The Entrepreneurs Radio Show Episode 106

THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW

Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

Copyright © 2012, 2013 The Entrepreneur’s Radio Show Page 1 of 19




Episode 106: MarkStevens

In this episode, Travis talks to Mark Stevens, founder of MSCO, a marketing company with the

goal of improving people’s business through effective marketing and exposure of your business.

He is also the author of the best-selling book, Your Marketing Sucks, which has helped open the

eyes of thousands of business owners to the reality of successful marketing in today’s

competitive market.

Mark and Travis share valuable insight in how to market and advertise your business to gain

better exposure and recognition from your target audience. They also point out the importance

of investing on marketing for your business and most importantly tracking it to see its effectivity,

with the goal of reaching out to your customers and giving them the value which would make

them customers for life. Mark also shares his key components to running a successful

marketing campaign. These and so much more are what you can expect to gain in this episode

of the Entrepreneur’s Radio Show.

Does your marketing suck?

TRAVIS: Hey, it's Travis Lane Jenkins welcome to episode number 106 of the Entrepreneur's

Radio Show, a production of rockstarentrepreneurnetwork.com. Today I'm going to introduce

you to Mark Stevens, author of Your Marketing Sucks. Now, I don't know if your marketing

sucks, most people does. Now in case you just started listening, each and every week I connect

you with rock star entrepreneurs that explain your journey to success. Now in case you just

started listening each and every week I connect you with rock star entrepreneurs that explain

their journey to success and what's been the key principles to finding a high level of success as

an entrepreneur. So that you can see that really successful entrepreneurs are just every day

people that stayed committed to taking action each and every day. And also, I want to take a

brief minute before we get started and say thank you for an online review. For those of you that

have written reviews outside of the U.S., just in case you don't know this, we can't see those

reviews on our account here in the U.S. because of course my account is in the U.S. So

recently I've found an app that allows me to pull reviews from all around the world so that I can

start saying personally thank you to several people from all around the world that have written

reviews and I just didn't know that. So, I want to know that it's gone unnoticed but it hasn't gone

unappreciated now that I know about it.

So basically, today I want to say thank you to Corey over in Canada. CoreyJohnson777, you

gave us a 5-star rating, wrote amazing content. Corey I want to thank you for leaving such a

wonderful, detailed review. I read all of these reviews and they really do matter. So, thank you

for that, I really appreciate it. Now as a reminder, if you enjoy the show and you find value on

what we're doing, then I'd really appreciate you taking a minute and writing a review on iTunes

http://www.rockstarentrepreneurnetwork.com/




or Stitcher. It will help us reach more entrepreneurs and of course, we'll thank you in person on

air.

I also want to remind you that I have a section on the website of

rockstarentrepreneurnetwork.com where you can ask me anything about your business,

marketing, management, pricing, client problems, sales problems, anything that you feel like is

holding you back from that next level of success. All you've got to do is click on the button

there's a little icon of a microphone on the right side of the screen. Click on that button, it's like

leaving a voicemail. Be sure and give me a quick background of your business. And what I'm

going to do is I'm going to start releasing short episodes, little 5-10 minute episodes in-between

these interviews where I answer your questions on air. And I'll keep your last name private. If

you're not comfortable with leaving a voice message, you could just opt-in, get my email, and

send it to me. That's fine also.

One last thing I want to remind you that there's three ways that you can take these interviews

with you on the go instead of just sitting at your computer and listening to them. I'm fine with

whichever way you do it. You can go through iTunes, Stitcher, or Android, although they have

very clunky search functions. So just go to rockstarentrepreneurnetwork.com, click on the

iTunes, Android, or Stitcher right there on the menu bar. And what that will do is it will take you

directly to the podcast where you can subscribe to the show there and then download it on your

phone, or stream it on your phone and listen to it whenever it's good for you. So, now that we've

got all that stuff out of the way let's go ahead and get down to business, what do you say?

Without further ado, welcome to the show Mark.

MARK: Thank you.

TRAVIS: Yeah, sorry about that. I didn't mean to step on you. I'm excited to have you here.

You're the author of Your Marketing Sucks. I love that title. Do you mind giving me kind of the

back-story of how you gotten to where you're at today and maybe what the pivot point was for

your success?

