How to Diagnose Your Own Business Problems and Level Up with Dennis Yu

CTO of BlitzMetrics – Dennis Yu

Dennis is a content and marketing genius – and he shares stories and how-to’s on figuring out why your business is stuck and SPECIFIC tactics you can do to start getting traction again. (Like his crazy smart tactic for getting HUGE media attention on Facebook by only spending a dollar per day)

Resources Mentioned in the Podcast:

• Business Framework Guide
• Personal Branding Guide
• Facebook For a Dollar A Day

Check out BlitzMetrics.com for more info!

Thanks so much for listening!

Transcript: Download

Jaime:  Welcome to Eventual Millionaire, I?m Jaime Tardy and I am so excited to have Dennis Yu on the show. He owns Blitz Metrics, and one of the things I want to talk about is how we met. I sat on an airplane, he sat next to me, he didn?t know who I was and I didn?t know who he was, and somehow we ended up talking and have I don?t know how many mutual friends on Facebook but it?s kind of crazy and synergistic how this works. I am so excited to actually have you on this show and learn a ton more about what you do. Thanks so much for being on the show today, Dennis. 

Dennis: Thanks, Jaime.

Jaime: So explain to everybody a little bit more about what your company does. 

Dennis: So we have a bunch of young adults that are running campaigns and we think of it like an apprenticeship. So you may have seen the Golden State Warriors won the NBA championship, most of the digital there - the ads on Facebook, on YouTube - not just social media but  a bunch of channels were done by folks that were 18-23. And the same for campaign analysis, social analytics for Jack Daniels or Rosetta Stone or Allstate Insurance or a number of chains or people that use market automation systems. That?s not to boast or give a pitch about why our company is amazing or anything like that, but to say that we believe that if you take complex things and you break them into checklists, then anybody can do it and effectively you franchise out your business because all of us here are striving for something more. 

We can read all the stuff about working harder, being smarter and being more motivated, but at some point it comes down to being able to execute at scale.  Either through automation - which is what a lot of software does - or by process, which is taking that stuff inside your head, writing it down to a checklist that anyone can come down and follow. If you?re honest about how you spend your time, there are probably 3 or 5 things that you say over and over again explaining what you do and how to do something. And you probably spend a lot of time complaining with friends saying, ?Man, I just wish so and so could get  this one thing done because they don?t know how to do it. I have to keep explaining it.? That is a perfect thing for you to write down into a checklist. 

So what we?ve done is we?ve created checklists that are based on how do you set up Google Adwords and Google analytics and Google webmaster tools and all this stuff together. How do you setup your Facebook campaigns for success for custine audiences and so forth. How do you evaluate your best audiences, how do you know which emails and landing pages are performing best. So we have checklists for everything for your own, personal brand.  For concepts like how do you delegate, how do you get stuff done quickly. So we?ve created all these checklists and put it out there for free, and these young adults in partnerships with a number of schools we work with, they get credit, and so it?s the apprenticeship model of Europe but brought over to the United States. And regardless of whether you like Obama or not, his model in the community college space - where he?s trying to make that free because it?s vocational - is the same kind of thing we?re pursuing so we?re not competing against these agencies. We?re not competing against Google and Facebook, they?re partners of ours. 

Jaime: So how many people do you have? Is it a specific apprenticeship or internship, or are they employees, like, how does that work? 

Dennis: Originally we had called them ?analysts? and then we called them ?unterns?, because they?re not ?interns? because they?re not getting coffee and doing nonsense junior kind of stuff, but doing things that are actually important, actually executed. So there?s a few dozen of them and we match them up with the vertical that they have. So we have some folks that really like basketball, guess what, they?re working with some of the NBA teams. If they really like a particular car brand, then they work with some car brands. And it?s just amazing because we?re very fortunate in the social space to have a broad range of businesses that for some reason they want to be on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube, and they want that but they don?t know what to do. And so there?s a natural affinity and credibility with kids.  Anyone who?s younger than me is a kid, so if you?re in your 20?s and 30?s then I consider you a kid. Are you...you?re a kid.

Jaime: Yes, thank you. I am a kid. That?s insane though. 

