Michael Buzinski On Digital Marketing Secrets That You Should Know But Probably Don't (#144)

[00:00:00] Jeffrey Feldberg: Welcome to the Sell My Business Podcast. I'm your host Jeffrey Feldberg.

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Michael Buzinski is a lifelong entrepreneur, digital marketing, thought leader, and bestselling author. Dubbed a visionary marketer by the American Marketing Association, Michael's sole mission is to reduce the prevalence of entrepreneurial poverty in the US.

Buzz as most people call them has simplified digital marketing success with the Rule Of 26 to help business owners avoid the time drain and frustration of managing profitable digital marketing campaigns.

Welcome to The Sell My Business Podcast and as always, wow do I have a guest for you. We've just been chatting offline and truth be told we almost didn't want to start the podcast. We're having so much fun. And just talking along here and for your business owners out there, let's just do a quick thought experiment before I unleash this guest on you.

And imagine whether you're growing a business or having a liquidity event is really one in the same. When you think about it anyway, for the strategies of preparation, and you're asking yourself, how do I grow? How do we get more sales? How do I bump up my profits and revenue? And if we're really honest with ourselves from most business owners, that's really the challenge.

Our guest today is an award winner, thought leader, author, successful guy, just a marketing guy through and where gonna do a deep dive in, into all of that visionary marketer. I mean the accolades, just keep on going and going, like the energizer bunny here. So Michael, welcome to The Sell My Business Podcast.

Such a pleasure to have you with us. And there's always a story behind the story. What's your story? What got you to where you are today?

[00:03:14] Michael Buzinski: God that is that going to take the whole podcast, Jeffrey. I'll do the short version I was in the air force from 1996 to 2005. I got stationed in Anchorage Alaska at Elmendorf Air Force Base. I got out after a divorce there in 2005 and up to that point, I'd been a working musician for 15 years.

And so I decided that I would get out and start myself a recording studio, and I'd work with working musicians and make sure they get a good experience. Unfortunately, about a year in, I realized surviving off of starving musicians' bad business plan. So I pivoted that into a media production house for small businesses.

Lots of a micro-business again, not a lot of money coming from them, but over the years, that's where we found our sweet spot. It grew into what was called a creative agency. So it's like an advertising agency, but we do all of the media production in-house. So it was full service. We had a 13,000-square-foot facility.

Over 20 employees, multi-million dollar enterprise. And then in about 2018, I found myself completely miserable, owning a job called CEO and not wanting to do it anymore. And so I was undervalued by my employees. I was underpaid by myself. All the things and the beginning of 2009, I broke the company up into two entities. And so I let the media production side keep its legacy as media. And now I spend 95% of my time with the digital marketing firm called Buzzworthy Integrated Marketing, where we focus all of our efforts on the digital presence and scalability of service-centric businesses.

[00:04:55] Jeffrey Feldberg: Wow, what a story, but firstly, thank you for your service. I don't think we say that enough, you know, you put in the time and the sacrifice so we can all do what we do. So a huge thank you for that, Michael, that that's just terrific, but wow you really kind of went around the block and try different things and you've now landed in this digital marketing, and I know you've created a whole system and we'll get there and the metrics and the KPIs and the Rule Of 26 and all those good things, and listeners are saying, what Jeffrey what's this all about? Don't worry. We'll get there. What, we'll talk about that, but let's do this.

It's interesting because you and I offline, we were just chatting and we were just talking about how for most business owners marketing is probably one of their biggest challenges of what do you do? How do you get out there? So let's take the glass is half empty. You and I are positive guys, Michael. The glass is always half full, but let's just flip it for a moment when you're coming onto the scene with most businesses, I would imagine probably 20% of the mistakes are causing 80% of the problems for most businesses.

What are these businesses doing wrong? Are there whatever number of things that are going on and what are they?

[00:06:01] Michael Buzinski: So I find that for service-centric businesses, there's usually one problem. And there are a number of mistakes that lead to that problem. And the problem is that they're ignoring or mistreating their website. The website as I told you earlier it's an ATM for businesses like there are statistics out there that show that 68% of all purchases for products or services start with a search engine query, but only 5% of websites actually rank on the first page. That means that 5% of the website pages out there are out of the millions. And now billions of pages that exist are getting two-thirds of all business. So, If you think about that, just in the search, we're not talking paid, we're not talking anything else. We're just talking search. If you are not paying attention to your website, you are losing out on two-thirds of the potential business that could come to you. Two thirds.

[00:07:03] Jeffrey Feldberg: It's organic. It's not paid as just people coming to you.

[00:07:06] Michael Buzinski: There's investment in being on, you know, ranking. I think that's one of the misnomers of search marketing is that well, if I do it organically, it's free. No, you always pay for exposure. You're either going to pay with time or you're paying with money. So you're either doing it yourself and taking the time to work in your business to figure out SEO or you're paying somebody else with expertise that can do it for you.

