Dear Reader,

How are your leads?

In the good ole days, a digital lead was inexpensive. There were 3 paid ads at the top, and a list of highly recommended companies based on Search Optimization.

Yes, a man could make a living on less than $2,000 a week in digital ad spend. And if a man had $5,000 a week, well, he could flat-out grow as big as he wanted!

Remember those earlier and wonderful days of digital marketing?

Do you miss those days? Sorry, friend, they’re gone—and they’re not coming back.

Your $2,000 a week is but an appetizer for the insatiable appetite of the Google corporate machine.

And while it’s less than a snack to Google, Google is still going to eat your lunch—and sharpen its teeth on your wallet.

Pull up Google, search for your category of service, and tell me what you see. Go ahead… then come back here.

… What did you see on your side?

Let me tell you what I see:

  • Three sponsored ads at the top of the page. All three owned by Private Equity.
  • An AI overview defining Air Conditioning Repair, with a link to Angie’s List and a recommendation to “get bids.”
  • Four more sponsored ads.
  • A “People Also Ask” section about price—each answer priming the client to think cheap. (That’s in Google’s best interest. It sends their money-maker back to their site.)
  • Three DIY videos on YouTube.
  • Reddit recommendations.
  • Five SEO posts. (One from Home Depot and one from Yelp.)
  • And finally… four more sponsored posts.

You know what I don’t see? You.

Hit refresh and you’ll get a new list. Guess what? You’re still not on it—unless you paid for a sponsored ad.

Now, do one more thing: search your company name. Go ahead… I’ll wait.

Did you see what I see?

  • Your Google Business Page, dominating the right-hand side.
  • One sponsored ad that isn’t yours.
  • An organic post from your website.
  • A Yelp review link to your company.
  • Two Facebook posts linked to your page.

Do you know what this means, Dear Reader?

If you aren’t branding in a way that makes people search for you by name, then you are doing it all wrong.

Stop fighting for scraps. Start building a brand that gets searched for.

When you’re ready to do it right, click here.

When you are ready to do it right, then click here.

 

 

Watch / listen above or read below.

Todd Liles: Today we’re gonna talk about Google and the truth about search advertising. And just for the listener, the last episode that we did, we touched on this and it was extraordinarily powerful. We even broke down a case study. But we know that this is a big question. What is search advertising? How does radio impact that? Why does it matter?

Roy Williams: Radio and TV.

Todd Liles: Radio and TV.

Roy Williams: Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Todd Liles: Yes, yes. And because I love forecasting, we have TV as a future topic coming up very soon.

Roy Williams: Good.

Todd Liles: So I wanna jump into it, and if the listener is interested, Roy, these are coming from your memos. Here’s the title of the memos, which I will put in the show notes. You don’t have to go searching for them. Just go to toddliles.com, find this episode, you’ll have the show notes with the direct connection to Roy’s Monday Morning Memos. They are…

The goal is differentiation. How quickly will my ads start working? Unbranded search the Yellow Pages. Roy, let’s jump straight into it. You talk a lot about being the default choice. Why is this so powerful, specifically in the world of search advertising?

Roy Williams: Okay. Search advertising, whether it’s Google or any other search engine, is simply the new Yellow Pages. Anybody that’s old enough to remember the Yellow Pages, if you know the name of the company you’re looking for, you’d look it up in the White Pages. If you were looking for Morris Jenkins, you would look under M for Morris, right?

Todd Liles: Exactly.

Roy Williams: Now, if you’re looking for air conditioning repair, you would look in the Yellow Pages under A for air conditioning repair. Now here’s the problem, when you search by the name of the category, which is Google, and it’s the Yellow Pages, the only thing that we can know for sure is you do not have a preferred provider in that category.

Todd Liles: Wow.

Roy Williams: You’re searching for the category, which tells us a second thing. You believe everyone in this category is equal. And the only thing that separates these people is the price. And so whenever you look under P for plumber, you believe all these people are equal. Now that’s gonna be an unbelievably…

And it was Ryan Chute who taught me this, one of our partners. Ryan said, the difference between low CAP and high CAP keywords, and I said, dude, I’ve been doing this forever. What the hell is a cap? He says, C stands for conversion.

Todd Liles: Yes.

Roy Williams: A stands for average sale. P stands for profit margin. And so whenever I was talking to him about branded and unbranded keywords, he said, yeah, one of those is low CAP and one of those is high CAP. And so when you type in air conditioning repair or you type in hot water heater replacement, you’re basically saying, all I know is the category I’m interested in, I have no preferred provider.

And so a bunch of people are gonna get clicked, a bunch of people are gonna pay a lot of money for that click. It’s a very expensive click. And everybody that gets clicked is gonna have a very low conversion rate. They’re gonna have a very low average sale and a low profit margin if they get the sale. Why?