Dennis: So it?s low cost labor, and its not that you?re trying to outsource to the Philippines but because you?re finding folks who are young and eager, they understand technology better, it?s better than working at some fast food retail place and they get real job experience ideally tied to something they?re passionate about. 

Jaime: It?s like the E-Myth upgraded. It?s like it's taking that except with the training and everything else that comes along with that. But how long did that take you to set up, because it sounds great now, don?t get me wrong. It?s perfect, you?re helping people, you?re giving them training. But some people listening are probably like, ?Well that?s great for him, how can I even work on that? I don?t even have the systems in place to even hire the people.?  So give me the process for that. 

Dennis: So you guys can benefit off of 20 years of mistakes that I had made, just a shortcut. Isn?t that the whole reason for podcasts, videos and stuff like this, you want to learn from the mistakes. And I?ll just openly tell you, any type of entrepreneur that wants to pretend like everything was amazing, they?re just lying to you. 

So I?ll just tell you, the mistakes I made here were around thinking that I could scale this thing just by working harder. By having a couple of trusted friends, by trying to beat the market or the competition, by being better. I was ranked #2 on Facebook ads and Google, behind Facebook themselves. Of course for a while it got us a bunch of leads and I thought that was a good thing, but it wasn?t, because I wasn?t able to service the demand that came in, plus I was trying to compete with other people to see who was better at Facebook ads and Google ads. It was ridiculous.

I ran analytics at Yahoo, I was an executive, and it took me almost 20 years to realize that you can?t have any competitors. And it?s not because you don?t have competitors, it?s because the mindset has to change that anyone who knows more is someone that you want to partner with. You want to openly share your knowledge, you want to get it out there - just like the other people that you?re interviewing, Jaime - you want to get that information out there because they?re going to help build your business. 

If you stand for something - you know the Simon Sinek, Start With Why - if you stand for something so passionately, you have the knowledge necessary to build  checklists so that other people can follow along and do this kind of stuff. They can be ?mini me?s? of your stuff. And you have the ?how?, the other stuff to process steps on the secret sauce that helps you execute against a goal. Everyone of us as an entrepreneur is solving some kind of goal and we want to solve that goal at scale consistently. That?s something we call ?repeatable excellence?. It?s going into McDonald?s and knowing the french fries are going to be hot and amazing no matter what McDonald?s you go to, even though the teenager there is not paying attention, but they have such good bureaucracies. So bureaucracy isn?t such a negative thing. 

So to summarize all those mistakes - which we can go on for hours about - we created this thing called ?The 9 Triangles?.  So there?s the first triangle on the very top which is about your mission. And every triangle has got three parts, so for us it?s analysts, businesses and partners. It?s the students, it?s businesses that buy packages from us which are implementation done for you - checklists - and then the partners are the schools and the conferences and those guys that aggregate students and aggregate businesses. And because we clearly stand for creating jobs for young people and giving them experience, we?re not a threat to anyone in this triad. 

The schools love it, the students love it, businesses, agencies and conference love it because we?re sharing and referring. They?re getting our best stuff for free, we?re not charging $99 to get access to the materials. So theres that on the ?why?, and everyone has to define their ?why?. Once they define the why, they can figure out who the partners are. So it could be a certain vertical association, conference, a school. Then they find out who the best customer is or the best workers are. 

So let?s say you?re a Ford car dealership and you sell Mustangs. All the Mustang enthusiasts in town want to work on promoting Mustangs. Your best customer is your best marketer. And then you can find them and people who are really passionate about something, they do it because it?s something they really love as opposed to just for the money. So they actually work for less. 

For example, Rosetta Stone, maybe that?s how you learn Spanish or another language. Well there are people that would love to be featured, I?ve reached out saying, ?Hey, we?d love to feature you in the Rosetta Stone byline,  I love that thing you wrote, would you write something like that for us, can we share that on Twitter, etc?? You can expand on that, if you love Rosetta Stone and you just came back from Italy and learned Italian and then Rosetta Stone reached out to you saying, ?Hey that was amazing, I?d love to hear more about your trip and how you learned?, and he wrote about it, you would view that as a big compliment. So it?s a flattery strategy.  