[00:07:28] Jeffrey Feldberg: Let me ask you about that. I know maybe it's just me. I can be jaded at times when I do a search and then I see the two kinds of results. And depending on the search engine that you're using, the one that I use, it shows this is a paid advertisement. And I usually skip past those. And I look for the other ones. So am I alone with that am I the exception or what do you find most consumers' behavior is like in that area?

[00:07:52] Michael Buzinski: you're not alone, but paid search is how Google and Bing and Yahoo pay the bills. And the thing is that people do click on it. So you are part of the population and the users that go pass the ads because you are still in research mode. See when people are clicking on ads, they're usually in an immediate need or immediate buying mode.

And so a good Google ad or a search engine ad doesn't matter what platform you're on. Can grab your attention when you're buying faster than you can go down into the, what you called the search engine results part of the page. So the organic side before that you even have the Google maps area, now that Google maps is used usually on your cellphone. When you go, hey, Google, or, hey Siri, you're using, what's called voice search. It's a search engine. It's using the same algorithms, but it's now on the local side, it's taking into account where your IP address is and saying, okay, what are the keywords you're using for your search? And I'm going to marry that with your location and give you the results that are within a certain radius of you where you're at right there.

[00:09:00] Jeffrey Feldberg: So it's it's really interesting. No one ever remembers who's in third place in a sporting event or at the Olympics or whatever, you know, who finished third, who got the bronze? I don't know who got the silver?

Couldn't tell you, but it sounds like with search so pages two and three forget about it, but even page one, I would imagine. And maybe you can clarify for us if a business is at the bottom of page one, I would think from what you're sharing with me, they're going to be missing out on a lot of the opportunities and the clicks that would be there. Is that the case or not the case?

[00:09:30] Michael Buzinski: It is the case. So the top three of each of the pieces or sections of a search engine result page so you usually have one to three ads at the top. Okay. And that's a competition in its own. You don't just pay to be at the top. You have to compete there. There's another algorithm that figures that out, not the highest bidder, there's a bunch of other usability issues there.

Okay. And then you have your maps and now we even have position zero. So the widgets that you see where it's like people also asked, or they might have an answer to something with a little excerpt, from a website, and then a link to that to answer the question, those types of things. Those are usually in the more research intent-driven searches. In the maps, your top three are usually your most important. So it's okay to be second or third, but be careful being past that because over 70% of the clicks there and in their organic, the top 10 organic results are where the traffic goes.

[00:10:27] Jeffrey Feldberg: So Michael, just to do a recap and for our listeners, I really hope you're paying attention here because Michael is separating out the fluff, giving us the platinum. And the big takeaway here is number one if you're online and you have a website and you're probably ignoring it, you're passing up countless dollars and profits.

But whether it's paid search or your own organic, whatever you're doing for your website, if you're not on page one, it's likely not going to happen. And being on page one in and of itself. It's okay. But where you really want to be, Michael, what I'm hearing you say is you've got to be the top three, whether it be in paid or in the organics when you first hit that page, people are probably passing you by, and not even recognizing you.

[00:11:08] Michael Buzinski: So there are statistics that show that about 36 to 38% of all the clicks on the organic side go to a number one, then it drops down into the twenties percentiles for number two, and then the team percentiles for number three and then single-digit percentiles for anything below three. And then only 2% of all traffic. Get to the second page of a search engine

[00:11:35] Jeffrey Feldberg: Wow.

[00:11:36] Michael Buzinski: And the click-through rates on that are less than 1%.

[00:11:39] Jeffrey Feldberg: That's not. So unless you're maybe researching or being a little bit jaded, like Jeffrey, okay. What's really going on out there past page one, with all these algorithms, people just aren't or if they're in a rush, people are just, you know, first come first serve whatever's up. Boom.

[00:11:52] Michael Buzinski: A lot of times what you're looking for when you're getting past the second page, you might be in an academic, you might be doing some market research. You might be doing a lot of things, but for a consumer, you're usually looking for the negative stuff 'cause that's where it hides because if you had some negative stuff happened to you and at some point in your life cycle of your business that's going to be, you're going to try to bury it.

 And so you bury it with great stuff and you push that down. And so people are then looking at the top 10. So, you know, you can Google me and I'm probably on page three or four, something that happened to me or somebody I ticked off 10 years ago was probably somewhere around there. I mean, You can please, some of the people, some of the time, you can't please all the people all the time and nobody's perfect.

And so when you're looking to find a, say a marketing fiduciary. You want to find out the bad stuff, just as much as you want to understand the good stuff. And that's where we talk about reputation management, which drives your Google rankings for specially for maps.

