Episode 038:

How Pete Sold the MCG

Pete Williams:   Welcome back everyone to this week’s episode of PreneurCast, with me, Pete Williams, and my trusty sidekick Dom Goucher. Hello, buddy!

Dom Goucher:   I’m good, I’m good. “Trusty sidekick,” We’re sticking with that Batman and Robin metaphor aren’t we?

Pete:                   Yeah, well, it’s better than partner in crime.

Dom:                   Maybe, maybe; slightly more racy aspect to it, possibly less silly outfits.

Pete:                   Yes; I could call you my wingman? That’s a bit more racier.

Dom:                   I’m good with that, but before this gets out of hand let’s just get on with it. How’s your week been?

Pete:                   Well, it’s been good. Week’s been very good. A bit hot again the last couple of days here down in Australia, which is nice as it should be in the summer.

Dom:                   Hang on a minute, hang on a minute, we had like six months of “don’t talk about the weather,” because it was hot where I was and cold where you were.

Pete:                   Oh? Don’t I get to make the rules?

Dom:                   This is supposed to be a partnership!  Just hang on a minute.

Pete:                   Fair point, fair point.

Dom:                   Stick your weather, it’s freezing here.

Pete:                   Alright, edit it out in post.

Dom:                   Yeah, yeah- hey, don’t start that.

Pete:                   I am just pushing all your buttons today aren’t I, and we’re only about two minutes in.

Dom:                   Put that NLP manual down and get on with the podcast.

Pete:                   So, last week, good show. I think everybody seemed to enjoy it; feedback as usual is always great.

Dom:                   Indeed, indeed. Thank you everybody. Little detail folks, don’t forget we are still in time to get your entries in to our little Christmas giveaway, we’ll cover that again at the end. Cover that again at the end, I think, just a reminder.

Pete:                   Sounds good. But I think, yeah, the Preneur Hierarchy kind of resonated with a lot of people, which was great, sort of helping give some structure and obviously a framework which is sort of the word of the year for me at the moment anyway, to peoples’ marketing, giving them a bit more of a structure to go around. You know, working out  where they’re spending their money to bring in new business and new leads to their companies and their projects, and I think it was very good, so that was a little self-indulgent and I think today’s episode is probably going to be also self-indulgent. But yeah, so far so good with the episodes this year.

Dom:                   Yeah, no, I think the Preneur Hierarchy, other than the self-indulgent name, isn’t a particularly self-indulgent thing and it’s very, very helpful. It’s one of those things that gives people perspective. It makes you stand back and look at what you’re doing. And I think, as you say, frameworks and action plans are our watchwords for the year, and that was a really good one to start with because it also refers to the first level of the seven levers of business, insomuch as you’re looking for traffic. That’s what marketing is pretty much about.

Pete:                   Yep, absolutely.

Dom:                   And so looking at it from that perspective, it does fit in very well with what we’d been talking about towards the end of the year, and it’s certainly I think something that we’re going to probably bring to bear a lot more into our Mastermind group. We’re going to be focusing people with that Preneur Hierarchy, that’s one of the very first things that we do. So, yeah, and I also got some good personal feedback from that as well, so it was a good start. So, this week, you mentioned last week, and as you say on the thread of self-indulgence, but also in the thread of good lessons, we’re going to talk about how you sold the MCG.

Pete:                   Yeah, there have been quite a few emails from listeners who I guess their sort of first experience of yourself and myself and what we do has come through the podcast, due to all the fantastic feedback and stuff we’ve had on iTunes which has obviously helped the Podcast rank really well and get new people into the community. So a lot of people are probably aware of the tagline that I’ve had for a while about selling the MCG, which for those who don’t know is the Melbourne Cricket Ground, also known as Australia’s version of Yankee Stadium, or Lord’s Cricket Ground for those of you in the European area. So yeah, I think a lot of people have asked can they hear a bit more about how that happened and the story behind it, and some lessons and entrepreneurial takeaways that we can share from that experience. So, we thought we’d, you know, take on the request and actually do an episode and talk about it.

Dom:                   Great, well, in this particular case the stage is all yours.

