Focusing on Fundamentals with Tyler Garns

Transcription of Episode

[00:00:00] Ryan Chapman: Well, welcome to another Fix Your Funnel interview series. I'm really excited to have Tyler Garns with us today. Tyler is someone I've known for geez, Tyler, it's been years now. Has it been a decade?

Tyler Garns: It might've. It might've been like more like 15 years.

Ryan Chapman: Is it really? I don't know.

Tyler Garns: Well, I started, well, not 15, 13 right? I started at Infusionsoft in 2007 and I think you were already a customer.

Ryan Chapman: Oh wow. Well, I feel old now. So that's a, that's a long time. Tyler actually, you know, I mentioned in an earlier episode with Craig Jacobson that Craig was the one that pointed me towards using normal phone numbers for texting. But Tyler's actually the one that got me into texting because he wrote the very first, texting integration for Infusionsoft. What year was that? 2009?

Tyler Garns: 2008 or nine, something like that. Yeah, a long time ago.

Ryan Chapman: Now, you know, you really are old. At the time, Tyler was working at Infusionsoft, and then if you just have said, Nope, you can't own companies that integrate [00:01:00] into our company and work here so you got to choose, and Tyler chose to sell that off. And then I think I ended up making the next generation for the shortcode provider. But yeah, that was, that's how we kind of really started to do stuff together. I know we'd run into each other at like icons and stuff like that before then. But we really start communicating a little bit more then. When did you leave Infusionsoft?

Tyler Garns: I left in 2012. Yeah. Beginning right before icon, 2012.

Ryan Chapman: You went to the Outback, right?

Tyler Garns: The Outback? Yeah. That was actually the end of that year. Right at the beginning of 2013 we went to Australia, with a client there. We were out there for almost a year and came back.

Ryan Chapman: So Tyler is a big time surfer. You probably already know that if you've heard of Tyler before because it seems like you're always posting about going somewhere surfing. Which is fun.

Tyler Garns: I think it's just the only time I ever have time to actually post anything is when I'm on vacation. And that happens to be when I'm surfing, so I probably don't surf nearly as much as people think I [00:02:00] do. It's just that that's the only time they hear from me.

Ryan Chapman: Yeah. I don't, I don't, I hardly post on social media at all. So I get you. At least not for personal stuff. Well, you have a company called Box Out Marketing. Now, did you start Box Out when you got back from Australia? Is that when it was?

Tyler Garns: Yeah. It was basically right when I got back. So when I left Infusionsoft in 2012 I was just kind of doing private consulting for a couple of years. And then when I got back from Australia, I felt like it was time to start a real business. And see what we could do, so that's when I started Box Out Marketing.

Ryan Chapman: And then Tyler, you were in charge of marketing back in the heyday when Infusionsoft is having a pretty good growth spurt. So you were responsible for and deeply involved in some pretty high spend for. marketing and I, obviously the game has changed and you've kept up with the work that you do with your clients for your own business, but you did some fun stuff back then. So that was kind of cool.

Tyler Garns: Yeah, it was a really, it was really exciting time. You know, back then it was, in the early days [00:03:00] we had a very limited budge t in Infusionsoft. But we're growing really fast, so, you know, when I started there, we were doing about. Yeah, 300 leads a month. And I think I had like a couple thousand dollars to spend, you know, that's about it. But then, then, you know, it's out there raising money and all of a sudden we had lots of money to spend and I had to continue to spend it, you know, wisely and profitably. And that's when I got heavily involved in lead source tracking and making sure every lead source, every ad was profitable and things like that. And by the time I left, we were doing about $200,000 in ad spend every month and it was, it was crazy. Yeah. I mean, we, we grew from a, I think about 4 million annually to about 30 million in annual revenue by the time I left.

Ryan Chapman: Well, so you've, you've gone through a number of iterations. Box Out Marketing has been an agency, but you've also been, have a reputation for developing quite a bit of education for the market. And so you've been doing that for a while, but it seems like recently you've been [00:04:00] talking about a change in your model that you thought would serve the users better. Those folks that are business owners, they don't want to be messing around with the software all the time, but they want the benefits of it. We were talking about this before we started recording. I thought that was really interesting. And you mentioned though that also with that you realized it can't be just, implementation of stuff, there's gotta be some strategy education going on. Yeah. And so you've been doing some work in that. So tell me a little bit more about that, because I thought that was really fascinating, at least sounded like it.

