Brand voice and marriage advice? They aren’t as different as you think. EP-045

Modern Marketers with Blake Beus and Greg Marshall

Blake Beus 0:00 Okay, so we were just barely talking about. I mean, everybody talks about data driven and all of these things. But we, we were talking about some unique situations where a lot of business owners, they've been through the the brand voice message, the customer avatar thing that they they put in that work, which I don't think is a bad thing. But then it's almost like they get a bit locked in, in that area. Stubborn. And and convinced that that that because they did that work, which is great, that that's what we need to stick with when the customers are voting with their dollars in a different direction. Maybe you can clarify what I'm what I'm getting at? Yeah,

Greg Marshall 0:45 well, I think one thing, and you know, I've think we've all fallen prey to this before, but being too overly focused on like, what you want the message and the image to be versus what the customer reacts and pays for. Yeah, and some examples that I would use is, oftentimes I see. And it's normally the individual that's very brand centric, right? Especially if they want to present a high end brand, right, they become so obsessed with how everything looks and feels to them, that they're actually focusing on the wrong person. Yeah, you need to focus on the customer who's going to buy it. And where this is coming from is actually I've run a bunch of campaigns where I've seen where the business owners is like dead set on the vision and the brand, and everything has to look a certain way, yet those campaigns perform very poorly. And then when we switch it up and do it more in the way that the customer responds to, the business owner is unhappy with how the image brand and voice looks. But the customers are responding and

Blake Beus 1:56 buying and buying. And so they're, they're happy with the money coming in. Yep. But they're not happy with the images or the video because they're not pro quality. Yeah, or, or any of those

Greg Marshall 2:09 are, they don't look as a very specific way, maybe the way they envisioned and I go back to, when I when I first started doing my fitness business, we initially wanted to go after like this high end. And I think a lot of changes is high end highly motivated, willing to spend a lot of money type of client. And we kind of just kept pushing that over and over and over again. And we noticed we had no customers, no one would pay us even though we were like we deserve the high paying customer we deserved this is the best product out there. No customers where we had people like beating our door down, saying can you help us lose weight? Can you help us get fit, and this is the exact thing we were trying to get away from. And we finally caved in because we're like, well, these people are literally like throwing their money at us asking us can we help them? Maybe it's time to make a pivot and make a change. And when we did that, we started seeing great success. And so I say that because it is very common, in my experience, especially if it's a newer business owner. Or maybe someone that has the habit of comparing themselves to other bigger brands, where they get so locked in on how everything needs to look that they don't do enough testing, to see what gets the customer to buy. And then how do I do more of that? Right? And that's kind of the point of this topic is to almost tell you make sure you're not making this mistake where you're doing it a certain way, because you want it. But the customer or the market is not actually even paying for it.

Blake Beus 3:49 Yeah, I mean, this is when I went to college, I have a degree in Business Information Systems. And I had a bunch of business classes with that. And it was it was one on one, it's like, marketing one on one, you are not your customer. Yep, you are not the one going in there and buying this thing to fix this problem. You've already solved the problem. Yep. So you are a completely different person than your customer is. And so the best way to figure out what your customers want is to ask them and let them vote with their money. And this is where, you know, free market forces and we want to start using some economic terms free free market forces. This is this is how that stuff works. And you see this all the time in, in restaurants, right? If you have ever been to a brand new restaurant that just opened up in a dance, they have a menu and that menu is the chef's best guess what people might like right and and I've I've helped open restaurants before when, you know when I was working at the ski resort. And it is we have there's lots of meetings about you know what kind of food we want to have your meeting with the general manager of the resort and everything and, and I was in a lot of those meetings mostly because I'm I'm a tech guy, and I've got to be able to make sure their systems are selling and all this. But all of it is this big guess. Yeah. And then when people start showing up, you see what they're buying? Yep. And then you drop the things on the menu that they're not buying. Yep. And then you add more things to the menu to see if you can find a few winners. Yep. Right. But the ones that are selling, you know, get rid of those. Yeah, you never get rid of those. And in I don't know why in business in like, a more a non food business. This concept is, is is harder for people to grasp or something. And I think one of the things you said really drove the point home in that they're comparing themselves oftentimes to much bigger brands. Yes, right. Um, my, my wife, and I watched the house of Gucci, okay. And I have never owned any Gucci Mane, we've never. But you know, there's this this high end fashion brand with a specific look, and whatever. The thing is, if I were to launch a clothing brand today, it would be absolutely crazy for me to try to dump so much money into the photography and the videography and everything to match that brand. Because I'm not Gucci not yet. Like, if I wanted to be as big as Gucci, whatever, I think that's possible. But you, you aren't at that stage yet, where that even makes sense, you need to come down to this lower stage. And I think the waters get one last thing a little even a little bit muddier in that was social media ads, people want to see the types of ads that they expect to see in their newsfeed. Yep. So when you have a very organic looking photo of, you know, someone modeling something, and it's clearly not a pro photo shoot, that oftentimes can resonate better with your customers than a high fashion, very professional, highly edited, perfect photo.