So how do you scale this kind of flattery strategy for the problem you?re trying to solve, identifying who those best customers are. If you already have something that?s working, then how do you find those people at scale to talk about you without making it sound like an infomercial or testimonial or white paper or any of that kind of one way, obvious self promotion? The way you do it is you become a PR journalist. Everyone listening here should become like Jaime because you want to interview these other people because it?s very clear that as a journalist you?ve got the microphone next to you, you are sharing information, you?re not promoting yourself, you?re promoting other people. So when you interview these other people and put it out there, what are they going to do? They?re going to share it. If they?re influential, that?s the best marketing for you. You don?t have to pay for advertising, you?re going to interview people and the fact that they have audiences and are influential in their particular area, means that they are your market. 

So you?re a great example of how this works. So we embody all of these in what we call, The 9 Triangles. There?s actually a guide, there?s no spam. It?s actually BlitzMetrics.com/NTG, which is ?Nine Triangles Guide?. 

Jaime: Awesome. I was going to ask you for a worksheet because trying to map out 9 triangles in my brain wouldn?t work. so we?ll definitely link up to that, too. So tell me more, because that was the first triangle.  

Dennis: There?s 9 in total. So imagine there?s one here, there?s 3 in the middle and there?s 5 at the bottom. So you can imagine how these 9 triangles fit. The middle are the ?why?, and so that?s kind of the core engine of what makes you special and the differentiation. And the 3 there are ?MAA?- metrics, analysis and action, ?AEC? - audience, engagement and conversion, and ?GCT? - goals, content and targeting. 

These are not random, these actually all fit together. So ?goals, content, targeting?, what are your goals, how do you define that kind of mission and how do you make it measurable in terms of cost per lead, cost per sale. It has to tie back to the first triangle and your mission and what you stand for. Whatever it is it has to tie back to some metric where you?re measuring your audience and how well you?re educating them and eventually that results in a sale because you build your list and market against them, sequential marketing, that kind of thing. 

And the ?content? is to support each of these goals so that you are living proof in demonstration that you?re getting those things done.  And then ?targeting?, have you segmented those particular audiences because each audience needs to be paired with different content in sequence so then you can measure - this is the goals - measure how you?re able to nurture people along the funnel. And then it goes to the funnel, this goes with ?AEC?, audience, engagement, conversion, and you?re constantly seeing - just like a factory - the process of how many people are in stage 1, stage 2, stage 3. So if you?re a gardener, how many of my tomatoes are ripe, how many are still at week 1, week 2 and at week 6 I harvest them.  
 
Jaime: I love how analytical you are, this is insane So this is like a business plan to the nth degree in like a short and sweet way. Because it?s metrics along with goals and planning and mission.

Dennis: Yeah, it?s the hard and soft side, it?s the artist and the scientist put together. So the third one in the marketing triad we call the ?metric? triad. So the idea of metrics is what are the stats that help with your business - sort of a dashboard - use Google analytics plus your email system plus your ad system - which is not going to be integrated with Google analytics. But there?s those metrics, there?s analysis of why did it go up or down, and the the action is therefore what do I need to do. So this happened, here's why, therefore I need to do this. So if you constantly go through this cycle, if you listen to podcasts or read articles or talk to people or go to conferences, you?ll get a list of thousands of things that you need to do. 

Here?s what one business did, I wonder if it will work for me, you might as well go to a hospital and randomly choose a surgery. But you have a different situation, so if you think about what happens inside the emergency room, lots of people are coming in they have gunshot wounds, arms are cut off, they?ve got a fever, they?re a hypochondriac, they have cancer. Think about all the reasons why people come in. And then triage and the emergency room is figuring out all the things it could be, what do we need to do, so prioritize. So the idea of analysis is we do it as opposed to reporting, making charts is not analysis, analysis is thinking and figuring out. The whole point of analysis is how do I figure out the top tier 3 or 4 things out.  Do you know House, that TV show?

Jaime: Oh yeah. 

Dennis: So some guy comes in and he?s about to die and they have to figure out what it is that?s causing it and they try this and they try that and at the very end of the show they finally figure out this weird thing that happened and they heal the patient because there is a deadline, there?s an imminent emergency to solve. 

