Episode 249: Special Guest – Perry Belcher

Ken

Welcome, everybody to this episode of the Marketing Guides for Small Businesses podcast. Today we are absolutely thrilled to have who I think is one of the absolute legendary digital marketers on the planet and somebody that I respect just tremendously. That's Perry Belcher. And so we're really excited to have you on board today, Perry.

Perry

Thanks, man. I appreciate it.

Ken

Yeah. So just a little bit about Perry. I mean, gosh, I mean, you're such a jack of all trades and you're so darn good at everything. Copyright strategist for a second. You know, it's just amazing what all you've been able to accomplish and I admire you so much for that. We've got Jeff Steck from Tylerica Marketing in Austin, Texas, Ian Cantle from Bradford, Ontario from outsourced Marketing, and then Paul Barthell and myself, both from Changecape Web. So over the last couple of years, Perry, you've done a lot of really great things that I think have been kind of leading education in the community from AI Bot Summit traffic and conversion strategies that you've been doing for years and years and years. Vibe coding Primal offer workshop that I got to attend with you in person, which was amazing. And you know, your, your four box business model strategy, which I think is just so important for every business to kind of learn and understand. We wanted to kind of talk to you today just about a variety of different things, especially the more cutting edge things that you've been working on. So I'll get started if that's okay.

Perry

Yeah, go for it.

Ken

All right, cool. So the idea of marketing and sales funnels have been kind of the backbone of digital marketing for a long time. What's changed in customer behavior today that maybe makes them less effective than what they have been in the past?

Perry

Just like with any other marketing tool as, as the cat's out of the bag, you know, things tend to be less and less effective. If you look back, Allen Sultanic said this was really smart. He said every great innovation in marketing has been a method by which to disguise the sales process. Right. So when we started off online selling. Selling online. You know, there was E commerce stores which were pretty easy and they were pretty straightforward. It was like walking into a store, you put things in your basket like a supermarket. You checked out, you left. And then all of a sudden these direct response marketers of old started popping in and teaching direct response marketing to a whole generation of people. Corey Rudolph was the guy that started that. And at first there was a long form sales letter that looked an awful lot like what today we would call an advertorial. It was a special report, you know, that told you all about whatever. And then boom, at the end, buy my stuff, right? And then it went to teleseminars. That was the thing which by the way are back if you didn't know that, but it would be a teleseminar would be the next thing. And you know, get on a teleseminar and you're going to learn something. Oh, just kidding. Buy my stuff. You know, and then it was a webinar, you know, okay, on a webinar you're gonna learn some stuff and you learn some stuff and then surprise, surprise, buy my stuff, right. And there have been more and more, you know, methodologies for that. And then funnels came along. I think actually Matt Baysac and I, right around the very same time were the first people to ever do one click upsells. And I didn't have any software to do them with. We did them with actually a human being. We would have a, you know, your, your shopping cart would push data to a thank you page and we would ask on that thank you page if people wanted to add additional things to their orders. And if they did, I used to have two ladies that would sit all day and augment their orders and add those things to their orders. And that's how I started doing one click upsells. And it was a boondoggle for me. And those two ladies sat there and put thousands of dollars a day in the bank for me because there was no software that did it. And then, then Matt had somebody create a little piece of software that worked, I think on maybe one shopping cart or something like that. And. And then all of a sudden somebody invented this amazing thing called infusionsoft. And it had, it had upsells built in it. And so they've been around a long time. And I, I wouldn't go so far as to say they don't work today. They still work. They work less in the marketing community where it's my least favorite market in the whole wide World marketers selling marketing materials to marketers about how to market to marketers. You know, they don't work that great there because we're very much in the know. I mean we know what's coming, right. If you, if you or I get on a teleseminar or a webinar or go, you know, buy a free plus shipping offer, I mean we know there's going to be an upsell there. There's no surprise to us. There's no, there's no novelty to it. Right. So it works less. But like when I'm selling Sourdough Starter on Pinterest, I'm still getting 50 take rates on one click upsells because those people have never seen one before. They don't know, you know, they perhaps never seen one. So it's not as, it's, I would, it's not, I wouldn't say you throw the baby out with the bathwater on them quite yet, they're still there. But it's the whole, the whole process of selling online is changing a great deal. Smart sellers are beginning to concentrate, which we should have for a long time, are beginning to concentrate on a great deal more on the quality of the product and really having a deep, deep, deep understanding of the client. Marketers got really lazy with traffic targeting, you know, because you know, if you got a guy walking across the Sahara desert, it's pretty easy to sell him water, Right. And if you could just target down tight enough, all you had to say was I got water, you know, and you, you sold a lot. Well now you can't target that tightly anymore. And the skill of being able to market to people is actually much more valuable today than it's ever been. And it, it's just, but it's, but it's a different game. It's not about tricks, it's not about hyperbole, it's not about pressure, it's not about any of those things anymore. It's more about authenticity and most importantly, really spending the time to understand the client.

Ken

Yeah, one of the things that you mentioned in Primal Offers is, you know, these big audacious claims that marketers have been making for years. You know, 10 extra business and do this and do that is no longer really resonating well with people. You know, really they're looking for lower return but also much lower risk. And that, that's, you know, become, become a really important consideration. Can you talk just a little bit about that?

