Business Book of the Month

Today on the the Business Book of the Month podcast and today we’re discussing They Ask You Answer: A Revolutionary Approach to Inbound Sales, Content Marketing, and Today’s Digital Consumer with the author himself, Marcus Sheridan.

Here’s what we covered in our conversation:

One of the reasons that you started on this journey was the financial crash of 2008 – can you tell the listener a little about what you were doing at the time, how it impacted you, and how that changed your sales and marketing ethos?

And what prompted you to write the book?

So how would you summarise the “They Ask You Answer” philosophy?

Are there any types of businesses that aren’t so appropriate for this philosophy?

And I believe that the first edition of the book was published in early 2017, is that correct?

And we’re recording this discussion in July 2019 – and you already have edition 2 coming out in October, so what’s changed since the first edition?

One of the things that you suggest that readers do is that they write down the questions that they think that their customers want to know the answer to. What if the questions seem reasonable, but they don’t appear to have any significant search volume?

A popular article that you wrote on your River Pools and Spas website compared fiberglass pools with concrete pools – but you don’t sell concrete pools – so why write about something that you don’t offer as a business?

Something else that you’re keen for every business to publish is product pricing – why is that a good thing for businesses that don’t compete on price?

A lot of your content doesn’t have a great deal of branding or a strong call-to-action.
For instance, I watched one of your videos on Fiberglass vs. Concrete Pools – and it had nearly 200,000 views – but is was a fairly low-quality video with just one of your customers expressing their views on the subject – was that all done on purpose?

Something else that really hit home for me for you saying that if a prospect reads 30 pages of your site, you have an 80% chance of the sale – that’s an incredible figure, but does that apply across other industries as well?

You’ve obviously generated lots of leads for this business through content marketing – you share in the book that one of your articles has generated over $3m in revenue – that perhaps means that you can afford to suggest strongly to prospects that if they won’t read your content then they’re probably not a great fit as a customer. But is that a realistic approach for most businesses?

Will content marketing ever totally replace sales in some industries, or will there always be a need for sales people?

You also recruit content marketers for your clients – do you see content marketing as being an in-house discipline in the future instead of an agency service?

You highly recommended the software Hubspot in the book – has that recommendation changed in the past couple of years and is there other software that you’re able to recommend as well?

We’ve been discussing your excellent book, “They Ask You Answer” – but what is your favourite business book by another author and why?

Today on the the Business Book of the Month podcast and today we’re discussing Email Marketing Rules: Checklists, Frameworks and 150 Best Practices for Business Success, with the author himself, Chad S White.

Here’s what we covered in our conversation:

Towards the beginning of the book you start off with a model you call a hierarchy of subscriber needs, quite similar to Maslow’s hierarchy. You start with Respectful at the bottom, then Functional, then Valuable then Remarkable. Tell me a little bit about that.

You also say towards the beginning of the book that many people refer to email as being owned media – but you don’t share this view. Why is that and what do you classify email as? and why? (Email marketing is Granted Media)

You include 150 best email marketing practice rules as part of the book – I’ve selected a few of the rules to ask you more about – so let’s start off with rule number 2, and that is not to include too much promotional content in your transactional emails. Is this not a big opportunity that businesses are missing out on? Where’s the line that you shouldn’t cross?

Rule number 9 is to accept that securing an opt-in to another channel doesn’t constitute permission to reach a consumer via email too.

So are you aware of any customer communication preference centres that works with multiple forms of communication like SMS and chatbots as well as email?

Rule number 28 is to send your promotional emails from a different IP address and subdomain than you use from your transactional and other critical emails.

If you have different brands, should you use different email addresses for each brand?

Can your transactional emails be on the same domain and IP as the direct emails from your employees?

Rule 41 – you recommend that brands maintain a minimum email frequency – why is this and what’s the minimum sending frequency that you recommend?

Rule 43 – not all subscribers are equally valuable or desirable – how do you discourage people from opting-in or remove undesirable subscribers?

