The Fast (But Not Easy) Way To Shape Yourself Into A Marketing Leader

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Hi, my name is Igor Kheifets and this is the List Building Lifestyle, the only podcast
which delivers cutting edge conversion strategies from the online trenches straight to
your earbuds. Download the transcript of today’s episode and all future episodes at
listbuilidnglifestylesshow.com. I also invite you to grab a free copy of “The Wealthy
List Builder’s Survival Guide” at listbuildinglifestyleshow.com/survival and now
once again it’s time to claim your List Building Lifestyle.

Jonathan: You are listening to the List Building Lifestyle show. Aren’t you lucky
to be here? Yes, you are. And here is the Chief List Builder, the Sultan of Solo
Ads, Mr. Igor Kheifets.

Igor: Oh, wow. The Sultan. I don’t think I qualify for a Sultan. Yeah, I think you
need to have three wives minimum to be a Sultan.

Jonathan: Oh, shit, man. You’re slacking. You better get to work.

Igor: Oh, man, if you can find a legal loophole to do that, then I’m down.

Jonathan: [laughter]

Igor: Coach me.

Jonathan: I’m sure, I’m sure.

Igor: Coach me. [laughter]

Jonathan: [laughter] Nice. I’m sure your wife’s going to love that. [laughter]

Igor: Oh, yeah. She’s going to be the one picking them for me. No, she’s not
worthy of my men. And this one, we will test her out for 500 clicks.

Jonathan: You better make sure you get one that knows how to clean. Add one that
knows how to clean, another one that knows how to cook. [laughter]

Igor: I’m going to get so sued because of you.

Jonathan: Oh, shit. Alright.

Igor: I’m definitely getting into a lawsuit because of you.

Jonathan: Look, I didn’t know that’s what Sultan meant. I was just trying to use
alliteration. It’s easy to remember. So Igor, let’s get serious now. We’re having
a lot of fun, but come on. What are we here for today?

Igor: Well, it’s really hard to tell because all we do is shoot the shit in these
calls. It’s really hard to keep delivering value every single day. I was watching
just literally this week, as we’re recording, there was this big super classical
game, which is Real Madrid against Barcelona. And me and Dennis, I’m a Real Madrid
fan, as well as a Manchester United fan, but Dennis and my dad, they cheer for
Barcelona, my brother too. And Barcelona ain’t looking too good this year. And I
was a watching this video review by one of the ex-Barcelona players, who I really
respect, ______ and he said, “Look, everybody talks about how Barcelona ain’t
showing up, but first of, they’re still fighting for the title. And second, it’s
really hard to be at the top be at the top of your game for ten years nonstop,
every year, every game, playing like 50-something games every season. And he has a
point. And now that we’re way past the 130-episode mark and we’ve done so many,
I’m thinking, “Man, it’s really hard to keep coming up with more things to talk
about and with more value to give to the listeners. It’s getting really difficult
without repeating myself.”

Jonathan: Oh, Igor. You’re putting too much pressure on yourself. With a 130
episodes you start going back to stuff you said in episode two and three. They’ve
already forgotten about that. You’ve got to drive home them points. [laughter]

Igor: You should have included that in your quick start guide for a successful
podcasting. [laughter]

Jonathan: [laughter] I happen to run into that, buddy.