Marketing in business is the same way. You have an imminent emergency, you have to figure out what that one or two things - and it?s going to be different for everybody, so if you think of a medical analogy you take all the vitals on the intake - blood, x rays - that?s metrics. Analysis is diagnosis. ?Well Jaime, it looks like you broke your collarbone while skiing according to the charts.?, that?s the diagnosis. And then the treatment is therefore, ?We?re going to give you a cast, you need to rest for 2 weeks, take these pain pills and then come back and see me again.?  So that?s ?metrics, analysis, action?. 

We have the charts, we have the diagnosis and we have the treatment. And you need to apply that same kind of logical methodology to your business, because otherwise you?d become a purely reactive business where if something happens, ?Oh, check out this cool, random marketing tactic, maybe that?ll work for me and the magic will happen?, and ?I?ll take this pill and I?ll lose all this weight by next week.? No, it doesn?t work like that. 

So underlying marketing is fundamental logic. That?s what we want people to open their eyes to after us making all these crazy kinds of mistakes ourselves. So it?s not that we?re selling software or letting you in on all the secrets, we?re openly putting out - I don?t even want to call it a system or software technology, marketers try and wrap themselves in these big words -  But we say here?s a process that you can use to diagnose what you need to be working on so you can get 10x kind of efficiently on your time. 
 
Jaime: Which everybody wants. I have a bunch of questions but I know we have 4 triangles left, so do you want to finish the 4 triangles or can I ask you a questions about how you figure some of that out? 

Dennis: Let me take 2 minutes on these other triangles. So there?s the middle triangle we said there?s the funnel and metrics and goal content targeting. The bottom 5 are just general efficiency, because if you don?t get enough efficiency out of your time, you won?t be able to be proactive. As an entrepreneur you should be able to spend 50-75% of your time being proactive, planning, reaching out. Instead you?re reacting. 

A lot of people are VP and high level and running companies so they?re trying to do this thing on the side and trying to decide if they?re going to quit. But you have to have enough time that you can be proactive instead of reacting to things. So to do that, you need personal efficiency which is to delegate the lead. You need to make sure you get multiplying power we call it , ?learn, do teach?. Anything that you learn you do, you document it and teach it to other people and it becomes a checklist so you don?t have to do it again - you do everything only once - it?s the same thing as having your inbox once and touching everything only once.

Then the idea of marketing operations and finance is how do you sell your stuff without selling or being in sales? It?s by understanding the customer, being able to put checklists out there so people can consume them and then they find that they will need to hire you or use your software because it?s more efficient because you put it out there. That way you never have to spend time selling, it?s all inbound marketing. 

Which goes into my favorite triangle , ?CCS?, which is ?content, checklist, software?. By putting great content out there on how to solve problems - here?s how to set up a Facebook ad - and then Facebook picks that up and they share it on their blog, and all of a sudden we have an endorsement from Facebook. So that?s word of mouth at scale. Then you spend $1/day on Facebook and LinkedIn to amplify that to your custom audience to people who work at the Wall Street Journal, NY TImes, etc and that?s how we get the media coverage. That?s how I get on Fox and NPR and LA Times and all this stuff is because every time we get one quite, we then use Facebook to amplify to people who work at Facebook so we look really big. But we?re just spending $1/day per article that we want amplified. 

And there?s other triangles that are related to how do you iterate by thinking of yourself as a franchise. Starting from your personal brand all the things that you know, is the sum of your personal brand, is what you?re going to use as a template for other people to follow in your footsteps so you?re franchising yourself. You want to think of yourself as a business not as a person, not as a freelancer - which is another kind of business which is fine, too - but if you really want to scale something out and truly believe in something then you?re going to write down your stuff and openly share your stuff and that?s how you build process. 

I bet you there are people out there that are better at Facebook ads, better at LinkedIn ads, better at Google analytics. We?re just seen as being good in that space because we?re so good at executing all these other fundamentals - which are boring related to personal efficiency - but without that you don?t have headroom to be able to plan and build software and write content.  The biggest sign of failure in the system is when folks come up to us and say, ?Hey, I?d like to scale our business.?, and we say, ?OK, are you producing content??  Ok, well then you need to focus on this efficiency so you can squeeze out enough time so that you can work on your business, and then you can start to make these efficiencies happen. 