I look at the one in two stars. Not that I want to see that how badly they screw up. I want to see how well they handle adversity because customer service is easy to give when things are going, right. It's what you do when everything goes wrong. And how you treat people. That's where the nuts and bolts of your customer service actually reside.

[00:13:12] Jeffrey Feldberg: Absolutely. And for all of us business owners out there, we always have to be aware. There's always going to be people who, like you say, aren't unhappy and who are the ones that post online while it's the unhappy ones. Usually, the ones that are thrilled and tickled pink you never hear from.

[00:13:27] Michael Buzinski: You have to beg them. You have to beg them to like, literally beg like a pester. And like we have reputation management programs for our clients that don't want to do that themselves. And so we have ways to automate that without, bugging people to the point where they give you a bad result. But it also filters out those folks that are maybe not as happy as you thought they were.

And so giving you that opportunity to that feedback loop to say, oh, whoa, this person's not as happy as we thought. And then they give you that feedback comes to you before it goes out to the search engine so that you can make it better. And then go ahead and invite them again. And if that, that has improved and they get forwarded on there.

So there's lots of ways for you to manage your reputation, that's. The only thing you have as a service-centric business.

[00:14:12] Jeffrey Feldberg: And reputation so important and Michael, to your point, and for our listeners, just here's a data point of one for you. Okay. I was dealing with a company really terrific service representative, and they said, Jeffrey if you don't mind, can you go onto Google reviews and put a little plug there for us.

And I usually don't do that. But they not just because I'm busy and you know, that's about it, but I did, it had an email, I think it was the other week now. And over a thousand people had read that little plug. And so I emailed that to the company saying, hey, you remember that one little request, look at what that's done.

And so it's just amazing where that goes, but for our business owners out there, are you asking for referrals. Are you asking for testimonials online or are you making it easier? Are you giving links and saying, hey, would you mind, you just did this with us? Would you mind going online and putting something there?

And Michael, you've built a whole digital empire, your digital empire around some numbers here. And so your book, The Rule Of 26 For Service-Based Businesses: Three Steps to Doubling Website Revenue so talk to us about this. We'd love to hear the three steps, but let's go foundational first, the Rule Of 26. Walk us through that if you could please.

[00:15:22] Michael Buzinski: So the rule is 26 states that if you increase unique traffic by 26, your conversion rate by 26%. And then the average value per client coming from your website by 26%, you will have a compounded effect of 100% more revenue coming from your website.

[00:15:42] Jeffrey Feldberg: Wow. That's huge. That is huge. Now, how did you come to those numbers in that realization? What's the story behind the story?

[00:15:50] Michael Buzinski: So that came from the frustration of business owners, not really caring to understand KPIs or key performance indicators, which in digital marketing is the power that we derive because we can track everything and we can follow trends by those metrics. But the problem is that marketers are really good at marketing.

And so we create all these KPIs. For lack of better term, our fluff, they're what we call vanity KPIs, vanity metrics. So we say, oh, you've had a hundred likes. That's great. But how many people bought from those likes? Oh, you had 500 shares of this one post. Great. Were they sharing a purchase? Probably not. And so I got on a mission to really boil down KPIs to the ones that directly move revenue needles because we can all agree that as business owners, the only metrics that really count are the ones that create more revenue. And so I boil it down to these three where it was traffic.

 Cause if you increase traffic and all other things stay the same, you increase revenue. If you increase, how many of those visitors convert to customers or increase, and your close rate stays the same, you've increased your revenue. If you increase how much they're spending with you or the value that they bring to your company, then you've increased revenue.

And so all three of those, I found really good leverage points, but I needed a goal. Everybody needs a goal not just, hey, just increase these until you're happy. Let's double something. That always feels good. And so then I reverse engineered that and 26% across the board actually worked out.

And so that's where the Rule Of 26 came from.

[00:17:36] Jeffrey Feldberg: I love that. Well, Let me ask you this, because I know there's some listeners in our community saying, you know what, Michael, this sounds terrific, but let me tell you my story. And the stories are all similar. You know, I hired this digital agency and they told me they were going to do this organic SEO search.

Well, I got to tell you. X thousands or tens of thousands or more dollars later. And maybe even a year later, babkas nothing it was just a waste of time and money. And I'm sure if I'm hearing that, you're probably hearing that more times than you care to count.

[00:18:06] Michael Buzinski: I adopt those people with wide-open arms and show them the way

[00:18:12] Jeffrey Feldberg: What's going on there?

[00:18:13] Michael Buzinski: The problem is this. So I was one of those SEO folks back in the early 2010, like 2009 to 2011, we were kicking butt taking names, getting top rankings. The whole nine yards problem was is that our business owners weren't increasing revenue.