Igor: All jokes aside, today we’re going to be chatting about something really
important, and that is two things. First off, what is marketing? In other words,
although we spoke about this many times on the show, a lot of people still don’t
understand what marketing truly means. They think marketing is driving traffic.
They think marketing is joining a business opportunity. Well, no, it’s not.
Driving traffic is driving traffic, and joining a business opportunities is just
literally joining a business opportunity. When it comes to marketing, marketing
means producing that indoctrinating content and communication to the marketplace
that allows the marketplace to perceive you as a trusted authority and an expert,
and then making a call to action for them to actually do something like buy from
you, or sign up on your list. And now, when it comes to marketing, it’s really
important to understand what it takes to create good marketing. Because there’s a
lot of people out there who can’t produce content, but very few people, they can
actually do a good job of it. And I found out that it’s really difficult sometimes
for me to teach someone who’s brand new to produce good marketing. And even though
I give them all my secrets, they still fail to do that. And what I found is it
often comes down to their experience. So in other words, kind of growing up in
this industry. I’ve been here for almost ten years now, kind of going through the
motions. I took a lot of shit. I went through lots of months of being full
experiences. I got scammed, I got bruised, I test the traffic campaigns that
failed. I had people who’d be funding $6,000 coaching programs after six months of
being in the program claiming I’m a scammer. I had rip-off reports submitted
against me. I’ve had so much crazy stuff happen to me that it’s really easy for me
to produce good marketing. Because to produce good marketing you really have to
have taken lots and lots of punishment in your career. That’s what this experience
and the lessons you learned are, the prerequisite for you to produce something
really good. Now, another example of this, something I’ve seen a couple of days
ago, which kind of sparked the idea behind this episode. There’s this Russian
lady, she’s sort of like a stand-up comedian, and an Instagram star, and a
YouTuber, and she’s sort of like all-around communicator. She’s a public person.
Has a ton, a ton, a ton, a ton of followers on YouTube, and a ton of followers on
Instagram in Russia. A very popular girl. Now, she’s giving this dating advice or
relationship advice probably. Yeah, relationship is more accurate because she
talks about her relationship, not so much about how to get hooked up with the
right guy. And she released this video, and said something so true. She said,
“Don’t message me thinking that I’m the saint and that I know everything about
everything when it comes to relationships, and that I never made any mistakes.
That’s not true. The reason I’m able to produce all these videos for you and give
you all this advice is because I made a ton of mistakes myself. I made every
single mistake in the book. I was divorced twice. I broke up with like a gazillion
boyfriends.” And this, and this, and this. Which makes a lot of sense. The reason
she can give us advice is because she made the mistakes, which brings me to
another point, which I believe I mentioned in one of the recent emails that we
sent out. And that is, what’s up with all the coaches that are like 16 years old
telling me how to live my life?

Jonathan: Come on, Igor. You need a 16 year old life coach because you do not have
any vision.

Igor: Yeah, sure. But seriously, I was scrolling through YouTube the other day on
my phone. Not sure why I did that, by the way, because I’m committed not to do
social media anymore. But I was. Guilty as charged. And I saw this video by this
young guy. He was doing a video about why he got comfortable with being alone or
something like that. He’s alone and he’s annoyed that people want to hang out with
him, and this and that. I’m like, “Dude, you are barely 20 years old. You haven’t
lived your life. You haven’t really made mistakes. Why am I even sitting here
listening to you on how to live my life?”

Jonathan: Why were you?

Igor: Even though his advice was pretty cool, by the way. The advice he gave was
okay, but I’m sure he read it in a book and just kind of repurposed it in his own
video. But my point is, everybody’s trying to teach you something, even though
they don’t have this experience which brings me to the point. That’s why they
can’t really become true leaders yet, because they don’t have this experience. Not
yet anyway, they have to go out and make some mistakes and come back with battle
scars. And when you come back with battle scars, this is when the stuff surely
kind of shines through you. You know what I mean? You can be talking about the
same thing that another guy is talking about, but it will shine through the other
guy so much better than it shines through you, often times it has a lot to do with
the experience.

Jonathan: Yeah, I can’t remember where I read it. I think it was Harvard Business
Review or something. Anyways, they were talking about how pain makes an imprint on
your memory. You have tattoos also, so you know what this is like. But those
tattoos cause some pain when you’re getting them, but you remember where you were,
what you were doing, why you got that tattoo, because it causes that imprint. And
I think it’s the same thing with experiences in your life, is you have to go
through that pain, it causes that imprint that you can’t forget, and then you’re
able to communicate that with people. And that’s what so many people like these
two year old life coaches are missing. They have not felt that yet.

