Josh Fonger: [00:00:00] All right. We are live. And welcome to the Working the System podcast where we help entrepreneurs make more and work less using systems. And I’m your host Josh Fonger. And today we are recording again live on Facebook. So make sure to leave us your comments, questions, thumbs up, thumbs down. Let us know what we’re doing. And you can put your questions in here live for Wayne, Wayne of ugly mug marketing. I’m going to give you a little intro on Wayne is my guest today. No experience, no contacts, and no outside funding. Wayne Mullins, bootstrapped his first business into a massive success at the age of twenty four and then sold it. Today Wayne is the founder of a one of a kind marketing firm, Ugly Mug marketing. Their clients include Fortune 100 companies, four best selling authors, two New York Times best selling authors, and businesses from over 81 different industries. They built over 500 custom websites and work with clients from around the world. Wayne is also the author of two books, So You Have a Web site, Now What and The Freelancers Guide to Proposals and Pricing. All right Wayne, so I’m excited to do this interview. This should be fun. First, before we get started tell us a little bit about your story how you got in this line of work building Web sites.

Wayne Mullins: [00:01:07] You bet. Thanks so much for having me. Josh I appreciate the opportunity and as we’ll move forward in the conversation you will get to hear and those watching on Facebook and watching the podcast will get to kind of hear how work the system and the systems methodology has really been fundamental in the building of Ugly Mug Marketing. So the story begins actually with the very first company that I started. I graduated with a degree in marketing and decided that I wanted to go in sales. I succeeded in sales after a couple of years. The first year or so was a struggle but I started succeeding and what I realized was I was making all of this money for my employer. I see how much I’m closing in deals. I really want to keep a larger percentage of that. So I’m going to jump out on my own and start a business and that’s what I did. I started a lawn and landscape company much to my family’s dismay my parents dismay after a college degree I decided going into lawn and landscape over the course of a few years I grew that company into at the time it was the largest in our region and the result of that was the marketing that we had in place during that time. So during the course of growing that business I constantly had friends I had clients of the lawn company coming to me and saying how are you marketing your business to grow it at this level. So after three years in that industry I put the business up for sale sold it and that business the person who bought that is still up and running with that same business that I sold them. Now you know 10 plus years ago. So that parlayed into all of the people asking about marketing into Ugly Mug Marketing. My passion back then was direct response marketing. I had become a student over the years of Dan Kennedy and his style of direct response marketing that led into Jay Abraham and led into all of these great authors great marketing minds. And so my intention initially was to solely do direct response marketing and what I discovered was the market at least in our region our area wanted nothing to do with direct response it was foreign it to them. What’s common what’s popular at the time around here was kind of traditional brand building marketing. So it was a struggle initially and as I’d go out and visit with people meet with people a common question that kept coming back was can you help with the website? Can you fix my website? Can you build a website? And so the answer was always no. And then finally I was like man all of these people keep asking. So I said the next person who said who asked that question. My answer is going to be yes. I had no clue anything about web. Next person asked literally within a couple of weeks of that and said yes. And then from there figured out how to get into the Web business. Company has since morphed. Right now we’re kind of divided into four sections. We have Web sites which to date we’ve built six hundred plus custom Web sites. We have traditional marketing. So that would be television, radio, billboard, print, that size or that type of thing. And then we do Facebook marketing. And the last area is kind of visuals, so that will be graphics, photography, videography, and things in that area.

Josh Fonger: [00:04:29] Wow. So you guys have your fingers in a lot of places right now in terms of marketing.

Wayne Mullins: [00:04:34] We do. Yeah. It keeps us on our toes for sure.

Josh Fonger: [00:04:36] For those who got our e-mail this morning. I really wanted to interview Wayne because they deal with a lot of complexity which I want to dive into both on know doing the work fulfillment and then on the needs of their clients changing all the time. I think for a lot of my clients that is that is the hard thing is you know if it’s a very simple process it’s easy to document scale but in your case a lot of curveballs and so what it’s been like to grow a team? Because when you first did it you were all doing it all yourself I’m sure. So how have you grown a team in this kind of an industry like this?