Because the only thing these people are looking for is somebody that can come right away and give them a really cheap price. And if that… If you don’t answer those two things for them, you’re not getting the deal, which is a race to the bottom. And so the people that are willing to spend way more money than you and they believe, well, I’m gonna spend a whole lot of money to get that customer, then I’m gonna keep that customer. No, you’re not. That’s a pipe dream.

Todd Liles: Right.

Roy Williams: You know why you’re not gonna keep the customer? Because a person that you can win for reasons of price alone, you can lose for the same reason just as quickly. The person that will come to you for reasons of price alone, will switch to you from somebody else. Now remember, customers are either switchable, non-switchable or switchable for reasons of price alone.

Now a customer that is switchable for reasons of price alone, you cannot build a company on those people. Because somebody’s gonna come along, make it a little worse and sell a little cheaper and take it away from you. Now customers that are non-switchable, they have found their provider, they love that provider and they’re not gonna switch until that provider really, really screws up more than once and they will be forgiven once.

With a non-switchable customer, they may be forgiven twice, but it takes a real screw up on the part of their current provider for that company to ever be in… For that customer to ever be in play. So what you’re actually looking for is switchable customers. You’re not… And so you want to get switchable customers and make them non-switchable.

But you don’t make customers that are switchable for reasons of price alone, you can’t make them non-switchable. You got to find a switchable customer. You have to say the right thing, the right way to get a person to switch from their current provider or to switch from just typing in the category and to switch to typing in your name.

When they type in your name, that ain’t the Yellow Pages, baby, that’s the White Pages. And now when they type in your name and your name pops up, they click it. Even if it was number seven on the list, even as number eight on the list. Which is why I say, when you’re doing a customer bonding campaign, when you are becoming the name they think of first and feel the best about, through repetition and customer bonding language, messages, poetry if you will, when you’re telling stories that are new, surprising, different and memorable, now all of a sudden they go to Google, they type in your name because they’re looking for you by name.

And you always have an unlimited budget to buy your own name. You know, what’s a pretty cheap click? Your name. You don’t type in air conditioning repair, you don’t type in hot water heater replacement. You just say, when they type this name in there, in this trade area, yeah, you have an unlimited budget for me to show up, they’re looking for me. Never have a daily budget on your own name. Does that make sense? Just be…

Todd Liles: Never have a daily budget on your own name.

Roy Williams: See, everybody has a daily cap or a weekly cap on their spend. On your own name, don’t have a cap, asshole.

Todd Liles: Thank you.

Roy Williams: Does this make sense?

Todd Liles: Yeah. That was unclear to me. You’re saying, actually do have money that you’re putting on your own name, just don’t limit it. If someone’s willing to go look…

Roy Williams: You need to have an unlimited budget on your name.

Todd Liles: Thank you.

Roy Williams: 24/7, if they type your name into Google, you need to show up. Why? Because if you don’t, somebody else will.

Todd Liles: Yeah. And just for clarity, Roy wasn’t calling me the asshole.

Roy Williams: Yeah, I wasn’t. I wasn’t. I was just saying, if you don’t buy your own name, then either your name is worth nothing or you’re too stupid to succeed.

Todd Liles: I absolutely adore that analogy. And I know that there will be certain people of a certain age that will listen to this, like my nephew, and he won’t even get what the Yellow Pages are.

Roy Williams: I know.

Todd Liles: But he will now understand that a Yellow Page is a search by category. It’s a search for garage door repair, air conditioner repair, plumbing repair.

Roy Williams: Dentist.

Todd Liles: Dentist. And that’s gonna be really, really expensive with a really low average ticket and a really low profit margin. If they’re searching for the name of your business…

Roy Williams: They’ve already chosen you.

Todd Liles: Or your brand… They’re just trying to find you.

Roy Williams: And that’s a high conversion. High conversion click. Unbelievably high conversion. They’ve already chosen you.

Todd Liles: Already done.

Roy Williams: High conversion, high average sale. They’re not shopping. And high profit margin because they’re not shopping.

Todd Liles: Because they’re not shopping.

Roy Williams: They have chosen you.

Todd Liles: Yeah. Yeah. That…

Roy Williams: And so to move people to typing your name into Google.

Todd Liles: It’s sort of a litmus test, isn’t it? Like when you’re talking…

Roy Williams: This is why we tell our clients, look, your digital weasels aren’t gonna wanna do it because they want to show you, oh, it all works out. It all works out. It’s all pretty good. Just blend it together. It’s like, no. I want to see, what did they type into the search engine? All the people that typed our name and on ServiceTitan, you can actually isolate if you have… I don’t think it’s part of the standard program. Maybe it is today, but it didn’t used to be the last time I looked.

