Building Exceptional Teams & Creating High Performance Cultures with Founder of Ugly Mug Marketing Wayne Mullins on Episode #0231

Wayne Mullins [0:00]
Hey, this is Wayne with Ugly Mug Marketing and you are listening to EA Interviews.

Intro [0:05]
EA interviews, Episode 231 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 [0:19]
Do you want more likes? Do you want more interaction with your social media? Do you want your marketing to actually work once? You know in your lifetime, because there’s that old saying of I know my advertising is working, but I don’t know which half? You know, I believe that was from Ogilvy 50-50. Marketing is something that is absolutely crucial and needed for your company. But do you have a grasp on it? I’m excited to have the CEO and founder of Ugly Mug Marketing, Wayne Mullins on today’s show, because we’re going to be talking about the only thing that really matters. And that’s the results. I’m going to bring them up right after we thank our sponsor.

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Mario Fachini [1:15]
Here he is. Ladies and gentlemen, Wayne Mullins. Wayne, how are you feeling today?

Wayne Mullins [1:20]
I’m great. Mario, thank you so much for having me on.

Mario Fachini [1:22]
I’m excited for you to be here. Because marketing is one of those things I feel that everyone knows they need. But no one really knows what they’re doing. Unless you know what you’re doing. Would you agree?

Wayne Mullins [1:34]
I do agree. It’s such a simple concept yet so profound. At the same time.

Mario Fachini [1:39]
Why do you think so many people struggle with it?

Wayne Mullins [1:43]
You know, Mario, I think honestly, big part of the struggle has to do with the fact that most people confuse marketing and advertising, they really don’t understand the difference between the two. And so until you understand the differences between those two things, you can’t do either of those successfully.

Mario Fachini [2:01]
I want you to tell the expert authority world, what is the difference between advertising and marketing?

Wayne Mullins [2:06]
So advertising and marketing, the differences would be this advertising is merely one small piece or one component of marketing. And when most people think of marketing, they only think of advertising. But we at Ugly Mug Marketing kind of like to define marketing as a very simple definition. But your ability to both attract and to keep a customer. That is it in its simplest form, it’s those two functions. But when you hear that definition, most people don’t think of that last half, right? They don’t think about the keeping part, as actually part of their marketing. And they only think of the attraction side. So once you get clear about those two things, that both attracting and keeping everything else then can get easier.

Mario Fachini [2:52]
What’s the importance of keeping them and not just getting them?

Wayne Mullins [2:56]
Great question. And it’s obviously easier to resell people who already know you like you and trust you. And when you keep a customer. And when you do it correctly, what we would say is we can turn those customers into evangelists. Evangelists for our brand, evangelists for our product, evangelists for our service. And when your marketing is working correctly, and all in unison, and all kind of under one strategic thing, part of your marketing plan will be some very specific ways that you can convert customers into evangelists for your brand.

Mario Fachini [3:33]
So you’re not talking, you’re not just talking about taking a transactional approach and saying, Hey, we got one, we’re good. You’re talking about finding the right people, keeping them and then having them essentially do the marketing for you.

Wayne Mullins [3:48]
That’s absolutely it, Mario spot on. That’s it. All too often. I think that, as entrepreneurs, as business owners, or even as marketers, we get in this cycle of our job is to find the new customers, bring the new customers in, and then it’s the fulfillment team, to you know, take care of those people. And we’ve moved on to finding the next new people. And I think if we will kind of shift our mindset away from just the attraction side, but into the keeping side, and we begin working with the fulfillment team, we begin working with everything that happens post sell, we can engineer some very specific things to actually do what you just said, turn those people into basically advertisers on our behalf.

Mario Fachini [4:33]
Are you open to sharing some of that because I would love to know what you can do once you get someone because there’s 1,000,001 different ways to help. I would like to say help someone, not just get them and I want to dive into that. But once someone does have someone and they’re like, hey, we chose you, we trust you. We know you, we like you, we want to go with you. What would you advise someone to be doing to keep them longer term instead of just you know transactional?

