PreneurCast is a business podcast. Each week, author and marketer Pete Williams and digital media producer Dom Goucher discuss entrepreneurship, business, internet marketing and productivity.
This week, Pete interviews Dale Beaumont, one of Australia’s leading business advisors, author of 16 books, and creator of a business education program called ‘Business Blueprint.’ Dale shares some fantastic tips for raising your profile to improve business.
Pete interviews Dale and talks about how you can use your profile to help you get exposure
Transcript:
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Episode 071:
Interview with Dale Beaumont
Dom Goucher: Hi, Dom here, and this week we’ve got another great interview for you. This week, Pete talks to Dale Beaumont, who is one of Australia’s leading business advisors. He runs a business education program called Business Blueprint, as well as having written a huge number of books on various business and marketing subjects.
In this conversation, Dale shares some fantastic tips for raising your profile, including ideas for getting killer testimonials and even book deals. So, have your notepads and pens ready and I’ll hand you over to Pete.
[Pete’s interview with Dale starts]
Pete Williams: Hey mate, thank you for joining me on the show this week. How’re you doing?
Dale Beaumont: Hi, I’m doing great, thanks. And you?
Pete: Good, mate. Doing very well, as always. Now, I was trying to do the math before we jumped on the phone today. I reckon it’s got to be seven years we’ve known each other for.
Dale: Yeah, for sure.
Pete: When the first books came out, and I remember we were on the same cover of Wealth Creator Magazine. You had your photo on there but my name was on there as well, so that’s a while ago.
But rather than me sitting here and just talking you up, I always like to make people feel awkward having to talk themselves up. Do you want to give a bit about your background and what you’re doing now, and about all the books you’ve written, mate?
Dale: Sure. One of my major passions in life is family, business and education. I’ve been involved in a number of businesses over the past 12 years. The first one was running seminars for teenagers, teaching things like goal-setting and leadership, and communication skills, and money management. That was fun, educating some 27,000 teenagers across six countries.
And then the next major venture was a PR company that I started called Kapow Media. Next one after that was a publishing company where I produced a whole series of books called the Secrets Exposed series to take people up-close-and-personal with high-achievers. That was a great success with 15 books that we published and sold over 250,000 copies, which was great.
Pete: It’s incredible, isn’t it?
Dale: That was really the launch pad for some other little seminar projects that I did for a couple of years. But my core and sole focus now is a business education program called Business Blueprint, which is where we work with entrepreneurs over a month period to transform the way that they do business by integrating technology and more modern and smarter forms of marketing into their business.
We run events right across Australia and New Zealand, and work with a whole bunch of clients right now, just nearing 300 or so, and I love what we do. Outside of that, got married with two kids and love to travel, so I’ve been to heaps of different places and I love mixing business with pleasure.
Pete: That’s very cool. I actually spoke at one of your events recently, one of your high-end client events, which was such a great three days, and talking about the family and traveling. You were talking about one of your events next year is going to be on a cruise boat around Europe, which is just so friggin’ awesome.
Dale: Yeah, we’re going to have about 150 entrepreneurs leaving from Venice on the 22nd of May and going all around the Adriatic Sea and finishing in Rome, and then we’re doing some other stuff from there. It’s all good to make money and certainly that’s a major goal and focus in business because money is like oxygen.
Pete: Absolutely. You’ve got to put me down for 2014, mate. I think a four-month-old baby won’t do so great going to Europe on a vacation, but definitely 2014.
Dale: Fantastic, I’d love to.
Pete: One thing, before we get into the topic of today’s show, I’ve got a question for you about those Secrets Exposed books. Which was your favorite out of them all? There’s Secrets of Male Entrepreneurs [Exposed!], Secrets of Top Sales Professionals [Exposed!], Secrets of Internet Entrepreneurs [Exposed!]. There’s all different niches that you’ve covered. What’s your favorite one of those books?