You can get someone who has access to the AP and they can show you the people that typed your name into Google. This is who answered the phone. This is the total price of the job. This was the profit in the job. And this is the profit you made after you paid for your Google Ad words, for your keywords. And then if you calculate your branded keywords, your name and the other recurrent phrases that you and you alone use, those keywords, if you type those brandable keywords separate from…

If you track them separate from the un-brandable keywords, unbranded, the unbranded keywords, that’s air conditioning repair, hot water heater replacement, you’re gonna find out you’re paying an enormous money for these. You have low average sale, low profit margin, horrible conversion.

Todd Liles: Right.

Roy Williams: Spend tons of money to make not that many sales. And when you put them all together, it looks okay. Don’t put them together, because when you see this starting to grow, you can cut back your ad spend. As a matter of fact, when Elmer sold Elmer’s, okay, this blows people’s mind. Doing $40 million in San Antonio at the end of 10 years. 10 years earlier, he’s a guy named Elmer with the pickup truck. That’s it. That’s it.

And so we’re just helping him. And 10 years later, he sells with generational wealth. We had Dallas and Houston both going like crazy because we could fund it from all this wonderful profits in San Antonio. And so when Elmer sold the company, we were spending less than 20,000 a month on digital. 240,000 a year on digital to drive 40 million. And you know how much we were spending on the radio?

Todd Liles: I have no idea.

Roy Williams: $430,000.

Todd Liles: A month?

Roy Williams: No.

Todd Liles: A year?

Roy Williams: A year. $430,000 net per year, plus $240k on digital. That is $690k?

Todd Liles: Even at $690k, but driving 40 million in revenue?

Roy Williams: Yeah. $700k. Yeah. That’s, whenever you know what you’re doing and you have patience. We were driving 40 million in revenue with a total ad budget of, total ad spend of $700,000.

Todd Liles: That’s mind blowing.

Roy Williams: I know. Now what I’m saying is, that kind of efficiency comes with patience and relentless commitment. And it doesn’t come overnight, and it doesn’t come quickly, and it doesn’t come in the fourth month or any of that crap. And I’m saying, when you start by making sure of one thing, Todd, this is the thing everybody has to understand.

You will always hear me say, choose who to lose. Sometimes it’s a customer with the wrong mindset. The customer is looking for something and it ain’t you. Choose to lose that guy. Do not ask, how can I sell that person? I’m going, you just don’t want to. Please don’t try to sell that person because it’s gonna screw up your brand. They are against what you stand for.

Don’t try to pretend you stand for what it is they’re looking for. The other thing, when I say, choose who to lose, I don’t care how much money you have, you don’t have enough money to reach everyone. Choose who to leave out. Because anytime somebody says, oh, we’re leaving out these people, oh, we’re leaving out those people, I’m going, yeah, you don’t have enough money. Get over it. You don’t have enough money, get over it.

If you have a little bit of money and you’re in a big town, it is way better to reach 5% of the people and own them.

Todd Liles: Right.

Roy Williams: And that takes repetition. And we’re choosing to lose at this time because we can’t afford to reach everybody else. We’re choosing to ignore the other 95% of the city because we only have enough to reach 5% properly. And anytime somebody tries to stretch a budget beyond the amount that they can actually afford to reach correctly, they will never succeed. Never.

Todd Liles: Roy, I crunched the numbers on that. You take 690,000 and take 40 million as a division, that’s 1.725%. That is amazing.

Roy Williams: Not that amazing to me. I’ve been doing it for four years.

Todd Liles: I think everybody else that’s listening to this are going, I’m spending 10 and 12%, not getting anywhere near that type of results. That is phenomenal.

Roy Williams: Well, no. Elmer spent a lot of money, parades and…

Todd Liles: And other… He reinvested in other ways.

Roy Williams: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It just… Just, whenever you’re making crazy, crazy profits, you start doing fun things simply because you can afford it. He decided… By the way, I didn’t tell him to. I didn’t care. You know why I love Elmer? It’s his money. He owns the company. He had just told me one day, hey, guess what I did? What’d you do, Elmer? I became the major sponsor of the San Antonio Spurs. What’s that cost? 1.2 million. Okay.

And he goes, put together some TV ads to run during the San Antonio Spurs games. Cool. We put together some incredible ads. Never asked me if I thought he should do it. I never told him I had an opinion. He’s got the money, I created the ads. He’s a hero. I guarantee they would elect him mayor today. I guarantee it. If he would run for mayor, they would elect him mayor. And so I just go, all right.

And so with the unspent money, most clients figure out a way to spend it, or something to spend it on, and they’ll buy a jet and call it advertising expense. You know, or something, write it off. I don’t care. My job is just to do what I do incredibly well. And what you do with the money that’s made or that’s left over, that’s up to you.

Todd Liles: That’s still only 4.75%. That’s still… Go for it, Elmer. So this is what it says to me, is that when it’s done well, mass media can be the key to creating familiarity in a digital world that drives people to typing in your name.