Perry

Sure. I mean it depends on the, you know, that really comes down to the. Sophistication of the buyer. Yeah, right. In a lot of cases, if I tell you, if I tell a guy on the street that I meet at the bar who's broke, that if he'll give me a dollar, I'll show him how to make $10 from it, I'll get him a 10 times return on his dollar. Well, he might risk a dollar, but probably not. Maybe, but he's not very sophisticated. If I go to a sophisticated investor and say, give me a million dollars and I'm going to get you a 10 times return on it, they're just going to laugh their head off. They're not even going to think about you. You're going to be ridiculous, you know, because there's just no such returns without actual. There could be in a physical business, but as an investment, there's no such returns. So when we're making ridiculous offers, they don't work to smarter people, they don't work to more sophisticated people. And what happens is. And what's always happened, this is not a new thing. It's just people are realizing it more. You know, when you make those kinds of offers and they do work, you're getting the worst possible customer you can get. Because that customer number one was dumb to start with. Right. Two, they were a sloth to start with. They were wanting something for nothing. Three, they're gonna be disappointed. And when they're disappointed, they're gonna hate you 20 times more than they loved you for telling them the secret. That wasn't really a secret. It was just. Yeah. Does that make sense?

Ken

Yeah, absolutely.

Perry

And all that hyperbole, it now is a signal, you know, It's a signal. Everybody's been screwed 15 times and nobody's really lining up for number 16. You know, their butts are still sore, so. And if you go back to caveman mentality, it's like it's just learned behavior, you know, over time, you may want something a lot. You may attempt it three, four, five times, but at the end of the day, you know, you eventually learn that the fire is hot. Don't touch it.

Ken

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You only have to learn to stick your hand in the fire and then it's hot, you know?

Perry

Right.

Ken

Two times before you start to realize you don't want to do that again.

Perry

Right?

Ken

Yeah, definitely. Paul, I think you had a question.

Paul

Yeah, I do. Few. So you talk about AI driven ecosystem. So first of all, can you kind of explain what that is and what does it look like in practice for a small business?

Perry

I have no idea. I really.

Paul

All right, moving on.

Perry

I don't know. No, but I don't know what an a. I don't know what an AI driven ecosystem is. I don't. I don't know that I've used that term. I think maybe, you know, we're an AI First Company. I don't. I don't know. The ecosphere is certainly changing, I guess you could say that way. And AI is a GPT. Not ChatGPT, but a GPT meaning it's a general purpose technology. There's only been, depending on who you ask, about eight of them ever in the history of mankind. The first one was fire. The next one was the wheel. The next one was the engine. The next one was electricity. There's only been a handful of things that. The telephony, the Internet. I mean, telephony, computers, the Internet, and now AI. And you've got two on the horizon right now. You've got AI and humanoid robotics. And both are equally as huge a shift as anything could be. The. The ecosphere, I guess to say that, that. What's the, what's the AI ecosphere? I don't know that there is one. I think that we're still, you know, we're very much in a human ecosphere, but there, There's a total shift. What a GPT means is that it's a technology that changes every human's life on the face of the planet. Then that's the reason there are only, you know, so few of them. Right? But an AI is one of those. So it changes the economy, it changes our society. I mean, if you look right now, how we fight, right? You know, you're a liberal, I'm a conservative. I hate you. You hate me. If people were hate, I'd be China, right? That's largely driven by AI, believe it or not. The, The AI ecosphere, I guess, as you'd call it, is, you know, created something like TikTok and Instagram that when you start watching a show today or when you start watching things on. On TikTok, they show you more things like the thing that you watch. They. If you're a conservative, they show you more conservative stuff. If you're a liberal, they show you more liberal stuff. If you're, you know, a millennial, they show you millennial stuff. If you're an old fart like me, show me country music and, you know, osteoporosis supplements, you know, you know, it. It just. They just show you more of what you want. So they're cementing your beliefs Through AI because they, AI analyzes well. Perry likes to hear about blank, so we're going to show him more blank. And, and as a business model, it's a good idea. As a society, it's a terrible idea because people lack a diversity of information anymore. I mean, there are good liberal people out there, there are good conservative people out there, but it, when you do this, it, it demonizes the other on either side. So that's a big shift inside business. You know, the ignorance of business people to the cataclysmic shift that is going on right now is to me, scary. It's actually quite frightening because I think a lot of businesses are going to wake up one morning and it's too late. When, you know, I was in, I'll tell you funny story. I was in South Bend, Indiana. That's the home in Notre Dame, right. And I, I was chasing a girl. This many years ago, I was chasing a girl, imagine that. And I went to.

Paul

That's illegal now.

Perry

I took her to a fancy. I took her to a fancy. Well, I didn't catch her. So there you go. I took her to a fancy dinner at this place called the Tippecanoe Place. And this was the home. This is the Studebaker family mansion, if you remember. Studebaker cars.

Ken

Yeah.

Perry

And they had, they had a, like a 50 room mansion there. It's beautiful. It's, it's now a restaurant, weirdly enough, owned by the Ralston Purina Company. So it's a, it's a fine dining restaurant owned by a dog food company, which is a little frightening. But anyhow, they bought it and turned it into one. Yeah, right. Turned into one of the finest restaurants in the world. If it's still there. I don't know if it's still there or not, but I was surprised with the history of it. I remember this 25, 30 years ago. I wish it was 25 years ago. It's probably 40 years ago now. And I was, I remember being taken aback by the fact that I'm like, well, Studebaker. Do you know what they're famous for, Ken? Or do you know what they're famous for, Paul?

Paul

Well, they were basically, they were a high end horse and buggy company and they started building cars.

