[00:00:00] Speaker A: We are in the business of selling.
[00:00:03] Speaker B: The melodrama, being of service to someone rather than trying to sell a bunch of stuff.
[00:00:08] Speaker C: The idea is to build trust.
[00:00:10] Speaker D: I'm Richard Gerhardt.
[00:00:11] Speaker E: And I'm Elizabeth Gerhardt. You've just heard some snippets from our show. It was a great one. Stay tuned, especially if you want to.
[00:00:17] Speaker C: Start a new business, ramping up your business.
[00:00:22] Speaker D: The time is near. You've given it heart, now get it in gear.
[00:00:27] Speaker F: It's Passage to Profit with Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart.
[00:00:31] Speaker D: I'm Richard Gerhart, founder of Gearhart Law, a full service intellectual property law firm specializing in patents, trademarks and copyrights.
[00:00:39] Speaker E: And I'm Elizabeth Gearhart, not an attorney, but I do marketing for Gearhart Law and I have my own startups and podcasts.
[00:00:45] Speaker D: Welcome to Passage to Profit the Road to Entrepreneurship, where we talk with entrepreneurs and celebrities who tell their stories about their business journey and also share helpful insights about the successes that they've had.
[00:00:57] Speaker E: Did you know that 2 in 5Americans want to start a new business or are business owners? Well, we have lots of information to help them too.
[00:01:05] Speaker D: And we also talk a little about the intellectual property that helps them flourish. We have a very special treat. Gina Tognoni, who is an amazing actress. She's been on screen and stage with One Life to Live, Guiding Light, a lot of interesting stories and we really look forward to working with her.
[00:01:24] Speaker E: And after Gina, we have two just amazing presenters. I have to say, both of these people came to our meetup last night in New Jersey and blew everybody's socks off. I'm not kidding. Their marketing skills are beyond what I've heard before. So really looking forward to Warren Miles pickup and Kay Allison and hearing advice and tips from them.
[00:01:44] Speaker D: Great. But before we get to our distinguished guests, it's time for your new business journey. Two in five Americans want to start a business or are already business owners, and this segment is for them. We're going to ask our panel a question and hopefully enlighten our audience about how they work. So today the question is, how do you use marketing tactics to build your brand? Let's start with Gina. How do you use marketing tactics to build your brand?
[00:02:12] Speaker A: When you ask me something like that, I immediately go to, okay, where am I? Where am I and what am I doing well and what's working? I start off with a series of questions. What interests me? In other words, if I find that I'm having enthusiasm, coaching or talking about stories about faith, which my podcast. And we'll get into that is about. That's where I start from. I think that's so important. You know, I can't speak to exactly the technique, but we use social media, you know, Instagram, all platforms to get our stories out there, our podcast. But I think what is most important for us is the authenticity of what we do. Being an actress for 25 years, there's a lot of masks going into my daily work. Right. Preparing for characters and making them believable. And I find that when relating to people, being myself, brand, if you want to say a Gino Tognoni, I think to stay authentic and connect to the audience about content, about what you're trying to talk about is the most important thing.
[00:03:16] Speaker D: Absolutely. And you have that sort of relatable nature. I think that really kind of helps get your message across. Warren, how do you use marketing tactics to build your brand?
[00:03:27] Speaker C: I would say the number one tactic that I've used recently and in my past is the process of education based sales. So it was a concept that was popularized by Chet Holmes, who was the right hand man to Charlie Munger and he wrote a book called the Ultimate Sales Machine. And the concept is that in order to be successful in sales, you have to educate somebody on the problem, teach them what it is that they're facing, what the consequences are of not fixing that problem, and then show them what the solution is, teach them how they can implement that solution and then position yourself as the provider of that solution. And by bringing them through that process, you can bring yourself to the forefront as the individual that is going to be best suited for them to fix that problem for them.
[00:04:14] Speaker D: That's great. Kay, what tactics do you use to help build your brand?
[00:04:20] Speaker B: It's very ironic. My clients are entrepreneurs and so you would think I would find them on LinkedIn, but I got talked into experimenting with TikTok. Yes, TikTok. And I don't unpack shopping hauls from Shine or Lip Sync and dance. I really don't. Ironically, I have built a very robust business by putting business content out on TikTok.
[00:04:46] Speaker D: Wow. That's kind of different. Yeah. How's it worked?
[00:04:49] Speaker B: I have something blowing up right now. I posted something from the airport on Sunday night and it has 400,000 views. I've gone from 15,000 followers to 30,000 followers. And my next paid workshop is booked out. My sales conversations are booked out through way through the end of the year. It's kind of crazy.
[00:05:09] Speaker D: That's really great, Elizabeth.
[00:05:11] Speaker E: I'm not as brave as Kay.
Social media is great, but it's so overwhelming. There's so much. So I really focus for my branding on LinkedIn. So when I decided to really get into the podcasting stuff, I changed my LinkedIn profile, all the stuff about me, everything to be media focused. And I found that really has helped shift my brand to me as a media person because I'm getting outreach from a lot of people about media now on LinkedIn and people interested in the different things that I'm doing. So that's what's working for me for my tactic.
[00:05:44] Speaker D: I guess I'm just going to go back to something that's kind of basic. When we first started the law firm, we started doing pay per click advertising and people were like, oh no, you're never going to get clients, number one from the Internet, number two from pay per click. And it's a really easy way for a business owner or entrepreneur to get some attention and get some results really quickly. Pay per click. In case you don't know what it is, it's those advertisements that show up on the right side of your search bar when you're like looking on Google or up at the top. And you pay for those ads to be served. And every time somebody clicks on it, they go to your website and then you pay Google a small fee in order to get the advertisement. And so rather than just wait for SEO to take place and make sure that your website gets up to the top, you can get your business out in front of people fairly quickly. So pay per click, I think, is a great tactic. Thanks, everybody. They're really amazing tactics and passage profit. We're always willing to speak with our audience, hear your feedback, and you can reach us at passagetoprofitshowmail.com, contact us and we'll put your question on the air. So now it's time for our guest, Gina Tognoni. Welcome to the show.