Tyler Garns: Yeah. You know, like I said a moment ago when I, when I decided to start Box Out, the, the real driver for me was, I felt like my impact was limited by having just a handful of private clients at a time. And I wanted to help a lot more people. So I figured by starting an agency, we'd be able to help. You know, many more people and we have, but at the same time, the percentage of people that can actually afford and utilize, you know, fully custom [00:05:00] done for you services is a, a small percentage of the market compared to what's out there. And so, you know, that that desire to serve more people is really what's driven us to this next iteration, which is. Now making, you know, making Infusionsoft implementation accessible to more people. So what I mean by that is over the last, you know, five years or so, we've built a team of implementers who are rock stars. I mean, these people know in Infusionsoft inside and out, they can build anything and everything. They've been up until now only accessible to our account managers who are working with our clients. Now we built a, we built an online portal where essentially anyone who signs up for our service can go into this online portal and submit requests that go directly to our implementation team now, so no account manager required. And that cuts down the cost of the implementation significantly. So now..

Ryan Chapman: It creates a new problem too, which was what we're getting at.

Tyler Garns: Yeah, exactly.

Ryan Chapman: People are going to be asking for things that may not actually [00:06:00] help them move the needle.

Tyler Garns: Right? Right. So that, that problem is people need to understand strategy, right? They need to know what they're requesting. And so that's where we're focusing a lot of our time and energy right now. In that, educational area of strategy and how to help people understand, you know, what's, what do they need to focus on and what, what is best for their business Not just right now, but what, what model of, you know, campaign is, is best. There are so many different ways to do things. And what's unfortunate is most of the education out there is what you learn at conferences. And usually the person up on stage at a conference it's an influencer. That's why they're on stage. And the influencer model is very different than your average, you know, mom and pop, small business. And so people take those, those examples that they learned at the conferences, they go home and they try and implement them and they don't work. And so it's just frustrating, and then people say, Oh, Infusionsoft doesn't work for me, marketing automation doesn't work for me. That's not the case. It's just you got the model wrong.

Ryan Chapman: Yeah. [00:07:00] A in Infusionsoft the marketing automation is just tools. The, the tool doesn't make the really cool woodworking, you know, chair or whatever. You gotta have the craftsmen with it, which means that some sort of approach to making the thing that you're going to use. So, yeah. So you talk about having different business model, business types that you guys have identified through your... 'Cause you've worked with a lot of different types of companies. It's not just that you've done the agency work, you are pretty indiscriminate about which business type you would work with. So you've gotten familiar with a lot of different business models and business types and identified what works best for different types of businesses.

Tyler Garns: Yeah. Well, ultimately we've come up with four basic business models that just about every business fits into and those are your local service businesses. So that's any, you know, doctor and lawyer, roofer, you know, pest [00:08:00] control, whatever. If you deliver a service and you're, you have to deliver that in your local area, then you're a local service business. Then you contrast that with online service businesses, which would be like our agency. We deliver a service, but we're not bound by geography we can deliver that anywhere. And then you've got your eCommerce businesses, people that are selling widgets and shipping them, and then, you've got your influencers. So just about every business can fit into those, one of those, I should say one or more of those four business models. And I'd say or a more, cause sometimes there's some crossover. Like our business as a, as an agency, we actually operate a lot of our marketing from kind of more of an influencer standpoint. You know, we drive a lot of influencers style marketing on the front end to get people into the back end of our services. So sometimes there's some crossover, but that's probably the most important step in the beginning is to figure out what your actual business model is, because then you can understand the conversion models that are gonna work best for your business.

Ryan Chapman: So how are you doing that kind of evaluation? Are you just giving them like a quiz to take or is it like a [00:09:00] self select based on some descriptions.

Tyler Garns: Yeah, I mean it, it's self select. It's not really a quiz required. You know, with that simple description I just gave you, you can figure out what business model you're in. If you can't, then you probably shouldn't be in business.

Ryan Chapman: Oh, okay. Well that sounds, that sounds pretty good then. So let's, let's talk about, which of these do you feel like is most common that you run across the most of the four?

Tyler Garns: You know, it's interesting cause the Infusionsoft community has, has shifted over time.

Ryan Chapman: It used to be all influencer marketers.

Tyler Garns: Exactly. That was the vast majority. And now the majority are a service based businesses, combination of local services and online services.

