Something from Nothing, Possible?

Brian talks about a recent podcast episode he had with Jocelyn Schmidt of Fusion Performing Arts Alliance

➑️ https://grantspassvip.com/jocelyn-schmidt-fusion-performing-arts-alliance/

Making Personal Connections πŸ§‘β€πŸ€β€πŸ§‘

Brian talks about a recent event he went to locally called, First Crush.

➑️ ContentMarketingQuestion.com

Simple Direct Mail Content Marketing πŸ“¦ (NeoLife Nutrition)

Brian talks about some content marketing done via direct mail by John Chambers and his wife Debbie Musack

Contact the today – https://business.grantspasschamber.org/list/member/neolife-nutrition-musack-chambers-13248

Brian’s Live Training on July 29th – LiveContentTraining.com

EDDM – What Is It and How Do You Do It? 🏠

If you read this before watching, spoiler, Brian’s talking about Every Door Direct Mail!

Transcription

EDDM, what is it and how do you do it?

Hi, I’m Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

EDDM stands for Every Door Direct Mail. And this is a sample of it, I’m going to talk about it what is Every Door Direct Mail.

Well, if you’re not aware, the post office has had this program for a number of years now, where you can declare a certain area, and it’s a postal route.

Within a zip code, there are specific routes you can declare a certain area and you can say I want every door in this area to get a copy of my direct mail.

Yeah, this could be an envelope, this could be a piece of paper like this, this can be a postcard, there’s a number of different, you know, ways of doing it, but you’re paying for a bulk amount to be sent out.

The idea is that it actually reaches all of those areas.

Now, depending on the personnel in your area, this may work, it may not work, and you’ve got to really keep an eye on it to make sure that it actually reaches its destination because it’s junk mail.

Because the post office knows it’s junk mail, some postal employees have been known to skip it, and to dump it off in a dumpster or hide it somewhere, just so they have less work to do.

I’m not saying all post office, all people work for the post office do this or anything of the sort I’m saying it has been known to happen and anybody that’s done any amount of work with direct mail knows that flub ups can occur.

Now, with that in mind, though, Every Door Direct Mail may be really useful for you because you can cover a really big area. If you have a message that you want most people to see that it’s a great way of doing it.

This is a piece and you can always tell whether something’s direct Every Door Direct Mail, by this right up here, I don’t know if you can see that. That is showing it actually says EDDM retail us postage paid.

So where a stamp should be, it’s going to have this little insignia. And here it says it will not have an actual name it will say a something like local postal customer.

So that’s the name this showed up in my mail and said his person probably covered a very wide area be curious, I’d love to know because I’m going to show you all the details of this piece. I’d love to know if you know this person, have them get in contact with me I’d love to find out how well this did for them. I want to know if they got their money back and more.

I want to know if they covered the enter you know county or whether they they covered very specific areas and be very interesting to to know and be able to help other people out. This is what it looks like. Very simple page.

So what was on this side is just what I showed you this is nothing but a piece of paper neon, horrible color.

These horrible colors standout and they get attention that’s part of direct mail, you got to get attention.

So even though it technically this is this can get attention as long as I mean, I doubt you get into many of these in the mail every day and on it is a very simple message.

It says Bill’s tree service with his phone number. I hope you don’t mind me showing his phone number.

If you’re in the Southern Oregon area, Josephine County, I imagined bill might be able to help you with your tree. So there’s a little free advertising for you bill. It says licensed bonded insured, and there’s his license number.

I think they may have to have that in their advertising. I’m not sure of the rules for California, but I see it quite often free estimates. So you can estimate on what Bill can do for your trees but here’s a list.

Bullet point list on the bottom of things that can happen removal, hazardous removal, wind sailing, crown cleaning, stump, grinding, hedge trimming, logging, chipping, fuel reduction, retrieval, cat drone plane antenna install.

These are all things that they can do for you at Bill’s tree service, LLC now look at how simple that is. I would bet that bill got some attention with this one way or the other.

I would bet bill got some attention nowadays with with the yellow pages not being hardly I know in at least in our area. It depends on your area. Some areas they’re still thriving, the physical yellow pages, but in our area it’s not.

The simplicity of just finding who to use for your tree services.

It’s not there and everyone’s looking a little bit different. Some people, they go into Google, some people, they have to ask someone they know some people check with the local Chamber of Commerce, or with another website that is one of these websites that you have to pay to get on as a vendor.

They’ll look at reviews online and so forth.

Bill found a way around that with a simple piece of paper sent in the mail. Now, are there ways Bill can make this even better?

Absolutely.