Perry

100%. 100%. But they started building cars too late. Yeah, exactly. They decided that, you know, they would keep building horse and buggy, that this car thing may be a flash in the pan. Right. So they waited a long time. They had all the capital, all the ability, all the Engineering all the factories. But by the time they, by the time Ford and Chrysler and everyone else got started and had a heads up on them, it was too late. And the Studebaker.

Paul

Yeah. And they actually built really good cars. But yeah, like you said, they were just too late.

Perry

It was too late. So you had tons and tons of people, by the way, pay attention to this weird thing. I'm drinking, I'm on a, I'm on this diet thing and my girlfriend's been giving me multicolored things all day that I have no idea what's in them. But, but the same is true with, you know, there were tons and tons of people who decided that this Internet thing. Well, I'll just wait. I don't know. I don't know if that's going to be a thing or not. Right.

Jeff

What do you need a website for?

Perry

By, you know, said Blockbuster. Right. You know, so you got, you know, those companies went the wayside. So. But look at what was birthed out of it. You know, out of the horse and buggy came this gigantic industry, this automotive. Out of the Internet came this enormous multi industry. And out of AI will come great deal of industries, but with a great deal of casualties left behind. And they're always the same. They're always the people that said, well, I'm just going to wait and see what happens before I decide. And when something's a little bit difficult, when it's not quite, you know, it's, it's not impossible, it's not too technical, but it's not quite easy enough. Like right now I'm doing a lot of. Ken said, I'm doing a lot of vibe coding, I'm writing software right now and I'm an idiot when it comes to that stuff, but I can crank software like mad. With AI, it's not as easy as it eventually will be, but when it becomes really, really, really easy, there'll be less and less and less money in it. So getting in and figuring out AI and robotic process automation and things like that now while they're still a little bit crude, a little bit premium primitive, you know, the earlier people get into those things, the better off they're going to be. And then just to ignore it. Everybody says the same thing, well, if you ignore it, it's going to kill you. Well, it's going to kill you. You know, you're gonna, if you ignore it, you're, you're gonna, I don't even know, you're gonna be working at Starbucks because you're not gonna Be anybody working at Starbucks. You're gonna go into Starbucks and a robot's gonna hand you your coffee. That's a fact. You know, they've got, They've got a McDonald's in Fort Worth, Texas right now that has one employee in it. It's a very high volume McDonald's and that one employee just watches the robots to make sure they're all running properly and the supply lines are filled. So you know, fast food's going to become big box vending machines for lack of a better term. You know, so I guess that might, that's a long, long about way to not really answer your question, Paul, but as best as I can.

Paul

Well, you know, you said a couple things like on social media, I said for a long time that social media drives people into Echo Cham and it just like you said, it just keeps feeding them what they want and it separates people and they have no opposing viewpoints, no diverse viewpoints. And I hate you and you hate me. And I think social media has been doing that for a long time. And you know, on AI as far as relates to business, I don't know if small businesses are ignorant. I think they're overwhelmed because things are changing faster now than they ever have.

Perry

And they're changing faster than they know they are too. Right.

Paul

And I think they're just overwhelming that. They're, they're, they're scared. And it's like going back to what you said about being burned it in their mind. I'm sure part of it is like, okay, maybe this is for real, but I've been burned before. How I know I'm not going to get burned this time?

Perry

Well, and there'll be some guy that walks in the door that tells them how they're gonna fix their website and make them rich and then just steals their money. And you know, that's so common. But, but you know there's, there's a, you know, when you look, it's like a perfect storm of bad, you know, the, the something like almost 70% of US businesses are owned by people over 60. So if you're over 60 and you're going to have to learn, you know, a whole new way of doing business, it's very, very hard. That's the reason there's such a turnover in those businesses right now. This reason they're selling and they're kids don't want them, you know, the kids don't want responsibilities of businesses. They saw their parents work so hard that they don't want to work that hard. They think, they think they can do it easier. They'll just, you know, get a mean coin or they'll become an influencer or whatever the hell and you know, they'll get out of that when they get hungry. But, but for now we're living a very prosperous country. So yeah, it's, it's, it's nuts. And as a business model, it's genius. And that these, these companies like Meta and Tick Tock and all that, they're all being driven not by technology really. They're being driven by caveman level psychology. That's the real part nobody talks about. They're paying psychologists and sociologists and you know, running multi billion dollar behavioral, behavioral science studies to figure out, you know, do you know, do you know that the, the scroll feature, the thing that rolls up, you know, rolls the things on your phone where you can scroll through like that. When Facebook put that in place, Facebook usage went up by 2000%. Wow, 2000%. Just that scrolling. What's it remind you of? Anything you can think of that it reminds you of? How about a slot machine? It works on the same psychology a slot machine does when the wheels are, you can walk up to a slot machine, put in your quarter, you don't take quarters anymore, the credit cards, but you put in your quarter, press a button and say you lost or you won. But if it did that, no one would play slot machines. The, the wheels turning stimulate a dopamine response in the brain of chance. And chance is incredibly addictive. So is the scroll on the phone. So they, they took. There's a great book Joe Polish recommended to me called Addiction by Design. Addiction by Design. And it's all about how casinos are designed to psychologically addict you. And probably 50 to 70% of the psychology theory, other than game theory that's in all these social media apps was actually taken from the casino industry.

Ken

Wow.

Perry

Yeah.

