Circle of Love – Q&A

Enoch:                  Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to this question and answer call on the Circle of Love Strategy. This is Enoch calling in from Visalia, California and joining me are Richard.

Enoch:                  Richard, how you doing buddy?

Richard:                I'm doing good. Yeah. Enjoying it.

Enoch:                  And then String. What's up String?

String:                   I'm out enjoying a nice sunny day here. So, getting ready for this.

Enoch:                  Good. Thanks guys I just wanted to let everyone know today that if you have a question, today we're going to be talking about the Circle of Love Strategy. So if you've ever wondered ... I get this question all the time, "How do I follow up with clients without being salesy?" A lot of times what I'll do is I'll talk to people and they say, "You know what, yeah, I have this big contact list, but I really haven't talked to anyone and you know it's been years and it's just going to feel awkward to go out there and ask him to find me the project."

Enoch:                  Well if you follow this strategy, you will avoid having to go out and ask someone for work after not having talked to them for 2 years. So, really it's a great way to stay in contact with people. Now, if you have a question let us know. Drop that into the questions for staff. There's a questions for staff box. Drop that in there.

Enoch:                  In addition to that, look, we're going to keep this on schedule today. If we run out of questions we'll go ahead and end the session early. There weren't many questions said in ahead of time, so if you want to get your question answered make sure you ask it into the question box right now so we can make sure to hit up before the end of the session.

Enoch:                  Alright. So, Richard, could you just, in addition to what I said could you give us a little overview of The Circle of Love Strategy?

String:                   Sure. So we've got a strategy for people who come in and they're [inaudible 00:01:42] and request some information. Then we follow up in a set way and then we've got a strategy for everyone else who just falls into the bucket who doesn't do anything. And it's not to say that these people won't do something later, so we need some sort of leverage system for staying in touch.

String:                   And so, the Circle of Love is about being organized and the suggestion is a question and answer video of the month. Okay? So, question and answer video of the month. Now, I do it with ... Obviously, we do it with [inaudible 00:02:16] lists.And what ends up happening is ... And I don't actually always do a video of myself. I often write stories. Just email stories. And I don't know whether anyone reads them or not sometimes. I can look at the stats and see about 30% of them opened them.

String:                   But I'll get a call ... I got a call just the other day from a past client. When I first started working with him he was a good client and he had a travel company and now they doing really quite well he's got a sales team. And he's called back after probably we went through it was about seven years ago, and he said, "Oh yeah, I've been reading your emails."

String:                   And he said, "You read about 20% of them." But then he started to tell me on all the things I've been doing. So he said, "Oh, maybe I've been reading more of them than I thought."

String:                   But anyway, it was seven years later when he's come back to me. And you know, it's probably about $8,000 in their budgets for training. So, that's after seven years. Now, I don't mind because it's coming out to 2,000 people and he'll call up out the blue ... No, it's out of the blue to me, but he still sort of feels connected. So, it's just a case of telling some good stories and having that consistency of staying in touch.

Enoch:                  Great. Thanks Richard. So got a question here. How do you find the people to put into your Circle of Love? Where do the people come from that you add to that list?

String:                   Yup. Well, [inaudible 00:03:48] of God. I mean, they're anyone that you want to include in your regular monthly communication who should be receiving it instead of a question of the month type or a story of the month type thing. So a lot of the people ... You know, a lot of the leads who come and who maybe request some[inaudible 00:04:03] first and didn't end up doing a project with you. They're perfect people. Plus anyone if you're having a working meeting, you get their card and so on, all this time, I do a monthly question/answer session. I'll stick you on the list and most people would go on as well so, non converted leads, contacts who are worthy of being on there.

Enoch:                  Okay. Thanks for sharing.

Richard:                I can just add to this, when I had a mailing list privately, this is the ultimate in leverage, because we're not talking about if you've set up your physical newsletter, there's a cost involved in that, there's actually a little bit of effort to put that together whereas this here is your ultimate leverage because it doesn't matter how big your list is, you can communicate with a large amount of people at the same time, with the same amount of effort and as Richard said, getting contact back after 7 years, it's very powerful and you don't know who's reading to what extent, maybe you can say, if you're using an order system that tracks open an engagement, you can see how many people open but you can get these surprises where if they feel like they've known you, they've been following you and you realize, oh hang on, they've been paying a lot more attention to you than you have to them because you're out one to many as opposed to one to one.

