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Becoming an entrepreneur takes grit.
Deciding to do it solo takes courage.
This is 1,000 Routes, the podcast where we explore the stories of solopreneurs who have made the bet on themselves to build a business that serves their life. Every episode you'll hear about the lessons they've learned and the uncommon routes they've taken to stand out in a world that is purposefully trying to commoditize them.
Doug Lawson [00:00:00]:
I think that's the future of solopreneurship is being able to get high ticket deals but realizing not everybody's ready. What can you put in front of them? Where can they go to get that brain? I think people think only content makes brilliant. That's not true. I think what you could get people into reward, but with low reps, meeting reward. If you do it, wow, they'll love you.
Nick Bennett [00:00:32]:
Hey, it's Nick. And welcome to 1000 Routes, the podcast where I explore the stories of solopreneurs who have made the bet on themselves to build a business that serves their life. Every episode, you'll hear all about the lessons they've learned and the uncommon routes they've taken to stand out in a world that is purposefully trying to commoditize them.
Doug Lawson [00:00:53]:
My name's Doug. I'm basically a content marketer for technical founders. So anybody seems good at product but suck at marketing. And you got.
Nick Bennett [00:01:07]:
Dude, the first time I got to know you, the first time I came across you all those years ago, doom scrolling LinkedIn. You're not going to believe this one. You posted something about the boom. Where did you get the boom? Like, where did the boom come from?
Doug Lawson [00:01:24]:
I'm a very energetic guy, so growing up it was always like boom. It was always just some weird, you know, brawl jockey of just emphasizing a moment. And then I got tired of commenting on people on LinkedIn. Like, you know how LinkedIn people. Fantastic poem. Or the row. Oh, so inspiring. Congratulations.
Doug Lawson [00:01:52]:
I just got boom. It just allows me to move on to the next poem. And I think people know me know the boom has many meanings. Either I'm agreeing with you or I'm cheering you on, or I like, wow, that's a mic drop moment. So I brought the boom, very flexible. I could say four letters and made a whole lot of different settings and I can just cut through the noise much faster.
Nick Bennett [00:02:20]:
Dude, I love the boom. It is like you got me saying it every time something's good. I'm like throwing booms out now. I mean, it works. It's a universal term. So I appreciate the boom. And I feel like you've been throwing it down for so long. You've been so consistent for all this time.
Nick Bennett [00:02:34]:
You've been at it now solo, almost 13. 12 and a half. 13 years now.
Doug Lawson [00:02:41]:
12 and a half years. So this January, about maybe February would be 13 years. So I haven't been changing the boom for that role. I've been changing the boom for maybe six years, maybe seven years.
Nick Bennett [00:02:54]:
So yeah, what did you know, 12 and a half years ago that the rest of us didn't like. What was it like back then?
Doug Lawson [00:02:59]:
So Twitter at that time did not care how much you engaged with somebody, how big your following was. They were chronological, for the algorithm was chronological, so. But you followed me and I posted at 9am, 10am, 11am tomorrow, one or two feet, you were sick. Pretend you were shit.
Nick Bennett [00:03:20]:
It was a volume game.
Doug Lawson [00:03:21]:
The goal was to create five fucking pieces of content, so to speak, or twins, and stay in front of you. All that is much catchy. So I didn't need to use boom back then. I just need to have clever things to say. All that in that word. My exposure to social media, way before algorithms became smart, way before algorithms started measuring your online activity, it was chronological 12 years ago, 13 years ago. Algorithms were not that smart. It was very chronological, very much about volume.
Doug Lawson [00:04:01]:
That would produce the most volume and a catchy way you would get attention. No, Mr. Complete Opposite. It has nothing to do with anything that 12 years ago was important. So a lot has changed. Just that even for Twitter itself, LinkedIn and Instagram, they all had very similar algorithms.
Nick Bennett [00:04:22]:
Yeah, but back then, back then, the name of the game was like, how much stuff. I call this peanut butter marketing. Like how much stuff can I create? And smear it all over the Internet. Because as long as you were creating anything, as every time they opened Twitter, you were there, that was the name of the game. Just, if they open Twitter, I better be there.
Doug Lawson [00:04:40]:
It was that easy. I don't want to make it sound like it was easy, but it was super bad. Post something, be genuine, be funny, or be polarizing or have a strong day or say something weird. You want a diamond traction. And if you can maintain that seven days a week for months, years, you don't really be just responding. So yeah, it's a peanut butter I they're kicking a part of noodles and throwing it on the wall. There's only one step. You make another part of noodles and throw it back on the wall.
Doug Lawson [00:05:14]:
You just keep going. You can't do that now. This is not the viable strategy for that.
