Fred Berns - Business by Design (E1018)

It's true that some things change as we get older, but if you're a woman over 40 and you're dealing with insomnia, brain fog, moodiness, and weight gain, you don't have to accept it as just another part of aging. And with Miti Health, you can get help and stop pushing through it alone. The experts at Mitty understand that all these symptoms can be connected to the hormonal changes that happen around menopause, and Mitie can help you feel more like yourself again. Many healthcare providers aren't trained to treat or even recognize menopause symptoms. MIDI clinicians are menopause experts. They're dedicated to providing safe, effective, FDA approved solutions for dozens of hormonal symptoms, not just hot flashes. Most Importantly, they're covered by insurance. 91% of MIDI patients get relief from symptoms within just two months. You deserve to feel great. Book your virtual visit today at joinmidi.com. That's join MIDI.com. Welcome to the Exit Coach Radio show, the show for baby boomer business owners who are looking for cutting edge information as they plan their 3 to 10 year business succession and exit. Every week we interview top professional advisors for their best tips, strategies, and precautions so you can be well planned. And don't miss our one minute exit coach tip of the day on Exit coach. Radio.com and now here's your host, the exit coach Bill Black. Thank you so much for joining us. I'm so glad you're with us today. I want to get right into my next guest, but first I want to tell you that at exitcoachradio.com in our audio library section, you can listen to hundreds and hundreds of interviews from authors, advisors, and thought leaders on over 40 different indexed files. File folder topics. So go there if you want to learn about things like running a family business, growing the value of your business, preparing for exit, life after exit, etc. etc. tons of information there at Exit Coach Radio and the audio library. My next guest is Fred Burns, and he is with Business by Design, and we're going to talk about that, about what is business by design. Fred, welcome to the show. Thanks for joining us today. Thanks very much. It's great to be here. Thanks, Fred. Um, tell us a little bit about yourself and your company business by design and how did you get started and what do you do? Well, this is by design is a company that helps other companies dramatically differentiate yourself. You know, it's never been easier to get elsewhere the products and services that your company sells, but there's one thing that they can't get elsewhere and they can't get you. So this is all about helping you really stand out in your marketplace and my background is as a journalist. I'm a former journalist who for 25 years was in Washington DC and I, um, began to realize that. Uh, I always was looking for sources for people to interview so I could get my stories in on time and I could never find them. It was very difficult, so I started to really focus in on this whole area of getting quoted and promoted in the media. In fact, they started doing classes on that helping business owners. Get free publicity, one of the uh, the best advertising that money can't buy, and that turned into a book which I wrote called Sell Yourself 501 Ways to get them to Buy from You because free publicity is one of the, the best ways to blow your horn and toot your flute. Well, it, that's very true. It's a, it's a difficult part for a lot of people, you know, a lot of our listeners are age 50 plus, Fred, and they, they came up to the time when it was pretty simple. You put your ad in the yellow pages and if you want more business, you've got a bigger ad. And then and then it kind of blew up and now people are wondering OK what what do we do now? How do we use all of this new media and does it really work? So what would you tell them about that? Well, I think it's important to make use of the most important, most versatile and valuable and vital marketing tool of all, and that is your personal bio. My finding is that professionals do a very poor job of promoting themselves in their bios, on their website and in their social media sites, and this is your brag piece. This is your one opportunity to really get yourself out there, and I think it's really important to either rewrite your promotional profile or have it rewritten in a way that really spells out your specialness. Because, um, that is the gift that keeps on giving, uh, whether you're selling your business or whether you're trying to get new clients, that is the leave behind that that promotional bio. So I really stress the importance. In fact, a big part of what I do is create bios for professionals. I help make rock stars out of people so they can, uh, really maximize the impact they make in their promotion efforts. And I hear a lot from people these days that a big part of your visibility is your bio section in LinkedIn. And so does that, does that resonate with you as well? Do you get do you get into social media and that type of thing as well? Quite a bit. And LinkedIn, I think, is the most effective of the social media channels. And uh you know there's a word that I think everyone should embrace in their LinkedIn promotional profile and in their bios elsewhere and that is the word only. Tell me what only you can do and I will buy only from you um are you the question to ask yourself when you're creating your promotional bio is are you the only one in your area who offers a certain type of product? Are you the only one who offers a certain service? Are you the only one who specializes in a in a a specific client niche? If you could, you're only is your ultimate differentiator. It's your fee and price justifier it's what creates your buzz and what really creates your brand. So when people are in the process of promoting themselves in social media and in other channels as well, I would urge them to focus on their only word because that's the million dollar marketing word that sets you apart like no other. First, that's not the first time I've heard that, but it's the first time I've heard it put like that, and I like it a lot, especially I go out here in Southern California to networking groups that are only professionals, they're just professionals involved, but there will be 45 at a table and you'll have 6 different, for instance, financial