MARK: Sure. Actually, spoke of my business at a commencement address I gave to a local

college. I came from a lower middle class family in one of the burrows of New York City,

Queens, lower middle-class. And kind of a messed up family. And not kind of a messed up

family, a messed up family. And one day I was 16 and I was walking through a parking lot on a

gray February day. And my mood was great, the skies are great, everything just seemed well,

and I looked up at the sky, I don't know what prompted it. And I said out loud, but not out loud

enough for people to think I was crazy, or just sort of to hear myself speak. And I said, "I

promise I'll never be ordinary." And I made a pledge to myself that I wouldn't be ordinary. And

so there I took that pledge seriously and I don't know where it came from but then it sort of

drove me to figure out ways when I had-- So, the next year my dad died and I was 17, he was






40. It was very sudden. He left 84 bucks, and no life insurance or anything like that. And my

mom, she's a nice person but she sort of wasn't into mothering that much. She sort of took a

hike too. So I was there with my 14-year old sister, I was 17, and I had to figure out what I'm

going to do. And I made that pledge a year earlier not to be ordinary, now I was faced really with

a test. No money, no family, my sister needs me, my mother actually needed me, couldn't pay

the rent, etc. So, I'm sure it was in DNA already, but I just went on a route to first of all save the

lives of the family, I did. And kind of funny stories in it, they weren't funny at that time but they're

kind of funny now. And I can go back if you want me too, and then find a path for myself. And

the path led me to business. And I started to build companies. Little tiny ones and they got

bigger and selling companies. Building and selling, building and selling. I've had a life of intense

curiosity, very strong sense of drive, determination to succeed, and a lot of growing pain. And

that's sort of a short summary of-- As part of that, I've also always said that-- another thing I said

to myself when I was quite young at that part of my life, "I will always obey the law because I

believe in the rule of law. But I will never follow the rules." Because the rules are made up by

somebody else and they're imposed upon me in and they're all-- if you look at business rules

and social rules, those are pretty stupid.

TRAVIS: Right.

MARK: And so I said I'm going to make my own rules. I'll follow the law and make my own

rules. And those are sort of the underpinnings of who I became and who I am today.

TRAVIS: You know, what's interesting is I have a lot of the similar framework mindsets and

pieces. And I think most people that have found success do, that didn't make me a good

student. I didn't want to follow rules. I was a rule breaker myself. And not for the sake of

breaking the rules but if something seemed like BS I would say so, right?

MARK: Yeah.

TRAVIS: And I've come from a very dysfunctional background. And I think at times that can put

the fire in your belly. There was an urgency for you to get out there and provide for yourself and

your sister. What did you do initially that allowed you to pay the rent and get things covered and

then live basically?

MARK: First of all my mom, I talked to my mom, after she sort she came back, "You have to get

a job." She had always told me about a high school year. And so, it's one thing she never told

me was that she never graduated. And when I told her, "Mom, I gotta go get your job, get out of

your diploma." She said, "I never graduated." And I said, "What do you mean? You told me all

about your high school years." And she said, "Yeah, but I quit the last week." And I was going to

reach across the table and strangle her, just not actually. But I couldn't believe that anybody

would quit high school the last week.




TRAVIS: Right.

MARK: I asked her, "Mom, how could you quit the last week?" And she told with straight face,

everybody would feel the same way. Sinatra was playing at a ballroom in New York and she

said I got to go see him. And then it all make sense to the world to her. So I actually went to the

department of education in New York City and I told them, I lied to them, and told them that my

mother, her high school had burned down, it had burned down. But I told them that her diploma

went with it. And they said, "Sure, we'll look it up and send you a replacement" blah, blah. And

sometime later they called me back and said yes the school did burn down, which I knew, but

your mother never graduated. And I said, "Yes, she did." I was lying, I had to save myself. They

said, no she didn't, yes she did. It went on for like 4 weeks where I was also fielding complaints

from lawyers and losses, my dad's debt. And I probably said to them, "Look, if you don't give me

a diploma my mother is a widow and 2 kids-- I'm going to come down." I looked up the address

of the Board of Ed, and I said I'm going to come down to 14 Broom Street, wherever it was in

New York, and I'm going to get it myself. And I guess it got in them because I absolutely got my

mom an equivalency diploma. Stuffed her in the car, drove her to the New York City library

system, I read that they needed a clerk, got her a job as a clerk. And in today's dollars let's say

she was making 2 or 3,000 a week. And I happen to get a job with a very wealthy family about

10 miles from where I live in a whole different world of-- it was the Whitney, John Hay Whitney

had been the ambassador of Court of St. James. He had built the Herald Tribune, which used to

be a big newspaper in New York. Anyway, I drove there with this piece of junk car I have. He

knew I was going to be, thinking I was going to be a sort of like handyman kid for a local family

in a split-level. And I rode into a thousand acre estate where a foxhunt is going on. This is a true

story. And I'm driving my broken down car with a tailpipe dragging on the floor. And they were

so out of touch with reality that I got this job from them to actually help the guy who was the

chief botanist of the estate, it was like a feudal manor. And because they were out of touch they

paid 3 times the going rate not realizing it. So I passed to get enough money for us to get a

small studio, one bedroom apartment, I lived in the living room, my sister and mother lives in the

bedroom, and then I went there by day. It was a horrible black tie of my life, I was miserable. I

just want my mom and my sister to survive, and I was able to pull that off. And then when my

mom got remarried which was a few years later, my sister went off to school which I was able to

get some loans and people to help. I came up with my first business concept, which was a

syndicated column for small businesses. The name of the column was Small Business. I came

up with the idea. I really didn't know very much about syndicated columns but I knew about Ann

Landers and a couple of all the things I've got at the time. I called up the newspaper on Long

Island, which was the next area from Queens in New York City, outside of New York City. But

it's adjacent to it. News Day is a big newspaper, from that my idea they said, "Sounds

interesting, can you do 12 columns for free? We'll look at them and maybe we'll run the column."