Nick Bennett [00:05:20]:
It's never been more saturated. But before you were doing content marketing and social, you were the E Com guy.
Doug Lawson [00:05:29]:
I started as the E Com guy. I did drop shipping, I did shopify. Way back before when it was really janky. That was how I got into it.
Nick Bennett [00:05:41]:
So how did you make the leap from the E. Com? You called yourself the E. Com maven.
Doug Lawson [00:05:46]:
Prior to that I was the teacher. So I was teaching special Education I born with underpinning. I know the misconception you get tenure. Well, 30 people get tender and when they get tender, they're there forever. And your salary goes up and up with the school. What the school did when I graduated from college, well, they would hire young people. And you had about three to four, maybe five years before you had to tenure them, right? Five years in law. So what they were doing was they were hiring younger people.
Doug Lawson [00:06:23]:
Let them teach for a year or two at really, really see wage and then lift you. All right, Lift you. Then you can't get tender. Then they fire you and they start that angry soul. Teachers just being ripped, don't get any secret teachers. Except you have a whole pool of teachers getting ripped every year through the movie Whack a Mole. But when you do that, you can't get 100 salads when you're coming back to the same year of experience that somebody just got into the field. So really like attendance.
Doug Lawson [00:06:56]:
So at that time I was just sick and tired of that. And I do remember that under no circumstances did I want to work the overnight shift. I had already done that. I'm sick of it. Most teachers have two or three jobs in the summer. They had an after school job, they had an overnight shift job. I was just sick of that. So I needed a way to make money from home.
Doug Lawson [00:07:21]:
And at that point, again this go back almost 15 years ago, I was trying to figure out, okay, how do you make money from home? And there was just a wild wacky rabbit hole to go down. But even trying to be a football coach, and then one of the biggest shocking revelation is that you're the head ball coach. If you're an assistant coach. All the practice, all the travel, all the August pre cheese and warm up, you will probably only make $500. They give you a stipend. That's it. It's a stipend. And then I remember getting a stipend and like, oh my God.
Doug Lawson [00:08:05]:
And you don't get that stipend at the beginning of the year. You get it at the end of the series after all that travel, all the bus rides for all the pockets, all the fring sections, all the whatever, all the team done it. You only get $500. Maybe some schools you might get $1,000, $2,000 for the whole season. Only the hot ball coach get a salary. So there's no way to make a living as a teacher, provide for your family, get out of student loan debt. So I just got, I was all over the place at that time trying to find a way to work from home.
Nick Bennett [00:08:42]:
So how did you end up learning ecom and ended up turning that into a business?
Doug Lawson [00:08:49]:
Twitter taught me. I'm listening to, I forget who the guy was. Give me a second. Didn't even cling to me. But there was a guy who was just talking about how much money he made every single week just writing a few words. I mean literally that's what he said. I only write a few hundred words a week and I get paid $10,000 a month. And then it was the original PDF download.
Doug Lawson [00:09:14]:
So I downloaded an ebook and it was about copyrighting. So okay, copywriting in my mind, copywriting. I kept getting confused. You can't copy that. So it's again copywriting, right? So I couldn't wrap my head around, oh, copywriting is ad copy. So I read his PDF in that PDF with a list of books that you can buy from old, old school people. So I read a bunch of copywriting books. It didn't make any sense because one I didn't know, I had to go get a job at a marketing agency.
Doug Lawson [00:09:52]:
I didn't know how to buy a million, I didn't know how to do xy. So then if you stay on Twitter long enough, you, the original Twitter blogger just, they make money from home. And then the second one was this passive income. Got the old stunning passive income idea. One of those ideas was, well, guess what, good news, you don't need to own your own product. You don't need to do that. You need to sign up with this account. That means you need to know how to eat your market and you need to pick a product that you think will best sell or in the market and sell it for somebody else and you make a percentage of return.
Doug Lawson [00:10:37]:
So that's how I got started. That was almost 13, 14 years ago. That was a long time ago. That taught me branding page, email marketing. It taught me price changing, it taught me social media creating paid to email marketing, upselling them. And then a little bit after that, clickfunnels came out. So not that good. But a little bit later.
Doug Lawson [00:11:01]:
But that was so expensive for me. It was something like $99 a month or something ridiculous at that time that was ridiculous. I mean $99 a month for clickfunnels, but everybody's doing clickfunnels. So I finally told my wife I need to get a clickfunnels statute. Mark, I at that time could barely afford diapers, I could barely afford formula. Literally our budget was day to day. I did not know if we were having enough money in the. So I made a month after the big app.