String:                   If you get the reputation for telling interesting stories too, they [inaudible 00:05:46] to read them so as [00:05:50] String, I often do listens from Australia, or listens from San Francisco, which is really just horrendously bad name dropping about all the traveling I've been doing, right? But it looks like you're really successful because you're going over there and doing this and doing that so I deliberately do it, you know? Listens from Las Vegas and tell a little story about something that happened and what I learned but there's a lot of embedded messages in that so but they all know, they all know I've been on these trips in outer space and, of course, it's really funny because, of course, you tell interesting stories, you're packing the stories, they only hear the good ones and everyone always things you're far more successful than you are.

Richard:                When we're in San Francisco, Richard and I caught up 2 days before Enoch and Eric and we went out, went and had dinner. Richard's always with his camera, he's like "Oh, take a photo of this, take a photo of this" because it's creating content and then at night, after dinner, right up an email and that was the first one of the lessons from San Francisco and I think that went out before we had the San Francisco Fast Track event so it's always in the mindset and I've witnessed it first hand, always thinking about "Oh this would make a good story".

String:                   I'm always looking for Stories. I'm always looking for little stories. The part [crosstalk 00:07:20]

Enoch:                  The stories are good because it's what people remember.

String:                   Yeah.

Enoch:                  If someone meets you, a good story can stay in someone's mind for years. Even from the moment when my kids are born, they always want me to tell them stories and when they're thinking back about past vacations or things we've done, they're not talking about what we saw or where we stayed, they're "yeah, you remember that one time when Jude fell in that mud hole" and then everyone's laughing "yeah, I remember that", so that, humans, we just connect with stories.

Enoch:                  So The Circle of Love is really, it's just one arrow in your quiver of marketing tools but I think it's one of the most important because it really is that ability to stay in contact with people like String said, over long periods of time and just to respond to the question, I really wanted to add something, Richard, in terms of where to get these contacts, so most people don't know this, I'm going to show you a little trick here, one of the places you can get your contacts is from your Linkedin network.

Richard:                Nice.

Enoch:                  If you don't have a Linkedin network, now's the time to get one. Just go out there and connect to the kind of people you want to be in touch with.  What people don't know is that you can actually export your entire Linkedin network. Anyone who's connected to you can export them, so if you hover over my network and you go to connections, I'm just going to show you really quick how to do this and make my screen a little larger here. As of the time when I'm basically, when we're doing this video, this is how it works.

Enoch:                  You know that this changes frequently so it might be a little bit different when you do it but what you do is click this here on the right hand side, you'll see it will say export Linkedin connections and right here, you can export it to whatever kind of file you want, an address book file, a Microsoft Outlook file, Outlook Express and you can then import these into your email program or any sort of bulk emailing program so there's one place. Everyone should have some Linkedin connections and that's a great way to instantly get your Circle of Love list.

Enoch:                  Now I do want to say, before you send out that first email, you probably want to send out, kind of, a warmup email. Richard, String, you guys have any suggestions for how to get people, the contacts, the heads up that you're going too be sending them emails more frequently so that they don't get perceived as spam or unwanted communication?

String:                   Oh I don't have a set strategy for that but I think this is so good. We need to probably make a little 5 minute video on how to export that because I've never done it, I'm sure I've got a thousand people in Linkedin Connections but other than just being straight up and saying, "Hey, you've connected with me for some reason, but I'm about to start a monthly question of the month on this topic and if you don't want it, by all means, here's the button below, click out", something like that would be fine. Don't ask them to opt in, just ask them to opt out, if they don't want it.

Richard:                Yeah, I did that in a previous business with my brother when we were doing training. It was live training, not webinar training and he had about 2.5 thousand connections in Linkedin because the thing with Linkedin, people just want to connect, because it's not a social network, it's a professional network, so it's a different psychology with people who are connecting in there. They think, "well this could be good for business", most people don't utilize it so what we did, we thought well, we got this, it was actually a training that was selling.

