Latest / The ROI Online Podcast / [Feature Friday] Mike Verret on Why a Razor-Sharp Story Matters: The ROI Online Podcast Ep. 85

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[Feature Friday] Mike Verret on Why a Razor-Sharp Story Matters: The ROI Online Podcast Ep. 85 · The ROI Online Podcast

• 0:03
  Mike Verret: And it created consumer behaviors like dead scrolling, where you're just scrolling through content, and you don't even know what you're looking for anymore, you're just going through it. Like those areas of opportunity that we see as marketing areas of opportunity. It takes either an unbelievable amount of resources, or a razor sharp story to break through it. You know, if you think about the comparison of Instagram versus LinkedIn, okay, LinkedIn is beautiful, because everybody goes there for one purpose. But how many purposes do people go to Instagram for? You know? It's networking on LinkedIn on Instagram, it is everything.
• 0:44
  Steve Brown: Hi, everybody.
• 0:44
  Steve Brown: Welcome to the ROI Online Podcast where we believe you, the courageous entrepreneurs of our day, are the invisible heroes of our economy. You not only improve our world with your ideas, your grit and your passion, but you make our world better. I'm Steve Brown, and this is a place where we have great conversations with winners just like you while we laugh and learn together.
• 1:19
  Steve Brown: Mike Verret, welcome to the ROI Online Podcast.
• 1:24
  Mike Verret: I cannot tell you, Steve, how excited I am to be on thank you so much for having me.
• 1:29
  Steve Brown: Yeah, I'm proud to have you. So Mike, I like your message here. The folks that are listening, we want to catch, we want to get the story hook in now. And so what I love about what you do is you're addressing the artist challenge that every business owner faces. And that's how to clearly get the message that's in their head, out and make it understandable for the people that they're wanting to help. Why in the world did this really attract you? And why did you start to embrace this?
• 2:04
  Mike Verret: That's a good question. I think, you know, with a lot of people who own their own business and start their own business, it was a question of trial and error. But the genesis of it came from my time at Hasbro Toys and Games, where my role sort of surreptitiously became the face of Hasbro Gaming. So my job was to produce and present our story to our global sales meetings, to our internal stakeholders, to buyers around the world, and ultimately to consumers around the world as well. My job was to communicate to them the benefits and the experience of what we provide through Hasbro Games.
• 2:47
  Mike Verret: And playing games is obviously a very visceral experience and it, it's supposed to bring out elements of competition or humor or just togetherness, right? The interaction. What we latched onto was the idea that we could make these people who are general managers of organizations who are VP level who are C suite level, we could bring them up and have them play our game and react like a child, and the entire audience would see the reaction. And immediately, they'd understand what we're all about, we would show them what it looks like. So when I left Hasbro in 2018, what I took away and what my, call it strength, is understanding an audience. And that does not have to be an audience in front of me. But understanding how an audience thinks and how to land a message with them became the hallmark of what I was doing in my business career. So I sort of, that's what I took as the impetus for Verret & Associates And I started out reall focusing on presentation and ho to write and present the way yo think, to communicate your idea And what I've evolved into i more about showing businesse how to talk about themselves and more specifically showin them how to talk abou themselves in a way that get their customer or their audienc to say, Tell me more. So you'r familiar with the idea of th elevator pitch, and everybod has heard the elevator pitch you need to be able to say wha you do in 10 seconds and great My theory on that is a littl different. It's not about tha 10 seconds, it's about how lon that person wants to stay on th elevator, and how many floor they would go up with yo listening to it. So in order t do that there's almost a cadenc to the information where yo create intrigue and you let the know what you do, but it lead to the next question and i leads to, here's how it works And what I found was a lot o organizations and a lot o businesses have trouble crossin that bridge. They spend a lot o time looking at their business It's a business that, let's sa they started it with an idea and that was 100% of their idea But the second they start th business, that idea gets erode by things like meeting website, or an email address, o how am I going to market mysel or I need to sell or I need t build more product. So it' constantly being eroded and cu into, what I do is make sur that they get back to that, the get back to what they're bes at, and the motivation for wh they wanted to share this wit people and show them that it' not this big amorphous blob, i you really hone down to th story you want to tell, becaus then everything from that stor becomes just an expression o it, it becomes a chapter in th story. So I am able to hel businesses grow through tellin their story more effectively b simply understanding how t communicate with their consumer on what differentiates them
• 5:57
  Steve Brown: I think it's the biggest challenge that businesses face, nonprofits, parents, coaches, whatever, the folks that lead people, I think the biggest challenge they face is to clearly communicate the vision that's in your head, and where you going. But I think part of the thing that we you hear folks that talk about story is like, help you tell your story but the problem is, we need to figure out a way to weave in where the folks that we're wanting to serve, see themselves in this story. What's the trick?