Greg Marshall 6:48 Yep, I would agree. And in fact, not only will I agree, I can just tell you just from looking at data, that seems to be the case, the ones that are like very organic, and almost look like they're not an ad, are the ones that perform the best and what the way you can take that information is to essentially let yourself test different ways of communicating to your audience. And then focus on doing more of what works and remove your emotion from how you wish or want it to be. Right. Like, an example would say, like, I sure wish I was 610 and was in the NBA, but I'm not right, right. So I can't behave like I'm a six foot 10. And expect things that a six foot 10 NBA basketball player would expect, when I'm not any of that, right? And that's kind of how you have to view your businesses, you have to go where am I at right now? What is the customer really looking for, and then grow your way into a lot of the big brands that you see, or you know, aspire to be or emulate? Do the things that they did when they first began, for example, selling sneakers out of a trunk, selling CDs on a street one to one, actually knocking on people's doors to sell their shampoo. These are examples of billionaires that have a lot of money, that they have very extravagant marketing campaigns now, but that is the wrong stage for you to be following. You need to do what they did when they're at your

Blake Beus 8:21 stage. And you're always going to be frustrated if you try to follow the stage of a large brand. Yes. Or follow the strategy of a large brand, because it's frankly, impossible for a small business to do that. Yeah, why money? Like these, these, these large brands have marketing departments that are hundreds of people large Yeah. And then they have entire departments that are just for media production. Yep, where they have entire studios and everything to take all of these photos. And I know you can get a $2,000 camera and a nice lens and some decent lights and get kind of close. But this waste of your time to put all that effort into a couple of photos. It's just not worth it, you're much better off, snapping some photos, focusing on your brand message. And figuring out which of those work and in scaling up the things that work

Greg Marshall 9:12 exactly. I think messaging is more of because you can always fine tune photos and videos and things like that. But it's the messaging that actually matters the most because if you can resonate with the customer, then you can start making much more because you figured out what message works, then you can start making much more prolific type of campaigns with better pictures and better video and you can kind of upgrade that way. And that's exactly how the brands that maybe you aspire to be did it. They figured out what their market is what the message is, who's their actual customer and buyer figured out how to give them more that stuff and then build campaigns around that the messaging instead of guessing and doing these elaborate photoshoots or video shoots I have another big brand without even knowing what message works.