So I delve in and said, okay, why aren't they making more money? We're giving them more traffic. It turns out that they weren't converting. And so back in 2011, 2012, I created what is called digital engagement optimization. And what it did is it took the traffic and then paired the SEO and then paired it with what we call conversion rate optimization, which are starting to sound very familiar, because there's two of the steps of the Rule Of 26. And from that, we are now working in a machine where we go, okay. We increase the traffic. Did we get more business? No. Where is our conversion?

Okay. Let's push up conversions. Okay. Now the traffic and conversions are in a good way. Let's get more traffic or the conversion staying the same. No, we needed to tweak that. We keep going. Now we are creating the Seesaw effect that is actually just it's more like one of those rail cars or the people are pushing up and down and getting us going because it's like an engine, you have to hit all cylinders to make it work. So all the traffic in the world on a website that doesn't sell anything is worthless. And that's where the tens of thousands of dollars are spent on SEOs that don't understand the marketing side of the actual website, taking a visitor through a customer journey to making a decision to reach out to that company.

[00:19:43] Jeffrey Feldberg: Wow, I'm so glad that you're putting that out there because you're really confirming one of my own biases. And as an example, my e-learning company social media really wasn't there. So some of the social platforms that we have today and that's where a lot of the marketing is going through didn't exist.

And so we were doing what people call old school. So sending a good old-fashioned letter in the mail, which I still think is incredibly effective, or emails, or at the time you had these marketing portals, which was the predecessors to social media. But the one thing I noticed Michael using the quote-unquote old school techniques, we just got results faster and for less money and more effectively.

And it seems like, with social media, you hear all these gurus well you know, we're going to have to wait three months for this and how many likes and how many people in the community you get and this and that. And thousands of dollars of later, months later, and nothing's happened. It's just been a colossal waste of time.

So again, it sounds like going back to your Rule Of 26, those three KPIs cut out the fluff start using your system to get to the gold stuff, which is really the digital marketing best practices. And you're taking digital marketing and SEO and social media in the secret sauce of yours. And just getting that out there.

Am I on base with that? Or what would you say?

[00:21:01] Michael Buzinski: You are. So back in the day, back in the good old days, there wasn't as much competition you as an earlier adopter, we're getting all of the bandwidth. So you were one of few, now we all are one of many upon many. So the competition's much more fierce now. Okay.

The problem with social media is that social media is more of a like, and trust part of the sales process. It doesn't answer the questions. The of like what you do. It's who are you? Do I like you? Do I trust you? Because we do business with people who I can trust. So in my equation, I use a social media as a conversion tool, especially organic because statistics show that search engine traffic is seven times more likely to become business traffic than organic social media. Period. End of story.

[00:21:56] Jeffrey Feldberg: That's huge. Can you say that one more time for the listeners? That is huge.

[00:22:00] Michael Buzinski: So 14% of search engine traffic will become a purchaser, 2% of, organic social media traffic will purchase making SEO and search engine marketing seven times more profitable than organic social media.

[00:22:20] Jeffrey Feldberg: Wow. And what's terrific about that and really the dark side of social media. If we're really honest about it, we're renting a room in someone's kingdom. And if we have set them step on some toes, you can be shut down. No questions asked and that's it. You're done.

[00:22:38] Michael Buzinski: And search is the same. Don't worry. I mean, It really, your most powerful mode of digital marketing is your email list.

Because you own that list and you own your website. So between those two things, you can leverage them to get $1 per month of revenue for every person on your email list.

When you're doing it right to get 10,000 email followers, you should be garnering at least $10,000 per month in revenue from that list.

[00:23:09] Jeffrey Feldberg: Some terrific stats there. So really Michael, you continue to distill this knowledge and wisdom you're taking the fluff out. And what I'm really hearing you say is, hey, listen SEO search is great and social media, that can be helpful, but ideally, the two tools because you can, you're the king of the castle or the queen of the castle is your website and your email list because you control that.

No, one's taking that away from you.

[00:23:35] Don: You own it. If you cultivate your followers, your tribe properly over time, only 5% of the market is ready and in the buying cycle. Okay. So if you have say a thousand folks on there, that means 50 of them are ready to buy whatever you're offering. So if those 50 are all going to spend what 200 bucks that makes a thousand dollars.

[00:23:59] Jeffrey Feldberg: Yeah, that sounds about right for sure.

[00:24:00] Michael Buzinski: Right. Right. So that's something you can control. You can't control what Google is going to rank you for. And you can't control how many people are searching for certain keywords because how people search over time changes as well.

And that's why your SEO is an ongoing rental. Like I tell people your SEO is rent. It's just like your mortgage, you just got to pay it because if you don't, then you're going to get left behind. Because once you get to the top guests who wants to be there. Everybody else. That's not at the top. They want that traffic.

They know that 70% of the traffic is sitting right there and you're getting it. They want to get it from you. So if you don't, if you just go up, I'm here. I'm good. I love it. When people are like, hey, we did all that SEO stuff now. We're good. Thank you so much. We'll give you a call. If we ever need you again, like you guys missed the whole assignment.