Dale: Wow, no one’s ever asked me that question. They’re all special to me in different ways. Two of the most special ones, one’s Secrets of Male Entrepreneurs [Exposed!], just simply because that was the first book that I produced and so many of those people that were in the book were people that I looked up to as role models.
They were of great inspiration to me. The other book that I also loved producing was Secrets of Marketing Experts Exposed! because you can have the greatest product in the world, but unless you’re able to market it and promote it, you’re never going to build a successful business.
Pete: So true.
Dale: I remember maths at school, and I remembered my 0 times table, they were really simple. You could have 100 and you times it by 0, and the answer is always 0.
Pete: Very cool, mate. Yeah, I couldn’t agree with you more. People who’ve listened to this show know that you and I have very similar philosophies when it comes to business in that it’s not about the mousetrap; it’s about the marketing of the mousetrap.
Dale: Exactly right.
Pete: And that’s a perfect segue into what we’re going to cover today. Because I know in your New Rules of Business event (which we’ll talk about later, and talk about a whole bunch of stuff with your clients and the high-end programs that you have), but what is the one thing you think is best to discuss today?
We could do this weekly, almost, and still have a 12-month worth of content that you and I could talk about. What’s the key thing that you think is worth touching on today?
Dale: Well, I think it’s in a broad sense, marketing. In a more specific sense, what I want to talk about—this idea about building your profile to generate awareness about what you’re doing, but also at the same time to establish credibility.
Because if someone is looking for a landscaper or someone is looking for any type of service or product, they’re basically asking themselves this question. “Who is this person and why should I buy from them as opposed to the other 10, 50, 100 other people in this space?” Say we were looking for a life coach.
What makes you worthy of spending money on as opposed to somebody else? And so we’re talking about really building your profile to becoming the leader in your particular field, and you can do that in a number of different ways.
We’d like to touch on 10 different things that you can do in order to build your profile. What it’s about is not just doing one of them, but as many as you can—the more things that you do. It just gives people that reassurance that I’m making a good decision because of all of these factors.”
This will help you from two aspects: one is about increasing your awareness and exposure, but also increasing your conversion as well. Making it easier for people to buy from you.
Pete: I think it’s really important that—I say quite a bit to try and sell in a vacuum, and it’s a statement that a lot of people talk about where you try and get away from your competitors. So when you’re selling, they don’t think about competition. You’re the only person fulfilling that need.
That’s where you want to get to in your marketing. But for so many people out there, that’s not where they are right now. They’re in a competitive field. They’re working towards positioning themselves. It’s an apples and orange comparison; they are different.
But there are certain times that you’re advertising in the Yellow Pages, which still works if you do it right. People who are saying the Yellow Pages is crap and stuff like that. But it does still work if you’re doing AdWords. A lot of marketing, there’s still a lot of noise from the competition at that point of contact with your client. Would you agree with that?
Dale: Yeah, there is a lot of noise out of there. So going from just a pack and becoming, what I say, ‘one of one.’ Most people are in the industry of one of 10, one of 50, one of 100. There are so many other factors there that basically increase people’s desire to want to work with you and also minimize their risk as well. Doing these things that we’ll talk about will help achieve both of those objectives.
Pete: Yeah, exactly right. It helps you cut through the noise of your competition when you are in that space. But more importantly, it helps you starting to even push you further to that position of one as you said. Let’s reel off those 10, mate. We can delve into them and talk around them if you like.
Dale: Okay, these are in no particular order. I’ll just throw them all out there. One is [1] generating exposure through the medium. I’d love to talk more about that, and I know that you’ve got a huge amount of experience in that area as well. [2] Participating in social media.
We can expand on that. [3] Write video content, and we’ll talk about why video is so powerful. [4] Building a great website, and that involves making sure that you can actually be found in the search engine. So you’ve got a website; not only do you have one, but you’ve got a website that can be found.