Rule 53 – Recognise that requiring email subscribers to share additional contact information lowers sign-ups significantly – how much by and where should you draw the line?

Rule 59 – Use the signup confirmation page as a “pre-welcome message” – what’s best practice for this?

Rule 66 – Use a recognisable and consistent sender name for your emails –

What’s best practice for the ‘from’ name – brand name, personal name or both?

and what happens if you change your email address?

Rule 71 – Use preview text like a second subject line – what’s preview test, how much do you get and what’s best practice for this?

Rule 73 – design your emails to render well and function properly across a wide range of platforms and devices –
quite a few email marketing software providers seem to me to be mobile-aware rather than fully responsive and truly optimised. Do you agree – and if so, are you able to recommend email marketing software that does a great job in helping you design responsive emails?

Rule 108 – optimize the delivery time of your emails to increase their effectiveness – what deliver time tends to be best?

Rule 109 – create a customer journey map and address the moments that matter –
what would be an example of a brand doing this really effectively?

Rule 129 – Create an email content calendar –
what should this look like and is there any particular software that you recommend?

Rule 150 – Use A/B split testing to settle disputes – what should be split-tested and why?

Towards the end of the book you talk about subscriber journeys – how do you map a subscriber journey to a customer journey?

And you finish off the book by talking about how email marketing may change in the future – what’s the biggest thing about email marketing that will change over the next few years? 

So chad, we’ve been discussing your excellent book, “Email Marketing Rules.” – but what is your favourite business book by  another author and why?

Today on the Business Book of the Month podcast we’re discussing Choose: The Single Most Important Decision Before Starting Your Business, with the author himself, Ryan Levesque.

Here’s what we covered:

You’re already a number 1 national best-selling author, having previously published Ask – a book that’s already influenced the way that thousands of entrepreneurs discover and assist with their customers’ frustrations. But something niggled at you that you’re Ask book wasn’t the true starting point for new entrepreneurs. So why is that and how did that lead you into writing another book?

Who is the ideal reader for your Choose book?

You were kind enough to provide me with a pre-publication copy of your audio book, so I listened to that over the past couple of days. I must say that I thought it was superb. I’ll certainly be going back to it. So I’ve picked up a couple of areas from the book that I’d like to hone in on – firstly, your description of Mission, Passion, Opportunity or Undecided based entrepreneurs. Can you give the listener an overview of what you mean by that, and how that terminology was born?

My background is in SEO and initially in adsense success. I used to make thousands of dollars a month publishing sites with content that didn’t really interest me. So the fact that I don’t like focusing on an area that doesn’t interest me – does that mean that I’m a passion entrepreneur – and if so, how does that make me different?

You also talk the reader through how to compare different concepts, so that they work on a business that has the highest potential. What if the listener has one specific business in mind, and absolutely intends to start that one business. Would you still recommend comparing it against other opportunities before they start?

You talk a lot about researching keywords, but I don’t recall you mentioning keyword volume – is that a metric that’s not really important?

Something else that you talk about is having a product mix that gives you a low-level price point, a mid level price point about 10 times the low price point, and a high level price point about 100 times the price of the low price point. Why is that and why do those ratios work best?

Should you start off by just offering the low price point on your website and only offering the higher priced products or services for those who purchased the lowest priced items or offering all of your products, all at the same time?

I love how you’re focusing in on designing your business, because for me, the vast majority of business and marketing gurus focus too much on how to drive traffic and build a personal brand authority rather than how to select and structure a business – do you agree with that?

Who are your favourite business or marketing authorities to listen to?

I would say that Chose has the potential to become a movement, just like Ask – is that what you’re trying to create? What does it look like in 5 years time?

From your perspective, what would you say is the number 1, actionable takeaway from the book?

As a final question, apart from your own books, what is your favourite business book and why?