The assignment is to get to the top and then stay at the top. And then once you get there, how can you spread that? Create the halo effect of all of the keywords that are affected by that ranking that you're getting, and then make sure that you are distilling. So get rid of the keywords and the traffic.

Don't bring you the best clients. I tell people some of the most profitable phone calls I take are the ones that don't come in.

Because bad leads, waste my time and I cannot buy more time.

[00:25:23] Jeffrey Feldberg: How does that work when you're saying some of the best phone calls you take are the ones that don't come in. You're saying that you'd rather not be speaking to the people that are just going to waste your time, the bad leads tire kickers. Thank you. But no, thank you. Go somewhere else. I only want to speak to the interested people.

[00:25:38] Michael Buzinski: I want to speak to the people. They're all interested in something, they're either interested in learning all this up, when we talk about average value per client, let's take a look at who you're doing business with. And then now think about all your clients who is the one client that your face just lights up when you see their phone number on your caller ID or oh, great. My favorite client or you see a, from your favorite client in your email list. Oh, great. What do they want that person right there is the personification of your best client because that person's probably.

Finds value in what you bring, pays their bill on time, pays you what you're worth, and doesn't bug you with stuff that sucks your time, energy, and money from you.

[00:26:24] Jeffrey Feldberg: And Michael, let's talk about time, energy, and money because again, you've distilled it down to the fundamentals here to really create a solid foundation and ultimately is getting this email list that you own, that you control of prospects, who aren't going to waste your time that are really interested in you and what you're doing.

And I know listeners are saying, okay, I get that Michael, I'm prepared to do that, but once I get those names, how am I keeping people engaged? What am I doing to keep them on that list? Because everyone is so busy and there's a gazillion different things that they could be doing. What's the secret sauce to have a community that's engaged.

That's thriving that keeps on buying that keeps on growing. What does that look like in Michael's world?

[00:27:11] Michael Buzinski: Well, It's not my world. I didn't make it. The great, all the guards of marketing back in the early 19th century created something called the basics or the fundamentals of marketing. And see what's the problem is right now is that we have a era of marketers who came on to the scene, right as social media was taken on a steam. With that, they will became tactile or tactical, not tactile tactical marketers. So they go, oh, I can make you money. If I spend money on this thing called Facebook. And for every dollar you put in, I'll give you a certain ROI. Okay. Which is ROI-driven marketing. But it's tactical. The problem is this.

Now that machine doesn't spit out as much money as it used to when you put the money and so all of this goes back to the fundamentals of marketing. You have to understand those or work with somebody who does to build out that ecosystem and really document your customer's journey through the buying cycle and for your return clients, how that value ladder happens.

So that at some point they reach the pinnacle and become an advocate and a promoter of your brand who then bring in those coveted referrals. All the, while the ones who haven't bubbled up into your promoters and your advocates are still in that ecosystem. And you need to document that process so that you can understand what to do, where to do it, how to do it, how not, what not to do sometimes.

[00:28:50] Jeffrey Feldberg: Love that and two keywords and for listeners, as you pick it up an advocate and a promoter, and I just call those raving fans. Those are people who, you know, what, they'll stand on the top of their toes and they will scream your praise to whoever will listen. And isn't that really how the titans of business become the titans of business.

They get such passionate clients who want everyone to be experiencing the same joy that they're experiencing for whatever particular application that's going to be for. And so how do you get those advocates and the promoters? How do I make someone just from a prospect into an advocate or into a promoter?

[00:29:29] Michael Buzinski: Great question. So the thing is this there's so many people out there who are trying to build a tribe versus just do what you do really well. Just focus on what you provide, the value that you bring to the table. If you focus on their needs, solve their problems under-promise over-deliver every single time, you will not have to worry about having raving fans.

Okay. Now the trick, the secret sauce is that you have to tell people. The value you're bringing to the table on a constant basis. Marketing does not end when they come in and give you their credit card. Marketing is all the way through the process of delivering that service. And then after delivering that service, reminding them how much value you brought to their lives.

Because as service-centric companies, we do one of two things. We solve problems or help attain dreams. There are only two things you do.

[00:30:32] Jeffrey Feldberg: Spoken like the true entrepreneur you are. And for our listeners, I'm just bowled over here because the marketing world and the liquidity event world are really one in the same. So Michael was saying listen, get your advocates, get your promoters, show them your value. Show them how truly terrific you are, how exceptional you are, why you're different than everyone else.

And it's really no different in a liquidity event. Step number two, X-Factors that insanely increase the value of your business. That's in our 90-day Deep Wealth Experience and step number three, mastering the art and science of a future buyer, Michael it's word for word effectively the same thing of what you're doing.