Pete:                   OK. So basically, to give some history, I was living in the United States for about six months when I finished university, I sort of took some time off and travelled around the world and did some stuff over there. I came back to Australia and worked with The Athlete’s Foot, which is actually a company I’ve sort of mentioned loosely on the podcast a few times because they have some great structure and frameworks when it comes to marketing and sales and things like that. So I worked with Athlete’s Foot while I was studying at university, and the reason- well not the reason- an excuse for my trip to the United States was to actually again work with The Athlete’s Foot over there and get an idea what they were doing throughout their stores in America to bring back some reconnaissance to Australia. But given that it was winter- and not to go too much down the weather track again- I wanted to spend as much time as I could in the warmer climates of America, and it was over the Christmas period so I chose Florida and ended up staying at the same store for the whole period of time because I didn’t want to actually get anywhere near the snow. So I did that, came back to Australia with plans to move to the US. So I took a bit of an interim position again with Athlete’s Foot at a relatively new store that had just opened up and was there sort of helping them build that up. And, you know, one of the days it was a little bit quiet so I was reading a book called The One Minute Millionaire by Mark Victor Hanson and Robert Allen while I was on the counter. So obviously when you’re on the counter you can’t do a whole lot of other admin stuff except standing there and waiting for people to walk in the doors. So I was reading the book and I read a story of a New Jersey man who bought pieces of timber, or the planks of timber that were the walkway of the Brooklyn Bridge. And he made little certificates up with the history of the Brooklyn Bridge, and attached a small piece of that timber, turned it around, got a lot of exposure for that project, sold them for maybe twenty dollars a pop, and rumor has it he made a couple of million dollars out of it because of all the exposure he got. Now I thought that was just a fantastic idea, and the little Richard Branson wannabe that I was at the time, sort of started thinking about how I could replicate that concept and take the foundation of what that was and apply it here in Australia. I was an avid sports memorabilia collector; I could kind of see how that all sort of tied together. So, just realize that the Melbourne Cricket Ground had just started its renovations. It went under a pretty big renovation here in Melbourne due to the Commonwealth Games that we had here a few years ago, and realize that the seating of the grandstand or the first grandstand that had been pulled down at the time was made out of timber, so I was making a few phone calls, was able to get ahold of the wrecking company that was doing the demolition and said to them “Do you have any of the timber, what are you doing with the timber?” and they said “It’s just sitting here in our warehouse doing nothing, if you want to come and buy it, you know, by all means you’re an idiot but come and buy some secondhand timber, it’s fine.” But the guy also mentioned that he had a lot of the Melbourne Cricket Club crested carpet available sitting in the back of the warehouse getting damp and dreary and dingy as well, because the Melbourne Cricket Club was another stand that has since been demolished, so it was very old and very historic, and the waiting list to become a member there is like fifty years or something ridiculous like that, and the dining room part of that members’ area actually spread across into that first grandstand that got pulled down. So the carpet was very ugly, but it had the monogram of the logo of the MCC on there, and I knew again how famous that carpet was. So I fundamentally bought all the carpet and a little bit of the timber sight unseen with a friend’s credit card at the time because my credit card was completely maxed out after my US trip, and then went down the following day to actually double-check it all and put it on the back of a courier’s van and snatched it all up, so I guess that’s sort of the premise about how it all came about, and we sort of tied it back to lessons and stuff which is the question that spurred us onto doing this episode. I guess the key lesson out of that first thing is from the moment I read that chapter to actually picking up the phone and started tracking down the wrecking company, I would say was no more than ten or fifteen minutes. It was basically I had this idea and thought “OK, I’m going to take action on this straight away,” and started making those phone calls. So that was sort of I guess the first key lesson out of all of that to begin with anyway.

Dom:                   Wow. That is quite amazing. I mean, we do talk all the time about taking action, about implementing things, giving things a go, but that’s amazing.

Pete:                   So, it was very cool. So that’s how I sort of I guess kicked off, and from there being a sports memorabilia collector and that sort of as a side hobby or passion I kind of realized that we could easily frame up a photo of the MCG, with a piece of that crested carpet, so you know cut out that monogram and the logo and get that framed up with a small plaque outlining the history of the MCG with obviously a bit of a limited edition number as they always do with sports memorabilia. And you know, given my skill set, I am not a carpenter on any level, so basically found a memorabilia company who was quite local, worked out of his garage at home actually and had a retail store on the main street of the town I was living in at the time. And I bought quite a bit of signed memorabilia and unframed stuff while I was in the states, so I already had a bit of a relationship with this guy who was signing up all those. You know, signed boxing gloves and signed photos and bits and pieces like that. So I got ahold of him and sort of coordinated it so he’d obviously do all the manufacturing because I just you know had no skill set around that. My next door neighbor at the time was an ex carpenter, so he cut all the timber that we purchased into the frame, so the actual frame itself for a limited edition number of those pieces was actually framed out of the timber that was the MCG as well as having the carpet piece in the whole piece that was being sold. So he was able to do that, had the timber and the carpet literally just sitting at this framer’s home garage, and he basically made the frames on an on demand type basis, which is really nice.

