DIRTY 30 – Dirty 30 Q&A Recording

Eric:                        Welcome everyone to core training Q&A for the Architects Marketing Academy. We'll be focusing today on the Super 6 Strategy and with me, joining me today, all the usual suspects. How're you doing?

Richard:                Doing good. Doing good Eric. Lovely and sunny here in ... We're kind of into summer in New Zealand, so I like summer. Sun's shining and I've got my clown's nose on. I just get it right. I can just ... There we go.

Eric:                        All right.

Richard:                [inaudible 00:00:40] got his halo on.

Speaker 3:           I got my halo. It's early morning. What is it? It's 3:00 am here, still on [inaudible 00:00:46] where I am in Thailand. I have a ferry out to [inaudible 00:00:53] in three and a half hours, and then heading to Bangkok this [inaudible 00:00:57] early morning for a conference.

Eric:                        How are you doing, Mr. Sears here?

Speaker 4:           Doing good here in central California. We're heading into winter, which is actually good for us. We're leaving the, although it's been a little bit of a heat wave right now, but looking forward to some cool weather.

Eric:                        All right, so let's see. We have some questions stacked up. I'm going to bring those up on screen. By the way, on the broadcast screen you're going to see a gap on the left side that is open, but on the recording you'll see our webcams, so that's why there's a gap because I have the webcams taking up that strip on the left side. The core training for M-05, module 05, Super Six, focuses on referral strategy, how to generate more referrals by being in touch regularly with a core group or a key group of super referral sources. Richard, I know you want to give us just a very short refresher on what that's about? Then we can take some of our questions.

Richard:                Yeah, so I think if there was only one strategy, yeah, if you only had one thing in this whole course, this would probably be it, maybe the targeting your ideal clients, but the concept behind it is is that it came to a point where I'd hear all the time, not just architects but everywhere, that referrals and word of mouth was where people got most of their clients. Then it was sort of thinking down, okay, well if you could double any different lead source, which one would you double. The common sense answer would be referrals, word of mouth, but that didn't really ... It took me about five years to pop into my head. I said, "Okay, what can you do to get more referrals and word of mouth." Well, that's where the Dirty 30 came from.

Richard:                You must be, there's probably five or six people in the world, well, there's probably two or three people in the world who could give you more business than you could handle. It's just that we don't know who they are. If you could form a list of 30 and communicate to them regularly and stay top of mind with them, then some of them, it may be three or four or five of them, might end up sending business your way. I think it's the smartest, cheapest strategy as an architect that you could possibly implement is a communication plan to your Dirty 30.

Richard:                Ah, there's one more thing, one more key point on this. When we do who's your number one target market, right, we'll often go in and who's your ideal client and what's your ideal type of project you like to do and we'll work out who your ideal client is and who's your ideal target market. I've changed that a little bit. I believe your number one target market for marketing or communication is your Dirty 30 list. That's your number one target for communicating, your Dirty 30 list. Your number two target is your ideal client list. A subtle change, but I think it's a profound one if I can say so myself.

Speaker 4:           It really is, because lead generation is always going to be more time intensive. It's going to cost more. Referrals are basically free leads. There's just so many advantages to it, plus you're talking to less people. It's just so much easier.

Richard:                And if they come to you as a referral from a friend, they're pre-sold to a large degree. They're faster to deal with. They usually are the quality of a client, the same sort of quality that you've already dealt with. They don't tend to be as price conscious because they've decided they want you. They've been told about how you're different from other architects or how you're better by someone they believe and trust, so often they don't mind paying a bit more because they want what you gave their friend or their colleague. Really it's your number one client getting strategy is A, communication and String's going to go through how we can help you by setting up your communication plan with newsletters and things like that, but that's only part of it. We need a 12 month plan and we need to work out how we're going to communicate to these people who could or should be sending people your way because of the position they're in.

Speaker 3:           I can just add to that, and I have mentioned it before, when I had a design business, I'd always, I'd start with the people or who already had my client, so starting with there referrals in mind. That's why I was big on builders. I'd just go, "Okay, I want to work with builders because they do the selling for me." I wouldn't need to go into a meeting and try to explain too much because I was already pre-sold. The builder would say, "Oh, yeah, this is roughly gets the budget and this is who you need to talk to to get the design." I'd just walk in there cold and a lot of the time even they had an expectation of what the price would be. There wasn't very much selling. That was definitely worthwhile having, yeah, I think, I don't think [inaudible 00:06:38] I had six, as many as six referring consistently because once you, the term is getting into bed with someone, but once someone's locked in and you're solving their issues, they're more likely, you're doing the work for them, they're more likely to refer more because you solved their problems.

Richard:                All right, let's get into the questions.

Speaker 3:           Jump to Eddie's, Eric. You're muted. Jump to Eddie's first because he's limited on time. I think he's got to shoot of in 20 minute.