Wayne Mullins [5:02]
Yeah, so I’ve got a few specific things I’ll mention. But first, let me kind of step back one step, just so we have full context on how we actually get here. And so we use this term called the natural progression. And what the natural progression is Mario is it’s the natural way that every single human being makes buying decisions, and possibly becomes evangelists for a brand. So the way we explain this is if you think of an old analog clock, so a circular clock hanging up on the wall, it’s got the our hand, the minute hand, the second hand, and at the very top, you’ve got the 12 o’clock position. And in the 12 o’clock position, you have what we would call strangers, those are people that you and I believe may be a good fit for our brand. Okay, at the three o’clock position, we have friends, so those are people that at least know about us at this point, they like us a little bit. And then at the six o’clock position, we have customers, that’s the point where the wallet comes out of the pocket, they hand us the money, we fulfill the service, or we deliver the product to them. Now, for most people, again, we just talked about this, but that is kind of the end of the marketing cycle. For us, we like to teach that over here the nine o’clock position is where you have an evangelist. Now, here’s the beautiful thing about this. When you create evangelists, you bypass the entire stranger portion. Because what happens, all of these evangelists go out and tell their friends about you. So that is the natural progression. And the reason I say that it’s the way that people naturally flow through this process is because it really leans very heavily on some kind of human psychology, it leans on selling. And what I mean by that is, when someone’s a stranger out here at the 12 o’clock position, what we have to do to get them to become a friend is they have to know about us common sense, right?

Mario Fachini [6:56]
That’s where some of that advertising might come in.

Wayne Mullins [6:59]
Exactly.

Mario Fachini [7:00]
That’s just out there. Just so you know, so people know you’re out there.

Wayne Mullins [7:05]
Yep. But again, keep in mind, when we think of the natural progression, we think of this frame, the way we advertise to people in these different positions will change based on where we’re trying to move them. What we often find is that people expect too much from their advertising. And what I mean by that is they believe that they can run, go put up one Facebook post, run one campaign, run one radio spot, and magically move people from strangers all the way to customer evangelists for them. And it just doesn’t work that way. So we’ve got to first get them to know about us and get them to like us a little bit. And now their friend, right. They’re interested in what we’re doing. And they’re curious to learn more. Now, the next step to move them from a friend into a customer is one big element. And that is trust. So if you were to think back through your marketing and advertising, the question then becomes up here moving strangers to friends, I need to put things out there that will get people to know about us, which we would recommend starting with customer avatar, right? Yeah, you may be familiar with that. But building out who are the strangers out there? Who are our ideal customers that we believe are out there that we could reach? And then once they become friends, the next step is how do we move these friends? How do we build that trusting relationship so that they believe our product or service, our company, our brand, will actually deliver more value than they get when they pull out their wallet and give us those things? So what yep, go ahead.

Mario Fachini [8:36]
What would you say is a realistic timeframe to move someone through all thes? You got me thinking? I love the clock analogy. You’re moving through it and everything. What is a realistic timeframe to be doing some of this? Because you’re saying people expect too much from their advertising? They’re trying to move on through too quickly. I realize it probably isn’t two, three years. In most business cases, maybe it is, maybe it’s not, but I doubt it takes that long for most companies, especially now. But what would you say is a realistic timeframe or it’s like, can you get them through in a few days, a week, a month? quarter?

Wayne Mullins [9:15]
Yeah, great question, Mario. The answer is it’s going to vary based on industry and the product that you’re selling. And as a general rule, this is not an absolute, but as a general rule, the higher price or the higher ticket items that you have, the longer that process is going to take. Moving strangers to friends, and then friends and the customers. The higher ticket price, the longer that transition takes place. But I think a key distinction is that when you think of your individual advertising pieces and components, you begin thinking, okay, this ad the sole purpose of this ad, is to build trust, right? So we’re communicating to friends, people who know about us, we want to build trust so that we can move them from being a friend into pulling out their wallet and giving us some money. And so it enables us to begin thinking through pieces and components of our advertising in very specific ways. So if my goal is to build trust with someone, I can then tailor my messaging. I can then think through what type of creative should I even be using to move people from that friend into the customer?