Number five is about [5] having great testimonials. Number six is about [6] building a smart phone or an iPhone app. Number seven is about [7] publishing either a book or an eBook or a magazine. Number eight is about [8] getting involved in public speaking and becoming a speaker.
Number nine is about [9] submitting to awards and ideally, winning or becoming a finalist in some awards as well. And number ten is really about [10] keeping in touch. You probably need to have a good e-mail marketing system, something where you can build a relationship over time and stay top of mind.
Because like you said, there is a lot of noise out there. We want to make sure that we are constantly staying in touch with our customers so that they know that we are still there, and we are able to help them whenever they’re ready.
Pete: Awesome. I’m going to throw some of these back at you. There’s a couple of things that you said that I’d like to discuss because there’s stuff that we haven’t spoken about on the podcast before. Things like testimonials is probably a great one that I’d love to delve into first. And if we’ve got time, we’ll go through all 10.
But let’s at least touch on some of the top three or four things that I’d really like to get out from you from your experience, and your own testimonials is one of those things. What’s your experience, thoughts, advice, and case studies when it comes to testimonials to get that leadership positioning?
Dale: Testimonials just makes such a big different to how you’re perceived in the marketplace. Anybody could say that they’re great, they’re wonderful, they’re fantastic. But naturally when it comes from you, people are skeptical. Of course you’re going to say you’re great, you’re wonderful. But who else says that about you? And if there’s nobody, then that’s saying something.
So as an example, you can go to one of my websites. It’s NewRulesOfBusiness.com.au. That’s like a long sales page to promote. But down the right-hand side, there is dozens and dozens, and dozens of testimonials. When we put those there, dramatically increased the conversion rate of the website.
Without the testimonials, people are like, “Who is this guy and what makes him think that he’s all that special? But the moment that those testimonials were added there, people were like, “Oh, that person is saying that. Oh, that person made 100,000. Oh, that person’s done this.” Instantly boosted the conversion rate of the website. It’s what’s called social proof.
Pete: Exactly. Let me ask you about this. When it comes to testimonials, what’s your experience? There’s so many different ways you can have testimonials presented. There’s some of the obvious stuff in terms of ideally have a photo of the person who’s giving the testimonial, and name them by their full name and location.
But there’s testimonials, and then there’s testimonials in terms of the actual content of them. Do you have a formula or an idea, or a preferred way of actually having that testimonial presented?
Dale: Absolutely. In the basics term, make sure you have the person’s full name. Initials, just people are skeptical. They’re like, “Well, if this is a real testimonial, someone would be paid to put their name to it.” So, I only use testimonials where you have the person’s full name and ideally photo as well.
Now, let’s talk about how to actually get a great testimonial because there is a formula. If you just say to someone, “Give me a testimonial,” you might get something like, “Pete Williams is great. He’s a really good guy. He can really help.” But it’s like, so what? It doesn’t really stand out. We have this basic formula.
So what happens is after someone has experienced your product or service, you’re going to send them an e-mail, and you’re going to go, “Hi John, it’s Dale here. By now you’ve hopefully had a chance to use my product and I’d love to get some feedback. Would you mind just answering these four simple questions? It’ll really help a lot. Thanks so much, and I look forward to your response.”
So there’s two tips there. Number one is never ask for a testimonial. When you ask for a testimonial, people go, “Ooh…” They get all weird about it and they don’t know what to say. They think that you want something different. Ask for feedback. So call it “feedback,” that way people will be more comfortable.
Secondly, don’t ask them to write something, because they won’t know what to write. Ask them to answer four simple questions. They answer the questions and that is the testimonial. We just need to then remove the questions and we basically mush it together into one chunk of text. So if you’re happy, I’ll give you the four questions.
Pete: Yeah, that’s awesome. Before you do that, that’s something that I really love. That idea is, don’t ask for testimonials—get them to answer questions. I’ve found that when I’ve ever asked for testimonials in various businesses and projects and things like that, if they really did enjoy the process, the product, the solution, whatever it was that you gave that person, they’re so eager to help you out that they are so eager to help with the testimonial.
