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Dennis Collins:
Welcome back to another episode of Connect and Convert, the Sales Accelerator podcast, where small business owners tune in every week to hear the latest and the greatest on how to grow sales faster than ever. Hey, today we’ve got a great topic. Hey, Leah, my partner. Hello, Leah Bumphrey, all the way from Saskatoon!

Leah Bumphrey:
That’s where I am. Good to see you.

Dennis Collins:
A week or so ago from when we were recording this, we had a hurricane here in Florida. I live in Orlando. And Leah and I were talking about something and she mentioned that her radio stations in Saskatoon were covering this. So she got the news director to get in touch with me, and I made about five appearances on Saskatoon and Regina radio stations. I am a radio star in Canada, thanks to Leah.

Leah Bumphrey:
Absolutely. As they say, it has nothing to do with you having a face for radio, but man, did you nail it? You know what? There’s nothing more important to any kind of media than reaching out and touching the people that are listening or viewing, and by you being willing to tell us what was going on, we don’t experience that. Next time we have a big blizzard and it’s minus 42 here. You give me a call, let you know.

Dennis Collins:
Anyway, in Orlando here, thankfully we didn’t get hit too hard, but really my heart goes out to the people on the West coast that got slammed twice in about two weeks. Not a pretty sight. So again, we were lucky we got some rain and some wind and flooding, but we can live with that. So thank you for making me a star.

Leah Bumphrey:
You are a Canadian star. I don’t know what that means exactly, but I know you are.

Dennis Collins:
I don’t either. I’m waiting for my check, but I won’t hold my breath. Today we’re going to delve into a gentleman that I don’t know, we were kidding before. Every time his name is mentioned, I think somebody makes money. Leah, I don’t know who it is, but we’re going to talk about deconstructing the presentation style of Steve Jobs. This man has been dissected and looked over more than any human being probably ever when it comes to what he accomplished. First of all, Leah, are you an Apple person or are you anything but Apple? What’s your preference?

Leah Bumphrey:
Phone wise, I am iPhone all the way. The three boys are all iPhone, and my husband Sean, however, he’s an IT guy, so we do not have Apple computers. If I did have an Apple, you wouldn’t be able to help me. So I’m on Windows when it comes to other technology and what’s in our house. But in terms of phone, iPhone, all the way.

Dennis Collins:
Okay, that’s good. You’re in the majority. The latest 2024 figures, take a guess. what percentage of phone users, mobile phone users in the US use an iPhone? Take a guess.

Leah Bumphrey:
You know what they say? Statistics are all made up as they’re needed. So I say more. There’s more iPhones than anything else.

Dennis Collins:
There are. It’s 60% is the number. 60% of all mobile phone users use an iPhone. How about Canada? What do you see up in Canada?

Leah Bumphrey:
We’re your kissing cousins, I think we’re pretty close.

Dennis Collins:
You are. You’re right on it. So both the U.S. and Canada are 60%, about 40% for Android phones. Worldwide though, isn’t this interesting? Look at the whole world. The total world, 71% market share for Android phones. Isn’t that interesting?

Leah Bumphrey:
Yeah.

Dennis Collins:
So in Japan, in the U.S., in Canada, 60% iPhone, but the rest of the world is flipped. So that’s interesting.

Leah Bumphrey:
Don’t tell Sean. He’s going to make me switch.

Dennis Collins:
Oh, no, don’t switch. You’re where you should be. I don’t know about you, Leah, but when I try to study something, I try to learn from the very best. Is there someone better than Steve Jobs to learn from? If so, I don’t know who that would be. Gone way too soon at a very young age. But here’s the thing. He created a legacy that lives on. So we did an episode maybe a few months ago, about style and substance. Remember that?

Leah Bumphrey:
Oh yeah, that was a good one.

Dennis Collins:
Is it the substance or is it the style? And I think Jobs can illuminate a little bit about that in what we’re going to talk about today. So what is Steve Jobs? Is he a technical genius? Is he a design genius? What do you think, Leah? Is he or was he?

Leah Bumphrey:
I don’t think so. I think he was competent based on what I read. He was good at that, but that wasn’t his real magic.

Dennis Collins:
That wasn’t his superpower, was it?

Leah Bumphrey:
No.

Dennis Collins:
Certainly he had people, he had technologists design people working with him. But Steve Jobs, his superpower was seduction. Yes, Seduction. And let me tell you why. I think that people, us people, we humans, we want products that transform, that transport. Don’t we want something to take from here to transform us? And that’s what Steve Jobs provided us. He gave us the power to change our worlds that we didn’t even know existed. This man was a visionary and a world-class presenter. We can focus on every one of his presentations is enshrined on YouTube.