Mario Fachini [10:23]
How well do you think people are doing the advertising versus the messaging?

Wayne Mullins [10:29]
Yeah, I think all too often, it kind of gets, I’m here in Louisiana getting thrown into this one big pot, kind of all mixed together. Like we would call gumbo down here, you know, it’s a bunch of ingredients thrown in together. And then we hope that it actually works. And that gumbo tastes good. But the reality is, you have to be strategic. And the very first step in answering that question would be until you are crystal clear about your market, you have no chance of getting the messaging right, until you really understand the pain points, the struggles, the desires. I heard an exercise once that you’ve got to know your ideal customer so well, that you could literally write a page from their journal. In other words, you’ve got to be in their mind so deep, that you understand the things that wake them up at night. Once you do that, the messaging then gets super, super simple, because you can speak directly to them where they are.

Mario Fachini [11:30]
And that’s the avatar you were talking about, or I referred to, as you know, for someone that doesn’t know the term, your ideal customer, your perfect customer, something like that, basically, you know, what is the model of the person that you’re looking to talk to?

Wayne Mullins [11:48]
That’s exactly it. You’re correct.

Mario Fachini [11:51]
So now I have a new question. Because I do want to get in I appreciate the context, because this is just I love the watch analogy, the clock just I’ve never heard that before. That’s fantastic. I do want to know what you recommend to keep people longer term. But now you got me wanting to ask, how do you find the avatar? How do you narrow it down to the point where it’s not just oh, we help everyone? Oh, my gosh, if I hear that one more time? What do you do to help people narrow it down? Because I know everyone’s at different spots. And I’ll be nice, I’ll let you go.

Wayne Mullins [12:28]
Now you’re good. What I would say Mario is this that, you know, when we think of figuring out who that avatar is, or who that ideal customer is, all too often we kind of brush that aside is like this touchy feely exercise, that really doesn’t mean anything like obviously, we need to sell things, we don’t have time to go figure out who’s this typical fake person that we’re trying to reach. But what I can tell you is this, that we’ve now worked with hundreds of companies, hundreds of industries all across the country. And I can tell you, without a doubt, when the business owner, when the marketer takes the time to actually go through and identify that person, it radically transforms everything else that takes place, it makes it so much easier every other step of the process. So that’s my encouragement to those watching those listening to take the time, it’s worth the investment. But the answer to the question is this. Look at your perfect customers that exist now. So if you were to take 100% of your customers, you were to pick out the 20%. So we’re using kind of the pareto principle, the 80-20 rule, the 20%, who you absolutely love doing business with, they love buying your product, they love your service, they tell their friends about it. What are the common characteristics of those people? Do they live in the same area? Do they watch the same TV shows? Do they drive the same type of vehicles? Do they all have similar careers? In other words, are they all in a certain career path? Are they married? Did they have children? You literally go through and you ask yourself all of these questions. And what we’re looking for are the common characteristics of those people.

Mario Fachini [14:14]
You know, you got me thinking, why is Google, Facebook, YouTube, all of them so successful? And it’s because we’re giving them so much information? They know everything about what we like, every single preference. And it sounds like the majority of businesses out there. They don’t even want to find, I mean, you just named 10 or 12 different data points, if you will, where do they live? What do they drive, you know? You know, if people aren’t willing to figure out five to 10? I mean, is there a number you strive for, like, hey, let’s see if we can figure out 25 to 50 different things so that way we can, again, I see it as better serving them because if you’re running an ad that says increase your revenue. Well, I personally rather increase my profit, along with the revenue. But those are two totally different things that one word changes the whole game, as well as every other word you use in your marketing. So I look at it as actually a disservice. If you’re not going that deep with them. It’s like maybe there’s something you don’t know about. Maybe there’s something they don’t know about that you can help them with. You just never had the conversation because they see you as a when really, you have complimentary services.