One of the things I’d say is I would either say the city or the if it’s Josephine County, I’d say Josephine County resident, here’s a, here’s a special deal from Bill’s tree service. free estimate for this, this is I mean, even, it’s just taking the same information and presenting in a different way.

You can get more attention, there’s a reason why you put who it’s for. And if you don’t have a name of a person, or you can’t put a name and a person like something that’s direct mail, you want to get as specific as possible. You may say, Well, this whole area is, you know, in this certain neighborhood.

So you could say that the you know, residents of the suction suction neighborhood, or Josephine County residents, we live in Josephine County, Oregon.

He could say that, that’s a quick way to be able to gain a little bit more attention, you have a couple more extra split seconds is what you’re looking for when it comes to direct mail, before between the person throwing it away.

And actually reading the next sentence reading the next thing that stands out, this is going to hit certain people, and it’s not going to hit other people, he could take this exact same one, and put it out a couple of weeks from now, and probably get a very similar result to what he’s already gotten.

If he got a good result, I’d suggest he tried again, do nothing but sin the same one out, we’ll get something maybe even a different color, another horribly ugly neon color, they do work. This is the simplicity of getting attention, though.

Sometimes it just means doing something, doing something to get attention, it doesn’t mean you have to use direct mail, it doesn’t mean that you definitely don’t necessarily have to use Every Door Direct Mail.

You can go online and check out the post offices website, you can actually see maps and see where your mail will hit in theory.

That’s a great Every Door Direct Mail is something you, you certainly want to check out. And there’s a lot of other tutorials on YouTube and so forth, where you can find out how to do it exactly. Or you can work with a professional, somebody that knows how to do it a little bit. I am business investor.

So I love discussing these ideas. I love discussing how businesses can do simple things to get attention, because there are people who are not even in your local area that will buy Every Door Direct Mail in order to reach people and it’s well worth it if they understand who their audience is and who they’re trying to get.

Even if it’s a if it’s a very small minority of the people who they’re reaching with each piece of mail.

Hopefully that’s helpful to you. I have a book, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business. Right now it is at the timing of this filming.

It is still available on my website for free AmazonProofBook.com.

If you get this or watch this or listen to this later, it may not still be available for free, but hopefully there’ll be something there that you can discount or something that will help you out in your business.

AmazonProofBook.com That’s all I have for today. We’ll be back tomorrow.

In the meantime, get out there and let the magic happen.

How Important Are Relationships? πŸ‘« (B2B Networking)

Thoughts on the value of relationships and networking after Brian just recorded an upcoming podcast with Grants Pass local, Cat Bonney.

Transcription

How important is relationships?

Hi, I’m Brian Pombo. Welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

Today, I wanted to discuss the concept of relationships in business specifically. So it’s all about being relationship reliant for me.

In fact, there are three pillars at BrianJPombo.com.

The first one I like talking about the most, right off the bat, at least, is being relationship reliant.

This is something that came later in life for me, even though I was surrounded by it, and the evidence was everywhere. It didn’t occur to me that the relationships you have the strength of the relationships, but even the loose ties that you have out there in life, or that one of the most important things possible.

That all business is based off of people, you know, like and trust, it’s based off of some form of relationship.

Now, sometimes you don’t necessarily have a relationship with the person, most of the products and services you use, that you spend money on, you don’t know the person behind it. But you have a relationship with that brand.

There is something there, someone has created something, put it forth, and you’ve taken it and exchanged it for money.

There’s a relationship there even at the most crass you know, just financial interaction, you know, even just that there’s still a relationship, and it goes on from there. The strongest relationship you have with someone the people that you paid the most amount of money on the most regular basis.

That’s some of the most powerful stuff and it can tell you something about even the things that you pay a small amount for. It all has to do with the same thing. It all comes back to some form of relationship.

I was reminded of this today because I had a really good podcast interview.

So I have a podcast that’s local. It’s called Grants Pass VIP. And what it does is it covers basically stories of movers and shakers in Josephine County, Oregon. And Grants Pass is the largest town here.

It’s named Grants Pass VIP, because that’s where most of the people will relate to it. Up this past year, about Yeah, about a year about this past year, I’ve been working very closely with the Chamber of Commerce.

Even though a good portion of that year, we weren’t even meeting in person. But meeting over over video chat. So I got to meet somebody that we had known each other kind of at a distance or name’s Cat Bonney.

Cat, she’s just a million different things in town. And she’s one of these people that I finally got to sit down and have an interview with for my podcast, this will be coming up. Not available yet if you’re watching this right away, but you’ll see it soon over at GrantsPassVIP.com.

Cat is a very interesting person, her entire life has been built on the idea of getting out there and making a difference and encouraging other people to do the same thing. And having her hands and a whole lot of different items.