Wayne Mullins: [00:05:09] Yeah. So you’re right it started with just myself initially and when I got that first client that said yeah I’m interested in a Web site. I’d turned to online and started looking for a freelancer that I could hire subcontract and have the Web site built. So the first several years all of the work that we did was strictly through subcontractors. And then as we began growing as we began having more need for our services I decided that we need more people in-house to take care of some of these things. So I don’t remember where I originally heard this from. Everything that I share. I read a lot of books behind me. So there’s a lot of what I’m going to probably mention today that it’s not my original idea. It comes from somewhere else. And if I can remember who to attribute it to I will but I probably won’t be able to. But I remember hearing very early on that as you grow a company as you attempt to scale a company that the company kind of goes through four unique stages. And so the first stage is what’s called the ME stage. So that is like I’ve got this idea I’ve got this passion I’ve got this skill or talent. And so it’s about me it’s my passion my talent my skill I’m bringing it to the marketplace. It’s also about like I’m the salesperson I’m also the fulfillment person. I’m also the janitor. I’m also the receptionist. So it’s about me. And then as you move into the next stage of business it becomes about we. And so that is where you begin building that team. And one of the core components in that area is where you are still jumping in and you still have your hands on a lot of things but you’re learning to delegate and to hand off bits and pieces of projects and client work. And then the next one beyond that stage would be the day and that stage is where it’s about the systems and processes. So once the systems and processes are in place you focus on the day. And that’s a systems mentality it’s kind of that elevated above looking down at the business and seeing how it all fits together. And then the last age is kind of the culmination of those three things together and that is where you kind of reinvent or dive into different areas because what’s true for most entrepreneurs is by default by nature by makeup we often hate systems and structure and processes. It’s why we love jumping from thing to thing to thing. And so what often happens as companies scale and as they grow what you’ll see and then you see this in the news all the time is the original founders often when they get into the systems and processes maybe when they go public and there’s a lot of oversight they end up leaving. And the reason they end up leaving is because they hate all of that system structure process et cetera. So that’s the long way around to the answer of your question of when did we decide we need to hire what I knew early on was that if we’re going to grow to any size of significance if I wasn’t gonna be working 80 hours a week I want to be working every weekend late at night that people were a critical component to building a team and growing the business.

Josh Fonger: [00:08:23] Very interesting, so its about this is what I tell folks is invest in yourself first in terms of getting yourself efficient then your team and then you’ve documented then you grow from there. So it sounds like you went through that process but you did it with some creative folks along the way and some moving target. So what were some of the systems you built first was at the website building first or the marketing first to the advertising what was that was the first place you went?

Wayne Mullins: [00:08:48] Yep. So the very first area was the Web site side. Actually we have all of our systems and processes we have them all online. We use right now we’re still using Google Docs to kind of keep track of that stuff but we also have physical copies. I’m a very tactile tangible person. And so we have physical copies of everything. And so this is the website process. And so this will literally take anyone I think it’s in Work the System where Sam talks about off the street your systems and processes should be designed and built in such a way that you could literally have my walking out from your office holding man and say here I need you to build this website for our client and they could do it successfully. And so that is what we’ve attempted to build in all of the areas of our business. And we did start with the Web site side because that was kind of the first area that we really grew and expanded.

Josh Fonger: [00:09:42] So let’s let’s do a hypothetical but I’m sure you’ve had this all the time so let’s say someone comes to you and they own a cake. So you’ve got a new client big cake so a cake baking business. They’ve got maybe 10 employees they want to build the website how do you walk them through that. Because there’s 100 different directions they can go?