• 6:33
  Mike Verret: Well, I'll give you a wonderful example, because it's one of the best examples that I saw from my time at Hasbro on how we would influence an audience and get them to adopt an idea as their own, or relate to it in very personal terms. So we were charged with selling more of the game Monopoly. Now if you know the game, you know that Monopoly is bought once for $15. And it sits in a game cabinet for 20 years.
• 7:03
  Mike Verret: So we were trying to figure out how to drive incremental sales.
• 7:07
  Mike Verret: And we worked with our global Insights Team, and they gave us a ton of insights. But we found one that was basically from an article a headline from an article online poll, 50% of people cheat when they play Monopoly. So our first slide to the organization, there were 45 people in the room, was those words, that was it. And what happened was brilliant 45 people started talking about experiences where they cheated, or somebody else cheated. And it became very personal to them very quickly, meaning that idea was adopted and imprinted into their minds, because they related to it. The very next slide introduced Cheaters Edition Monopoly, which came out, you know, a year or so ago, but the idea was very simple. We were encouraging people to get away with a behavior that 50% were already doing, and 50% weren't. And we even introduced"if you get caught", so there were you know, these cards or whatever to try and get away with during the game. And if another player caught you, we added a handcuff to the go to jail space. So you would literally get cuff to the board.
• 8:20
  Mike Verret: But the whole thing was generated by the idea that we got the people in the room, our audience for this discussion, to latch on to that one insight and make it their own, and therein lies the rub. If you can understand the fact I was telling you, everything I know is from the movies, if you can understand the fact that an idea, in the movie Inception was described as being more contagious than any virus, and more addictive than any drug.
• 8:49
  Mike Verret: Because once people adopt it as their own, they can't extricate it, they cannot get rid of it.
• 8:56
  Mike Verret: So what we would do is focus on that, relatability, making them understand what the result was or make them think about what the solution is, before we would even introduce them. And that became sort of the guideposts for what I do now, showing businesses that whether it's a new business pitch, or whether it's just a marketing presentation, it doesn't matter, showing them how to tell their story in a way that's going to get their audience to understand it by page one or two so that the audience is bought into the rest of the story.
• 9:32
  Steve Brown: So if I'm a regular business, this seems like a big hurdle for me, you know, I'm like you said, I'm running a business. I'm doing HR I'm trying to put out fires, and I need to be creative and think like a movie, and somehow get an idea implanted in the head of the folks that I'm wanting to help.
• 10:00
  Mike Verret: Yes,
• 10:00
  Steve Brown: that's a big hurdle, that's a big challenge.
• 10:03
  Steve Brown: What is it that I need to do? Is it like, if I can get them to envision themselves in the future utilizing my service or my product? Is that the secret?
• 10:16
  Mike Verret: Well, that is a great question. And I'm going to answer it sort of with a visual, if you will, and why the logo of my company is a butterfly.
• 10:24
  Mike Verret: Business owners imagine, Caterpillar is being born.
• 10:29
  Mike Verret: business owners, when they start their business, it's like a caterpillar being born, they are programmed, they have to be programmed to do certain things so they can become a butterfly.