Ken

You know, one of the things that you were talking about, Gary, kind of triggered a thought in my mind and that's, you know, when I'm talking to small businesses, they never put a price to inaction or a price to those missed leads or opportunities. And I think that that's what's going to be so tragic because it's going to steamroll certain businesses and certain industries very, very quickly. Others, it's going to take a while to roll out, but it's because people, they're not taking action. Even taking little micro actions, you know, do. Starting to do some things, you know, using AI, getting comfortable with it is I think going to be so important for so many businesses to survive. But they, they just aren't taking any action at all. And that's what's tragic.

Perry

Yeah, and I don't think they're gonna, I mean, and, and you know, for the people that are in the know, we're just as dumb because we're not. You know, right now I'm living a very uncomfortable lifestyle, unfortunately, because I work from five in the morning until my eyes burn so much. I can't work anymore at night because I know what I'm sitting on top of. Right. We have an enormous advantage and people are like, well, yeah, but pretty soon everybody's going to be onto this and hey, I'll do everything. And doesn't matter what business I started, I was going to take it over. And you know, it's just so untrue if you look how, you know, how much time have people had to learn to build websites? Right? And how many people do you know that know how to build a website outside our industry? I mean, one in a, one in 500 maybe. You know, they're not going to adopt that quickly. The, the scary part is how quickly corporations are adopting. So the, the gap between small business and big business is going to get bigger and bigger and bigger. Small business is going to be okay, but small business is going to actually be small. It's going to be small. It's going to be industries that big companies don't want to screw with because they're just too disparate, they're too spread out, they don't scale well. You know, I went yesterday to two places to get a haircut in the first place pissed me off so bad I left. But the second place, by the time I got to the second place I submitted, I couldn't, I couldn't get a haircut without giving them my phone number, my email address, my first and last name. I said, I'm not applying for a credit card here, I'm getting a haircut. And they were like, I'm sorry, we can't do it unless you do this. And I know they're selling my data, you know, and the poor girl at the salon, I can't get mad at her. She's just under directive. But when you, you know, embar, you know, hair salons here open at 9 o'. Clock. When I was a kid, a man's barbershop opened at 6 in the morning. You went down and saw Charlie before you went to work and you got a haircut, you know. Yeah, but in small town America, that's still around. I think you're seeing really a big exodus right now, 2 of cities. That's going to be an interesting thing because for the last 20 years, the growth of metropolitan cities has been, you know, clearly where everything was going, super cities, all that. Now you're seeing people spread back out into the countryside, so to speak. And I think you're going to see more and more of that. So that's going to slow it down a little bit, you know, because big corporations not going to care what's going on in, you know, Blytheville, Arkansas. They're just not going to care. It's not going to be enough money to matter. So, you know, small business will be okay, but it's going to be small. It's going to be mostly manual and, you know, retail. Dude, I would not want to be in the retail business right now. It's a scary space. Retail. Anything blue collar, anything that's, you know, bookkeeping, things like that, that stuff can be so much better done. But even, even manual stuff, humanoid robotics are going to be crazy. We're, we're looking at buying a farm right now. And my girlfriend says, well, who's going to do all the work around the farmers? Robots. We'll buy robots. When robot. By the time we get the farm, you know, Tesla will be selling us a robot that'll go, you know, hoe the fields, pick the tomatoes, bring them in and make us an omelette in the morning, you know, and that'll be fine. And, and I'll get that before other people get it, because the first ones out are going to cost 100 grand, but eventually they're going to cost less than a used car, you know, and it won't be, it won't be long. It'll take two or three years. So, so the thing that we got right now going on that people don't grasp, I think, is all the other technologies that have ever happened, right? They were developments that people created, invented discoveries happened. And then we wanted to. The next discovery, robotics and, and AI are the only developments ever that build upon themselves. The AI teaches the AI. The robot, you know, right now at test at the Tesla plant here in Austin, Texas, they're building robots with, guess what? Robots. So they're using robots to build robots. So you're, you're, you know, so there's a point where that just becomes exponential. It's exponential growth that's uncappable and grossly unpredictable.

Jeff

If I could add one thing, when you started, you were Talking about the barrier and ignorance being one of them. Paul mentioned overwhelm. I would add fear to that, but here's the thing I think that people need to come to grips with is if you look at the adoption curve with some of those other game changers that you talked about, it was measured in months or years and AI is changing. I heard something the other day. If you're more than nine days away from it, you've probably fallen out of touch, right? The adoption, the rate of change that's coming in so fast that you can't afford to take that wait and see attitude and see where it's going to be in a few months because then you're going to be what equivalently would have been years behind.