Wayne Mullins [15:32]
Yeah, no, you’re spot on. And what’s so interesting about the analogy, or the example that you gave Mario is that you mentioned, revenue versus profit. And if we think of those two things, more often than not, when we use those two words we are actually communicating to probably two different audiences. And what I mean by that is, if you were to sit down and you were to run an ad that says, I can help you grow your revenue, that’s going to be appealing to probably people who are maybe newer in business, and who aren’t really thinking all the way through to the bottom line, right? Now, if the other side, you say, I’m gonna work with entrepreneurs or business owners and help them increase their profit margins, you’re now speaking to a slightly different audience, because those words resonate in different ways with those different perspective audiences. So it’s a very great example of when you understand the audience, it even goes down to the specific words you use in each of your advertising pieces.

Mario Fachini [16:33]
Yeah, there’s this great video that I’ve seen. I’m sure you’ve seen it, too. It’s with the blind man in the sign.

Wayne Mullins [16:41]
Yep.

Mario Fachini [16:41]
You know what I’m talking about? I’ll actually put a link in the show notes on EA interviews when this is all done. But for anyone listening right now that you don’t know, watch the video, click the link on the show notes page for this episode, I’m not gonna even ruin it. Because you need to watch it and grab some tissues. I’ll say that. So that’s fair. So now that we have some context for this, I totally just didn’t say anything about that. I’m like, wow, I thought I was going to expand, but it’s really best to watch it. So now that we have some context about this, what are some ways you would advise someone, okay, you’re getting them in? They like you? What are some of the things you do to expand it, so they fall in love with you for years to come and get them, turn them into those evangelists that tell their friends about you? Because I’ve known a lot of people that do marketing and this that the other thing, and it’s like, it really is more focused on just the front end. But the truth is, it’s always better when you’re going long term, at least eyesight, it’s why I tell my clients and advise my audience.

Wayne Mullins [17:52]
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I have no doubt that, if you look around and kind of just survey, even the brands that everyone is watching or listening, that you interact with on a regular basis, chances are the ones that you are the most passionate about, the ones that you’re willing to tell your friends about. They have done some very specific things, probably some intentionally strategic things, to help turn you into an evangelist for their brand. So step one, to answer your question. Step one is, we as marketers, as business owners, must fight this constant battle to always go out and find the next new customer, right? It’s an internal mindset perspective. And we have to work on ourselves to shift that mentality that, you know, it’s not about always finding the next one, it’s about getting the current ones to fall in love with us. I don’t remember the exact quote. So I’m going to roughly paraphrase this, but I believe it was Dale Carnegie, who originally said that all business problems could be solved, if business owners would just spend an hour a day, truly trying to understand the problems that their customers are facing. And so that is really what it’s about, when we truly understand the challenges, the problems that are customer facing, we can then say, Okay, how can we align ourselves? How can we align our products around those things? Now, how do you actually create evangelists? Well, step one is you’re not going to create an evangelist. If they merely like your product, your service or your company, they have to love it. So the very first exercise besides getting your mindset right, that it is a long term, long term game, and that it’s about more than just the sell is this. Sit down and make a list of all the things that your customers can and should reasonably expect from your product or service. So in other words, you’re selling a product, sit down with a piece of paper and write down all the things that that customer can and should expect from that product or service. Step two is, what are some small ways to each of those items on the list that we could one up this? In other words, what are some specific ones besides each of those that you just listed, that we could take from there expectations, and exceed those expectations. So it’s literally looking for little tiny things that can be engineered into the process, that create the love, it’s that attention to the detail of, I understand you, as a customer, I know why you bought our product or service to, you know, either solve this problem or to help you get something that you’re after or for enjoyment, whatever the thing may be. And we understand you so much that we’ve also engineered into this process, some additional things that are unexpected things that are gonna go above and beyond what you expected of our product or service along the way. So that’s the next step in the exercise. And then the final one is this. And this is one that there’s a lot of simple, great examples. But we often again, we’re already back looking for the new customers, we ignore this. And that is we have to create tools that make it easy for our new evangelist to go out and tell their friends about us. So those are the steps, I would say there’s kind of three. One is the mindset two is making a list of what’s expected versus how to exceed those expectations. And then three, making sure we have tools that make it easy for them to share.