Doug Lawson [00:11:38]:
So my wife said bloody dark. And then once I got into clickfunnels, everybody doesn't know what I'm talking about. It's basically template on how to get in the market and look at the thing. To her, it's all in one inclusive email marketing. I even put the shopping cart all in one and you don't have to think to a product. They will teach you how to make the landing pages. That would teach you how to do email marketing. There was a different way you had to do it and once you figured it out, you could pretty much take their ideas and move it to different platforms.
Doug Lawson [00:12:12]:
So that's how I got started, just playing whack a mole with these early products. When it comes to income, when it comes to drop shipping and all in one marketing tool, that was just the wild, wild west.
Nick Bennett [00:12:28]:
The clickfunnels thing is funny because I feel like now everyone has this like weird sentiment towards click funnels, but back then it was like, holy shit. Like you can just engineer this, like you could just do this. It was a different time and it was pretty profound the fact that you could just unlock it kind of that easily. So talk about the initial traction, right? You said that was tough. Like you didn't know if you haven't enough to afford diapers. You're trying to. You're looking at E Com and drop shipping and the early days of Shopify. It's like the wild west.
Nick Bennett [00:13:03]:
Clickfunnels is coming out. Like, how did you gain this initial traction? When did that happen? And you looked up and you were like, holy shit, this might actually work. What led to that?
Doug Lawson [00:13:13]:
Let me tell you a quick story and then I'll answer the question. I'm laughing because two weeks ago I was hired for a project for a website copy and the website developer was like, why are you writing like a clickfunnels blog? Because I've been writing clickfunnels for a long time. So 13 years later, I still write writing pages in a very quick funnel style. So that's why I back to the funeral work. I suck at blockchip more ended up happening words. People asking me to write their email sequencer or they were asking me to write their landing place copy or they were asking me before ghostwriters were fighting, they were asking me to write 10 tweets a week for them or whatever the case may be. So I really mean I write because I sucked at what I did, but for some Reason people wanted me to do it, and it was just an easy thing because there was no sales call involved. They were out with, hey, dog loves writing.
Doug Lawson [00:14:21]:
I'm curious, do you wait? Email sequencer? Yeah. Oh, what's your name? Oh, that's YC for A, B and C, you know. And this was all playpop. So Play Pop was the only payment processor that I was aware of. So again, wow. Wow. Raspberry janky. But I started making traction when I started realizing, hey, I can write crypto for other people.
Doug Lawson [00:14:50]:
That is myself. Even though my income thing was okay, but I made more money just writing emails for other people. Then I became the email me that I was on Twitter. That's when I really became what I was known for at that time, which was just writing these 12, 20, 30 email sequencing for products and just putting these complicated funnels. That's what I got paid for.
Nick Bennett [00:15:18]:
Through all of that, your own boom system was created. You ran the Clickfunnels playbook, and that slowly kind of becomes your own thing. I think that's a pretty natural progression for all of us. Like, we learn some stuff from someone else who's a few steps ahead of us in the process. You run that play, it slowly becomes your own, and you kind of put your own. You have your own spin and your own flavor of it. I mean, it's pretty standard. At some point, the boom system comes out and you start seeing, like, crazy results.
Nick Bennett [00:15:46]:
Like, one of the first things that I noticed about you, and you're so good at this, and I don't know why more people don't do it. And I try to do it as often as I can, but is showing proof. Like, not enough people are showing the raw proof of that what they do works. It's like, you are so good at just publishing screenshots of people just saying the raw thing. It's not a polished case study. It's not even a specific testimonial. It's just the raw interaction between you and a client. And that is so much more powerful than a polished case study I think will ever be.
Nick Bennett [00:16:22]:
That's the thing I feel like you're known for is, like, when I first saw this, I was like, whatever the fuck this guy is teaching is working, and I need to know more about it.
Doug Lawson [00:16:30]:
I agree. I heard people damn me. Like, this is so unethical. You should not breathe. Take angels calling screenshots and sharing. Are you paying my boat, yes or no? No. Then be quiet. Literally, that's what I said.
Doug Lawson [00:16:46]:
Unless you're Paying my bill. You can't tell me that this is unethical.
Nick Bennett [00:16:52]:
It's unethical. If you were to disclose who they were without their permission, I would think. But you have never once done that. Just for the record here, like you, you always blur out the name and you just shared the interaction. And it's always, it's always someone saying this insane thing happened and then you're like boom.
Doug Lawson [00:17:11]:
That's literally the fact. That is my Twitter guy that will be. Shut up. I learned all that stuff from Twitter. You know, there's such a consumer 13 writer doc. You can only write this much on Twitter, right? So what can you say to make somebody go, oh shit, okay, well there is amount of words and it's the most important word that matters the most. Not even saying they studied through these insane blog related topics about that. I think people underestimate the role of curiosity.