They go over the top and it becomes cheesy and wonky, and just looks ever less authentic and less real because they were so excited and wanted to give you so much. It’s a pleasant constraint on both ends. You’re sort of, but aren’t for a testimonial. The people who really love you won’t go over-the-top trying to impress you; they’ll just answer your questions.
And the people at the other end of the scale who are reluctant to give you a testimonial because they feel shy or don’t know what to say, whatever it might be, will help you out because they’ll just answer the question. So it’s a great way to top and tail that, and give it a very positive constraint, which I thought was awesome.
Dale: Exactly right. I’ll give you the four questions, and so this is the time to scribble some notes. Question one is: [1] why were you unsure or even skeptical about ‘insert XYZ product? Enter the name of your product or service there. Why were you unsure, why were you skeptical? What was it that was just holding you back?
That’s the first question, why were you unsure or skeptical about XYZ product. Now question number two is: [2] what ultimately made you decide to buy XYZ product? What ultimately made you decide to buy? What was that turning point where you really know what it is? The third one is [3] what specific benefits have you received since using XYZ product or service?
What specific benefits? The key there is specific benefits. And number four is [4] who would you recommend the product or service to, and why? They are the four questions. I’ll give you an okay testimonial and a great testimonial. You see these on infomercials all the time.
An okay testimonial is, “This weight loss program is great, it’s wonderful, it’s fantastic, amazing.” Like what you said before, it’s over-the-top. It’s great for you to say that, but I’m still unconvinced. I’m still over here and you’re over there, and I’m not coming any closer to you.
That, versus something like this: “I’ve struggled my entire life and I’ve tried almost every weight loss program imaginable. I finally had basically given up because nothing seemed to work. I maybe lose a few kilos, but I always put it back on. And then a friend told me about XYZ product. I was originally skeptical. But when I saw they had a money-back guarantee, I decided to give it a shot.
I’m pleased to say that after 6 months, I’ve lost 25 kilos and I’ve kept it off for the entire time. And finally, now, I can play with my kids without needing to take a nap in the afternoon. Thank you so much. I’d recommend this program to anyone that’s serious about losing weight even if you’ve been disappointed by other programs that haven’t worked. ”
So there we have two testimonials: one that was gushing and over the top that didn’t influence me at all; and now this one is real, it’s genuine, and it’s actually what makes people want to buy because people see themselves in that. They’re like, “That person understands.
They were skeptical just like me and unsure, and then they decided to it and they’ve lost 25 kilos and they’d recommend it.” What I did was covered the answers to those four questions. If you follow that formula, it’s called the before-and-after formula, or if you entered a Catholic school like me, you would’ve learned a hymn which was, ‘I once was lost, but now I’m found,’ which is basically what you’re going for.
It’s: why you were unsure or skeptical (so we meet people where they’re at), what ultimately made you decide to buy ( when I saw they had a money-back guarantee, when I saw that I could take a trial, or when I saw that they had won this award). Once you’ve got 20 of those testimonials like that, you almost cover off every skepticism, you cover off every reason that makes people want to buy.
You cover off (number three is the specific benefits) all the specific benefits of what people get as far as the outcomes of your product, they have all been mentioned and covered by other people. And the last one: who would they recommend it to and why—you only need 20 testimonials.
It does the selling for you; the features, all of your benefits, overcomes all the objections and it’s all disguised in a testimonial. It goes to connect with people’s unconscious. They’re not rationally going, “oh, this person is selling me here and this person is promoting this benefit, and this person is selling that.” It’ll just absorb.
That’s why you can be sitting there watching an infomercial at two o’ clock in the morning and you’re fixated. You’re just captivated with testimonial, testimonial, testimonial. They’re selling to you, but because it’s through personal endorsements, it goes into your subconscious and you just absorb it.