Richard:                It wasn't really selling so why don't we make it free but we've already sold it for a value so I crafted an email saying, "Hey look, the reason why I'm contacting you, is because we're connected on Linkedin, maybe we haven't, but just so you know, we're putting this information out there that was previously sold for so much, people who've bought it found it very valuable and we decided to share it rather than selling it. If for any reason, this doesn't appear to you, at the end of every email you can unsubscribe.  So if this isn't relevant, please unsubscribe". Because I want them to know, this is where you can get that "Is it spam or not", there is a connection, it is an online connection but I made it very obvious in the very first email that if you don't want this, please click this button. I don't want them to then be clicking on "this is spam" because that can affect deliverability. Make sure that first one, you let them know. I'd even say be very blunt in saying, "Totally, if it's not for you, please I want you to opt out."  Because you want them if they're not your relevant audience or buyers, you don't need them on your list.

Enoch:                  Going back to that Linkedin example. The nice thing about Linkedin, is that I think people are more likely to connect with you on Linkedin rather than give you their direct phone number or their email address so it's a nice little baby step in terms of getting to know them but, like I said, what most people don't know is that once you connect with them on Linkedin, you can get their email address.

Enoch:                  I can show you what that export looks like here. So I just exported my connections and you can see here that, I don't even know how many connections I have. I've kind of stopped connecting with people but I already have, I've been doing this a while so obviously I have over 1000, 2000 connections.

Enoch:                  But I just want to show you what it gives you. So it gives you the first name, their last name, their email address and here's where it gets interesting, you can also get the company they work for, the department, their job title.

Enoch:                  Okay, so, just imagine you want to connect with anyone who has job title of X and X Industry, you can export their spreadsheet, sort by job title, instantly pick out who in your network does what and that way you can build your database pretty quickly. So that's just a little bonus strategy for those of you who are hard core networkers and marketers.[crosstalk 00:13:51] I already see Richard's wheels are turning. Richard's got that evil grin.

Richard:                Well, I knew you could do that but then I forgot all about it. It's amazing. That's amazing because some people... I must have over a thousand Linkedin and people connect with me all the time, I don't even know why the connect. I never do anything and I don't get that many emails from them, I don't think, but maybe I do.

Richard:                Now I can hit them back.[crosstalk 00:14:21]

Enoch:                  Sorry String, go ahead.

String:                   [inaudible 00:14:24] I saw the question from [inaudible 00:14:27].

Enoch:                  Yup, she says, "I'm trying to understand the difference between my Circle of Love and my general mailing list." Richard, you want to handle that one?

Richard:                Well, the only list I'm interested in, 3 lists: One is client list. Two, is your hot prospect list, which is the people that download the reports in any deals you're in on, and three, Circle of Love.  So it is your general list. [inaudible 00:15:13]

Enoch:                  Obviously you to want to make sure that the people you're sending it to, it's relevant to them. That's probably the primary thing. If you have, for architecture, I think it probably be mostly irrelevant, even if you have real estate agents and you have brokers, you have bankers, you have publishers, journalists. You can send them your monthly Q and A video which is your question and answer video. Like Richard said, it doesn't have to be a video, it could be just a story or an article.

Enoch:                  The example we give a lot is, of course, Peter's example where he sends out one image every month and that's all he sends out. It's, here's one from [inaudible 00:15:48] and it's just a picture of one of his latest projects with a button to click over to the website and read more about that project. So I think it is the general mailing list.

String:                   I saw a great example, this was in 2007, I was living in Hornsby in Sydney and at the local, weekly publication and I know the ad space cost $4000 and it was taken up every single week by this company and they called themselves The Reno Brothers, so The Renovation Brothers and every week, they had a short article on something specific about renovating your home.

String:                   One might be re-tiling the bathroom, one might be relaminating the kitchen or how to alter structural wall so that was, for me, their Circle of Love, it was the offline version and we had a client, we advertise in the same paper. Now it was $4000, maybe it was less for them because they were doing it regularly, but it wouldn't have been a lot less but they built their authority through that because they were always there giving tips on the services they provided which was renovations and home extensions.

Enoch:                  That's a great example. What I like about that String, sounds very effective in terms of using, it's a content right? So instead of taking out an ad like everyone else is probably doing where it's all about "Hey, check us out, this is the kind of work we do, here's some of the projects we've worked on", they're providing a hopeful little article. If you can dig up some of those advertisements, if you have access to them, it would be interesting to see some of those.