Wayne Mullins: [00:10:01] Yeah absolutely. So there’s there’s two interesting parts to kind of managing creative or creative work. So like you mentioned earlier unlike a lot of businesses where it’s very cut and dry with a million different variables possible you have to manage both sides which is the internal side how the projects actually manage and handled and then the external side which is the client’s expectations and kind of their view or their flow through the process. So what we’ve done is we’ve worked really really hard to build systems on both sides that complement each other. So we never want our clients to feel like we can’t make another round of changes because our system says you know we’ve made three rounds of changes so sorry three rounds of changes are over. The flip side of that is obviously with infinite possibilities we don’t wanna get stuck making changes forever. So one of the things we do with a client is when we start a client we have a starter pack and so we sit down with them at the very first kickoff meeting I realize most people can’t see what’s here but the point is it’s a process that we walk people through step by step in the very early stages of the project. Now an important thing to note is that expectations get set way back from often the very initial inquiry to the first conversation with someone kind of on the sales team. And so it’s very important that we have systems and processes in place that ensure we’re setting the right expectations from the very very beginning of the process. But what we do once we actually begin the process is we sit down with the client the very first meeting and we walk them through each of these cards and there’s not much on these cards. So this first card just explains the process that we’re going to go through and we call it the critical five and this is kind of our philosophy around building a website. The next one and this is the one that really speaks to the arming what they can expect of the process. It’s called the five phases and we just simple explain here the five phases that we’re going to go through as we build your website. Step 1 is going to be design and we anticipate it’s going to take this long to complete. Step two is this you know I’m not gonna go through all the steps but you get the point. So. I don’t know who originally said this saying or where the saying comes from but the saying is there are no people problems. There are only systems and process problems. So does that not mean that you know from time to time we don’t have clients who you know we get stuck in the design phase way too long. Absolutely we do. But what that tells us is that we need to work to revise and refine our system so that going forward we know OK right now we’re averaging I’m making this up but we’re averaging you know 17 days in the design phase while our internal target may be 14. So if we’re constantly hitting that we know we’ve got a system problem somewhere that we need to drill into and get that figured out fixed.

Josh Fonger: [00:13:04] That’s interesting. So do you. What did you get a client who is always changing direction so you get through the design the wireframe it starts to go live and is that you actually know what I want. Totally different than I thought a new design. How do you deal with clients that are always changing direction like that?

Wayne Mullins: [00:13:22] Yeah. So the answer to that is is we forced them to commit. So we forced them to commit in our process. So we tell them at the very beginning that once we get to the design phase you should feel that you love what we’ve designed and if you don’t feel that you love it. In other words it’s a gut feeling. We want to know and we don’t want you to sign off on the design. And so we actually have a form that people have to fill out when they approve the design that basically says from this point forward I understand that if there is significant design changes you’re probably going to come at a fee. We we tried to use analogies paint pictures for people so you know because most people that we deal with they’ve built websites before. So much of our clients already have a Web site that come to us because it’s not performing the way they hoped it would or should. But what we do is we use analogy of building a house. So we sit down with them and we say look just like building a house we’re in the blueprint phase. You can change. You can move the bathroom you can whatever you want. We can do it. But once you sign off on those blueprints and we start building the walls there’s probably going to be some fees involved to build those walls. So again it’s not like we do have hard fast rules I would say but it’s more so about providing guardrails on either side. So as long as we keep the project in the guardrails they’re going to be happy and we’re gonna be happy with the outcome.

Josh Fonger: [00:14:47] Ok so they can change as much they want as long as they’re willing to pay for it.

Wayne Mullins: [00:14:52] Well in the design. Yeah in the design phase and we set that up originally. They can change it as much as they want. Blueprint can move the bathroom as many times as you want but it’s not much work to do that. Once you start build the walls it’s money right.

Josh Fonger: [00:15:05] Yeah. How about your team? So you can have this roadmap for your clients to walk that all makes, makes sense. I mean I definitely you don’t need to be just a website designers a lot of industries where this makes sense to kind of have milestones and check ups with your clients along the way. But what about for your team, your employees. How do you keep all that work straight? I’m assuming you have a mixture of part time full time contractor staff, right?

Wayne Mullins: [00:15:33] So again and that’s not to bring back the system right here. But this binder our process for building a Web site literally walks step by step through the entire process and then it’s got the notes that go along with each section so you know if you’re stuck on a certain section there’s probably a note that tells you how to solve that particular issue that you’re running into. I wish I could say it’s like some magic formula that’s you know we’ve got this magical thing that takes place that we keep it all in line knowing and on track. But the reality is its systems and processes that we follow that constantly get updated and constantly get tweaked and adjusted based on not our feelings or not. We didn’t feel the project went well but actual real data. We keep track of how long projects take. We know different phases how long those phases take them on projects and so then we can use actual data and say you know we’re having this issue where we’re constantly running into too loud too long in the coding phase. So we then began looking into that and figuring out where our system may be broken. We actually use this came from somewhere I don’t remember where. But we recently start using what’s called an issue log. So we have just a Google document called an issue log. So any time anyone on our team runs into an issue so it could be a client’s upset because they thought they were getting whatever a 10 minute video and we only have an eight minute video or whatever it may be. It goes in the issue log and then what we do is we come back to those issues and we work through those issues to see if they are symptomatic or if they’re one time kind of just anomalies that are out here on the fringes and we use that issue log to ensure that our systems and processes are functioning correctly when a system or process is broken just like a doll or a gauge on a car. If the temperature gauge is too high you know you’ve got an issue with the cooling system in the car is not keeping the engine cool enough so you know kind of where to look based on the issues that you’re seeing.