But all around this concept of really making a difference for people and in doing things that that stirs her soul, not just a way to pay the bills, you know, obviously, there’s always that end of it, but you have to have things that really make a difference for you.

Even the short period of time we hung out today at the coffee shop, recording the podcast, even that short period of time I found it really interesting how useful her knowledge is. I mean, just she asked what she can do for me and I just tossed something out there.

And she threw some advice out that I know is gonna save me many hours, and many headaches. And so I thank her so much for that. That’s one simple, subtle relationship that I that I’ve had that I have that I share with her.

You can’t put a price tag on that. But at the same end, it’s going to profit me if you could put a price tag it’s going to profit me greatly over time. If nothing else in the saving of time just for a brief moment, a brief conversation.

These are the things that are true throughout. And if you’re looking to grow things, if you’re looking to look at the world differently, if you’re looking to think more like people who have something that you want out of life.

It comes back down to a relationship. My entire way of building my business for the past, you know, two-plus years, via podcasting, and via the book that I wrote, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business.

These are things that that happened because of relationships because I connected with other people, sometimes at a distance will originally at a distance online with a lot of people.

And then also in person talking with people and going through it and wanting to reach out and meet certain people that I couldn’t find a way to get a conversation with until I could find a gift that I could offer them.

The gift in this situation was the Podcast, the podcast allows me to offer a gift of publicity to somebody.

In exchange, I get to meet this person to get to know them better, and find out if there’s anything that I can do in their life and maybe even learn something from them. Simple, simple concepts, these simple ideas, but it all comes back to the relationship.

Business is about other human beings. It’s about you and other human beings connecting. That’s all it is. And it doesn’t matter whether you’re making dog food, it doesn’t matter what you’re making. I don’t know, why do I always go back to dog food, it’s interesting.

Maybe it’s because I have no experience in the dog food market. And but for some reason, my mind always jumps to dog food when I’m thinking about things. It doesn’t matter what your industry is all a relationship based.

This is very difficult. If you have a task oriented mind, my mind is very much at least on the forefront is initially task oriented. I have a little bit of people orientation back there. But mostly it’s task oriented. And it took me many years to realize the practical benefit of relationships.

I hate to say it that was sounds weird, doesn’t it? If you think like a robot, it’s difficult to put it into words. But that’s a sadly that’s where I come from. So that’s all I got for today.

Go check out my book if you want to hear some more about about how to take relationships and take them to the next level and also meet people that you would have never met before. That can be really helpful to you.9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business. You can get a free copy at AmazonProofBook.com.

AmazonProofBook.com.

And I’m going to be back here tomorrow talking about the second or the three pillars for BrianJPombo.com. Stay tuned for that, we’ll see.

In the meantime, get out there and let the magic happen.

Gifts for Local Business 🎁🦊 (ROE Motors & GP CarFox)

Brian shares a gift he got from GP CarFox of ROE Motors, while attending his local Grants Pass Chamber Greeters Meeting.

Transcription

Gifts for local business.

Hi, I’m Brian Pombo. Welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

I have here a gift from a local, I guess we could call her an influencer. Amy fox, GP CarFox here in Grants Pass is a bit of a local celebrity among people who know her.

She has developed kind of a persona, and I’m here to talk with you about it today.

First, I want to remind you about my book, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business, you can get a free copy at AmazonProofBook.com. Or you can purchase a hardcopy wherever books are sold, including amazon.com.

But I want to show you now what is this gift.

This is a gift that I received from attending the Chamber of Commerce meeting today. And that’s why I wanted to go over it, and haven’t even taken the ribbon off of it yet because we are going to unwrap it right here.

I want to I want to kind of break this down for you.

Now what happens it specifically at our chamber of commerce and you can I don’t old Chamber of Commerce work a little bit differently, but they tend to have a weekly or bi weekly mixer type meeting. We call ours greeters.

You go to a greeters meeting and everybody has Well, in our case, we have 30 seconds in order to give kind of an elevator pitch for our business, and a lot of them mostly people you’ve heard something from them before, but some people try and wrap in news and other things.

They’re also allowed, you’re also allowed to bring a gift every time. So to pass on to the next speaker, whoever gets their card pulled next. Now let’s take a look at this. This was a gift that I ended up with. Right take this ribbon off, let’s break this down.

So who is Amy Fox?

Amy Fox is a as a car salesperson here locally. And so she always gives away Little Hot Wheels. Cars. Here’s one here.

That’s cool. It’s a Rally Baja Crawler. Tyler is going to love that. My son is a Hot Wheels junkie, so he’s definitely going to love that.