Doug Lawson [00:17:48]:
So the goal of these screenshots isn't to get you to buy, to get you curious. Who the hell is this guy? What's he doing? And your natural prevention is going to be to pick the profile. And then if I do my job right, then the laugh will take care of yourself. But I can't get you curious about me in a couple century sector, what am I really doing?
Nick Bennett [00:18:11]:
You know, you're the first person to say the word curiosity as it relates to creating content and doing marketing. And I think that is the absolute best thing because every time I see one of those I'm like, I gotta know, I want to know more. I'm like, what is like what's the whole thing? That is the perfect way to describe how the type of like feeling you get. Because it's not like it does it build trust? Sure. People are gonna be like, okay, if I did choose to make an investment down the line I could like I have a high probability that this will pan out. But to even get anyone thinking that you need to create the curiosity loop or open whatever, right? This little curiosity gap that you've created.
Doug Lawson [00:18:51]:
It'S an open feedback.
Nick Bennett [00:18:53]:
It works so well. Like I just started doing it.
Doug Lawson [00:18:54]:
It's an open feedback group because people, they can't close the feedback group. So you can really open feedback groups in the context. That is a great way to move behavior. And you know that you and I both had marketing background so worked inside systems before. That's how I first met you. I think people don't trust themselves to not stop every post is to create curiosity which requires trust and confidence in yourself. But if you do it Right. Because we're all human.
Doug Lawson [00:19:29]:
They're going to move to the next step on their own. So it's the opposite of her saying, hey, look at this guy. I got him. Xyz. Here's a beautiful video interview. Here's a breakdown of what we did. Here's the part it doesn't make anybody curious about what you do. In fact, don't forget what you did.
Doug Lawson [00:19:49]:
So that should always been my bread and butter. How do I get you to click my profile without asking you to click my profile?
Nick Bennett [00:19:57]:
I love that these things you said you picked this up on Twitter.
Doug Lawson [00:20:00]:
Yeah, I'm lucky. It just completely pure luck because you want it. Understanding social media marketing now wasn't I take this back. I can be a little absolute in the way I talk about the great platform and I just found that Twitter just taught you how to move behavior quicker than integrating Facebook at that time just had to be quick with what you get. You didn't have to make great pictures like that. You're great. You didn't have to have great lifestyle. Facebook and Instagram don't require you to add some sort of lifestyle component to your copy.
Doug Lawson [00:20:45]:
Twitter, you couldn't make a tweet in 10 seconds. And like I said, they are directing back then really benefited the people who made the most twins and whoever made the most attention grabbing tweets. Often we're going to be completely fine in the market provided that you had a place where you can put people off the platform into your own ecosystem. So Twitter just taught me how human respond to stimulus. Put a stimulus in front of them, they were going to do something with them. So that's like my shortcut hack. Like go back and put your 2012 Twitter hat on that you'll realize that less it more.
Nick Bennett [00:21:31]:
I had a, I had a marketing professor in college who this is like probably 2010, I don't know, whatever year Twitter came out. And he was like, Twitter is going to be huge. And I was like okay dude, like what do you know? And that guy was right. He was the right. He was as right as anyone's ever been. Twitter obviously was the answer. What's interesting to me about this and I'm starting to see this through line is like you pick this trend up on Twitter and you just applied it to other areas of marketing and other platforms. I just interviewed Pete Davidson and one of the things I asked him about how his content, like how did, how he thinks through and chooses to create what he does and he was like, I just picked this trend up off of TikTok, because it's all happening on TikTok a lot and nobody does it on LinkedIn.
Nick Bennett [00:22:17]:
So I figured why not try it? And it's, it's the same. It's the same thing, just a more a modern, a more modern version of it. Just like the way that people create stuff or inspiration for types of things. It's the exact same thing. But I think the lesson is trying to do this in a way that makes sure that like you had to do it to maintain relevance back then. Like it was like a necessary part of the game because it wasn't you. Gary Vee always said it's like day trading attention. Like back then it was because the only way to keep people's attention was to create 50,000 things a day.
Nick Bennett [00:22:50]:
Now one thing can live in the feed for weeks nonstop. I commented on a post the other day, or maybe like two weeks ago now, and it still showed up on my notifications that people are liking and commenting on it. I'm like, oh my gosh, when the littlest thing jobs. So you don't necessarily have to create that extreme volume of stuff, but you're playing a different game now. You're no longer playing the how do I maintain relevance in the feed? And how do I just constantly be at the top of the feed anytime somebody opens the platform? And now it's like the nuance of the game is so much so different. It's like hook formatting, post formatting. What imagery? Like selfies are a big thing. Like you've had, you.