So I wrote 12 free column, they looked at them and they started running my column. Make the

long story short I created a syndication business. My column called Small Business was running

in about 100 newspapers around the country, with my clients, all of which paid me and that was

sort of a real beginning. I had a business early, I sold Christmas trees and I was-- I created




Christmas trees still when I was 15, bought a truckload of trees from Canada, got a Texaco

Station to give me the space to sell all my trees. I learned a heck of a lot. And it was a series of

businesses like that, sort of job businesses what I actually invested in. But the first real business

was the syndicated newspaper column.

TRAVIS: Interesting. And so, how did you monetize that first business, how do you monetize a

syndicated column? Do you get paid for airing in different papers?

MARK: Yeah. Each newspaper pays you separately. It used to be per week. So they paid you X

dollars per week to write on the column. It came to the attention of Universal Press Syndicate,

my column, which they ran places like; they ran some very prominent columns and cartoons like

Doomstar. And they approached me and they wanted to take it over their sales force etc., buy

the rights. I would split it 50/50, I agreed. And I was really excited because they started selling it

and they were getting a tremendous response in the marketplace. But ultimately I had an out in

my contract and I took it back from them after a year because I was better doing it myself. I was

making more money and I was keeping all the intellectual property. But that's how you monetize

it. First you monetize it by each newspaper page you. Secondly, when you have a lot of

newspapers people call you to consult and read about what you're doing. I was still very young;

I was 22, something like that. And I was consulting with companies, 3 sometimes-- places

wanted to just use your content for commercial purposes without an endorsement. I remember

one time-- so one time I was 23 and Net Life contacted me. And one of my columns I wrote

about for small business was that of financial lives of small business owners. And they wanted

to run one of my column with no endorsement or anything, I get some newsletter or something

that they have. So I said, "Sure, how much you want to pay?" And they said, "Well, how much

will it be to run?" I said, "Let me get back to you tomorrow." So I said, "I'll shoot at the moon."

This was in 1972. When you think about the dollar value bear that in mind and they just wanted

one column to just run in a newsletter. And I said, "Okay, $15,000." I've never seen $15,000 in

my life. And they said, "Who we make the check out to?" And I got the $15,000. And so, it was

like I-- I said to myself, "This is how the world works." So you monetize it that way and then you

monetize it by-- the next thing I did was start to write books and develop a consulting firm

around small business consulting. And I had an intuition for it. I learned as I was writing and

interviewing companies. I had some exposure some things my dad did. And his personality

were helpful to me. He was dead but I had learned from him, he's the greatest mentor I ever

had. And even though we had a difficult relationship, I thank him for everything I am and

learned. And so I went on my way. That was the beginning of my business career.

TRAVIS: Right.

MARK: Well, you know what I think is illustrative and why I like dissecting everyone's path to

success is. So what you're describing is a frontend, backend model. So you're frontend, you're




monetizing through all of the different papers. And then your backend or your consulting piece

of the business, which is normally the most profitable part, right?

TRAVIS: And so, take down the path, how does that segue into a marketing firm, something

that really-- let me add to that statement, something that really strikes the interest of mine is I

know that you have a roster of clients that include a lot of big corporate people, Nike, GE,

people like that. And what I find so interesting about those businesses is hardly any of them use

any direct response methods, which I believe for the most part, is ego-based-- maybe not even

ego-based for big corporations but not monetarily responsible. It doesn't provide it direct return.

So what you're feeling on that and do you agree?

MARK: Well, I do. I wrote Your Marketing Sucks because so much of-- and became a big global

best-seller is because I do believe that so much of what passes from marketing is just an

aesthetic puppet show that makes the people who do the work, the so-called marketing work

feel good, and win awards, and all that. But it doesn't do the only thing marketing need to do;

the only legitimate goal of marketing is to grow revenue. It doesn't have to be anything else. And

it should not win awards or break any-- We won't accept rewards at my company. My company

is MSCO, it's in its 20th year. If founded it based on the principle that most marketing sucks.

