Focus on the Long Play

Show Notes

• One of the best ways to do marketing is to focus on the long play rather than the here and now.
• If you are only focused on today, you are probably not making good decisions.
• You can afford to start playing the long play right now, even if you feel too busy.
• It is likely there is something you are doing right now in your business that you don’t need to be doing. Use that time to invest in long term solutions.
• The long play may not pay off right away, but once it is in place it starts to pay off.
• In order to make the long play work you should:
  • Be clear on your message.  What is unique that you bring to the marketplace? It might be something that everyone in your industry knows, but no one is talking about.
  • Start with what your customer needs and wants. It doesn’t matter what you think, it matters what your customer thinks your product or service can do for them.

• Once you get your message down, begin to publish your message. Publishing a book is powerful medium available to anyone today.
• Share your message on an existing authority’s website or podcast.
• Then share on your own blog or podcast, then on Facebook or Twitter.
• The more you get your message out there, the better you will be able to play the long play.
• When you find out what is working and gets people’s attention organically, then you can pay to get your message in front of them.
• Once someone interacts with your messages then promote an identifying call to action.
• Once you identify someone, then invite them to become a customer, and then to become a more frequent customer and then get them to refer. This is the long play.
• The quality of your customers will be better if you are in business for the long play.
• Part of the long play is that you don’t look at everyone as a money source, but as an opportunity to help. Some people will see value in interacting with you in a commerce situation and others won’t.

Transcription of Episode

[00:00:00] Recently, the movie Now You See Me Two came out the sequel to Now You See Me One, obviously, and in that movie, if you haven't seen it, it's about a set of magicians. And one of the main characters, Dylan Rhodes, is known for his long play. The long play is almost always worth it, and the challenge of the long play, when it comes to business, is cash flow.

If you saw the movie, I won't spoil it for you if you haven't, but the long play is laying out a trick or show where it goes over a long term. And longer the term of that trick or that entertainment that the magician is doing, then the more the payoff is at the end. And so it's kind of exciting for the people watching it. You'll see this in comedians as well, where they'll maybe tell a joke early in the set and then towards the end, they'll pull that back in and it kind of wraps up the whole show. And so that's the long play. I mean, we're not just going for [00:01:00] the short term, but we're keeping the long-term in mind as well.

In business, this is probably one of the best ways to do marketing. The problem, though, is that for most people, because of cash flow, they don't feel like they can afford to take the long play. They always keep the focus on the here and now.

In fact, I recently heard a CEO talking or being quoted, saying, "What I really think about each morning is, how can I push the company forward today?" And for me that was kind of like, that was terrible. If you're a focused on the today, chances are you're not making good decisions.

You have to have the long play or the long game in mind. The good news is, you can afford to start playing the long play now. There's something that you're doing right now that you don't need to be doing, guaranteed. It's true for all of us.

Even if you think, I'm totally swamped, I'm totally busy, there's no way I could take the long play in my marketing, in my sales, in my business. [00:02:00]

The truth is, whatever you've been doing to get you the results you're getting today, the things that you're doing that are getting those results don't take up 100% of your time, guaranteed. Unless you're some freak of nature, chances are, there's something you're doing right now that you don't need to do. There's some small number of things that you're doing that are actually producing all of your results, which means that we have a gap in your effort that can be utilized for the long play.

I would like to encourage you to start thinking about, how can I start doing the long play as I continue to my short-term hustle to get whatever needs to be done done?

I said earlier that the long play is much easier and more forgiving than the short-term hustle. This is very true.

This is the difference between someone like the guy that runs Berkshire Hathaway in the way that he invests versus the guy that's doing minute trades on the e-minis. The guy that's doing the mini trades, he's got to be right, and if he's not right he pays very quickly. [00:03:00] With someone like Berkshire Hathaway, and what they do with their investing, it's always the long play. They may be wrong in the short term, but in the long term they're able to win.

The long play is much easier and more forgiving than the short-term hustle. You can start doing the long play now. It may not pay off for a little bit, but you can start building it now. That's the thing about the long play, is you can't build it later. You have to start building it now. Once you get it in place, then it starts to pay off.

Now, there's a few steps that you need to actually do the long play. The first one is you got to get clear on your message. What is it that you bring that is unique to the marketplace that can allow you to craft a unique message? It doesn't have to be unknown information. It can be what everyone in your industry knows but nobody talks about. That's perfectly fine.

But you got to find what is your message to the people that you want to help. In terms of finding your message, you always got to start with your customer. What is it that your customer really needs and wants [00:04:00] that they think that your product or service can give them? That's important, the word think is important, because it doesn't matter what you think, it matters what your customer thinks that your product or service can do for them.

If you understand that, then you can start making things really happen for yourself and you really do the long play well.

Number one, get clear on your message. Best way to clear on your message, understand what your customers or clients think that you are doing for them. Not what you think you're doing for them, but what they think that you're doing for them. What are you helping them accomplish?