• 10:39
  Mike Verret: So they're going to eat the right leaves, they're going to fall, they're going to eat leaves, they're going to climb a tree, they're going to build a cocoon, and eventually they become a butterfly. There's a lot of steps in there, and they just do them. Now, that's exactly what we do. When we're running our own business, there's HR, there's accounting, there's marketing, there's sales, there's product development, there's operations, all of that becomes just the things that we do. So when do we have the perspective to look at that one thing that's going to drive us? Now, if a caterpillar was born one out of 100, let's say, with the perspective of a butterfly, and could see where the best leaves were, where the safest tree was, where the most sheltered place to build their cocoon was, they would effectively become a butterfly faster, correct? Because they know ahead of time, what I do is show businesses from an outside perspective, because it's a forest for the trees that we're dealing with all this stuff, I show them how to pull out that one thing, that story that they can anchor to. And what that does for them is starts to give everything else, an element of that story. So they're only talking about one thing, everything is always paying off to it. And the magic of it isn't magic at all, it's the fact that I have the 30,000 foot view of what you're up against, and you're down in the grass, trying to eat the leaves, trying to climb the tree. So my job is to really pull out what's differentiating, how to make that your story and effectively make your life easier let you focus on driving your business the right way. And not looking at a list of two dues every day, I have to market, I have to do this, I have to do that. If we can get out of the graph level at a little higher, we start to understand that all of these things are distracting us from what we're best at. And what we can really deliver.
• 12:38
  Steve Brown: This is so important because every day, you need to realize that your company, your messaging is up against some highly weaponized attention grabbing, focused, demanding entities, Instagram, Facebook, little kids, spouses, bosses, all sorts of things are demanding attention from the folks that you want to help. And then they're also grabbing their focus and their attention, and keeping it for long periods of time. And that's what you're up against, No matter if you're a plumbing company, you're a restaurant, you're all competing against these same entities that are highly weaponized and very well trained. And this is so important, if you can get this, really clarify your messaging, you now have an opportunity to compete in this world.
• 13:49
  Mike Verret: And you're talking about areas that are so cluttered, and have created consumer behaviors like dead scrolling, where you're just scrolling through content, you don't even know what you're looking for anymore, you're just going through it. Like those areas of opportunity that we see as marketing areas of opportunity. It takes either an unbelievable amount of resources, or a razor sharp story to break through it, you know? If you think about the comparison of Instagram versus LinkedIn, okay, LinkedIn is beautiful, because everybody goes there for one purpose. But how many purposes do people go to Instagram for? You know? It's networking on LinkedIn on Instagram it is everything. So if you don't have a story that's going to connect with your audience, you know, on their terms in a way that they're going to understand, and you can't tell that story consistently, they're going to go to another channel, and that's what you're up against.
• 14:47
  Mike Verret: It's hard.
• 14:49
  Steve Brown: The reason that story is so important is because our brains were designed a long time ago, I always say, even though our world changes, our brains remain the same, and our brains crave, they desire information that honors the rules of story. And this is why marketing is broken. This is why messaging is broken, is because everyone's coming from an industrialized perspective where messaging is designed for a consumer. And imagine this consumer is basically that mannequin at Dillards, that you can't tell if it's a man or a woman, but it doesn't have a face. And so when people sit down and design their messaging for their company, or for a customer, that's who they envision, this Dillards mannequin that happens to have a credit card in the pocket of whatever clothes it has hanging on it. And that's what most marketing has done, that's industrialized messaging is aimed at the Dillards mannequin, and the rules of story, actually turn it around and connect with humans.
• 16:05
  Mike Verret: It's an amazing thing when that happens, isn't it?
• 16:07
  Steve Brown: Yes. So walk us through some examples, Mike of how you've worked with someone and changed this mannequin messaging over to human messaging?
• 16:19
  Mike Verret: Sure, actually the one of the formative experiences that I had in terms of understanding how consumers think and can consume information was the character Elmo. Everybody knows the character Elmo, and Hasbro would make the feature Elmo every year whether it's to Tickle Me Elmo, Dance With Me Elmo, let's say this one's Dance With Me Elmo.