For this episode of Business Book of the Month I’m pleased to be joined by the former Chief Evangelist for Apple, and current Chief Evangelist for Canva and Brand Ambassador for Mercedes Benz USA  – welcome, Guy Kawasaki.

Guy famously likes to make 10 key points in a presentation – so to celebrate the publication of his latest book ‘Wise Guy: Lessons from a Life’, in this episode I ask him about 10 lessons that he took from key stages in his life.

Here’s what I asked him…

1) You studied psychology at Stanford University from 1972 to 1976. Looking back, what was the main benefit that you got out of studying psychology for your future business life?

2) You studied for an MBA from 1977 to 1979, but since then you’ve said that an MBA is a hindrance to entrepreneurship – what do you mean by that?

Is this maybe because you went straight into doing an MBA from your first degree, and you might have got more out of it if you’d had a couple of real jobs first?

3) Your first real job was in the jewelry business from 1979 to 1983, and there your boss Marty Gruber had a tremendous influence on you – what was the biggest life lesson he taught you?

4) In 1983 you worked for Eduware Services – your first tech job. What advice would you give someone today who isn’t working in tech to be able to move in to the sector?

5) After that you started the role that defined your next few years – Software evangelist at Apple. Your job there was to convince developers to create hardware and software products for a new computer that had a zero installed base, zero backward compatibility, and zero monthly sales. How good is your reality distortion field?

6) In 1987 you left Apple to start a Macintosh database company after as you said, you listened to your own hype about the opportunities in Macintosh software. Was it a good idea to listen to your own hype?

7) From 1989 to 1993 you wrote as a columnist for both MacUser and Macworld – what was a key lesson that you learned from that?

8) Shortly after that you went back to Apple – this time as Chief Evangelist. You say that your Apple Chief Evangelist job description was to protect and preserve the Macintosh cult by doing whatever you had to do. What was the biggest life lesson from that stage of your life?

9) After that you began a series of “Advisor” roles, advising firms like StumbleUpon, Motorola and Ustream. What is a common challenge you see that rapidly growing tech companies face?

10) More recently you’re back to “chief evangelist” type roles – Chief evangelist for Canva and Brand Ambassador for Mercedes Benz USA. What’s one key activity that a “chief evangelist” does that a modern business owner needs to make sure that is done in their organisation?

You sometimes have bonus tips in your presentations – what is one key life lesson that we’ve missed?

Thanks to Guy Kawasaki for joining me!

In this, the first episode of the Business Book of the Month Podcast, Mark, Chris and I and joined by guest Mark Traphagen who kindly join us at short notice to replace Colin, the man with the flaky internet connection. Mark – if you make it on another episode you’ll get your own page on BusinessBookOfTheMonth.com! 🙂

“The ONE Thing” by Gary Keller

In this episode we discuss “The ONE Thing”, a book by Gary Keller and split into 3 main sections – “The Lies” – looking at things like why multitasking isn’t efficient. “The Truth” – how to formulate the focusing question and get a better answer.  And thirdly, “Extraordinary results” – how to put the focusing question into action.

Top quotes from the book

The path of mastering something is the combination of not only doing the best you can do at it, but also doing it the best it can be done.

Multitasking is a lie.

It is not that we have too little time to do all the things we need to do , it is that we feel the need to do too many things in the time we have.

Extraordinary results happen only when you give the best you have to become the best you can be at your most important work.

What score do we give  “The ONE Thing”?

Mark give the book 8 out of 10. I give it 7. And Colin gives is a 7 too. Chris gives it a big 9. This means that the ONE Thing scores a very respectable score of 31 out of 40. Difficult, but not impossible to beat!

What we’re reading next

At the end of the podcast we ask the audience to take a vote on what we should read next. Mark suggested the Miracle Morning. Chris wanted to read the E-Myth Revisited and I suggested that we read the $100 Startup. The audience voted and they selected my choice – the £100 Startup by by Chris Guillebeau. Here’s where you can sign up to join us discussing that book live.