And my book Your Marketing Sucks just simply highlights our philosophy here. But you're

exactly right, there's so much that's going on under the name of marketing that it's really simply

frustrated artists trying to show how cool or creative they are when they don't really realize that--

they're not business people at all and they don't realize that the true creativity is on the part of

business people, that's where ultimate creativity comes. You can be creative in any field. I think

the most creative person who ever lived was not Picasso, it was Einstein. Well Einstein is the

most creative person who ever lived, period. No one came close.

TRAVIS: Then what makes you say that?

MARK: Look who make second?

TRAVIS: What makes you say that?

MARK: Because he took the elements that we all see and builded them up into an idea and a

concept that nobody ever thought about, nobody ever had, and it changed the world.

TRAVIS: Right.

MARK: Steve Jobs, the world's great businessman said he want to put a ding in the universe.

He didn't, he did really cool things. He was a great businessman, he's a fantastic person,

character. I don't mean he's the guy to get along but that he wasn't. But he was certainly one of

the greatest business people who ever lived. But he didn't put a ding in the universe. Einstein




did, Newton did. So we have to reexamine creativity and look at like Walt Disney did, that's

creativity. And not just because it's a sort of creative theme park and cartoons, etc. What he did,

his ability to create that business, that's amazing. And so, the people working in a stellar and all

that, that they can certainly be creative but they have this view that business people are not

creative, they are and aesthetics is what drives the process. No, marketing is business. And

once you create a marketing department so to speak, you are getting in the way of the true

power and value of marketing because it should not be broken away from anything but growing

a company. All of our clients know that our focus here is to grow their business, period.

TRAVIS: Right. Yeah, so let qualify that from my side, okay? There's so much puffery and

almost a kind of-- I hate to say it but a form of scamming with advertising because people

believe that it's about witty jingles, it's about funny billboards, it's about the latest trends and all

those other things. Whereas it's about making the phone ring, it's about quantifying the efforts.

And ideal with lots and lots of businesses, and hardly any of them know what advertising is

effective for them and what's not. They are not tracking the lead sources, they're not tracking

the conversions, they're not tracking it all the way down into the cycle, all the way to the point of

sale. And so, so many people see these gigantic companies do this ego-driven, ego-based, silly

advertising. And then they think, well, if it's working for these big companies then I'm going to do

the same thing and they try to copy it. And so, that's what I've seen, that's what I've noticed, and

I made that mistake as a business owner myself very early on. Although I come to realize that I

couldn't play with the big boys so I needed to get results with my marketing. And so, what I hear

you saying is like Picasso, his work is esoteric. Whereas Einstein took an idea and thought and

translate it into something. Is that the difference that you're drawing here?

MARK: Yeah. Einstein did something that had intangible return on investment.

TRAVIS: Quantifiable, yeah.

MARK: He actually changed the way we do things. He made impossibilities possible. And I

don't want to detract from Picasso's abilities as an artist as to move people but there is a

difference. And let me revert back to your question about advertising, which is just a metaphor

for anything you do in business. Marketing plus business. We're 20 years old and we went on

the radio, most marketing firms don't advertise themselves. That's how other people do but they

don't spend their own money.

TRAVIS: Right.

MARK: Because they don't believe in it. They believe in it with your money not with theirs.

TRAVIS: Right. I completely agree with you.




MARK: Yeah. So I've decided to market, advertise my company in the New York tri-state area 6

years ago. I've put down $10,000 on a 2-week flight on WCBS in New York radio. We made

$147,000 on the first 10,000. And you shouldn't do anything in marketing you can't track. So if

you're not tracking it, you say you can't track it, which you absolutely can. But if you say you

can't track it, stop it. So, we made $147,000 on the first 10,000. So we double them, triple them.

Last year we spend 1.2 million on these because it just works. And it works-- in order to give

contributions to radio stations. And a month ago we went on, started going on TV less than a

month ago. And that's working great. Not working great on the standpoint of that's great to see

my spots on TV, it's great because people are coming in the door and they're looking to our

message, and they're understanding that we provide marketing in an entrepreneurial way to

companies of a size-- many small or mid-size. We work with some of the giants in the world. But

like you said, Nike, Mars, AIG, etc., most of our clients are small and mid-sized businesses who

cannot get marketing guidance, advice them in execution from the typical marketing firm. You

have to be working with a unique firm focused on their growth, not on the beauty or their

aesthetics. So, when people say if they don't know if they're advertising is working then they

should stop it.

TRAVIS: Right.

MARK: Somebody has a kid and they give them advice, and they tell the kid, "Don't drink and

drive." And I have two sons, they're grown now, but when they were kids I tell them that all the

time. But let's say I said to you-- you would ask me, "Mark, do you tell your kids not to drink and

drive?" And I say, "Yeah, I tell them that all the time." And you said to me, "Well, does that stop

them? Are they drinking and driving?" And I said, "I don't know. I just walk away. I've done what

I--"

TRAVIS: Right.

MARK: Why is it any different? It's the same thing.