• 16:41
  Mike Verret: And we spent an inordinate amount of time saying mom is the decision maker and the child is the nag factor and all of these assumptions and how did things work, okay, which was leading us to how we approached search marketing even, all right? We were under the premise that we're going to market Tickle Me Elmo. Until we went through this exercise. A mom uses Sesame Street as a device to get stuff done. It is a babysitter for an hour for all intents and purposes, and it has been for 45 years or 50 years. Yeah, the mom is not privy to the content there. She's hearing about it secondhand or knows fundamentally what Sesame Street is, but she's not seeing any of it. She's somewhere else, this is not co viewing, right? So imagine she's in the kitchen, and little little Jimmy comes in and pulls and says, Mom, I want Elmo, I want Elmo, he's three years old. He's not saying I want Dance With Me Elmo, he's saying I want Elmo, so mom, now have the decision to make, her child is coming for it with information. This will be something that makes the child happy and moreover, distracts the child further. I want to get it, what do I search? They're not searching Dance With Me Elmo, they're searching New Elmo. Because that's how the consumer is receiving the information from a three year old. "I want Elmo", they must have seen something new, I'm going to search the term New Elmo not Tickle Me Elmo, not Dance With Me Elmo, we were missing the connection, because we were thinking about how we talk about it, and not how they talk about it. What I have done recently with companies, and this is the most recent is working on just their capabilities, presentation, okay. And making them understand the simple thing that lets use a resume as an example, the average employer will look at a resume seven to nine seconds, maybe, maybe 10 seconds, yet we spend all of our time writing our accomplishments, they don't have time to even look at it.
• 18:49
  Mike Verret: Where we should be focused is that one sentence at the top that is going to stop them from flipping and read below. So with the capabilities presentation with two clients that I'm currently working with, their capabilities are all about who we are and what we've done. What we focused on was showing them how to reflect the Ask, the objective, why we're in the room to present our capabilities, reflect that back to them and explain to them with the real world problems. You tell us you want to increase your presence on social media through paid and organic such. What we're telling you is you can't just increase your presence you need to build your social home. We are home builders, that's what we do.
• 19:38
  Mike Verret: Here's your challenge, here's the solution. Then I share with you what the work is to validate it. It is not the first thing to lead with. What happened there was five people presenting capabilities, five companies, theirs was the only one that addressed the issue that was at hand, they related it to the consumer, I mean to the client by explaining, in very simple terms, this scrolling is something we all experience. And if you don't build your social home right, that's what's going to keep happening, you need to stop the scroll. And we had them right away. Point being, stop the scroll. So we gave them something to anchor the consumer, the customers mind to, and then told the market validation in our story.
• 20:28
  Steve Brown: Hey, I wanted to pause right here and tell you about a book that you need to get today. It's the funniest book on marketing, it's called The Golden Toilet, stop flushing your marketing budget into your website and build a system that grows your business. And guess who wrote it? That's right, I wrote it. And I wrote it just for you, because I want to help you get past the last hurdles of setting up your business and getting it squared away. I wrote it so that you can avoid time, wasting time, wasting money, wasting frustration. Get the book on Audible, you can get it on Kindle, you can get it on Amazon, but get the book, take advantage of the insights in there, and let me know what you think. And now back to this excellent episode.
• 21:20
  Steve Brown: So think about that, your resume is going in, basically your resume is like an Instagram post. But if you think about how you look at Instagram, that scroll, sometimes you're pushing it where it's like rolling, and you're not even stopping at each post, you're just rolling. And all of a sudden, you just put your finger on something that really grabs your attention that you want to spend a little more time on.
• 21:50
  Mike Verret: Your thumb stops going like this for a minute and just goes, Oh! Yeah.
• 21:54
  Steve Brown: So in essence, your resume, your business, your message is in the same way. It's just like that, not the blackjack table but the craps table, no, where's the marble that's bouncing on the?
• 22:10
  Mike Verret: Roulette, roulette.
• 22:12
  Steve Brown: Basically your message is like the Roulette, it's just bouncing around until finally someone's attention, it drops on someone's attention, and a winner is declared. And so utilizing the the advantages of how the brain is perceiving and deciding on how it's going to delegate, carve off a little bit of its attention budget for the day, through your story is how you earn that.
• 22:46
  Mike Verret: Yeah, and I mean, just taking your casino gambling metaphor a little further, think of it this way roulette is, you want to be prepared if it lands on your number, but that is chance right? You're leaving it to chance. Poker is a game of skill, poker is a game where you're not leaving it to chance you were actually playing to your strengths in your hand, you're playing to what you have and understanding what the other player has based on the information you have. That is a lot more effective than roulette, where you have 36 numbers, and each one you have to be ready with an answer.
• 23:29
  Mike Verret: Versus, if it's me versus you, heads up in poker, I know what you have, you know what I have.
• 23:33
  Mike Verret: It's a much more engaging conversation. I think it's about education versus engagement, right? With your story. You can educate all you want, but if they're not engaged with it, they're not gonna remember it.