Blake Beus 10:03 Yeah, yeah, it's um one of my, one of my favorite brands on Instagram is a good example of this. It's, it's a brand that's targeted towards middle aged men, like myself. And the brand is called Sharpies, and they started off selling just swim shorts. Okay, yeah. And when they first started off, and their swim shorts are kind of like bright and loud and everything because traditionally, swim shorts for dudes have always been I don't know, camo. Yeah, we're blue with some stripes. Yeah, nothing crazy. And, and so these, these guys did this. But their brand messaging has shifted over time to apart a point where now it's pretty professional, but their messaging is dialed in, and people know who they are, and everything. But their messages are funny. They'll oftentimes take photos of actors in the 80s, like men, with their hairy chests, and whatever, and wearing really short shorts. So they're like, it's time to bring back the short shorts, you know, stuff like that. But it's, it's just a funny brand. But they didn't start off that way. If I were to launch a short brand a day and try to emulate what they're doing, it would fall flat, because there's already someone kind of feeling that knee. Yep. And but they had to, they had to go into that they didn't know exactly what they needed to do. They had an angle. Yep. But but they didn't know exactly. And then it took them several years of consistent marketing effort to do that. And now Now they do really well. The same thing can work with products too. But go ahead.

Greg Marshall 11:34 No, I'm sorry to cut you off. But I want to I don't want to forget this point you just made. The point Blake just mentioned is this company was testing and giving what the customer wanted. Yeah. Like they didn't say we sell shorts, this way. And that's the only way we're gonna sell. No matter what the customer says there, they adjust to what the market is telling them they want. And so that's, that's something that I wanted to interrupt and make sure you hit on that, because that's a great point.

Blake Beus 12:03 And that's, that's kind of like the whole point of a business in general. The great thing about owning your own business, is you can make your own products and services. Yep. And so because of that flexibility, I think a lot of people kind of forget this point, because of that flexibility. You can literally adjust your products and services to match whatever the customers want. And theoretically, this is super simple. Like, it's like, people like this t shirt. Let's maybe ask a few of them why they liked that T shirt. And then let's make some more that have those qualities in there. Yeah. Is it? Is it the quality of the fabric? Is it the funny message? What about the message? Is it the design is that the colors, whatever those are, and then launch some similar to that and see, see what people resonate with and then drop the duds and or bundle the duds. Yeah, bundle the duds to get rid of is a special flash sale

Greg Marshall 12:54 offers. Yeah, you buy this, you get these for free,

Blake Beus 12:57 for free, or whatever, you know. But you, you need to going back to what you said about removing your emotion. I heard this phrase this week, and I loved it. Some points in time, you just need to be a stone cold, professional, right. And I like I like being loosey goosey and running a kind of a casual business and things. But when it comes to ads and emotion, you got to be a stone yelled professional. And you have to look at which ones are working and which ones aren't. Because if you keep turning off the ads that are working, yeah. Because you don't like the picture isn't super professional, you just have a feel or you have a feeling. You're constantly you're literally shutting off your revenue sources. It's like I'm thirsty, and you keep turning off the water, the water spouts that are given me the most water. Why would we do that? Is it it's because of oftentimes your own post personal insecurities or visions or whatever?

Greg Marshall 13:59 Well, it's funny that you mentioned that. So just just yesterday, I had a call with one of my clients. And there's, they have a unique setup where it's kind of three owners and they're they're all very open minded and willing to try things, which is great. So we spoke yesterday. And it's funny how it was a good lesson in emotional decision making versus the data, right? Because two of the people of the three were felt that the ads were performing exceptionally well. And then one of them felt that the ads weren't performing at all. Which is interesting, right? So they were both trying to figure out why do you believe that the ads are not performing well at all and they're like, Well, I I just been here that people sales. And so think about this, she said I just been hearing about other people's sales and the sales or or this and that and you know, maybe it's a tough time And the other two are just looking at the data from the ad account and saying we're getting what we want. And they got 500 subscribers to see, you know, for 300. Something bucks targeted US Canada leads not, that's cheap. Yeah. And sheep it and it's to the exact targeted audiences that they want. Yeah. And so after we went through the numbers, she actually felt like, wow, this campaign is doing really well. We literally almost turned it off, because she was like, I just don't know if it's resonating, or this, this and that. Yeah. And so that's, to me a perfect example of how you can have, you can feel an emotion. And if you sometimes follow that emotion, you can make the wrong decision for your business.