Jaime: That?s like a catch-22 for some people, especially newer business owners, because that sort of goes right into what my question is.  A lot of people like you said are picking pieces and going, ?Oh, we?ll do this one?, because there is a testing component, but how do they do triage to themselves? Because that?s the thing, if they?re not the nurse that can decide what this is, how do they get that information? I feel like that?s an issue with a lot of people, they?re consuming from a fire hose all this amazing content, they love your content but have no idea how to implement it or use it.  So how do they diagnose themselves?

Dennis: Great entrepreneurs are not there because they?re trying to get rich, because they want to be a millionaire. When I was back at American Airlines and I help build AA.com, the joke was, ?It?s amazing how little you can get for a million dollars these days.?  When I first made a million bucks about 15 years ago, I thought I had achieved this goal. Just like when I got out of high school and I was able to get a job that made $10 an hour. And then eventually it was like if I make it to $50,000, then that?s wow! And then it was no, once I get to $100,000 a year, then I?ve made it. So that never happened, as everyone here knows. Because there?s always more, things always go up at the same time or you have to buy more as you grow your business, leveraging capital. 

So as an entrepreneur you have to put the money thing aside for a minute and think about what is the problem I?m solving for other people. I had personally started to solve the problem first. So each of us have to write down what is the problem I am trying to solve now. Then I document a process - a checklist - that someone else who has the same problem can repeat the process by reading my training materials, by listening to my video about it, whatever you way is of sharing. Some people don?t like to write, if they?re under 30 they just like to do snapchat or whatever, ok good for you. 

Jaime: Periscope, I did that right before this. 

Dennis: Sure. Whatever your method is to share, but you have to openly share your expertise. It?s not just a Brendon Burchard Expert Academy thing, you have to really document this stuff and help other people through it. In the process of doing that, you?re going to charge the first few people that you do it for, because you?re a business and you do it for a living.  When people come and they ask for help with Facebook ads, the best line I use is - which is from Jeffrey Eisenberg, he taught me this - and I use this all the time when people come and ask for free advice I say, ?You know I do this for a living, right?? Because if you put a bunch of content out there for free that way you don?t have to feel guilty. 

That happens when you publish great content, you?re solving the problem by definition if you're listening to this podcast and you?re solving some kind of problem that people are willing to pay money for and you?ve documented that process. Of course documenting the progress against paying clients will then elevate those clients they by saying, ?This is how Jaime was able to get Google Tag Manager done properly, here are the 10 steps that she followed.? 

And then those customers not only did they pay you, they became your marketing at the same time because you didn?t use them as shamelessly as promotional materials like testimonials, you were openly teaching and you?re elevating them, especially if you put them on third party, high authority sites or write about it or put it on your podcast. That creates credibility and authority to build a brand, personally, of those customers.

Jaime: I love that. I?m realizing that I realize I?m not doing that as much as I could. I work with a lot of clients both one-on-one and in group settings and I have so many amazing testimonials, and I have not gone through and told people how we?ve done it. Don?t get me wrong, I?ve interviewed people that do amazing things, but we?ve done amazing things and we don?t talk about that at all.  It doesn?t make sense.

Ok, that?s really interesting. And the hard thing is that it takes time. You?ve been doing this for a really long time so it?s easy for us to hear from you going, ?I?ve been doing this for 20 years, I?m at this point now?, and typical entrepreneurs - as you know - are like, ?That?s great Dennis, I?m totally in that right now. And I want to speed up 20 years and have everything you have by next year, if possible.?  How do we mitigate that? 

Dennis: So we?ve created checklists on how you can do this. So for example - this is going to sound like B.S. kind of ?make money quick? stuff - but you can download the guides and you can see for yourself that we prove it everyday by openly sharing it. There?s a process for how you create content - we have a process, you might have a better process -  but we?ve created one that?s taken us a long time to get there where when I want to write an article or when other people are writing articles that literally takes us 10 or 20 minutes to create an article. So when you see my articles on Adweek or Social Media Examiner or stuff that gets cited by CNN or Forbes, that stuff literally took me 10 or 15 minutes to do.