advisors, and I keep Hearing that over and over again is how in the world do you differentiate so that people walk away thinking just of you? What how outrageous and remember this you have 17 seconds to make an impression after which you've lost their attention possibly forever. So what are you going to do? What are you going to say in those 17 seconds to really knock their socks off, to really uh Uh, make yourself memorable and that, that again is where I suggest that people come up with their only phrase that pays so that they can instantaneously differentiate themselves from others at that networking meeting or whatever other function they're attending. Now I can already tell that you're a great communicator. You're, you're giving us a lot of things like phrase that pays and the 17 seconds and, and, and you're only uh now how important is it to have a a catch phrase or a gimmick? I mean, I see some people will put a penguin on their lapel. I mean there's there's different people doing different types of things. Uh, it's, it's all about shelf space these days, right? But that doesn't necessarily speak to quality for people just because you have a penguin on your lapel doesn't mean you're, you're cool. I, I think the key is the words you choose to use, Bill, and what I always recommend with all professionals is that they, they first and foremost pinpoint the pain that their prospects and clients really feel. what is it that keeps them up at night? Well, what is it that bothers them the most? And if you can address in your marketing and branding that pain and how you can help them overcome that pain, that that is the key to effective marketing. it's one thing to make a lot of general claims in your marketing and branding. It's quite another thing to really. Position yourself as the expert. As as the doctor who can over help, uh, clients and customers overcome the pain that is most Prevalent in in their world. Yeah, and let me give you an example of that. Let me give you an example of that. I work with a lot of interior designers, and I have one designer I work with in Florida, and in Florida, a big pain is the fact that people are scared to death that the resale value of their home will not be very large when it's time to sell because home values have been on the decline in Florida. So what I advise this designer to do is establish yourself as a uniquely qualified one of a kind expert when it comes to helping clients enhance their home resale value, and ever since this particular client has adopted that approach, her business has increased dramatically. So that's a case of pinpointing a pain and then establishing yourself as the one who can help uh clients overcome that pain. And is it important to, I've heard, I've heard in so many over so many years that uh in the financial services industry, let's say you don't, you don't sell solutions, you, you sell the problems, you sell the need, you don't have to be, you know, a fear monger, but if people don't have that pain, they won't, well, they won't go see a doctor, I guess, so number one, so. So that they won't, and, and I, I would suggest that the, the first thing you wanna sell before you're even talking about your services as a financial planner or or or your products is yourself because first and foremost you are not selling products and first and foremost you're not selling services first and foremost you're selling yourself. The personal sale is the most important sale any of us ever make. So, um, making that connection and establishing your expertise and creating your credibility within that short attention span that you have is so vital and so important that I urge all of your listeners to really polish their presentation skills and and and hone down their message in a way that really makes it clear that they are the uniquely qualified one of a in their fields. Now I've seen so many groups, let's say community banks as an example, where you see, you know, our unique, um, our unique aspect, our unique ability is that we provide great service and, and pretty soon they're all saving, saying we all are uniquely providing great service and it doesn't and it loses its specialty and. a commodity, and I see that happening a lot today. I think with social media where people are saying we're going to, we want to use social media to build relationships and they're turning into what I would call finger quote relationships. They're surface level, everybody's doing it. They're very, very shallow. How do you combat that and really start to establish great relationships? Well, I'm going to go back to that million dollar marketing and branding word I suggested a couple of seconds ago, and that is the only word. I mean, uh, if in your brand and if in your social media marketing you can establish uh what only you can do, um, they will buy only from you. So I think it's, it's the kind of thing that companies should brainstorm about and, and really. Uh, focus on to a great extent because there's a lot of noise out there. I mean, uh, and, and there's uh between all of the emails and between all of the, uh, tweets and all of the, uh, social networking going on, it's hard to get your message across in an effective way and that's why you need to have a a catchphrase a branding phrase that really establishes what makes you stand out in the field. I think that's a very solid recommendation that you're giving in a very slippery world. A lot of people are trying to figure out, you know, how do we best use all of these new tools to to so-called establish new relationships and these types of things. And so it's very solid. So tell me about your book. So you have a book called Sell Yourself. Was it 501 Ways? Was that it? Yeah, I have a book entitled Sell Yourself 500. In one way is to get them to buy from you and it's I call it the um toot your flute blow your horn success bible it it's all sorts of do it-yourself easy steps that uh professionals can take to effectively uh promote themselves. We're talking about low cost no cost ways to uh make the all important personal sale and um that is actually one of two books I have, Bill. The other one is called Confessions of Shameless Self promoters which is. Um, 68 different marketing specialists talking about secrets and strategies and ideas that people can use to shamelessly promote themselves in a way that helps them stand out in their