TRAVIS: Right.

MARK: It's not the same thing because there's more at stake when you're kids are drinking and

driving but I like to exaggerate to make a point. You wouldn't walk away, you say, "Hold on.

How do I know?" You look, you see, look for hints. Does their breath ever smell? They seem like

they're drunk. Are they getting in accidents. But the same thing with marketing and advertising

as a subset of that, you need to know if it's working. You don't spend on advertising, marketing,

or invest in them. And you can't invest in anything with good faith, how do you do on any

investment portfolio? I don't know. It must be doing good. Do you ever check? No. Do you have

revenue? No. We'll have that conversation. So we have a gut check with ourselves and say if

we can't measure it, and/or it's not performing-- A lot of people come in all the time and say,




"We've been advertising in this magazine, or used to be in the yellow pages. And we spend a

lot of money per month, we don't know if it's working. But we do it anyways because we're afraid

to stop." Fear never works. Fear is a terrible thing. It isn't good for anything. It never adds value.

It's a loser. You can't run your life in fear.

TRAVIS: Yeah, I agree. It's kind of like 20 plugs plugged in to the wall and they don't know

which one they can unplug and which one needs to stay plugged in because they're not tracking

any of that. And that's more of a common problem than I think most people realize. I followed a

very same trajectory. We started out advertising 1,000 a month, and then 2,000, and then

5,000. And then 10, and then 20, until we graduated up to spending $120,000 a month. That's

an insane amount of money to advertise. But when you're tracking it's not that insane because

you're getting a return on it. And so it's really a revolving cycle. I get that 120 back and then

many fold, and I take in reinvest again, right? And I would scare the living daylights out of the

TV and radio stations because I tracked everything. And all of them, every station will tell you

they're the number 1 in their market at something. And really if you listen closely it's just a slight

alteration of the wording that they're using that they're number 1 at something, if you listen

closely between, 18, 24, demographic, or whatever it is, right? And for me, since we tracked

everything all of them grew to know that I could turn my monitor around and show them whether

I'm getting any calls from their commercials, and what time those calls coming in and whether

they come from a cell phone and all of that other stuff. And that strikes the fear out of a lot of

advertising sources because they're not used to people being able to track. And so you can

correlate an ROI straight back to that money that you've spent with that station, right?

MARK: Yeah, absolutely.

TRAVIS: Yeah, and so--

MARK: You have to.

TRAVIS: Ultimately eliminate the ones that aren't working, and double down on the ones that

aren't, right?

MARK: Yeah. And we used to adapt an awesome amount of money, or tremendous amount of

money. Well, actually maybe too little.

TRAVIS: Right.

MARK: When I looked at last year and saw that we were spending 1.2 million, I realized that we

need to spend more because it's working. And we're making money at every dollar we spend.

So that's where we started TV less than a month ago. So, it's absolutely-- Anything in marketing

works. Whether it's PR, events, sales people, advertising, whatever initiative you're using. And




you're generating ROI on it. That's why it's the central theme of my firm and my book Your

Marketing Sucks. If you're generating positive ROI, you need to continuously reinvest until you

start you see a point of diminishing return.

TRAVIS: Right.

MARK: If I told everybody listening, everytime you go into a casino, and you bring $5,000. And

using a sort of system that I've got. This is all nonsense I'm just using this as a crazy example,

but to drive the point home, you would walk out with double what you came in with. So you

tested the first time. You went in and you brought 5,000. You walked out with $10,001. You

tested me again and you walked out with $10,005. So if you brought in 5,000. I forgot what I

said to bring in-- Bought of you brought in 5,000 you walked out with 10,001. You tried it again

with the 5,000 more, you got 10,002. You would say to yourself, or you should, next time I'm

going to bring in 10,000. Because what Stevens is telling me is working. I'm doubling my money

everytime I go in. It's a basic concept underlying that with marketing. If you're generating you

have to look at the ROI number, return on investment. Where you are generating ROI, keep

increasing the spend and if you reach a point of diminishing returns. If you're not generating ROI

and if you don't know if you are you're probably not. Stop it and find an avenue where you will

start to generate ROI, and start small. Don't start big. If you hear about my metaphorical lessons

of the casino. Instead bringing in the 5,000 bring in 500 and test me. If you find it working on a

thousand then bring in 5,000 the next time.

TRAVIS: Right. I completely agree. What you feel like are the key components to running a

successful marketing campaign these days, whether it's a top 3, top 5. Off the top of your head,

what are the key elements that you would tell people to look for or to do?

MARK: I would say that you need to be, and this is something that I think may come as a

surprise to a number of people. But I would say start with the recognition that you need to be

provocative. Your message is very important. So people will say to me all the time, "Well, we

tried advertising or whatever it is, it didn't work." So advertising with direct mail or another

initiative doesn't work. I said, "Let me see the message and then show me some plain vanilla

message, who's going to pay attention to that? Don't forget, your marketing sucks that time.