String:                   I can't, it was like 9 years ago. I didn't take any photos but it stuck in my mind. Yeah, these guys know what they were doing. They would've been working with someone because you don't get billed as typically doing that content marketing, you're usually too busy building so I'm sure they were working with a coach or some marketer that knew what they were doing.

Enoch:                  Some smart marketer. So here's a question: "My Circle of Love, does it have to be email or is hard copy letter better?"

Richard:                Oh, well if you could do it hard copy, it would be better. Hard copy is always better. Face to face would even better but as the numbers go up, face to face gets harder so you go, all right, we'll do hard copy and numbers go up again, you go email. So face to face is better, hard copy is next best and then email. If you've got hundreds, you're probably going to do email. But look, the pros stack up financially, [inaudible 00:18:51] investment, it would probably stack up just to send a one-page letter with your story each month or your question of the month because even if you sent it out to a hundred people hard copy, I'm just speaking hypothetically here, but it might cost you $200-$300 but [inaudible 00:19:11] so if these people either refer you or take up a project themselves, then you don't need very many projects to justify so it probably would stack up doing a hard copy but I know most people probably won't so just do an email if that's all you can get around to doing.

Enoch:                  Okay great, thanks Richard.

String:                   And this goes along side your Dirty Thirty, your list of 30 top potential referrals. Still send out your 30. They're the ones that are your best most likely prospects. Your movers and shakers, your past clients. The second is obvious the leverage one. That's why we're saying email. As Richard said, physical mail is going to get a better response but you don't want to, if you get a big list, I don't know that you'd want to be sending it out to everyone because a lot of them will be unqualified but there's no reason why your Dirty Thirty couldn't be your seventy or hundred. I know Eddie is sending it out to, I think, 70 or close to 80 people but the Circle of Love is the leverage one. That's why we're the same email.

Enoch:                  Well great, let us know if there's any more questions about the Circle of Love strategy. I think it's hopefully pretty cut and dry, just in terms of what it involves but, I guess, the main- if you want to sum it up, it's all about providing value content and staying in contact with someone in a way that they'll perceive as useful and interesting.

Richard:                And also in a way that positions you where you want to be positioned so you got to think "how do I want to be seen?" And make sure your Circle of Love fits strategically into that.

Enoch:                  Great, great point Richard. So I know there's some notes here about, maybe some sound problems. You know what? This is recorded so apologies about that but I think the recording will probably sound okay so that's, of course, going to be posted and you'll see that on the member's website. I don't see any other question's here so I think we've pretty much covered it. I'm going to wait here a minute or two so if there's any other last minute questions, we'll go ahead and answer those. Other than that, we'll get on here. I see a couple more questions here rolling in so we'll give you a couple minutes here to roll those questions in and see what they are.

Enoch:                  You know, Circle of Love and you'll be surprised as you implement the strategy, I think I know, at least, when I started communicating with more people en masse, it was always a little intimidating, so if you feel like your finger's a little hesitant to just hit that send button, you're not alone. We all feel that but you got to overcome that. That's just a mental demon and you're not going to be able to get ahead if you don't just bite the bullet and do it.

Enoch:                  So just be aware that's going to happen. You're going to have that little voice in the back of your head saying "well what if some people don't like it?" You know, what if, what if, what if one person write me back and says "I hate you, I hate your guts", I think there's something Seth Godin talks about. He's one of my favorite marketers. I don't know if he made it up, he calls it the imposter syndrome. Have you guys heard about that?

Enoch:                  So the imposter syndrome is basically, it's that little voice that we all have in the back of our head that tells us that we're not good enough. So we all have this from the moment we're kids. There's always this doubt that we don't measure up, that we're going to make mistakes, that we're just this frail little kid so even as adults too, we have this. Of course, he tells this story that Barack Obama, or the leader of any free nation or any enslaved nation, stands in front of the mirror, they look at themselves, and they have that imposter syndrome. They have that little voice in the back of their head. Barack says "I'm just Barack Obama, I just grew up in Chicago and who am I to lead the United States of America and sit at the bargaining table with leaders from around the world?"

Enoch:                  So the key is to overcoming that and moving ahead in spite of having those doubts.