Blake Beus 15:47 It, I think it's a bit of a catch 22 situation, because when you start, if you're a business owner or whatever, and you suddenly start diving into ads, you want to start learning about ads. Yep. And so you start learning about it. But then you start, there's no shortage of people out there willing to tell you how to run ads, many of them disagree with with one another. And guess what, we're here on a podcast telling you about how to run ads, right? Like everybody in their dog is going to tell you that. And you're going to have people that are going to say this is the only way I would run out right now. Because you hear that messaging all the time. And then you so you, you start knowing and learning more, and then you start second guessing what, what you know, is work is working? Yep. And so at some point in time, I'm a big believer, at some point in time, you need to kind of shut off the gurus, and trust yourself, you know, trust, like trust yourself, and the things that you've learned that are working with you with your, your business and everything. It's okay to learn a few things here there. And I think, I think in our podcasts, we're not super, super opinionated about, absolutely do it this way, do this one structure, if you do this one structure will work because it's not really sustainable. Things change too much. We talk a lot more about principles and things. So that's my hint that you should keep listening to this. But trust yourself, and what's working for your business and maybe shut off some of these other channels with these loud voices to trying to teach you how to run ads. And

Greg Marshall 17:18 well. And the other thing about you got to be careful with how much you can get information overload where one person will say, I mean, look at anything in life, how to make the most money, right, that's a subject everyone's probably looked up before. You got some people will say you should focus on one business. And he got some people say you should have 20 streams of income. Right? Which one is the correct way? Well, it depends. If you're already a millionaire 20 streams might make sense because you've already have a million. And you can diversify. If you have $10, it makes no no sense to have tried to attempt to do 20 different businesses. And so it really depends on each person. And so if you take information and you almost like just think, Okay, this is the way no matter what versus saying, How can I apply some of these principles into what I'm doing, you can get very confused. And what you're going to do is just be in a cycle of starting and stopping over and over and over again and gain zero momentum, right. And then because you don't gain any momentum, you're keeping yourself in the hardest stage of anything, which is the very beginning. You're literally keeping yourself

Blake Beus 18:29 going in the hardest, hardest part and you're getting burnout, because you you you're you're stuck in this loop where you don't get out of the hard part, you

Greg Marshall 18:39 still in the hard part. And the worst part is you're the one doing it yourself. You're actually resetting and restarting your progress over and over and over and over again, instead of looking at how can we build some momentum. Let the momentum work for me. And let me make adjustments as I go along. Instead of start, stop, start stop. And that's, that's something that I also see a lot is the starting and stopping you hear people say, Well, I've tried this, or I've tried that, and then you go, but for how long? Well, you know, I ran for three days I spent, you know, 50 bucks. And it's like, there's no I mean, you never gave anything a chance to build the momentum. The people who see the best results in any aspect, making money running ads, exercise and fitness, marriage. It's all the same long term, build momentum fundamentals. There's no tricks Yeah, to start and stop over and over again. Because if you get overly fixated on that, you literally will keep yourself and the hardest part of the journey over and over

Blake Beus 19:46 again. This is this is Greg's marriage counseling. We've We've turned it into this is no relationship.

Greg Marshall 19:56 This is marriage counseling.

Blake Beus 20:00 But it's true. Like, these are the reasons we talked about principles a lot is because a lot of these principles carry over into many different aspects and can be applied to to many, many different things. And, and it's so easy hung up on a lot of these details and everything. But when it really boils down to it, running a business, at least principles of running a business is pretty straightforward. You just need to give people more of what they want. Stop doing what's not working, and follow those numbers. That's the end the podcast. Well, there's that's it, you know, we're shutting shutting everything down. We buy, we buy our course. Yeah, that one sentence. Like unless of what they don't. Such a simple statement, but it's so hard to do. I don't want to minimize it. Like, I've definitely struggled with that. Right? Same here. We're emotional beings, like, yeah, we do that I've been so hung up on my emotions before, with various different aspects of my business and everything, I get it. So it's easy to say, and I know it's hard to implement. But it's one of those things that you should constantly strive to maybe gut check those emotions. Well,