marketplace. And now you also, you give speeches at groups like Visage International and other business groups, I would imagine about this topic, right? Right. That's correct. OK. And so when you've given these speeches or topics, what are some of the things that people have said, you know, you really opened my eyes to this. I mean, the only thing I think would be one of those things, but what, what are some of the other things that people have said, you know, I really had never thought of it quite that way. One thing is websites and social media sites. I talk a lot about the fact that the average visit to a website is 4 seconds and 2 clicks. And that 50% of the people who come to your website and your social media sites uh never get beyond that first page. So the, the words you choose to use really important, uh, uh, they need to be compelling and captivating and concise. So, um, I think so many businesses disqualify rather than qualify themselves from the kind of uh clients they want because they use wording that's weak and fuzzy and confusing. And I would advise all of, all business professionals to really put their business, their, their websites under a microscope and, and, and pick apart the words and see if they do make the impression in 4 seconds and 2 clicks because otherwise they get lost in the shuffle. you know, that's probably why we've seen the, the newer versions of websites come down to one word, you know, one word, uh, description of, of what's happening, say across the title bar, you know, it's, it's not a, it's not a two sentence world anymore, is it? It really isn't and um. So again, the wording is so very, very important. And another thing that is important, I think, is I think the single most effective marketing strategy these days is blogging. Blogging can be a pain in the neck. It takes a lot of time, but about 60% of businesses who blog acquire more customers according to the statistics, and. Um, studies show that websites with blogs get 55% more visitors than those without them. And again, what to, what to, uh, post about, we, we get back to this idea of paying, what are the, what are the biggest challenges that you're Prospects face when it comes to your uh your business area and and what are the solutions you can offer to help them overcome that pain and and once you establish that kind of information in your blog, people will perceive you as an expert as uniquely qualified and will want to do business with your company. And it does it have to be a detailed, heavily researched piece, or are we talking about just a steady drip of of good communication? I think the more concise and more captivating and more compelling, the better. Uh, a couple of paragraphs, people don't have a lot of time to spend. And uh I think it's, it's important to not so much the, the quantity but the quality of what you post. Uh, it, it, companies make the mistake of using blogs as kind of a show and tell. Uh, product and in fact it should be a problem solving marketing tool and when you do this with your blog you will find that you start getting a lot more creating a lot more buzz and a lot more business as a result. Great solid advice from Fred Burns on at Business by Design. Fred, what is the best way for our listeners to find out more about you and what you do and of course, your speeches and, and talks that you give in your books? OK, uh, my website is what'syouronly.com. What'soon.com, spelled as it sounds. My phone number is 303-589-3013. That's 303-589-3013. And, uh, two books to consider. One is called Sell Yourself 501 Ways to Get Them to Buy from You. The other one is called Confessions of Shameless Self Promoters. Both of them available at whatsouronly.com. And one last thing is I'm offering a, I offer a 30 minute coach call, a complimentary coach call to anyone who's looking for help in trying to apply these principles to their own businesses. So anyone who's interested in a 30 minute complimentary coach call can contact me, Fred Burns at 303-589-3013. That's very generous, Fred, and I hope our listeners will take you up on that. When I first saw your your pre your survey and I saw the website What's Your Only, I was thinking, what's that all about? And now I know very clearly and succinctly and I learned a lot. I took a lot of notes on your interview. I hope our listeners did too, and I hope you'll come back and join us again sometime because I think, you know, obviously we scratched the surface today because there's 500 ways and one way to do this. So, come back, come back and join us again, will you please? I certainly will. Thank you for the opportunity. My pleasure. We're gonna take a short break. We'll be right back after this, so please stay with us. You're listening to Exit Coachradio.com, the information station for age 50 plus business owners, where we're interviewing top advisors for their best tips, ideas, and precautions so you can be well planned. We upload new one minute tips every day. Exitcoachradio.com. Come listen for a minute. Business owners, if you came back from lunch and there was a resignation letter on your desk, which employee would you really, really not want it to be from? What are you doing to prevent this from happening? At Exit and Retirement Strategies, we design plans that attract, motivate, and retain key employees for a free consultation, called Bill Black, the exit coach at 866-370-3774. Call today. Thank you for listening to Exit Coach Radio. It's true that some things change as we get older, but if you're a woman over 40 and you're dealing with insomnia, brain fog, moodiness, and weight gain, you don't have to accept it as just another part of aging. And with Miti Health, you can get help and stop pushing through it alone. The experts at Mitty understand that all these symptoms can be connected to the hormonal changes that happen around menopause, and Mittie can help you feel more like yourself again. Many healthcare providers aren't trained to treat or even recognize menopause symptoms. MIDI clinicians are menopause experts. They're dedicated to providing safe, effective, FDA approved solutions for dozens of hormonal symptoms, not just hot flashes. Most Importantly, they're covered by insurance. 91% of MIDI patients get relief from symptoms within just two months. You deserve to feel great. Book your virtual visit today at joinmidi.com. That's join MIDI.com.