Eric:                        So we have, in our fresh desk, we've organized questions for today's call and we've got Eddie Gontram. Eddie is one of our long time members. I guess when did Eddie get started? Was it a year ago or was it a little longer? I'm not sure. Eddie, so one of you can unmute his line. Eddie's been using the Super Six strategy for many months now. When he sent out his first newsletter, I received it here and you can see Eddie's picture on it here. It was very interesting because Eddie sent it out in a lumpy envelope, and envelope that had a ball because you can see here that these balls, I'm not sure if they're in focus, but they're basketballs. One of the things that Eddie's been into for years is the basketball tournaments here that's the NCAA championships and March Madness is sort of a tradition amongst sports fans to pay attention and go pretty crazy over who's going to win the college championship.

Eric:                        Eddie sent out a little, tiny basketball as a squeeze thing, you know, one of those anti-stress things like I'm really stressed out, okay, feel better. Well, he sent that with the newsletter. I, like everybody else who received it, will never forget that Eddie sent me this little ball. Eddie, are you there? Are you line open?

Eddie:                   Yes. Is this working? Is it working?

Speaker 3:           Good, Eddie.

Eddie:                   Okay, good. Yeah, no, the newsletter has been a big help. For years I had done my own newsletter. I tried to do it once a month. Once a month turned into once a quarter, quarter once a year maybe. It was just a lot of work to come up with content on your own. When you guys announced that newsletter last year at Vegas, it was a big help and I think I've utilized it just about every month. In fact, I just got the one back from the printers this morning, the current issue. I got to send that out tomorrow.

Eddie:                   It's actually been successful. I mean, when I did the newsletter, I don't know that it was successful. I started doing it this way. I know a couple of months ago I was shortlisted as a direct result of the newsletter. I know that for a fact, and actually did get the project. I have a small medical office I'm doing that basically I can attribute directly to the newsletter.

Eddie:                   The lumpy certainly helps, but I think just the fact that the content was mostly done for me and all I've got to come up with is a couple of hundred words each month is priceless. It actually gets the job done.

Speaker 3:           I love Eddie because Eddie implements. I love you Eddie. Eddie get stuff [crosstalk 00:10:23] yeah. He gets stuff out there.

Eric:                        How many people do you have receiving the newsletter at this point?

Eddie:                   Well, I send it out to my Dirty 30 list, but I also add to that other people that are relevant to whatever the topic is that I'm sending out as well. I can send out anywhere from 35, 40. Next month or this issue I'm getting 70 put out. It varies, but I definitely hit the Dirty 30 list, and that's where that medical office came from as well, one of the recipients of that list.

Eddie:                   It's costly. It costs me about $100 to print it up professionally. I get it on a glossy card stock that makes it a little bit harder to throw away, even if somebody just wanted to. I put it in a full size, 9 by 12 envelope that I had custom printed for the newsletter so that it's actually got printing on the outside of it that sets it apart as well, and $1.20 in postage, so do the math. It's still a couple of hundred bucks or 150 bucks each month, but one or two projects out of it more than pays for it and so far that's the way it's tracking.

Richard:                Eddie, I'm going to put you on the spot and you have a limited time. Do you by any chance have a camera on and you're clothed that you can share, show us what it looks like since you got it back from the printers?

Eddie:                   Yeah, give me 30 seconds. I got to go grab it but yeah, I've got a camera on and the office is a mess, but yeah.

Richard:                You've got to go put some clothes on, 30 seconds.

Eric:                        By the way, here is Eddie's website, GontramArchitecture.com. This is actually one of the websites that our web team put together for clients. If you're interested in getting a nice looking website, that's one of the things that we can provide as a supplement to your Architects Marketing Academy membership, and you can email support at ArchitectsMarketing.com if you'd like to find out how we do that.

Richard:                One thing just to mention, and I know everyone heard it, is Eddie won a commercial project on the back of the newsletter. I know we do get a lot of questions. Does this component work for commercial? It seems residential. You can see that you can mix and match, so it's good that, yeah, Eddie's come back and won. It's not just a residential project. I hope that that answers some of your questions and I think the newsletter, we'll see Eddie live, what the newsletter looks like, and then we'll also show you inside the members' area. If any of you have questions where to find it, just drop it in the question box. That's only if you haven't watched the video at the end. If you watch the Super Six video, then it's explained in there where to download the template.

Eric:                        Right, okay. So ...

Eddie:                   I have it here. I don't know what to do about webcam, though. Is that something you do or I do?

Eric:                        I think we can request. Can one of you, like Enoch, can you make Eddie a panelist and then ...

Speaker 6:           Yep, done. Let's see here. Let's do this. We'll see if we can get your webcam on here.

Eric:                        You've been elevated, Eddie, to the status.

Eddie:                   Oh, boy.

Eric:                        Hey. You look just like your picture, you know?

Eddie:                   Here's the newsletter, 11 by 17. You see 11 by 17 and [inaudible 00:14:36]. 11 by 17 folded in half, cover page. This month actually is I tend to use this, well, I can use this for Gontram Architecture's project examples, but this month I actually chose to scare the bejesus out of my clients and emphasize some handicap accessibility regulations they need to be aware of.

Richard:                Nice.