I suggest if you want his best and don’t have time to look at the rest, look at his presentation on January 9th, 2007. That is considered by most people to be his most effective and most persuasive presentation. That was the introduction of the first iPhone. You weren’t even born then, Leah, you probably don’t remember.

Leah Bumphrey:
I hope I was.

Dennis Collins:
Again, can you believe it was only a few years ago? We didn’t have any iPhone until 2007.

Leah Bumphrey:
Wow.

Dennis Collins:
It’s like we’ve had ’em forever.

Leah Bumphrey:
And it’s amazing because for our kids, you say, we did not all have phones. They can’t even imagine that concept.

Dennis Collins:
How could that be? Yeah, my kids were born into a time where there was always a computer. I mean, they weren’t the computers we have today, but there were computers. And so they don’t know anything about the before computer era. They never lived it. But anyway, back to Steve Jobs, his iconic, persuasive, effective style is what sold Apple. Now, your husband being an IT guy might be able to talk about the technology. I have heard people say that the Apple technology is very good, but there is better technology out there. I’ve heard people say that.

Leah Bumphrey:
I have heard that too.

Dennis Collins:
In fact, some of my Android relatives, they had features on their Android phone that iPhone has just now putting on their latest edition. And oh, by the way, I have to confess, I have drunk the Kool-Aid. You see this?

Leah Bumphrey:
Yes.

Dennis Collins:
What do you think this is?

Leah Bumphrey:
That is…

Dennis Collins:
IPhone 16.

Leah Bumphrey:
16. I don’t think we’ve had that up here yet.

Dennis Collins:
Yeah, I just got it. And I used to be that guy that had to have it first on the first day. I’ve overcome that, but I do have to have it. So far it’s great. Except some of the systems that are going to make this really unique haven’t been released yet. So it’s going to be in a future release. So I’m still waiting, but it’s a great phone. But anyway, I have definitely all Apple. Everything in this office is Apple. I admit. I am in the cult. So what got me into the cult? Leah, we could spend today, tomorrow, the next day, and all beyond talking about it, but I boiled this down to three things that I think made Steve Jobs, the marketing genius that he was.

Number one, I like the way he was dramatic. He was dramatic. So his product launches were performances. They weren’t just speeches. They were performances. “Today we’re introducing three revolutionary products, an iPod with a touch control, a revolutionary new phone, and a new internet communicator.” That’s how he started that speech in 2007. Okay, are you getting it? These are not three separate devices. This is one device and we’re calling it the iPhone. And today Apple is going to reinvent the phone and the audience went nuts. That’s dramatic. They all thought he was going to be introducing three products. He introduced one product with three features.

What else? Number two, this man was a master of visionary language — forward looking how things are going to be. We want to make a leapfrog product, not just a new product.

Leah Bumphrey:
I like the word leapfrog. That’s a great word.

Dennis Collins:
Isn’t that a great phrase? A leapfrog product that is way smarter than any mobile device has ever been. And we want to make it super easy to use. This is what the iPhone is. Simple language, in a few words, vivid language. He conveyed a vision of what the new iPhone is all about.

Leah Bumphrey:
What I love about that language is everybody hearing it. You internalize that. You visualize yourself leapfrogging over what other people have. You make yourself smarter, and it’s super easy to use. People hear that. You put yourself into his vision,

Dennis Collins:
And that’s why he did it. So emotionally and using such great phrases and words. But the one that I like to mention third, but it maybe should be first, is his ability to tell a story. So on that day in ’07, he painted the picture of the typical frustrations that people had with most of the mobile phones that were out. Then, I don’t know if you remember those tiny little keyboards.

Leah Bumphrey:
I had a Blackberry.

Dennis Collins:
Yeah, a Blackberry. Man, my hands are too big to use that thing. The non-intuitive user interfaces – today we have apps, right? We just go to the apps that wasn’t available before the iPhone and the poor web browsing poor to no web browsing, actually nothing like a real desktop computer. So he painted that picture in story form, and then here’s how he said it. Here’s a quote. The problem is they’re not so smart and they’re not so easy. They’re not so easy to use. So if you kind of make a business school 1-0-1 graph of the smart axis and the easy to use axis, phones aren’t so smart and they’re not so easy to use. So he summed that all up in one sentence. They’re not so smart and they’re not so easy to use.

He went on and on during his career to tell some of the most compelling stories. And here’s a bonus tip. Steve Jobs always had a call to action in his presentations. He would talk about availability. When are these going to be available? He would talk about the dates, the date and time sometimes that they’re going to be available. And he would mention the prices. He put it all out there creating. Remember the pictures of people in line at Apple stores? They still are to some extent.