Pete: Absolutely. Now, just as a practical side of things. I know people are probably sitting there and overanalyzing this as well. People, and I’m sure you’ve experienced as well, they hear a great tactic like those four questions and they think that’s brilliant, and they start overanalyzing it without implementing it.
They start thinking they’ve got to do crazy SurveyMonkey.com-type questionnaire forms as part of their autoresponder series. You just literally have your team e-mail it, “Hi Scott,” as you said, “I just want you to answer a couple of questions for me after you’ve used the product. Here they are below, just hit reply and answer them.” Is something as simple as that effective?
Dale: I’ve literally got three of four lines of explanation text. “Do you mind giving some feedback,” blah, blah, blah, “answer these four questions.” That’s it. Then they reply and then my next e-mail goes like this: “Hey Pete, thanks very much for your feedback. I really, really appreciate it. It was so good, in fact, I’d love to use it on my website.
To save you some time, what I’ve done is I’ve just removed your questions and I’ve put together your answer into one block of text. Can you have a read of it and let me know if you’re happy with what’s being said, and I’d love to be able to use it? By the way, if you could flick me a photo, that way people can see that you’re a real person and that I haven’t just made this stuff up (smiley face).
Thanks so much, I really look forward to getting your reply and to say thanks, I’m going to send you out XYZ,” or, “I’m going to give you this discount as my way of saying thanks for helping me out with this great feedback.” So that’s it, that’s the step two. And again, nothing fancy. Simple reply, just saying, “Hey, I’ve taken out the questions.
I’ve put all the stuff, put it together. Are you happy with this? We’d love to be able to use it,” and, “Can you please send me a photo?” That’s it. As long as you have delivered great value (and I assume you have), nine out of 10 people will say yes. That’s pretty much what I find. There might be one out of every 10 that’s part of the Russian mafia and doesn’t want to be named.
Pete: Absolutely, mate, that’s gold. If people don’t literally pause it right now and go back to this when they get home from their run or their drive, and literally swipe and deploy that in the next two days, and send an e-mail out—even just to your last three clients; just pick three people and send this e-mail out. Test it to see how it goes with your business.
It’s a perfect swipe-and-deploy formula that I absolutely love. The other thing that I’d love to hear from your perspective, as well, because I know you’ve been very successful with this is the awards side of stuff. It’s something that I’ve implemented quite a bit in my businesses to build that credibility up.
But I’ve never really, I guess, outwardly spoken about why I did it. I thought when you raised that as part of your 10 key things, it was something that jumped out at me and said, “Okay, we should really delve into this as well.” So, can you talk about the whole awards side of things?
Dale: Absolutely. If you’re a business, there are literally dozens and dozens of different awards that are out there that you can submit to. Some of them are just in your local area, others are going to be in your city, others are going to be in your state, and others are going to be national, even international.
There’s heaps of awards there, they’re free to submit to any of these different awards. Some you just have to put a written proposal together, some it’s just an online form that you want to fill out. And once you become a finalist, if you’ve done a good proposal that follows it—and they will tell you what they want so it’s not that hard.
You just give them what they want, and make it look nice and fancy, then there’s a good chance it’s just like fishing. That if you put enough hooks in the water, that one will bite and you will get nominated and become a finalist in one of these awards, which is instant credibility. You can say “finalist in My Business Awards” or “Finalist in Entrepreneur of the Year,” or whatever it is. So that alone is great. You don’t even have to win.
Pete: Yeah, exactly.
Dale: But then if you do win, then of course, that’s even better. You can take these and you can put these logos on your website. Underneath your name, you can have award-winning pool designer or whatever it is that your profession is. But again, what it does is it makes people go, “Oh, I want to work with an award-winning life coach.
I want to work with an award-winning interior designer, not just any interior designer.” So immediately it makes you stand out, differentiates you from all of your competitors and it minimizes the risk about working with you because it reassures people to say, “okay, I’m working with a professional, I’m not working with some fly-by-nighter, could-be-in-business-today-gone-tomorrow.