Josh Fonger: [00:17:41] So in a dynamic industry like this there’s always feedback coming from the customer. How do you determine between urgent and important and non urgent but important and not urgent unimportant because I mean those interruptions can really cloud up your day or do you of batch those those comments?

Wayne Mullins: [00:18:02] Yeah. So we pride ourselves on great service. You know that is something, so to date 90 plus percent of our business comes from referrals. So we work really really hard to be super responsive with all of our clients. So we don’t necessarily batch issues that come in when issues do come in. We try to jump on them and handle them as quickly and as immediately as possible. But to answer your question on how do we distinguish between you know important versus urgent. We do something and we vary. We’ve played around with kind of how often this takes place and when this takes place. But we do something called focus time and so during the week we have blocked time that is focused time and right now in the current version that we’re using is it’s three days a week. It’s Wednesday, Thursday, Friday is from 10 a.m. to ten fifty eight A.M. and during that time you’re not allowed to work on any current projects. You can only work on future work meaning you can work on the system which you can work on the processes. You can work on if you have an idea about how to market your division. So we use that time to protect that time even in the most chaotic weeks. We protect that time to stay focused on the future and stay focused on the things that are actually truly important versus just all the things that are screaming around us that are urgent.

Josh Fonger: [00:19:26] So what would future work be like research and development or new product development or new idea development, is that what that is?

Wayne Mullins: [00:19:33] Yep absolutely anything that could drive that particular year. So every person does this could drive their division their department their role forward so it cannot involve any specific current client work that you’re working on it cannot involve any future client work meaning if you have a project starting in two weeks you can’t work on that project it to be kind of systems level work for the future.

Josh Fonger: [00:20:02] I mean it shows you I mean as a leader and as an owner investing in the future of your business and with your team and I think that’s very rare. Most people are very much behind the eight ball. So they’re just rushing they’re not thinking about the future and the systems that actually allow you to get ahead of the eight ball. That’s cool. I know, before we started this interview you mentioned some other interesting idea about how you manage your work structure between kind of time where you interact together the team the time where you have focused work. It’s kind of a modified Pomodoro. Can you explain how that works?

Wayne Mullins: [00:20:34] Yeah absolutely. So we by default a lot of what we do would be considered highly creative work. And so it’s often very collaborative work. You know when you think of creative work you think of sitting around with a whiteboard. There’s a team of people sitting around and they’re brainstorming together into coming up with ideas together. But what we discovered over time was that to be the most productive that we could be in our roles. So whether it’s my role whether it’s our manager Mara of the website division what we’ve done is we block off the 50 minute blocks or from the top of the hour so say 10 a.m. to 10 50. There can be zero distractions. So if I have a question for Mara like I’m curious about how a project is going on a website I can not go ask her that during the 10 to 10 50 time block and we actually run this all day up until 4:00 p.m. we run so after 4 p.m. It’s kind of a free for all you can you and before I dive into that this is the actual clock it sits on the desk in the front of our office. And so this gets set every hour to 50 minutes and it slowly dwindles down and then the timer goes off and then we know it’s distraction time and we can go ask questions we can whatever but what we’ve discovered is that our level of productivity has gone up so so much because what happens is as you’re working you know I’m still working on a project I’m working on something coming up in the future I’m thinking you know what I need to go ask Hannah this question I’ll run in there and you’re a Hannah, who is in the middle of deep work Cal Newport’s great local deep work points about the importance of deep focus on work and so I go interrupt her and now corner research it’s roughly it varies but six to 15 minutes for someone to get fully back engaged in what they were doing before the distraction. So it’s it’s certainly seems very stifling in a lot of ways from the outside. It’s one of the things that we get made fun of a lot by friends and clients in the area they think it’s very you know too structured to elementary school I guess but our office initially when we roll this out was very not excited about this. The concern was you know if I’m working on something I really need an answer. I can’t go ask him but what we’ve discovered is everyone really really loves it because they’re able to stay focused on what they’re working on at the moment and it forces everyone to think ahead. So if you know you’re gonna be working on something you know you’ve got questions you need to get it answered or whatever. It forced you to think ahead. OK any distraction time I need to ask all of these questions and one caveat if you’re working on a project or something you can schedule time during that time with another co-worker but it has to be schedule so you can’t just go interrupt them say Hey can you meet for 15 minutes right now it has to be pretty schedule time.