[00:06:57] Speaker A: Thank you for having me.
[00:06:59] Speaker D: You're such an accomplished actress and now you're kind of focusing on some different things. So tell us where you started and then how you got to where you are.
[00:07:08] Speaker A: The quick story. 25 years in daytime television. I had the honor of playing some just wonderful characters for One Life to Live. Kelly Kramer, Diana Marler at Guiding Light, and phyllis Summers at YR for CBS and ABC. And that's 25 years of so much joy and incredible people that I met along the way.
[00:07:29] Speaker D: So what are these characters like? I mean, I remember seeing these.
[00:07:33] Speaker A: And if you have not watched soap operas, you know, soap operas are melodramatic, right? So we are in the business of selling the melodrama for the week. So we have cliffhangers on Friday and we pick them back up on Monday. And then during the week, we carry the story with a lot of sort of repetition. And though so many people who I met over the years make it look easy, it is not an easy job. And it's an incredibly hard job in that there's a lot of volume of material every day. You have to produce a show every day and sometimes multiple shows. Average script is about 75 pages, so you could be doing anywhere between 45 to 70 pages if it's a full day, if you got a lead character. So it's a lot of volume and no cue cards, all memorization. So that's one component. The other component is being interesting, right. And compelling. That part is the work. And so I had the joy of learning how to do that for 25 years.
[00:08:33] Speaker D: So how do you do that?
[00:08:35] Speaker A: Well, buddy, you should ask. One of the pivots that I've been making is coaching online for folks who want to learn how to make material come alive, whether it is for high school production or something they're doing privately or for debate. Dramatic interpretation, which is really taking emotion, finding the emotion within the text that you're studying and performing and bringing it to life. Funny thing is, when you memorize things, it can sound memorized. It can sound memorized in a funny way. But when we get an action and tactic, and I learned this from my mentor, Penny Templeton, it means, like, how are we going to get something that we want? Well, we're going to dig by grabbing, or we're going to dig by lassoing. And you literally put that into action, and it changes the vibration of the material. It becomes personal to the performer, and it resonates with the audience. So that's the quickest way I can explain it. And I teach people how to do that.
[00:09:34] Speaker E: Well, I did want to ask you, if you're in character five days a week, immersed all the time, do you take that character home with you?
[00:09:43] Speaker A: The quick answer is, of course you do. It's in your back pocket. But you have to, for sanity reasons, put it up at the end of the day, come home and relate to your life. But it is. It's a constant dialogue. And I will tell you, people say, well, what was it like when you left this show or that show? It takes a little bit, but I had to get some space from always having dialogue in my head. I always was sort of preoccupied. Maybe that's the word Preoccupied with learning material and the energy that that took for me. And when I stopped doing that, it's remarkable how quiet life got. And it was very good. It was very rich. Really good.
[00:10:18] Speaker D: So how do you understand what emotions you're trying to convey with a given script? Is that written into the script or is that the director saying, we need more of this, or is that you understanding the character?
[00:10:31] Speaker A: It's every component. So it's what's written on the page, it's the clues within the page, it's the questions you ask as an actor. And you have to look at the genre, you have to look at what the whole script is. So you have to look at it from every angle. And then when you're done doing that, then you have to find the character similarities to yourself and the non similarities and how they're relating to everybody on the canvas. So there are several components.
[00:10:59] Speaker E: How do you make yourself cry?
[00:11:01] Speaker A: You know what it is finding the trigger. And the triggers change over the years. And I will tell you that when I was working a lot on a daily basis, they were always right there. It wasn't very hard. I could use something that was recent or I could go back, but usually it was pretty recent stuff that I could trigger. And it would be visual, I could go there visually and I would remember what the emotion felt like. And like a computer, I would tell myself, okay, she's in this emotional state. It's about this. It's like an 8 or a 10. And it's a just a focused belief. But when you're away from it, you have to really zone in on it. So it's not easy when you're not doing it often, I'll say that.
[00:11:39] Speaker E: Wow, that's fascinating.
[00:11:40] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:11:41] Speaker E: One thing that you and I had talked about was you're helping kids who are preparing for prep debates. Right.
[00:11:47] Speaker A: It started with my niece, and that's what really influenced me. She is competing in Florida with National Speech and Debate in her high school. And she came to me and looking for help and it just. It showed me that, wow, I can help her, which means I can help others. So it really motivated me to start investigating how I could get the word out and start looking for other people who might need help in prepping. Because it's a lot. You know, a lot of these drama departments or debate departments have a lot going on and their director sometimes can't handle all the students. And that might be something that I could help with.
[00:12:25] Speaker D: Just kind of turning your focus maybe to the commercial world.
Where do you Think having sort of enhanced skills in presenting. Where would that come in handy, do you think? For business people, for example?
[00:12:39] Speaker A: I just think when you are interested, when you know the value of what you're saying and why you're saying it, it makes all the difference in the world. And so there you go. That's what you want to do in a presentation. Whether you're selling toothpaste or a spreadsheet, or explaining a spreadsheet. You want to know why you're talking about it and why you care. Because there is a reason why you're there in the room. Sometimes we get in our own way. Some of us don't want to be in front of a great crowd or don't know how to. Well, there are ways that you can talk to one person in that room. You can parallel. You can talk to one person in your mind and personalize. That helps. It helps calm the nerves.
[00:13:19] Speaker D: So that's great. I mean, part of it is purpose, understanding what your purpose is, being there. I think showing the audience that you care about them and that you're kind of listening. I mean, you either understand your audience or you're trying to understand them. And I think that sort of seems to be the essence of communication.