If they’re an award-winning business and you’ve got a picture of you holding the award or even just a logo [on your website], it makes a big difference to your profile and credibility, and helps people to make easier decisions.
Pete: Absolutely. In the same essence of why media and publicity (which I know you talk about as well ) is so important, it basically makes the prospect feel like the due diligence has been done for them. So in terms of winning an awards, you have to have been scrutinized on some level.
It’s not always the case, but that’s the appearance of being an award-winner, that you’ve been scrutinized and this company wouldn’t have given you the award unless you ticked all the boxes. And the same with the media; if you’re seen in the media, which we’ve spoken about quite a bit. I know you and I have discussed it multiple times about being positioned in the media as the expert in that space.
Again, it implies that that reporter has done their due diligence, scoured the globe for the best person to talk about this particular topic or article and they’ve chosen you—so you must be the best in that space. It’s just that implied due diligence has been done, which means me, the prospect, don’t have to do that, don’t have to do shopping around, fact-checking. You must be the person to go to.
Dale: Exactly right.
Pete: In terms of the other things, media exposure is something that we both share our love of, but I really want to finish up with the publishing side of things because that’s where you and I first met, and where you got your biggest exposure was from publishing so many books. What’s your take on that?
I know a lot of your clients in some very strange niches, not just how-to. And this is the thing I really love about you, Dale, as opposed to a lot of business consultants, coaches and gurus, whatever the term may be, so many people end up just teaching people how to teach people, how to teach people to make money.
Whereas, I know a lot of your clients, a majority of them are real-world business owners that I think when we were there together speaking at your event, you had an award-winning pool manufacturer who was up on stage speaking about some of the stuff that he’d done recently with his business.
I think I met some people in the therapy game and a whole range of real-world people selling real stuff to other real people, so I know a lot of those people have written books. I think a lot of listeners who are landscape gardeners, or either masseuses or retail store owners would be like, “Well, hang on, I own a bike store.
What’s a book got to got with me?” I’d love your take on that. I think that’s something that’s very powerful that people don’t really get the connection or the correlation.
Dale: Let me reframe what I’m about to say. It’s important to understand that no matter what business you’re in, everybody to a certain extent is in the information business. Perfect example: at the moment, we’ve got a swimming pool and we’re looking to get solar heating so that way it’ll extend.
Instead of us being able to swim three months out of the year, we’ll be able to swim five months in the year by giving us a couple of months. Right now, even though we’re buying a solar system, we’re collecting information. What is this system? How much is it going to cost? What’s it going to look like?
Pete: How will it work?
Dale: How do they work? So we’re collecting information. Someone is basically having to go and come for an hour, an hour and a half. We’re going to ask all our questions and they educate, educate, educate. Now, that’s a slow process and quite frustrating when we have to basically be squeezing blood out of a stone and try to get the information that we need so we can make an informed decision.
All I could do was really just call these people up and say, “Can you send me out someone,” and they’ve had to come to our home. But if on their website they had ‘Free Guide: The 7 Things You Must Know Before Installing a Solar System,’ guaranteed, I would’ve downloaded it. I would’ve had a look at it and I would’ve been able to do my research and get the information that I need.
Instantly, it would’ve differentiated that business from any other business because the person who educates is the person who makes someone feel empowered. And when someone’s made to feel empowered, then it almost takes every other horse out of the race. I’m only going to buy from someone that is someone that’s added value to me and educated.
Pete: I’m just going to jump in there really quickly and throw another argument or reason for doing that. From the other side of the coin, you spoke about it from the prospects’ perspective, about making them feel empowered, which is so, so powerful and a great marketing tip across everything.
But even from my business in the telecommunications industry selling phone systems, one of the companies I have is traditionally very much face-to-face selling-based, and that’s fine. But everyone has experienced, either as a client or as a salesperson, the amount tire-kickers that you get, just fact find. They’ll waste your sales team staff for a half-hour meeting with no intent to buy, just to get the facts.