Mario Fachini [21:38]
Well, I appreciate you for sharing those. And I really like that last one because I not I don’t know any other CEO or business owner or anyone trying to help people that isn’t looking for referrals. And I’ve seen people put on whole seminars just on referrals. But it seems like so many just missed the ball with it. And then other companies who aren’t trying to push it, it’s just like clockwork, and when you’re saying make it easy, I mean, there’s a classic call to action. You know, everyone’s saying, hey, share my stuff, you know, especially with the show, like show, like, subscribe, click here, sign up. It’s like holy smokes like did you even like the episode? The first 30 seconds, they’re asking them to do all these things, you gave them no value, it makes no sense to me, but the call to action. Now they do like you but is it easy to share? That’s brilliant.

Wayne Mullins [22:31]
Yeah, that’s it. You see it often now with a lot of e-commerce sites. So as soon as you check out very often there will be a pop up that says, hey, share this with your friends and get whatever it is 15% off your next purchase. That’s a great example of you can visually see how that process works. But the question then becomes for other businesses, what are some ways that you can engineer that, right? So if you’re not an e commerce company, what are some things that you can do that make it easy for others to share? So let me just give you one example that we do. And the reason I’m giving this example is not because we’re doing something remarkable or great, but it’s how we as a service provider, created a way that makes it easy for people to share. So when we work with someone, and we build them a website, that process for us, usually is a six to eight weeks, six to eight week process. And when we get done with that process, by that point, they should absolutely love what we’ve created, they should be excited about what we created. But the question becomes, how do they actually, you know, tell their friends about this wonderful new website. So one of the very simple things that we do is we actually create a post on our Facebook page that says, We’re super excited for our friends over at x, y, and z on their brand new website, you can go check it out here. And then what we do is we spend a little bit of money promoting that. So now we have all these people commenting and liking the posting, that’s a beautiful website, congratulations to them. And then it gives them literally they can click one button and share that to their social media if they choose to. So that’s one example of one little tool that is kind of indirect, right? It’s not in direct correlation to the product they bought necessarily, but it gives them an easy way to share.

Mario Fachini [24:26]
And it sounds like you’re putting some ad spend behind it too.

Wayne Mullins [24:32]
Yep, just a little bit. 10 bucks.

Mario Fachini [24:34]
Okay. Have you ever done press releases?

Wayne Mullins [24:39]
We have. Yep, absolutely.

Mario Fachini [24:42]
I’ve used those with my author clients when their book launches. And that’s another way that I wholly recommend, advise, do it. Now whatever word you want to use there. But yeah, that’s great because when it’s on Facebook or on Instagram or on anything, the ability to share it, I’ve noticed even the apps are making it easier to share their own stuff. It used to be like Click, click, click. And I think after two or three, it kind of gets cumbersome, even though you’re literally talking the difference of two seconds versus five. People are just conditioned, would you say? Where do you think the break off is? Do you think people are willing to do five or 10 steps?

Wayne Mullins [25:33]
The answer is yes, maybe. And what I mean by that is, the more you have exceeded expectations, the more hoops they are willing to jump through to share on your behalf. So, you know, one thing that that’s super interesting to think about, as we think about exceeding expectations is this, that expectations are an escalator. So what I mean by that is, if today, we are exceeding expectations by sharing on Facebook, and making a big deal about launching a website, at some point, that becomes expected by every new client who signs with us. So now we’ve no longer exceeded expectations, that has become the expectation. And so, over time, expectations are always moving down the escalator. And so if we are going to create evangelists, for our brands, and for our companies, we must constantly be moving back up the escalator, knowing that today the thing that exceeded expectations tomorrow will become the expectation.