[00:13:38] Speaker A: Yes, it is. And facilitating the message, really facilitating the message and being the best facilitator you can. And maybe there are things you're doing that are getting in your way or maybe things you can do that will help you.
[00:13:48] Speaker E: Well, if you feel really self conscious, if you don't feel confident, because so many of us are not confident in front of other people and speaking. And how do you project confidence to the people you're talking to or train yourself to do that?
[00:14:04] Speaker A: Absolutely. It's not an easy thing. Hey, I mean, how many times are we really standing in front of a group of 10, 50 or more and trying to communicate a message? I think the most important thing is having a strong driving question. It's important to have a strong driving question. And when you open the piece and say, you know how, let's say, example, how can I appeal to Elizabeth's heart? How can I break open to Elizabeth's heart right away? That gets the focus off of myself and onto you and onto now a doable tactic. I am going to lure you by lassoing or petting. And so these are images that I can use that will help get the material moving along and texturize it and make it personal. And then suddenly now you're onto an object and so you're not focused on Yourself and the nerves start to settle down.
[00:14:52] Speaker E: So people are wild animals, really?
[00:14:53] Speaker A: Yes, we all are wild.
[00:14:55] Speaker E: Yes. But you're actually great.
[00:14:57] Speaker A: That sort of explains the power of the question. Right? The driving question. It gets the mind on a job. Right. And off yourself and onto a tactic that's really interesting.
[00:15:08] Speaker D: So while you're presenting and working, you're actually kind of also have these other images in your head as you're trying to create emotion or.
[00:15:18] Speaker A: And you know where your piece is going, you know where the transition is. And then you know, okay, this is really where I want to put some emphasis. So, you know, the map of your piece.
[00:15:27] Speaker D: That sounds exhausting. But I guess if you're a professional, you can do it, right?
[00:15:31] Speaker E: So do you practice? When you were in your acting in heyday in the soap operas, did you practice? Did you have time to practice?
[00:15:38] Speaker A: I memorized. I memorized all that material because Erica Slazak, incredible actress, One Life to Live, she played Victoria. She said to me, as long as you have the material in your head and in your heart, you can do anything with it. And she was correct. If I had the material that gave me the first piece of the puzzle and the second piece was, then I could execute it. But you always have to have a piece in your head. So I memorized quite a bit. And then when I got the chance to work with the other actor, maybe we would run it before the scene, then we would have fun with it. And sometimes you didn't get a chance to do that. And then that was up to prep. That was up to the prep. Yeah. It's a lot of work. It's amazing how these actors on soap operas today make it look just like. So easy.
[00:16:20] Speaker D: That's what I was going to say.
[00:16:21] Speaker B: So easy.
[00:16:21] Speaker D: I always thought you just kind of walked in and you.
[00:16:24] Speaker A: Well, I will say. And I'm going to. I'm going to divulge a little bit here. There were several actors that I worked with on Y and R specifically that did not study. They got it the day of, they opened it the day of, and then they. They said it. They did their thing. It's amazing.
[00:16:39] Speaker D: So.
[00:16:40] Speaker A: And these are very well known actors on the show. They're great. Amazing. I could never do that.
[00:16:45] Speaker D: And it came out great.
[00:16:46] Speaker A: It came out incredible. They've been there for 30, 40 years. They're killing it. I mean, it's amazing how they do it. That's a natural talent, not one that I, that I have or possess. I have to work at it.
[00:16:57] Speaker D: So how much of acting is talent and how much of it is craft?
[00:17:02] Speaker A: I think it's craft, then you always work at it. But I think it's a lot of God given in, in many ways. And I also think it's the trust and the enthusiasm you have for what you do. And I think that translates. And it's a magic, it's a certain magic. I always say, like it takes a minute to find out really what moves your heart, you know, protect your heart, look into the heart and ask good questions.
[00:17:23] Speaker D: Gina Tognoni, an amazing actress. She's been on screen and stage with One Life to Live, Guiding Light. A lot of interesting stories on Passage to Prophet, and stay tuned. We're going to be hearing about the legal battle between the plush toy titans. Back with more Passage to Profit right after this.
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[00:19:41] Speaker F: Now back to passage to Prophet.
[00:19:43] Speaker A: Once again, Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart and.
[00:19:46] Speaker E: Our special guest, Gina Tognoni. Gina's very accomplished actress. There was a question from one of our other guests here. His daughter is an actress. She's in plays at school.
She wanted three tips for acting.
[00:20:02] Speaker A: Three tips. So your daughter is how old?
[00:20:06] Speaker C: She's 12 now.
[00:20:06] Speaker A: She's 12. Great age. So they're like a sponge, right? You know, before the moment, there's this really wonderful beat that can happen before any actor opens their mouth and they can create any world they want. So if she has a sense of before the moment, emotionally where her character is coming from before her first beat, that gives her a few seconds, maybe 30 seconds of prep before she steps onto that stage. And that puts her into an emotional state. And if she can quantify that, if she can say, well, I'm at an 8, I'm at a 10, I'm at a 5. And then when I get to the second line, I know I'm going to get to a 10. Let's say she, in her mind, can evaluate that, and she knows exactly what she wants to do. So she puts her in control right away. That'd be the first thing. Number two, I would have her storyboard. I would have her make a little board at home and completely graph out, if she wants, with colors, whatever she wants of how she sees the whole piece going. In other words, this is where her character starts. This is where what happens in the middle, and this is what happens at the end. So she draws this beautiful picture. So in her mind, she's always creating this beautiful picture every night, and she can change it however she wants, but she's in control of the image. And number three, have fun. Have a lot of fun and trust yourself and let go and within the material and get lost in it. Allow yourself to get lost in it and shine through it, and she's going to be amazing.