Jaime: And you actually are writing it or you have someone else that?s doing it?

Dennis: Now there?s a process in how you do it. 

Jaime: Ok.

Dennis: Now some people are all SEO-oriented and they?re thinking that they?ll spin it or have other people write it and put my name on it - which is ghostwriting - which sometimes works and sometimes doesn?t. But there?s a process, for example, I monitor for certain people or we have checkpoints inside projects where clients achieve something. I?ll write 5 or 10 minutes, maybe I see an article about something and I just really react and so I?ll spend 5 or 10 minutes and write the article about it. And then here is the magic, then it goes to our editor who cleans it up, adds in links to their own stuff and reaches out to other people in that category who are experts in that topic and asks them for a quote. And then distribute it, we have logins to different WordPress sites - I mentioned Adweek and Social Fresh - and so that way we have a whole content team on the back that handles this stuff. 

Some people say, ?I can?t afford a content team, we have 3 people that work full time on this.? Ok, fine. There are sites like Fiverr and Fancy Hands and there?s other services that will do this kind of thing piecemeal and you pay these people literally five bucks. So there?s no excuse not to get your content done if you have a process to get these people.

I?ll give you another example. There?s a process called ?client love?, and that?s when we achieve something or we meet someone influential and then we will send them dollar bills with their faces on them, like real dollar bills with stickers on them. 

Jaime: Now I really want that, thank you. 

Dennis: And they of course will share it.  Let?s just say we came out of a client meeting and it was successful - we were pitching a client or whatever - then we have a  process where we go on Amazon Prime and we have a list of food items that are fun. It would be like maybe an Andes mint, and it will say, ?Hey Jaime, I mint to tell you what an amazing time we had together last Friday.? So total cost, $8.00. IT includes shipping, gets there in 2 days, has the little gift card with the personalized note. So I can actually look you up on LinkedIn or Facebook and see where you?ve been and what you like - maybe I really like Disneyland - so I?ll find a Mickey Mouse thing using Amazon Prime. So that kind of personalization I can do myself, or if I go back to the checklist [inaudible]. They?re going to think, ?Wow, you really took time to honor me.? 

Jaime: Yeah. And then I?ll think extremely highly of you and that you actually care. Because a lot of people - no offense - are not in a caring mode. We don?t normally receive, especially something physical, something in the mail.

Dennis: And the physical stuff is actually the best. So there?s actually API?s where you can send things out via postcards. And I think that phone calls and meeting in person, I?m a big fan of old fashioned stuff, even if people think I?m a digital marketer person I?m really big on old fashioned things because they mean the most. When you see a handwritten note, when you see people think about you, it?s the thought that counts not that I spent $10.  

Jaime: Well it?s so funny because Josh Turner who I had on the phone sent me his book, but then he sent me a note that said, ?Maybe my book isn?t the first one you wanted to read?, and he sent me an Audible gift card for 12 months. That is genius. I loved him before, but now I think even more highly of him. That is the sweetest thing ever, and to be able to think of that. Now if I know anyone that I need to connect him with or whatever, his book is just sitting there on my desk. It?s amazing what that will do.  

Dennis: So how do you do that at scale without taking a lot of time? How do you make everybody feel special without having to spend the whole day with each of them? You?re trying to get efficiency on your time. 

I?ll tell you a story, a few years ago I was in New York City and I lost my wallet - I think I was coming off a flight from London and jetlagged - I had no money, no credit card, all I had was my phone. I was speaking at a conference later that afternoon and I kinda had a meltdown, I didn?t know what to do. I have no money, I don?t have any luggage, and Ted Rubin came - Ted Rubin is the guy who wrote, Return On Relationship, and he?s a speaker and a social media guy - and he came and found me and cleaned me up and gave me some money, checked me into a hotel, actually waited while I took a shower and we went to the conference together. So that left such a an impression on me. This is a guy that is obviously very busy, CMO for a medium sized company, he canceled everything for that day, came out and saw me in New York City - I think he saw I posted on Facebook that I needed help and lost my wallet and bags - he came out and saved me. 