Mario Fachini [26:40]
That’s brilliant. Is there anything you do that you don’t tell people about like a surprise? So that way, it doesn’t become part of the just normal, everyday expectation?

Wayne Mullins [26:58]
Yeah, absolutely. So again, when we think about exceeding expectations, we don’t have to think of like, grandiose, massive things. The best ways to exceed expectations are in the little thing. So I’m just gonna throw out a few things that we do, because I hope that either people can take them and run with them and use them, copy them, or it will inspire other ideas. So when someone comes into our office for the very first time, so maybe they’re coming in to meet with our salesperson, we have a little chalkboard sign that goes out front, and we write on their welcome, and we put their name. So as they’re walking down the sidewalk coming into our business, lo and behold, there’s their name on the sidewalk waiting for them. Another thing that we do is we do a kickoff meeting. So they’ve already signed on the line. They’re an official client of ours. One thing that happens is, we actually send them a goodie bag, and it actually comes from not far from you, Mario up in Ann Arbor, Michigan over from Zingerman’s. We send them a big Zingerman’s goodie bag. So they get that unexpectedly. And then when they do come in for their kickoff meeting, one of the things that we do is we will actually, prior to that meeting, we will kind of in conversation, ask them, what are some of your favorite snacks? What is your favorite candy? When is your birthday, so we kind of run down these lists of questions. And then when they show up for the kickoff meeting, we have their favorite snacks, we have their favorite candy, we have all of that waiting for them at the kickoff meeting. Another little simple thing that we did is we have one of these wheels, kind of like a wheel of fortune. But that’s what’s that word vertical, not horizontal. I get my directions mixed up here, you understand what I’m saying? And on the wheel, we wrote down some prizes, like, you know, a $25 Starbucks gift card, a $25 gift card to a local restaurant. And so there’s like eight or nine different things on this wheel. And at the end of the meeting, they get to spin the wheel and they win whatever they land on. And so sure that costs us a little bit of money. But what it does for them is it creates an experience that they will never forget right? How many business meetings have you been to where you’re working with someone and you go in and there’s all your favorite food laid out for you. And then you can spin a wheel and win something right? It creates a remarkable experience for them.

Mario Fachini [29:29]
That is fantastic. And I’m glad you’re doing it with people in person because when I first started when I first went full time in business, I was giving all my clients gift gift albums they could pick out you know, whatever they want from it and there was 50 to 100 different gifts in there and the albums were anywheres from 25 to 100 bucks depending on what was in it and they loved it. I love the idea of getting their preferences before they come in. And then when they come in, they’re just like, How did you know? And as you may have seen on the form, I actually added people’s birthdays on the form for the submission, the application even beyond the show, because exactly what you’re saying.

Wayne Mullins [30:27]
Yeah, there’s a million ways to exceed expectations. But those million ways can’t be figured out until you know what the baseline expectations are. So it’s impossible to exceed something if you don’t know what it is, you’re exceeding. So as an exercise, you know, sit down and think through what do the people who give us money do? What do they reasonably expect from us in this process, and that is, that is the jumping off point to building and creating evangelists for your organization.

Mario Fachini [31:02]
You are sharing some great expert authority insights, and I so appreciate how did you get into this? Because you’re clearly good at it. What inspired you to even get into marketing?