Igor: Yeah, I agree. And I completely agree about the pain leaving an imprint. If
I think about it, there’s very few moments that are positive that I can remember
from my childhood. Most of it is the bad stuff. Especially if I walk around near
high school somewhere, I look at that thing and all of a sudden there’s like
flashbacks, really nasty experiences coming back to me. So yeah, it does leave a
freaking imprint. And it does allow you to come from really true place when you
try to educate and indoctrinate your potential customers into working with you.
And they want to work with somebody who made the mistakes, by the way. They don’t
want to work with somebody who’s got the blueprint. They want to work with
somebody who can tell them war stories. One of the most effective marketing
tactics that I’ve ever fell under the spell off, if you will, so when it comes to
Dan Kennedy, John Carlton, Gary Halbert, the one thing they all have in common is
they have these crazy marketing war stories that they are telling, which not only
build up their credibility so much, but also allow me to say, “Man, these guys
know what they’re talking about and that’s why I’m willing to pay John Carlton
$2,500 for an hour of his time, 2,500 bucks for an hour. That’s double the rent
I’m paying right now for an hour of his time. And you have to prepay for four, the
last time I checked. So telling war stories is just such a good, authentic
marketing tactic. It doesn’t require you to hype the crap out of your emails or
videos, whatever. You just tell the war story and you’re instantly credible.

Jonathan: I got to get some more war stories. I’m writing myself a note here. I
need more war stories. [laughter]

Igor: I’m writing myself a note here.

Jonathan: More war stories for everyone. [laughter] All of a sudden we’re going to
be blasting our list with all this stuff. But alright, so knowing the pain, going
through the experience, and then being able to translate that to your market so
that’s what you’re saying is a good way to attract people. That’s marketing. Is
that what we’re talking about here? Marketing. That’s one of the pillars, I
suppose.

Igor: Yeah, that’s the definition. One of the ways to market is to tell war
stories that doesn’t require you to go out and say, “Oh, I made a gazillion
dollars.” Not to mention that even when you’ve made a gazillion dollars, doesn’t
mean you’ve got to go and talk about it. Because this doesn’t mean that your
customers will make that. I think Ben put out a great email last week where he
spoke about why he doesn’t use numbers in email. And even if he does use some
numbers, he usually doesn’t use his own numbers, but only the successful case
studies that the people send in from the newsletter. Which is really smart,
really, really smart. Because when I started out, and there was this Click Bank
launch craze, every headline was the same. “Here’s the one click button software
that made me $7 million dollars in 42 days.” Blah, blah, blah. Next day something
else is going live and it’s, “Here’s the world’s best plug-in that produced
$200,000 in the first 12 hours of me launching it.” etc. So it’s always like a
claim attached to some sort of a number. And honestly, I don’t like that sort of
marketing. First of, it attracts the wrong kind of person. And second, it doesn’t
build up your credibility, it just makes the customer go, “Oh, not one of those
assholes that screams numbers at me.” They’re immune to that stuff anymore at this
point. The consumer changed compared to, I don’t know, three, four, five, seven
years ago. It’s a different consumer. You can’t get people just because you tell
them, “Hey, come in and you have the potential to make big money.” It’s like every
single MLM in business opportunity these days, it sells through the same fricking
strategy. They come in, they show the lifestyle, then they are like, “So here’s
what your income potential is.” The key word is ‘potential’, which basically
translates into, “You’re never going to make that. Ever.”

Jonathan: [laughter] Good luck.

Igor: And so, they show you these levels, and they show you the compensation plan.
They show you their winning product, and they give you a replicated website. But
of course, none of that stuff works. Nobody’s going to join. That’s why these
companies rely so heavily on top earners who tell war stories in the first place.
They need the people. And another funny thing is that nobody notices that, but
when it comes to business opportunity marketing, everybody’s playing a different
game. The company owner is playing the game of, “Where can I recruit my next top
earner that’s going to bring me a lot of people?” The top earner is playing a
different game. The top earner basically plays the game of, “What’s my next big,
shiny thing that I’m going to bring my team into?”

Jonathan: Nice.

Igor: And the people joining them at business, they’re like, “What’s the next
thing that is finally going to make me rich?” So everybody’s playing a completely
different game, but nobody’s realize that.

Jonathan: No kidding. And they all have way different agendas. Nice, nice. He’s
breaking down everything in MLM; everybody’s going to hate him. You should be
thanking this guy for this stuff. [laughter] People are going to blacklist Igor
for letting you know all this.