[00:21:38] Speaker C: Thank you so much.
[00:21:39] Speaker D: Yeah, those are amazing suggestions.
[00:21:42] Speaker C: And it sounds fun.
[00:21:43] Speaker D: It sounds like a lot of fun.
[00:21:45] Speaker A: It sounds like fun at 12.
[00:21:46] Speaker E: Do you coach kids that young on acting?
[00:21:49] Speaker A: I've worked with kids in 25 years. I've worked with daughters or whatever you may, you know, Cousins, whatever, on the show, my storylines. So, yeah, I've been around, and they are incredible beings. They're fun to watch.
[00:22:00] Speaker D: Absolutely. So we had another question, wanting to know the difference about how you prepare for a social media post versus another type of presentation.
[00:22:12] Speaker B: Right.
[00:22:12] Speaker A: Even mean an acting piece, maybe. Or it really is different because I was doing a public service announcement for a hospital in an area that I'm involved with, and I did it as if I was standing up and making an announcement, and it didn't work. And when I watched it back, I went, oh, it's not personal. It's not me, it's not Gina. I don't know what that was. So I had to go back and find why I was saying what I was saying and speak from the heart. And then I connected to it and I thought, well, then this is something I could watch. And so I knew that the audience could probably watch it too. So that's a great question. And you have to be aware of that. It's just understand why you're saying it and make it as personal as possible.
[00:22:55] Speaker E: I'm doing podcasting now, and I'm helping people with podcasts, and so are Warren and Kay helping people with the marketing in their podcast. Some people's voices I can't take. How do you fix your voice?
[00:23:07] Speaker A: You know, it's an interesting point. If you think about somebody like Cyndi Lauper, if you think about these iconic voices, were they perfect? What can someone do? I think they have to find, is it a pitch issue? If it is, play with the pitch. And is it a structure, Something within their voice structure that they could work on? Go to a coach. I think you can explore it. And I think that, yes, of course you can find something. You can find a balance to anything. You'd have to ask yourself, what is off about that voice and is it universal? Do more than a few people feel that way?
[00:23:42] Speaker D: Gina Tognoni, an amazing actress. She's been on screen and stage. I want to change the focus just a little bit here. What's it like kind of going from an acting career to kind of being more of an entrepreneur? Right. Which is kind of the path you're on now. You've got the podcast, you're giving people instruction.
[00:24:03] Speaker A: So I'm at this beautiful space in my life that I've had much more quiet and much more groundedness because I don't have all that dialogue in my head, I guess, so to speak. And I'm not traveling and I'm home and I'm living my life with my husband and my doggie. And I am really in tune with what moves me. And that isn't overnight. And I will say that to anybody who's looking to pivot. It's not overnight that we know what's going on in our heart. And sometimes your heart has to go through some work. Whatever you might be going through, whether it was personal or whatever, give yourself some time, but stay in it and know that you will get that answer and you will be drawn to what you should be drawn to. And you have to trust that.
[00:24:46] Speaker E: And what's the name of your podcast?
[00:24:47] Speaker A: My podcast, I do that with a creative partner of mine, Ashley Crane is called God Winks with Gina and Ashley.
[00:24:54] Speaker E: And what's it about?
[00:24:55] Speaker A: And it is about stories, stories that people will share with us about their encounters with God. Not coincidence, not necessarily self help, but beyond a shadow of a doubt, God walked into their life and changed it for the better. Very often it was at the most difficult time in their life and they knew God's presence. They knew his peace. And for me, I love talking about faith and I love talking about how God can work. So when people tell me stories through their struggles, that excites me. So we pre taped eight episodes and we released them this year on all social platforms. And people can find it on Apple or on Spotify or Iheart. So we want you to listen to it.
[00:25:40] Speaker D: Gina Tognoni, amazing having you with us.
[00:25:43] Speaker A: Thank you so much.
[00:25:44] Speaker D: I think we've all learned a lot and I feel inspired.
[00:25:47] Speaker A: Where can people find you, Gina Tognoni? On Instagram and all on Facebook. But my last name is T o g N o n I. And yes, you can find me on all social media platforms.
[00:25:58] Speaker D: That's great.
[00:25:59] Speaker E: Passage to Profit with Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart.
[00:26:02] Speaker D: Well, now it's time for Intellectual Property news. And remember, if you have a patent or trademark need, you can go to learn more about patents.com and download a free white paper about patents. And if you are interested in trademarks which are different than patents, you can go to learn more about Trademarks.com and you can also download a white paper there either place you can book a consultation with me, Richard Gerhart. So now it's time for Intellectual Property News.
[00:26:31] Speaker E: What is the difference, Richard, between a Squishmallow and a Scoogers?
[00:26:36] Speaker D: I have no idea.
[00:26:37] Speaker E: They're very similar. So that is what the court is trying to figure out.
[00:26:40] Speaker D: I did read a little bit about this story. Build a Bear is being sued by Jazzwares. Okay, Jazzwares is a company owned by Warren Buffett and I guess they put out products that are confusingly similar. They're struggling for control of the plush toy market and they're relying on legal stuff in order to get through that.
[00:27:01] Speaker E: But the thing is, this is I think why Jazzwares feels like they have a leg to stand on. Build a Bear for those of you who maybe don't know Build a Bear, you get this bear shell and you fill it up with stuffing and you put a little heart inside it and you give it a name and all the stuff. So it's an empty shell that you fill up. So you make a stuffed animal from the parts. The Squishmallows is an already made stuffed animal. It's just like a kind of a pillow. And the new Build A Bear thing with Scoogers are already pre made so they're not like a Build A Bear typical product. They're already out there as like this pillow thing.
[00:27:36] Speaker D: So I wanted to ask our guest today what you guys think about this situation. Warren, what do you think about this?