Perry

Just open up your phone in a bar and ask people if they've seen, you know, how to generate an Image in chat GPT. I'd say maybe 20% of people, I think the stat is now like 8% of people in America use chat GPT on a daily basis. It's less than 10% used on a daily basis. 30% have played with it. Right. And we're talking about the rudimentary toy of the industry, right? We're not talking about power tools. Nobody's using the power tools. So, yeah, you're right. Fear is going to freeze people. And I think, I think a lot of these people in their 60s and later are just going to say, I'm just going to hang up my boots and go out in the country and hopefully live on my retirement and buy a farm. Buy a farm. Like me, I'm gonna buy a farm before I buy the farm. You know, it's my general idea. I'm taking all the money I make in AI. I'm telling you, I invest it in stuff that AI won't affect. I, I bought a septic tank company last year and, you know, I'm doing things that, you know, because I don't think the AI is going to poop the, you know, pump the poop out of my septic tank. Right. So I'm trying to figure industries to invest in that are going to be. Everything's eventually going to be affected, but there will be industries that will be affected later. I'm investing in a moving company right now. And the moving company uses robots today to move really big objects. We only move safes, pool tables, pianos and hot tubs. We only move the stuff other moving companies don't want to move. But we do it with robotic movers so it doesn't strain the Human or whatever, that's a good business to be in. There are, you know, there are, while there's, you know, when there's fear in the streets, there's money to be made. Right. Every stock investor knows that. And people are afraid and they're uncertain and this uncertain political climate that we're in of division sparks that. Social media adds to that. Like people are anxious and unsure and you know, as we're filming this, there's a shooting yesterday that was just awful. You know, you, you just, people are, there's something almost every day that you go, oh my God, I can't believe that happened. What kind of, where are we living and what times are we living? And you know, when that, when that happens and you're, you're watching your, you know, your business go down and you don't know why, because as, as smarter operators come in that are better automated, you know, they're not going to send you a card that tells you, you know, you're going out of business, dude, you're just going to start noticing fall off and you're going to blame it on the economy and you're going to blame it on inventory and you're going to blame it on, you know, customers and all kinds of things when really it's just, you just didn't adapt, bro. Because I promise you, as sales were going down on the buggies, Mr. Studebaker was yelling at the sales department saying, make more calls. You know, it didn't matter. It really didn't matter, you know. Yeah, Harry, you were, you were mentioning that one of the biggest mistakes we can make with AI is not being an early adopter. But are there, are there also other types of mistakes that businesses are making as they try to implement AI onto their market or onto their old school funnels right now? Yeah, I really think so. That's a good question. I think that, you know, they're, they're trying to be too automated. Well, let me back up a little bit. Number one, I think most people are using AI in completely the wrong way. They're approaching it the wrong way. I use AI to think. Most people that are new to AI or think they know what it is or, you know, whatever they're saying, well, what task can I get this AI to do for me? How can I make this a slave? How can I, how can I make it do the task that I don't want to do? And AI will do that, you know, to some extent along with, you know, rpa, Robotic Process automation, things like NAN and things like that you can, you can automate tons and tons and tons of tasks and soon, you know, you'll be automating them to a physical humanoid robotic robot that will go do those things that you don't do. And that's an important part of AI. That's an important part of the technology. But it's not the most important part. The most important part is you have 177 IQ, you know, 15, 20 points higher than Einstein Advisor in your pocket on every subject on Earth. And you're still making your own decisions because you believe you're smarter. You believe that you're in charge and you are in charge, but you're not smarter. You know, you're, you know, people who are still trying to make those decisions for themselves. I ask AI, My number one prompt in AI right now is, what do you think? Hey, I'm thinking about doing this. What do you think? Hey, I just bought this company. What do you think? I'm thinking about buying this company. What do you think? I'm thinking about offering this. What do you think? And I ask opinions of all these experts that I've built inside, you know, various AI tools. So I think, you know, number one, not adopting at all. Number two, I see this a lot. I see people not, you know, not using AI to think and get advice from there. I have three layers. Three layers. I have advisors, project managers, and then task bots that I use. But you know, the, the people who do adopt, the second dumbest thing that I see is them learning and them getting tools and then not teaching and tooling up their teams. When you're not giving your teams the same tools that you have because you, you're afraid they're going to leave you or whatever, man, you're making a big mistake because you can make each person on your team 10, 20, 50, 100 times more effective, giving them proper training and tools to incorporate this new technology into your whole business. And it's exciting. And people want to work for forward companies and if they're going to leave you do, they're going to leave you anyway. And guess what? They're going to leave you anyway. Nobody's going to be with you for the rest of your life, probably, right? So try to have a good run with them. Hopefully they leave you better than they found you and you leave them better than you found them. And that's the way things work, right? But, and I think the last thing that I see people do is try to over automate. They're trying to over automate and make things very impersonal. Like the haircut thing yesterday. I mean they're going to make 30 cents gathering my data. But I walked out of a 50 haircut, which is crazy. The haircut should cost $50. No more hair than I got right. I walked out of a 50 haircut because I didn't want to give them their 30 cents worth of data. That's stupid, you know, that's really stupid. Yeah. You know, the, you know, people still want to have respect. The, the thing that's happening though, it's pretty interesting. Younger people have an incredible tolerance now. I watch it and it's fascinating to me. They just comply it. When I, many years ago, when I, the first job I ever had, I was, I wasn't really a job. I wasn't supposed to be working. I was 12 years old or 13 years old and my stepdad ran a gas station and I would help him by going to pump gas and he would pay me under the table a little bit of cash and it wasn't much and, but I did that. I wanted to work, I always wanted to work. And I'd get some tips, you know, for changing oil and wiping windshields and like that. And I was working at this gas station when they came in one day and they installed self service pumps. There was no such thing. And they installed self service pumps and my God, people threw an absolute fit and they made the gas a little bit cheaper on the self service pumps. And back then we had a big chain with a key. I don't remembers that or not, but I used to go out and unlock the gas pump. If you wanted to pump your own gas, I had to go unlock the gas pump for you to pump your own gas. That was the system. And people bitched about that to high heaven. But then, you know, a couple of years later, it's all self service. They, they, people eventually capitulated and, and you, you know, self checkouts in grocery stores and department stores have been the same way. You know, over time people bitched and moaned and over time they just eventually capitulated. So you, you know, you're, I don't know, I guess people are going to fall into it. It just is fascinating to me. I don't know how as things get more and more technical, there's less and less customer support. I don't know how older Americans cope. What do they do when their electricity goes off and there's nobody that answers the phone at the power company anymore? What do they do when there's fraudulent charges on their credit cards. And nobody answers phone calls at the credit card company anymore because this is very common today. I mean so, so few. Everybody wants to automate everything to be, you know, hyper efficient. And they have to be because these giant corporations are consolidating so many customers. You know, I go to the Philippines a lot and over there I was in a, I saw a thing with four buildings, four high rise buildings put together, 10, 12,000 people in each building and all they do is handle the customer service for AT&T. That's it.