Dom:                   Cool. And another lesson there, which is outsourcing.

Pete:                   Yeah! Except that was, you know, I guess my first real-world experience with outsourcing in that I didn’t have that skill set in place, but I didn’t let that stop me for wont of a better sort of analogy there. And what we actually did is, even a bit of a higher lesson we can see how this all sort of fits in, with the sales every sale was with a two to three week delivery and lead time, which gave us enough time to actually produce the frame and send it to the recipient, and meet that demand. We actually set their expectations up front saying “Due to the demand it is going to be two or three weeks delivery time from your order, so please bear with us in terms of delivery,” so that actually set the expectation right for the end purchasers so they weren’t wondering where their goods were. Obviously we had a limited amount of carpet so we weren’t selling something that we didn’t already have and people were aware that the frame were being made as we were going because of the demand. So what that actually meant was that I got paid up front, so we charged the credit card the price of the frame before we even had the actual production underway, so that way I was able to make the whole project cash flow positive from day one, so that way we got the order in and I literally had that order, sent the details through the phone who then made the frame, boxed it up, packed it up, and the courier came and picked it up from the framers, and still does now- it’s now a different framer for the frames we’re still selling- and I didn’t have to do anything. I could literally, for wont of an analogy that’s being used over and over again, sit at home in my underwear and run my business.

Dom:                   Well, that’s basically drop shipping.

Pete:                   Exactly. It’s outsourcing and drop shipping the whole thing.

Dom:                   How old were you?

Pete:                   I’d just turned 21.

Dom:                   And after reading this book, seeing the opportunity, you made the call, you went down there, you got the carpet, you put all of the different processes in place, and you actually really hadn’t done that much work, had you? I mean, you’d done the thinking, you’d done the legwork to go get the carpet, do the deal, and you found the people, but that was it.

Pete:                   It was basically just project management. Probably the best cap you could probably put on my head if you want to look at it that way was project manager. I was just coordinating the whole project so it would run smoothly.

Dom:                   Amazing.

Pete:                   And then I had that system in place, that framework in place to then focus on the marketing because from my perspective it wasn’t about the product so much. Obviously we had a great framer and still work with a great framer who looks after all that and puts a great product together, but for me it wasn’t necessarily about the product, it was about marketing the product.

Dom:                   And that’s what I love about this story is there are two halves to it. There’s the taking action and the process that you did to put the opportunity together, the thing that you can sell, the product yeah? And how you leveraged everything to get that done. But the other part that is equally as interesting if not more interesting to a lot of our listeners, it is the marketing. But I don’t want people to overlook that first part, the making of the product, the having the idea and then bringing in the people to get it done, to leverage what you’ve got. You know, you did the project management, you found the people and you know what you wanted them to do, but you got the experts to do it including building and shipping.

Pete:                   And that’s the part of the story that I haven’t shared as much as the other side, because obviously you know the sexy side of all this is I found the idea and I turned around and sold it, but there’s the real sort of I guess ‘business lessons’ which are kind of boring for the general public so to speak, such as how we were able to structure a business, and I say we because I did have a partner in that who sort of helped me get the credit card to access to buy the carpet originally and sort of had a bit of time on his hands to actually help coordinate and all that sort of stuff, so a big shout out to Bruce who I know listens to the podcast as well. So the business is structured very particularly for those reasons, because I didn’t have the skill set of making the frames, I didn’t have the time to make the frames or time necessary to do the deliveries and stuff like that because I was still working Athlete’s Foot you know thirty-five forty hours a week. So it was really a deliberate structure set up because the limitations forced us to put the business in place that way and build the system around it because of the limitations that we had.