So I?ve told that story multiple times and his advice is to be real and really connect with people, because people don?t expect that. They expect to be sold. So when you do something like serendipity like your friend who just sent you the book and the 12 month Audible subscription, that creates delight and that creates a customer advocate to all those other people. 

I?ll tell you another story that sort of reinforces this. So I was coming back on a flight from Europe and I was in coach this time. You know how sometimes you have to get up because you can?t sit there for 8 hours, and I was walking up and down the aisle - it was during Christmas time - at the bathroom I was talking about using Amazon Prime for the 1 day shipping and got all my shopping done in 1 day, I didn?t have to go to the mall and deal with the crowds. I was gloating about ordering everything on December 23rd and it had plenty of time to get there and how amazing this was. The guy said to me, ?You know, I run the call center for Amazon in Dublin.? I said, ?Oh really, that?s awesome. You guys lose so much money on me. I Amazon Prime giant things of soft drinks that have to weigh about 30 pounds  that are either free shipping or $6.99 next day shipping, you guys are losing money on me. I just love how Amazon does all this stuff off of my membership which only costs about $89 a year.?  And then he said, ?Well, actually have you considered that the reason why we do Amazon Prime and we don?t spend money on marketing is to create advocates like you.?  How many times have I told that story to other people where I told them about Amazon Prime, what?s that worth to them. 

Jaime: But even a huge company like that relies on word of mouth instead of advertising. That?s insane, when you think about it, because you just assume they spend money on that. I talk about Amazon Prime constantly and how amazing it is in general, and knowing that?s a customer strategy is huge. 

Dennis: So the way to scale that up, you can do it through processes. Probably the easiest way for people who are listening here who don?t have a lot of these processes built up is what we call, ?influencing the influencer?. Some people can be cynical and call it ?manipulating the media?. We created a guide called, ?Facebook For $1 A Day?, so we talk briefly about what it means to spend$1 a day. Do you have $1 a day, of course you do. So blitzmetrics.com/FDD. 

So what that means is if you?ve got your personal branding and you stand for something and you?ve created content around that that shows your passion and expertise and how you?ve actually executed it. As you say, show not tell.  And then we?re creating this kind of content that we take and spend $1 a day promoting it to people who are influential using workplace targeting. Let?s say you have a product or service that is with Ford cars, I?m going to target the executives that work at Ford. I?m going to target the people who work at - not who like - Ford Mustangs., and it definitely gets you contact. If you?re trying to get your stuff into Wal-Mart, I?m going to target the people who work at Wal-Mart.

I was late to a meeting with Facebook a couple weeks ago and I took an Uber and some bad things happened, I had to get out and get another Uber as the first guy was unsafe, so I paid $138 to get all the way down to Menlo Park in San Francisco. So I said they needed to refund me, this is ridiculous I nearly got killed, I wrote an article on it just for fun. Their response was, ?Well, we?re an app so we don?t actually manage the cars, it?s contractors that?s between us and them, so if there?s an accident it has nothing to do with Uber, we already paid the guy and we have no liability they?re not employees.? So long story show I warned them I was going to write a blog post and I put it on a no traffic site - I wasn?t going to put it on a big site because that was like cheating - but I wanted to show that anyone could do this and it wasn?t just because Dennis Yu has a big audience. I wanted to demonstrate that anyone on a nothing blog could do this. So I did Facebook for $1 a day targeting people who work at Uber, Lyft and the companies that fund them. What happens if Lyft and Uber sees this? They?re all going to circulate this. So later that day I got a call back saying, ?Ok Mr. Yu, so sorry, here?s your money back.? So this technique absolutely works if you?ve got good content and you know the audience that you want and you amplify it for $1 a day. 

So that?s how you guarantee distribution . So when you think about Facebook and LinkedIn and Google not as social networks and search engines and consumer-ish kinds of things, you think about them as platforms to distribute your message. Not for advertising, but in the same way you put a stamp on that thing. Like Amazon Prime, I think Facebook ads and Amazon Prime are the same thing, because you?re trying to deliver packages, deliver knowledge. You?ve got an email with Jaime so you certainly pay every month to use direct targeting, Constant Contact  whatever, so it?s the same thing. You?re paying Facebook to deliver, you?re paying for delivery. So if you?ve got the content machine that?s working, then you can start to amplify for $1 a day. Some people come and say, ?Oh, I want to try and start to do that strategy.? They have the $1 a day, but they don?t have the content. You can?t make chicken salad out of chicken shiitake, right? So that?s how all these triangles fit together.