Greg Marshall 21:06 you know what, speaking of emotions, this is why you have you should before you make any decision, take a step back with with, what am I feeling right now? And does this have? Is it real? And I'll give you an example. Let's say, you know, not that this has ever happened to me. But let's say you didn't sleep for a few days, because you're babies. And you're extremely exhausted, right? Well, sometimes when you're very tired, you start, like the little things that maybe don't bother, you will start to bother you. Right? Yeah. And but you could really make some really dumb decisions. If you let that portion impact your decision making instead you have to go, Well, this is probably fake. None of this is really that bad. It's that I just haven't slept for three days. Yeah. And so let me I actually exercise this a couple of days ago. And it was, I was like, I wish I knew this like 15 years ago. But it was. So I didn't have a great night's sleep. And then I found out some information, like some changes that we needed to make a certain campaign. And I felt like, you know what, I'm just really tired. And I don't want to say yes or no, or make any adjustments based on how tired I am. So I'm just gonna, and I would have never done this 1015 years, I'm just gonna not do anything. I'm just gonna go to sleep tonight. And then tomorrow, when I wake up, I'm gonna think what's the best decision, I waited one day and made the correct decision. And it was the decision that I would have made the day before. So even that taught me the importance of taking a step back, right, let's, let's say you're very tired from exercise or family, or maybe you had someone pass away in your family, or you've just got outside life factors. Sometimes those can transfer into, like, the one thing you can control your business, you're looking for a sense of control. So you control that, versus taking a step back and going. Is this real?

Blake Beus 23:13 Yeah. Yeah, I, I, I get that all the time. Right. And I feel that way, a lot. It's and not to get too much into you know, mental health or whatever. But when you're in like a mental health cycle, which everybody, everyone, I think more people need to talk about mental health. It's not it's certainly not a bad thing. We all go through stressful moments, or were moments where things aren't going right. But it's very easy to kind of get stuck in a cycle. And and when I do me personally, I get an inner dialogue that is negative. Yeah. And, and I have to gut check that, and my wife helps me gut check that which is great. But I have to gut check that and say wait, or is this inner dialogue actually reflective of reality? Yeah. Most of the time is not a couple of times. It is but it's too harsh. Yeah. Because obviously we have things to work on right? Yeah, every everybody does. But my kind of point in sharing that is we have that but a good way to kind of check those things is to have someone else you can talk to Yep. And I'm telling you right now most the time with Greg and his clients he's he's honestly more of a therapist but but no, you need to gut check yourself. And that's why it's that's why having I don't know a media buyer on your team or or a business partner or an associate or if you're just starting out. I don't know just someone that's maybe not just anyone that doesn't know anything about ads, because that would be frustrated. Maybe someone that knows a little bit about marketing advertising just to bounce some ideas off of them, and to gut check yourself, or whatever, but it's totally okay to think am I am I thinking About this correctly or do or whatever. And when in doubt, just follow the numbers. Yeah,

Greg Marshall 25:04 and I think to the importance of having an outside eye on things, or someone to bounce ideas off of is important because the likelihood that both of you are feeling the exact same emotion at the exact same time is highly unlikely. Right? Right. So if you're, let's say having, you know, problems at home, or you're having problems at work, or you're at work, you're having problems with your health, whatever that is, most likely, the other person you're talking to, is not going through the exact same thing at the exact same time. And so they don't feel as emotionally kind of boxed in as maybe you are. So they're able to give a little bit more constructive feedback on like, You should do this or try this or take a step back. And so that's where I see the value of having other people to bounce ideas off of, and really talk things through. And I know for me, anytime, you know, we're going into the emotional side of things, because that's probably the most important thing you can do for making the best decisions for your business long term is controlling your emotions and understanding them better. Because if you know your tendencies, right, like for example, I know if I don't sleep that great. Sometimes I get a little more anxious, more antsy with things. My maybe my, my fuse is shorter, right? Why know that? So if that happens, I know to go, Well, I'm going to back out of some appointments. I'm gonna go do something completely unrelated and relaxing, so that I can prevent myself from even putting myself in the environment of making a bad decision. Yeah. Right. Because because I know that's how I behaved Yeah. If I don't get any sleep, or or I'm just physically exhausted. And so do you have any kind of tactics that you'd like to use? When you kind of know you're at your threshold? And you're like, Well, before I do anything that I'm not going to be happy with? Let me go ahead and start with.