Leah Bumphrey:
Oh yeah.

Dennis Collins:
Remember the lines to get an iPhone? I mean, those were legendary.

Leah Bumphrey:
Well, and you know what? All the best podcasts also have call to actions. Dennis, look at our podcast. Our call to action is for our listeners to send us questions. I mean, this is why we did it, because it’s a template that works because we’re telling stories that are reflecting the frustrations and the questions that small business owners have. Then we are providing them a venue to ask a single question, but also with our discovery call, which is 60 minutes. It’s a longer segment of time where you and I will sit down with them virtually and go through possibilities. So it’s very specific, but it’s all based on the story of who you and I are and who our business owners are.

Dennis Collins:
And we also, when we do an engagement, when we finally decide to get together, this is the stuff we teach, the stuff that Steve Jobs does. Our job in our world is to deconstruct the geniuses. What did the geniuses do? And try to replicate that. They did it intuitively. Most of them. We have to work at it, and that’s what we do. We bring their genius to you.

Leah Bumphrey:
And that’s a page right out of WizardOfAds.org who sponsors our podcast. That’s where you go when you want to have those moments of clarity, where we were looking at the geniuses in literature, in music, in marketing, to see how does that impact not just business, but life. All of this comes down to you have to have everything connected together in a way where it makes sense.

Dennis Collins:
I like that. Connected together. That’s what Steve Jobs said. Let’s connect everything together. Let’s put all these three things into one device.

Leah Bumphrey:
Yep.

Dennis Collins:
Do you have an upcoming meeting, A presentation? Maybe it’s to your team. Maybe it’s to a client. I’m sure you do. We all do. That’s what we do for a living. What can we learn from jobs? He was not selling iPhones, was he? No. He was selling a lifestyle. He was selling a sense of design, a vision of the future. Here’s our challenge. Next time you have to do a presentation, pick just one of those. Maybe the drama. I love having a dramatic presentation where you don’t reveal what you’re really revealing until that dramatic moment. Or maybe you like storytelling.

Pick one. Don’t try to do all three. Pick one. Use it at your next presentation. Cut out the jargon, cut out the cold, hard facts and features and benefits and all that stuff, and the PowerPoint slides with all the points on it. Stop it. Pick one of those and see what happens. What impact is that going to have on your consumer? I guarantee you, you’ll build better emotional connections. You’ll build better brand loyalty.

Leah Bumphrey:
And when you have clarity in a presentation like that, you are going to enjoy presenting. You’re going to have clearer focus. And when you enjoy something, you just can’t help but transfer that confidence.

Dennis Collins:
And that was another point. He always had a sense of humor when he did his presentations. He didn’t take himself too seriously. And yet, this is a very serious thing, a very serious matter launching a product and hoping that it will sell. But he handled it lightly.

Leah Bumphrey:
Thank you, Steve.

Dennis Collins:
Thank you, Steve.

Leah Bumphrey:
I have a serious question.

Dennis Collins:
Yeah.

Leah Bumphrey:
I have a serious non-Steve question for you from one of our viewers.

Dennis Collins:
Okay, going to nail me now, Leah.

Leah Bumphrey:
This viewer emailed me and was very specific knowing that you and I both come from a radio background. The question, I think he thought it was challenging, but what do we consider the best media for businesses to advertise on?

Dennis Collins:
Is this a trick?

Leah Bumphrey:
I think there was a little bit of cuteness with the question.

Dennis Collins:
It’s got to be radio. I spent 30 plus years in the radio business. I mean, you’re in the radio business. No, I won’t say that because I think radio is very good for what it does. But you know what? Any medium will work if you have the right message, the message that’s relevant to your buyer, that resonates with that buyer, that causes them to say, I have got to know more about this. I have got to have this, the resonant message in any medium, in my opinion, Leah, wins the day.

Leah Bumphrey:
I think you’ve got that bang on. And that is why we tell all of our listeners and viewers to actually give us a shout. Take us up on our offer of a 60 minute. And we will tell you, oh, you know what? Because it depends. Everything always depends. And if anybody tells you something different, I promise you they’re just trying to sell you something.

Dennis Collins:
That’s true. Be very careful. It’s the message. It’s the message, stupid.  I didn’t invent that was some political consultant, but…

Leah Bumphrey:
I like it.

Dennis Collins:
I stole it. Okay, kid, we got to say goodbye for today. I hope you enjoyed the session. I certainly enjoyed bringing it to you. I hope you did, Leah.

Leah Bumphrey:
You bet.

Dennis Collins:
And we will say goodbye for now from Connect and Convert a new edition, A new episode every week. Tune in to connect and convert.

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