Ryan Chapman: Yeah. Interesting. So are there some strategies that you find in those two types of business models that are gonna pop up over and over again.

Tyler Garns: Yeah. So again, let's just talk about what, what people think they should do and then what they end up doing and what actually works. So, so [00:10:00] people tend to follow the trends, right? And they'll go to these conferences, they'll learn things like, Oh, webinars are hot, let's do a webinar. Right? And if you're a roofer. The last thing I want to do if my roof is leaking, is get on a webinar. Right? So, so, but people do this. I mean, we see it all the time where, where you learn a strategy and it sounds great, and the results that someone else is showing are amazing. And so you, you put it in place, you spend all this money and time and effort building it, and then it doesn't wor k. And so that's a very, very common mistake is, you know, needing to understand when education is required and when it's not required. And that's probably the biggest differentiator is when does that relationship and the nurturing and the education really help in the process versus when does it hinder, or, or when does it need to be after the initial sale, you know, sometimes, the, the roofer just needs to get someone to call them right now and they'd come fix the roof and then they develop a relationship and they can up sell them a [00:11:00] whole new roof later, or the next time their roof is leaking, they call the same person. Now that's all that nurturing and education happens after the first sale . ut if you try and do that before, when they're in that urgent need, then you're going to screw the whole thing up and they're gonna go find someone else who has the, you know, sign up right now, or will be there in 30 minutes type of offer. You know, it's more of an offer based situation.

Ryan Chapman: So it sounds like there's some subcategories to these four major categories that service-based really depends on, there's, is urgency one of those? The urgency of the customers that one of those differentiators that kind of segregates businesses and the different subsets?

Tyler Garns: That's right. You got to look at the very first purchase that is most common and decide the urgency level, right? Is it something that they need right now or is it something they're going to take some time to, to figure out if I'm a local service doing estate planning, you know, that's something that, that someone doesn't need right now. In fact, they typically put it off and put it off and put it up right? Until it's too late. [00:12:00] But...

Ryan Chapman: Totally different approach there.

Tyler Garns: Entirely different approach. So that one's going to require all the education and nurturing and relationship building upfront. And actually probably a lot of persuasion as well to get people to get off their butt and actually do something about it. Because it's one of those things you keep putting off. The real thing is an urgent need right now, and that's a totally different approach.

Ryan Chapman: Yeah, it's interesting because I think a lot of people when they do go to conferences, the conferences usually not oriented to, okay, tell us about your business, go into this room. It's, here's 20 topics. Pick the one that you want, and you know, unfortunately, most of us that go into business when we get into business, we don't go in with a full understanding of, well, here's the things that need to look at and here's the order I need to pay attention to them and here's my methodology for determining what I need to look at now. And so it's just basically whoever's the better salesperson that starts controlling a small businesses life.

Tyler Garns: That's right.

Ryan Chapman: And [00:13:00] that's kind of tragic in many senses because I've seen too many people, again, like you're saying, blame the tool, blame some..., you know, anything but themselves for the fact that they automated the wrong thing and when it didn't produce any results, then they assume, well, it must be the automation that doesn't work. Instead of we didn't actually have anyone help us figure out what the right strategy was for our business type and our business at this moment, because each business has a little bit different shift too, right?

Tyler Garns: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I think that's one of, one of the hardest things probably for a lot of business owners to finally accept is that they personally are responsible for all of the failures. We always want to take credit for the successes, but, but when, when things don't work, it's, it's so easy to blame, like you said, the tool or the consultant we hired or whatever. But ultimately. You've got to take some responsibility, and, and realize that your own decision making around your strategy is, is fundamentally the most important [00:14:00] thing you as the business owner can do. If you can drive the strategy right, then you can figure out the tools and the people to help you do it. But the strategy direction is what will screw you up faster than anything.

Ryan Chapman: Well, that's just terrifying.

Tyler Garns: Yeah, it is.

Ryan Chapman: You know, the, the, the interview with, like I mentioned, Craig Jacobson the other day, and, at the end of it, I turned off the recording and told him, you broke my brain because he had pointed out some things to me. I realized, Oh shoot, I'm falling pretty short on some areas I need to up my game on. And you know, fortunately, you know, I do recognize that it's on me to do, but I think that's a big breakthrough for a business owner to get to where they say ultimately, how the business succeeds or fails is up to me, and that's liberating and also terrifying at the same time.

Tyler Garns: Absolutely.