Roy Williams: Yes.

Todd Liles: That’s what I’m taking away from this. And I had a whole series here. How can a small business become the familiar choice without spending a fortune? And you’re kind of already answering these questions if we’re listening closely. Which is, go deep, don’t go wide, get five or 10% of the people to go 100% of the way there with you. Don’t try to get 100% of the people, do 5% of the way.

Roy Williams: Here’s… Yes. And my publisher, Ray Bard, he’s retired now, but he owns Bard Press, a legendary publisher.

Todd Liles: Say deep and narrow, but yeah.

Roy Williams: Yeah, yeah, it’s called a well. It’s a well. And so he says, everything falls into this, one of these four quadrants. Now, left to right is how widespread is the interest. To the far left, narrow, small number of people interested, or you’re reaching a small number of people. On the far right, lots of people, up and down is how deep is the interest. So if you look at the upper left, you have a puddle, you have a small left to right, small size, very shallow.

Todd Liles: I’ll make a little drawing of this.

Roy Williams: Yes, very shallow. Number two, to the right of that, it’s very shallow interest, very shallow interest, but very wide number of people. That’s a swamp or a bayou. You know about these?

Todd Liles: Oh, yeah. Mississippi and Louisiana.

Roy Williams: Mississippi and Louisiana, bayou.

Todd Liles: Absolutely.

Roy Williams: So it looks like an ocean, but you can jump out of the boat and stand up, it comes up to your knees. You know what I mean? There’s no depth. Now, here’s what’s interesting. Width of interest, width of a reach, how many, how wide you reach, isn’t that important. How deep you go in the relationship is the only thing that matters. So if you go to the left side again, where you had the puddle on the left, you have a well on the right, a well.

You can make a fortune with a well. And then if you go to the bottom right, you have an ocean. It’s huge, wide and very, very deep. Now, in book publishing, there’s only three non-fiction categories. Only three non-fiction categories that are ocean categories, diet, sex and money. Diet, sex and money. So sales books.

The Chris Voss books, money, okay? That’s a money book. Diet, sex and money are the only non-fiction categories that are ocean categories. Advertising, so when I made number one, blah, blah, blah, Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Business book of the year and all this stuff, right? Advertising is a well, there’s very few people actually interested in advertising. But those that are interested in it, their interest goes very, very, very deep.

And so Ray was telling me about a book. I think I mentioned this once before. There’s 450,000 members in the American Quarter Horse Association. Now, back when books were selling for like eight bucks and 10 bucks, this is like 30 years ago, there was a book published, big book called ‘The Care and Feeding of Quarter Horses’. And it was $69.95. So it’s a $70 book.

Todd Liles: Alright, that’s an expensive book.

Roy Williams: Yeah. This is a crazy book. Unbelievably expensive book. $69.95, ‘The Care and Feeding of Quarter Horses’. How many copies do you think it sold? 450,000.

Todd Liles: I was gonna say 100.

Roy Williams: No, 450,000.

Todd Liles: Made a lot of money on that book.

Roy Williams: There’s… Yes, there’s 450,000 people in the American Quarter Horse Association. If you have a quarter horse and it costs money to own that horse, but forget what you paid for it, it costs money for that horse just to exist.

Todd Liles: You’re right. You’re buying that book.

Roy Williams: Pasture. Listen, 70 bucks is nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing compared to feed and pasture and barn and vet bills and tack and equipment and a horse trailer and something to pull the horse trailer with. I mean, if you own quarter horses, even one, you have got many, many, many, many, many tens of thousands of dollars invested in that horse. And a big, big, big is way more expensive than owning a swimming pool and a tennis court and being a member of a country club. It’s way more expensive than all those combined.

And I’m saying so, yeah, 70 bucks, no problem. Is it a mass market book? Nope. Does anybody know about the book that doesn’t own a quarter horse? Nope. And so that’s a well, and I’m saying, when you’re a small company, a small service company, air conditioning, plumbing, electrical, garage doors, I don’t care, don’t try to reach more people than you can afford to reach.

Make sure that your budget, instead of reaching 100% of the people and convincing them 10% of the way, reach 10% of the people and convince them 100% of the way.

Todd Liles: Love it.

Roy Williams: And it takes repetition, it takes repetition, it takes repetition. Without repetition, you got nothing.

Todd Liles: Yep. So going into that well category, I’ve only recently added cycling. I’m doing the peloton stuff to my fitness routine. And I bought these very inexpensive, you know, covers that I could put my feet in and I zip them down and then I go. But now I’m becoming more interested in actually owning the shoes that they clip in. So I’m like, okay, I’m fairly interested. So I’m starting to research that and I’m watching this video where this guy’s going over the top 10 shoe manufacturers in the world.