Richard:                Definitely, definitely and even still sometimes now. I write one and think, it's not very good.  [crosstalk 00:23:39] then you send it and you get some comments back and [inaudible 00:23:44], I'm glad I sent that, that was a relief so even experienced marketers sometimes. You just got to do it, you just got to do it.

Enoch:                  Very true.

Richard:                I just see Marcus Moreno is on the call and Marcus, we are obviously coming to your home town. We're going to be there for the [inaudible 00:24:04] Marketing Conference in April, early April so [inaudible 00:24:13] you know about that, I don't know, has he bought his ticket? Is he coming?

Enoch:                  Marcus, hopefully you bought your ticket.

Richard:                Hopefully and everyone's coming around your house for dinner on the first night as well so if you haven't, we'll give you a complementary one because we're looking at this for a big meal and you're welcome from our favorite. Is there anyone else here that lives around New York? Here he is. He says "Not yet, everyone is welcome." Yeah, it'd be fun at Marcus' place.

Enoch:                  All right I did have a couple questions that did roll in here, Richard, I'm going to roll in to these if that's all right.

Enoch:                  Paul asks, he says "Regarding Linkedin, how open should we be to accepting Linkedin requests?, we get them from all types of people."

Enoch:                  Look, I only accept Linkedin requests from people who I feel there is some mutual benefit there. Like a lot of times, I won't necessarily accept requests from product manufacturers. As an architect, I get those sometimes and also at other times, people who run rendering companies and people who I know will be spamming me mercilessly. If my sales radar goes up, then I don't connect. That's just my general but I'm pretty open. I pretty much do connect with anyone. Anyone in my industry, contractor, architect, interior designer, I will connect with them on Linkedin.

String:                   I just want to add something, I forgot if it was covered in a module or not. The one good thing with doing videos is rather than sending them to just your YouTube video or if it's posted on Vimeo, embed it on your blog, embed it on your website and get a little bit, like a summary written so you can also get some SEO benefits from that so for their SEO, have a look at their events training that Eric did last month, the SEO for architects advanced training but so it doesn't just get lost in ether, a one off but you build content for your website so that's where the benefit comes in doing a video. Once you have the video, you can get it transcribed and tidy it up or if you're a good writer, you can summarize it quite well and use a bit of, some of those ninja tricks that Eric went through to make sure that you get some long term SEO.

Enoch:                  Yeah, that's a great point. It's something that I've been thinking about recently, String, is to leverage everything you do, so if you're going to do it once, if you're going to do it for your Circle of Love video, put it as a Linkedin update, right an article for Pulse on Linkedin, put it on Medium.com, put it on your website. Submit it as an article for one of your local design mags, try to reuse that content as much as possible.

Enoch:                  So question here:  "I have a lot of other architects on my mailing list, some are actual refers, some are fans and others are spies. Should I filter them out of my Circle of Love?"

Enoch:                  What do you think gents?

Richard:                Probably filter the spies but then again, I don't know sometimes they could still, I don't know. It depends who they are obviously. How much are they going to learn? I mean, you're building your personality. All they're going to learn is how you build your personality within your list and they probably won't do it. They won't do it, even if they [inaudible 00:28:00] what you were doing, so it doesn't really [crosstalk 00:28:09]

Enoch:                  I agree with that. The other thing too is that, just as the business of architecture has changed over the past 20 years. The way people did architecture 50 years ago was very different. The way we do it now today is different. I'm seeing changes in the way architects are marketing themselves and those of you who are in this program are on the cutting edge of those changes so eventually it's going to be really difficult to keep all of those strategies and tactics close to your chest and not let anyone else use them.

Enoch:                  Eventually other people are going to catch up and they're going to start doing these things but the advantage that you have and few will do them, few will do them but the advantage that you have is that you are doing them first so they will never be able to catch up with you so to speak so that is something that I'm seeing as I'm out there, listening to what people are doing in different parts of the world and different circles.

Enoch:                  Some architects, just the very more progressive ones who are seeking and learning and growing are starting to do some pretty cool stuff with their businesses but it still will be only the top 1% who will do that so that's my 2 cents.