Ryan Chapman: So the education you're putting together though, it's designed to help them kind of work through that process then of figuring out what strategy actually is best for my company, given everything I know about where I [00:15:00] am right now.

Tyler Garns: Yeah. Well, we'll guide people through a process. And we do this right now with our new customers over the phone because we can do a pretty, we can do it pretty quickly over the phone, but we'll have a, a full online educational system here soon where people can go through it. And, ultimately it helps them decide, okay, which, which of those four business models am I in, and then within that business model, what's my approach? Like you're saying, sometimes it's a more of an urgent, approach versus a, a nurturing approach and then from there it helps them identify campaign strategies. Okay, I need to use this type of campaign. You know, if I'm an eCommerce, this is another example of things that people always screw up, is their an eCommerce business and they get Infusionsoft and Infusionsoft teaches, this whole like, you know, lead, capture, then nurture, blah, blah, blah, and they screw up the offer because now instead of having an offer on an eCommerce website, they're now offering, like download my 10 page ebook and no one wants a 10 page ebook. And so then they leave instead of getting the offer. [00:16:00] And so, and so, you know that that's the next step is what, what is the campaign strategy that's gonna work for your business? And then of course, you know, if they decide to utilize our services, you know, for, for a flat fee each month, well, we'll build it basically anything and everything that you need. But you gotta know what your strategy is. You gotta know what campaigns you need and how to, how to utilize those. So that's, that's what we're putting together.

Ryan Chapman: Well, it's neat. So when you do it with an individual, you kind of go through, it sounds like a series of questions. That can help you guys to get a feel for where they're at and what they're struggling with and kind of what's that bottleneck in their business at this point. Once you've identified which of these four camps they're in, and then which of the two types of basic offers are they looking at presenting? And I think that's really helpful for a lot of people because one of the things I've noticed is that, just the market automation is so exciting. Especially when you first get into it, that you end up focusing on that instead of, [00:17:00] well, what's my offer going to be? You know? How compelling is it? You know, how well do I understand who my customer is and what they're looking for? And so that kind of gets thrown to the back burner cause they're so excited about this new wizz bang technology that's gonna solve all...

Tyler Garns: The other problem that that excitement creates is a a paralysis that happens when they try and do too many things at once cause they get all excited about. And so like, Oh, build a lead gen campaign, a webinar campaign, a conversion campaign, a fulfillment campaign, my referral campaign. I need all of these steps in place.

Ryan Chapman: Well, I need a 10 year nurture campaign. So 300 emails.

Tyler Garns: Right? So they get stuck with all these half-built campaigns that never get launched. And so I'm glad you brought up the idea of a bottleneck a minute ago. Yeah, that's kind of the next step in the process is figuring out, okay, what, what's the bottleneck that's holding you back? And I've always called this the rate limiting factor. And that's because my background is in biology and in biochemistry and [00:18:00] chemistry, we talked about rate limiting factors, but I stopped talking about rate limiting factors cause I realized no one understood it. And in your book and your book, you talk about like the pipes, you have those diagrams of the pipes. That's a much better, much better ways of explaining it, much more simple. But yeah, basically it's like what's the main thing that's holding you back? Let's just focus on that. Lets build that campaign and launch it right now, and then we'll move on to the next one and so that, that's the, the strategy progression that we want to take people through is, is forget everything right now. Let's get the model right. Let's figure out the conversion model. Let's, identify your one biggest bottleneck and fix that problem now, and then we'll move on to the next one.

Ryan Chapman: It sounds like you're saying to, don't let me put words in your mouth. You either confirm or deny, that you like to start with a simpler campaign and then let's enhance it later once we get some feedback on it versus let's build out a real sweet campaign and then it'll just be great.

Tyler Garns: Yeah. I'm not even sure we ever want to go [00:19:00] back and make it fancy. Like, the reason I say that is I've just learned over the years that anytime I've tried to make a campaign like more advanced or whatever you might call it, it hasn't necessarily produced more results. What we will do is we'll split test drastically different types of campaigns, but like when you go in and you say, okay, well this campaign is kind of working, let's, you know, segment the audience 47 different ways and, you know, put them all down different, different routes and see if we can get better conversion. Now, I don't know, I just, I haven't seen that pan out with great results, too often. So generally we just stick to really simple campaigns. As long as we've got the strategy right and the messaging right and the audience right then, then it works. There's no need for all this crazy stuff.