Eddie:                   That's what this article is about. Of course, the back page is the fun part that you guys create with the find-a-word and then a blurb about me at the top and then a link to my monkey's fist at the bottom. Then on the inside is, again, more content that you guys create, a helpful article about business and then some architectural insights really that have nothing to do with our practice, but then always a nice quote at the bottom by somebody famous.

Speaker 4:           That's right. It doesn't matter who.

Eddie:                   This is, again, I printed this out on 80 pound card stock, gloss, double sided, folded, and it'll go out in an envelope full sized, so it makes it stick out in the mail as well. Then there's the squish ball that I did for the basketball season last year. I think I'm going to do a squish ball football for bowl season in the next issue.

Speaker 4:           Nice. Hey, Eddie, who ends up putting that stuff together and putting the postage on it? How do you get that done?

Eddie:                   That's me. That's me and it takes me about 30 minutes to do it. I enjoy the mental holiday from the daily grind, but most of the times it's me. Sometimes it's my kids. There's several other people here that could do it, but I just take about 30 minutes. That's really, from start to finish, the newsletter is, you know, it's a lot of times what I'll do is use the newsletter to bridge between this printed piece and our website. I'll steal a lot of content off the website that I've already done and, in particular, this month's article on accessibility was a [inaudible 00:17:12] piece I did a while back. I got to edit it down somewhat, but all in all it probably takes me an hour and a half or so to do the content, do the mailing labels, stuff them, and get them out of here. It's really not that big a deal.

Eric:                        Just wanted to comment, Eddie. You've got a great blog. You've been adding articles here, and I think they're providing useful information to clarifying, in this case, some regulations about accessibility. One little suggestion is you've got your newsletter that you're sharing. I don't see a mention of the newsletter, at least not prominently, so I think you could have in the sidebar, perhaps, an offer that says, "Sign up for our newsletter," which not many people will take but at least it's something that could add in, as well as when you have an article that you want to feature. Then you can say, "Featured in our current newsletter," things like that. You can potentially have a PDF download of the newsletter incorporated into the website.

Eddie:                   Yeah, I thought about doing that under the firm news tab or something along those lines. I know electronic newsletters aren't nearly as important as the paper copy. That's something y'all taught me and it's definitely proven true. Of all the tasks on my marketing to dos, it's there. It's just not at the top.

Eric:                        Okay. One other thing I wanted to mention, you have a video here that you did, so ...

Eddie:                   Yeah, that's fairly new. [crosstalk 00:18:59]

Eric:                        It looks like it's set up against a nice white wall or white screen and it's you've got it posted on [inaudible 00:19:10], so you want to tell us a little bit about what you're doing this? Are you doing this regularly or is this just a special, one off thing?

Eddie:                   We do design. We also have a separate company for construction and one thing I took away from Vegas was that the market, the website really at that time was really set up to market to the client we really didn't want, which was sort of the entry level client. We've actually redone our monkey's fist to highlight what we are really after, which is the design/build commercial client. This video was really born out of Vegas. It took a while to actually do, but wanted something that people could actually click on and see me personally and relate to me personally, but also get the message across that this is where our sweet spot is is doing design, commercial design/build projects. The video seemed to be the best way to go about doing that.

Speaker 3:           Michael Jordan [inaudible 00:20:32]. Does he own it or something?

Eddie:                   He's, yeah, he lends his name to it.

Speaker 3:           Right, all right.

Richard:                First [inaudible 00:20:44].

Eddie:                   First [inaudible 00:20:44], exactly.

Speaker 4:           Right, okay. Anything else you want to share with us, Eddie, or Richard, you want to grill Eddie on?

Richard:                No, I just think, look, I love Eddie because he gets stuff out. He does stuff. He gets good results occasionally. He deserves everything he gets. I just what can you say? Good on you. He's getting it out. He writes his article. He uses our articles. That's the easiest way to do it, just use what we've and just put on your own. Write your own cover article, your own 300 word article, and put it on the front and just get it out there. Get it out there to 30 people.

Richard:                There's a comment from Eric Mickerton who says, "I'm not sure about newsletters. Sometimes they seem a bit gimmicky with the games and puzzles on the back and maybe not so serious. I want to look more serious as an architect." What are your thoughts on that, Eddie?

Eddie:                   I'm not serious, so it definitely suits me. I'm a strong proponent of letting your personality through. I think your clients relate well to personalities that suit them as well. If they're looking for some ultra-serious person to do business with, then they may see that video and know that's not me, but I tend to be, I tend to use the other approach. I think you can use humor or just a little bit of humor anyway, nothing ... I'm not trying to be silly, certainly, and I don't think the newsletter's silly. I think what you guys have done here is actually a fairly clean and I receive silly newsletters. I receive stuff that has been canned and then somebody just puts their name at the bottom of it, essentially. Those things go in the garbage, but I think this is something that we've actually, we actually know that it has staying power on your clients or your potential clients desks. That's why we enjoy it, and we use it.

Eddie:                   I've done the completely custom designed, over the top, 100% authored content newsletters, and they're just not sustainable as far as I'm concerned because it took an enormous effort to get them out each month. I think this is certainly the happy medium.