Jeff

I just saw a headline today literally this morning that said the first big round of jobs that are going to be eliminated are customer service jobs by AI.

Perry

Yeah. And it's going to hit third world countries too. It's going to hit India, it's going to hit, you know, technical support out of India, customer service out of the Philippines. Even though those jobs are cheap, they're going to be the easiest to wipe out. And so they're going to get wiped out. Mid level management is going to get absolutely assassinated. I mean just killed. And so you're gonna have all these $125,000 mid level Americans that are, that got mortgages and car payments and kids in college and planned on a life, you know, they're just gonna have a wrecking ball ran through their life and if they don't, you know, make a move now, there's gonna be, but this is going to create great deals of opportunity for us, you know, so because you're gonna see there you more and more people looking for a new way to make a living. There's going to be more and more people starting businesses because they're gonna have to, they're gonna have to. You know, you're, you're 55 years old and your company decides that they don't need your whole department anymore, what are you gonna do? Go find another job? No. You know, you're gonna have to go find something that you can do. Trade or barter in your community to make a living or you got to go on the streets. Those are your two choices. So you know, if, if I'm, you, I'm prepping that nest now. You know, if you're, if you got a job, you know, you got extra hours, you don't have to watch Yellowstone reruns, you don't have to sit by the TV and wait for the next season of Landman to come out. You can, you can spin. I don't have time. Everybody's got time. You know, I, I start working at 5am most mornings I study for a couple hours. I spent an hour with this with, you know, good paper on a clipboard. I spent an hour with a cup of coffee and no computer, no phone, no anything. And then after that I, I just stare at a piece of paper with a pencil. I like pencils because they're tactile and I, I write my thoughts for the day and what I want to get accomplished and what I missed yesterday and things like that. And then I start training, I start watching videos and coursework and stuff like that, sort for another hour or two and you know, by the time and now I start working, I start knocking out. I want to knock down my first project of the day before anybody else in the house gets up because that's when everything gets hectic. Right? So, you know, you've been to my house, you in my house, Ken. So, you know, I, I, my girlfriend gets up about 7:30. By then I've already been up, you know, two and a half hours and already knocked a big chunk of my day out. And a lot of times I go back, take a nap after that, you know, but, but yeah, but people say they don't have time. It's just bullshit. They're going to find time when they're living in a box.

Ken

That's true.

Perry

You're going to have a lot of time.

Jeff

Time is like a vacuum. Something will expand to fill it.

Perry

Yeah, exactly.

Jeff

So, Barry, we're just a minute ago on the topic of customer service and AI being applied to it. If we broaden that out to the overall customer journey. You know, as, as marketers, we talk about the customer journey a lot. We've talked about how it's evolved, how everyone thinks it's linear, but it's really this crazy, convoluted rat's nest how, how seven touches has gone to 50 touches in some businesses. But if we take it back to the customer journey in AI, how would you say that AI is not only influencing and being used, but also even changing the customer journey compared to what we think of traditionally?