• 23:46
  Steve Brown: Right, in the way that they become engaged, is that there's some stakes in it for them that they see themselves in that story.
• 23:57
  Mike Verret: Exactly. And that's the beauty of understanding how your end user or your customer is thinking and processing information from you. You're going to increase your close rate or your yes rate simply by bringing them into the process, by making them feel connected to what you're talking about right away. And it's a simple, like you said, it's conversation.
• 24:22
  Mike Verret: That's how we communicate, we don't communicate in presentations. We communicate in conversation. So I tell everybody, the difference between a presentation and a conversation is connection. And if you connect on their wavelength, they're never going to not pay attention to you because now you've given them that idea that they've adopted and made their own.
• 24:45
  Steve Brown: You know, you were talking in getting where you implant a thought into someone's head. They adopted over time and it becomes their own. They can't, Who's that magician? Is called Darren Brown, that's who it is, and he does a version of that where he can get them at the end of the exercise to pick all the things that he told you he was going to get them to pick. And it's by setting up a situation where those people become involved and that thought becomes implanted in their minds.
• 25:25
  Mike Verret: Exactly. And it's an amazing sleight of hand trick, right? And one of the things that makes it much harder for brands now is what Amazon introduced back in whenever it was the late 90s, early 2000s, but the ability for consumers to talk to each other about brands, rating systems review systems, that effectively took the power away from the brand, right?
• 25:53
  Mike Verret: Because the consumer is now calling the shots. And social media has just made it all the more important that, you know, the consumer is calling the shots on content too, and if you're not resonating with them it becomes a challenge. So think of this example, I love the insurance business because everybody back in the 90s had, you know, like a rock was Prudential and Liberty Mutual is Windsor, Starch bank banker college, and you had the good hands people. But everybody had an archetype like a brand archetype. They were the sage.
• 26:27
  Mike Verret: They were the hero. They were the Creator. Along comes Geico adjuster uses humor, right? And we know that so easy a caveman can do it. How much wood could a woodchuck chuck? But they hit on something with that. I want you to think now of every insurance company that sells auto home, whatever. Name one that's not human driven now? You can't because everybody has pivoted to what the consumer responds to.
• 26:53
  Mike Verret: They saw what Geico was doing and they created flow, or they created even Allstate now is, they're moving in that direction by doing, Hey, it's the save 40% guy, it's the save 40% guy. And then you look at Liberty Mutual, I mean, the stalwart of class and decorum and conservativeness is Lemo, Emo, and Doug. And they actually use the term Liberty biberty in one of their ads. So that, to me, speaks volumes to understanding how your consumer processes your message. And it's not about what you think they're processing. It's about what they're going to take away, and how to make sure that in that bag of what they take away, are all the things you want them to have.
• 27:47
  Steve Brown: So the thought that comes to my mind now, some people might say, Well, where does this border on manipulation? Right? You're manipulating me into desiring your product? And in some cases, that might be true. But how do you, how do you answer that?
• 28:12
  Mike Verret: Well, look, you're walking a fine line, right? And I think for better term, the bullshit meter of consumers has never been more sensitive.
• 28:20
  Mike Verret: Because let's think about the life of the consumer. You get text messages, you get everything on social media, you get phone calls, you get emails, you see billboards, you watch TV, you're getting everything from everywhere, okay? And it was not like this 30 years ago, 20 years ago, it was very straightforward. You want what we have, I'm a TV ad salesman, I'm a radio ad salesman, I sell billboards, you want what we have, the consumers are calling the shots now. Right? Which means the businesses are calling the shots too on what they need to have, the sales people who are coming in, can't say, you want what we have anymore, because well do my consumers want what you have? Does my end user, the people who are purchasing it? They're asking the questions, because they're not there. They're not reading the newspaper and stuff. They're where they want to be. They're skipping commercials on DVR, they're consuming their time bending, they're consuming an hour of content in 20 minutes, they're able to do this now. So they call all the shots on what they want to take in and wet out. Manipulation almost becomes like, it's like trying to trick someone who's too good at telling when someone's trying to trick them, it becomes harder and harder and harder. So companies have really moved, it's less about manipulation and more about alignment, more about empathy and synergy with how that person is thinking. But at the end of the day, what they are forced to do, whether they're trying to be manipulative or not, is be really straight forward with their message in a way that the consumer can see through the crap. And if they can't do that, they are going to come across as manipulative or taking advantage of a situation in a point in time. So look at COVID what it did for advertising, right?