Richard:                No, brilliant. My answer to that is we're living in an age where people will say, "I haven't got time for this and I haven't got time for that and I haven't got time for this," but they've got time to go onto Facebook and have a wee chat with a few people. They've got time to watch a couple of funny videos on YouTube, maybe. They've got time to do things that amuses them slightly or that entertains them a little bit. They've got time for that, but they haven't got time for the serious stuff.

Richard:                With the newsletter, there is a bit of a science and psychology behind it, like everything else. It can't be pure, hardcore architecture content because you're going to bore the living bejesus out of people. It needs a bit of that, so the formula is 30%, 100% relevant content to what it is you do, 30% semi-relevant content, or sorry, it's 40/40/20, so 40% hardcore content that shows you know what you're talking about, 40% semi-relevant, so it's related but it doesn't have to be completely on target, and then 20% completely non-relevant, just stuff that, you know, a little puzzle or something that entertains people. People will stop if they're a little bit entertained or there's something interesting or a quote of the day.

Richard:                I don't want to go on, but I'm going to anyway. The big mistake small companies make is they try and get, look too professional. When they look too professional, they look sanitized and boring and unapproachable. The bigger companies, you look at the big companies. They all try and create characters and personalities and fun. Why do you think the big companies with big advertising agencies do that and the little ones try and look professional, you know, the law firms and the accounting firms who don't hire a big ... It's because they know that, you know, people buy from people.

Richard:                We want Eddies. Ideally, we want to see a bit of Eddie's personality come through in his feature article and his videos and things like that because the people who are going to get on with Eddie need to have rapport with him. He needs to be a person they can connect with. A vanilla, sanitized, boring, professional newsletter that comes from no one and it talks about we the ... You look at people's websites. There's no personality in them. They're just, "We are this and we believe in this." Oh, give me a break, you know?

Richard:                It's about personality because personalities are interesting. It's tame and it's interesting and all that type of stuff. End of rant.

Eric:                        There's a question related to personality, just to from Don saying, "Does Eddie ever write a message to the addressee?" Eddie, since you're doing it one on one, or you're filling it in, do you ever stop and put a Post It note or write actually on the copy?

Eddie:                   I do. Occasionally we do a personal note for all of them, not necessarily tailored for specific, but we'll put in ... It won't just be the newsletter. We'll put a cover letter in there. We did that last year with the basketballs. We'll do it again next month. Occasionally we just stick a Post It note in there. We don't know actually who's opening these things, so we try to be a little careful with those, but certainly, yeah, that's the fun part about sending out a hard copy rather than just a blast email.

Eric:                        Which also relates to the question [crosstalk 00:27:15]

Speaker 4:           Very cool. Richard made a point and I think it was so powerful that I want to restate it, but when we're talking about being serious and commercial and corporate versus being silly and fun, or at least entertaining, if you look at what people are willing to pay for, so people are willing to pay up to a certain amount for results, which in our case would be a building or getting a newsletter. They're willing to pay a lot more, however, for intrinsic things like entertainment, like enjoyment, like a good laugh.

Speaker 4:           Take, for example, a car. I know that Richard gave this example in one of the previous modules, but you take a look at one of the low end cars versus a Rolls Royce Ghost, well, what is someone paying for? Both cars get you from A to B. What you're paying for with the Rolls Royce is totally about experience. It's totally about getting in there. It's totally about having people look at you as you drive down the road. It's totally about that ego boost you get from driving a $300,000 car. When you're delivering your newsletter, your marketing is only going to go so far, like Richard said. If it's all architecture [inaudible 00:28:20] or your ADA stuff, but if you can throw in some stuff in there that's enjoyable, that gets people to laugh, that makes them have a good time or have a good day, boom, no one else is doing that.

Speaker 3:           [crosstalk 00:28:35] With your Dirty 30, one other little strategy, just quickly, is if you hand write Post It notes or hand write little notes on any of the articles, beside the articles, you know who you're going to. You've only got 30 people. Some of them might be worth saying, "Hey, Mike. Just thought this article was relevant for you," put a little arrow pointing to it. Now, Mike's going to open it up and see that Eddie or someone has handwritten a little note on the newsletter. It becomes even more personal. This is actually from Eddie and he says I might be interested in this article. They're going to read that article, aren't they? Or circle something or underline something or asterisk something in pen. Really makes it stand out. Doesn't look very professional, but it certainly gets attention and I think people won't mind.

Richard:                There's a great book called Outrageous Advertising by Bill Glaser. He has a lot of examples of mail, direct mail that's gone out. They call them copy doodles in the marketing term. When you start scribbling on letters, then the response rate generally goes up because it's a personalization. People then will read. If you scribble something, highlight it, stuck in arrows, then it becomes more engaging. They're, "Oh, this must be important. It's got a red asterisk next to it." You end up getting the viewer inside your content.

Eric:                        Okay, I know, Eddie, you said that you had to go around the half hour mark, so I want to thank you for joining us.

Eddie:                   [inaudible 00:30:26]

Speaker 4:           Thanks, Eddie.

Eddie:                   You're welcome.