And then when he gets to the end, it’s specialized in lake. These are the two big high end shoe manufacturers. And he says, you know, they’re selling each of them somewhere around two million pairs of shoes annually. And I’m going, okay. And he just goes on about how great they are. Well, then I hop online. I’ve never bought shoes for cycling before. I have no idea. I still haven’t bought them yet because I have this really wide foot, which is rare in the cycling world.

So I got to find something that’ll work. But the average shoe sells for $500. And each company is selling somewhere around two million of these $500 pair of shoes annually.

Roy Williams: Wow.

Todd Liles: Because the people that are into it are into it. And these shoes are lasting thousands and thousands of miles, but after a year, they need a new pair. So they have this loyal audience and I’m going, holy smokes. They’re doing hundreds, hundreds of millions of dollars. And when you look at eight billion people in the world, cycling is pretty popular.

But the people that are gonna invest $500 in shoes is actually a really narrow well. There’s tons of other shoe manufacturers that are making very inexpensive shoes, but no one’s buying them. Well, some people are buying them, but the people that know…

Roy Williams: And then after when they can afford them, they get the good ones.

Todd Liles: Eventually they get the good stuff.

Roy Williams: Or if they stay committed to the endeavor.

Todd Liles: Yes, that’s right. So I love this well philosophy and this concept. And I think if you look at a well and I’m going back to someone that you turned me on to, you turned me on to James Michener. And I read the book ‘Hawaii’, and it starts with him talking about the formation of the island. And then eventually they’re trying to get to the water that has over millions of years have seeped into it.

And there’s a character in the story who is digging a well and one of the family lineage people is like, why don’t you put a motor on that thing? Because he was digging the well by hand, one well at a time. Clip, clip, clip. He’d built this machine. And he just cranks it, cranks it, cranks it. Eventually, after a long period of time, they hit the water. And this makes them next level uber rich because they were the only people that believed it could be done. And they just keep finding new ways to dig wells, and they use that water to grow and grow and grow more things, more pineapples, more crops, more… Et cetera. But it makes me think about the tortoise and the hare approach.

And the reason why is that, really good things often take time. But the things that take time tend to last. They tend to come in first place eventually. So let’s just tackle the mindset. I’m assuming that the listener that’s been hanging out with us by this point knows if they’re trying to get everything all at once right now, right, right now, right now, right now.

And they probably are realizing that that’s not good. So the person that’s sort of trying to get over their addiction of the fast hit, direct response, low price, something’s for sale, limited time offer, yeah, yeah, call me now. What would you say to that person when it comes to this topic that we’re talking about today?

Roy Williams: You don’t want me to answer that.

Todd Liles: I do. Go ahead. The risk of clarity is the price. The risk of insult is the price of clarity. Let’s do it.

Roy Williams: All right. A person who is a TLB.

Todd Liles: May I translate? That’s a twitchy little bastard, for those that are…

Roy Williams: So anytime somebody has this, I wanna make big things happen right now. I wanna make a whole lot of money real fast and not take any chances. Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh. I’m going, great. Do that. This is America. Go do that. That’s my advice. Go do it.

Todd Liles: Just go do it.

Roy Williams: You know why? My experience has been… Keep in mind how long I’ve been doing this. My experience has been, if you successfully talk a person out of doing that, they’re still a twitchy little bastard. They still secretly believe their idiotic thing is gonna work until they hit a wall…

Todd Liles: There you go. I was gonna ask if there’s a…

Roy Williams: Until they hit a wall and they’re… I’m not gonna say they actually wanna kill themselves. They can just think of not that many wonderful reasons to keep living. You know what I mean? It’s like, man, this is like, I have done so many things, I’ve spent so much money, I’ve listened to so many experts, I’ve listened to so many podcasts, I’ve hired so many consultants, I’ve done everything that all these people have told me and it’s just not coming together. Because, see, a twitchy little bastard can keep the dream alive.

Go to one more conference, and listen to one more inspirational talk, get some half assed advice from one more enthusiastic person, right? And I’m going, I can’t compete with that. You know why? Okay, okay. I’m just a shiny new object for those people and it always ends badly. And I’ve learned and I try to teach my partners, you have to make the decision, is this a person that I actually would like to have in my life, yes or no? And you know who the people I want in my life? This is a horrible thing for me to say on a podcast.

It’s the people that have tried so hard and it usually I need them to either be flat working their butt off and they’re flat, or better down, down three years in a row and they’re doing everything in the world they can to turn it around and they can’t. That person I wanna talk to, you know why? They’re exhausted and they’ll do exactly what I tell them and they won’t be nervous and they’ll be committed to it and it will work. But anytime somebody says, okay, okay, okay, how long is it gonna take? How long is it gonna take? How long is it gonna take?