String:                   I think you're putting yourself out there by doing that and I think there's a change happening because there's so much information out there and, was it 2 years ago? Or 3 years ago? When Tesla released all of their patents publicly, they said, we're not going to hold anymore patents because we want the advancement of electric vehicles not just the [inaudible 00:29:50] of Tesla to go up so now they said, well we're just going to keep so far ahead of everybody else and let our technology, let other people use it as well so if you're seen as the leader in your field and most people, they won't follow it but you can still be respected by your peers and I think if more architects end up being out their teaching clients, teaching prospects about architecture, well it can only help the profession for people to understand, it's not just drawing some lines and passing it to a builder, people do need that education and it can come from multiple architects.

Enoch:                  Good. Thanks gents. Hopefully that helps. All right. My long list of contacts from my new website announcement was partially sent, then it hit a snag with too many rejections and it shut me down. Maybe 400 of 2000 went out. Any tricks of the trade for getting around this. They suggest confirming all the emails before uploading to them but that's way too much work.

Enoch:                  Sure, so what we're talking about here is that the difference between someone who's opted in to receive communications from you and then someone who hasn't opted in, so that's why we talking about building your list organically and what that means is that that's where the monkey's fist comes into it right? The people get put on that list there because they have requested to get some information from you. The other way to do it is to- Here's one thing that I see happening, especially with some members of the academy when they're really ambitious to get this stuff going and they send out, for instance, a Circle of Love email that has no context to it. It's just, someone gets this email from an architect and they might not even remember you and they're initial reaction is to hit the spam button. I know I do.

Enoch:                  I always give someone the benefit of the doubt when I an email from someone who I don't recognize, I think, "Okay, did I opt into something?, is this an old friend? Do I even know this person?" And if they email me the second time, usually I will mark it as spam so you got to figure, I don't think most architects are as lenient as I am or builders or potential clients.

Enoch:                  So to make a long story short, what I would do in that case is I would make sure that my first email reintroduce myself and that was sort of what I was referring to earlier in terms of strategies for the first email you send out. Tell them how long you're going to be emailing them, given them an option to opt out, tell them how you got a hold of their email address, remind them who you are so simple email might be "Hey John, this is Enoch, look I know we haven't been in touch in a while, we meet, I'm an architect, anyways, I've added you to my mailing list so I can send you some valuable content, if you prefer not to receive it, write back and let me know or just click the little link at the bottom of this email."

Enoch:                  A lot of times, that will save you a lot of the grief. So that definitely should be your first step if you're just uploading contacts from Linkedin or something like that.

Enoch:                  Of course, you'll have to look at your laws in what area you're at. In Canada, it's actually against the law to send any commercially focused, unsolicited email, so you want to make sure you're getting people's permission.

Enoch:                  Going back to the question here, confirming all the emails before uploading them, that's way too much work, so then what you might want to do is go through the mails and prioritize which ones you think are the most important to keep in contact with. There's a couple thoughts.

Enoch:                  Elizabeth writes: Diane Von Furstenburg, "If you're not your power, you give your power to the doubts." Okay, going back to that comment about worrying about what other people think about us. Thanks for that.

Enoch:                  Okay, it looks like we've hit all the questions about the Circle of Love. Thanks for throwing in those last minute questions and I'm not seeing any others here. All right.

Enoch:                  Thanks everyone for joining us today. Richard and String, you guys have any last minute thoughts?

Richard:                No but [inaudible 00:34:07] is no and then I say something but, yes, just go and take action. Go and do stuff and things happen.

String:                   I'll just back that up and for your first one, the quality may not be great. Get it out there because the only way you're going to learn is to ship it, to send it out.[crosstalk 00:34:29] bad quality video and audio, it's just the way it goes.

Richard:                I still do bad quality video. It [crosstalk 00:34:40]

Enoch:                  [inaudible 00:34:43] Craig says: Been getting good comments on newsletters, all right. So look, just to reiterate, I know I showed that strategy for getting contacts from Linkedin. Don't just upload those to your email program and then send out a huge email blast because that's not the way things work. What you're going to want to do is, you're going to want to warm up those contacts first and a lot of times that could just be a simple email message that says, "This is who I am, this is how you may know me and I'm planning to email you more, if you want to opt out, just write back and let me know." Makes it simple. All right. Gentleman. [crosstalk 00:35:20] as always. Over and out. Thanks everyone for joining us.