[00:27:42] Speaker C: I think it was inevitable that Jazzware was going to wind up getting sued by Squishmallow. Having said that, it's likely that they'll wind up still turning a profit off of having produced something similar.
[00:27:52] Speaker D: K. What do you think?
[00:27:54] Speaker B: As an innovation consultant, had Build a Bear been my client, I would have guided them to create a squishy pillow that more built on their heritage, maybe a bear shaped face pillow rather than being so closely aligned to what the other company is already doing.
[00:28:16] Speaker A: Gina, you have to be careful of these things and stay unique. It'll be interesting to see what happens with Build A Bear from this moment on.
[00:28:23] Speaker D: Well, hopefully they'll work it out and the plush toy world will continue to thrive. So you're listening to Passage to Profit with Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart. We'll be back right after this. Commercial break Also, Secrets of the Entrepreneurial Mind is coming up soon. You don't want to miss that.
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[00:30:24] Speaker G: 8004-3067-2280-0430-6722.
800-430-6722. That's 800-430-6722.
[00:30:38] Speaker F: Passage to profit continues with Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart.
[00:30:43] Speaker D: And I just wanted to point out that Passage to Profit is a nationally syndicated radio show heard on 38 stations across the country. We're also available on podcasts, so you can find us anywhere that you get your podcasts. And Passage to Profit, I humbly say, is ranked in the top 3% of podcasts globally and has also been ranked in the top 10 of entrepreneurial podcasts by Feedspot Database. So you can find us in a lot of different places. And now it's time for Elizabeth Gerhart and her project Update.
[00:31:20] Speaker E: So I want to just quickly touch on the Jersey podcast that I do with Danielle Woolley. Still having fun with that. And then I want to talk about the meetup and Warren and Kay were both at the meetup last night. I have never been hacked on Zoom like this before. We had somebody do something super nasty on Zoom and Warren fixed it. So, Warren, can you please explain how you fix that?
[00:31:41] Speaker D: Sure.
[00:31:42] Speaker C: With Zoom, you have to ensure that you take control as the presenter to limit the interactions that your guests can have on a webinar or a Zoom meeting. And so what we did after somebody took control and changed the video to something that was ludicrously inappropriate. Inappropriate, yeah. Distasteful would be a great way to put it. We removed the ability for guests to annotate over top of a speaker slides and we removed their ability to share videos. So as a reminder, before you're hosting any type of an event on zoom, to ensure that your speaker controls are set so that your audience does not have the ability to annotate, to share their own videos, to unmute their mic, that sort of thing.
[00:32:24] Speaker E: And where do people find those controls? Is that under that little security badge?
[00:32:27] Speaker C: It is, yeah. Under the. Under the speaker settings, yeah.
[00:32:30] Speaker E: So the meetup is going really well and we started it in conjunction, kind of for me, with the podcast studio. So the podcast studio remodel is going along and enough about me. I am so excited for the world to hear these two guests coming up. We're going to start with Kay. So Kay Allison, and that's her brand. She helps creators monetize their content. Welcome, Kay. We really want to hear about this.
[00:32:56] Speaker B: I'm excited to be here. Thank you so much for inviting me. I help creative entrepreneurs, mostly people who have already been somewhat successful in their careers, be seen, be heard, and be paid and be paid well, I might add. It all has to do with starting by understanding your audience and what's missing for them, where they're stuck, how they see the world. And that's a really important distinction because I can sit here and look at you, Richard, but unless you come and sit over here in this chair, you can't see the world as I expect experience it. So making an offer really has five parts. It has to do with identifying what's missing for the people in your audience from their point of view. It has to do secondly, with me offering or presenting a solution. Third is the other person has to accept it or reject it. Fourth, I deliver my solution. And fifth, you acknowledge that you are satisfied with what I've done. What I've seen with a lot of creative entrepreneurs is we think about what we can make and what gets us excited. And it's important that we're excited and follow the energy, as Gina said, of what we're enthusiastic about. But without the other half of the equation of what's missing from the other person's point of view, it becomes self indulgent.
[00:34:20] Speaker E: You told a story last night that I thought was so demonstrated at this point so well about the foil wrapped potato.
[00:34:26] Speaker B: In my previous career, when I was consulting for global brands, most of my work was in the food category. And for one global food client, they realized that they kind of had their marketing worked out. They understood how to make TV commercials and print ads and social media. But what they knew they weren't doing well was converting people when they were in the store, standing at the shelf, deciding between brand A and brand B. So they asked me to go grocery shopping. Believe it or not, I got paid to go grocery shopping with all kinds of people from all kinds of walks of life. I went with this one woman who had just moved in to a brand new high rise downtown Chicago. She was mid-20s and this beautiful little apartment had a balcony with a tiny Weber grill on it and she could overlook the Chicago River. She was excited to grocery shop with me, a stranger, because she was going to have her inaugural grilled dinner for her boyfriend. So we shop, we're pushing the cart through the produce. We get to the potatoes. On the right, there's a bin of Idaho potatoes. Naked, bare, like right out of the ground. Idaho potatoes. And they were about 79 cents a pound. Adjacent was a bin of potatoes that were wrapped in shiny aluminum foil. And it had a giant sticker. They had giant stickers that said, great for grilling with a whole bunch of exclamation points underneath it. And they were 250 a piece per potato. So like 26 cents for a bear potato and 250 for a wrapped potato. And she calmly took two of the wrapped potatoes and put them in her cart. We get back to her house and like everything she pulled out, I asked, could you please help me understand what you were thinking when you made that decision? We come to the potatoes. I said, what do you think the difference is between this potato and the potatoes that were in the bin right next to it? And she said, what potatoes? She literally did not see them. The way that she was processing the world was through glasses that were, I am a griller, right? And so all she saw were things that told her specifically on the front of the package, this is for the grill. Veggie skewers also had a sticker for the grill. Hamburgers in the butcher case also said, for the grill. And so everything she bought was earmarked on the front saying, this is for your grill.