Dom:                   Absolutely. And I think the great thing about this is that it’s got so many parallels in so many different businesses. It’s not just that it was a physical thing that “Obviously you’re not a carpenter, obviously you can’t make it yourself, blah blah blah blah.” You know, this maps all the way up to say what you or I do, what I do for you in your business right now, where you actually could do some of the things that I do in terms of the media production, but now you have all the businesses that you’ve got to run, you’re still at that project manager level, you’re coming up with the idea and the core content, we’re talking now back to the content leverage system piece that you did for the Noble Samurai guys if anybody’s interested in looking at that, but literally your input into that process once you designed the actual concept of the product is just to sit down with a mind map and record some audio. You put that initial piece of effort in and then after that you’ve put together a team of people that convert it and mold it and build it and make it into the actual product, albeit video, audio, text, things like that, and distribute it for you. So you’ve taken exactly the same concept and looked at your business and what you can best put into it, and what you also that don’t need to get involved in, and you’ve outsourced the rest. So it’s an incredibly valuable business lesson, to look at opportunities from that point of view, in my mind.

Pete:                   Absolutely. I’m gonna try and take that as a backhanded compliment saying I’m lazy. But moving on from I guess the structural side of things which was really important for the success of it for me, is obviously the whole marketing side of things as well. I guess the real key driver, at least for the initial influx of sales by any means, was mass media exposure I was able to get from that. I wrote a press release with the headline ’21 Year Old Sells the MCG for Under $500’, and sent that out to a whole bunch of media that’s around Australia and got so much radio coverage, so much metropolitan newspaper coverage, some TV coverage on the national news and that was just a huge wave of exposure that not only obviously got traffic so to speak to the business, but also a great way to sort of build the brand around the MCG project and also my brand to a certain extent as well which was just fantastic.

Dom:                   I love that headline. It’s absolutely- it is a classic, classic headline from back in the good old days of advertising and marketing. But the more interesting thing there, and I think the thing that quite a lot of listeners at that point would have gone and literally have stopped dead in their tracks, you offhandedly say “And I sent a press release out,” and I know- you and I worked on your going analog product which was my really detailed look into how you do these things- but it’s not really as hard as people think, is it?

Pete:                   No, no, it’s not, and it’s probably worth a whole episode in its own right about publicity and stuff. Like, a lot of people these days are sort of teaching PR and that sort of stuff, and I think it’s a very valuable tool, and we can definitely- let’s do next week’s episode, we’ll delve into PR in a much deeper level and we can sort of lay out the foundation and how to actually get that exposure for a business, creatively being proactive, and also some really cool ways to be reactive and get media exposure as well which is something that a lot of people don’t talk about too. So we can definitely delve into that next week on the PreneurCast.

Dom:                   Cool, that would be great. I was going to say I just flagged that, didn’t want to interrupt your flow, but I flagged that because people I know for myself if before I met you and before I studied some of this stuff that you’ve done, if somebody had said “Just do a press release,” that would be it, I would switch off.

Pete:                   Yep. Yeah, absolutely understandable. We’ll delve into this, but this was definitely the big crux for the initial launch anyway, was the exposure that press release got me and it was fantastic, so that was a good way and then obviously we had a website and did all the usual marketing kind of stuff, probably not to the same level that I do these days and definitely not doing these days. I think we did leave a lot of exposure and a lot of traffic on the table. We did do some very traditional magazine adverts, definitely the Preneur Hierarchy wasn’t around as a framework to lean on, so we sort of had the PR sort of stuff, but then jumped very much towards the high end pointy part of that pyramid there and did some media exposure, some advertisements, and it completely bombed. Absolutely bombed. So that was a good lesson very early on to sort of make sure that you target the bottom high ROI elements of the Preneur Hierarchy before you sort of go and do mass media advertising, because it’s definitely a waste of cash in most circumstances.

Dom:                   Definitely. And not only just a waste of cash, but also it’s so difficult to track it by comparison.

Pete:                   Yeah, you’re exactly right, exactly right. So that was a good lesson, and we continue to sell the frames now, and actually did a relaunch of the whole project about 12-18 months ago now, did quite a significant relaunch of all of that which was a huge success second time around, and kind of did it a completely different way which was very cool.

Dom:                   And that’s been almost half the questions from my side looking at the feedback about this, have been; OK, well you did this quite a few years ago now, and then you did the relaunch, and then the questions have been around, you know, what have you done differently the second time around, and also if it’s different what would you do differently again if you did it now? That’s one of the things that I’m interested in, because you’ve learned a lot. As you said, the first time around you did the spray and pray with the magazine adverts, and you’ve learned something from that, the origins from the Preneur Hierarchy even came out of that.

Pete:                   Absolutely.

Dom:                   So what did you learn, what did you apply second time around?