Nick Bennett [00:23:28]:
You saw the writing on the wall with the selfies and you were like, let's go. So let's talk about this. You were anti selfie for so long. Then they were like, LinkedIn said, we're going to reward photographs. For some reason, selfies were the one. And then now there's pictures of you drinking coffee all over LinkedIn. What happened? Well, I got on LinkedIn 2019.
Doug Lawson [00:23:46]:
Okay, so 2019, right before the pandemic kicked off. And LinkedIn had a very similar algorithm to Twitter. Not 2012 Twitter more than 2016 Twitter, what it was about. Okay, you gotta get violent here or not. But topics were relatively easy. If you knew how to make a hook, you knew how to get catch attention. In 2019, you would have been fat. And then 2020 came along.
Doug Lawson [00:24:18]:
That's when Sherry Robot and all these listen more and all these people putting out really sophisticated video marketing, right? And then from there I took off shooting video marketing. You've got the empty brain. People Coming in with the very cool selfies and crisp pictures. And I went, God, this is nasty. I don't want to kick in the phone and going, that's part of your personal branding. LinkedIn in 20, 20, 21 started shifting into personal branding. And the writing on the wall for me was like, okay, my text based content is getting ground because not just from an algorithm standpoint, from a real estate standpoint. Think about your feed, your face, think big.
Doug Lawson [00:25:12]:
You got a picture here, picture here. You got your little text based post. You're getting drowned by all these pictures, all these videos. You don't post any picture with your t. No. You posted the real estate. No, you can stand out in the theater. So my rationale, whenever I go with them, it was always, well, I mean, clearly getting drowned out by one of these pictures.
Doug Lawson [00:25:37]:
Finding everyone. Now I have another problem. I don't pick pictures. I drive my wife. I don't get pictures. Doesn't mean I'm ashamed or embarrassed of my family. I'm not a picture guy. I don't have my camera ready to go to take pictures of environment.
Doug Lawson [00:25:52]:
So now I've got to figure out, okay, well, how do I take a picture of myself? I mean, so it's just this weird thing where it's like, okay, well, I'm gonna have to stand out. I'm not gonna be serious about this. I'm not gonna hire a blind photographer and take pictures of me looking. I'm gonna be groping with that. Like, I'm gonna make spaceship because this is really goofy. So, yeah, I made a teacher when I realized, okay, I'm just getting crushed. I'm getting crushed by the algorithm. Yeah.
Doug Lawson [00:26:24]:
So let's have fun with it in 2024. I don't like taking pictures. I hired a video editor to help me make homemade guests or jets or whatever they call just. Because it's just easier for me to do. I just pick it up, throw it in there. That has nothing to do with the piece of content.
Nick Bennett [00:26:42]:
One of the things you said to me when we first met was, stop adding value. And it has, it lives rent free in my head because every time I like write a post or I'm trying to write a comment, I'm just like, stop adding value. And I think that's like this great. This is like the great misconception of creating content is everyone thinks they need to add value and the content is terrible. What did you mean when you said stop adding value? Like, I know what I interpreted it as and I've like, internalized this. But like when you say stop adding value, what do you mean by this?
Doug Lawson [00:27:16]:
So give back to Twitter, brother. Why would you buy from anyone on Twitter? I mean what is the most amount of value can someone give you on Twitter? They can't. The only thing they can get you to do is be curious enough for you to naturally move to the next piece of content or to the next part of your photo or touch point or buy real whatever. People want a car. So for me people sell value out of insecurity. So they feel like, well, I get hired based on how much I know. I get hired based on how hopeful I am. I get hired if I can write lawyers.
Doug Lawson [00:27:59]:
That's not why you get hired. You get hired because you took a perfect grader and fit them fast enough that they just went print a profile to read about what you do over there. You tell them what is the problem. You actually take that problem and you sell the service over there, right? All I need is to get you to go over there. So I think people just jam up the feed with so much value based content that it takes, I don't know if people are aware you're not getting hired based on how much you know. You're getting higher on the probability than you could solve this problem, period. So what do they need to hear? An experience for me day to know I can solve this problem with me. A mixture of those screenshots could obviously my stuff work for me.
Doug Lawson [00:28:52]:
I don't bad 100% just to be honest. But the probability of my stuff working as fuck, well that's once true. I get hired based on my ability to grab your attention. So Chuck, I get hired based on solving complex problems. Like Chuck, I never get hired by how much I can teach you about copywriting. I never get hired on my 16 part email sequence. I never get hired on how to write a great book. My clients don't hire me for that.