Eric:                        All right, so shall I move on to the next set of questions that were submitted?

Richard:                Yep.

Eric:                        All right. By the way, if you have any other questions, feel free to add them into the chat and we'll be queuing them up. Let's see. We have a few things here. Joy, you have a question. Dirty 30 strategy for light steel frame contractors. Joy actually on the line. We could open up her line. I'll just read it, since it's probably a little small on screen. Hi, there. I'm a rep for a light steel frame contractor. I don't have a referral from an architect that resulted in any work yet. When making my Dirty 30 list, should my priority be 1, architects who specialize in light steel frame design, so obviously specializing in what she, her company creates, or 2, architects who specialize in green building, and I'm assuming green building my very well take advantage of light steel frame, or 3, any other architects. Thanks. Joy?

Speaker 3:           Well, I think an architect should answer that. Joy's get it from the horse's mouth. What do you guys, architects, think? If someone's trying to target you to get you to promote their steel framing, what's the best way to get appointments with you? What advice do you have for Joy? Bear in mind she's in South Africa, so she's probably not going to maybe type in the chat window. What ideas do you have?

Eric:                        One thing I would look for, certainly, is who have been, let's say, clients for this company. You're a rep for the company. Surely they have a list of previous architects or projects that they've worked on that they've supplied the materials for and the architects. I would start by actually just contacting those architects to check in with them. That would be an interesting little exercise as a rep. Maybe there are multiple reps and you can't talk to people who had previously worked with other reps, but you can do some sort of survey. You can do some sort of reaching out to get more information.

Eric:                        Find out, maybe, some of the problems that they're having that your current product line answers. What is it that your product line actually is a solution for, and then think about the answering that verbally or through a newsletter or through articles to explain how their particular problem, whether it's cost or energy efficiency or flexibility, what is it that you provide? I'm assuming that there are some real benefits to the product compared to some other alternatives, so not just thinking about here's what our benefit is, but what is the problem that you're solving. Those are a couple of thoughts.

Speaker 4:           It also is going to depend on, Joy, what she's trying to accomplish by connecting with these architects. For instance, when I would do projects that are light steel frame construction, we never have any direct contact, really, with the framing contractor. That's all handled by the GC. As far as I'm concerned, I would never have any need to talk to a light steel frame contractor. On the other hand, there is a lot of value that she could provide architects, so I guess the question is what's her goal. Is it to get more of these kind of projects? If it is, perhaps she needs to go be talking to contractors, GCs.

Speaker 4:           If it's to actually convince architects to use light steel frame construction instead of wood frame construction, well then, that's a whole nother issue. Then it seems like she's going to want to position herself as an educator and talk about, educate architects, about why light steel frame construction, what the advantages are over using typical wood frame construction. That's my architect's perspective looking at this since that's the ... We did get some other people put in some comments in here.

Speaker 4:           Anyways, Stefan said, "Educate architects about the benefits of the product," which is kind of what I was saying. If she's going to try to sway architects, because that is a design decision. When they're thinking about what to build this in, they're either thinking okay, it's either going to be wood frame construction or we might use light frame, light gauge steel studs. Which one are we going to use? Education could go into that.

Speaker 3:           I did send an email back to Joy as well. Sometimes I accidentally just send emails back to people rather than ... I forget we have the Q&A calls.

Richard:                We've got Marcus, Mark Siddell, MS, and it said structural engineers would be a good place to start for a steel frame supplier. They're specifying it.

Speaker 4:           Exactly. She says, "I don't have a referral from an architect that resulted in any work yet. When making my dirty 30 list, should my priority be in architects who specialize in light steel frame design?" If I'm an architect and I specialize in light steel frame design, if I don't actually build the projects, so in other words at least here in the US, if I'm not the GC, then I don't ever have any say in who the subcontractor is.

Speaker 4:           In other words it would be the steel frame contractor. I'm not quite sure why she's saying she wants to ... I guess it must be different in South Africa because on top of my list, top of my list would be GCs, because the GCs are the ones who are bidding on the jobs from the architects. They're the ones who are, when they get a lump of, when they get a plan, a set of plans, and they leaf through it and they say, "Oh, this is metal studs," boom, they're going to pull out their list of subcontractors who do light steel frame construction. I'm not quite ... Maybe some more information is needed. Anyway, Joy, if you get this, those are my thoughts anyway. I'll quit ranting here.

Richard:                All right.

Eric:                        All right, let's go on to the next question, then. That's where ...

Speaker 4:           Just to back up, while you're doing that, Eric, just to back up what I said and add a little bit of value to Joy's question, I think that the first thing you need to figure out is the good question she's asking, which is who actually goes on that list. Who are the people. Then you need to identify why do you want to build that relationship with them. Is it because they can refer your work? Is it because they know someone who can refer your work? Good place to start. What do we have next? Stefan's question.

Eric:                        Stefan writes [crosstalk 00:37:36]

Speaker 4:           I'm not sure who to send the newsletters to. I work with a few builders who refer to me and I don't think sending them a newsletter will make them send any more. Also, I'm not sure about sending them to past clients because they remember me anyway and I don't want to bombard them with a newsletter every month. Let's unmute Stefan's line and see if he has a microphone here.