• 30:14
  Mike Verret: Every company in the world slammed on the brakes. And every company said, we're here for you. We know what you're going through. Right? Verizon is saying that, Holes was saying that, everybody was saying that, well do they know what we're going through? I mean, they pivot their message, all they were able to say was, Oh, we're here for you.
• 30:41
  Steve Brown: You know, I think of that Mr. Mom movie where the the tuna company was like, that was the message for the tuna company. And it felt like everybody was just stealing that line from the tuna company and Mr. Mom.
• 30:55
  Mike Verret: Yeah, it's true.
• 30:55
  Mike Verret: And it's like, eventually people are gonna get desensitized to it. Like, this company that charges me $350 a month for my cell phone bill tells me that they know what I'm going through and a global pandemic? Seems kind of disingenuous to me seems like, we have to let people know we're on top of this, versus actually talking about what matters, your service is going to be more important than ever, here are the things we're doing to make your life easier. I don't want someone to come and say, Oh, we know what you're going through, do you want to try Verizon? That's not a message that makes any sense to me. But when Verizon drills down to, here's what we're delivering in 2021, so that we can make sure 2020 issues don't happen again, now that means something to me. So understanding what the consumer is listening for, and understanding that they are more in tune to manipulation than ever. It's really about having a conversation with them that's honest and right up front, here's what you're going through. And here's what we can do to help it.
• 32:07
  Steve Brown: I think the messaging that really nails the rules of story communicates more. It communicates clearly, Look, I understand you, and you're safe here, and you innately feel it, and so we have a connection. But if it's lazy messaging, if it comes from a place where, just like your example, We know what you're going through, and you're going, Really? You know what I'm going through? So that messaging is going to land short and feel wrong. And you're right, your brain, when it's evaluating information from the perspective of the rules worry, it can clearly define someone, and pick out someone that really understands me, and relates with me.
• 33:04
  Mike Verret: And relatability is ultimately, I'll use this last example of forming connection that leads to conversation, okay? I'm sure you've had somebody say, Where are you from? Or where did you go to school? And you tell them and the next thing that happens is, Do you know this person? Do you know this person? Do you know this person? That is a way of us trying to find a connection to start a conversation. It's just a simple device. That's what consumers need, is a platform to start a conversation. They don't want a bunch of functional benefits and what it means to you. They want to say, All right, my roof is leaking.
• 33:47
  Mike Verret: Right? Now, if I'm driving to the hardware store, I go buy a billboard, I don't want to see a billboard that says we're Verre Roofing Company, we'll make sur that your roof never leak again. What you want to see i roof leaking? Call us now Right? It is need-state, it i this is what I need to hear a this time. Companies don't spen enough time thinking about, the spend what they think they nee to hear, but they don't spen any time processing that for ho the person on the other end i going to receive it and interac with it. In effect, they'r throwing out a roulette wheel o connections and hoping it land on one versus engineering tha connection and building it an playing strategically like yo would in poker. So I thin that's probably at its essenc is the biggest challenge fo companies is there are way to many consumers that choose ho they want to proces information, and they are i control. They are not open t you want what we've got anymore You need to say Hey, what ar you looking for? You know, wha do you into? You need to start conversation with them, What' your sign? You need to buil that connection and then you ca have a very normal conversatio with them. So when it comes t social media when it comes t getting your word out, and yo know, that I can't remember th term use, but think of lik seven layer marketing cake o whatever, those become tactica executions that people ar calling strategies. And th strategy is the connectio point, that's it. I don't car how you propagate th connection. But the strategy i the connection point, everythin else beyond that it's just Yeah, we'll put it on Instagram or we'll do this, or we'll d that. And you have to customiz it to the tactic, but you don' have a social media strategy You don't have a conten strategy. You don't, you hav tactics that tell one story. An it needs to lead to a connectio and conversation and that's i bare minimum, and understandin how the person on the receivin end of that actually receive the information. That is th rub, that is what everybod needs to know, because the everybody's got a great stor but if the first page isn' grabbing them, they're i trouble. So that's where I yo know, that's really what focused on is helping companie understand the importance o that connection, and how that'l help them grow their business all comes down to how they tal about themselves to thei consumers. And it has to be in way that's going to say, tell m more
• 36:33
  Steve Brown: So what's one question nobody ever asks that you wished they would so that you can answer it?
