still a fan of email marketing, I may only get 20, 30% opens when I send out an email. But that still 20 to 30% of the few 1000 people that are on my mailing list and it works.

Mario Fachini [37:20]
Excellent. You had mentioned one, but feel free to mention it again with any others. What are some books you’d recommend to an expert authority world that have made a difference in your life?

Peter Levitan [37:31]
Well, I would say that. Here, I’ll make it simple for people because my list would be credibly long. Go on Amazon search on business books, I would say to people spend two or three hours trying to resolve a question. So while I can tell, I could probably name a bunch of books. If my brain worked. And if you know, I wasn’t thinking more about cocktail hour than books the moment I’d say go online. And for example, just search on best B E S T search on best business books. The word best is a great one, best car, best book, best everything, best movie, best Netflix series. It’s a great word. And there are so many people that want to tell you what is best. But I would say, search on Amazon because Amazon will, you know, essentially deliver a quantitative look at whatever subject you’re trying to figure out. Alright, by the way, side note, I know he’s sort of strange these days. But I’m reading the Biography of Woody Allen. Just seeing how Woody went from nobody in Brooklyn to making movies is very interesting. I think creative books, books about creative people that make it are in some cases, some of the best business books.

Mario Fachini [38:56]
Excellent. Well, I appreciate you for sharing that insight. Where would you like people to learn more?

Peter Levitan [39:04]
Well, I tried to keep life simple. My website is called PeterLevitan l e v i t a n.com. And I’ll tell people that I’m putting something up in a couple of weeks, which is a guide. And you know, you’re the last person that needs to hear this as a guide to how do you do virtual meetings and sales calls? And because I get asked this question a lot. So I’m interviewing four experts, including a neuroscientist about how the brain works on zoom.

Mario Fachini [39:33]
Oh, interesting. Yeah, there’s so many people that, you know, zoom has been around for ages. It’s going to be around for ages. And it sounds like a great resource because so many people use it nowadays, but it’s not going anywhere. And unless you’re in video. I don’t think you’re going to be looking at it as the way you could be because if you’re using it as a conferencing thing. People are just like as long as they get a signal and they get a picture, they’re like, oh, I’ve mastered it. And any type of live stream software, any type of web conferencing, any type of anything video related is so much more than that. They’re just conduits. So I’m glad you’re making that available.

Peter Levitan [40:23]
Well, the other thing, I didn’t say this earlier, people should write books. And you know, as you’re the man so you can help people do that. And you’re not going to write a business book to make money selling the book, but you’ll make money using the book for sales. You can quote me on that.

Mario Fachini [40:43]
Well, I appreciate it. And I just might add, it doesn’t hurt that it’s getting recorded live stream. So thank you for that.

Peter Levitan [40:52]
Cool, my pleasure.

Mario Fachini [40:54]
All right. Well, I’ve enjoyed this. Thank you so much, Peter. I hope you enjoy the rest of your day. And thank you for sharing with the expert authority world.

Peter Levitan [41:05]
I appreciate it. Thank you very much for having me on.

Mario Fachini [41:07]
Alright, expert authority world. We have another great episode here today. I’ll see you tomorrow. Have a great day. God bless.

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www.EAInterviews.com [41:49]
Hey, thanks for listening to today’s episode. I hope you got a lot out of it. I know I sure did. If you haven’t done so already, I invite you to subscribe to the show. And also be sure to check out EA interviews comm for complete show notes, the full interview video experience, links to the resources we mentioned in more. Have a blessed day and I’ll see you tomorrow.