Richard:                [inaudible 00:38:01] Stefan. Stefan, is he Swiss or Dutch? I keep forgetting, Stefan, sorry. [inaudible 00:38:08] is Maori. Not too many people pick that up, Stefan. He lives in New Zealand now.

Speaker 4:           Stefan, I unmuted your line.

Stefan:                 Yeah, can you hear me now?

Richard:                We can. We can.

Stefan:                 Oh, good.

Richard:                You're Dutch, aren't you, originally?

Stefan:                 Yeah, yeah. I've been here for 16 years now.

Richard:                Yeah, [foreign language 00:38:33]

Stefan:                 [foreign language 00:38:35] Yeah, they just got kicked out of the qualifying games, so I'm a bit sad now, just a minute ago. Never mind.

Richard:                I'd like to have a crack at you, at your answer, Stefan. Sending a newsletter every month, no, no, you won't bombard them. How much mail do you get in the post that you feel bombarded? I hardly get anything. Occasionally I get a hard copy newsletter from [inaudible 00:39:09]. He was obviously an old client or a past client of mine. I always read it, but okay, I was a marketing coach. No, you just don't get much mail anymore and it's something to read over a cup of tea. Bombarding? No, I think bombarding is ... Look, if anybody doesn't like it, take them off the list, but you've got to stay top of mind. Even your past clients, if they're referring you a lot of people, then maybe they keep thinking of you, but you've got to remember, they're not referring lots of people to you and they could be referring more. It's just that they're not really thinking of you. You're not top of mind.

Richard:                Same for all the other people who could, the builders or the other architects that don't want to do the type of work that you're doing. If you were top of mind, they could point them in your direction. I think the biggest danger is more that you will under-communicate to people who could be referring to you. That's the danger. It's unlikely you're going to over-communicate to the people who could refer to you.

Stefan:                 Okay.

Richard:                Yeah.

Stefan:                 Yeah, it, I don't know.

Richard:                Rude? Rude? Rude? Sorry. One more thing. Rude? Well, sending somebody a newsletter? No way. That's not rude. You send me one every month. I won't think you're rude.

Stefan:                 No, it feels a bit salesy, you know what I mean? I went to a clients house to make some photos and I saw my newsletter lying on his desk. It was weird. I don't know what it is. [crosstalk 00:40:45]

Richard:                Oh, dear.

Stefan:                 Yeah, I don't know. It's probably my own issues, but never mind.

Richard:                It is. It is.

Speaker 3:           We are selling. We're selling architectural services and that's okay. But we're doing it. A newsletter is a non-salesy way because it's largely educational, so look, I educate my past clients. I educate my community. I educate my little network of friends and I give them ... I let them know what I'm up to and I let them know what's happening in the market [inaudible 00:41:16].

Stefan:                 Okay, well, I might print some more, then.

Speaker 3:           Yeah. Be like Eddie.

Richard:                Yeah, sounds like a plan.

Speaker 3:           Yeah, we need better in Wellington.

Stefan:                 When's the next marathon? I was actually in Wellington a few weeks ago, but I can't tell you. No idea at the moment. Hopefully shortly. It's an awesome place to be, though. I really like Wellington.

Speaker 3:           [crosstalk 00:41:49] Any other comments for Eddie? Sorry, for ...

Eric:                        Stefan, you wrote, "Wouldn't it be better to send the newsletter to new prospective referrals only, new contacts you haven't worked with before?" It's yes/and. Send it to these previous people, stay top of mind, and of course if someone inquires, they're somewhat interested in talking to an architect, then send them a newsletter and, in fact, ask permission. "Do you mind if I send the newsletter? I have informative articles and it just comes out once a month." Most likely they'll say that's fine. Then remember that these people who are prospective contacts aren't necessarily going to do it instantly. They may not be ready to hire or to refer someone this month, so you build up a relationship by doing it on that basis.

Stefan:                 All right.

Speaker 4:           Thanks, Stefan.

Stefan:                 No worries.

Speaker 4:           You bet. Okay. I just wanted to add something because there's something right there at the beginning of what Stefan said that I think is very telling. When I deal with people one on one, architects or even in the academy, this is something that comes up a lot. If you notice, his first sentence was "I agree that it might work." I agree that it might work. It's not that it might work. It's that it will work. Absolutely, 100%, it works, period. Get it out of your head that it might work or maybe it'll work for you or maybe it doesn't apply to you. It's the same as calcing out a beam. If you think about your structural engineer, he doesn't come to you and say, "Oh, yeah, you know I think this beam might work for you. Hopefully it does. It's worked in the past and I'm just going to take a wager that it's probably going to work for your particular project here."

Speaker 4:           No, what you're looking at here in the academy, this is a scientific process that has been developed because we know it works. We're not giving you half-baked strategies that might work for you. We're giving your hardcore, cutting strategies that are proven to work.