Josh Fonger: [00:23:31] Yeah I love it. I mean and most almost everything can wait 50 minutes so it’s very rare. When the emergency is that that dramatic. That’s cool, I’ve never heard of someone doing it that way. It’s really hard to focus on but not as a company overall which leads me to my next question because you’re your team is quite systematic with their procedures. Binder there which I think is great. What have the employees and contractors and part timers the full timers, what have they thought as they came into your business because this is kind of a new way a new approach it were they did they buy into it or were they hesitant o, how is that going?

Wayne Mullins: [00:24:05] Yeah I think you know on the surface because of so much of what we do is highly creative work. People have this mindset that we’re very lax it’s very fluid and. It’s very laid back environment. And what we’ve learned over time is that’s the public perception. But the reality is quite different internally. Don’t get me wrong we have a great team and we all get along very well and you know we enjoy what we do but we’re very very structured. And so what we’ve learned over time is in our hiring process we actually have to warn people ahead of time about how serious we are about structure and systems and processes. But here’s the thing that I would say one of the things that I’ve always struggled with and I think a lot of entrepreneurs struggle with this as well is like what is the balance between good management versus micromanagement and how do you what’s too much weight watch too much the other? And,what I’ve learned over time is it’s really about just establishing the guardrails. So in other words we’re going to operate in these time blocks from zero to 50 minutes but I’m not going to tell you what to do in your time blocks. I’m not going to micromanage your schedule. I’m not going to question why did you spend two hours on this project versus an hour on this project. So there’s a lot of autonomy within the guardrails that are there and there’s all kinds of studies out there now that talk about autonomy in the workplace is very very important for employees. Team member satisfaction and what I found is that those guardrails when I have the peace of mind as an owner as the entrepreneur of knowing that the guardrails are there they’re going to keep people from running off the cliff on one side and from running into the mountain on the other side. It gives me peace of mind of giving them all the autonomy they want within those guardrails. So.

Josh Fonger: [00:25:58] I think I think that’s great. I mean those of you who are listening this and I wash in this way as well as guys who reads more books than I do. He’s got a more impressive bookshelf than I do in terms of what he’s read and certainly knows this stuff and I couldn’t agree more with regards to autonomy by giving them the framework so they can’t fall off the tracks and so they can actually be remove the friction that everyone assimilates the same the same boundary.

Wayne Mullins: [00:26:22] Yeah let me just interject real quick into that. So one of the things is along that autonomy somebody out there may be saying but yeah you have this system that they’re supposed to follow you know down to the tenth degree. And here’s what I would say is until there’s an issue we don’t have to look at the system at all. So in other words I said that earlier there are no people problem there’s only systems and processes problem. So. As long as I’ve given them the guardrails I’ve given them the system to follow. If there becomes an issue we then have to look and say OK first of all was the system followed was the process followed. If the answer is no then we have the conversation about is there a reason why wasn’t it followed. And there may be a very valid logical reason as to why it wasn’t followed. So then we look at does it need to be added. Does that exception to the process to the system need to be added. So we’re very structured but within that structure we’re very lots of autonomy within that structure.

Josh Fonger: [00:27:21] So what happens when a client asks for something that is new can be I mean I know you do a lot of different types of marketing and they say hey you know what, now we want to do ads on YouTube. We’re going do video ads on YouTube and that’s something you don’t know if you do this or not. Let’s say it’s a new thing. There’s no process for it. Do you say yes? You say no? Do you say we need to get the people first?