[00:37:03] Speaker D: Well, it makes a certain degree of sense, right?
[00:37:06] Speaker B: Of course it doesn't. We all do this. My point to my clients was, you need to tell consumers on the front of your package how to use things that you think are wildly obvious slices of American cheese. You need to say on the front, great for grilled cheese or Makes a great cheeseburger. Right? Like, you have to be specific. They did this, and their sales rose by millions of dollars a year. My point is that there are opportunities when you learn the skill of embodying how someone else experiences the world.
[00:37:41] Speaker E: She was probably anxious because this was the inaugural deal, so she wanted to do it right, and she didn't trust her own capabilities, so she wanted somebody else's reinforcement. This is what you use for this?
[00:37:52] Speaker B: Well, not only that, but what I found in further questioning was that she had grown up in a family where she was a latchkey kid and both of her parents worked. And so one of them would stop and buy dinner from the drive through, and then the other one, the next night, would assemble meals. So they'd make a box of Mac and cheese and heat up some hot dogs. And so she didn't know how to cook. She did not come from a family that cooked. They assembled meals. And so for her and for many people who don't know how to cook anymore, this telling somebody specifically how to use a food product makes all the sense in the world. So I am not coming from a place of being judgmental. I'm coming from a curiosity about how can we be of better service to this human being.
[00:38:41] Speaker D: So how do you kind of translate this message for entrepreneurs?
[00:38:47] Speaker B: It is my philosophy that I need to know the human beings that I'm trying to be of service to. My orientation is more about being of service to someone rather than trying to sell a bunch of stuff. I call this a Copernican shift. Remember Copernicus? He was an astronomer in, like, the 1500s. He's the one that said, oh, no, no. Despite the way it looks in the sky, it's not the sun revolving around the Earth. It is, in fact, the Earth revolving around the sun. In the same way I think about my audience, I think about so many people I see that are entrepreneurs, put themselves and what they're trying to do in the center of the universe and expect their consumers or their audience to revolve around what's important to the entrepreneur. When in reality, the power move is to put your audience in the center of your consciousness of your conscious universe and orbit around them. What that means is DM with the people in your audience and invite them to have a conversation and get curious about what's making them tick and why they're attracted to you, what's missing in their life that they think that you've got information or education or entertainment or transformation that's important to them. Get curious and start conversations. I am a qualitative market researcher by trade. I have interviewed 10,000 people over 13 countries in my life. And what I find is having the one on one interaction helps me get the vibe of somebody. And I've learned to not only listen to what they say, but to get the vibe underneath it. Gina, you were talking about that intention that you come to a part with. We all come to our conversations with a certain vibe. I've also learned that it's very interesting if you ask, can you help me understand where you're coming from? I'm not sure I'm quite following you on that. I think about that so differently. Can you explain that to me? And so I have all of these follow up questions in a genuine curiosity kind of mood that encourage people to be very revealing. The reason this works is none of us feel seen. None of us feels like someone truly shows up and is present with us and is interested in us. Think of how distracted we all are with our phones. I mean, have you seen people on dates walking down the street, each of them on the phone? It's like, what are you doing? And so the gift of your presence and your curiosity about someone is immensely powerful. What I found was that in especially big companies, but even for entrepreneurs, we rely on data, we rely on numbers or studies or trends. And all of that is valuable. I'm not discounting it. But unless you understand the humanity of why someone does what they do and what it means to them, you're missing 98% of the story.
[00:42:00] Speaker D: How do we put ourselves in the spot of the customer? Do you feel like you can truly experience what they're experiencing? How do you do that?
[00:42:10] Speaker B: Well, I am a little bit psychic, so that helps quite a bit. That explains what I found, however, is when I ask open ended questions, rather than do you like the red one or the blue one? That is extremely helpful and can be very revealing. I feel like there are two different types of conversations with consumers. One is very evaluative. Do you like this or do you like that? And why? The other one is more like trying to get to know somebody on a first date. I would ask consumers before they came into the focus group room to write down their philosophy of feeding and caring for their families. It gave me a frame. I then understood where they were coming from and I could assess everything else that they were saying. So my philosophy is ask really broad questions, ask a lot of follow up questions, and don't do a lot of closed questions where it's a scale of 1 to 5 or yes or no.
[00:43:09] Speaker E: Yeah. So if you're a podcaster, say how do you know like a specific person in your audience to ask or how would you go about finding that person that you would ask and connecting with them?
[00:43:19] Speaker B: It's such a great question. I would suggest looking at the people that have left reviews and seeing if you can find a way to connect with them. Them Also the people that are following you on YouTube or make a comment on YouTube or the clip that you put on TikTok or that say something to you on LinkedIn. That is the beauty of being an entrepreneur today. Back in the day, you know, we used to spend tens of thousands of dollars to recruit people to come and be part of studies. But today you have direct access with these people. It's simply a matter of saying, would you be open to having a conversation? I'm so curious about who you are and where you're coming from and maybe you send them some swag or you, you do something for them. But social media has just facilitated that connection so effectively and you use it so well.
[00:44:13] Speaker E: I would advise people to touch base with you. They want to learn how to use short form content. Especially. How do people find you?
[00:44:21] Speaker B: Well, TikTok is my jam, so come find me on TikTok. My handle is K A Y. My name K a y_company_creativity. Or you can find me at K Allison my full name K A Y A L L I s o n.com Excellent.
[00:44:39] Speaker E: Thank you. Passage to Profit with Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart. Warren Miles Pickup. I love that name and there is a whole story behind it that he told me. It is so cool. There are only a few people in the whole world that have that last name, so you'll remember him. But he has a product staircase method that he outlined for us. I've never seen marketing and the steps you take put so succinctly and so easy to understand.