Wayne Mullins [31:18]
So the super quick version of that story is this. My junior year of college, for whatever reason, for Christmas, my parents gave me some CDs by this man named Zig Ziglar. I don’t know why. But lo and behold, are open and present. There’s some Zig Ziglar CDs, I started listening to Zig Ziglar. And Zig Ziglar sold me on the profession of selling. So I knew that I had to go into sales. So I leave college, I get a job in sales, I spend the next few years in sales. And I get pretty good every time at selling. And what I realized at one point was, I looked at the amount of revenue as generating for the company I was working for. And I said, hmm, if I devoted the same energy and effort to something on my own, could I make a lot more money. And at the time, the only skill set I really had was cutting grass. So I left my good corporate sales job, and started a lawn and landscape company. And over the next three year period, I took that from startup to a very good sized company, and I ended up selling it. But in that process, I had a lot of actual clients of the lawn company, I had a lot of friends coming to me saying, hey, we see how fast your company’s growing. What are you doing? How can you help us do the same? And so it was kind of out of that process that I really fell in love with marketing, I became a student of marketing and have literally devoted almost the last 20 years to studying and implementing different marketing techniques.

Mario Fachini [33:01]
That is fantastic. My first business I started when I was 12 was landscape, powerwashing, painting all of that. I did that a few years later, but just like you’re talking about needing one of my sales pitches, I drove up after church. The guy looked, it’s a hot day, grew up on the water. And this guy’s cutting his lawn. And I’m like, just thinking he doesn’t look like he’s enjoying it just walked up pulled in his driveway. In the sales pitch it doesn’t look like you’re enjoying that too much. He goes, nope. I would rather be on the boat. He goes, yep, I go. Once you go pack a cooler, I’ll be back in 15 minutes. He goes how much I go 20 bucks. I had him for a couple of years before I sold that company to start this one. And good on your parents for giving you Zig Ziglar. That’s fantastic.

Wayne Mullins [33:56]
I don’t know where it came from. But I’m thankful for it as well.

Mario Fachini [34:00]
Yeah, when I was working jobs, if you will back in when I was a teenager because I started my first business at 12 and went full time and this started when I was 18. So I had some jobs early on, but I always knew I was an entrepreneur at heart. And I remember something similar to you. We were short staffed one day at this other place and I was like, we just made them $36,000 on half the staff and I’m getting to pull out a calculator. I’m like $56.62 whatever the math came out to for 650 an hour after taxes. I mean, they bought us a sub for lunch. Again, I think we chose the right path, right?

Wayne Mullins [34:44]
Yeah, it’s definitely got its ups and it’s definitely got its downs but…

Mario Fachini [34:49]
And sideways.

Wayne Mullins [34:50]
If you’re an entrepreneur at heart and sideways, but if you’re an entrepreneur at heart, you know it, you know it kind of deep within and you know there there’s nothing else that you can be happy with doing is other than, you know, I hate to use the cliche, but quote unquote controlling your own destiny.

Mario Fachini [35:09]
Sound cliche, I think it sounds great. And when people think it’s weird, that’s their problem, not ours. So we got one more fun thing to do. I got a wheel on my own. And that’s why I was smirking when you were saying the wheel. Because this one’s real. Some people thought it was like a visual effect. I’m like, no, it actually spins. And I call this the Wheel of Whatever. And my question for you is, while that one’s going real good, look at that. Sometimes it just looks weird. Okay, none of that. So my question for you is, who was a person and or company and or both? Nice single question there that you would just love to work with, you can help them with their marketing?

Wayne Mullins [35:55]
So great question, you know, one that I think would be super fascinating. And I think that we could actually do some interesting things with Tesla.

Mario Fachini [36:03]
Oh, really? That’s a great answer, what would you want to do?

Wayne Mullins [36:10]
Well, they’re brilliant in the fact that they actually don’t spend money on advertising. And what’s so brilliant about that is, in order to get to their level of success, without spending money on advertising, they have to be brilliant at marketing. And so I think their approach is very much in line with the way we love to approach things in our company. So while I don’t necessarily have a specific thing that I would love to do for them, what I can say is where they are brilliant ties in to something you said earlier, Mario, and they are great at generating publicity for themselves. So there’s lots of leverage points when you shift your mentality away from just having to, you know, quote, unquote, advertise, and you shift your mindset into the weekend market, and a part of marketing is publicity. It opens up so many doors and that is one thing that Ilan musk and his team at Tesla are brilliant at.