So if you can put something they can place, like information, like the stuff you’re talking about here and are probably about to share as well, that makes less resource-dependent. You have your salespeople only invest in their time with pre-qualified, pre-educated buyers or prospects, at least, that are going to come by a lot easier.
So from that perspective, you can operate a lot more lane by not having to have all these salespeople out there trying to bend the arm and convince people who are just there to tire-kick to purchase something. You might as well let content like publishing, reports or books, do that for you and then you only have to spend time dealing with the actual decent people.
Dale: Yeah, exactly right. So there’ are just so benefits as to why you’d want to write a book. It’s great for building a profile and credibility. It’s also a good way basically, like you said, to sell and to only then work with pre-qualified people. It’s a great way to build your databases.
It’s a great way to get media exposure. Because a lot of media these days, they only want to work with people that have credibility already. And one of the ways to get credibility is to be an author, so it’s like the chicken and the egg. You can’t get exposure without having credibility and you get credibility without having media exposure.
But having a book breaks that pattern and it goes, “Okay, this guy’s at least got some credibility now, and let’s interview them for their story.” Then you get more exposure, then you get more. So it’s a whole upward spiral. If you’re someone that is in a mainstream category—go into a book shop and it could be landscaping or it could be helping people with their business or cooking.
Then certainly a physical book would be a really good thing. If you’re in a more niche-y subject—I’m just trying to think of some niche—installing pools or solar systems, it’s probably not going to be a physical book; it’s probably going to be like an eBook that someone could download for a website.
Still great, because it builds credibility and there’s no cost of production and it doesn’t have to be that long, either. With a physical book, it’s got to be around 70 to 80 pages to be bound and to look credible. But with an eBook, it might only be 20 pages long and it still is an eBook, and you’ve at least published something.
Another thing that you can do now, thanks to iPads and also computers as well, is to be able to create a digital magazine. That’s something you know a lot about and have spoken about before. But basically, get your ideas down. Take that information out of your head that’s you’re only telling one-on-one, and then being able to put it out there and so you can be communicating to thousands of people all at the same time.
It’s just a really smart thing to do and a great way. As a publisher or author of this particular book, it’s another thing to build your credibility and to raise the profile and awareness of your business.
Pete: Let me ask you one question around publishing. You’ve got a whole course on how to write a book, and I’ve seen it and it’s fantastic. What’s the one tip in that course that you haven’t heard anybody else share when it comes to writing and publishing books?
Dale: Wow, what’s the one thing? One of the biggest things is about this idea of being able to pre-sell your books to other companies. I’ve done this hundreds and hundreds, and hundreds of times where I’ve basically said, “What do you think is easier: to sell one book to a thousand people, ‘Do you want to buy a book?
Do you want to buy a book? Do you want to buy a book?’ or to sell a thousand books to one person?” There’s this billion-dollar industry out there which is called the corporate gifts industry, where companies spend billions of dollars on t-shirts, hats, squeegee balls, bottle openers. Basically, crap that they use for a few days and then gets thrown out.
But companies, they’re not even aware that rather than getting a crappy little item like that, that they can get a book and it can be given out to their staff as Christmas presents, used in marketing materials, given out at expos and stuff like that, as well. I’ve done a number of deals where companies or charities, or different organizations have bought 5,000 books from me.
I give them quite a substantial discount; instead of $30, I might sell them for $10 a book. It only might cost me $2 to print, so I still make $8. If they order 5,000, that’s $50,000 just for one transaction. That’s something that not many people know about—to be able to come up with these strategic partners. For example, if you’re selling solar systems.
You could go to somebody that does pool installation and you could go, “It might only cost you $2 to print. After you install this pool, can you give them this gift?” And this will make you look good because they’ll think that you’re giving them something (which you are) but that you’ve paid for it.