Ryan Chapman: I love that you said that because that's been my experience too, is that, you know, I always built them with the intention of coming back and you know, kind of enhancing them over time, because that's what I did with Short-Sale Genius, which was my first company I used Infusionsoft on. We built a basic campaign and then we just enhanced it. But we had a [00:20:00] ton of lead flow through a very narrow campaign. So it was pretty easy to figure out where the, the ridges were on it and knock them off. So it's kind of a smoother process for the customer. But you know, what I find today is, you know, we'll put together a fairly simple campaign. Our most complicated campaign is actually our customer onboarding campaign. It's not our customer acquisition campaign, because most of that is actually pretty quick.

Tyler Garns: Sure.

Ryan Chapman: And so I in, I've noticed throughout all the businesses I've ever worked with, cause we do a lot of work, not in implementing, but just some strategic calls and stuff with going over where are you at? What, you know, what do you got going on? And the prescription always is fairly simple. And I think some people are disappointed by that. But the reality is, to your point, is that. What actually ends up working in the real world is the simpler, straight forward approach versus the [00:21:00] super fancy whatever.

Tyler Garns: Well, I think a lot of that is people trying to compensate for a poor offer, right? If the offers really good, if the offer is really good, it'll, it'll sell. Even with even a bad copy and bad campaign implementation, it'll sell okay.

Ryan Chapman: No, that's true. I'm saying that same thing

Tyler Garns: But with that offers, you know, then, then you have to try and create all kinds of crazy stuff and write really fancy copy. And then the campaign implementation gets really hard and all this stuff. And I think too often people don't want to admit that their offer really kind of bites, you know, and they don't want to admit it because that's their business. You know, their whole business model is built on the, on the offer, and it might be terrible.

Ryan Chapman: Offers are intimidating to prepare. And so I think the people just tend to avoid them because it's so like, ah, shoot, I don't know, what should I say? What should I do? And so they go to the place that's easier. And I think you're exactly right. It's a lot easier to drag out [00:22:00] different things on campaign builder.

Tyler Garns: Yeah.

Ryan Chapman: It's a lot easier to copy and paste, you know, HTTP post variables and do all that kind of stuff and go, Oh wow, this looks really cool. And then publish your fancy lines dancing all over the place, than it is to actually think about, okay, Oh, who am I actually going after and what are they actually wanting and how can I articulate that in a way that's meaningful to them? And then how do I... How do I show them that beautiful future that we can create together and how do I point out the pitfalls and you kind of express the value that we're going to bring to the marketplace that, you know, that seems really intimidating for folks, but that's where all the value really comes in. I call it thinking time. And if you, it's, it's cause you don't feel very productive when you're doing it because we were just think through some stuff and maybe you're talking it through with somebody and you know, nobody really loves meetings, but if you have a business [00:23:00] partner or a team and you're talking through this stuff, it may not feel like you're getting anywhere, but really that processing of this kind of information about who your customer is and what are they after and what do they really want. Cause you know, there's that thing. Like I always say, nobody wants what you sell, and people are always thrown back by it. And I kind of maybe partially say it for that fact, but the truth is nobody does. They want what they believe that they'll get from what you offer.

Tyler Garns: Yeah. They want the result.

Ryan Chapman: And so you really have to think about what is it that they're really after and let's talk about them and that and how we're going to help them get that instead of us and who we are and how long we've been a business and all this other stuff that really nobody cares about.

Tyler Garns: Yup.

Ryan Chapman: So yeah, that's interesting. I hadn't thought about the fact that it's compensating for the, the lack of an offer that we get too focused on the mechanics.

Tyler Garns: Yeah, I think if the offer is really strong, you can reduce a lot of the clutter.

Ryan Chapman: So what do you, do you guys offer some sort of like [00:24:00] a bootcamp or training that talks about offer creation.

Tyler Garns: Currently? No. Currently we don't. But that's, that's all going to be part of this, you know, strategy education that we're putting together. Basically, we want to help people get to the point where they can utilize our unlimited service and a lot of people can utilize our unlimited service now. They're good, astute business people and they, they know what they need. But there is a fair amount of people that, that don't know quite what they need. They, they understand the basic concepts of marketing automation. They get the vision. But they don't know where to start. They don't know exactly what to do, and so that's what the education is, is designed to help them get to a point where it's like, okay, I'm really clear on what my business is. I'm really clear on what I'm selling. I'm really clear on how I need to sell it now I just need somebody to go build that stuff for me, so I don't waste my time doing it.