Mario Fachini [37:10]
Excellent. Well, we’re gonna thank the sponsor and come back for the rapid fire Imperfect Action Round.

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Mario Fachini [38:48]
And we are back with the Imperfect Action Round. Wayne, are you ready to take imperfect action?

Wayne Mullins [38:55]
I’m ready.

Mario Fachini [38:57]
Rapid fire answers 60 seconds or less. The first question is what is the fastest path to the profits?

Wayne Mullins [39:08]
Great question. I would say clearly understanding your customer avatar is the fastest path to the profits.

Mario Fachini [39:16]
Excellent. Number two, what is the biggest problem you see your prospects making and the fastest way for them to fix it?

Wayne Mullins [39:23]
The biggest problem is confusing marketing and advertising and not devoting enough time to playing the long game, as you said Mario and converting customers into evangelist.

Mario Fachini [39:35]
Number three, what is the best way to maximize customer lifetime value?

Wayne Mullins [39:43]
Great question. I’m going to cheat and use understanding your customers needs, their desires. Because when you do that you can open yourself up to whether that’s cross promotion of other products, whether that’s developing additional product line service lines to meet and fulfill those needs of your customers and clients.

Mario Fachini [40:03]
Excellent. And I wouldn’t say that’s cheating. That’s just being a smart business owner. Alright, what books would you recommend the Expert Authority World?

Wayne Mullins [40:14]
That’s a dangerous topic for me. The list could be forever long. A book that I would recommend is Principles by Ray Dalio highly recommend the book. Yeah, I just finished reading, Who Not How by Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy recommend that one as well. I read a lot. It’s very tough for me to narrow it down and pick a few. Usually, I find that the current book I’m reading is the best book I’ve ever read until I pick up the next one.

Mario Fachini [40:48]
Great recommendations. And I had Dr. Ben on the show.

Wayne Mullins [40:55]
That’s awesome.

Mario Fachini [40:56]
It was a very great time. Great book recommendation. And I thank you for those. Where would you like people to learn more? Where would you like people to learn more about you and your company?

Wayne Mullins [41:11]
Sure, the simplest place is just uglymugmarketing.com from there. We’ve got links to social channels, we’ve got email addresses. If you want to send something in the mail, we’ve got a mailing address, too. So that’s the easiest place.

Mario Fachini [41:25]
Mail is so great. I love getting stuff in the mail. And I think people overlook it nowadays, because everything’s so technical. Well, Wayne…

Wayne Mullins [41:34]
What’s interesting…

Mario Fachini [41:35]
Just go ahead

Wayne Mullins [41:36]
To tag off of that one statement is, I have four kids at home. And just recently we got the Amazon Christmas catalog in the mail. So just keep in mind that just because we have all these tech companies out today, that the smart ones are leveraging all different forms of media and mediums to put their message in front of their ideal customers.

Mario Fachini [42:01]
How much did you appreciate that they sent you a catalogue everyone can look at and tell you what they want.

Wayne Mullins [42:09]
I didn’t necessarily appreciate it, but the kids absolutely love it. And last night and when the kids were in the room after bedtime, and one of them had his little light little book light up and he’s sitting up on his bed with all the lights out flipping through the Amazon catalog, staring at all the toys.

Mario Fachini [42:23]
Yeah, I think reading is important. I used to do the same thing. Sneak in a light now I can just leave the light on or have. I don’t even want to say your name. She can turn on the lights and everything. But it’s nice to get away from all the tech and just grab a book, go sit by the fire and sit in a normal chair. Like getting away from the screens, I still prefer something in my hand, physical books. And that’s why I love publishing them for people because there’s enough screens like 12 per person. That’s statistically like we’re good. So thank you again. It has been a pleasure.

Wayne Mullins [43:00]
Thank you so much, Mario. I enjoyed our conversation.

Mario Fachini [43:03]
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 [43:44]
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 EAInterviews.com 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.