Jaime: Oh my gosh, there?s so much though, Dennis. That?s the thing, I know we don?t have a lot more time. You sent me an email and I was so excited to talk about it and you didn?t even touch on that. You have so much. So what we?re going to do is we?re definitely going to try and link up to all those things. 

I?m going to ask you the last question I always ask, but we?re going to make sure we take you guide and give people extra so that way they can go forth because you are a wealth of knowledge, which we already know. Thankfully you?ve created processes and systems that we can read later. But back to my last question, what?s one action listeners can take this week to help move them forward towards their goal of a million? 

Dennis: Choose one thing that you know a lot about, a problem that you solved, something that you've done many times so that you know it well and create a checklist against it. Get that checklist into a 1,2,3 format and publish it. Share it with other people and you?ll be surprised at how far that goes, especially if you amplify it, especially if everytime that you get written up and you exalt them by thanking them. You?ll find that the checklist stuff  is really automation at scale. And the same way that software is rules for computer automation, checklists are automation for people. 

So think of yourself as a programmer. If you think about McDonald?s, they?re not a hamburger company, they?re a software company because they?ve created processes that scale up and are reliable. You need to take your knowledge and scale it up, and that?s what the whole point of an emit is because you?re working on your business instead of in your business. So the best way to start is the first step, create a checklist. It doesn?t have to b this 50 page guide, literally just here are the 10 steps. Make sure they?re specific, get it out there, get feedback and other people may suggest things and that creates content. If there?s controversy on the best way to do it - even better - because now you have more people to interview who are also solving that same problem. Interview them and ask them what their thing is, they?ll respond and endorse your checklist and now you?ve got content marketing.  

Jaime: I love that you gave me a simple process, because where there?s so much and just being able to go and take one thing - that?s what I needed to hear - take the one thing and then move that piece forward.

Where can we find out more about you? We?re definitely going to link up everything, but give us anything that you can in order to have us follow up with you later. 

Dennis: We put most of our stuff on our website and that?s blitzmetrics.com. However, the stuff that I talked about is not linked to anywhere publicly, you have to know the URL?s. The one I would start with is blitzmetrix.com/PBG - which is Personal Branding Guide. And then blitzmetrix.com/FDD - which is Facebook For $1 A Day. And those will link to all the other things.

If you want to understand the core principles - which are actually more powerful it?s the 9 triangles - it may seem more mundane and people who want to get rich quick and need result right away are less likely to do that, but I guarantee you these fundamentals we have shopped them across to so many other people they?ll seem obvious if you read them. But you need to do them and here?s how you do them at high efficiency. And that?s blitzmetrix.com/NTG - which is Nine Triangles Guide.

So we?re here to share and folks who implement this, we want to hear about it because we want to exalt you. If you find this works, email me at dennis@blitzmetrix.com, tweet it at me, send it to us on Facebook, there?s many ways to reach me, and then I will share that with our audience because we demonstrate how other people are successful. We want to elevate other folks, it?s not about me, I don?t want anyone saying anything about me I want other people to demonstrate that their getting success from following these simple guidelines. 

Jaime: I adore you Dennis, When we first met I just noticed how down to earth and amazing and how easy it was to connect with you, because you're huge and you?re showing me all your stuff. And you actually accepted my friend request and then we actually chatted again and it was just amazing how real and honest and amazing you are, especially for everything that you?re doing now. So thank you so much for coming on the show, I really appreciate it. Now we have to have you on again, because again we didn?t talk about the other stuff. 

Dennis: Thank you, Jaime, alright. It was a pleasure.

Jaime:  Have an amazing day, take care.

Tags: business problems, content marketing, Dennis Yu, Facebook, Facebook Ads, Facebook Advertising, internet marketing, millionaire interview, social media, traction, troubleshoot, troubleshooting

Categories: All, Business, Business Model, Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Millionaire Interviews

Hi I’m Jaime. Each and every week I bring you the top business advice from the people who know best.

Learn More