It’s also a great promotion for my business as well. So you can either sell it to them and say, “Pay me $5 per book just to cover the printing, and then that marketing is free,“ or even just give it to them. Costs you nothing. And that way, a client can get educated.
You can have thousands and thousands of books out. There’s basically a sales army as opposed to what you mentioned before, which is having to sell one-on-one and being only able to talk to maybe three or four decent face-to-face appointments per day. You can literally have thousands of people being exposed to your product or service, or at the same time, and it does all the hard work for you.
Pete: Very cool, man. We’ll have to get you back on the show at some stage to walk through that process, because that is a very, very powerful tip.
Dale: Oh, I’d love to. It’s been great chatting.
Pete: We’re sort of out of time. We try to keep it around 40 to 45 minutes, so we probably should start wrapping it up. I know we only covered three of those 10 things. We left media exposure, social media, video, apps, public speaking, all on the table either for another episode of the podcast with you one day.
But I think you mentioned it before that NewRulesOfBusiness.com.au, an event you run all around Australia—which I’ll let you talk about. I highly recommend people come along for that event. I’ve spoken at the subsequent events you’ve run off the back of those tools, and I have to say it’s one of the more powerful rooms I’ve been in when it comes to seminars in Australia. It’s not pitchy, it’s not hype-y. I spoke, I didn’t pitch.
Other speakers and their private events you guys run don’t pitch, and I really do believe it’s some very powerful stuff. The 90-Day Plan stuff that you guys do, which I won’t give away too much, but that is one of the best things I’ve ever seen at a business event. Do you want to give everyone a bit more of an overview about the New Rules of Business event as a starting point anyway?
Dale: Sure. I’m aware that people might be listening to this from all around the world. So, if you’re just interested in me, generally, you can go to my personal website, DaleBeaumont.com. Just a bit of information about me and also you can access some of the books that I’ve published as well.
But if you’re in Australia or New Zealand, I’d really strongly recommend you come along to one of my free business seminars. I run these a couple times a year in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide and Auckland.
Basically, I’m on a mission to try and help as many business owners as I can to transform the way that they do business and integrate technology so they can build a business that gives them the life that they want and not a business that sucks the life out of them—which is what many people have right now.
I give away heaps of content. We talk about video marketing and social media and creating systems, and we talk about outsourcing and heaps of other content, all on building a business for the future and not the past.
If you want to find out more, the website’s NewRulesOfBusiness.com.au, that’s NewRulesOfBusiness.com.au. And if you make it, come up and say hi and tell me you first heard about me through PreneurCast. That would be great to be able to connect with you that way and for you to be empowered with some great content (for free, of course) and I’m sure you’ll really enjoy it.
Pete: If you do get along, make sure you pester Dale to come back on the podcast one day to share some more stuff. But definitely take a pen and paper because of some amazing stuff shared like about this Chicago real estate agent. I think the other thing is what three words that help you rise to Number One in your industry, and a whole bunch of other really cool stuff.
So, NewRulesOfBusiness.com.au. The really cool thing is that you run these multiple times throughout the year. So even if you’re listening to one of the archive or the back catalogue episodes of the show, hit the website up because there will be no doubt, date’s in probably the next 3 months. Is that the cycle of the tours?
Dale: Yeah, exactly. I go to each of the cities four times a year, so it’s normally every three months, and Adelaide and Auckland twice a year. It’d be great for you to come along.
Pete: Awesome, buddy. Thank you so much for coming on the show. It’s been good to know you over these seven or eight years or so, now. Mate, very proud of what you’re doing. I wanted to get you on the show, so thanks for your time.
Dale: Yep, thanks. It’s great to see what you’ve done as well. You know, it’s funny, where we started as baby entrepreneurs.
Pete: Exactly, taking over Australia.
Dale: One step at a time. Thanks a lot!
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Links:
Online:
http://www.dalebeaumont.com/ – Dale’s Personal Site
http://www.newrulesofbusiness.com.au/ – Dale’s conference – The New Rules of Business
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