Pete:                   Yeah, sure. Well, it’s a bit of a loaded question too, makes you know we’ve been working on the third relaunch, that’s slightly a loaded question but I like where you’re going with that, mate. So, in terms of what we did second time around is we did a traditional product launch. So if you go back and listen to some previous episodes of PreneurCast; I’m not sure what episode number it was, but we actually did a whole episode on Product Launches, and I think we touched a little bit on the relaunch that we did for the MCG stuff. So what we did in a nutshell, not to sort of recap too much or regurgitate stuff we’ve already covered here on the show, but I did a traditional launch where I had a squeeze page, which was a website page we set up over at OwnTheG.com.au and had a video there with me just sort of explaining what the product was all about and how people had the opportunity to own a piece of the Melbourne Cricket Ground, it’s going on sale in a couple of weeks, it’ll be open and launch shortly. If you want to get on the early bird list and have access to the frames before the general public- there’s only X amount of frames that are going to be available- put your name and email address onto this website now and you’ll be on that prerelease notification list. And then that was fun to me too, the start of the launch, and sent a lot of traffic to that site by doing forum advertising, online banner advertising, a little bit of pay per click sort of stuff from an AdWords perspective, and drove a lot of traffic to that site; did a little PR again and got some exposure on radio and print media as well, second time around using just a slight tweak of that original press release, and drove a lot of traffic to that site originally and built up a brand new community from scratch in a very short period of time. And then over that two week period as we got everything in place to do the relaunch because we changed framers, I moved from the old framer to another framer, a larger framer who could handle a lot more demand at a cheaper price point closer to me where I am now in Melbourne, and got all those systems in place as well to get all that organized and made sure they go about it- do the same sort of structure that I wanted, and they’d been actually doing stuff like boxing and delivering and all that sort of stuff for me too, so I made sure that was in place. But over that two week period, what we actually did was do a number of marketing pieces to the community to build up their demand, let them get exposure and excitement around the availability to own a piece of the MCG. So, did videos of me at the framers discussing with the framer the frame being made, you could actually see the high quality frames and the love and care that went into making a piece of Australian sporting history; wrote some emails back and forth explaining all the comments we had been getting and feeding it back into the community. Did a really fun video where I actually jumped onto a bunch of competitors websites, other people who sell sports memorabilia, and did a video of me walking through their website, going “Look at this, it’s a manufactured cricket bat signed by the athlete, there’s 2000 of them, and they’re selling them for $1500 each. It’s completely manufactured, there’s no authenticity in this really. Yes, the autograph is personally signed, that’s authentic, but the limited editionness, for want of a better word, has been manufactured, whereas you know the MCG carpet, the piece of carpet that you’re going to own shortly, which is going to be available, is 100% authentic sporting history, it’s not a manufactured piece on any level,” so sort of built up that demand, set the price point expectations quite high of what other people who are selling this manufactured- got to be careful what word I use- the manufactured sports memorabilia is selling at quite a high price point. So when I showed them that hey, here’s a chance to own something authentic at a much cheaper price point, it was just an obvious easy purchase for them to make because they felt like they were actually buying savings, or buying money at a discount is what Dean Candy refers to it as, because our buying site that should be valued at a lot higher or is valued at a lot higher, so they’d be silly not to do that because they’d actually be leaving money on the table, and that’s the whole, you know, selling to sales mentality. So that’s sort of how we did that and did that four or five piece marketing sequence leading up to the launch of it, and then obviously the day that the frames are ready to be made available and had the shopping cart open, obviously had quite a lot of demand built up and sold a significant number of frames in that first four or five hour period because the demand was built up, the relationship with that community that I made was built up and you know they were absolutely limited edition pieces of history that were at a very, very good price point.

Dom:                   Excellent. I just love the fact that that second time around you applied a lot of the product launch stuff that we talked about. It was Episode 27, by the way, that we talked about the product launch; I put a link in notes. But I think that you made a difference, a significant difference, and I just want to talk about a couple of those things from different perspective. First of all, the building, the anticipation I think was quite a significant part of that, and those sales. But also involving and building like a miniature community by talking to them, by communicating with them, by being quite open really. I’ve looked at a lot of the media that you’ve produced and it is that kind of insider knowledge that behind the scenes, look at what we’re gonna give you, really giving them an experience of the product before they actually get it, and these are all things that are important when you’re doing marketing. They’re all big marketing lessons, and you made to kind of cram them all into this one launch. The other thing- I’m always big on this, you know that I am- the other thing, you offhandedly say twice “Oh, I made a video.” What I think is great about those videos is one of them, the one where you talk about the other peoples website is literally a recording of course computer screen which you can get a standard piece of software to do, you can use something like Camtasia on the PC or Screenflow on the Mac, or there’s hundreds of pieces of software now every day coming out that will let you do that very very easily, and you literally just sat at your computer, went to a website, and talked about what was in front of you. That was it. And when you went to the framers- again, you probably had a flip camera back then-

Pete:                   It was indeed, yup.