Igor: Oh, that already happened, man. You’re so late in that. I already annoyed
and angered so many “influencers” to a point where they went for days literally
bashing me on their Facebook, bashing me on their blog. Releasing videos telling
how my service is rude and my traffic is overrated and overpriced. And a lot of
different things like that. So that thing is already happening. So I might as well
be honest.

Jonathan: The cat’s out of the bag. Alright. So war stories. What else? Any other
stuff? Going through the pain, sharing that pain, being more than 12 years old,
that’s another prerequisite for being in business, I guess.

Igor: Yeah. The other thing about war stories is that it’s kind of like in
fiction, when you read a book and you see a hero, and you see how this hero is
basically going through this challenge. He has a goal. He sets out to get the
goal, but there’s a bunch of challenges along the way. So every time we read about
somebody overcoming the challenges, it’s almost like we are overcoming these
challenges ourselves. We get a part of that experience. So hypothetically, if we
encounter the same challenges in our lives, we have a pretty good idea what we
need to do. That’s why people who read a lot are so smart. Because they just get
to live so many lifetimes in just one lifetime, thanks to the books. So when you
tell war stories to your market, what happens is, they’re able to relive these
experiences with you. They get to ask themselves the question, “Oh, my God. How
did he get out of that one? How did he recover from bankruptcy? How did he recover
from losing his $100,000 lead Aweber account? How did he recover from having this
client who got so upset with him that he literally went out and started to haul
out information war against him?” And yadda, yadda, yadda. All that stuff is
really, really important. Because the market needs to know that. Your potential
prospects need to know that. And by relieving this with you, when you tell the
story, you’re allowing them to quite literally bond with you, to have this common
experience that you just shared together that feels like they went through this
journey with you. And if you don’t know, just in case you don’t know, going
through a journey or overcoming a challenge together with somebody is one of the
most incredible things you can do when it comes to bonding with them. When I was
in the army and we were going to the boot camp, I didn’t have a single Russian in
my eight person little platoon thing. I don’t know what’s the technical term for
that. But we were eight people, we shared the tent, we shared the dinner table, we
shared the toilet, we shared everything. So by going through this experience
together, all eight of us, by the time we were done with the boot camp, and
probably about 30% in, we were like the best friends. I literally went home, I
think week three they allowed us to go home for a couple of days, and I told my
wife, “I’m missing the guys.” I only met these guys a couple of weeks ago, and I
already told her, “Look, I miss them.” But that’s how the brain works. You go
through an experience together, and it’s almost like you’re the best friends.

Jonathan: Yeah, that’s a movie, a popular movie plot, probably book plot and
everything. The hero’s journey story that Igor just described. If you guys don’t
know, look it up, hero’s journey framework. So Igor, we’re coming close to the end
here. Anything else you want to say as we are wrapping up?

Igor: Yes. One more thing that I picked up from Steve Martin’s Master Class. The
master class that I was sharing a couple of episodes back. Really cool stuff, like
I said. I highly recommend. Go to masterclass.com. I’m not sure how they got that
domain, probably paid a lot of money for it, but there is a Steve Martin master
class about humor, about stand-up comedy, about comedy writing. And he shares a
really cool secret that basically says, “Make yourself the topic or the content of
your writing.” So when it comes to stand-up comedy, you see a lot of comics, they
laugh about themselves, and they tell stories about what happened to them. Same
thing in your marketing. Make yourself the hero of everything you’re talking about
and it gets easier. It gets interesting, it gets fun, and it allows the customer
to quite literally befriend you without ever having a real one-on-one conversation
with you.

Jonathan: That’s interesting. I like that. Alright. So that is a wrap for another
List Building Lifestyle show. Thank you, Igor for sharing your war stories with
us. And thank you list builders, for tuning in. We will be back next time.

Thank you for listening to The List Building Lifestyle Show, make sure to
subscribe on iTunes or Google Play to never miss an episode because who knows just
one conversion tactic we share on the show might double your list and double your
business. Download the transcript of today’s episode and all future episodes at
listbuilderslifestyleshow.com and don’t forget to claim your complimentary copy
of “The Wealthy List Builder’s Survival Guide” at listbuildinglifestyleshow.com/survival .
This is Igor Kheifets until next time we talk, have a good one.

This is the ThePodcastFactory.com.