Blake Beus 27:04 Yeah, I have lots of first and foremost, one of the most consistent triggers for me to be grumpy is I'm hungry. Because I focus on I focus on work. Like when I sit down, I usually work really hard. And I've got, you know, juggling between a couple of different things. And it's very easy for me to forget that I need to eat and have water. Yep, drink water. And so first and foremost, I kind of prep for that. Yeah, I don't, I intentionally don't eat like snacks and things at my desk, because it's too easy, just cram and food. But I have them like away from my desk, and I'll go up and grab a handful and check the time. I try to be pretty consistent with meals. Like I'm like a little baby fat on time getting whiny. But the other thing I've been doing recently is I, I work in a remote office. And I have set up this cozy corner. Yeah, with a chair and an ottoman and some plants and a blanket. And I sit down. And I call it meditation. Yep. Sometimes it turns into a nap. Yeah, I set a timer because I don't want to sleep for like a month meditate. But it's it's I basically my the point of it is I sit there and I try to just kind of clear my head of thoughts. Because I, I have a lot of thoughts going on a lot of the time and, and there's a bunch of different techniques, people can like in their head, chant different things or whatever. What I do is I just count backwards from 100. Yeah, I need something more than just saying the same thing. Because my brain can think about things. Yep, saying something happened going autopilot. But if I have to count backwards, I have to think about the focus just a little bit. But I don't want something too complicated. But something that makes me have to focus enough so that I'm not thinking about this software engineering problem, or this customer problem that I'm dealing with, or whatever, I don't want those things to spin. And I do it for 2030 minutes. And it it sounds I don't know, it helps a lot. I think it helps a lot. I

Greg Marshall 29:00 think it's important to prioritize time like that in your day, particularly if you're running ads, or you've got anxiety about running ads, or you've got anxiety about just anything else that's you know, going on in your business. Because if you don't take that time out, you're setting yourself up for massive failure, because you're going to start to feel these emotions and they'll start to compound. So the anxiety starts to go into the depression, and the depression starts going into anger. And then it becomes well I don't even know if I should do this. And then before you know, it's like, but nothing in your business has actually changed. It's all your motions that have changed, right? And it's it's funny because there's so many times where you can you know, from running my own stuff for for quite a while now. I've learned a thing or two about self management for me and how I behave and I just try to really go alright, I have felt This emotion before, and the decisions I made in the past weren't always the most productive, right? And so, knowing that, what can I do differently? When this comes up again, and you just kind of like step back and try to learn from previous mistakes or errors, and at the time, you don't know better, but now you do, right? Like, now you understand how to improve these. I feel like, if you spend more time, here's, here's something that I don't know if I've ever actually revealed, but I try to spend more time, quote, unquote, like having fun than working. And I consistently try to keep that unbalanced. And the reason why I do that, because I have a tendency to want like, if I don't stop myself, I want to work the whole day. Oh, that's and and all day, and that's unhealthy. So because of that, I switched my thinking, I just said, I need to actually focus more on having fun, because I've run into the opposite problem of almost working yourself to death, right?