[00:45:05] Speaker C: I'm all about bringing value to people and I think the product staircase idea is something that has an impact for entrepreneurs in a way to bring people from first viewing your brand to how they're going to move from low ticket offers, mid ticket offers to your highest ticket offer offer. So it's, you know, similar to building a value ladder, but instead of doing it through content, it's really through products. So you offer something that's of value to them through social media or some type of content that you create, whether that's a blog or podcast or any anything like that that then offers them a lead magnet that draws their attention. It's a, it's an offer to solve a problem. That's really what this is all about, is value based marketing. And so that offer to solve a problem, whether it be through a guide or a video series, an email series, whatever it may be, creates an exchange of value. They're trading their email address or their contact information in order to solve a small but not insignificant problem that they have. Once you have their contact information, then you can market to them in ways to solve additional problems. So by having a clear ideal client profile that you've got, understanding who that individual is, you know what their problems are, and then you help them to walk through all of those problems by utilizing the staircase. We were doing a podcast event last night and I walked the audience through how I built my own for that event. And so it was an offer of a content monetization challenge. And so I created a QR code that I put up on the slide. And the individuals that were there listening to us and had heard me speak about how to build a product staircase, they would click on that or take a picture of the QR code. It would take them to a page where they would sign up for a content monetization challenge. So five days to walk them through how they could take the content that they're creating and turn it into a profitable activity. It would walk them through the creation of the lead magnet, the creation of a low ticket offering, how they would then market that offer, that sort of thing. A coach that I work with, they do personality profiles for real estate brokers. And so they offer a low cost paid offer for somebody to join in on a zoom webinar talking about utilizing personality profiles to understand their clients better. Once the person has attended that webinar, they then have somebody's email address. They would then use that email address to offer those individuals a low cost subscription for a series of different solutions that would go out to those real estate agents. So it might be daily tips, it could be a content calendar for them, it could be a number of different very, very small cost entries into purchasing products from this coach. The idea is to build trust through that process. And then when you're sending out those emails, you give them an opportunity to engage with you at a higher level. So that might be a group environment, like a group coaching environment. It might be some one on one time, that sort of thing. And then once you've built that additional layer of trust, which is your mid ticket offer, you then offer your high ticket offer, which is really the doing the service for them. So it's engaging with them on more in depth one on one coaching. It's helping them to build marketing platforms, it's helping them to do all sorts of different things. So you have to create multiple on ramps into your product staircase so that you can meet them where they're at at that moment. Some individuals want to establish a sequence of trust, a sequence of purchases. The first purchase you make with most companies is going to be something small and then you're going to build up to that highest ticket purchase. And so by building trust and value, by ensuring that they're getting a higher return on investment with you at each stage, it's a no brainer for them to continue to climb up that product staircase with you rather than coming in and taking all of that risk right off the top. They already know that they're going to have a positive ROI as they go along.
[00:49:05] Speaker E: Are these just digital products you're talking about?
[00:49:07] Speaker C: This could be any type of product, it could be any relationship that you're building with a consumer. But for what I work with is largely digital products.
[00:49:15] Speaker E: So let's say that I wanted to start a podcast coaching business. What would be an example of a first offering that I could give people?
[00:49:23] Speaker C: So a first offering could be something like a one page guide, like a lead magnet that you promote on social media that says here are the top 10 tips for starting your podcast. Right. So a new podcaster is going to want to download that to understand what are the first 10 things I need to do before I start a podcast. And then you have a video course that's maybe 10 videos, five minutes long, showing them how to set up on Spotify or on iHeartRadio or wherever it may be, and it walks them through a sequence and it costs them $7 to download. The next thing is, hey, join a group coaching session that I'm running on such and such date to meet with 10 other new podcasters that are all going through the same things as you and I'll walk you through how to successfully accomplish X. Right. And then the high ticket offer, once they've gone through that group coaching at the event you're going to offer, if you'd like some one on one support, I'm here to help you and here's how you can do that. So with each stage you're constantly adding more and more value. They're seeing that through the return on investment that they're getting and it makes it a no brainer for them to go, I want this one on one time because I know I'm going to get value from this.
[00:50:31] Speaker E: So to really find out what they want, what part in that process would you really pick their brains to see what you should be offering?
[00:50:38] Speaker C: That's before you start anything. Just as Kay talked about, understanding the person that you're selling to is absolutely vital. Building your ideal client profile is the first stage before you do anything. Because creating a product without understanding what the problem and pain of your ideal client profile is is a total waste. So for me, I have one individual in mind that I am building everything around. She is my avatar, she's my ideal client profile for what I build. And so everything that I'm doing is based around would this serve that individual? Because us as people are all looking for a community. We want to put ourselves into a box that we fit with. If you ask somebody their political leanings, their religious leanings, anything like that, they will very quickly identify which box they fit into. And so when you pick a single person as your avatar for your ideal client profile, you will find that there are a ton of people that identify themselves the same way that that person does. They will fit into the box of that individual because we all want that sense of community. And once you've done that, you build for that person and then the group that you're trying to solve the problem for will expand from there.
[00:51:48] Speaker D: So Warren, how does this whole trust process with email, it's just one word, it's value.
[00:51:53] Speaker C: You have to be giving value all the time. If you ask for something from somebody before you have given them significant value, you will be deleted, unsubscribed immediately. You have to build trust by offering value in those first five emails.
[00:52:07] Speaker D: Especially when you're starting out, I think you always have to deliver more value than you're asking for. In return, you have to over deliver because that's what it takes to build the trust.
[00:52:20] Speaker C: I worked with a coach in order to identify what my mission was in life. And I uncovered that my entire mission is offering more value in every engagement with somebody than I receive. And if I do that, inevitably everybody will want to engage with me because they know that they're going to get more out of it than I am. And so every single thing that I do, I try to aim for a 3x ROI for the person that I'm dealing with. Then I'm receiving out of the engagement.