Along with that I’m saving some of the best pieces here for last. We’ve got Baby Ruth funds eyes for people that enjoy their candies. I mean, how do you get go wrong with candy?

If you if you don’t eat candy, you can always pass it on to somebody else. So that’s I mean how you go wrong with that. That’s awesome.

Also, this is unique, the $2 bill one of these nice, fresh $2 bills, unusual because you don’t see them very often.

The famous for Jefferson being on the front, if you don’t know about $2 bills go and look it up. It’s fascinating history.

Then here’s the cool part. She’s got her card, which is very cool.

But look at this…she has her own kind of logo, Amy Fox, and she’s got the little cartoon Fox there with her phone number. She’s with ROE Motors here in Grants Pass.

She always has kind of little updates on what they’re doing locally at ROE Motors in terms of what they have available and so forth.

It’s always very interesting.

She also does a lot of social media videos on social media, which is very cool and unique for local. A lot of local businesses do not take full advantage of video. So that’s a quick tip on top of anything else and doesn’t have to be fancy video, you could just be behind the wheel, giving an update.

She’s got her own logo sticker with phone number and email address. So this works as a quasi business card, but also something that you could put up that people were saying, what is that, right?

How do you go wrong with having having your own logo that reminds people of your last name, that’s just the coolest thing of all. Hey, Amy, we’d love to have you on Grants Pass VIP, the podcast that’s all about Grants Pass and Josephine County as a whole, the movers and shakers that work here.

So if you know Amy, be sure and send this to her, make sure she sees it and Amy reached out to me and let’s let’s get you on the show because this is quality stuff.

It’s really important whether your chamber of commerce offers a gift giving a situation like this, or whether you just need to do it yourself.

If you’re if you have a local community or you have any type of community that you’re able to plug into of professionals, of potential clients, customers, patients, parishioners, what have you, it whatever you’re looking for.

You need to give out gifts in order to get attention It’s a simple concept. It’s not over the top, and people aren’t going to hate you for it.

They’ll enjoy the gift even if it’s something simple and or silly, and you can’t go wrong, you can’t go wrong with a gift. That’s just another way to be able to stand out. And the more unique your gift is, the more you stand out, the more people will think about you talk about you.

Maybe they’ll even talk about you on their video podcast. So that’s all I have for tonight, you have a good one. We’ll be back tomorrow.

In the meantime, get out there and let the magic happen.

Testimonials Are Very Important! ☺️

Brian shares a recent experience he had at his local chamber of commerce meeting.

Podcast with Candy Morasch – https://grantspassvip.com/candy-morasch-once-upon-a-horse/

Transcription

Testimonials are very important.

Hi I’m Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

Every night, nearly every night, I will promote my book, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business.

It’s just because it’s the latest book I’ve come out with it is the main way in which I start a conversation with many of the people I ended up doing business with as a business investor, I am always looking for partners I’m always looking for people to team up with.

I don’t have a very clean process because depending on whether we’re actually a good fit or not whether I move forward with people. And sometimes I work on an equity deal, or sometimes I work on just a straight line, a very specific short-term deal.

But one thing is true, I always tried to recommend this book, or have people at least peruse it before we go any further with business. Because I’ve had so many great business conversations today.

I’m not even sure where to start but I want to talk a little bit about testimonials.

I’m going to tell you how they handle testimonials at my local chamber meetings. So what they’ll do is they’ll that will have a group of people and of course, we’re all meeting in person nowadays. So we had a really good-sized group of people.

And they’ll tell everybody, you can give one testimonial to one other person, all right.

And you’ll do that after they get up and give their 30-second talk.

So everyone gets 30-seconds that’s there. And they get 30-seconds to give their pitch or talk or whatever.

Then if there’s someone with a testimonial, they can talk and give a testimonial but you’re always only able to get one because they don’t have to have limited time.

So it’s kind of fun. It’s kind of cool to see. And there’s always good stuff that comes out of that. Well, I was lucky enough to have some people bring me up. I actually got to I think I got two testimonials when you’re always supposed to get one.

I ended up with two testimonials from some great people, Mr. Tom Parker and Mr. Steven Sable, I really appreciate what they said about me today.

I like to say what Candy Morasch said during her own time, she took time out of her own time to talk about a section in my book, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business now she spoke about an area that I talked about in here regarding lumpy mail, and how to basically show up differently.

It’s in my it’s in the third chapter on being different and lumpy mail an example of that.

Now how you do that is if you’re sending a piece of mail to somebody a piece of direct mail, physical snail mail to somebody, you could send it in a regular envelope. If you just put something in there that they can feel through the envelope, they’re more likely to open the envelope.