Ryan Chapman: Yeah. Oh, that's great. I think that's going to be a, a great service from the market in general, because, you know, one of my biggest contentions with, you know, the software like Infusionsoft, is that I see so many business owners forget what business they're in and [00:25:00] suddenly they think they're marketing automation experts instead of whatever it was they were before they got Infusionsoft.

Tyler Garns: Right.

Ryan Chapman: And so they're spending all their time doing everything except for what they actually get paid for. Unfortunately, I see them too often on, no offense, anybody thinks I'm calling them out, but it seemed too often on Facebook user groups answering questions and you know, I'm like, you know I tried to get in there just to help and serve in some ways, and it's partially marketing as well, but some people I see in there, I'm like, well, wait a second, I know you've got a business that has nothing to do it doing this stuff for other people. Why are you answering all these questions and here go back to work or go earn the money that you're supposed to earn. So that's my, you know, my, my main concern when I see people is they get too excited about the software when they, they really wanted the software to help them do something better in their business. And now suddenly they're all about the software and not about the business. And so it can become a real distraction. I [00:26:00] mean, have you seen businesses actually fail because they got to into the software and not enough into what they do to make money?

Tyler Garns: Yeah, I mean, it could be, it could be the software or a myriad of other things that people get distracted with. You know, like we talked about already, it's kind of that, that idea that, that people always think that there's some silver bullet to success, and so whatever they think that is.

Ryan Chapman: It's texting.

Tyler Garns: There you go. But aside from that, you know, people get hyped up on things, whether it's marketing automation or it's, you know, copywriting or whatever they might get excited about at the moment. And they think that that one thing is going to solve all their business problems. You know, people get, people get that mindset with us sometimes, you know, with a service like ours and think, Oh, if I just go hire this you know, top agency to go do all my work. You know, they'll make the magic happen. Well, yes and no. I mean, we can make a certain amount of magic happen, but you know, again, if the offer is not right, the business isn't right, if the, if the audience that you're attracting isn't right, you know, we, we can't solve all [00:27:00] your problems. And so people tend to just look for, they look for something that they think is going to be that pill. One pill they can take to, to bring them to bliss and, and they get really hyper focused on it. And, and yeah, oftentimes it is the software because the software is sold to be that.

Ryan Chapman: Sure. Well, the truth is it can be a very powerful part of the equation.

Tyler Garns: Sure.

Ryan Chapman: I want to run a concept by you and just kinda get your thoughts on it because you know, once you've been around the technology long enough, you start to realize, you know, what is it strength and what is its weakness? What are the pitfalls people fall into or what have you. And you know, there's just a feel, at least for me, there's been a general refinement of how I view business and how to do business. Because I'm always thinking about, well, what would be a worst case now? And I had to start a whole new business. You know, what would I do? How would I handle that? Because after Short Sale Genius, we had a little trough between that [00:28:00] and when Fix Your Funnel came up and there's a point in time in there where as an entrepreneur and as a business person, I was questioning myself and saying, well, maybe we were just a one hit wonder because we had the right market at the right time. I wonder if I can, I can create success again in business using these tools and skills that I've developed with this other business. And there was a point in time where I was kind of concerned about that. So that's always been a thing bouncing around the back of my head is, well, what if it got wiped out? Could I use the same tools and skills to create a successful business again in maybe a totally different industry? Not that I'm going to do that, but if I had to, could I? And so at the center of, of all the successful businesses that I'm aware of is a conversation. And it's the conversation between the prospect and the and somebody on the business, like salesperson or the business owner or whatever. And these conversations are where we get, we see business happening. I remember Clay telling the whole [00:29:00] Infusionsoft story multiple times and he talks about how they sent out an email with the software and suddenly they had phone calls coming in. And they are picking up the phone and closing deals. So there's this conversation as sort of the vortex where business happens is having conversations. And so the idea is how do I facilitate more conversations with people who are prepared to make buying decisions as opposed to just anyone. And I feel like if, if the business owner keeps their eye on that and then fulfilling whatever promises they make in those conversations that they could have success as long as the math makes sense. So there's those three pieces. How do I generate enough conversations with the right people at the right time? How do I keep the promises that I made in those conversations? And then how do I collect enough money in the value that I bring to the marketplace that it's worthwhile for me to do all that.