Blake Beus 31:06 Well, that's my default, my default answer to every problem is to work hard. And I don't love that. I mean, I'm glad I'm a hard worker, but I don't love the the older I get, the more I realized that's not a healthy trait. Now, you got to have you got to have a good, a good balance. And, frankly, I'm trying to teach my kids that as well. It's, it's hard, right? Cuz a lot of aspects of life. Yeah, in a lot of aspects of life like school and things. When when my kids are in school school is pitching it as this is the most important thing, you got a bunch of homework, these grades matter, especially my son is in high school, these grades are starting to really matter. Yep. And, and they're not wrong about any of those things. And I absolutely am a huge fan of being as educated as you can. Sure. But sometimes I feel like there's so much emphasis put on working hard and putting in all of this extra effort when our quality of life isn't there. So we get into these habits, college was very much stepped out for me, I was working full time doing school full time and had a family and, and that was you know, a few years ago, basically just kind of, I did it. I just didn't sleep a whole lot. But it kind of set this stage where my default solution of a problem is to work hard. And it's not fun. Yeah, when you do that, like it's not enjoyable.

Greg Marshall 32:26 Well, I think too, you can get a lot of the wrong messages from you know, making things quote unquote, matter. One of my things that I've learned over time with making things matter is when you attach too much of a meaning to something, I find in my own experience that it creates a negative thought pattern, a negative cycle, you're no longer doing things for enjoyment, or to improve yourself, you're now acting out of fear, right, and you're acting out of fear that something bad is gonna happen. And then you're basically robbing all the enjoyment out of your life. And because you make something matter more, doesn't mean you will actually perform better. That's kind of the irony of it is as a good point. A lot of times you perform worse, yes. So you're making you're increasing the meaning of something with the kind of thought thinking that if I make it matter more, I'll perform better. But the irony is you don't you perform worse when you make it matter

Blake Beus 33:35 more. Yeah, there's a lot more stress, anxiety, you know, mental energy needed to to this thing that's like super, super, super important. I think that's, we're getting philosophical. I think. I think that's, uh, yeah, I do. I think that's one of the reasons why I struggle with a lot of when, like, someone who's wildly successful, writes a book. And they're like, here's how you do a startup business, or whatever. It's like, you don't have a lot of the anxiety and stress because you have this massive cushion, shirt and blanket and everything. And so I don't think your information is actually that relevant shirt to your average everyday person, because they have a different set of circumstances. And of course, you can run 2030 businesses because you have a team helping you with this and, and all of these things and payroll of $20 million. Right, right. And that's all fine. Like, I'm not saying that that person is bad. I'm just saying, I really struggle when someone who's up here is telling people down here, how to get up here because most of the time, I don't think they actually know how to do it. Yeah. I think they know how they did it. Yep. But I don't think they know how to teach others to do it because the circumstances are so different. Yep. So I my very first example of like, really this thought thinking sinking in is when I read Elon, Elon Musk's autobiography and it was written back in 2015 and He's much more famous, famous character now than back then. But the book was talking about how he, you know, he was one of the founders of PayPal sold that had a lot of money. But he dumped it right back into starting three different businesses, if SpaceX Tesla and solar, solar city or whatever the solar one is, and slept on people's couches, because he did. He dumped all the money in there. And he was working 130 hours a week and all of this stuff. And I was thinking, Well, that just sounds terrible. Yeah, that sounds absolutely absolutely terrible. And and I, I just didn't think that that was realistic for literally, your any average person. And that doesn't mean that someone like Elon Musk that was able to do that is has more mental strength and more grit or whatever. It probably means that that aspect of his life was quite unhealthy. Yeah. And people that have a more healthy, well rounded aspect of life, probably would choose to not do that. I know, it doesn't mean you're weak or whatever. You'd be like, I don't I don't see that. Well,