That's provocative. We use that with all of our clients. So, the quality of the message, it's going

to be provocative, strong, compelling. People have to turn heads is number 1 by far whatever

the marketing initiative is. Number 2 you need to have integration of elements. People say I

have a website, nobody visits me. Well, what are you doing to drive them there? So let's take

the advertising campaign, or the PR campaign, or whatever. Once you have the provocative

message you create a provocative spot. You need to have a landing page. I wouldn't drive them

to a home page, I would drive them to a landing page about that specific element that you are

promoting in your provocative message. And you need to make sure that there's a good-- so the

integration is critical. Do you need a whole set of elements that integrate it for the model to work




effectively. And finally, you need to be able to deliver a good product or service because that's

what reinforces the sale. Now you've got people listening to this and they realize my product or

service really isn't great. It's okay but it's not great. People don't buy okay twice. And they don't

buy what they like, usually not even the first time. They only buy what they love. Sitting behind

me in my conference room is a portrait of Marilyn Monroe not because I'm a big Marilyn Monroe

art fan, but because she is symbolic of the key principle we use here at my firm in SEO and

they're incorporated in my book Your Marketing Sucks, which is that companies have to make a

transition from like to love. If you settle for the fact that people like you, your company, products,

or services you will ultimately go out of business. If you make the transition over to people loving

what you're offering, big difference.

TRAVIS: So, let me make sure I understand number 3. Did you say make it an offer that they

would love? Is that what I'm to extract from this?

MARK: Yeah. And also and/or products or services. If it's both that's best. So they have to be a

great offer, and that the product or service cannot be one that the people like. It has to be one

that you work on. Marketing is not just about the advertising, the PR, websites, and all that.

You're selling something. And the thing that you sell, Steve Jobs knew it so well, Steve Jobs

knew this so well. I'm going to make a product first of all that people didn't know they could

have. Not that they wanted, they didn't even know they wanted. But the element of surprise is

important in all of business. Secondly, when they do see my products they're going to fall in-love

with it much more than they do with any other competitive product. And you go and do an Apple

story you feel all proud of. I went in recently to an Apple Store near where my office is because I

couldn't-- there was sudden malfunction, it appears to be some malfunction in my iPad. And I

thought I needed a new battery for the charger, it wouldn't charge. One of the guys fixed it

immediately, quickly, no new battery. And right out of his hand he took out a window cleaner,

and he sprayed it and cleaned it, and put my iPad into a beautiful little bag for me to go away

with. Something that isn't done in most businesses. But when I was there, I said to him, "What

else can I buy? I don’t need anything but I'm going to buy something." Everything looks so

delicious. And he started asking me, "What do you have?" And I told him I have an iMac at

home, I have an iPhone, I have this iPad, I have an iPod. And he says, "You shouldn't buy

anything else. You have everything you need." But it was also a great marketing. What really

got me Travis is that he said, "We get that question all the time. People come in and say "I have

everything. What else can I buy?"

TRAVIS: Right.

MARK: That's the indication of people love your product. And that rounds out the marketing

picture in a tremendous way.




TRAVIS: Yeah. So let me go back and hit these points again. So, number 1, be provocative. I

think it's painfully obvious but a lot of people miss it. And I forgot who said it. But you can't bore

people into buying, right?

MARK: Yeah, obviously.

TRAVIS: And it seems like people forget that. Their message, or their delivery, even their

energy in delivering something is so blasé that it's almost like they're expecting to bore

somebody into buying. You need to be provocative. Number 2, integration. And so, I want to

draw an example from years ago that blew me away with HP. So I was looking for a business

card template. And I clicked on an add that Hewlett-Packard was paying for. And they landed

me on the homepage, and I had to look at 100 different options and figure out where the

business card template page was. And it blew me away that a big company could get something

like that so wrong. And to your point of what you're saying here is if I clicked on an ad that was

about business card templates, then they should take me to the business card template page

rather than dropping me on the home page and making me look for it, right?

MARK: Yeah, absolutely.

TRAVIS: And so, I wanted to mention that example because there's a lot of people-- I'm in a

mastermind and we were reviewing some people's websites, and they're making that common

mistake, bringing everybody to the home page rather than the item that they clicked on and they

expected to see. And then make an offer that they would love to have. So, I guess the one thing

that-- Let's take something like business card templates that's not very sexy. How would you

turn something like that into an offer that they would love to have? Would it be a trial thing,

would it be this kind of mafia offer or something that it would be tough for them to say no to?

MARK: I need to actually look at-- you don't pull these things off the shelf in a cookie cutter way

but there's no such thing as a non-sexy product or service. There's no such thing.

TRAVIS: Right.