And I’m going, at least six months. It’ll be six months before you are just… You’re gonna be out of your mind, just frantic for a few months. Okay, okay, okay. Six months and one day then and I’m gonna be rich. It’s like, nope, you know, it’s gonna take time. Now at the end of a year, you are deeply, deeply impressed. And you’re going, this is working. I’m excited. Now, getting people through that first year, that’s what I get all the money for. The second year is a joy compared to the first year, the third year you’re celebrating.

And I’m going, getting through that first year takes everything I’ve got. It takes everything the business owner has. It’s a horrible, horrible, hard, dark time. And I’m going, yeah. If somebody still secretly believes in all these little magical bullshit things they’re being told, I don’t wanna know them.

Todd Liles: I wanna speak to people that over time have become twitchy little bastards. I’m gonna give you… Like, I agree with everything that you’ve said. I wanna give one counter thought and this counter thought may actually be for our Wizard of Ads…

Roy Williams: Keep in mind I said some horrible things. I told you you shouldn’t ask the question.

Todd Liles: It’s not the horrible things. That’s not the part that I wanna counter on the thought. And I’m actually gonna speak to the Wizard of Ads partner group right now and you can listen as an observer and give your thoughts. So one of the things that I’ve realized for us, and this will totally relate, is that it’s important that we ask the question when someone calls us for the first time, can you tell us about your history with Service Excellence or with Todd?

And if they can describe that they have been reading content and listening and watching for a year or two years or three years, we understand that they know who we are. If they go, well, I just saw one of your videos. I thought it was interesting. And it’s just one, they can’t help it. They are a twitchy little bastard. So I have worked with folks for a long time and one of the things that I’ve realized is that, there is sometimes a transition to twitchy little bastard. You even said it in your words. They’ve tried this, this, this, this. They’ve believed every promise because they don’t know the promise to believe.

And then they come to a wizard, not necessarily you. Because if I’ve looked at you, I’ve probably been reading your Monday Morning Memos. I’ve probably read your books. I’ve probably taken a deep dive. If I haven’t, then go do that because they got to have a level of confidence. But maybe they talk to one of our partners and they’re asking these questions. It’s kind of risky for one of our partners to think that they are a twitchy little bastard and therefore they have no saving grace. Because the truth is, they probably are a twitchy bastard because other people have made them some promises that they bought into and it’s not turned out well.

So when they’re sitting across from a partner that doesn’t have the length and breadth of history that you have to dive into it, they got a million questions going in their mind. They’re like, even if I like this person, go, I really like this person. I really, really like this person. But I’m terrified because I like the other three people before them. How do I know that you are the guy?

So what I would say to our partners is, evidence them, be patient before we’ve written them off and make sure that their education is deep and wide. And I think this is when we have to be long term thinking. It’s like, oh, this is really their first brand experience with us. They came across with us because they read an article. They haven’t read many articles. What is your history with the Wizard of Ads? What is your history with the organization? Oh, it’s brand new? Let me send you 50 things to read.

Roy Williams: I did that recently and thank you for bringing up what you brought up. Because you know, as I will and for literally for many, many, many years, 30 years, when somebody wants to meet with me, they can call Corrine Taylor and spend 7,500 bucks and I’ll sit for them for a day. Now I’m losing money, giving up a day for 7,500 bucks. But I’ll always do it because here’s why. It’s a really weird thing. That’s a number I paid somebody 30 years ago that changed my life.

I paid him $7,500 for one day. His name was Gary Wortman. He was a CPA. He’s retired now. He was in Springfield, Missouri. I flew up from Austin to Springfield, spent a day with him. Took me a day to get there, took me a day to get home and a day to be with him. And Penny and I both went and we both talk about that day a lot. So I spent 7,500 bucks. That’s why I’ve never raised the price. So I’m gonna do exactly what Gary did. If somebody spends a whole day to get to Austin, spends a whole day with me, and a whole day to get back home.

He spent three days plus 7,500 bucks for me to sit and talk with him. And so four weeks ago, somebody came from Dallas. They’re not in home services. And it’s somebody that just deeply, deeply, deeply admires the 1-800-GOT-JUNK ads. And they track down who writes those ads and they called 1-800-GOT-JUNK. They found out this is the number for Corrine Taylor. You don’t have Roy’s number. We don’t have Roy’s number. Nobody has Roy’s number except Corrine Taylor and people named Williams. Right.

And you know it, but of course it’s you. And so Corrine gives me my schedule. Says, these people come down from Dallas and here’s some backstory on their company and blah, blah, blah, and here’s why they’re calling you. I’m going okay, so the only thing they know is, I write the 1-800-GOT-JUNK ads. So that’s where I started. I said, what do you like about those ads? And he was telling me, I said, okay, so let me tell you how those came into existence. And I told him, at the end of the day, it’s a very, very, very big company, very big, tons of money throwing, willing to give me hundreds of thousands up front and tens of thousands a month to take this account.