[00:52:48] Speaker E: That's going to take you a lot further because people can sense that.
[00:52:51] Speaker C: I think the money comes if you offer value and if you are passionate about what you do because people are attracted to passion.
[00:52:59] Speaker E: Warren, how do people find you?
[00:53:01] Speaker C: LinkedIn is probably the best place and if you look for Warren Miles hyphen pickup. So Warren miles pickup on LinkedIn you will find me because there are only 8 miles pickups in the world. You can also find me@marketingmotivators, XYZ or design.pixeltrue.com are the best places to find me.
[00:53:18] Speaker E: We are going to take a break now, but we're coming back for Secrets of the Entrepreneurial Mind. Passage to Profit Road to Entrepreneurship with Richard Elizabeth Gearhart. Our special guest, Gina Tonyoni. We will be right back for some very cool secrets.
[00:53:32] Speaker D: I'm Jack, CEO and co
[email protected] when.
[00:53:36] Speaker C: I left my job as a Wall.
[00:53:38] Speaker D: Street banker back in my 20s, I felt completely lost trying to navigate the process of hiring a financial advisor. I thought it should be easy to find the right financial advisor. So I created a place where young families could feel understood and their unique needs would be met with empathy and expertise. That's why I started usehabits.com where we help you find your financial advisor free of charge. Use habits.com it's passage to Profit. Now it's time for Noah's retrospective. Noah Fleischman is our producer here at Passage to Profit, and he just can't observe our future without recognizing the past.
[00:54:15] Speaker H: Just recently, a young Gen Z friend of mine asked me if I knew what the word unalived meant. I told her I'd never heard it before, so she read it to me within the context of the youth fiction book she'd been reading. It said he feared his desperately distraught friend would have unalived himself. Turns out that's the new accepted word for killed. Okay, look, I know our general culture is more hypersensitive now than ever, but there's only one way to define such an untimely end. And I happen to think that our linguistic forefathers established it quite suitably. Thank you very much. Before long, they're going to need to change that new word to unparticipated or parade partured. Because words can always be changed, what they define remains the same. One of the TV networks actually laid plans on that particular work of fiction for a series, but once they got around to reading the full text, they unalived it.
[00:55:07] Speaker A: Now more with Richard and Elizabeth.
[00:55:10] Speaker F: Passage to Profit.
[00:55:11] Speaker E: It is now time for Secrets of the Entrepreneurial Mind.
[00:55:16] Speaker D: I can hardly wait.
[00:55:18] Speaker E: So, Gina, is there a secret you can share with our listeners?
[00:55:23] Speaker A: I don't know if It's a secret because to me it seems obvious, but I will share it. I think there is something to creating amount of quiet in your life so that you can listen to God and hear with active ears. I think a lot of us like to talk and as I love to talk and I think we have lots of noise in this world that we live in, especially today. And get good at being quiet and get good at listening. It's not as easy as it sounds. So in order to do that, I like to keep a journal. I like to write out what I'm thinking in the morning, right away. And then I put the pen down and I just center myself. I begin a small prayer and I wait and I listen and I write down what I think what I project might be God. And I write it down and I find that is so good because I can track it and I can see sort of where I'm coming from and where I'm going over a period of time.
[00:56:29] Speaker E: That's beautiful. I love that. So, Warren Miles, pick up with the interesting name. What's the secret? You, I mean, you've got so many, but what's a secret you can share?
[00:56:40] Speaker C: I would say a secret that I can share is that the majority of your future customers are sitting on the fence with regards to making a decision about your product or service. And you have to understand what it is that the pain of change, because change is painful, what level of pain they're at with their existing problem versus the pain of change to purchasing the service or the product would be so that you can reduce the amount of pain that they're going to experience to take part in that change so that they make a decision. And if you can understand what point they're at and where that tipping point is, you will be significantly more successful in selling and marketing your product or service.
[00:57:26] Speaker E: Wow, that was super insightful. Thank you. Kay. Allison, what's a secret you can share?
[00:57:32] Speaker B: I have learned that if you wait until you feel confident to take an action, you're totally screwed. Actually what happens is confidence is a byproduct of taking action. The entrepreneurs that I've seen succeed wildly take a bunch of actions and they put stuff out that is imperfect, not all the way thought through, doesn't necessarily make sense, may not be on target, but they act and then they act some more.
[00:58:04] Speaker E: That is really great too. Wow, Great advice. Well, my secret is going to be sometimes it really is darkest just before the dawn. So you may feel like it's time to give up and you may be wondering and you may not be making enough money, but then you find a coach, right? You find a Gina or a Warren or a K and you're like, oh my God, this person turned things around. I would say, don't give up. And if you are like, in a space like that, I have a coach. She was on this show earlier. Sonia Satra. I love her. Find the right person to help you because they're out there. And there are people like the people in this room today that can help you be successful in your business. Secrets of the Entrepreneurial Mind.
[00:58:47] Speaker D: That's great. Passage to Profit is a nationally syndicated radio show appearing in 38 markets across the United States. In addition, Passage to Profit has also been recently selected by Feedspot Podcasters Database as a top 10 entrepreneur interview podcast. Thank you to the P2P team, our producer, Noah Fleischman, and our program coordinator, Alicia Morrissey, and our studio assistant, Rishiket Busari. Look for our podcast tomorrow anywhere you get your podcasts. Our podcast is ranked in the top 3% globally. You can also find us on Facebook, Instagram X and on our YouTube channel. And remember, while the information on this program is believed to be correct, never take a legal step without checking with your legal professional first. Gearhart Law is here for your patent, trademark, and copyright needs. You can find
[email protected] and contact us for a free consultation. Take care, everybody. Thanks for listening and we'll be back next week.