Doug Lawson [00:29:29]:
They hire me to solve problems. Now I told you that many other people, well once you start shame in battling, you start zombie like everybody else. You start being uninterested. You start eliminating curiosity. You start eliminating the issue about you start becoming blood. Now keep in mind, yes, you should be sharing value. Of course you should be sharing value. What value should you be sharing? How do we determine what is valuable? What makes somebody eager to buy from you to answer what makes my client eager to buy from you? And write that on a notebook and wait all the way except that interest.
Doug Lawson [00:30:14]:
I can buy it from you and you're going to buy it has to do with your experience, your point of view, a hot take, how they're different from somebody else. What you say about it. You don't let everybody else.
Nick Bennett [00:30:27]:
Yeah, this feels like it flies in, like it's conflicting to the whole zero click content in feed consumption stuff. Because everyone's like, no one wants to leave the platform, so just give it all on the platform. I mean, both can clearly be true. But how do you think about that?
Doug Lawson [00:30:47]:
I go back to what you were saying about this guy you had on your show. You said, hey, I just picked up a trend on TikTok. George applied it here. I picked up clickfunnels and applied it here. The current playbook, that's about dad at this point. It's the George Walsh playbook. And the George Walsh playbook was. I'm going to give you how I did this.
Doug Lawson [00:31:14]:
Joe is a very specific player, but he's not going to take you to ball. He's not going to take you anywhere. It's going to be so simple. That's the only place you're going to want that for yourself. So in a lot of ways, Blake Dane has become a lifestyle platform. And that's Justin Wallace. I won't say Justin, but he had a big play in glamorizing lifestyle and it just makes people addicted to using the platform to create your lifestyle and it becomes disordered. When I see the platform as a business tool.
Doug Lawson [00:31:55]:
It's a tool to use to get you pay money. That's it. I think people get it turned it into a lifestyle platform where they want to leave it all on the table. They got to put it on the table. Then you got the hours home managing effect with one hour playbooks. But people are not realizing why, if I was home, only give me one hour playbook. Can anybody tell me why most people care? Because they get paid from YouTube. They get paid to keep you on the YouTube platform.
Doug Lawson [00:32:31]:
Consuming hours of his content. It tweets, he's screaming. People who are educational only people. That's why they find, first of all she's quote or they violate. What is the book called? The Purple Book from Homelanders. I forget what it's called.
Nick Bennett [00:32:51]:
$100 million leads, right?
Doug Lawson [00:32:53]:
So it's a tool that liberates the magic.
Nick Bennett [00:32:57]:
Yeah. I think one of the things that you'd pointed out to me a while ago now was that. And I was guilty of this, you were like, your content's all business. There's no you in it. It's like so. It's so transactional. When you try to add so much value, it just becomes like so boring. It's like hard to read, it's hard to want to consume it all.
Nick Bennett [00:33:21]:
And it's not to like, oh, be vulnerable and talk about your family or whatever. It's like it needs a little more personality. It's got to be, you got to mix it up. Otherwise no one like, you're not a robot. I think that was one of the things you said. You're like, you're not a robot. Tell people that, show people that you're not a robot.
Doug Lawson [00:33:37]:
That's literally the name of the guy. I am not a robot. I'm Doug Lawson. Here's my personality. You're not what's unique about you really have anything to do with business.
Nick Bennett [00:33:49]:
Right? But it's that difference. It is the thing that people connect with. It creates more curiosity, right? If they're able to connect with you just a little bit and you're able to show the proof and create more curiosity. Like all of these little things that all these thousands of little micro moments that stack up on top of each other to get you the sale. And I think this is one of the things that I learned from you early on because especially right when I got started out on my own, it was like, oh, I'm like very clearly making a mistake here being way too transactional with you. Like here's information, like that would be like the posts were just here is raw information and you're like, dude, like you're going like way too robot on this thing. And it made a massive difference. I didn't have any proof when I got started.
Nick Bennett [00:34:34]:
I didn't have like that level of proof. But the second it started rolling in I was like, you use that stuff and it's like every time you post one of those inbound, inbound, inbound, like it is like you need to juice your pipeline, show some proof. It is crazy how fast that works, how easy it works and I wish more people did it.
Doug Lawson [00:34:53]:
I think you found this out. It's just such an instant, attention grabbing micro moment as you say, that is teaching any value you could possibly get. Again, it goes back to I don't think people understand how to use platforms. I think they see a thing so called barrier, but they don't really understand who's winning, who's actually winning on LinkedIn, think about who's actually winning this high ticket deal. Using content is the main driver. I promise you. Only two types of people, one, again, you're just in wealth, lifestyle, business. I went from 0 to x 4 ways and it's just very tangible.
Doug Lawson [00:35:42]:
But they're selling low products, low price products. So they're in the volume business. So they're losing your. You need for freedom and lifestyle. Such a lifestyle lover that just develops to make you go to the next stop. And once you see the next stop, it's not $20,000 a high ticket bill, it's $195 course or $99 a month community or $20 a time cut or whatever. So the educational flashlight dollar bill. So again that should share that much power.