Perry

Yeah, I know. My old business partner Ryan created that whole customer value journey thing. I don't know how much I believe in it. If you've got a problem today, you want a solution today. Dan Kennedy, who I have a great deal of respect for, told me one time, every offer needs an express line. You know, some people are looking for a problem, they want to solve it today. They'll pull the trigger today if you give them a path to do that. Right. You know, some people who who have a pain problem, they don't even know what it is. I think that, I think Ryan is absolutely right, by the way, that there are people that are, you know, they're, they're pro, they're pain aware, problem aware, solution aware. I forget the process, but, but I think that they, while you have to follow that process, you can also greatly accelerate that process. There's a lot to be learned from the dating gurus because they talk about how, you know, if you, a girl wants to, you know, go through these different steps of intimacy before they'll sleep with you, right? But you can accelerate those. You can't skip them, but you can accelerate them. And I think before all that, the thing that AI gives me the, the greatest gift of truly is its ability to do collegiate level, team level deep research that has never been available to me. So I can take a market that I don't know that much about or perhaps don't know anything about, run, you know, super deep research on the business model that I want to run, run super deep research on the industry, run super deep research on the avatar, run super deep research on the belief systems, run super deep research on my competitors. Before I ever sit down to make a decision to start that business or to develop a new product or to formulate an offer. I've got all this data that it really was impossible to accumulate before. Even with Google, you'd be googling till your eyes popped out. Now it's, you know, a couple of hours of AI, which sounds like an eternity in AI because we're like on AI now. They're like, why isn't it here yet? You know, I, I ordered this 72 page deep research report four minutes ago and look at the clock. It's just running, you know, makes you, you know, you're just stupid in the way you think about. But, but then you get this amazing research in hell, you don't even have to read it. You can have it analyze the research for you afterward, you know, so, but people aren't doing that. I promise you. 99.99999% of marketers are business owners are still not doing that. I can usually sit down with a client, any client that comes to me and wants to do a day. And I don't really do clients, I just do like days at the house. And, but, but I'll know more about their business and their client than they do by the time they get to my house. If they've been in that business 20 years, I'll know more about their Competitors, I'll know more about their general market. I'll know what their CAGR is in their market. I'll know their cost analysis, I'll know their margins, I'll know what's motivating their clients. I'll know everything about them. And they don't. They just stumbled into that business one day because somebody said, man, that's a pretty good cake. You should go in the cake baking business, you know, and that they just kind of. Most businesses are stumbled into, they're not entered with any degree of intention. And when you get somebody that comes in with intention, a little bit of capital and the tools that are here today, it's not a fair fight. You know, when I go into a local market to buy business or compete in a local market, it's like Mike Tyson fighting Pee Wee Herman. It's like not even a, it's not even, it's not fair. I almost feel bad. It's not fair. It's not fair. And that's not because I'm great. It's just because I utilize these tools a little bit better than the other guy does, you know. So yeah, I think people are not doing that. They're not, they're also not using, they're using in the wrong place. They're using in the front of their funnels, you know, where they maybe should have a better human touch. And they're not using it for follow up, you know, the, the follow up automation of creating amazing messaging and marketing automation. Follow ups. You know, I think somebody said earlier how many touch points, I don't think anybody really knows. But the truth is it's a lot, right? And the vast majority of people, you know, get a phone call, hey, how much is, how much is your blank? That's $18. Okay, thanks. It hangs up the phone and there's never any follow up to that. There's no lead capture to it. And, and then the guy down the street who went to, who has a kid that went to Berkeley, you know, who put a crazy high tech thing on their website called an opt in form and they learned how to send emails out into the future, you know, all of a sudden this kid's just. This kid didn't know shit from peanut butter, is putting you out of business and this is going to happen. But the kid gets over optimized and learns, loses all the personality. They're going to have their own set of problems because like right now I'm looking for a barber shop owned by Bob. I want to go to Bob's Barber shop. Now all these guys. I don't want to go to any of these. Let me have your email address and your. You know, I gave them information, by the way, and they didn't care. They didn't care at all. I was Rico Sparducci. I made her spell it. But. But, yeah, it's just crazy. What an idiotic thing. Just. I see that all the time. And then. But the craziness is they'll do that and then I'll never get anything from them. Yeah, they went to the point to piss me off, but then did nothing with my data. You know, I was consulting for Zillow. I don't do a lot of corporate gigs because they don't. I don't. Weirdly, I don't fit corporate that well. But I was doing a gig for Zillow and it was crazy problem they had. The average Realtor pays Zillow $125 for a lead. 88% of those leads are never followed up with. At a hundred and twenty five dollars a lead. Yeah. Isn't that crazy?

Jeff

Sounds paying a thousand dollars for the one that they follow up with.

Perry

Right? Wow. Yeah, it's. It's just nutty. So I wonder if they even realize that. Oh, they. Of course they do. And you know, what it really came down to? They wanted me to help solve it. And really what it comes down to, I would talk to the salespeople. Well, yeah, I didn't call that lead. That was. That was Ping Joe Shin. And there's this Chinese people. You got to drive them all over. They'll never make up their mind.

Jeff

Or.

Perry

Or that was Leon Washington. He sounds like a black guy. And black people ain't got no money. I don't want to call that guy and you know, or this or that. They have all these biases. They think, but they're not really biases. What they really are are excuses. Because on. On one end of that telephone is the potentiality of the sale and a much higher potentiality of rejection. And faced with rejection, the vast majority of people will cower and do nothing. Yeah, Just like my buddy Mitch Miller wrote a paper not long ago called how to Sell how to Sell Worthless to Weak People. And it was all about the biz op business. And it was a joke. It was a parody piece. But like, everybody wants stuff. Everybody wants wealth. Everyone wants stuff. And they'll go out and buy, pay people for opportunities, and then quit at the first sign of discomfort or effort or potentiality. Rejection. It's absolutely true, you know, but they'll go back to the bar. Then over time that, that bug will, that desire bug will buy them again and they'll buy something else. And they, and that's the reason in the, you know, the opportunity space, you see tons of times the same bouncing around between different opportunity gurus buying stuff, you know, the secret system to blank. And they never actually take any action because in their heart of hearts, they know they're going to fail. You know, and they, they don't. And they don't, they don't want to put the effort for. They rather watch Landman. You know, they'd rather watch people play cards on tv.

Ken

Yeah, yeah. As a matter of fact, Perry, I think I've heard you say, you know, there are three reasons why people won't buy. One is they don't trust you. They, you know, they. Part of it. But the biggest problem usually is they don't trust themselves.