You're identifying as a business. I'm really world-class in these areas. We call some of those. X-Factors actually Rembrandts these hidden Rembrandts in the attic that you put out for public display. And when you tell your future buyer and you show your future buyer, your Rembrandt's, your X-Factors, it's a game-changer just like what you're saying.

Do what you do really well. And the community and the tribe will follow if you're world-class in what you're doing. And so back to your world now, Michael, here's the question for you? And you've been great at simplifying it. Let's do both the do this, and then don't do that.

So what we've been speaking about it, if a business owner were in front of you and they were saying, you know what, Michael, I only have five minutes of your time after I tell you about my business.

And you've heard about the business and it was a typical business. What you see kind of day in, day out, firstly, three things that they should stop doing immediately on the marketing side. If you're seeing that what would that be?

[00:32:08] Michael Buzinski: Let's narrow it down to website marketing, stop talking about yourself. Nine times out of ten the first thing I see on a website is an I, we, and us at the top of the website for service-centric, business, people don't care, they don't care how awesome you are until they know how much you care. That's number one, make it a you, your. Make it about them. Be empathetic, identify their need, or identify their problem, or identify their pain or identify their dream, make them understand that you understand them before they even get into your website, then identify the solution. Then identify you're the best person for that solution because of your differentiator. Then invite them to learn more about you on another page.

[00:32:56] Jeffrey Feldberg: I love it. You're such a master at simplifying. You really took both questions and you just rolled it into one.

[00:33:01] Michael Buzinski: Sorry.

[00:33:02] Jeffrey Feldberg: I stopped doing this, but start doing that. And exactly what you did in those three steps, hey, why not? And what's interesting when you're really tuned in as a marketer, as you are Michael, and you're also really an entrepreneur at heart.

The world's favorite radio station when it comes to your potential buyer, your future customer. It's called the WII.FM radio station. The what's in it for me radio station. And that's exactly what you're talking about Michael, you're identifying a pain for them. It's a painful problem they're thinking about this. And then you're showing and demonstrating, hey, I will take your pain away and I'm oversimplifying. I know, but before you know, it, people are only too happy to pay you to take their pain away.

[00:33:49] Michael Buzinski: If you convinced them that you are the person to do it. Can you do it efficiently? Can you do it without more pain? Can I afford the way you're doing it with either time or money? That's the balance. We either have more time than money or more money than time. And this is where we identify our best clients.

Are you looking for clients that have more money than time or the opposite, if I'm a high ticket service, I'm looking for people with more time than money? If I have a system or maybe I'm in a group coach, or maybe I have a software as a service, now I'm looking for people who have more time than money and understanding just that you will cut how many people you have to talk to in half and the fewer people you need to talk to the more leverage, you can create with your marketing message because you don't have to splinter what you're saying so many times. And every time you splinter your message, it costs you money and time.

[00:34:49] Jeffrey Feldberg: Really what you're saying. I'll just say it in a little bit of a different way with a different analogy. You can have the best restaurant in town, but if you're in front of people who just had dinner down the street or lunch down the street, it doesn't matter. You're going to go out of business.

If you put yourself in front of the people, the right people who haven't had that meal yet, you're going to do exceptionally well.

[00:35:10] Michael Buzinski: I think you could even go a step further, put a posh restaurant in a poor neighborhood.

[00:35:16] Jeffrey Feldberg: Tell us what you're thinking with that.

[00:35:18] Michael Buzinski: So if I have more time than money, that means I can then cook my own meal. As I don't have the money to pay somebody to cook it for me. Now, let's go the other way. Now let's put a greasy spoon in the middle of a posh neighborhood. If they're going to spend their money on something, they're probably going to get the quality.

They don't want just any old burger. They want a gourmet burger. And so your message needs to match the people you're trying to attract. And when you try to be everything to everyone, you become no one to everyone. Because you become invisible. You have to take stand on who you are and who you serve. I serve service-centric businesses. That's what I do. If you want, e-com probably gonna go somewhere else or I'm going to show you some of the people I trust in the industry to do it for you. Okay. I'm not going to be, if you're a brick-and-mortar retail store, I'm going to give you one of my trusted colleagues to help you.

I'm not the person. I am the service-centric king. I'm going to help you find your voice for your most profitable audience. That's all I do. And that's all I'm going to help you do.

[00:36:33] Jeffrey Feldberg: what's interesting with that Michael and for our listeners. Okay listeners it's accountability time because here's the question for you. With what Michael was saying. Let's just bring this home for a moment. When it comes to your business are you just everything to everybody because you want to get that extra buck or two?

Are you turning away business because it's not what you're doing? And you're saying, you know what? I would love to service you as not really our specialty. It's not what we do. Why don't you go to A, B, and C and they can help you with which of the two camps are you in? And I hope it's the. Not the former and as a business owner myself.