Speaker 4:           If you find yourself doubting about whether it's going to work for you, to me that's an internal issue. It's something that's going on in your own mind and it's maybe lack of confidence because you haven't seen it work for you. Richard, you're the coach. You have any suggestions about how to get the mindset right?

Richard:                Well, I just love the fact that one of our partners, Enoch, is an architect as well because sometimes, I mean, he's an architect as well, so he knows what you're thinking. We think we know what you're thinking as an architect, but it's great having Enoch who is an architect as well and a great marketer. He can actually see it from both sides. Getting it out of your head, yeah, the big fear is, and I get it all the time, I'm working with a professional sports team here in New Zealand at the moment, even with them the big fear for people is what are other people thinking of me. That's the fear. What will other people think of me if I send out this newsletter? What will people think of me if I put out this ad? What will people think about me? It's just paralyzing.

Richard:                Do you know what they're thinking most of the time? Probably nothing. They're not even thinking about you, and that's the problem. We need them thinking about you, even if they think you're an idiot. At least they're thinking about you. Come on. Don't worry about what people are thinking about you. You'll spend your whole life worrying about what other people are thinking about you and probably the truth is they're not thinking anything. This whole process is to get them at least thinking something. Get over yourself. Get out there. You're running a business. You're allowed to educate people. You're allowed to sell yourself. You're allowed to be prominent in the marketplace. You're running a business. You're allowed to.

Richard:                I mean an architect, accountants put out ads. I'm working with an accounting firm that's doing follow up email [inaudible 00:45:54] responders and, you know, lawyers put out ads. You're allowed to. You're allowed to. You're running a business. They won't think any less of you. If you're successful in business, they'll think more of you.

Richard:                There is a thing with architects is they want to look professional. They want to look like they're not selling themselves. They want to look like everybody's just coming to them because they're so great. Sometimes that happens. You go through patches where you are just busy. Lucky for you, but sometimes you've got to hustle. Sometimes you've got to get your name out there. That's okay. Everyone else is. We do. Every other business I've ever worked with, they have to hustle sometimes, a lot of the time, most of the time, sometimes.

Richard:                Architects are kind of lucky. A lot of you sort of, a large portion of the time, you do just get referrals and business come in. You're not used to going out there and hustling and [inaudible 00:46:56] or promoting yourself. The rest of the world does. The people you're selling to, if they own a business, they're all selling stuff. They're used to selling. They like selling. The rest of the world is selling and the rest of the world is okay with it. You should be okay with it, too.

Speaker 4:           Stefan says, "Richard, you hit the nail on the head." I think regarding the we care what other people think about us.

Richard:                That's good, but don't key it so much that you paralyze yourself. Put on a nice shirt, sure.

Eric:                        There is a nice comment from Andy saying, "A key to avoiding the sense of bombarding recipients of our newsletter is to include some useful content. Hey, useful. Yeah, that sounds good, not just self promotion. We actually have expertise that's valuable and clients appreciate it. The fun parts are [inaudible 00:47:47] too, something to look at while eating a snack at break time."

Richard:                Yeah, and looking at it from the point ... Take the, from the position, and it should be this ... Oh, I know what you're talking about now, String. I'm on the side and you can only see half a face. Take the attitude. The newsletter is a chance to serve your inner community. It's a chance to give them content, information, help them, guide them, point them to resources, let them know what you're up to. It's your little service. It's a chance for you to help your little inner community and keep the community together. You shouldn't be ... You might have a little monkey's fist ad in there and you might prompt a couple of things if you want more stuff, but it's largely a service where you're helping your little community out with the stuff and, yeah [crosstalk 00:48:39]

Speaker 3:           The other benefit is putting a newsletter together is a real pain in the butt and other architects aren't going to follow you because you look at a guy, oh jeez, there's a lot of work that goes in there, so the more complicated you make your system look, and look, it's not really complicated because we're providing the template and the content for you, the less competition that you'll have. Going back to Richard's point, being professional, I bet if you showed a newsletter to 100 architects, I bet most would say, "I wouldn't do that." They'd be saying the same thing, but take what Eddie's doing. He's like going, "I'm just going to send it." That's what give it results. It's like, "Yep, there's stuff there so I'm going to. I've heard about it. Let's give it a shot."

Speaker 3:           You're doing what 99% of the architects out there aren't doing and they don't have a system for it. If they were going to do it, it would cost them thousands of dollars to develop it, to put content, to write content on an ongoing basis, to post it, to have everything up and running. You've got this resource, guys. Please use it. It's there.

Eric:                        One final comment related to this, being comfortable with it, Colleen writes, "If you feel uncomfortable with it, your audience will notice. Fake it until you make it." You've just got to try it and just pretend that it's all right. Then after a while, you'll see some successes like Eddie and then it will be all right. You'll have made it. I know we have at least one more question that was sent in ahead of time and then a couple of follow up questions that people typed in. From Harlet, who is in Kenya, and I'm not sure if Harlet's on the line because it's probably pretty darn late there, like midnight or 1:00, Harlet asked, "For the Dirty 30, do the Super Six have to know they're part of the referral system or are they in it unconsciously, without you saying, "Would you like to join my club," so to speak?" Richard?