Tyler Garns: Yup.

Ryan Chapman: And for me that's like, that's the kind of the central core of the successful business is [00:30:00] managing those three areas. I'd just love to hear your thoughts where you think I'm missing something or, you know, is that close?

Tyler Garns: No, I don't. I don't think you're missing anything at all. That's, that's the fundamentals of business and that's again, what people tend to forget. You know, as technology evolves, as different marketing methods evolve, different ways of reaching people evolve, everyone tends to follow these things and get all hyped up that, you know, there's another new silver bullet and they forget the business fundamentals. You know, those are the business fundamentals, we haven't talked about the marketing fundamentals being, you know, the message to market, to media match. You know, that old Axiom. Those things. The three things you said, and those three marketing fundamentals, the three M's or the four M's, however you look at that, they're never going to change, no matter how many new social media platforms come out, new mechanisms for messaging people or whatever.

Ryan Chapman: Yeah.

Tyler Garns: It's always going to be those basic fundamentals. From [00:31:00] a business stand point that you just stated from a marketing standpoint that I just stated. And so people need to not lose focus on those things. Cause when they do, I don't care what kind of fancy marketing you're doing, it ain't gonna work if those fundamentals aren't right.

Ryan Chapman: Well, I think what happens to all of us as entrepreneurs is we're ambitious by nature and so we see these, these extraordinary outliers that have these amazing success stories. And there's a part of us that tries to emulate that at a time when it's, we can't emulate it. And so, you know, well, Facebook doesn't talk to anybody. People just sign up and then pay money. Apple, they just do a big event and then everybody buys their stuff no matter how much it costs. And so people look at these, these outrageous examples and say, okay, that, that's how I'm going to run my business. That's like a recipe for disaster. You really have to focus on the one when you're a small business. And [00:32:00] don't overestimate how much you think it's going to take to have the conversation with the prospect. Because I think some people say, why I won't have time to talk to all the people, you should dream that you have so many people you have to talk to. Because if you're in that situation, as long as your math was halfway decent. You're going to be able to hire sales reps and train them to do the commerce. That's not your problem. But I see so many people are doing everything they can to avoid having conversations. Talk to my machine, talk to my bot, talk to my marketing automation campaign. Just don't talk to me. Yeah. If you, if you build it the other way around, if you build it so you can have those conversations, you use the marketing automation to make it so that the conversations are happening on a consistent basis, you know, mitigate human nature's negative impacts on things cause all humans, I know delay doing the things that they should do most except for a few freaks. And they're the ones that the gyms that look [00:33:00] like...And no offense, they just, they don't have that delay is just like get in there to get it done. But for a lot of us, we tend to procrastinate. We put off the things that need to be done most and favorite things that need to be done least. And so that's where if we do the marketing automation right, if you choose the right strategy with someone like your help and you're guided to that right point and put that in place. All you're really trying to do is say, well, where do we as humans in the company tend to drop the ball the most? Let's let automation handle that and then we'll handle the real important part of having those important conversations with real people.

Tyler Garns: Yeah. You know that, that's why the whole focus or theme of success gone last year was about the personal connection, right? And and because it is very, very common right now in particular for business owners to get caught up in the marketing automation dream and think that they can automate the whole business and go live life on the beach while money's just pouring in and forget that those conversations need to [00:34:00] happen and they need to happen with people. They can't be automated conversations all the way through. In most businesses I think now more than ever are craving that human connection because you get so much automated communication nowadays that it's actually nice and refreshing to get a human on the other side and realize, Oh wow, these people actually care about me. You know? But I appreciate that you brought that up.

Ryan Chapman: With, with texting, at least. Of course, texting is the silver bullet, we already established that earlier. The one thing that texting does facilitate is that initiation of conversations on the terms of the prospect. Which is is useful for getting people to engage. But what we found is that those businesses that are saying, Hey, let's move to human-human interaction, whether it's over the phone or texting or in person. As soon as we can get that agreement from the prospect that they're ready to do that. They're the ones seeing the most success, like by far.

Tyler Garns: Yeah.