Doug Lawson [00:36:20]:
If you think about it doesn't share the very emotional probability that you could make a living writing on LinkedIn. That's all we sound. There's nothing wrong with that. So people that we go after are not, I'm gonna say stupid. They're not into that thing. They're trying to grow a business. They're business owners. They're either solopreneur.
Doug Lawson [00:36:44]:
Whether they have a business routine, whatever, they're just trying to grow and they wanna bring that as a PO or they want to use a Mercury to bring in more deal philosophy. Whatever the case may be. That's a different mindset and that has to do more with problem solving. They need to know if you could solve a problem, that's all they need to know. You could solve my problem. How do we stand out in that way? Well, show your personality, show your heart. Pit, show your sister. We don't have a system.
Doug Lawson [00:37:18]:
Sure. What you would do different. Sure. Will somebody beg is doing it wrong. Here's a simpler way to do it. Document you join it. That's how you kind of get people going from the B pre to profile. So that's how I see social media.
Doug Lawson [00:37:35]:
I'm not saying don't hate everybody's law. I'm saying this is how I do how to get deals or LinkedIn. And I had never once told a client what nor have I written for a client that very, very happy bowling quote. Because it just looked completely different.
Nick Bennett [00:37:57]:
Yeah, I mean it works for some people. I mean like I think the Chris walker effect of LinkedIn has like taken over a lot of people's ability. Like they see that and they try to run that play.
Doug Lawson [00:38:07]:
I want him to come visit. Number one, let me just say that Chris Walker the Jillian. Absolutely. Okay. He's just really smart. I would be doing. I disagree that the training barrier was doing disagreeing. He provided a producer and backing it up would turn out to look very valuable.
Doug Lawson [00:38:30]:
Never, not one time Chris Walker ever showed you how to do it.
Nick Bennett [00:38:34]:
I never thought about this in this way. It's all dissenting opinion.
Doug Lawson [00:38:38]:
He got light rolling. He does give a video. So he said, oh shit, giving me a ton of hours. It feels like value. But I want you to look at his content and say, okay, how can I take action? How can I take action on that? You can't, because they too complicated, purposely does it that way. He's not selling educational product. He's selling $50,000 $100,000 a month retainer for companies who hire him. So again, they're not looking on how to write better content on the website to convert website traffic.
Doug Lawson [00:39:18]:
That's not why they hire him. They hire him because, oh, we've been hiring Salesforce and HubSpot people far too long and well closer to making adapt. And here's Christine. We're not getting those Martech products. Martech products have screwed up your silver pipeline. You gotta stop taking advice from Martech. Here's how we just refocus on fyc. So that to me is not giving value.
Doug Lawson [00:39:48]:
To me, it's creating a very emotional prediction because so many companies and people have invested thousands and thousands of dollars into these products. And he said, dude, you guys are stupid. You're doing it wrong. That ruins his attitude. Literally calling people stupid without saying they're stupid. And that's the emotional thing he does on LinkedIn that gets everybody pissed off.
Nick Bennett [00:40:14]:
I mean, it's genius. It's genius. And it's like all he does is agitate the problem. But in my original comment, like bringing him into this was because of like the long posts like this, like long, dense post. And then people see it. I've talked about this a lot. People see what he's done and they see how successful he is and they think, oh, I should write on LinkedIn more. And it's more nuanced than that.
Nick Bennett [00:40:37]:
And I think you spelled it out perfectly right here, which was it's all dissenting opinions, it's all highly technical. He doesn't tell you how to do anything, he doesn't tell you what to do, but he makes sure that you know exactly that. Like it's very obvious that he has a plan and it's why he's able to sell the ticket. The things at the high volume ticket that he can and most other people can't sell high volume or high value dollar value services on LinkedIn the way that he does. Most who aren't selling $20,000 retainers on LinkedIn.
Doug Lawson [00:41:10]:
I learned from him and I tell most of my marketing agencies clients who said, hey Doug. But I said, hey, guys, before we go any further, you don't need to spend a week and Chris Walker's feed and then come back to me because you're not going to win this game teaching people how to do Google Ads or how to use HubSpot. That's not why you're getting hired. So Chris Rock is a classic, classic example. He just chooses to use perfect throw and his hired means he's not going to. I'm just saying hypothetically. I don't promise you Chris, you don't need to write that much. I mean, your video already takes care of it.
Doug Lawson [00:41:52]:
He's already doing phenomenally successful. I'm just saying he wastes it looks like value, but it's really a girl hot take.