MARK: We work once for an asphalt company. So we had to make people fall in love with

asphalt, and how do we do that? And the asphalt is hot, black, smelly stuff that appears to be a

total commodity. But we had them develop some strains of asphalt. One minute when snow

landed on it, it melted almost immediately. So we could then sell that as a safety item for

schools, and corporate parking areas, etc. So suddenly asphalt became sexy in it, and we have

them create another strength that was much more environmentally friendly. And all the

businesses, and even individual residences for people that are eco-friendly passionately. And

they had to pay more for this. They both had to pay more for this type of-- significantly more for

this type of asphalt. But it became sexy. So never think your product cannot become sexy. I've




always had a sort of running feeling at the back of my mind that someday I want to buy a

manure company because areas dissolve with it is what terrible thing with manure. I bet I'll

come up with some sexy manure products. And I will offer them in a way that they'll be

irresistible. I want that challenge.

TRAVIS: Yeah. I think sexy is relative to the audience that you're speaking to, right?

MARK: Yeah, we sell annuities here for one of our clients sells annuities, right? Annuities are

like root canal because it's so-- But what's an annuity really? I'll tell you how we make them sexy

in a second. Annuities really mean you'll never run out of money if you'll live to a 150.

TRAVIS: Right.

MARK: That's what annuity means, it's that sexy. That’s annuity means, don't even use the

word.

TRAVIS: Right.

MARK: Would you like to make sure that you never run out of money as long as you live even if

you'll live through 150?

TRAVIS: Heck, yeah.

MARK: I just left my mother when she’s 93. She may go on to a hundred plus. I happen to be

her annuity. You can turn something around and look at what it stands. If I met you at a party

and today Hey, how about if I could tell you about ways you'd never run out of money. Nothing

illegal, nothing immoral, nothing jaded. He said, "How do you do that?" And then I'm right into

the presentation.

TRAVIS: Right. Great point. Listen, we're starting to run a little long on time. What do you say

we segway into the lightning round. I sent you 3 questions over there. Did you get a chance to

look at those?

MARK: I did, but I do not have them

TRAVIS: I'm going to ask them, just as long as you gave them some thought. And you can

probably answer these jut off the top of your head anyway, so--

MARK: Yeah, I've thought about all of them. I've always thought about all of them.




TRAVIS: Cool. So let me ask you, what book or program was pivotal in educating you or

helping you get a deeper grasp on business? And it could be a book or a program.

MARK: I could answer it easily. It was My Years with General Motors, written Alfred Sloan, the

founder of the modern GM. And I read it as a pretty young man, and it was an amazing book. I

don't like books that just work only on your motivation. This really showed me something

interesting, and Sloan said that the car business in United States. And he was talking about

when there really was no carbon. And that the early dealership said something that all of us

forget that they would have had to have. They had to have haystacks and fields so they could

teach people how to drive. People didn't know how to drive.

TRAVIS: And what was the name of that again?

MARK: My Years with General Motors by Alfred Sloan, and he's actually-- it's the Sloan School

of Business at MIT.

TRAVIS: Oh, okay.

MARK: That's the phone.

TRAVIS: Yeah, I've actually heard of that. Sorry about that. I've actually heard about that but

I've never read it. So I'm going to put it on my list. What were you saying?

MARK: Yeah. It talks about 3 reasons the car industry grew. One was the used car. I'm sorry,

the model year. When I grew up model years are like big deals. Each time a car unveils. But

that's just a human fabrication, a marketing fabrication and make people want to switch out from

their model year to another one because it was cooler and sexier. So the model year, the car

loan, you can look at a car and say, "I can't afford that $1,800 or whatever it was at the time. I'll

just get a loan, pay for it by the month." It's as ingenious as the house mortgage.

TRAVIS: Right.

MARK: And third was the used car market because if you want to get rid of your car and buy

the new model you had to have a place to sell it to. And those are the things that drove the car

industry into the behemoth it became.

TRAVIS: Wow. And to think those things didn't even exist.

MARK: Yeah.

http://amzn.to/UdyyR6




TRAVIS: Those need to be conceptualized and implemented for an industry to grow. And then it

grew into this gigantic behemoth. It's just a testament of imagining an outcome and then

executing.

MARK: Yup.

TRAVIS: What's one of your favorite tools or pieces of technology that you've recently

discovered, if any, that you'd recommend to other business owners and why?