And I’m going, eh, here’s what I need you to do. And they’re wanting to close. Just, can we just write your check right now? I said, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. Go home. I’m unwilling to talk to you for a week. Go home, cool off. You’ve been under the spell. We spent like 10 hours together and I suck all the air out of the room for 10 hours. We’ve been talking about all these big ideas and been talking about the kinds of things you could consider and the kinds of things it would take for you to become a household word and for people to feel about you the way that you want them to feel about you.

And I’m going, I’ve told you how long it’ll take. I’ve told you what you’re gonna have to do different. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They’re already spending big money, but they’re spending big money badly. And I said, and we can’t quit doing what you’re doing right now because they’re gonna start, the new stuff isn’t gonna start working right away. And I said, it’s gonna hurt a lot. And I said, so go home. It’s gonna take at least a week for me to even be willing to hear back from you. So just don’t even think about calling me. Get distracted, go back to work. Get busy. Get distracted. And I said, and if it keeps haunting you, a week or two or three weeks from now…

Todd Liles: Yep.

Roy Williams: And I said, in the meantime, there’s three books that I’ve written that are available easily, and I didn’t give them any. If they’re not willing to go buy them. And it wasn’t about buying them for the money. I didn’t want them to think I’m trying to sell them something by giving them these books to read. It’s like, nah, track down some books, buy the books.

Go to mondaymorningmemo.com, read through 30 years of archives of the Monday Morning Memo. And I said, and then when you’re really familiar. It’s the same thing you want people to do. They’d never… They didn’t know anything about us, really. They spent one day with me. What can you know in a day? And so finally, after about three weeks, they called back and they talked to Jake, which is the president of Wizard of Ads, and Jake knew about the meeting and he knew what I had told them.

And they said, yeah, we still wanna move forward. And Jake says, well, all right, let me talk to Roy and make sure he’s up for it. And I probably will. But the point is, these guys needed a cooling off period. They needed to go deeper into the stuff that had been written over the years. They needed to think and ponder and contemplate all this stuff I had told them to find out if they really were. You know what I mean?

Todd Liles: Oh, yeah.

Roy Williams: So several days later, after a meeting, they can have an actual decision. They can make an informed decision. But in the heat of the moment, I never close in the heat of the moment. And everybody teaches you to do that. But I don’t wanna close. I wanna make sure we have a long term relationship that works.

Todd Liles: I love that. And so since we were talking to the partner group, I think that lesson is good for our partners, but I think that lesson is good for our coaches at Service Excellence, which is no twitchy bastards, period. We don’t want twitchy bastard clients. We don’t wanna be twitchy bastards.

Roy Williams: And you don’t want twitchy bastard customers.

Todd Liles: No, it’s like we all need to be indoctrinated and understand and have that certain amount of cool off period. Now, maybe perhaps one little caveat to that, for people that are listening that are going, wait a minute, I don’t wanna take that same approach. I don’t want my technicians taking that same approach, as it also depends by degree.

Because certain business decisions are like buying a pack of gum at the grocery store. Just buy the gum, send the guy to the class. You don’t have to analyze that to the nth degree. Just do that. But if you’re talking about putting on the ring and going into a long term relationship, take the time. Take the time. All right, let’s talk about an ad today that I just actually think is fun. Not necessarily directly connected to today’s topic, but I mean, it’s just a effing great ad. That’s a pun, which will be clear in just a moment. So, Alex, if you don’t mind, let’s give it a play.

Mike: Hi, I’m Mike, founder of dollarshaveclub.com, what is dollarshaveclub.com? Well, for a dollar a month, we send high quality razors right to your door. Yeah, a dollar. Are the blades any good? No, our blades are f****** great. Each razor has stainless steel blades and aloe vera lubricating strip and a pivot head. It’s so gentle, a toddler could use it. And do you like spending $20 a month on brand name razors? 19 go to Roger Federer.

I’m good at tennis. And do you think your razor needs a vibrating handle, a flashlight, a back scratcher, and ten blades? Your handsome ass grandfather had one blade and polio. Looking good pop pop. Stop paying for shave tech you don’t need. And stop forgetting to buy your blades every month. Alejandra and I are gonna ship them right to you. We’re not just selling razors. We’re also making new jobs.

Alejandra, what were you doing last month?

Alejandra: Not working.

Mike: What are you doing now?

Alejandra: Working.

Mike: I’m no Vanderbilt, but this train makes hay. So stop forgetting to buy your blades every month and start deciding where you’re gonna stack all those dollar bills I’m saving you. We are dollarshaveclub.com and the party is on.

Todd Liles: Roy, I don’t know. Is this a Harmon Brothers?

Roy Williams: You know, it feels like Harmon Brothers, but I don’t think it is. I think this guy, if I remember the story correctly, the guy in the ad wrote the ad.

Todd Liles: Really?