Perry

Well, they don't. They, you know, there, I always say there's three reasons why. Number one, you don't have what they want, right? They clicked on your ad or went into your store or whatever thinking that you had something that they wanted. But when they got there, it wasn't the thing that they thought. It was the advertising. They either the advertising was misleading to them or that's the reason it's so important that you call out your customer. If you look at the old direct response ads, attention men 50 to 80 who thought they couldn't get life insurance or Attention. If you've had hearing, you know, whatever they are like, attention. If you've had hearing problems. But, but if you're, if you call out to the audience, you're sort of shunning away the other people and getting the people that you want to your. To your page. So number one, they don't, they don't want what you're selling. And there's all you can do with that is just have more clarity in your advertising. B. They don't believe you. And that's something I used to do called. I used to do this all the time for people called a points of belief audit. Every offer I ever made that was a great offer, asked people to believe exactly one thing. When you ask people in an offer to believe, hey, this is going to make you lose weight. And by the way, it's also going to make your skin brighter and you're going to have whiter teeth and you're going to feel better and you have more energy and your sleep is going to be better. You're dead as Fried chicken. That offer is going to fail. Because what happens, you make that one big promise. That's what people were searching for that day. That other stuff they weren't really looking for. And you think, well, yeah, but that's added benefit. The point is you don't prove any of it, you just say it. And people eventually call. Like if you go out to dinner with somebody and they're talking about their Ferrari and they start name dropping all the celebrities they've been out to. You're about 10 minutes in that dinner and you just kind of look at the person next to you. This guy's full of, you know, you know it. Or when a girl goes on a date with a guy and he starts talking about how awesome he is and she's letting him talk because she knows he's going to hang himself. Right? But marketers do that all the time, so they don't believe you. So just concentrate on one big idea. Read Michael Masterson's books, all of them. They're great. That's Agora, but he talks about that a lot. The one big idea. You can only sell one idea at a time and you don't sell the product. You sell the idea before you sell the product and try to build as much credibility and proof behind you. The McKinsey Company uses something called the pyramid style of writing created by a lady named Barbara Minto that has one idea, three arguments, six pieces of data that back up those arguments. And that's the way to sell. There's no better way to sell. But. And it builds trust and et cetera, et cetera, and clarity. But the third one is always the hardest, is they've already failed at something similar. You know, you're trying to sell them a thing. Oh, I tried Amazon. Amazon doesn't work right. Clearly Amazon doesn't work right. Clearly online marketing doesn't work. You know, clearly email marketing doesn't work. Clearly affiliate marketing doesn't work. You know, it didn't work for you. So therefore it doesn't work. Because nobody can look in the mirror and go, you know, I kind of did a half assed job on that. So rather than go back and try again, they want to try selling lemonade this time. Maybe that'll work. They look for a new thing. They don't look, they don't look in the mirror at all. They accept no level of personal responsibility and it's not even really their fault. Their, their self esteem is so low. Most people's self esteem is so incredibly low that they can't stand another disappointment. Frankly, they don't want to stay where they're staying. They don't want to stay where they're staying, but they can't stand another disappointment. So they don't believe in themselves. They'll believe that if Ken Tucker says, hey, you can go do this and here's 10 other people and that I've showed how to do this and they all did it, they'll absolutely believe Ken did it. They'll actually believe those other 10 people did it. But they won't believe they can do it because they have such low self esteem and self doubt and it's hard to overcome. And you know, I think the problem with a lot of marketers, we try to get them in a temporary suspension of belief so that they go, yeah, I can do it. Yay Tony Robbins. Woo woo. Yeah, yeah, just do it. And then they, they, on the drive home they're like, what the did I just buy? What did I do? I'm never going to be able to do that. And they get buyer's remorse and you get refunds and they hate you forever and et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, yeah.

Ken

Perry, this has been amazing. We're, we're at an hour. I want to be respectful of your time. I mean honestly, we could talk to you forever because you're just such a wealth of knowledge. And I do want to make a, you know, a disclosure that I am in Perry's Mastermind. It's called Ignat Ignite Mastermind. It's easily the best thing that I've done for my business. I encourage everybody to check out and learn more about, about what you're doing Perry, and look into my mastermind. Having said that, what's, what's the best way for people to connect with you? Find out more about all the great things you've got coming up, including the Growth Hacking Summit. It's coming up in September.

Perry

Yeah, I don't know when this is going to air but, but yeah, we've got the Growth Hacking Summit's in about 12 days now, which is crazy. In San Diego, growth hacking dot com, that's our largest event of the year. Then in the spring we'll do the AI Bot Summit. That's all about AI Growth hacking. Is all about growth Hacking. And then I do a thing every morning called the AI Morning Club, which is a lot of fun. It's totally free. We don't ever allow anything to be sold on there, pitched on there. It doesn't cost anything to go to AI Morning Club. And we Just talk about what's new in AI every morning for about 30 minutes. And. And it's a fun little thing. Kick off your day. And if you want to know about Ignite Mastermind, you know, call Ken Tucker. He'll tell you about it. And you know, any of the members I always tell people, don't ask me about it. You can go to ignitemastermind.org and read about it or whatever, but you're better off to go to a member, talk to a member about it, and they'll tell you what they think. And if, I don't know, Ken might tell you it sucks. He might tell you it's great. I don't know. Find any member and talk to them, because it. That's how it's spread. We're about almost 1300 members now, and then it's grown, you know, Almost exclusively word of mouth.

Ken

Yeah.

Perry

Yeah. Okay.

Ken

Awesome. Well, thanks so much, Barry. We really appreciate it.

Perry

Thank you.

Ken

Your insights are just amazing to me. I mean, I always learned so much talking with you and, and, and hearing you, you know, you. The stories you have and. And the insights are just, you know, leaves me speechless a lot of times.

Perry

Well, thanks, man. Jeff and Paul and Ian, thanks for being here, and it was nice to meet you guys, and it was great. We'll do it again sometime soon if you want.

Ken

All right. Sounds great. Yeah.

Perry

Almost. Have a face for radio. He's. Thanks so much, guys. What's that? Big data. I'm Big data. Yeah. All right. Thank you all so much. I appreciate it. Thanks so much, Perry.