Dom:                   But these days you know, iPhone or your favorite Android device is a perfectly sufficient camera to just do one of these. Everybody accepts it’s a behind the scenes thing, and I’m just going to say it now, I’ve been dying to say it, but all this is about framing- I’m sorry. It’s been there. But it’s really psychological framing, we talk about it a lot, everything you’ve been doing has been about- about talking about it been about framing. You let people know that this was a behind the scenes video, so they expect shaky camera. They don’t expect perfect lighting, microphone, and full camera crew, they expect you on your camera phone going in and chatting to this guy who looks like a deer in the headlights because he’s never been in front of a camera before. You know, you tell them you’re looking at a website, that’s what they expect to see, nobody expects perfect production if you frame it, and then all this goes towards the big frame which is, as you said, look what people are manufacturing out there at this price, this is an accepted piece of sports memorabilia in the marketplace, this is a popular piece, it sells well for this price at this quality level; I’m going to exceed that quality level, in fact I’m showing you I’ve exceeded the quality level because you can see me making it, and I’m not going to charge you that price,” and the implication there is “But I should,” and it’s just a fantastic setup, a great example of framing and positioning, a real example of building a tribe, building anticipation, it’s just really honestly you need to go back and listen to this again almost if you happen to be taking notes, to just write down and look at it and identify all the things that we’ve probably talked about up until now in all of our podcasts. I think this one thing embodies pretty much all of those things.

Pete:                   It just really was very much planned out to have all the elements we cover in various episodes into that marketing launch, and it was a huge success. I think a key part of that was Robert Cialdinis’ influence factors as well, that video was where I sat in front of the computer screen and showed a competitor’s website covered a lot of thing that Cialdini talked about in his book Influence, and you know, social proof showing that this memorabilia piece was sold out, there was 1000 units produced, manufactured, 1000 of them sold for $1500 each. It proves there’s demand in this marketplace for, in my opinion, subpar memorabilia. So imagine that the demands going to be like here. We covered a lot of that sort of stuff; commitment and consistency was there, in a lot of elements as well. Social proof, demand, all that sort of stuff, it was just covered off a lot, and I think, you know, after we do publicity next week let’s actually go and really delve into Cialdini’s influence factors and actually talk about it in a couple of different ways, we can kind of get a lot of examples for people how they can use the influence factors in different pieces of marketing, we can talk about it from the MCG relaunch, we can talk about it from online marketing, we can talk about using Cialdini’s influence factors as a filter or as a framework for picking marketing tools, so there’s a number of different ways we can talk about influence factors because that is a key underlying thing in this launch as well.

Dom:                   Oh, that’s going to be absolutely fantastic. I’ve really- I’ve been waiting for this, because you are great at implementing those influence factors. But one thing I also just want to say, because what we’ve done is we’ve taken a product launch there going out to the regular customers, regular people on the street, and we’ve broken it down and we’ve said we did this on purpose, we did this on purpose, we did this on purpose, and what I get from this, and this is something that comes back to a question somebody else was asking in a forum I was on earlier on today; if you look at the MCG launch both times around, if you stand back from it, you don’t know me, you don’t know Pete, you have no history in this and you look at the MCG launch, I don’t think you would necessarily have spotted the intentional marketing tactics that were used, and this is why I really really like this Pete, this is why I like this as a benchmark example of how to do, how to implement some of these tactics because it was a planned out launch, it was a planned out marketing campaign but it doesn’t look like implemented sales tactics, it doesn’t look like intentional mind-twisting psychological tricks, because it wasn’t. You were genuinely informing the audience, you were genuinely giving them information that would help and inform them in the sale. You were basically doing another thing that we talked about briefly is consultative selling, but you were doing it in a structured manner so instead of being a scummy marketer who’s scheming against his potential customers, which is how a lot of marketing is perceived, and this is a big thing for me, it’s really important that this thing comes out, a lot of people perceive sales and marketing as a scummy thing that you do to take money off people that wouldn’t otherwise give you money, and the MCG launch was just a structured marketing approach to inform people so that they could decide whether they wanted to or not, and yes you used influence techniques to encourage them and to keep them in the funnel, but that was it. It was- I just think it was a positive example of marketing and sales, using sales and marketing tactics that we’d talked about, and it is important because some people are against this idea, some people are against using marketing tactics in convertor comments, because of that, and I personally think that if you can do it ethically and do it well, there’s no need to be against it because you’re in business.