Wayne Mullins: [00:27:43] That’s a very very tough question for me because as an entrepreneur it’s like Of course we can figure it out. Like yeah I will do it let’s let’s just jump in. And I’ve had to learn over time to say no which is not easy for me to do. So I’ve gotten better at saying no to the things that are outside our current parameters. Now what we are looking for those we are looking for patterns. So an example would be the newest service that we have kind of rolled out is Instagram and marketing on Instagram. And the way that came about was we’d been doing Facebook for years and kept having clients ask hey can you help with Instagram? Hey can you help with Instagram? And so what we’re looking for is that pattern as opposed to kind of the one or two off conversations one right now that we’re getting ask pretty repetitively about is LinkedIn and marketing on LinkedIn. So that’s kind of the next one. Once we build all the systems and processes around Instagram and we’ll begin looking at LinkedIn.

Josh Fonger: [00:28:44] Interesting. Well I have got a few other questions if I will get to them all but I wanted to ask you because you wrote the book about it, Now You Have A Web site, Now What, is that book about how to make a website that sells or how to use a website to gather data or what it was the premise of that book?

Wayne Mullins: [00:29:00] Yeah the premise of the book is simply this. So after building at the point when I wrote that I don’t remember how many Web sites we had built but a common thing is people come to us still today with this kind of magic bullet mentality. So they’re like they come to us thinking if I just get the website built the world’s going to hear about my product they’re going to hear about my service and everything is going to change. And the reality is is that rarely ever happens that way. There’s a lot more effort. There’s a lot more action and tactics and strategies that have to go into actually turning you upside into an actual tool you know drive lead drive sales serves whatever purpose you think your website should serve. So that is where that book came from. The book came out of my frustration with the conversation constantly of your bullet your website not this magic bullet it’s not going to come save the day. So once you do have your here are some things that you can actually do to turn that into lead generating machine or you help drive sales of things along those lines.

Josh Fonger: [00:30:08] Well very interesting. Wait. So what. Because of time. What what is the what are you going to leave the audience with? You know for the entrepreneur you know our audience is if small business owners both online and traditional business owners. What’s something that you really think would be important for them to come away with regards creative work?

Wayne Mullins: [00:30:26] Yeah so two things that I would say I’ll save. I’m going to say this simple one. It’s this consistency creates miracles. Consistency creates miracles. And so it doesn’t matter what endeavor you’re doing whether that’s building out your systems and processes whether that’s getting your website actually draft leads whether that’s generating leads or sales Facebook, consistency creates miracles. All too often entrepreneurs have that that mentality of jumping to the next big thing and so they don’t stick with things long enough to kind of reap the fruits and reap the benefits of what they started. So that’s one I can’t stress that enough. Stick with it even when it’s not fun to stick with it. The other one would be this. So in marketing so we do a lot of traditional marketing and there’s again infinite variables but one of the things we’ve developed over time is something we call the natural progression. And so it’s a question that we go back to pretty much on every single campaign that we develop and we ask ourself where is this thing that we’re doing. Where does it fall within this natural progression. So I’ll explain to you briefly what it is the natural progression. If you think of a clock. So at twelve o’clock is a stranger. And then at three o’clock would be a friend. So a stranger friend. And then at six o’clock we’d be a customer or client and then at nine o’clock we’d be evangelists, so if you think of a clock moving around the clock. I think because on video this way that’s probably all backwards but I don’t know. But the goal of all marketing is to basically move people from a stranger to a friend from a friend to a customer and then from a customer to an evangelist. And once you move people to become evangelists and that’s the term we use. So it’s basically an advocate someone who’s out there proclaiming your message about your your company your product your service to the friends and to the world. You bypass the entire stranger part because they go tell all of their friends and there’s a few just simple elements that fit around this natural progression. So to move someone from a stranger to a friend. There’s two elements required you have to know about you and they have to like you they’re never going to become your friend if they don’t know about you and they don’t at least like what it is that you’re brand you your product or service stands for. And then the next phase to move from friend to a customer or client is they actually have to trust you. So no one’s ever going to pull out their wallet and give you money if they don’t trust that your product or service is going to deliver on whatever you say it’s going to deliver. And then to move from a customer to an evangelist they actually have to love your product and you have to give them tools you have to indoctrinate them to become evangelists for you. And so when I say tools an example of that would be back. When it was during its rapid growth Dollar Shave Club. So when someone mentioned sign up for Dollar Shave Club what would happen is they would give you a code that you could show on Facebook for all your friends so that if they signed up you would get a kickback and your friend would get a discount. And so they provided a tool that made it easy for you to evangelize to share the message with everyone else. So. That simple framework for anyone doing any form of marketing. It’s a really just think through OK I’m running Facebook ads. What is the goal of this Facebook ad? Is it to move someone from a stranger to a friend? Is it to move them from a friend to a customer? Or is it; Am I running this to customers trying to convince them to be an evangelist for the brand for the product or the service? Those are my two things. Consistency and the natural progression.