Richard:                I emailed back to Harlet. It could be either. There's some people who you could say, I mean, there are affiliate programs for software where people know that they're an affiliate and the out there busily trying to make as much commission as they can because there's an incentives game. Some people would like to earn, for every project that they send your way, they might like doing $500 or whatever. Others wouldn't like to win money. They would like to see that they're only referring people because they think you're a good person and do a good job. It kind of depends. It's up to you whether they know or not. Generally speaking, most people would probably do it so they don't know, but there's nothing wrong with letting people know. I rely on you guys for referrals.

Richard:                There's a doctor in Australia called Petty Land. You'll know him, String. His business is solely to become a client of Petty Land's, you have to sign an agreement that you will refer him at least two new clients a year. Otherwise he won't accept you as a client. He takes that approach that I could be out there doing marketing and selling myself, but I'd much rather be looking after you and looking after my clients. He wrote this big long letter. I did a lot of introspection and soul searching on who were my best clients and I discovered they fit this criteria. They also referred people to me, so I made a decision. I'm only going to work with clients who do fit this criteria and part of that is they will refer people to me. I'm letting you know out of courtesy, but at the moment ... His letter was, "I'm sacking all my clients. You're all sacked, but I'll reengage the ones that I think fit my criteria."

Richard:                That's kind of a ballsy thing to do, and he did. He runs a very successful practice and he runs a lot of marketing around this referral, by referral only.

Richard:                Another twist on that that you could do, this is sort of a bit left field but consider it anyway and maybe adapt it, is I've done this before where you say, "Would you like the normal? I can give you my [inaudible 00:53:11]. Would you like the normal price or the referral price?"

Richard:                The people go, "what's the difference?"

Richard:                "Well, did I not tell you?"

Richard:                "No, no."

Richard:                "Okay, well, here's my standard price here, but if you think you're in a position to be able to refer people to me over the next 12 months for an appointment or for an LCC or something like that, then I will charge you this price. It's 10% less."

Richard:                Now, every time I've put down the two options, everybody's always gone for the referral price. They're on the line, and in theory, for sending two people my way. I never hold them to it. I never send them an invoice for the 10% if they haven't, but they've taken up, they've willingly taken up the obligation to yeah, I'll send a couple of people your way for the 10% off your fee. It's just an interesting one to consider [crosstalk 00:54:17]

Speaker 4:           Great, and I think that brings us up to the end here. Thank you for joining us.

Eric:                        We do have a question from Eric [Meckatin 00:54:26] that was typed in. Since we have three minutes, I don't think we need to cut him off.

Richard:                You got here just in time.

Eric:                        Yeah, no, he actually typed this in half an hour ago, asked about the newsletter as a place to highlight a project with did each month. Is this too self promotional? It's easy content for a quarter page and more personal. Then writes, "The reason I ask is it seems important to have the newsletter a device that makes us look like an expert rather than being an advertising piece per se."

Eric:                        What I want to say is absolutely it is a good place to share news and projects, but what would make it even more successful is if it's not just, "Here's our project. It's so many square feet. It's in this location and here's some nice pictures," but what's the story behind it. What challenge did you overcome? They had this zoning issue or this person is disabled and they really needed access in this way and we worked out a way in a narrow lot to do this. What is the challenge and the success and the hero's journey of it seemed like we couldn't meet their budget and then ... What is that? That would make it a more interesting story than just, "Our latest project which we're proud to announce."

Eric:                        If you can wrap into that even something about here's something others may consider. In this context, you can do this solution. In other words, you're now educating them not just about this project but about how other projects can be solved, challenging problems. Other comments from my colleagues?

Speaker 3:           Sorry, I've just seen something come through from Eric Meckatin, because while we're talking about Eric Meckatin, he says, "This sparks a lot of thoughts. My list is finally growing." This is his Dirty 30. "Here's an idea for everyone. I'm going to go to the website of architects who are doing the projects that I want to do and get the names of the GCs they are working with and send the newsletter to those GCs."

Speaker 4:           Now he's thinking like a marketer.

Speaker 3:           Guerrilla marketing. I love it, Eric. I love it. I don't like it. I love it. That is ... I wouldn't say that's dirty. It's not dirty, but it's bloody good. That is brilliant.

Speaker 4:           Bravo, bravo.

Speaker 3:           That's how you build up your Dirty 30 list. Who else is on other people's, architect's, websites of the type of projects you want to do? That is brilliant. I'm going to be stealing that one, Eric. I might occasionally mention your name, but after a while I'm going to forget to mention your name. At that point, it'll be my idea. You've got about six months of me remembering. That's brilliant.

Eric:                        Okay, well thank you all for joining us. I guess we are now at the hour mark. We'll be back with another edition of our advanced training next week. What's the topic? I guess ...

Richard:                We'll send that through because this is being recorded for the module.

Eric:                        Okay, all right. Just watch your email for what's coming up next. Thanks everybody. We'll catch you next time.

Speaker 3:           Bye bye.

Speaker 4:           Say, guys, bye bye.