Pete:                   Absolutely, I think you summed it up perfectly and this is I guess sort of to answer the second part of your question is where is it going now, what’s happening next with the MCG stuff?  And what I’m trying to work out a way to do ethically as you just so clearly defined there is work out a way to make that launch what’s termed evergreen, so when someone comes to the OnTheGreen.com.au site in the future they get that squeeze page again and go through that same launch sequence before they’re actually able to buy the frame. Now obviously I have to work out the right way to frame each of those videos and each of those emails, each of the steps in that launch sequence, so they go through that, so they understand or it’s at least clear for those who want to see it that this is an evergreen launch, it’s not actually a closed sequential launch or a dated launch like the original one which we did last year was. That, you know, no matter when they come to the site, if it’s 2AM on a Saturday or 3 o’clock on a Wednesday afternoon, that they opt in and get those same emails in an automated sequence one day, two days, three days after they opt in. So that’s one thing we’re trying to work on at the moment is make that launch sequence which worked so effectively transparent and ethical so it can be evergreen. And that’s I think what a lot of people don’t do when they actually turn their launch sequences evergreen is they still say that they used incorrect language that can be easily misconstrued or misleading to say that, you know, it’s not going to be released to the general public for four more days whereas where actually it has been released, it’s just not available to you right now until after you go through my marketing sequence. What we’re trying to work on at the moment is a way to do that and we’ll mention in a future podcast when it’s actually evergreen and available, then they can actually go through it and experience it themselves to actually sort of see what it’s like and actually to sort of experience for themselves to actually sort of see what it’s like and actually to sort of experience from the consumer side of things.

Dom:                   Yeah, definitely. That would be a great thing for people to have a look at. And it’s a tip, anyway, is to go through other peoples marketing sequences, it’s something that we haven’t really talked about, but if you want to see how people do it go and have a look how people do it. Sign up, go through the websites, go through the process, obviously not necessarily buy the product as it were, but go through, get on their mailing list, and see what other people are sending out, see if you can learn something from it. You know, all of this started because Pete, you read that business idea from the book, The One Minute Millionaire, that was one business idea that you read, you took it, you ran with it, you found another opportunity, but you can find marketing ideas by looking at what other people are doing.

Pete:                   Exactly, and let’s get a bit granular and a bit techie in terms of a good idea of how to actually make that email signup effective without clogging your inbox. This is sort of I guess completely off topic but very granular and technical which I know a lot of listeners really like, the sort of technical implementable workflow profit hack type thing. So, one thing a lot of people don’t know is what you can do with Gmail if you’re using a Gmail account is actually add a parameter to your email address that fundamentally gives you a second or new email address that you can apply a filter to. So let me walk through that to actually give some understanding to what I just said then. Let’s say for example your email address is PreneurAdmin@gmail.com, that’s your email address, and what you wanna do, you wanna sign up to a marketing list to learn from or swipe and deploy, swipe the tactics you’re using and deploy them in your own campaigns. So what you can do, if you actually signup to that marketing sequence with the email address PreneurAdmin+Swipe@gmail.com that email address will still actually work for you, those will come to your normal Preneur group Gmail inbox. But what you can do then inside Gmail is set up a filter, whenever an email comes through with that +swipe parameter to automatically filter that out of your inbox and put it into another folder or label marked swipe file. So it’s not there in your inbox to clog up your day to day productive time management, or critical focus or GTD type process, but it’s there for you to look at on a Thursday afternoon at 4 o’clock when your critical focus time is to actually swipe and deploy. So you then go into that folder and see what’s coming in that scenario, so that’s I guess a really granular way to implement that without it getting and affecting your current workflow.