Josh Fonger: [00:34:21] Wow, yeah those are both great. I got a follow up question on the natural progression. I’m intrigued by this. How maybe this just maybe depends how fast does it take to get someone from hearing about you to knowing liking trusting your product, love your product and using a tool making that all happen within a few hours as I have to take years?

Wayne Mullins: [00:34:40] Yeah. So the answer is unfortunately it depends. It depends on the product the service and what it is. So you know the creating evangelists part not to divert from your question but it’s where most small businesses they overlook that entire and I’ll come back to your specific to your specific question. But if you if you were to tell any small business owner any entrepreneur open up you’re you’re marketing your ad budget. Is show me what percent of your budget is spent on this side of the equation are the words taking strangers and getting them to buy my stuff versus spending money convincing your customers to become evangelists for you. Now at the core of that a great product and a great service is as fundamental as a product or service does it deliver that value. Then there’s no convincing there’s no pleading there’s no nothing I can do at that point to get you to go tell your friends about a mediocre product or service. But to answer your question it varies greatly depending on industry you know kind of buying cycles that people go through but I think the most important thing is is that almost in every industry you need to be devoting time and budget on turning customers into evangelists giving them tools.

Josh Fonger: [00:35:57] Very interesting and I’ve got to believe that the spend, amount money it takes to take someone who’s already loved the product to be an evangelist is cheaper in terms of getting new clients than paying money to get a raw, cold person in there new that must cost more money buy less expensive right with the evangelist?

Wayne Mullins: [00:36:15] Yeah absolutely. I don’t remember the exact the data the stats but it’s something like you know an existing client 70 percent more likely to buy a new product that you that you launch and a stranger would be in and their, I can’t remember the exact gambit but they spend on average 40 percent more as a repeat customer. Get a new customer spends.

Josh Fonger: [00:36:37] Wow. So that makes sense you should invest in your systems and provide a good service. Right.

Wayne Mullins: [00:36:42] Absolutely.

Josh Fonger: [00:36:43] Wayne where can people find you if they want more information about what you do and find out more?

Wayne Mullins: [00:36:49] Yeah, Ugly Mug Marketing dot com everything that we do is there. Find out a little bit more about me and about our services and I can reach out if they’d like to through that through that platform through our contact page.

Josh Fonger: [00:37:01] Very good. And Wayne, Wayne been a friend of mine for four years now and so whenever I have somebody who needs a website, wants a website. I always send them to Wayne because they do a great job. And if you’re in that market for a new website it’s not marketing. Definitely check out Ugly Mug dot com; Ugly Mug marketing dot com. Well I hope you enjoyed the podcast with Wayne Mullins of Ugly Mug Marketing and make sure to stay tuned next week where I share with you another podcast from either one of my past clients. You can hear their steps to success or a business expert sharing a tool technique or resource that will help you make more and work less. Before I sign off today, make sure to leave us a comment or thumbs up or some kind of notice. Let us know what you learned from this podcast The biggest takeaway comments by the podcast and we’re gonna be giving away the newest edition of Sam Carpenter’s book work the system. I’m going to try to twist his arm and get him to sign it and send it out there. But next week when I pick somebody from one of the platforms whether it’s. ITunes, YouTube, Facebook, or any of the other podcast outlets out there wherever you listening just send us a screenshot of your comment and email to info or work the system dot com and then we’ll send you a free book. Or will we point out one of those next week. That’s it. Also if you want to get a free digital download of the book work the system. Just go to work the system dot com and you’ll find it there. Thanks everybody. See you next week.