MARK: It's also easy for me. I had been a BlackBerry freak, and I've had an iPad for years that

I've never used. I don't know why. I actually lived in semi-fear, I'm exaggerating, of my

BlackBerry not working. And when it would not work I'd freak out and then my IT guy fix it no

matter what time it was because I was --BlackBerry guy. But it broke one say and I said, "Hey I

can pull my emails off of my Gmail account on my iPad. And I started using the iPad let's say 4

months ago. Wow, it is the greatest productivity enhancer. First of all I was afraid I couldn't type

as fast and send messages as fast on anything besides a BlackBerry, wrong. Much easier to do

it on the iPad. Secondly, I can zoom in on while I'm just sitting. I get up every morning at 7 am, I

spend 2 hours listening to news half an ear and working on email for 2 hours, and I go for a hike

with my dog before I go to the office. But those 2 hours I'm dreaming, thinking, going on

LinkedIn, looking at things I never thought about. Checking out words, going on just dreaming,

free associating and I can do it all on my iPad, go to various websites, just generate ideas, look

up peaceful ideas, facts I'm not sure about. And it's such a great thing and I can get emails from

people with links to them. Go to the links, look them down, trick down their competitors. The

Ipad is just phenomenal.

TRAVIS: Right. I second that. I agree with you. What quote would best summarize your belief or

your attitude in business?

MARK: I forget the exact quote, there's so many, but I forget the exact quote and people have

to look it up. But I'm pretty sure it was Theodore Roosevelt who said it. And it was something

about being in the arena. And what it really drive that is that there are people in life who

observe, and there are people in life who do. When you do you have to face the risks, failures,

the challenges, fears, setbacks. But I always prefer to be in the arena. I can't even watch a

Broadway show because I'm not onstage, I'm sitting here like an idiot watching the show to me.

I need to be in the arena. And I think that's the place where we separate doers from the

pretenders.

TRAVIS: Yeah, I think it's--

MARK: You know what I mean?




TRAVIS: Yeah, it's something like victory goes to the man in the arena with blood on his face

and--

MARK: Yeah. That's the gist of it. Yeah, I love that. I used to memorize it. I also think that

another one that's important for me is for me is down the road the architect that “less is more”

TRAVIS: Yeah.

MARK: We want to think positive things and we never ask ourselves, or most of us don't ask

ourselves “What stuff I'm doing, what I should focus on to make upstream progress all the

time?” And if you do that you narrow it down, you will be more successful, and more happy even

more effective.

TRAVIS: Right. I totally agree. Vladimir Klitschko, I think I just murdered his name, the boxer,

says something very similar to the quote. You talked about the in the arena. And he says, "No

fight, no win." If you don't fight you don't win.

MARK: I was asked to speak at Wharton 2 years ago, the business school and somebody

would call me educated in terms of a formal education. And I said I would be willing to speak to

the faculty and the students but I have to be able to name the speech. And they said, "Sure,

what do you want to call it?" Before I'll tell you the title, it's because I don't have much respect

for teaching in a vacuum. I said, "I want to title the speech to the Wharton students and faculty

"Everything you learn here is a waste of time". And they said, "Oh my god, do you really want to

call it that?" And I said, "Yes, they let me do it?" I had a pack house and it was somewhat

tongue-in-cheek, but that relates to the arena. For a college professor everything works

because they're not in the arena.

TRAVIS: Right. Because they don't have to deal with the repercussions of where the rubber

meets the road so I totally agree with you.

MARK: Yeah. No risk, 10 years, everything works still on equation, blah, blah, blah. I think need

any day of the year. And I hope that everybody listening feels the same way because it's damn

fun.

TRAVIS: Yeah, I completely agree. Listen, how do people connect with you Mark?

MARK: It's easy, they can email me at [email protected], that's mark, steven, charles, oscar,

msco.com. Or they can go to yourmarketingsucks.com which is just really easy to remember,

yourmarketingsucks.com and just make an appointment to talk to me, schedule an appointment,

there's a scheduler there, there's no charge. And I love to talk to business people.

http://www.msco.com/

http://www.msco.com/yms/home.php

yourmarketingsucks.com




End of Interview

TRAVIS: Excellent, thank you for that. Remember that you can find all of the links to the books

and the resources mentioned in the show in the show notes. Just go to

rockstarentrepreneurnetwork.com, you'll find where there's a drop down on the menu right there

that says radio show. You can click through and go to the radio show, go to the specific show

that you're interested in, and you'll find all the resources right there. Now before I close the show

today, I'd like for you to think about committing to 2 things that will help fast-forward your

success, okay? So think about this. The first is find a mastermind where you can be surrounded

by people that have an entrepreneurial mindset. So that you can help eliminate those negative

self-limiting thoughts and focus on constant, forward, bold progress, okay? It's extremely

powerful when you surround yourself with people like this. The second thing that I really want

you to think about doing, find a mentor that has already achieved what you dream of and see if

that person will personally mentor you and your business. These 2 things will make a drastic

improvement in your business and in your life. So think about that. My quote for today comes

from Henry Ward Beecher, and the quote reads, "Man's best successes come after their biggest

disappointments." This is Travis Lane Jenkins signing off for now. To your incredible success

my friend, take care.





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