Nick Bennett [00:42:02]:
It looks like value. I love that. All right, looking back, Doug, is there something you would have done differently?
Doug Lawson [00:42:08]:
I would have gotten the video sooner. I wish I didn't have big hangout. I don't have it now, but back then. Hang up 3 video beyond camera hanging this abstinent not looking like Chris Walker.
Nick Bennett [00:42:23]:
Well, none of us do.
Doug Lawson [00:42:24]:
None of us do, right? We so good looking, total smell. It's just. I can die out of the package. But once I got over that hump, I kind of. I don't want to say I missed the boat, but I just became saturated. By the way, please keep doing video. I switched a theater sooner they got over my hand got same.
Nick Bennett [00:42:47]:
This is like hearing your own voice and watching your own face on video is a weird, sobering experience. When and you build up the tolerance, you're just like, oh, like I don't like that. And then you do it enough times and you deal with it enough times and then you just become used to it and you can become numb to the fact that you don't look or sound like Chris Walker. All right, man, let's end here. What do you want to build that you haven't built yet? What does the future of Doug Lawson marketing look like?
Doug Lawson [00:43:18]:
I'm building a quote. Another how to LinkedIn quote. Please go buy Joshua Walsh's how to link and quote. You know, I don't need those types of people. How to create 50 pieces of content in one hour. It's a mix of AI and Twitter marketing and all of that. I've been working on it for such a long time. I'm putting together that's the future of job loss and marketing.
Doug Lawson [00:43:48]:
Taking views of Rolex medium reward products and see if the market's hungry for it.
Nick Bennett [00:43:55]:
I like the way you describe it. Low risk, medium reward product. That's exactly where my sites are set as well. Like reduce the ticket size, increase the volume. See if we can hit a sweet spot there like critical mass and tap into a segment of the market that can't afford private consulting services. There's a massive part of the market that's not ready and then we can. I can drive a wedge between my private services and this product and increase the price of the consulting services while being able to increase access to the systems and the frameworks and all that stuff.
Doug Lawson [00:44:33]:
Some people are just simply too early to work with me and I didn't.
Nick Bennett [00:44:37]:
Have any place to put them exactly right. I'm in the exact same situation.
Doug Lawson [00:44:42]:
Hopefully I'm the national next stop when.
Nick Bennett [00:44:45]:
They become ready for private services 100%. That is the exact same situation I found myself in.
Doug Lawson [00:44:53]:
I think that's the future of solopreneurship is being able to get high ticket deals but realize that not everybody's ready. What can you put in front of them? Where can they go to get that brain? I think people think only content make brain. That's not true. I think wish you could get people into reward but with low risk media reward and you do it. Wow. They'll love you. They'll buy the next one. They don't need to go anywhere.
Doug Lawson [00:45:24]:
Oh, people are pretty brain loyal once they're getting to the raid trip a little bit. And I've always been lacking the early stuff for a lot of people.
Nick Bennett [00:45:33]:
I mean the volume is certainly there. So I'm with it. I'm excited to see how it goes. Let me know when that course is ready my friend. I can't wait to support you on it.
Doug Lawson [00:45:42]:
Thanks for having me brother.
Nick Bennett [00:45:48]:
Hey Nick, again and thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this episode, you can sign up for the 1000 routes newsletter where I process the insights and stories you hear on this show into frameworks and lessons to help you you build a new and different future for your own business. You can sign up at 1000routes.com or check the link in the show notes. What would be your last meal on earth?
Doug Lawson [00:46:17]:
It would be a big juicy bacon cheeseburger with french fries and cheese chopped. If you bring Chicago, you know Chicago food, it'll be portero, so I'll be ordering Portillo Big Shower Burger with cheese sauce on the fat.
Nick Bennett [00:46:36]:
Are they. Do they cook it to order like medium rare?
Doug Lawson [00:46:39]:
It's not cooked to order. It's fast food but it's old chart on the grill. You can see the fighting coming out. You get a noise crust on your burger.
Nick Bennett [00:46:52]:
You can't. You can't go wrong with a juicy burger. A lot of people will have a cheeseburger as their last meal. The cheese fries though, is where.
Doug Lawson [00:47:01]:
It's where you get why the hell cheese fries than the cheeseburger. But I kind of feel guilty if I just order cheese fries and nothing else, so I gotta get both. But if it's up to me, I'm gonna be just different. I don't want the cheese fries holding my to get really salty. I just put it on the side. Let me dip it. And I just dip it by myself.
Nick Bennett [00:47:23]:
This is the hack. You put the cheese sauce on the side. Bacon cheese fries or just regular cheese fries?
Doug Lawson [00:47:28]:
Regular cheese fries. Yeah. Just keep it simple, brother. Keep it simple.