Yes. I know it can be hard to say no when there's revenue coming in the door, but if you're in it for the long game, and I know all of you listeners are, if you're in it for the long game, you're doing what Michael says and you just become world-class and where I'm going with this, Michael, whether you do the case studies on the titans of business, or I've been very fortunate to speak to incredibly successful business owners across different industries, but it's all the same story. They effectively built their product or their service or their offering around number one. What pleased them. They really did it for themselves. And if people happen to like it, terrific. And if people didn't like it that's okay too, but it was world-class and that's all they focus on.

They weren't worried about pleasing this group and that group. And to your point, just being scattered all over the place, it was, let me just focus, do something I'm proud of that. I'm going to be world-class in. And the rest, as the saying goes, is history.

[00:38:01] Michael Buzinski: And to put the cherry on top of that. When you try to grab the business, that's not the most profitable, you are reducing the amount of bandwidth to take on business that is the most profitable. So if you busy yourself with things that take you out of your mode of genius. You are now expending more energy to deliver that product or service.

And therefore it is not making you as much money for the time spent. You can't buy more time, people.

[00:38:34] Jeffrey Feldberg: Wow. You know, What, if Michael, if we could figure that out

[00:38:37] Michael Buzinski: A gazillionaire.

[00:38:41] Jeffrey Feldberg: There you go.

[00:38:44] Michael Buzinski: It's not happening. I did. It's against the law of physics. And that's why in 2019, I decided to really take full responsibility of how I was spending my life and that. It wasn't worth trying to make a company that looked like all the other successful ad agencies out there. It was time to build a company that worked for me, not me working for the company.

And that's where I have found my biggest passion is that my company now builds other millionaires. And that to me is the most satisfying thing I can possibly think of doing.

[00:39:20] Jeffrey Feldberg: It doesn't get any better. So Michael, let's do this. You really enamored us with this whole system that you've come up with. And I love how you're really paying it forward. And listen, when you're making someone a millionaire, they're not the only ones that are benefiting.

It's that whole ecosystem of all the people they're employing and the people that they're helping and the list goes on and on. So for our listeners who are saying, okay, Michael, you had me at hello. You know, when I heard you're this visionary marketing guy and you can just make things happen. You had me at hello.

Educate us. When someone comes to your company as a new client, what can we expect in terms of results? If I can put you on the spot and how long does that take and what can we expect to see?

[00:40:01] Michael Buzinski: Well, every business is different. I know that nobody wants to hear that. Their adventure is different, and where they're at on the runway is going to be different than the next person. So where I start is actually creating even more value than anything else at the beginning.

So we dive in and we basically do an audit of where you're at, where you could be and what would those first steps be? Because for many years, I would allow people to come and self-diagnose their marketing situation. What I found is that I can pretty much make any of the metrics that they want happen. That's not the problem. Promise is that sometimes we're trying to cure the ailment that does not create the pain.

We're trying to cure something that they're not actually sick of. And so when some people come in and they're like, I want more traffic. And then we find out that their conversion rate is like one-third of industry standard for their company. No, you don't want more traffic. You're wasting traffic.

You're actually driving people away and you're creating a vacuum behind you because now they've seen you and your name and they didn't connect with it. So the next time they see you, they're less likely to engage. So what you can expect from me is a lot of questions and discovery. And if we hit it off, we'll hit it off.

If we don't, I will help you find somebody that you can connect with and be a good fit for you because it doesn't do me any good to try to force a relationship. If we can't give you what you need through that discovery, then we want to make sure that you are with somebody who can, because I want to eradicate entrepreneurial poverty.

And the only way to do that is to list all of the top marketers that I know and get them to the clients that can help the best.

[00:41:44] Jeffrey Feldberg: What a terrific goal. And for our listeners out there, I want you to compare right now, what you heard in the flesh with Michael compared to some of these others, I don't know what to call them

[00:41:54] Michael Buzinski: There's marketers

[00:41:55] Jeffrey Feldberg: Marketers or businesses or whatever. And they're saying something along the lines of, hey, tell me what you want and I'll just get it for you.

Oh, you want more followers? I'll get you more followers. Oh, you want to have more I don't know, backlinks or you want to have more likes I'll get that for you too, but it doesn't move the dial in Michael saying, hey I will figure that out, and see what you should be doing, what you shouldn't be doing.

And if I can help you, I will find somebody who can, that is a true professional.

[00:42:20] Michael Buzinski: I'll end it with this sound strategy, outperforms blind tactics, every single time.

[00:42:28] Jeffrey Feldberg: And so, Michael, listen, I could just kidnap you and go for hours on this episode, beyond our scheduled time, but we're starting to bump into that. And actually, we're a little bit over that. You've been very gracious to go on for a few minutes more. So let's start to wrap this up.

[00:42:43] Michael Buzinski: Okay.