Ryan Chapman: Once they get that paradigm shift of, [00:35:00] Oh, I'm just facilitating conversations with my marketing automation, everything changes for them. I've seen companies double their profits in like almost overnight in terms of the change of direction just by, once they get that shift, they go, Oh, it's conversations. I will actually need to push towards conversations. People have questions and if I answered them, they'll spend money with me. Wow. What am I going to do? You know, once they, once that, that light switch goes on, everything changes for them. It's pretty exciting to watch. And I imagine with the work that you guys do, as you get people to see this and shift in that paradigm, it's pretty rewarding for you guys as well.

Tyler Garns: Yeah, absolutely. You know, your, your comments reminded me of a couple of years ago, I hired a new team member who was going to be doing some sales. And I said, look, I'm not necessarily a sales person, but hop on a couple of calls with me and I'll, you know, I'll, you can just shadow me and I'll, I'll do this, how I do it. And [00:36:00] after the first call, we got off and he said, I don't even know. I don't call that sales. I say, Oh, really? What do you call it? And you said, I just call it conversations. You're just asking/answering questions. And I said, well, exactly. You know, if we do our marketing right. And like you said, you facilitate the conversation with all the marketing automation, you get to a point where you're literally just answering questions so that people can feel good about the sale and, that's what market automation really is beneficial for you. If you can get, get it to the point where people are like ready to buy and they just need, you know, that, that confirmation through a human conversation or whatever, then it served its purpose.

Ryan Chapman: Yeah. That's the thing is when you realize you really don't have to communicate that much, but it's just that, that it's at that pivotal moment. As long as you open that door to it, everything goes well from there.

Tyler Garns: Yup.

Ryan Chapman: Well, Hey Tyler, this has been a great conversation. Maybe just from my perspective, hopefully from everybody else that's listening 'cause, but I feel like just this, this whole idea is very helpful for small business owners that are using marketing [00:37:00] automation to see that, you know, it's, it's not a thousand different models. There's a, you know, just a handful. And then there's some slight distinctions based on how your business works. And then from there it's just picking one or two key strategies that the meet your need at the time. And that's how you get the benefit you don't have to do, you don't have to go through a two day intensive to be able to get this stuff done. You don't have to do all that. You just really need someone like Tyler in Box Out Marketing, guiding you through this process of identifying the strategy and then just, you know, getting that strategy implemented and it doesn't take much to start moving the dial if you get the right point in the business.

Tyler Garns: Yeah. I'll just add to that, I think that it's really easy for us all to forget that business in and of itself is actually really, really, really simple. That doesn't mean it's easy, right? There's a big difference between simple and easy or simple and complex or simple and hard, right? [00:38:00] It can still be really hard. But we often make it more hard and more complex than it needs to be. The fundamentals of business are, are really, really simple. You know, like you said just a minute ago, those three things, that's really what it comes down to. And if we can just focus on the fundamentals first and just focus on really simplifying everything, then we're going to be much, much better off. But all the tools and the complexities of everything out there, we just tend to get wrapped up in all that stuff. So that's where like our strategy education is really just trying to help people focus on what's most important right now? Lets focus on that one thing and get it done. And when we do that, it just tends to move the business forward a lot faster.

Ryan Chapman: Well, I've got two questions to close up. One is, when is do we have a date for SuccessCon?

Tyler Garns: Yeah. Success con is November 12th through the 14th. In Scottsdale, Arizona. There, there's also another event prior to that, if you happen to be, living in [00:39:00] Asia Pacific anywhere, we're having SuccessCon Australia. And that's going to be May, hold on just a sec, let me confirm. I think it's May 7th through the ninth of this year. That's going to be really fun to have an international event this year. The seventh, seventh through the ninth in Sydney, Australia. And then we're doing a leadership retreat, a SuccessCon leadership retreat, June 1st through the fourth in Costa Rica.

Ryan Chapman: That sounds like fun.

Tyler Garns: Yeah. Yeah. So that's only for nine people. I should, as a small leadership retreat. And then we have the, the big event is of course, November 12th through the 14th in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Ryan Chapman: Well, that'll be great. All right, well, thanks so much Tyler. And then the second question I had was what's the best way for people to reach you if they have questions about your new service and your program and strategy?

Tyler Garns: Yeah, you just got to boxoutmarketing.com you know, you can fill out the form to have a consultation there or just chat to us on the website or you can always just email me directly, [email protected]. [00:40:00] We're pretty, pretty easy to reach here, so yeah, I'd love to chat with you if you're interested.

Ryan Chapman: Cool. Thanks a lot, Tyler.

Tyler Garns: All right. Thank you Ryan. It's a pleasure to be on.