Dom:                   Absolutely. I actually got that tip from Merlin Mann a huge number of years ago for tidying up inboxes by adding the little plus after your original name and then putting something in there, and I use it all the time, but just to really add the detail because I want not to be so vague about certain things: First of all, folks, if you don’t have a Gmail account they’re free, and if you’re going to sign up for other peoples stuff, get a Gmail account, really. And then it really does isolate; if you’re already using a regular address, you know, me@myDomain.com then even better, create a Gmail account and then that can be your marketing and research one and it keeps it off to the side until you allocate the time to go and do your swipe and deploy as Pete said, so that’s one thing. But if you’re already using Gmail and it’s your primary email address, then once you put into their autoresponder box, you know, into your email box, you know, PreneurAdmin+Swipe@gmail.com in your email account, because Gmail has really upgraded this now, you can very very easily- you can create what’s called a filter, which is a way of getting things straight out of your inbox, and it can now actually be done from the search box at the top of the Gmail window. You literally type the search in and there’s a little down arrow at the right hand side, and I know I’m getting really technical, but it’s actually not because you can do this while you’re listening. There’s a little down arrow on the right hand side which most people don’t see of that search box, you drop that down, it drops a box down and at the bottom of that box it actually says “Create filter with this search,” and that’s it. You can then set up for it not to hit the inbox, for it to have stars against it, whatever. You can use filters- very powerful tool- for lots of different things, but to implement this very specific thing you literally just go to Gmail, type in the address that you just gave to that opt-in box, click the little down arrow on the right-hand side of the search, and hit create filter with this search and tick the options that you want it to do. That’s it, and you’re done. And it won’t go straight into your main inbox, you can get it to go away to one side for later processing, and away you go. So that’s a great tip, Pete, and it’s really good.

Pete:                   And I think that leads us perfectly into your action tip for the day. I reckon we should encourage people to set up some sort of swipe and deploy filter in their marketing, maybe therein, you know you could have you know PreneurMarketing+Newsletters, so all your newsletters that you subscribe to, except for our one of course because ours is clearly the most valuable that you should get and you should be reading it every single day when it comes into your inbox, but everybody else that’s distracting you from your goal because they don’t give you frameworks and action points and things like that, move them out of your inbox using a filter or set up some swipe & deploy type campaigns. Set up a competitor one, +competitor, and sign up to your competitors’’ newsletters, and set up these filters automatically to allow you to capture the information that’s there as a resource for you in the future without actually clogging up your inbox and your workflow. So that’s this week’s action point for you.

Dom:                   Yeah. And folks, don’t worry by the way that you’re putting something in a box, like +swipe, that somebody’s going to read it and be offended. This is an automated system, OK? That email goes to a computer server somewhere, maybe [UNINTELLIGIBLE 43:47] or wherever, and it ticks an electronic box somewhere and you get put on a list. Nobodies every going to read it, and so what if they do, OK? So you can put competitor if you want, you can put swipe in there. But yeah, great action point. My other one, and just to emphasize this, this is kind of an every week one, especially if you’re new to the podcast, is if you go to PreneurMarketing.com, Pete’s main website, you can sign up to Pete’s email newsletter, but if you sign up to Pete’s email newsletter, you’ll get access to a free audio version of Pete’s book which goes through everything that we’ve just talked about, the whole selling of the MCG, but it puts it all in context as he goes through it, so instead of the forty-odd minute podcast with all the lessons crammed in, this is a whole book where it’s all broken down and Pete talks about the origins of the Preneur Hierarchy and lots of stuff about publication and publicity, there’s loads and loads of information in there, definitely worth the signup just to get on and get that, so that’s kind of my extra regular action for you to go and take.

Pete:                   Thank you, that reminds me PreneurMedia.TV is the home of the podcast where you can get all the show notes, listen to back episodes, leave comments, leave questions, we’ve been able to put the Facebook comment section on the website as well, so if you do listen and have some questions and want to make it a public question that you think other people would get value from, please leave your feedback and comments on there. Speaking of feedback and comments, iTunes is something that we’d love you all to do, it helps us get more exposure for the show and get more people into the community, and we’ll see you next week for another edition of PreneurCast where as we promised twenty minutes ago we’ll be covering publicity, so we’ll talk about a bit more about how the publicity for the MCG venture was generated and also to some of the key lessons that you can go and take action on in your own business.

Dom:                   Yeah, I’m definitely looking out for that for next week, looking forward to that definitely, and folks look out for an announcement of our next round of seven levers business and what we’re going to do about that. So I’m looking forward to hearing your comments about this week’s episode on iTunes or on PreneurMedia.tv, and we’ll see you next week!

Pete:                   See you guys!