• 36:41
  Mike Verret: I wish that people would start by saying, How the hell do I talk to this person?
• 36:47
  Mike Verret: And actually think about it as a communication between two human beings first, okay? As opposed to leading with, I want them to say, How do I connect with that person? That should be the first question. It shouldn't be, How do I build my website? How do I create my SEO? How do I market these people? What are my seven levers that I can pull? None of that means anything until you understand how do I talk to that person, as a human being as a, every single one of us, as humans has had conversations with other humans. What's unbelievable is when it hits business it becomes this, you know, me versus them. And every time in a presentation, you can see it like people get up there and they get stage fright, let alone with their messages but just the idea of you're standing in front of a group of people who are adults, and you've had conversations with adults, what's the problem? If that connection point, the second, you're able to connect with your audience, everything else falls into place, you know what tactics you're supposed to be using. Maybe you don't need seven layers, maybe you need three, but at least you know how to talk to them. So the question I would love clients to ask or, you know, prospective clients to say is, How the hell do I talk to these people? And we think about it from a very human conversational perspective first, and that starts to answer a lot of the questions. I mean, really, it's that top sentence of your resume. If that stops someone in their tracks, you are far more apt to get the job.
• 38:28
  Mike Verret: Think of it that way. So that's what I do.
• 38:33
  Steve Brown: So don't write that line to the Dillards. mannequin, write it to that person standing there in the Wranglers.
• 38:41
  Mike Verret: Yeah, I would even go so far as to say everybody else is saying, I'm looking for this role and here's what I accomplished. If you know that, how do you do something different? I been around the world looking for this opportunity because nobody can do A, B and C better than me, read on to find out more. Like it's written for one purpose it's a sentence, but it's written for one purpose. What I just said is so nuts that I have to see what the rest of this stuff is that this guy did.
• 39:14
  Steve Brown: Right? Who does this guy think he is?
• 39:18
  Mike Verret: Exactly. And it doesn't have to be bold and audacious if you just build intrigue, it's find out more about me. And that's what businesses need to do. How do you say? Here's what I am for you in terms that you understand, come and find out more about it. Put the idea in their head and let them adopt it.
• 39:44
  Steve Brown: Mike Verret, so how can people connect with you and can get you to help them more with their messaging?
• 39:52
  Mike Verret: I would love them to simply check me out on LinkedIn. You can find me Mike Verret, or visit my websit veretandassociates.com, you ca book, I really just push for 3 minute phone calls that ar free, to clarify what you message is. And I encourag people to visit my site and jus book time right there. And love having conversations an just learning about people' businesses, and it gives me a opportunity to practice what preach. But it really I learne every time I talk to them, and feel like I even in that 3 minute call, I'm able to shif their thinking and give the sort of a disruptive thing t consider. So it's worth th while it's risk free and promise not to be boring
• 40:39
  Steve Brown: Mike Verret, how do you spell your last name?
• 40:42
  Mike Verret: That is V as in Victor, E R R E T, Verret
• 40:47
  Steve Brown: Verret, Verret & Associates. Mike Verret, find him on LinkedIn. He'll help you sell your Elmos.
• 40:58
  Mike Verret: That's right, sell more Elmos. Why not?
• 41:02
  Steve Brown: Mike, thanks for being on ROI Online Podcast.
• 41:06
  Mike Verret: Steve, thank you.
• 41:06
  Mike Verret: And I hope I can return the favor down the road.
• 41:10
  Steve Brown: I'll love that. All right, and that's a wrap.
• 41:15
  Steve Brown: Thanks for listening to another fun episode of the ROI Online Podcast. For more be sure to check out the show notes of this episode, and feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn where we can chat and I can help direct you to the resources you're searching for. To learn more about how you can grow your business better. Be sure to pick up your copy of my book, The Golden Toilet at surprise, thegoldentoilet.com I'm Steve Brown, and we'll see you next week on another fun episode of the ROI Online Podcast.