Roy Williams: And he hired a buddy. I think they produced it for like five grand.

Todd Liles: That’s amazing.

Roy Williams: And yeah, so this is a super, super, super talented guy who just had the courage to do something silly. But he also had the experience to understand how to capture and hold attention. And there is so long list of things in there that he never lets more than a few seconds go by. Three, four seconds without surprising you. Either with a word, a picture, something that it’s called… You know, there’s actually a… That type of production fits in a category known as a train wreck.

Todd Liles: Okay.

Roy Williams: In other words, there’s so many things that are not really choreographed. Like when he walks through the paper, right, that orange paper, he goes punching through right at the beginning of the ad, and it hooks around his neck and he’s kind of dragging it with him. And he acts like he doesn’t know it’s there. He never reaches over and flicks it off.

Todd Liles: Just leave it there.

Roy Williams: That happened by accident. I promise, you cannot bust the paper in a way that it wraps around your neck on purpose. But he just keep… No matter what happens, just keep doing your thing. Never pause, never break character. And I’m looking at several times where something happened, and I’m going, they say, we’ll just use that. You know what I mean? I promise, whenever the machete is gonna cut the tape and it didn’t, he just yanks it and it’s like, yeah, the machete did nothing.

Instead of cutting the tape, he’s actually just yanking it out of Alejandro’s hands and the bear doesn’t catch it. I promise, none of that was scripted. They were just shooting and the gag didn’t work. Cutting the tape with a machete and what he did was actually funnier. And they said, well, screw it, we’ll keep it. And so all of the serendipity, all the little train wreck crap that normally said, cut, got to redo that scene, he didn’t. Just powered through.

And then you realize the stuff that was unscripted and accidental was actually more captivating than the stuff you had written. And you go, oh let’s go with it.

Todd Liles: Because you see who he is as a person and you like him.

Roy Williams: Exactly. So you see who he is. It’s like he truly is just kind of improvising that. He had the basic structure figured out. I’m gonna start out here. I’m gonna get on top of these boxes and walk toward the camera. And so he had a shot sheet, but all the little gag shots, most of them went wrong. But he just powered through and made it work and just kind of go, wait a minute. This is a guy who’s just kind of out of control.

And you can’t fake that. He really was. Everything was going wrong and they just kept going. And I’m going, that’s what makes it so adorable. I remember reading a story about this. It’s a very, very, very old video.

Todd Liles: It’s like over 10 years old, I think.

Roy Williams: Easily 10, maybe 15. This was early, early success on YouTube. Early, early YouTube, which was ’97, something like that.

Todd Liles: Yeah, I’m not sure.

Roy Williams: 2005, maybe. I mean it wasn’t that long ago.

Todd Liles: I think I read this ad took them from like a million to 100 million in a year.

Roy Williams: Oh, yeah. And what I’m saying is, I remember reading a story about it at least a decade ago, maybe more. Reading a story about how that was all done. And I remember thinking to myself, yeah, this was literally just a guy out in the wild who had this idea and a buddy with a video camera. And they got together in a warehouse and, what have we got, what have we got? A bear costume and we got this chubby kind of a little Hispanic kid named Alejandro and you know, said alright.

Todd Liles: Which is a lady, but he’s calling her by a guy’s name, which I thought was also…

Roy Williams: Exactly. Exactly.

Todd Liles: Odd things all over the place.

Roy Williams: Exactly. Everything is called a train wreck. It’s literally a category called the train wreck. And train wreck ads, if you do them, they’re unbelievably authentic, unrehearsed. They’re scripted, but it doesn’t go according to script. And whenever you just power through and just keep it going and then you edit it together.

And so they probably did it 10 or 12 times and edited all the little best pieces together and created that out of it. And I’m going, yeah, that’s genius.

Todd Liles: So on our team, Asia Gregg and Adam Deatherage are probably the best at that type of ad.

Roy Williams: No kidding.

Todd Liles: Yeah, they’re…

Roy Williams: Asia Gregg and Adam Deatherage are an unlikely pair. How they ever got together is miraculous. They just kind of recognize out of the 87 partners we have now, we added three new partners you hadn’t met yet. And so they found each other and they’re both the same brand of creative crazy. And the stuff they do…

Todd Liles: Is funny.

Roy Williams: It is great. It’s like that.

Todd Liles: Yeah. Yeah. They did some great campaign work with Darrell Robinson, shared client. So really great stuff. Well, Roy, this episode ended up being a lot of fun and I think it was very clarifying and it’s probably one that when people begin to ask me questions like, hey, start here and then rewind backwards. So, Roy, here’s the last question for this episode. What’s the takeaway that you want them to have from today?

Roy Williams: Before you make a big decision, contemplate it, think about it, sleep on it, meditate on it, research it, settle it in your heart. Because if you’re gonna succeed, you have to be committed.

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