Once you get that message down, begin to publish your message. Now in terms of power for positioning, publishing a book is the most powerful media for you. With today's technology, you don't need anybody's permission to publish a book. You can do it entirely on your own. Obviously there's people out there that will help you with this process, but you can do it without getting anybody's permission. Wasn't the case 10 years ago. Totally the case today, and you can do it in a very big way.

The next place is [00:05:00] some existing authority, blog, periodical, and podcast, somebody that's already out there that already has your audience and is not competing with you. That's a great place to also get your message out.

That's a little tougher because you need somebody's permission, so if you can't get that initially, don't sweat it. Just move on to the next one, which is your own blog or podcast. Next your Facebook page, and then finally Twitter and mostly I'm using Twitter to publish out whatever I've already put on my blog or podcast, or maybe even my Facebook page.

But you got to get your message out there. The more you get your message out there, the better you're going to be able to play the long play.

Once you got your message out there, you need to pay to promote your best messages. Not everything you do in terms of publishing your message is going to get picked up. It's not going to resonate. You don't know for sure what's going to work until you put it out there. So, you got to put some stuff out there and see what works.

When you find out what's working, what gets people's attention organically, you want to pay to promote that, and that's [00:06:00] part of the long play. You want to get your message in front of people who could potentially be your customers, and I'll give you some examples of that in just a second.

Finally, once somebody interacts with your messages, then promote an identifying call to action. If you've listened to past podcasts. what I'm talking about here is if I get somebody to go to my blog to interact with my content, whether it's a podcast, a video, or something else, then at that point, I can identify them on ad networks like Facebook or Google and then promote a call to action to those people.

I don't usually do a call to action on the first time that I drive traffic somewhere because I'm going for the long play. I want to give people an opportunity to interact with me and determine if we have a possible future relationship and that only comes from me demonstrating my understanding of what they need.

Once I do that, then I'm in a position to be able to invite them to take the next action, which is to identify themselves. That's why I called it identifying call to action. Once you [00:07:00] have identified somebody, then you invite them to become customers. And once you invited them to be customers, invite them to become bigger and more frequent customers. And then finally you keep customers and help them to refer. That is the long play.

The long play requires persistence. But, it also builds deeper relationships. The quality of your customers will be much higher when you do the long play than if you do the short term hustle. Just know that.

You might have to do the short term hustle to keep yourself above water. But the long play is were you're going to build a business, something that's going to last for a long time and not a flash in the pan. Believe me, for all the effort you're going to put forth for a flash in the pan, you might as well put it into a long-term business.

Now, the long play is also an investment in others. Here's where I'm gonna give that example of the long play I mentioned to you before and how you make an investment in others and it will pay off for you.

Our initial company, I know I've brought it up several times, the one that we took from 0 to 1.3 million the first 12 [00:08:00] months and it was a very high profit margin business, we trained 40,000 people for three hours in a hotel, in their city, on our dime. We did not charge them a penny to give them this education and the education was very good. It was so good, in fact, that we had people come back 9, 10, 11 times, and not buy anything from us because they got so much out of the education and what we were giving to them. So we trained over 40,000 people to find 3,000 customers.

Now, if that doesn't seem like good odds to you, it really doesn't matter what the numbers are in terms of raw number of people that you're interacting with, what really matters is the math of the business. So, the math of our business allowed us to be able to train those 40,000 people, give them a ton of content, a ton of great education and only find 3000 that were willing to become customers and still win.

Today I invest time to teach marketing business concepts and pay to put that free education in [00:09:00] front of tens of thousands to find those who will become our customers, and I'm totally happy to do that. I don't even sweat over the people who don't become customers, but maybe I help on their journey through business. I'm totally pleased to do that, and you should be too. That's part of the long play.

Part of the long play is you don't look at everybody as a money source, but you look at them as humans, people on this planet trying to get to somewhere that you can help them get there. Some of those people will see value in interacting with you in a commerce situation, and they'll become customers, and if you look at them like we do, they will become part of your family.

The long play is methodical. If you've done your work to find out that you really need to be talking about in the first place, you'll be on a solid foundation.

By the way, if you're interested in discovering how the long play can work for your business, then you really want to try and join us at Claim Your Life Back 3. I say try and join us because the Claim Your Life Back event is on application basis. [00:10:00] If you want to learn more about it, you want to potentially apply to a 10, you got to text the keyword CLAIM to 760-621-8199. Again, that's 760-621-8199, text the keyword CLAIM to that if you're interested in joining us. The Claim Your Life Back event is only for a few people. It's not a big event. In that, we go deep with the people who attend and we just go through things like this, discovering what is your long play and how can you set it up so that you can be able to attract deeper relationships with future potential customers while you help a lot of people. This is Ryan Chapman with Fix Your Funnel. Thanks for listening to today's podcast episode.