[00:42:43] Jeffrey Feldberg: We're at the point where I get to ask my favorite question for every guest that I'm so privileged to have on The Deep Wealth Sell My Business Podcast. And the question is this. I'd like you to think about the movie Back to the Future.

[00:42:55] Michael Buzinski: I love that movie.

[00:42:56] Jeffrey Feldberg: Who doesn't, but anyway, in the movie you have that magical DeLorean car that can take you to any point in time.

Now, imagine it's tomorrow morning, you look outside your window, and there it is. The DeLorean car is not only sitting there, but the door is open waiting for you to hop on in. And you're now going to go to any point in your life, Michael, as a young child, a teenager, an adult, whatever point in time it would be for you.

What would you be telling your younger self in terms of life wisdom or lessons learned or, hey, do this, but don't do that? What are you saying? What does that sound like?

[00:43:32] Michael Buzinski: Can I have all three of the movies so I can go to three different places.

[00:43:35] Jeffrey Feldberg: You know what Michael and this thought experiment. Absolutely. And we'll even give you the digs on any future movies. If they come out with it.

[00:43:42] Michael Buzinski: Okay. Awesome. So the first place I'd go is a young like pre-teen to teen, Michael, and tell him that it's a very long journey. It's okay. You don't have to be in a rush. What you do today in just a matter of time will mean nothing. And then I would fast forward to the gentleman who got out of the service and started his business and tell him you're worth three times as much as you think, stop selling yourself short.

And then I would get back in the car and go up 50 years from now on my death bed and say, good job for listening to yourself.

[00:44:28] Jeffrey Feldberg: Wow. I love that. You know what that is the most creative answer that I've heard and hats off to you. And I think that just shows the depth and quality of your thinking and some terrific advice on that. That's phenomenal. So, Michael, I'm going to put all this in the show notes, and I know we have all of your links and for your book and everything, Galveston for our listeners, it will be a point and click.

You can just go there and click on it and off you go. But let me ask you this, Michael, if someone would like to find you online or even reach out to you, what would be the best place?

[00:44:56] Michael Buzinski: The best place to find me is on the website. Buzzworthy.biz

[00:45:01] Jeffrey Feldberg: Okay, we'll have in the show notes, buzzworthy.biz and Michael, as we now officially wrap up this episode, a heartfelt thank you for taking part of your day and being with us on The Deep Wealth Sell My Business Podcast. And as always, please say healthy and safe.

[00:45:16] Sharon S.: The Deep Wealth Experience was definitely a game-changer for me.

[00:45:19] Lyn M.: This course is one of the best investments you will ever make because you will get an ROI of a hundred times that. Anybody who doesn't go through it will lose millions.

[00:45:29] Kam H.: If you don't have time for this program, you'll never have time for a successful liquidity

[00:45:34] Sharon S.: It was the best value of any business course I've ever taken. The money was very well spent.

[00:45:40] Lyn M.: Compared to when we first began, today I feel better prepared, but in some respects, may be less prepared, not because of the course, but because the course brought to light so many things that I thought we were on top of that we need to fix.

[00:45:56] Kam H.: I 100% believe there's never a great time for a business owner to allocate extra hours into his or her week or day. So it's an investment that will yield results today. I thought I will reap the benefit of this program in three to five years down the road. But as soon as I stepped forward into the program, my mind changed immediately.

[00:46:18] Sharon S.: There was so much value in the experience that the time I invested paid back so much for the energy that was expended.

[00:46:29] Lyn M.: The Deep Wealth Experience compared to other programs is the top. What we learned is very practical. Sometimes you learn stuff that it's great to learn, but you never use it. The stuff we learned from Deep Wealth Experience, I believe it's going to benefit us a boatload.

[00:46:42] Kam H.: I've done an executive MBA. I've worked for billion-dollar companies before. I've worked for smaller companies before I started my business. I've been running my business successfully now for getting close to a decade. We're on a growth trajectory. Reflecting back on the Deep Wealth, I knew less than 10% what I know now, maybe close to 1% even.

[00:47:00] Sharon S.: Hands down the best program in which I've ever participated. And we've done a lot of different things over the years. We've been in other mastermind groups, gone to many seminars, workshops, conferences, retreats, read books. This was so different. I haven't had an experience that's anything close to this in all the years that we've been at this.

It's five-star, A-plus.

[00:47:27] Kam H.: I would highly recommend it to any super busy business owner out there.

Deep Wealth is an accurate name for it. This program leads to deeper wealth and happier wealth, not just deeper wealth. I don't think there's a dollar value that could be associated with such an experience and knowledge that could be applied today and forever.

[00:47:46] Jeffrey Feldberg: Are you leaving millions on the table?

Please visit www.deepwealth.com/success to learn more.

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As we close out this episode, a heartfelt thank you for your time. And as always, please stay healthy and safe.

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