It’s just it’s an old trick but it’s extremely useful, especially if you’re trying to get somebody’s attention. And there are other tips on how to get that type of attention.

But that very specific idea of having that piece of mail be a little bit lumpy and if you’ve ever noticed, if you get something that’s a little bit strange, even if it just has a hard surface on the inside, sometimes that will get people open and says this what was why is there cardstock in here or whatever. And people will open it I’ve talked about this a lot on my other podcasts hear regarding direct mail and so forth.

But she was so impressed with that she let everybody know at the Chamber meeting to read my book, I had multiple people come up and want a copy of it.

So it tells you about the power of a book.

It also tells you about the power of testimonial and makes a big difference I had also a number of people come and talk to me about wanting to be on my podcast which Candy was on I will include a link in the description going to take two candies interview on Grants Pass VIP which is a local podcast that I have that just concerns people within Josephine County in Oregon, United States. and

It’s a really interesting show because even if you’re from nowhere in this area, you can listen to people talk about their lives talk about their businesses talk about their projects, and their passions in life.

Candy is a great example of somebody that just has a zest for life. She’s just out there getting it brightening other people’s lives, which is it’s just the coolest thing in the world. So thank you very much candy for the testimonial thank you to everybody who has provided testimonials to me in the past I don’t use them nearly enough.

You should use them to you need to take what people say about you in print. What they, you know, what they either write about you physically or what they comment they leave on your social media.

Things that people send you maybe video getting people on video or audio saying great things about you and being able to use that and put it back out there because when people hear it from other people.

It means it makes 100 times bigger difference than If they hear it from you directly, you can say all these great wonderful things about yourself.

But unless they hear about it from somebody else, it’s unlikely to have the same impact. And if you notice, when you really hear real testimonials, not just fake ones, actors and so forth, when you hear real testimonials, it makes you stop and pay attention.

Which as the name of the game is getting people’s attention, you know, getting how to stand out that’s, that’s the subtitle of my book, How to Standout in Your Industry and Make Every Competitor Irrelevant.

You can get a free copy of my book over at, AmazonProofBook.com. If you want to hard copy, go on to Amazon.com or BarnesandNoble.com or all the other booksellers online, you can go and find, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business.

That’s all I have for tonight. You have a good one. We’ll be back tomorrow. In the meantime, get out there and let the magic happen.

Business Hacks For Chaotic Times πŸ’ˆπŸ’Ό (G St. Barber Co. in Grants Pass)

Brian talks about the attention a local barbershop (G St. Barber Co.) received from offering free haircuts to those looking for work.

link to article – https://www.kdrv.com/community/free-haircuts-for-those-in-need/article_2a1c3528-a654-11ec-a5f9-e30b527f5a1d.html

Transcription

Business hacks for chaotic times.

Hi I’m Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

Check out this article I found. I also found a video regarding something happening right here in town, you may have something like this happening where you live also, where we have a barbershop that’s offering free haircuts to anyone that is looking to get go out and get a job interview and is looking to move themselves up in the world, but they can’t afford it.

This is just a helpful leg up to be able to help out but what it also is, is an amazing marketing tool is you’re using a situation that everyone’s aware of the crunch of money and everything else and tough times and using it to your advantage by offering something.

I mean, think about a barbershop think about all the time in a barbershop, where you have an empty chair. There are tons of periods of time where there’s just nobody coming in and we’ve nobody’s coming in, no money is being made in most cases, as smarter barbers may have a subscription program or something like that setup but if you don’t, then chances are you need it.

You need all the help you can get even if it’s a free person, because it’s one of those businesses. That’s very special in the fact that people don’t like switching up.

Especially men don’t like switching up where they go to get their hair done. Once they commit there, they’re there for life.

So you get you get somebody to come once or twice to the same barber. If they’re happy with the results, they’ll keep coming.

If they’re even partially happy with the results. They will keep coming, which is a which is a really cool deal.

Congratulations to this fella for setting up this program here locally. It’s something you can do even if you don’t have a barber shop. That’s not even if you don’t even have a local retail shop.

Find ways to offer to make an offer that’s tied to the news that’s tied to the conversation already going on in people’s heads and you’ll go far. It’s a nice quick tip for tonight.

Go check out, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business my book that’s all about how to overcome competition works in into any industry whatsoever. If you purchase this read it and you say it can’t work in your industry. I would love to interview you and I will give you double your money back. So reach out today.

Go go pick up your own free copy. If you don’t want to pay for it, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business. Free copy at AmazonProofBook.com.

AmazonProofBook.com, all one word.

You have a great night. We’ll see you tomorrow.

In the meantime, get out there and let the magic happen.