Greg Marshall 36:12 and I think the you have to want you have to make agreements with yourself. Right? One thing that over time I've come to, I guess peace with is not necessarily okay, what are you willing to sacrifice for your life? Not for someone else's? Or to impress someone else's right? Meaning? Yeah, we can also you're not weak. If you say you know what? I am, Greg. And that's Elon. Okay. Ilan is wired to want to do that. Greg is not I have no desire to run $3 billion companies, because you know what that means? No free time, a microscope only 24 hours a day. No privacy. That just sounds horrific to me. I would much rather do a whole lot less, and have massive free time, financial freedom, not so much in the public eye, and just be able to live my normal life. We only live once, right? So it's like, I don't want to create a jail for myself. Because a lot of things that people may not realize is like, imagine being someone like Elon, or Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, where your every move is calculated, you can't go to the movies, and watch a regular you can't go to the grocery store. You can't do a lot of things, right. So there's a price for this. It's not all you know, all good with nothing, you know, being taken away. A lot of your freedoms are taken away. You think Mark Zuckerberg can just walk down the street with no security, go play bass, all people just start shaking hands with people just go to random church and hang out. There's no chance in the world. He could do that. No, he has. He'd have to call his security people and set up all of these schedules and time to do so. So there's a price to be paid. And I think growing up I always thought I have to be willing to pay the biggest price no matter what or that means. I'm weak. Right. And I don't think that's true. Like now that I'm getting older. I'm looking at it like, well, that's actually not true at all. Yeah, it's, you decide what you want to do. Yeah, sacrifice.

Blake Beus 38:32 Yeah, it's, um, you know, I had a ton of thoughts while while you're going on that rant, and I, you know, we'll we're kind of getting long winded. So we'll definitely wrap this up here. Just a second. But I think I have a question for you. Do you know the name of the person who started my MySpace?

Greg Marshall 38:50 Oh, yeah. Tom. Tom, right.

Blake Beus 38:54 Do you want to know why most people don't know Tom's name? Because he sold his business and retired I Yeah. I've never seen like, once. Yeah, he's just like, he he sold his business for I don't know, it was a lot of money at the time over I want to say over $100 million, where he sold MySpace to YouTube. I think they drove it into the ground. But but whatever. But here's the thing is like Tom got to this point. He's like, I think I've made it. Yeah. And I think he does personal projects and things. He's a tinkerer. I wouldn't be surprised if he's out there under some pseudonyms on I don't know, Reddit, or on GitHub writing code, because he likes to do that kind of stuff. But he's not in the public eye. That guy is the genius, right? Like, he did the thing. And the thing is, is, you know, gates, Bezos, Zuckerberg, all of those guys, they all could have done that. Yeah, they all could have done that, but they chose not to. And so I really struggled, like Holding, holding a lot of those people up into high esteem. And even really even listening to their tweets or what they say like ever because I just They are so much different than me my core values are so different that let's say we wave a magic wand and and Blake Beus started Amazon in the 90s. Yeah, I guarantee you, I would have sold that business way sooner and then you would have never heard of me again. And I would have had a peaceful life. They just like dads, I probably would have, yeah, would have done philanthropy or whatever. And there's so many things in my life that I would find much more fulfilling than trying to take a business from being, you know, a $200 million business to being a $200 billion business. I like that doesn't even sound fun to me. So I don't want to like listen to what they have to say all the time, because I just don't think they are even close to sharing my values. Yeah. And

Greg Marshall 40:46 I think, you know, it's funny you brought up Tom because I just remember him because he was my friend for so long my space. And but that's, that's a great example. And I think, you know, overall, pretty much this podcast episode, we wanted to go over something that I think a lot of business and or marketers don't really ever talk about, because it's like kind of that taboo subject, which is looking at your emotions, and kind of really making quality deals and agreements with yourself. Not because you feel like you have to do something because it matters. What matters

Blake Beus 41:24 or you're emulating this person. Yeah, it business that's up here. Like literally put in the work. Trust yourself. Don't over exaggerate the worth of something. Follow the data. Be a stone cold professional. Yeah.

Greg Marshall 41:39 Do it, do it your way, do your way. Find what works for you and do that versus trying to do what you're supposed to do. Right. So I think outside of that, right, we got long, hopefully was wrapping up. This is valuable. So Blake How to Get a hold.

Blake Beus 41:55 I just got to Blake beus.com/sm3 and

Greg Marshall 41:59 get a hold of me at Greg marshall.co and you can book a free strategy session with me. And until next time, we'll

Blake Beus 42:04 catch you guys later.

Unknown Speaker 42:04 Bye bye